Most people are aware of Southern California's beach cities and suburban sprawl all the way out to the ski resort towns. Some may not know that beyond the populated areas of Southern California there is a big, empty desert. The Mojave Desert is a large, almost entirely empty space populated primarily by coyotes, jack rabbits, and rattlesnakes. Recently I had to travel that route and was surprised at the new thing that was there. For miles and miles they were building solar arrays. Hundreds of acres of solar arrays. Makes sense. California is an environmentalist state dedicated to saving the planet. They've rejected fossil fuel and nuclear power sources and plan to move to more renewable energy -- primarily wind and solar. Add to that the pushing out of natural gas and the push for electric cars and you end up with an affluent state with a really, really high demand for electricity -- a demand they're having trouble meeting.
So they're planting solar fields. Sounds so environmentally friendly, but it's really not. They strip the land down to nothing but dirt and fence it off. Miles and miles of stripped, fenced land. When I was younger (and it continues today), a big ecological problem was the loss of habitat for wildlife. So California is stripping off enmasse large portions of the Mojave Desert in order to provide environmentally friendly power for the masses. They're destroying the environment to preserve the environment.
Where I live used to be the end of civilization. "Drive to the end of the road, turn left, and you're at my house." No more. A few years after we arrived they extended that road and built 600 houses a few miles north of us. But we still had 84 acres of pristine desert to walk through. Until a few years ago they took that, too. Oh, the neighbors were mad. Suddenly snakes and scorpions and coyotes were pushing through their living space. Pets were endangered. Children were at risk. Why? Because they eliminated 84 acres of habitat for the creatures and they had nowhere else to go. California has stripped off hundreds of acres of prime habitat and called it "for the environment." Like "We will exclude people because we're inclusive" or "We will not tolerate intolerance," they've managed again to contradict themselves while they pat themselves on the back for their efforts to save the planet. I'm not sure the planet can survive their efforts to save it.
2 comments:
Doesn't help that California will probably be out of water before they get those facilities running and useful. At least then nature will be able to reclaim that desert when everyone leaves to get water.
There is no "problem" the left won't worsen by involving themselves in it, usually as...ostensibly...saviors. Many of the "problems" are invented by them, and instead of resolving those, they make them actual problems they also fail to resolve.
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