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Freeze On US Solar Plant Applications Lifted
necro81 writes "Barely a month ago, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced a freeze on applications for solar power plants on federally managed land, pending a two-year comprehensive environmental review. After much hue and cry from the public, industry, and other parts of government, BLM has today announced that it will lift the freeze, but continue to study the possible environmental effects. To date, no solar project has yet been approved on BLM land."
We'll just figure out what the effects are after we're hooked up to your juice.
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
Solar power sounds great and is very trendy. Why evaluate the possible consequences for our actions when we can plow ahead blindly? Going ahead with energy policy without considering the environmental effects has worked well for us so far!
Besides, being in favor of solar power helps you score with hippie chicks.
I wonder if the BLM has approved any oil wells on BLM land......
While we whine about 'environmental considerations' of grabbing free energy from the sun, other countries are actually doing something about it. I was just in Germany where solar cell farms have been built in many places along the autobahns. Further, there are huge windmills everywhere (turning VERY slowly--Any bird which hits one of these is not paying attention. In France they've gone whole-hog nuke for electricity. There isn't a project alive that we can't make take ten times longer and make ten times the cost over our 'concerns.'
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
You need to see just HOW MUCH BLM land exists here in the Southwest. It's the vast majority of land where solar could be a viable enterprise. The amount of private land vs government-land (not withstanding Indian reservations, which I suppose could be argued as casino/government land) vastly outstrips private land holdings.
This is a big deal, because bush is shutting off a huge reserve of prime solar generating real estate on BLM land. I suspect if oil was found on BLM land there would be a cry for getting guvamint out of the land business.
But what exactly about them shows a "lack of compassion"? Because they'd ban animal testing? That's not a choice I'd agree with, but it has legitimate moral arguments.
How about assaulting people over their choice of clothing? Controlling something through fear... oh yeah, it's a terrorist organization. Wow... compassion what?
This is what their study aims to answer (what exactly are the concerns and how bad they are). Unfortunately random people's suppositions don't substitute research, which is why they are investigating it.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
nothing like the people that are against everything.
Doesn't matter how good a proposal is, there will always be downsides, and there will always be people that will use these downsides to block anything and everything just to show they have power.
If the 1800's would have been like that the world would look a whole lot different today.
There would be no railroads, probably no roads/cars and aircraft/airports and certainly no space travel.
Progress requires sacrifice, the tough bit is that lots of stuff got sacrificed to profits, not to progress and we're not facing the backlash of that.
The pendulum once disturbed never quite regains its balance.
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Keep in mind, one of PETA's VP's is a Diabetic.. So its a little funny to be arguing against animal testing when your alive BECAUSE of research done on animals.. (go look up penn and tellers "bullshit" episode on PETA)
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
I hope you realize that you are reasoning emotionally, not analytically.
The target of your polemic are (a) hippies with (b) money who (c) care about rare birds and (d) don't care about poor people. Just because somebody demonstrating caring about rare birds doesn't mean he doesn't demonstrate caring about people in other circumstances. That's an assumption you are making for polemical purposes, so that you can brand anybody who disagrees with you on an issue as a hypocrite.
Also, the implication is that anybody who has anything to say should just STFU if you think there's an issue that's more important. It's a BS position, because there's always a more important issue you can scrounge up. If you want to have any credibility arguing this position, you'd better show that you've dedicated your life to assisting the poor.
You can't be a serious thinker about issues and be a single issue person. The world doesn't work that way. Sometimes it's time to stand up for the environment, and sometimes it's time to stand up for the downtrodden. And quite often doing one is doing the other.
If you knew anything about environmentalism other than what you've learned from right wing bullshitters, you'd know that environmental problems fall disproportionately on the poor. Who breaths the most pollution? The poor. Who suffers the most from climate change or short sighted, locally focused water management? The poor.
The middle class don't do so great either, under the rape the environment philosophy.
But if you're wealthy, you get the lion's share of the economic benefits of that philosophy. Using that money, can simply move away from problems. Move to the outer suburbs, and buy a vacation home in Vail. If you despoil your native country, you can always go to Costa Rica to stay at a marvelous eco-friendly resort.
It's not that I have anything against the wealthy in general. I've known quite a few of them, and a lot of them are forward looking, socially responsible problem solvers. But this argument that environmentalists ignore the poor is just ignorant. It's worse than ignorant. It's willfully ignorant.
You don't give a shit about the poor, you're just exploiting them to make a rhetorical point. No person sincerely interested in the poor takes the attitude that nobody can have any other priorities but the poor.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.