Solar Energy Comes of Age in the U.S.

Barely ten years ago, the idea of solar power was still mostly mocked as the limited energy purview of assorted "tree hugger", arugala-munching  elites, but too expensive for the average person.  Even the arugala-munching  elites mainly used it for water heating. The expansion to utility power companies and multi-purpose uses had not yet occurred. Basically, thin -film photovoltaics (PV) had not yet emerged. Silicon had been the element of choice for solar panels, which was more efficient but expensive and difficult to mass -produce. Now that's changed.

Favorable economics for the PV thin-film panels have led to an explosion in solar energy potential most Americans are only dimly aware of. For example, most don't know that on February 9th a utility -scale solar power plant (run by "Desert Sunlight") was officially dedicated.

This occurred on 3,800 acres of land administered by the Bureau of Land Management - and most noteworthy - is now the 6th operational plant on federal property. (The gov't operates 250 million acres, mostly in the sunny, arid West, perfect for solar panels.)

The problem of utility scale solar plants poses an interesting conundrum. They need to be somewhere with year round sunlight, in a space vast enough to contain hundreds of thousands of solar modules, but close enough to civilization to easily connect to the grid.  Fortuitously, Desert Sunlights plant meets all the criteria, situated just outside Desert Center - a tiny town southeast of Joshua Tree National Park.

The site features millions of 1.2m by 0.6m panels each covered by a thin film of glass that absorbs sunlight and captures elections creating an electric current that flows into wires in the rear of each module. This represents d.c. (direct current) power which is then converted into a.c. by inverters. The converted power is then transferred to the electrical grid via a nearby substation. Each panel generates 90 to 100 watts,

Other facts of the burgeoning solar power industry with which you may be unaware:

- Desert Sunlight's solar plant has 8 million solar panels in all.

- About 160,000 homes are solar-powered by Desert Sunlight

- Fifty two utility scale renewable energy projects have been approved since 2009, including 29 solar plants.

- Solar power is now a $15 billion a year business in the U.S., employing more people than coal mining

- In 2014 alone, solar energy accounted for 36 percent of the country's new (installed) energy capacity

- First Solar has plans to build a 750 MW plant in Riverside, CA, even bigger than Desert Sunlight's.

All these ought to give Americans reason to hope that we've turned the corner on solar energy and perhaps very soon we might be able to pull back a bit on fossil fuels, including fracked oil and natural gas. In any case we have to, there's no issue on it.

Bill McKibben's 2, 795 gigatons is perhaps the scariest number most people never heard of- but Americans need to drill into their craniums. . It represents the total stored reserves of carbon held by coal, gas and oil companies. It was first highlighted and brought to global attention by the Carbon Tracker Initiative - a group of London financial analysts and environmentalists.  It is what the fossil fuel industry plans to exploit in the future by its whole spectrum of methods, whether deep sea drilling, oil shale fracking or natural gas fracking.

It is, in other words, five times more carbon than will already blow a gasket in our world and send it toward runaway greenhouse. It is a number we cannot afford to realize if we want to pass this planet on in any form to future generations.

And solar power may be the key to helping us avoid reaching it!

IDIOTS R US: The Lamo Right Compares Cliven Bundy to Occupy Wall Street

An Occupy Wall Street protestor  from November, 2011 (top) and Cliven Bundy. Is she the same as Bundy? Only a moron would believe so!

 

After the recent Right Wing media debacle of supporting nutso racist Cliven Bundy and his merry band of militia losers, one can't imagine how the mental deterioration could get worse. But evidently it can, because they're now trying to compare Cliven Bundy's Nevada stand - the egregious claim he "owns" the land his cattle are grazing on - to the Occupy Wall Street protestors of 2011. 

 

According to one idiot Denver Post letter writer (who clearly got this nonsense from FOX or some other lamo news site):

 

"A previous letter writer said the Republican Party is 'saddled with' Cliven Bundy forever. Is the Democratic Party saddled with the anti-government Occupy Wall Street people? Probably not! The Democratic Party jumped into bed with that ridiculous group the same way the Republicans did with the ill-spoken Bundy"

 

Not so fast there, Sparky! False equivalence is widespread but you gain nothing by attempting to invoke it against the Dems.

 

Let's try to clear the air for this numbskull:

 

1) Occupy Wall Street was not a unilateral "anti-government" group as this fool claims. They were protesting against ONE facet of government:  the privileged banking -financial sector (mainly based in Federal Reserve- though technically it isn't even a part of the federal gov't) which had been responsible for expediting the nation's plunge into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression (in 2008).  Conversely, Bundy declared opposition to ALL branches of the federal government, to the extent he wouldn't even recognize it!

