S1E4 - Green Energy vs. the Mojave Desert

Ep. 4: "Green Energy" vs. the Mojave Desert

Kevin Emmerich is co-founder of Basin & Range Watch, a non-profit environmental organization based in southern Nevada that educates people about threats to public land from industrial development and energy extraction in the Mojave Desert and the Great Basin. These regions have been ground zero for "green energy" due to their plentiful sunlight, strong winds and lithium deposits.

Kevin enjoyed a career in the National Park Service for 20 years in seven different National Parks and Monuments, including Death Valley National Park since 1991 (now retired). He has also worked as a field biologist for research on desert species such as the Panamint Alligator Lizard, Desert Tortoise, and Mojave Fringe-toed Lizard.

I've been following Basin & Range Watch's work for over a decade, since I saw Kevin quoted in an LA Times article about a "green energy" project in California. I've interviewed both Kevin and the organization's co-founder Laura Cunningham a number of times for print and podcast. (Links below.) I appreciate not only their knowledge and experience, but also the love they both so clearly have for the Southwest, a love that I share. So when I had questions how the incoming Presidential election might affect "green energy" projects in this area, my first email was to Basin & Watch.

We don't go to Trump right away. First I asked Kevin to talk about the negative environmental effects of "green energy" development in the desert, and we mostly talked solar. Having laid the groundwork for why it's important to stop such projects, Kevin speculated on whether Trump will be worse, the same or better than Biden was and Harris was likely to be. "Better" meaning less development. If you want to skip right to this section, go to timecode:

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BASIN & RANGE WATCH SELF-DESCRIPTION: Basin and Range Watch formed as an informational website project in 2008 to educate people about public lands and the threats from development and extraction, as well as how to protect local communities' economies and quality of life, and recreational uses from outside commercial interests intent on taking land and resources for distant profit. We know, we live here. In 2015 we became a nonprofit organization to further our goals of keeping our public lands wild, natural, and accessible to all. A major focus for us currently is the push by federal and state agencies to open up undisturbed habitat and public lands in our region to energy development. Our goal is to identify the problems of energy sprawl and find solutions that will preserve our natural ecosystems and open spaces. We specialize in ground-truthing proposed project sites and reporting our findings to the public so that everyone is well-informed about how to comment during agency review periods. We pioneered citizen science monitoring of energy projects in the desert. We support energy efficiency, better rooftop solar policy, and distributed generation/storage alternatives, as well as planning for wise energy and land use following the principles of science and conservation biology.

LINKS: Basin & Range Watch: https://www.basinandrangewatch2.org/ Substack: https://basinandrangewatch.substack.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BasinRangeWatch/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/basinrangewatch/ Twitter: https://x.com/BasinRange

Western Solar Plan (Bureau of Land Manageme