Bush Cites Enviro Concerns to Curb Solar Development...While Accelerating Oil Drilling

A few weeks back, I wrote a New York Times magazine article about the populist uprising against unbridled oil and gas drilling in the Mountain West. The article highlighted a major theme in my new book, THE UPRISING.

In the article, I discussed how the Bush Bureau of Land Management has thrown the principle of environmental caution overboard by opening up a huge amount of federal land to drilling. So it is with more than a little bit absurd to read this New York Times story today:

"Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years. The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states."

Look - I agree that we need to do a better job of measuring environmental impacts of all proposed energy development - whether that development is solar, oil or gas. But what's so incredible about this story is that the BLM is working to curtail solar development in Western states by citing environmental concerns while at the same actively accelerating oil and gas drilling in Western states - drilling that is way, way worse for the environment than solar energy, from both an emissions perspective and a land-use perspective.

This kind of government fealty to the rapacious fossil fuel industry is precisely what the energy-related populist uprising in West is revolting against.

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.

Comments

[joclark]

This is just total appeasing of big oil and gas. How transparent do they need to be? How ridiculous is this going to get before there is a real Uprising. Keep calling out the hypocrisy David.

[steffi]

Isn't it interesting when you consider the length the Bush administration has gone to muddy the waters regarding Global Warming and now all of a sudden when it comes to an alternative energy source when the "drill drill drill" debate is on going it's now time to care about the environmental impact of Solar energy.

hmm.

When has the Bush administration ever done anything to halt the increasing price of Oil?

I know instead of handing out stimulus checks they should have simply handed out vouchers for gasoline instead.

[jfor]

It is so typical of politicians to cite environmental concerns over solar placing another hurdle in front of the future all of us know is coming in order to appease a handful of fossil fuel pigs who apparently have not raped America enough yet and want one more round to make sure that every nook and cranny of our environment and economy is destroyed.

Remember republicans do not like our environment, it bothers them that the air is not polluted enough that they cannot sell us clean air. I can see how conservatives would be scared of solar technolog, at one time they were scared of gravity and even today they are scared of evolution.

How did this backwards thinking bunch ever get enough power to continue to stymie the natural progression of our species?

[ella52]

I heard this on NPR yesterday and was disappointed and frustrated. Honestly does every single movement forward have to wait until 01/09? So that big oil, big money interests are not the only interests that have any weight in the government?
"Crude: The Impac"t shows so clearly the monumental environmental damage that oil creates... but we are going to put the solar industry development on hold because of possible environmental issues. I live on the East Coast where wind developers have been trying for a long time to get turbines in Nantucket Sound and the outcry has been constant ...that we will lose this pristine envrionment to the ugly monsters "turbines".
Yet the very real possibility that offshore drilling or a LNG plant 80 miles away on the Taunton River doesn't seem to get any attention. In fact the local newspaper came out against the wind turbines and then turned around and supported the LNG plant in a classic case of "it's fine as long as it's not in my backyard."

[kingcityguru]

I believe in more domestic drilling AND solar panels on everyone home. I have some from Day4Energy on my roof because it was an economical purchase. Make it a positive economic decision and every new home will have them installed.

Do something!!

[clevelandchick]

Germany has been using solar energy for how long? Pretty much every rooftop in Germany is coverered with solar panels. I'm from Cleveland and even we beat Germany for number of sunniest days a year.

Why doesn't the government (better yet why haven't they been) studying other nations that use solar energy for some sort of a baseline idea of environmental impact? Because energy companies don't want to do it, especially Big Coal in the East. Therefore, our representatives who are easily cowed by Old Energy with threats of job loss or campaign donation loss refuse to press the issue.