What an odd world we live in when environmental activists feel the need to write about how horrible grass and open parks can be for the environment.
It is not odd, it is revealing.
As with most enviro-nutters (especially those in California) they live to criticize anything that does not fit into their idea of how green things should be. It is easy to pick on parks in California because these nutters have a good chance of effecting change on them. Politicians and government officials are so scared of the enviromental movement in their state that they will make the necessary changes rather than make them angry. Besides, these officials certainly don't want to look like they don't care about the environment.
But as we have found recently, even the green way is not always the right way. I am
talking about the fight in California over the Solar farms they want to build in the Mojave Desert, but the other side of the environmental coin, the animal rights organizations have put up a fight against them.
Near Hollister CA the world's largest solar project is in a classic struggle between NIMBYs and green energy advocates.
A Silicon Valley company is proposing to build here what would be the world's largest solar farm — 1.2 million solar panels spread across an area roughly the size of 3,500 football fields.
But, in recent weeks, the Santa Clara Valley, Monterey Peninsula and Fresno chapters of the Audubon Society have opposed the project.
Birds, foxes, lizards and kangaroo rats live there. Somehow I don't believe that these concerns will kill this one, since major transmission lines run right through the area, and other conducive factors are present. And the clock is ticking:
Demand for solar is hot. Schwarzenegger this year signed an executive order requiring 33 percent of California's electricity to come from renewable sources such as solar and wind. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama's stimulus plan contains billions in grants and tax credits for green power. It would pay for 30 percent of Solargen's project in the Panoche Valley, for example, if ground can be broken by Dec. 1, 2010.
In the Mojave solar fight, it's about Federal power and conservation on a grand scale.
Is California goes, so goes...