Clean Energy in the Steens

While conceptually this appears to be two monoliths within the environmental movement, land conservation and clean energy, on a collision course. Such a situation would be worthy of a great deal of soul searching if matters such as land use and energy were as two dimensional as the conundrum appears on the surface. The environmental community is being faced with the false choice of feeling compelled to sacrifice our best scenic land and wildlife habitat to achieve our parallel goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. What should be asked is "Do we really need to site industrial scale energy facilities on rare desert plant habitat in the Mohave desert or right next to Steens mountain? Don't we have the technological and political ability through the planning process to find more appropriate sites? Do we still need to produce energy at such great expense and at such a large scale so far away from its consumers only to loose most of that energy through transmission? The questions we need to asking are questions of location, scale, efficiency, and equity. How we transmit electricity, how its produced, who controls it production and distribution. Check out the reactions of the California Native Plant Society to the large scale solar projects in the Mohave desert. The arguments are compelling.