For those of you who think the battle over private property rights and access to public lands in the California desert came to an end in 1994 with the passage of Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Desert Protection Act, I’ve got news for you.
I wrote this op-ed, which is featured in today’s San Bernardino County Sun, to emphasize the importance of balancing California’s need for resources such as water and electricity with the potential impact that developing such resources could have on California’s desert lands.
Now with the majority of politicos worshipping at the altar of Climate Change and pushing the new imperative of Renewable Energy, nothing else – not even pristine desert ecosystems that 15 years ago were of such great concern to urbanites who elect Senators like Feinstein and Barbara Boxer – seems to matter anymore.
Environmentalists are now split between those willing to sacrifice the desert to more than 100 currently proposed land-devouring solar and wind farms and those – like the radicals who don’t care about the economy – who aren’t. And I find myself with strange bedfellows in the latter, albeit for different reasons.
At the same time, Feinstein and Barbara Boxer are currently redoubling their efforts to lock up hundreds of thousands of additional acres of public lands under Wilderness designations (meaning no meaningful use including motor vehicle access). Their purported reasoning? In part, to protect the desert from all of these renewable energy projects!
Talk about trying to have it both ways.
Again, here is the link to my op-ed in today’s Sun on this subject. http://www.sbsun.com/pointofview/ci_1000886