Written by Dr. Richard J. Krejsa

 on Green vs. Green

Despite editorials, commentaries, and letters to the editor regarding the advantages/disadvantages of two industrial solar projects on the Carrizo Plain, readers of local print media like New Times and The Tribune have not been given a comprehensive overview of the solar debate occurring in the western U.S. – the so-called “green vs. green” dispute between alternative energy advocates and those who wish to protect wildlife habitat.

Here in SLO County, that debate was on view when Jay Salter, long-time fellow activist and labor union supporter, challenged my “Viewpoint” article in The Tribune (February 22, 2011) with a Viewpoint entitled “Old activists should not be elitists” on March 6th. He reminded us that the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) “was drawn up during the state’s halcyon years... in our happier past, before climate change was acknowledged as a real threat to the world....” Salter implied that this 1970 act is outdated and doesn’t meet today’s needs.

I believe environmental laws were not written only for the 1970s. The same edition of The Tribune in which Salter made that suggestion also carried these headlines: “75 percent of world’s coral reefs threatened by human activity;” “Scientists predict that lodgepole pine...will be largely gone by 2080 due to warming climate;”; and “Eastern cougar called extinct.” To me, these concurrent assaults on Earth’s ecosystems indicate that laws like CEQA are needed more than ever and ought to be obeyed and strengthened wherever possible. The Carrizo Plain is a cauldron of biodiversity, with at least 240 plant and animal species, 90 of which are endangered, threatened, or of special concern. Ignoring significant environmental impacts through cunning wordplay is hardly a viable strategy for a much needed sustainable future!

Jay Salter admonished me and my friends to “descend from our lonely ivory towers and begin making smart energy policy...and accept the political and economic realities we face here, now....” He appeals for support for “smart energy policy” and suggests that we “graying environmentalists” should be “prepared to follow heartfelt words and passions with meaningful solutions.”

Okay, Jay, let’s do that.

Promoting clean energy is one way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but not the only way. I believe what is “smart” and what we need to start rebuilding local economies and communities is to disconnect from big energy and big money. Favor less centralization and more localization; build local small- to mid-scale electric plants keeping money and jobs local! Every planning department should first ask each new applicant: “Will your project be energy self-sufficient? If so, when; if not, why?”

What we need most is distributed solar, i.e., locally generated, both commercial and residential. We easily could accomplish this in SLO County. Renewable energy produced locally for local consumption is not grid-oriented. Planned properly, construction and maintenance jobs will stay local; so will the money. Projects will involve less acreage, fewer significant impacts, and can be – and are being --built faster and cheaper than utility-scale (less bureaucracy). Fresno County has 12 solar projects ranging from 2 to 20 MW capacity in various stages of planning or construction. All power will be produced and used locally for agriculture and other businesses.

I‘d like to leave you with this thought from Joan Didion:
"California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things better work here, because here, beneath the immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent.”
~Joan Didion, "Notes from a Native Daughter," Slouching Towards Bethlehem

So Jay, here’s my proposal: Let’s you and I ask our Board of Supervisors to please make it our Number One Energy Goal to be the first county in the State of California to reach carbon neutral status and keep the energy boom money in San Luis Obispo County.