Rare Truth-Telling Piece at L.A. Times Skewers Radical Left's Hypocrisy on Protecting the Environment

The development of a solar power plant in the Mojave will decimate large swaths of the desert --- all in the name of creating alternative energy sources and driven by global warming hysteria. Both the Bush and Obama administrations share the blame. Tens of billions of dollars have been made available for the development of non-fossil fuel burning energy sources, and the costs to the consumer will be substantially higher than that of traditional sources --- and that's to say nothing of the costs to taxpayers in the subsidies going to fund this boondoggle.

It's pretty messed up all around, but the inevitable result of a regulatory state that would make the old Soviet bureaucrats proud.

See, "Sacrificing the desert to save the Earth":

For decades, America's Western deserts have been dusty storehouses for government scrap, a lode for minerals, a staging ground for tanks and military maneuvers.

But the thrum of industry is afoot, bringing Space Age technology and a bustling sense of urgency.

The BrightSource solar plant stands as an exclamation point in the desert.

The $2-billion plant is an amalgam of gadgetry designed to wring the maximum energy from the sun. Computers continually focus the field of mirrors to a center tower filled with water, which will heat to more than 1,000 degrees. The resulting steam drives an array of turbines capable of generating 370 megawatts, enough to power roughly 140,000 homes during peak hours.

Capturing a free and clean source of energy is not cheap. Solar is the Cadillac of energy, with capital costs and other market factors making it three times more expensive than natural gas or coal.

Ratepayers' bills will be as much as 50% higher for renewable energy, according to an analysis from the consumer advocate branch of the state Public Utilities Commission.

What has opened the way for such a costly source of energy is the dramatic turn in federal policy. As early as 2005, the Bush administration established generous programs to reward renewable energy developers. The Obama administration sweetened the pot, offering $45 billion in federal tax credits, guaranteed loans and grants.

On the state level, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger freed large solar plants from property tax and handed out $90 million in exemptions from sales and use taxes. Under Gov. Jerry Brown, the state invested more than $70 million in clean energy research last year, funded by a ratepayer surcharge.

The funding has sparked a land rush echoing the speculative booms in mining, railroad construction and oil and gas on Western federal land.

One of the first firms out of the gate was Oakland-based BrightSource Energy Inc., which received $1.6 billion in federally guaranteed loans in addition to hundreds of millions in private capital derived from such disparate sources as NRG Energy Inc., Google Inc., investment bank Morgan Stanley and CalSTRS, the state's teachers' retirement fund.

By taking advantage of the available government subsidies, shrewd solar developers can get taxpayers to cover close to 80% of a multibillion-dollar project. The rest comes from investors, attracted by what amounts to a tax shelter.

But other companies — often no more than a website and a phone number — obtained solar permits from the federal Bureau of Land Management with no apparent intention other than to sell their place in line. Some gobbled up permits, sat on the land and never turned a spade of soil.

Federal and state officials have used job creation to partly justify their subsidy of private solar companies. During the two to three years of a solar plant's construction, most new jobs will go to union tradesmen. But after a plant is built, employment opportunities are limited.

BrightSource's Ivanpah facility is expected to employ 1,000 workers at the height of construction, but that will shrink to 86 full-time maintenance and facility workers once it is up and running.

"What troubles me is that the public has bought the whole solar expansion hook, line and sinker because it's 'renewable,'" Schramm said. "The public would be up in arms if someone was building Disneyland next to a national park."

You gotta read it all.

Virtually the entire roster of the big environmental interest groups have been either silent or in on the planning. And here's this from the Times:

The Center for Biological Diversity, one of the nation's most aggressively litigious environmental groups, has not challenged the Ivanpah project. It signed a confidential agreement not to oppose the project in exchange for concessions for the desert tortoise — mandating that BrightSource buy land elsewhere for conservation.

Some 24 environmental groups signed statements largely supporting the aims of solar developers. National environmental groups joined BrightSource and other solar companies in a letter sent Dec. 14 to the White House, asking the president to continue a federal renewable-energy subsidy.

