camp: San Bernardino County, California
So
yesterday afternoon we went to the Sierra Club’s Desert Committee meeting which
was largely focused on renewable energy development on public lands. It’s a
very interesting political situation—the national Sierra Club supports
utility-scale solar in the Mojave, because climate change is a big enough
problem that they’re willing to sacrifice. The California Sierra Club is
opposed, and from what I saw at the meeting, a lot of their motivation is NIMBY
related, but not necessarily wrong. So much infighting amongst the
environmentalists there and so much anger in tone when addressing people on the
same side. Maggie’s sociology-related theory is that that generation grew up
wanting to stick it to the man and had to fight for recognition of
environmental issues. Our generation grew up knowing the system was fucked—we
didn’t have to realize it in college. We’re about dialogue and compromise, so
we listen. I think it has a lot to do with politics too. Republicans are a
right-wing party whose rhetoric is even further right (like Tea Party). Dems
are centrist and talk center-left sometimes, but they mostly backpedal and
capitulate. So no one’s even paying lip service to the far left, much less
enacting policies that they support. And that leads to frustration.
So
I don’t like their rhetoric, but I’m glad someone is fighting for the desert.
I’m glad someone will be watchdogging any large-scale solar and wind projects
that do get approved on public lands, because those corporations need to be
held accountable with the same level of scrutiny we would apply to any other
project. I worry about the precedent we set by allowing large utility companies
to develop projects on public lands. I think I’m willing to sacrifice the
desert tortoise for the greater good, but after talking to Jim Harvey this
morning, I’m not convinced it’s necessary. Feed-in tariffs seem to make sense,
though I really want a better knowledge of PV materials and manufacture before
I start getting excited about rooftop solar. The Solar Done Right guy I talked
to at the meeting said the Department of Energy was doing a cradle-to-grave
analysis of PV vs. concentrated solar. God, I want to see that, and apparently
they might not release it. Freedom of Information Act…
We
also talked to Jim Harvey this morning. He made a pretty compelling case for
doing feed-in tariffs and distributed generation rather than utility-scale
solar on public lands. I still want to look into PV and also his claim that
deserts sequester a ton of carbon and that benefit goes away with power
installation. I find it disheartening that none of these new power
facilities/installations—not the rooftop proliferation in Germany and not the
large projects proposed in the Mojave—have actually closed any coal plants. And
overall, I think environmentalists need to be more proactive about these sorts
of issues. I love Alex (Wilderness Society dude)’s acronyms—Nowhere on Planet
Earth (NOPE) and Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything (BANANA).
These are the new NIMBY, and we have to be more than that if we want to make
progress.
I
guess one of the things I’m wondering is if we accept that large utility-scale
projects hurt the desert and that solar rooftop is a better solution, what is
our best course, as activists and environmentalists? Do we acknowledge
political reality and recognize that climate change is urgent even while
feed-in tariffs are infeasible in a market dominated by big utilities? Or do we
stall large projects and right the system, fight for the desert? I’m tempted to
side with political reality, yet I know that if the project in question were
Glen Canyon Dam or a nuclear plant, I’d right to the bitter, bloody end to keep
it out of the desert. Maybe. Or would I? Maybe climate change is so serious
that radioactive waste, flooded canyons and decimated salmon runs are worth it.
Except we’re not closing any coal plants when we add all this solar and wind.
And while that’s discouraging in terms of ever stabilizing our climate or
having a future with pikas and Bangladesh, it does mean that we should do solar
right the first time, even if it takes longer.
A
feed-in tariff makes sense whether the utility scale stuff happens or not. So I
want to look into that, into getting an initiative started to get that going in
Washington. That seems like the perfect thing to bypass the state legislature
with and go straight to the people, yet Jim seemed confused and taken aback
when I suggested it. We’re not good at being proactive, which makes sense to an
extent, because a lot of people get into activism by opposing something close
to home, something where they never believed the corporation would take it that
far. We fight and oppose, but we have trouble being proactive and finding good
alternatives. We don’t recommend alternative sites, because everything is
sacred. We don’t try to pass initiatives that would pave the way to a brighter
future we imagine. We don’t go after coal plants. If Bill Gates shifted his
entire foundation and fortune towards repowering the US, it would be done. We
could close the coal plants and still guarantee all the employees their
salaries for the next five years. We don’t have that kind of money and we’re
used to seeing ourselves as underdogs with no real cards to play besides
emotional appeal. But we’re past that. This problem goes beyond a hippie
concern for trees and Gaia. So we need to use that lever and push for what we
want, not just against what we don’t. And I’m serious about that initiative.
You have to start somewhere.
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