Environmentalists Battle Each Other

March 24, 2009
Environmentalists in a Clash of Goals
By FELICITY BARRINGER

WHITEWATER CANYON, Calif. — As David Myers scans the rocky slopes of this desert canyon, looking vainly past clumps of brittlebush for bighorn sheep, he imagines an enemy advancing across the crags.

That specter is of an army of mirrors, generators and transmission towers transforming Mojave Desert vistas like this one. While Whitewater Canyon is privately owned and protected, others that Mr. Myers, as head of the Wildlands Conservancy, has fought to preserve are not.

To his chagrin, some of Mr. Myers’s fellow environmentalists are helping power companies pinpoint the best sites for solar-power technology. The goal of his former allies is to combat climate change by harnessing the desert’s solar-rich terrain, reducing the region’s reliance on carbon-emitting fuels.

Mr. Myers is indignant. “How can you say you’re going to blade off hundreds of thousands of acres of earth to preserve the Earth?” he said.

As the Obama administration puts development of geothermal, wind and solar power on a fast track, the environmental movement finds itself torn between fighting climate change and a passion for saving special places. Read More

It’s an interesting situation that these environmental groups are facing. The old saying of careful what you wish for is starting to come into play. They have been very vocal about all the things they wanted done for energy production yet now when they have the chance to see it come to fruition, they are facing arguments from their own. I have noticed this seems to be the problem with most of the ideas you see from animal rights and environmental groups. They propose these grand ideas but seldom will they work well in reality.