Posted by
ngoc8or on Saturday, June 28, 2008 7:00:00 AM
The
New York Times reports that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) decided to stop accepting new applications for solar energy farms in the desert. Reason: environmentalists want to slow down the development so they can study the solar farms' effects on desert animals and assess availability of water. Of course the Times, other MSM outlets, and liberal blogs are going crazy spinning this as just another stupid Bush policy. Besides the fact that the BLM is still processing 130 applications for solar plants, and the freeze on new applications is temporary, the real culprets here are the sue happy environmentalists who threaten litigation if solar plants are not adequately addressed to their impossible standards.
Now, as a biologist, I am in favor of good planning and adequate data to avoid unnecessary negative impacts on wildlife, but how many years have we been studying this issue? Maybe 25 or 30 years at least. At what point do we have enough information to make a decision? The purpose of studies these days is to delay and suck the financial life out of a proposed project, without actually denying it.
By the way, to put this in perspective, the cost of solar energy is reported to be about 15 cents a kilowatt hour, compared to coal, which is 5 cents. You do the math.