It's either a "climate emergency" or it isn't.
I mean I have other things I could be doing with my time instead of snuggling up with the latest issue of the Journal of Insects as Food and Feed. So, emergency or no emergency?
From The New York Times, May 17:
Burning Man Becomes Latest Adversary in Geothermal Feud
Festival organizers are trying to block plans to build a clean energy plant in the Nevada desert, highlighting the struggle to combat climate change and the cost of clean power.
One of the darkest towns in America lies roughly 100 miles north of Reno, where the lights are few and rarely lit until one week each summer when pyrotechnics and LEDs set the sky and mountains aglow.
In tiny Gerlach, just outside the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, residents have watched the Burning Man festival grow over the last 30 years to a spectacle of nearly 80,000 countercultural hippies and tech billionaires, offering an economic lifeline for the unincorporated town. Now, Burning Man and Gerlach are more tightly aligned, joining conservationists and a Native American tribe in an alliance against a powerful adversary: Ormat Technology, the largest geothermal power company in the country.
Both Burning Man and Ormat share a vision for a greener future, yet neither can agree on the road to get there. The festival promotes self-reliance and leaving no trace of its ephemeral metropolis, yet it contributes an enormous carbon footprint; the power company is vested in the future by battling climate change, but its clean energy facilities pose a threat to local habitats while reaping a sizable profit.
The dilemma has complicated similar projects worldwide, underscoring the tension between the need to combat climate change and the cost of doing so using clean power. In the effort for a sustainable future, what compromises must be made?
Experts say the answer comes down to the No. 1 rule in real estate: location, location, location. “Devil’s in the details with the exact spot,” said Shaaron Netherton, the executive director of Friends of Nevada Wilderness. The organization has joined in a lawsuit to block Ormat’s project, which would explore potential geothermal resources in Gerlach.
Several Ormat initiatives have stalled or been forced to relocate amid concerns about potential threats to endangered species like the bleached sandhill skipper, a rare butterfly; populations of sage-grouse; the steamboat buckwheat; and, most recently, the Dixie Valley toad.
Opponents of Ormat’s project plans in Dixie Valley, Nev., fear it would drain the surface springs and push the tiny toad toward extinction. “Geothermal energy has a dark, dirty little secret: They dry up hot springs every time,” said Patrick Donnelly, the Great Basin director at the Center for Biological Diversity.
Yet other plants, such as Ormat’s Tsuchiyu Onsen plant in Fukushima, Japan, coexist with neighboring hot springs, inspiring the Japanese to reconsider the potential of geothermal energy, which creates electricity using fluids from underground....
....MUCH MORE
