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."

Comments

No Solar Projects Approved

[Alcimedes]

I wonder if the BLM has approved any oil wells on BLM land......

Germany has them

[mschuyler]

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.'

Re:Frozen?

[y86]

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?

Re:Frozen?

[hey!]

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.