Wonkette
Rep. John Hall (Dirty Hippie, NY) became a congressman in 2006, when even a naked “soft rock” hippie seemed less dangerous than Mark Foley or Don Sherwood or John Sweeney. Problem is, hippiez r dum! Hall is now sending official congressional spam about the alleged Bush Administration plot to stop solar energy so the Oil Corporates can continue to rule the Earth. Are American enviro-leftists as gullible as the “God DAMN Muslim O’bama’s Christian Church” crowd? Let’s find out!
From: Congressman John Hall [xxx@johnhallforcongress.com]
Date: Mon, Jun 30, 2008 at 8:08 AM
Subject: US Freezes Solar Energy Projects!
To: tips@wonkette.comDear Friend,
This shocking announcement was reported by the New York Times today. The Bush administration, while shamelessly pushing to give away oil and gas right on public lands and the outer continental shelf, just announced a two year freeze on new solar projects.
Smarty then quotes a New York Times article from last week:
Citing Need for Assessments, US Freezes Solar Energy Projects
Friday 27 June 2008
By Dan FroschDENVER — 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 — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah …
The article says, plainly, that more than 130 applications for utility corporations to build massive solar power plants on public land in the West have already been submitted, and that the BLM “will continue processing the more than 130 applications received before May 29, measuring each one’s environmental impact.”
You know, kind of like how environmentalists demand that all other energy corporations don’t just drill or dig or build wherever they want, on environmentally sensitive federal land?
These “green” companies are already getting huge state and federal subsidies to build their projects for the sole purpose of selling the energy, at a profit, to existing utility companies. Now they’re whining because an overwhelmed BLM wants two years to do EIRs on 130+ massive solar farms covering more than a million acres of publicly owned American desert.
The NYT article notes this, but you can’t expect people to read anything:
The manager of the Bureau of Land Management’s environmental impact study, Linda Resseguie, said that many factors must be considered when deciding whether to allow solar projects on the scale being proposed, among them the impact of construction and transmission lines on native vegetation and wildlife. In California, for example, solar developers often hire environmental experts to assess the effects of construction on the desert tortoise and Mojave ground squirrel.
Water use can be a factor as well, especially in the parched areas where virtually all of the proposed plants would be built. Concentrating solar plants may require water to condense the steam used to power the turbine.
“Reclamation is another big issue,” Ms. Resseguie said. “These plants potentially have a 20- to 30-year life span. How to restore that land is a big question for us.”
The article then quotes several angry solar-industry officials who claim that doing environmental review on solar plants will “choke” the industry, and then there’s one reference to an actual environmental group, which says, duh, obviously you don’t cancel basic environmental impact review because some industry is shouting “Green! Green!”
Alex Daue, an outreach coordinator for the Wilderness Society, an environmental conservation group, praised the government for assessing the implications of large-scale solar development.
And you can’t spell “Wildnerness Society” without the letters C, E, N and Y — which are all in CHENEY! (Other Bushbot wingnuts demanding proper environmental review of the federal land giveaway include the Sierra Club, the Nature Conservancy and dozens of regional desert habitat and land trust groups including the Amargosa Conservancy, the Mojave Land Trust and the Desert Protective Council.)
So where did Hall’s staff get the idea that the Bush Administration was somehow crushing the development of solar energy in America, when state and federal governments are in the process of giving away a million acres to more than 130 for-profit solar projects right now? How does a sudden boom in the construction of solar energy plants on federal land fueled by federal and state tax incentives turn into a Darth Cheney McChimptard plot to crush solar energy, when — until last June — there hadn’t been a large-scale solar plant constructed in America in seventeen years?
The answer, as always, can be found in the posts and comments of our nation’s brave, ill-informed blogs:
- unbelievable, seems they want to make sure they sell every last drop of oil before we can have renewable energy. James Hansen is right, they are criminals.
- Sigh. I just came across this little tid-bit of news: the Bureau of Land Management has called for a 2-year moratorium on building new Solar Power Plants. So, we can drill and strip mine all we want, but god forbid we install any new solar capacity. This has Bush-administration-logic written all over it. Anyone have further insight?
- Seriously. In all their foresight and wisdom our federal government just put a moratorium on new solar projects on public land for at least 2 years. Projects that could power 20 million homes. Because of environmental concerns. Say what?
- Yep it’s true. They aren’t putting a moratorium on coal or nuclear. They are putting the moratorium on solar energy projects. Funny how they cite an environmental impact study for the moratorium, but have no problem with locking in 50 years of coal plants. Where’s the environmental impact study there? I’d say it’s weak and pathetic, but actually I think it shows how strong oil and coal are in this society and they have the politicians in their back pocket and pull them out whenever they see a threat to their hegemony.
