DesertBlog

Sunrise Powerlink Media Onslaught

Sure power lines are ugly, but that’s not the main point. They also cause fires, reduce our energy security, and carry any type of power a company cares to put on them, from clean to dirty. In no way can they be considered “clean energy” projects. Our bets are that the Sunrise Powerlink, like the Southwest Powerlink that preceded it, will carry mainly dirty fossil-fueled energy and rob California of better energy options. Still, despite mountains of evidence and hours of public testimony to that effect, the national media wants you to think it’s all about “renewable energy vs. scenery.” Read on to find out what the real argument is about.

While DesertBlog took a couple of weeks off (with excellent pinch hitting by Jim Ricker), a national media tempest broke out over the Sunrise Powerlink.

In one bit of great news, the CPUC made the wise decision to recirculate the Draft Environmental Impact Report with additional information on how Sempra’s proposed La Rumarosa wind energy project will affect San Diego’s energy situation. We also hope the revised report will include a full analysis of the San Diego Smart Energy 2020 plan.

That’s good news, but it came amidst a national campaign to boil the Sunrise Powerlink issue down to one of “scenery vs. renewable power.” Readers of this blog, Energy & Nature, and the Smart Energy website know how wrong that view is, yet it’s the one making it into the press.

On June 15, an incredibly one-sided piece in the Associated Press got the blogosphere’s attention, with many quotes from SDG&E’s Mike Niggli, and only one from a conservationist, David Hogan of the Center for Biological Diversity. I am 100 percent certain that David gave many sound reasons for opposing the Sunrise Powerlink, including the fact that it’s really about bringing dirty fossil-fueled power into this country from overseas.  But the reporter cherry-picked David’s comments, choosing one that focused on the scenery the Sunrise Powerlink would destroy, and pushing the NIMBY stereotype the media loves to portray.

That comment was jumped on by bloggers and blog commenters from the “red” (“these environmentalists are such hypocrites”) to the “green” (don’t these people know that renewable energy is more important than scenery?!). A good example of the “green” response can be found in the comments at the end of this summary in Grist magazine.

Yesterday, Investor’s Business Daily did a roundup of what it considered illogical energy policies that included this statement, which should win the “Greatest Number of Errors in a Single Sentence Award”: 

“The Sunrise Powerlink solar-energy project in Southern California is being fought because of a 150-mile, $1.5 billion high-voltage line connecting desert-based solar panels with the urban customers of San Diego Gas & Electric.”

If those are the kinds of “facts” on which investors rely, it’s not surprising that the stock market is on a downward spiral.

Even this green blogger got into the pro-Sunrise Powerlink act, relying on the AP article without contacting any local conservationists. In comments on the piece, Paul Blackburn, formerly of the San Diego Sierra Club, and others did a nice job of challenging this blogger’s contention that the Sunrise Powerlink is somehow “green.” Yet the reach of this blog post was disheartening: 223 favorable votes at Digg.com (while we’re lucky if we can generate 10 social bookmarking votes for an anti-Sunrise Powerlink blog post). We can only hope that most of those readers viewed the full comment discussion beneath the main post.

Finally, in the “they just don’t get it” category, the Natural Resources Defense Council continued to sit the fence on the Powerlink with this post.

There were a couple of bright lights in the national media and the blogosphere, however. The Wall Street Journal actually printed a balanced article Monday that addressed the complexities of the Sunrise Powerlink issue, thanks to a good quote from the Sierra Club’s Micah Mitrosky. And a couple of blogs saw through the ”renewable energy vs. NIMBY views” angle, as in this post from Modern Hiker. It pretty much hits the nail on the head: the Sunrise Powerlink is about dirty fossil-fuel energy and puts corporate profits before sustainability. It’s the last gasp in the old, centralized energy paradigm, which has undermined our energy security while putting Sempra into the Fortune 500. And this nice review on Treehugger.com of Ernie Cowan’s Anza-Borrego book did a fine job as well. (Hint: Go give these bloggers a Digg or a Hugg.)

With gas costs soaring, and energy costs soon to follow, the mood in the nation now seems to be one of “build any power plant of any type anywhere.” Greens play into this mood by supporting solar power plants no matter where they are built. For instance, BLM’s decision to put the hundreds of solar proposals for the deserts on hold while environmental review can be carried out has been derided by some greens as a Bush Administration ploy to delay solar while pushing ahead with oil and gas. And the solar companies themselves have responded with an attitude of “We’re green, why do we need to follow environmental laws?”

Beyond the green blogosphere, average Americans seem ready to give up all sorts of environmental protections to keep what James Kunstler calls the “era of happy motoring” humming along. Enviros, perhaps fearful of being labeled Luddites, have not done a good job of educating the public (and in some cases themselves) about the power of conservation and the negawatt. So now, according to a Pew survey, a majority of Americans supports more power plants and more drilling, and believes that these are more important than conservation. “Anything, just don’t make us give up our single-occupancy, eight-passenger SUVs!” Maybe we do deserve the future envisioned in James Kunstler’s recent novel, World Made by Hand.

Meanwhile, if these attitudes persist, many thousands of acres of the desert are toast.

WHAT YOU CAN DO
To dispel the growing national misperceptions about the Sunrise Powerlink, there are a number of simple things concerned citizens can do:

1. Sign up for Google blog, news, and web alerts for the search term “Sunrise Powerlink.” You’ll receive links to articles, blog posts and web pages in your e-mail inbox.
2. Respond with letters to the editor (for news articles and op-eds) and comments (for blog posts), supporting sensible statements and correcting misperceptions.
3. The message should be simple: The Sunrise Powerlink is not about promoting renewable energy. It is about creating a way for Sempra energy to bring dirty fossil fuel power into the country from overseas. A better alternative for San Diego is the San Diego Smart Energy 2020 plan.

With an army of volunteer letter writers and blog responders, we may be able to counteract Sempra/SDG&E’s national media onslaught.