 

 

2) Bundy and his band of nuts were REAL anti-government tools, who actually took arms against Bureau of Land Management staff in NV - with militia snipers hiding in the covers aiming their rifles. By contrast, Occupy Wall Street protestors had been placed in the sniper sights of security forces, for example in Houston TX, see e.g.

http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1494

 

3) Occupy Wall Street protestors made no remarks or statements that could be construed as racist, or endorsing the horrific slave system, unlike Bundy who blustered:

 

"I wanna tell yuh one more thing I know about the Nigras! Weren't they better off as slaves, pickin'  cotton  and havin' a family life  ..."

 

 

4)  OWS actually protested on allocated areas permitted for those purposes, in assorted cities, e.g. NYC. Even the odd protestors (as in LA) who took over an area,  didn't lay permanent claim to it or graze cattle on it like Bundy did. They did not appropriate land for which federal FEES are assessed - remain there for YEARS (with the fees and penalties piling up) then refuse to pay them.

 

5) OWS protestors didn't have "militias" arrive, armed to the teeth,  from all over the country and point their rifles at the police who faced off against them.

 

6) Occupy protestors were fighting against the rampant inequality of income distribution (enshrined in the Neoliberal capitalist system)  that has allowed the wealthy and their scions get wealthier  while the ordinary middle class has descended further into the morass of debt and economic despair. Even seeing their offspring saddled with monstrous college debt that now totals $1.2 trillion.

 

Bundy - already a millionaire rancher- has demanded special privileges for himself in grazing his cattle free off federal land, that no other NV ranchers have. In this he has put himself firmly in the class of the privileged elites (1 percent)  that OWS inveighed against.

 

Mixing Occupy Wall Street with Cliven Bundy is the typical false equivalence tactic I'd expect from a Reepo moron, thereby attempting to tar both parties- but it won't work.   We already know which party is racist and also know which party wants to keep most workers in the country poor ....and on food stamps.

 

For that look no further than the Repukes' blocking any hike in the national minimum wage yesterday. They'd rather have and support those like Cliven Bundy than the typical OWS protestor who still owes $30,000 in college debt. The Repukes want millionaire  "socialists" who want to feed off government's teats (e.g. land)  for free - not indebted and impecunious young people!

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/thom-hartmann/55682/cliven-bundys-friends-have-become-the-koch-brothers-useful-idiots

Why Cliven Bundy And His Far Right Defenders Are Totally Wrong

"As long as millionaire Cliven Bundy gets to graze his cattle on public land for free, in contempt of three court orders and in violation of the law, this is not over.

Bundy and the suckers he brought in from the militia movement think they’ve won a huge victory against federal “tyranny,” and will only be more aggressive about breaking the law in the future." -   Thom Hartmann on smirkingchimp.com


The problem with the secessionist - Confederate South and the Far Right in general, is they fail to identify with  the right causes when they manifest and too often back the wrong ones. (Flash to the Confederate States of America demanding secession and the "right" to exist as an independent nation.)  Or flash a bit backward to the aftermath of the 2012 re-election of Obama when millions actually signed petitions online to secede from the United States.

Now, the far Right's minions, including "militias" who've traveled from as far as Florida,  are working themselves into a froth over one Nevada rancher named Cliven Bundy (any relative of Ted Bundy?) who they claim has been shafted by the federal government. As usual,  facts and truth are the first casualties of hysteria, and it's no different in this case.

First let's get a few of the facts out there:

- Bundy does not recognize federal authority over land where his ancestors first settled in the 1880s, which he claims belongs to the state of Nevada.

- . The Bureau of Land Management (BLM)  disagreed and took him to federal court, which first ruled in favor of the BLM in 1998.

- After years of attempts at a negotiated settlement over the $1.2 million Bundy owes in fees failed, federal land agents began seizing hundreds of his cattle illegally grazing on public land last week.

- After footage of a BLM agent using a stun gun on Bundy's adult son went viral in far-right circles, hundreds of armed militia supporters from neighboring states flocked to Bundy's ranch to defend him from the BLM agents enforcing the court order.

- The states'-rights groups, in echoes of Ruby Ridge and Waco, came armed and prepared for violence. "I'm ready to pull the trigger if fired upon," one of the anti-government activists told Reuters.

- Not eager to spill blood over cattle, the BLM backed down Sunday and started returning the livestock it had confiscated. The agency says it won't drop the matter and will "continue to work to resolve the matter administratively and judicially."

Now, let's start clearing up the muddied landscape.

First, there is no such thing as "states' rights".   (Which anyone who's taken a proper U.S. Government course in H.S. would know).   States have prerogatives, not rights, because states exist as governmental entities not as persons-individuals. Prof. Garry Wills (‘A Necessary Evil: A History Of American Distrust of Government’, Simon & Schuster, 1999) further reinforces this point in his chapter ‘Constitutional Myths’(p. 108). He notes that citizens alone possess rights, which neither the states nor the federal government share. Both the latter retain powers and prerogatives, but not rights. Hence, the subtext is that rights can only accrue to human individuals.  As he puts it (ibid.)