- The key to saving us from environmental catastrophe isn’t through a carbon tax, sustainable city planning, or by placing a moratorium on notorious pollutants like coal… no, we must stop the spread of renewable energies like solar power before it’s too late! At least that’s what the Bureau of Land Management would have you believe.
- Bush/BLM is preventing the solar companies from doing the environmental impact statements. Every plant has an environmental impact statement done. Bush/BLM is prevent applications and thus preventing the impact statement from being done. No application, no impact statement. Clever of Bush and BLM, but damaging to US national security, economy and environment.
- It burns me that we all know — just know — that this administration, who couldn’t be bothered about mercury levels in our water, shoves polar bears off the endangered species list and under the bus because they’re inconveniently dying in a way that validates “global warming” and has generally considered any regulations of what may be in our food, our water or our children’s toys to be not worth Turdblossoms hairbrush, is now taking this change to hose over a renewable energy industry.
The fact that this bunch will be gone by the time the study is done is the only reason I think it won’t find the program “threatens the endangered jackalope”. - alkaline ‘dirt’ that NOTHING grows on…. miles and miles of NOTHING. Hard to believe that ANYTHING could make these places worse than they are. Compared to the roads being cut all over the Colorado Plateau to service oil and gas wells, the roads and timber cuts in National Forests and the over grazed grasslands leased out to cattle ranches, I’m hard pressed to see what ‘damage’ is possible from fields of solar photovoltaics or focused sun steam plants or whatever else……
(Last batch of comments, obviously, are from Daily Kos.)
Still the most homoerotic album not made by Ted Nugent ever.
Didn’t the Bush admin. put polar bears ON the threatened list?
It’s called nuclear energy, dummies.
Jeez, that album cover is gay.
ALIVE!: Shh, you’ll confuse the Daily Kos commenters ….
Orleans invented Mangaroo care. You can feel the love coming off that LP.
On another note, so, uh….did all those posters just not read?
I mean, I’m down with the criminal gubment conspiracies and all that, but….
Global warming means the sun is now a terrorist. Why does the naked soft rock congressman hate America?
Can we chemically castrate these people?
Sorry, too long, didn’t read. Was it good?
graceless: Define “good”
I’m so glad we can continue drilling the shit out of everything for oil, because of its minimal environmental impact, as shown through the “extensive” E.I.R. reviews pegging oil as the renewable energy of the future.
Wait, doesn’t Ken Layne live out in the middle of the Mojave Desert? Don’t want to get blinded by those shiny solar mirrors, do ya, Ken?
This just in: A fabulous new invention will now solve those all-or-nothing options you are left with. It is call a “Queue” (TM). This ordered sequence will allow to to complete you high priority, first-in tasks quickly, while waiting for other low priority, last-in tasks to be completed later. No more having to wait two years to get an answer or complete the environmental study for every last application before starting the first project. The Queue (TM) — When acting like a bureaucratic idiot just won’t do.
It makes me wonder how many times this naked congressman has responded to
e-mails from helpful Nigerians.
shortsshortsshorts:
You CAN use old motor oil to fertilize your lawn! That’s Renewable. Dang it, now EXXON is a valued partner in the circle of life.
This is the ‘morantorium’ we’ve heard so much about.
Ken Layne:
They’re not “commenters,” they prefer to be called “commentary engineers.”
Aw come on guys, cut the dirty hippies some slack and give them credit for making the effort to read something other than the back of a Captain Crunch cereal box
graceless:
You don’t HAVE to tell us you didn’t read it. Snark doesn’t require scholarship, just balls.
…this administration would drill a whole in the skull of a newborn puppy if someone told them was crude oil inside. But now when companies want to build solar farms in the fukkin dessert, all of sudden they are worried about the habitat of rattle-snakes and scorpions(maybe because they share a common ancestor).
I’m thinking it’s gonna take longer than two years to train elk to wear sunglasses, but maybe I’m just cynical.
The solution to environmental impact concerns: put all your solar power plants underground.
Not even the Village People posed for an album cover in a naked man group hug.
I think we should cover the naked dirty hippies in solar panels - solve two problems at once.
I can understand the need for EIRs, but does the oil industry get off a little easier? The Directors for the MMS (Mineral Management Service) and the EPA are all Bush appointees/nominees. And we’re all aware of how pro-business and pro-neocon his flunkies have been these past 7 years.
HeelingToPort: And pro-oil.
Fuck all of this, we should have been building new nuclear plants a long time ago. Oh wait, anything involving atoms and radiation is (like all things morans don’t understand) a gay muslim that will make us all glow in the dark and get cancer and be used in “dirty bombs” just by existing.
