In Fort Mohave, Arizona, even Republican voters are fighting gas power plants as utilities try to lock in fossil fuels
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Over the next few months, the Sunrise Hills retirees – among them many climate crisis skeptics and committed fossil fuel proponents – uncovered a trail of misinformation that appear to suggest MEC and Aepco, which is developing and will own and operate the gas combustion turbines, were at times opaque as they sought to fast track approval and circumvent closer scrutiny. MEC/Aepco “categorically deny” any effort to intentionally mislead anyone.
The retirees organized and began fact-checking and calling out claims about affordability, outages and low pollution made by MEC and Aepco in the glossy brochure and during public meetings.
It turned out that with a capacity of 98 megawatts, the two-turbine proposal fell just under the 100 MW limit that requires a state mandated comprehensive environmental review of impacts such as emissions, noise and water consumption by an expert committee at the state utility regulator, the Arizona corporation commission (ACC). Yet the utility has openly discussed plans to eventually double the size of the plant.
It also turned out that many of the county residents who spoke favorably of the plant in front of the board were in fact MEC employees and board members.
The way America thinks people should live in deserts is just mind-bogglingly stupid.
I was telling my daughter about Palm Springs. They founded a town over a small spring in the middle of the desert, built over 100 golf courses, and now have to pump in water so they can keep them all green. Fucking moronic.
It isn’t all of America, but a surprising large part of it. So many short sighted people here. Shoot, you have a large solar installation and they reflect light and therefore heat back up making it cooler on the ground. Instead of importing oil, we can make solar panels here. Just ridiculous.
“America” as in the way American society has been built, not what individuals think.
I understand that there is the general society, but I feel like America is bunch of smaller societies bundled together. On 2 types of extremes Florida and California, but each has smaller groups within. Obviously there are overlaps with certain thoughts of doing things.
Illinois has solar farms, but also one of the largest suppliers of ethanol for instance.
I don’t think either of us wrong, just looking at it from different perspectives.
Yes, but it’s still an American problem in general. The city with 100 golf courses isn’t in Illinois where it wouldn’t have to be watered all the time. It’s in California. It’s not in Illinois because you can’t play golf with warm weather and sunny skies all year round in Illinois. You need a Southwestern desert for that. Even Florida doesn’t work as well despite the Oralndo golf courses because it rains a lot.
Meanwhile, Illinois gets nowhere near as much sunshine as the Southwestern desert.
So until we, as a nation, start building things in places that make more ecological sense rather than more economic sense, it will be an American problem in my eyes.
Yes, you are definitely correct about this. I was looking more at the energy side while you are looking at it from the water sustainability side. Different part of the overall same thing.
With climate change I am half expecting to be discussing the “great plains desert” someday in the future, assuming I live that long.
And most water restricted states have had laws regarding the building of new golf courses for at least a generation, including more conservative states like Arizona. There is also a legally set system for water rights based on who first developed the land.
And it isn’t like other parts of the USA don’t have ecological risks of their own.
I would like to point out that this whole “America is so special! We aren’t just one group but a bunch of different groups” is fucking stupid. Every country is like that, but y’all are too fucking caught up in American exceptionalism to care or notice.
States are incredibly more powerful in the US than their equivalent units in the vast majority of other countries. This gives incredible diversity in the government and legal systems that the vast majority of other singular countries just do not have.
I wouldn’t put it as “America is so special” so much as “America is so big”. I’ve seen a lot of Europeans get pissy about describing the EU in the same manner that the USA is described, and yet both the EU and USA are roughly on the same scale in terms of land size and population.
There’s a lot of corn, and there’s huge potential market for a renewable liquid fuel, even after renewable energy and EVs. If they could develop a better product for markets not served by batteries, they could be the new Texas (which was the new Pennsylvania)
Corn isn’t necessarily the best plant to choose though. Farmers already knew how to farm corn.
Honestly going forward hydrogen will probably be the preferred energy source. Planet has plenty of water and can be split with electricity. Largest problem is that it requires pressurized containers, and the lack of infrastructure, but that applies to everything except petroleum product.
The average American Desert city ought to be eradicated.
In the words of Peggy Hill
Phoenix is a monument to man’s arroganceNo place that experiences temperatures of 100F/37C in the Fall is suitable for human settlement.
Tell that to Cairo and Baghdad.
Tbf, those cities might have been founded long enough ago that they were mediteranian climates upon founding. Phoenix and Palm Springs weren’t.
Hey, Cairo and Baghdad:
I had family move to the desert under the auspices of “better, cleaner air” and “a lack of pollen and allergens” because lifeless hot rocky area. A year later, during the regular torrential monsoons of the southwest, the cottonwoods and flowers suddenly bloomed and caused a solid month of air so full of pollen that it left yellow smears on all surfaces. Then the sandstorm/haboobs forced them to clean everything.
There are no good reasons to live in the desert unless you want that Edward Abbey lifestyle, away from the things of man.
For that case, if you use the technical definition of desert, and are willing to move out of the US, I hear Antarctica is lovely this time of the year.