Mojave Desert Blog

A new bill introduced by Congressman Paul Cook would encourage the destruction of over 246 square miles of desert wildlands in exchange for widely supported conservation designations.  The bill - the California Minerals, Off-Road Recreation, and Conservation Act - panders to harmful, for-profit uses of public lands, including in the heart of the Mojave Desert along Historic Route 66 . The bill appears to be an effort to counter the desert conservation and recreation legislation introduced by Senator Feinstein, who decided earlier this year to seek establishment of desert monuments through the Antiquities Act because of roadblocks in Congress.  Contrary to misinformation I have seen spread online, the monuments would not "restrict access" for people that enjoy and explore desert wildlands.  I say this as a person that uses designated routes to access remote areas of the desert for camping, hiking and photography.  Unlike the monument proposals, Cook's bill would promo

First Solar has displaced at least 161 adult and juvenile desert tortoises to make way for its Silver State South Solar project in Nevada, as of August 2015, according to documents provided by the Department of Interior.  Initial information indicates several tortoises relocated from the project site have already died, possibly as a result of being forced into unfamiliar ranges.  First Solar is clearing over 3.7 square miles of intact desert habitat for the project after the company ignored requests to consider less destructive locations.  Underscoring its interest in profit over the environment, the company has even funded attacks on rooftop solar - a more sustainable alternative to meeting our renewable energy needs that First Solar sees as a threat to its bulldozer-led approach. Translocation Results Uneven   Although the 161 desert tortoises found on the Silver State South project site were moved to the surrounding desert before bulldozers leveled the area for solar panels, at

"Renewable distributed generation (“DG”) has benefits to society that cannot be measured on utility balance sheets." That is the bottom line of an extensive white paper submitted by the Sierra Club to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the regulatory body that is currently deciding whether rooftop solar will continue to expand in California or be buried by monopolistic utility companies seeking to continue a destructive status quo. The CPUC will decide by the end of the year how much the energy generated by a rooftop solar installation is worth under net-metering, and it has solicited proposals from stakeholders regarding how to determine this value.  If you live or work in a home with solar panels on the roof, or if you have purchased shares in a community solar project because you don't own the roof over your head, the utility companies currently credit you at the retail rate of electricity for every kilowatt-hour (kWh) that your solar panels gene