Mojave Desert Blog

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is hosting two public meetings on plans to mow down nearly 11 square miles of intact desert wildlands to build the Gemini Solar power project , which would be located northeast of Las Vegas along the entrance road to Valley of Fire State Park .  It will be very important for concerned citizens to attend because most environmental groups have taken a muted stance on the project, even though it is expected to displace up to 260 desert tortoises, and wipe out beavertail and silver cholla cacti, burrowing owl nesting locations and imperil a rare plant found in only a few places in the Mojave. [UPDATE: These meetings have concluded, but you can still submit comments by e-mail up to September 5.  Scroll down for details on how to submit comments.] Any member of the public is welcome to attend the meetings , and public comment sessions are during the last hour of each session: Public Meeting #1 - Las Vegas When: Tuesday, July 23rd, 5:00 - 8:00 PM

Green New Deal proposals and policy discussions often sound like a smorgasbord of different issues.  You hear about job creation, counteracting inequities that have impacted underrepresented communities, research and development, agriculture, transportation, and the list goes on.   Rightly so; the environmental problems of today rest on a complicated, interlocking puzzle of social, technological, and economic problems.   But the underlying goal of any Green New Deal is the dramatic expansion of the renewable energy sector.  That raises a prickly question: how do we do that and protect the environment at the same time? A recent UC Davis/Center for Biological Diversity study  led by Dr. Rebecca Hernandez highlighted perhaps the greatest challenge we will face in implementing a Green New Deal: "Achieving a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources on planet Earth to support human activities, in a manner benign to Earth’s life support systems, is arguably the gr