Slashdot Mirror
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."
So your complaint is that environmentalists care about the environment, not people? I have a similar complaint about humanitarians. They don't care about the environment.
Nothing, but just as with the oil and gas companies, it is much less expensive to lease land from the BLM. Also, you can get a lease on a vast expanse of land which you might not be able to buy contiguously through other channels.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Any PETA person would tell you that they're showing compassion for the dead animal who provided the fur. You can argue that there's something wrong with showing more compassion for animals than for people. But that's not evidence of "lack of compassion". Rather the opposite.
And before you launch into the usual ad hominem bullshit: I am not a member of PETA, I disagree with them on many points (especially about their harassing people who disagree with them), and I'm wearing leather shoes as I write this. It's just that disagreeing with somebody doesn't give you the right to turn off your brain when you're talking about them. I think I speak for most people when I say that demonizing people you disgree with is a tired concept, much abused by the mentally lazy.
As a german, I'll have to say I've never heard about any such quotas. All there is is a guaranteed price at which the electricity companies have to buy electricity from solar, wind etc. sources. Who would set the quotas, and who would get how much anyway? Would the owner of 100 small windmills get 100 times the quota the owner of 1 windmill gets? What about the guy in the windy north, does he get the same as the owner of a windmill in a not as windy part of the country? Would everybody elses quota be reduced if a large windfarm goes online?
The laws were actually made to support alternative energy sources, and while some are misguided (the photovoltaics subsidies aren't really doing much to reduce cost or support the local production of solar cells), the electric companies doesn't get much to say about how much they have to pay for the electricity they are forced to buy.
This is necessary
This is necessary
Life
Feeds on life
Feeds on life
Feeds on life
Feeds on
PETA displays a lack of compassion for the realities of life for the average person that is guaranteed to alienate them. When you give someone a hard time for eating meat or wearing leather, things that mankind has probably been doing since long before anyone ever had the idea (misguided or no) that there might be some ethical reason not to do so, you're making their life harder for something that they have little control over - their upbringing. I'd say that shows a lack of compassion... their lack of understanding for your position in life.
Finally, I do think that the members of PETA are a bunch of idiots, and I'm not afraid to admit it. I can look in the mirror and see what shape my teeth are. I don't believe any of that dizzy-headed bullshit about humans being the only animals who kill for fun (my cat does it) or about being the only ones who make war (ants do it) or any of that. If you want to go with what the majority of animals in nature do you'll spawn and separate and maybe die. But odds aren't bad that you'll eat some other animal for lunch. You probably won't wear one, but only because you don't have the combination of clever hands and a big brain that will let you get the idea. Is it demonizing them to say that I think they're all fundamentally damaged at some deep emotional level?
I personally know someone who at one point in their life cried because they couldn't stand to kill a vegetable. ("I'm a level five vegan. I don't eat anything that casts a shadow.") They realized the absurdity of the situation and began eating meat again too, because the plant is alive, and the animal is alive, and they both taste good. We're not meant to subside on plants alone, our body simply isn't designed that way. Even if it was, to live naturally is not desirable. If it was you'd typically die at 35 of one of your many diseases. Er, not you personally... the general "you" :)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"