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Sunday, June 29, 2008

But they want to drill for sticky black stuff everywhere
Posted by Jill | 1:29 PM
You don't even have to STUDY the environmental impact of offshore drilling, we already know the impact:





But for the Bush Administration, it's "Full Speed Ahead!" on drilling, while they want a fucking environmental impact on....solar power.

Yes, folks, SOLAR:

Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years.

The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.

But the decision to freeze new solar proposals temporarily, reached late last month, has caused widespread concern in the alternative-energy industry, as fledgling solar companies must wait to see if they can realize their hopes of harnessing power from swaths of sun-baked public land, just as the demand for viable alternative energy is accelerating.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Holly Gordon, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs for Ausra, a solar thermal energy company in Palo Alto, Calif. “The Bureau of Land Management land has some of the best solar resources in the world. This could completely stunt the growth of the industry.”

Much of the 119 million surface acres of federally administered land in the West is ideal for solar energy, particularly in Arizona, Nevada and Southern California, where sunlight drenches vast, flat desert tracts.

Galvanized by the national demand for clean energy development, solar companies have filed more than 130 proposals with the Bureau of Land Management since 2005. They center on the companies’ desires to lease public land to build solar plants and then sell the energy to utilities.

According to the bureau, the applications, which cover more than one million acres, are for projects that have the potential to power more than 20 million homes.

All involve two types of solar plants, concentrating and photovoltaic. Concentrating solar plants use mirrors to direct sunlight toward a synthetic fluid, which powers a steam turbine that produces electricity. Photovoltaic plants use solar panels to convert sunlight into electric energy.

Much progress has been made in the development of both types of solar technology in the last few years. Photovoltaic solar projects grew by 48 percent in 2007 compared with 2006. Eleven concentrating solar plants are operational in the United States, and 20 are in various stages of planning or permitting, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.

The manager of the Bureau of Land Management’s environmental impact study, Linda Resseguie, said that many factors must be considered when deciding whether to allow solar projects on the scale being proposed, among them the impact of construction and transmission lines on native vegetation and wildlife. In California, for example, solar developers often hire environmental experts to assess the effects of construction on the desert tortoise and Mojave ground squirrel.


Since when do they give a flying fuck about native vegetation and wildlife? They want to drill in the Alaskan National Wildlife refuge, with idiotic wingnut Congresswomen claiming that the caribou will belly up to the nice warm pipes to have their Starbucks. You think I'm joking?

This Administration is going to do everything it can, via squeezing Americans at the gas pumps, to get its way on oil drilling, the better to enrich the Bush and Cheney families and their cronies and friends in the oil industry. Meanwhile, a young industry that promises a renewable source of fuel is subject to a freeze while the federal government drags its feet on environmental impact studies that it doesn't find necessary while drilling for poison.

And with John McCain, we get even more of this insanity.

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