I’m No Tree-Hugger, but Ripping Up Joshua Trees for a Solar Farm is Ridiculous
We must destroy the environment to save the environment. That’s a fair trade-off, right?
Image: Reuters. This is what forever tainted land looks like.
It looks like the failure of the rooftop solar phenomenon in sunny Southern California isn’t enough to convince those in the “renewable” energy movement that maybe the idea of pinning your energy future on millions of acres of solar farms is just not...what’s the word?...sustainable.
The idea of building massive solar farms across the country, at first blush, seems to be a responsible and practical means of generating energy from otherwise unused (or underused) land. All of that sunshine, wasted on desert tortoises, diamondback rattlesnakes, and those twisted, strange-looking Joshua trees. Well, not to worry. We’re marching forward with solar farm installations regardless of what it does to the environment.
Who Cares? It’s Just Boron
Northeast of Edward Air Force Base is the small mining town of Boron. The desert surrounding this town is home to an abundance of desert wildlife and vegetation that includes the Joshua tree, many of which are over 100 years old. About 3,500 Joshua trees will be destroyed to make room for a vast solar farm owned by Aratina Solar Center which is nested within the investment portfolio of the private equity group Kohlberg Kravitz Roberts (KKR).
They’re ripping up protected Joshua trees. In California, where the Joshua tree has a national park named after it.
To keep the bad optics under wraps, Aratina Solar is grinding the uprooted Joshua trees on-site rather than shipping them off to a landfill. This desert area is home to a naturally occurring fungus in the soil around Joshua trees that causes “valley fever,” and uprooting the trees sends the fungus airborne. But you’re not a resident of Boron, so why should you care?
Upon completion, the Aratina Solar project will cover over 2,000 acres of pristine desert in order to generate power for “up to 180,000 homes.” Of course, this does not include the homes within the city limits of Boron – it is earmarked for homes hundreds of miles away to affluent California neighborhoods where the semi-wealthy residents drive energy-hungry EVs.
The environmental destruction isn’t limited to removal of the Joshua trees. Once installed, solar panels release nitrogen trifluoride, a toxic gas that solar farms emit at scale along with a host of other highly toxic materials if the panels are damaged and the chemicals contained in their internal parts find their way into the soil beneath. Hail storms are somewhat uncommon in the Southern California deserts, but they do occur and they have the potential to destroy portions of solar farms as we saw in Texas earlier this year. Residents in that area fear that chemicals released from damaged solar panels might have leached into the water table.
Stop Panicking – They’re Only “Trade-offs”
Devotees of solar energy will sometimes admit there is a toxicity downside to solar farms but they insist that the “trade-offs” are worth the effort to decarbonize. “Trade-offs,” like poisoning the land and water, forever preventing otherwise fertile property from producing crops, and rendering already endangered species of animals and plants extinct. All for producing intermittent trace amounts of energy at enormous expense using solar arrays that radiate more heat in the summer and absorb more heat in the winter than the land on which the solar farm is installed, thus exacerbating temperature extremes and increasing the likelihood of damaging storms that will, of course, be blamed on “climate change.”
Is this what the “renewable” energy movement has turned into? Has the zealotry now become so unmoored from reality that the hideously damaging consequences of “renewable” energy installations are positioned as mere “trade-offs” that are to be expected?
Not In My Back Yard
The maniacal push for solar energy in California and elsewhere is almost always centered in rural communities that are easily railroaded by state and federal agencies. There’s plenty of sunshine in Santa Monica, for instance, but even with an abundance of rooftop solar, the need for energy increases every year and there is no way those affluent residents of Santa Monica will tolerate an unsightly solar farm blanketing the hillsides. We’ll just cover the deserts and fly-over country with earth-destroying solar farms, and let the local rubes deal with all of those “trade-offs.”
We Must Destroy the Environment to Save the Environment
Never mind that the value of the energy generated by a solar farm throughout its operational lifetime will not offset the massive costs of its materials, installation, and maintenance. It is the sheer amount of damage to the surrounding environment that is so breathtaking, not to mention the toxicity of the disposal of damaged and spent solar panels.
Even if you don’t care about the Joshua trees, or the diamondback rattlesnakes, or the desert tortoises, we must understand that the notion of “saving the planet” with unaffordable “green” solutions that are worse than the stated problems isn’t just counterintuitive. It is lunacy on stilts that exposes the entire “green” movement as a poisonous scheme that swindles away the wealth of entire nations while delivering a fraction of what has been promised in the most toxic way imaginable.