Interesting video on a very local issue for me.
A lot of the footage used in this video is from right outside my town (the outskirt communities). We embraced solar technology in the late 2000s, and that shit took off out here. It quickly became a major sector business, and got our communities a lot of state and national interest. There are now miles and miles of solar farms across our deserts, and much more planned. My town is one of the sunniest places on the entire planet, so it’s an ideal place to build solar farms. We also have consistently strong winds, which makes us an ideal candidate for wind turbines like you see in the video.
However, these companies are razing our desert to make this happen. Like the conservationist says, our desert is an amazing place filled with biodiversity (even if it isn’t as beautiful as a mountain peak, or rainforest, or ocean). We’ve seen animal habitat decreased greatly. We have many threatened and endangered species that call the Mojave Desert home.
These companies caused horrible and dangerous dust storms when they removed all the plants from their plots of land about a decade ago. It made it dangerous to go outside for days at a time. They have also chosen to build their solar farms on lands where our beloved California poppies grow, thus reduced their habitat and making our desert ugly.
There’s now fierce battles going on between people town. Our communities are very divided by this. We love the jobs and investment it brings, but it destroys a lot of what’s special about living here.
I just thought I’d share this, since it’s personal to me. I’d be more inclined to agree with the conservationist, especially when he says we should build solar farms on roofs and over roadways as alternatives.
Also, a fun fact about Joshua Trees, they only grow in the Mojave Desert and in Israel (at least that’s what I was told growing up).