The national office of the Sierra Club has had to quash local chapters' opposition to some solar projects, sending out a 42-page directive making it clear that the club's national policy goals superseded the objections of a local group. Animosity bubbled over after a local Southern California chapter was told to refrain from opposing solar projects.

Look, that's lockstep compliance with the global warming program or else. Who cares about the desert's biodiversity, right? The maw of the bureaucratic climate change industry destroys everything in its path, from desert wildlife to recalcitrant opponents.

That's totalitarian.

Yosemite Waterfall Deaths

The Los Angeles Times recently ran a piece on the surging Central Valley rivers, "Central Valley rivers are flowing stronger, faster, more fatally."

I used to live up in Fresno, so a lot of the names and places are familiar. And now there's dramatic news, of three presumed dead at Yosemite, after hikers ignored warnings.

See Los Angeles Times, "Witness tells of horror as 3 swept over Vernal Fall in Yosemite":

The three were members of a group of 12 from a Central Valley church that had hiked to the top of the waterfall, said Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman.

Ignoring posted signs and repeated warnings, they had climbed over the metal-bar barricade to get in the Merced River about 25 feet from the edge of the falls.

As Gediman recounted what happened, it was a chain reaction. First one person was swept away, then a second one tried to rescue that person and then a third tried to save the other two. All three were swept over the waterfall.

They were identified as Ramina Badal, 21, of Manteca; Homiz David, 22, of Modesto; and Ninos Yacoub, 27, of Turlock.

Witnesses immediately called rangers, and search-and-rescue teams canvassed the waters downstream Tuesday. They were back out at first light Wednesday to continue the search, but by late morning park officials said they believed the three were dead.

Also, "Search for 3 people missing in Yosemite is hampered by raging river."

Plus, at Christian Science Monitor, "Yosemite waterfall accident a cautionary tale for Yosemite visitors."

Moral Revolution and the Collapse of the Soviet Union

The cover story, by Leon Aron, at the June/July Foreign Policy, "Everything You Think You Know About the Collapse of the Soviet Union Is Wrong."

I think that title is over-promising, actually. The key explanatory innovation is the role of moral ideas in overthrowing the old order. Aron writes, for example:

LIKE VIRTUALLY ALL modern revolutions, the latest Russian one was started by a hesitant liberalization "from above" -- and its rationale extended well beyond the necessity to correct the economy or make the international environment more benign. The core of Gorbachev's enterprise was undeniably idealistic: He wanted to build a more moral Soviet Union.

For though economic betterment was their banner, there is little doubt that Gorbachev and his supporters first set out to right moral, rather than economic, wrongs. Most of what they said publicly in the early days of perestroika now seems no more than an expression of their anguish over the spiritual decline and corrosive effects of the Stalinist past. It was the beginning of a desperate search for answers to the big questions with which every great revolution starts: What is a good, dignified life? What constitutes a just social and economic order? What is a decent and legitimate state? What should such a state's relationship with civil society be?

"A new moral atmosphere is taking shape in the country," Gorbachev told the Central Committee at the January 1987 meeting where he declared glasnost -- openness -- and democratization to be the foundation of his perestroika, or restructuring, of Soviet society. "A reappraisal of values and their creative rethinking is under way." Later, recalling his feeling that "we couldn't go on like that any longer, and we had to change life radically, break away from the past malpractices," he called it his "moral position."

At least from an ideational perspective, the argument is familiar. I'm reminded of the edited volume from Richard Ned Lebow and Thomas Risse-Kappen, International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War, published in 1995. Ideas are contrasted with material interests as a mobilizing factor in historical change. So Leon's argument builds on themes that have been common in international relations literature for some time. Aron's book on this is forthcoming, and looks interesting: Roads to the Temple: Truth, Memory, Ideas, and Ideals in the Making of the Russian Revolution, 1987-1991.

Wyalusing State Park, Wisconsin

At Althouse: