Broadwell Dry Lake, California

Well, this one has got to go back to the Bush administration. It's the only way to answer the question of just why an energy company felt that it could build a major industrial project in the middle of a designated national wilderness area.
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BrightSource Energy has given up on the idea of building a major, industrial sized, solar power plant in the Broadwell dry lake region of the Kelso Dunes National Wilderness Area. This is part of a 600,000 acre donation of railroad owned property, given to the federal government, for preservation. It has been the intention of California senator Dianne Feinstein to designate this donated land as a national monument.
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The problem with this now abandoned project is that it continues the old model of large, privately owned, energy solutions to global warming and what will probably be future energy shortages. There are enough roof tops, both on private homes, and commercial buildings that can be used for solar power generation at the point of use. Of course, providing for our renewable energy needs in such a manor would mean getting rid of the idea that electricity should be provided by for profit companies. We may never get to the point where it's possible to get rid of large power plants, but it is possible to make power generation part of a government provided infrastructure, removing the incentive to build for profit rather than need.
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I've spent a lot of time hiking in the Mojave Desert of California. Senator Feinstein is right in pushing for a national monument to be created from this land, and I congratulate her in stopping a major industrial project from being built in the middle of an already designated wilderness area. And just for the hell of it, I'll ask the obvious question: Where the hell was BrightSource going to get the water?
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See my posts from 8/20/09 and 7/1/09 for more thoughts on California's desert and power generation.

Cash for Clunkers, How About Solar Cells for the Middle Class

The cash for clunkers program is about to end, and only those ideologically opposed to any government involvement in the economy are calling it a failure. For a few billion dollars, (And yes, I do realise that's a lot of money.) we've increased fuel efficiency in the domestic auto fleet, lessening dependence on foreign oil, and started on the long, hard fight to control global warming by getting rid of older, heavier polluting cars. And as a bonus, we've saved a lot of auto industry jobs.

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So what's should we do next? I think we should add a little box to everybody's income tax forms. If you make less than a certain, to be determined, amount, and if you own your own home, make a check mark. That amount should be the line below which individual home owners cannot be expected to pay for their own, home, solar arrays. For a few billion a year, with home owners chosen by lottery, congress could jump start the home solar industry in the USA. Put in a provision to use American made solar panels, and local contractors rather than national businesses like Wal-mart, and we'd get the domestic solar panel makers humming, and stimulate, small local businesses. We'd decrease the amount of green house gases by cutting day time, coal fired, electricity use, and if a couple of hundred thousand home owners suddenly weren't paying electric bills, they'd spend a lot of that money on other things, which would stimulate the general economy.

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Of course, we'd have to give up on this whole idea that electricity should be supplied exclusively by large corporations. When electrification started, home electricity was being supplied to a small number of middle class homes, and above. That's not true anymore. Electricity is as much a part of vital infrastructure as roads. Perhaps those cities that own utilities shouldn't have their operations privatized. Perhaps private electricity companies should be taken over by local municipalities.