Mojave Desert Blog

In his State of the Union speech, President Obama vowed to speed up permitting for energy projects -- including oil and gas -- on public wildlands , and a potentially ominous call to invest in modernizing "pipelines".  The President is sticking to his "all of the above" energy approach that has had significant impacts on our desert landscapes, including inappropriately sited solar and wind projects that have already industrialized dozens of square miles of public lands.   It is hard to appreciate the President's proposal for energy and fuel efficiency investments when he remains committed to sacrificing our wildlands to private industry and increasing natural gas and oil production.  Our wildlands are already burdened by climate change. Converting more of those lands to industrial use -- whether for solar energy, natural gas, or coal -- is simply more of the status quo we have faced over the last century. [click on image to expand] The Obama administratio

The President today nominated REI chief and former Mobil Oil executive Sally Jewell to be the next Secretary of Interior.  I do not envy Jewell because the President and his outgoing Secretary of Interior -- Ken Salazar -- have made it imperative that the next four years look starkly different than the last four years.  After the first four years, President Obama has used administrative powers to protect 186,077 acres of public lands, according to the New York Times, which means he'll have serious catching up to do if he wants to reach George W. Bush's 700,000 acres, although that is a very low bar to set. Rather than preserve our natural resources, Obama and Salazar during the first four years opened up millions of acres to the energy industry -- including oil, gas, solar and wind projects -- that have fragmented and destroyed our deserts, grasslands and forests (not to mention the offshore drilling they have approved).   The President's "all of the above" en

Nevada is probably looking for a new director for its Department of Wildlife, but if you want to protect wildlife habitat, don't bother applying.  The New York Times has a good write-up worth reading on the ouster of the Director of Nevada's Department of Wildlife, who was apparently focused on preserving habitat for the greater sage grouse in the Great Basin desert.  Mr. Kenneth Mayer had previously been ousted after ranchers and hunters complained that he did not support predator control -- killing mountain lions and coyotes -- to boost deer populations.  It is no surprise then that Nevada falls behind other states in conservation planning, despite facing significant levels of proposed development . 

I got up early to watch the sun rise from a small patch of Joshua Tree woodland habitat in the western Mojave.  I parked the car along a two lane road and ventured into the dark desert, chasing a rapidly setting moon to the west as the faint light of dawn crept up on me from the east. The moon setting over the Mojave. I walked for a few minutes and my hands were already numb from the cold wind.  All of the creosote bushes that combed the wind in the darkness came into view as the sun's light silhouetted the San Gabriel mountains.  From this patch of desert I could momentarily convince myself that I had found solitude, even though I was standing on an island of habitat slowly being engulfed by new housing tracts and shopping centers.  Two lanes become four, and stop signs become traffic signals.  Joshua trees become car dealerships and rabbitbrush become fast food restaurants. Humans have always used and respected the desert's power, but now these beautiful wildlands ar

San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) wants a new natural gas-fired power plant built east of San Diego, but local organizations --including Save the Mission Trails , San Diego Sierra Club and 350.org chapters -- are asking the utility to instead invest in local rooftop solar deployment and energy efficiency.  The utility company argues that the peaker plant is necessary to offset the intermittency of wind and solar, although distributed generation spread out across our urban areas and energy efficiency investments probably would offset any claimed need for more fossil fuel generation. A rendering of what an industrial energy facility would look like near the Mission Trails, east of San Diego.  Photo from the Save the Mission Trails website. SDG&E did not bother to show up to a California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) meeting where members of the public expressed their concerns, and CPUC again delayed a vote to either reject or accept SDG&E's plans to buy energ

I am looking forward to the next issue of Sierra magazine because it will feature an article regarding the wind industry's impacts on birds and bats.  The author, Paul Rauber, wrote a good piece in the last issue on distributed generation, and some of the policy reforms necessary to expand deployment of community solar.  However, as I pointed out earlier this week, Mr. Rauber thought that a graphic and article published by Mother Jones comparing bird mortality by wind turbines to bird mortality by cats was a useful piece of information to share with the Sierra Club's thousands of followers in a separate piece published on the Club's website.  The Mother Jones article and graphic not only portray the loss of 440,000 birds a year as trivial, but also suggests that enforcement of bird conservation law on the wind industry is a tool of renewable energy "opponents."   The article boils down two complex and different problems into an unsophisticated and kitschy gr

How often do you find yourself looking outside for solutions to our environmental crises -- Federal regulation, conservation of wildlands, and the greening of industry.  These are all efforts that need to be pursued, but I end up spending so much time reading NEPA analysis or sending in public comments on proposed projects that I may lose sight of what is truly within my power to change.  That is why it was refreshing to learn that the US Green Building Council, and the Sierra Club's My Generation Campaign and San Gorgonio Chapter sponsored a home energy efficiency seminar in Southern California.  The seminar is part of a series that will focus on increasing awareness of efficiency and local clean energy (i.e. rooftop solar) solutions in underserved communities.  I hope to have advanced notice of future seminars in this series, and I will advertise them here on the blog. An audience in Redlands learns how they can save both money and the environment by making their homes mor