No gay hippy vinyl collection is complete without this one:
http://static.flickr.com/106/293230345_71d20abfb7_m.jpg
WIDTAP: Exactly. Sure the EIS’s need to be done, but why the hell does that require a moratorium on the applications? Anyone who has ever waited for a passport or a tax refund knows their paperwork can end up in a nearly endless stack, but that’s better than a big “fuck you!” from the people who are supposed to be doing the work.
Thee are legit concerns about destroying habitat in the desert, but coming from someone who lives here, there are areas we’ve already fucked up with mining and old landfills, abandoned air bases, bombing ranges, and nuclear test sites that wouldn’t be any worse off with “clean” power plants on them.
And where the hell are the “low power” nuke plants that we were promised back in the 80s? Not as much fun unless the fucker can melt down?
bitchincamaro: wow. Just wow.
Gopherit v2.0: and WIDTAP: I agree that federal land management is a bureaucratic mess–it is my world. There are several reasons. Recent reductions in federal staffing in the land management agencies (Forest service, BLM, FWWS) due to some “streamlining” from the bush administration has led to half the number of people doing twice the work. Various NEPA requirements that make completing an EIS in 2 years near impossible. Unknown funding from year to year–sometimes 2007’s priority is not 2008’s priority due to leadership change.
I think the BLM is stepping back and is likely going to do a programmatic EIS rather than 130 “small” EIS’s. It will allow them to permit the solar projects more quickly.
Welcome back, Megan.
crankybureaucrat: It’s fair enough for BLM to think of more efficient means of bundling EISs, but just because some group of EISs or their applications will be bundled and worked together is no reason to stop accepting new applications. You simply announce the current waiting period on the queue (no less than 2-years) stamp the application with the date received, file and forget until 2010. You then give the waiting period to the applicant and to the bosses at BLM.
Everyone wins. A bunch of EIS are worked more dfficiently than if they had been done separately. New applicants, although not necessary happy ones, know how long they will have to wait. The BLM honchos have ammunition to get more budget (”Oh Senator, if you want me to half the time in the queue, I need twice the staff.”). …and then the BLM drones can get back to their Internet Hearts games and online porn.
Had the Solar people said that their steam turbines that produce the electricity would be powered not by sunlight, but by radioactive iodine or medical waste or by burning unweened prairie dog pups, then Bush would have given them a pass. But nooooooooh, it had to be fucking sunlight. Assholes.
WIDTAP: Good point. That’s a fair solution all around.
My agency in Alaska has milked Ted Stevens in this very way. We call him Uncle Sugar.
Gopherit v2.0: Nothing like clean, safe nuclear power.
I think the real problem is when you compare the push back on solar energy farms to the new thrust of interest in offshore drilling along the coast lines.
I hear solar power tried to kill Reagan because he took Carter’s solar panels off the White House to de-hippyfy it. That’s why conservatives hate it.
Lawdy momma, that Orleans album cover has got to be one of the worst, most stupid, most flat-out disgusting album covers of all time. Gross! Yech! It’d be funny to know whose idea that album cover was–and to find out if they were fired or buried alive.
Hey, don’t knock Ted Nugent! He’s going to be a Governor, Senator or President one day!
And then album covers like Orleans’ piece of crap will be outlawed.
thefrontpage:
Actually, I was buried alive. But, I got out by punching through the coffin like a Zen Master.
Uma stole my mojo for just a moment, there…..
bitchincamaro: I saw those guys at the Seattle Pride Festival yesterday. We shared some Zima and a bag of meth and discussed the virtues of the Utilikilt.
Isn’t one of those guys on the album cover a young Mahmud Ahmadinejad?
KevoTron: mmmm, Zima.
FYI Ken Layne, They’re calling you a “HIPPIE!” on your AOL post. They are also calling Obama a communist, marxist, bi-racial, liar. For some reason, they are completely ignoring the actual protagonist of your piece, Nevada’s governor, Jim Gibbons. Funny.
Hey! Isn’t that Ken Layne in the center of that record cover? I would recognize that beard anywhere!
Dirty naked hippie tree hugger solar enthusiasts clearly haven’t figured out that hemp clothing and devil sticks expertise isn’t sufficent to grease the bureaucratic wheels of progress. Regular bathing and (surgical?) removal of the holier than thou zeal may also serve well. See also, “hoist by own petard” you composting luddites.
Liberals are all gay!
thefrontpage: If Ted Nugent runs on the insane hypocritical self-defecating dirtbag ticket he has my vote for any office in your home state. The Presidency not so much.
Solar panels are ugly!
And, the album cover turns me on, slighly.