“The states have no natural rights. Their powers are artificial, not natural – they are things made by contract.”

One of the things made by contract in this case inheres in Article 1, Section 2 of the Nevada Constitution:

All political power is inherent in the people. Government is instituted for the protection, security and benefit of the people; and they have the right to alter or reform the same whenever the public good may require it. But the Paramount Allegiance of every citizen is due to the Federal Government in the exercise of all its Constitutional powers as the same have been or may be defined by the Supreme Court of the United States; and no power exists in the people of this or any other State of the Federal Union to dissolve their connection therewith or perform any act tending to impair, subvert, or resist the Supreme Authority of the government of the United States.

 

The Constitution of the United States confers full power on the Federal Government to maintain and Perpetuate its existence, and whensoever any portion of the States, or people thereof attempt to secede from the Federal Union, or forcibly resist the Execution of its laws, the Federal Government may, by warrant of the Constitution, employ armed force in compelling obedience to its Authority.

The paramount-allegiance clause, a product of the era in which Nevada gained statehood, originated in Nevada's first (and unofficial) constitutional convention of 1863. Some 3,000 miles to the east, the Civil War raged between the federal government in the North and West and the rebellion that had swallowed the South.

The preceding citation and excerpt is critical because it bears directly on rancher Bundy's claims. This is something all right wing, anti-fed supporters of his would do well to process.

According to Bundy, "I believe this is a sovereign state of Nevada." However, Bundy said in a radio interview last Thursday. "I abide by all of Nevada state laws. But I don’t recognize the United States government as even existing." 

The problem is that this position directly contradicts the contractual document I already cited from Article 1, Section 2 of the Nevada Constitution - which most certainly DOES recognize the United States government as existing and even having hegemony to the extent that:

The Constitution of the United States confers full power on the Federal Government to maintain and Perpetuate its existence, and whensoever any portion of the States, or people thereof attempt to secede from the Federal Union, or forcibly resist the Execution of its laws, the Federal Government may, by warrant of the Constitution, employ armed force in compelling obedience to its Authority


So right wingers need to re-read that very carefully before getting their panties in a twist.

This means Bundy is also off the wall as when he told Sean Hannity in an interview last week (emphasis added): 

"Well, you know, my cattle is only one issue—that the United States courts has ordered that the government can seize my cattle. But what they have done is seized Nevada statehood, Nevada law, Clark County public land, access to the land, and have seized access to all of the other rights of Clark County people that like to go hunting and fishing. " 

In fact, the feds did no such thing! The embrace and recognition of the federal government's powers and state prerogatives in reference to it was already enshrined in the state constitution. READ IT AGAIN!  

Secondly, it is clear that what Cliven Bundy is really all about is secession. He doesn't even want to be regulated by the state (as per its federal gov't references) so basically wants it to secede from the Union. I guess he also wants it to shelve its Article 1, Section 2  and re-do its constitution. Not bloody likely!

Getting back to the actual legal issue, Bundy's claim that the land belongs to Nevada or Clark County didn't hold up in court, nor did his claim of inheriting an ancestral right to use the land that pre-empts the BLM's role. "We definitely don't recognize [the BLM director's] jurisdiction or authority, his arresting power or policing power in any way," Bundy told his supporters, according to The Guardian.


But again, this contradicts Article 1, Section 2  of the Nevada constitution that he professes to hold so dear.  The state constitution's framers, who were overwhelmingly Unionist, retained the clause in solidarity with the Union when they gathered in July 1864.The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White in 1869 that secession had been unconstitutional and that "the Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible states."

Now, if the people speciously standing with Cliven Bundy really want to get on the right side of a cause, as opposed to merely being wrong and strong, they'd do better to stand with the besieged ranchers of Pinon Canyon, in Colorado. They now face another land grab by the U.S. Army for not only training exercises, but drone testing! At stake is nearly 235,000 acres of land they currently call their own. See e.g.
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2014/04/01/ranchers-remain-wary-of-armys-pinon-canyon-plans.html

and
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/08/army-to-ranchers-we-need-yer-land-or.html

In other words, if you're going to pick a fight with the feds, do it for the right reasons  (and in the right places!) not the wrong ones. Standing with Cliven Bundy in Nevada is the wrong cause and the wrong place. Lining up with the Pinon Canyon ranchers in Colorado is the right cause and in the right place. Think before you become all hysterical at who's right and who's wrong - oh, and it also helps to read the relevant state constitution!

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/thom-hartmann/55416/nevada-ranch-stand-off-was-one-big-promo-for-rustic-right-wing-millionaires