Green Energy Is Coming for the Desert
Trump’s Bureau of Land Management is pushing to aggressively expand solar farms into the Mojave Desert, which advocates say would decimate its vast biodiversity. The post Green Energy Is Coming for the Desert appeared first on The Intercept .
In a dusty corner of the Mojave Desert, once a vibrant mining town, Rhyolite, Nevada, now stands as a ghost town. The population of this once lively community dwindled to just a few hundred by 1910, following the swift extraction of gold. Now, the town lies abandoned, with buildings relocated to neighboring areas, and has become a site for low-budget films.
The Bureau of Land Management manages this tourist attraction, and it has drawn attention from activists Kevin Emmerich and Laura Cunningham, who are concerned about the impact of two major solar projects on the nearby BLM-managed lands. Cunningham, a wildlife biologist and desert tortoise researcher, explains that deserts play a crucial role in carbon sequestration, absorbing up to 28 percent of land-based carbon.
Building solar farms in this region would cause irreversible damage to the delicate carbon-sequestering system, contributing to climate change.
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- Green Energy Is Coming for the Desert theintercept.com
