DesertBlog

Nothing Grows in the Desert

The desert is a barren wasteland.

The desert is unproductive.

There’s nothing there.

We’ve all heard these statements before, but those of us who have come to know and love the desert realize just how wrong they are.

The reality:

The desert teems with life, for those who know how to see it.

The desert is as lovely in its own way as a forest or a mountain stream.

The desert is home to plants and animals uniquely adapted to this harsh environment, making it an indispensable part of the diversity of life on our planet.

The desert stores as much carbon as some temperate forests.

A great set of photos and text on the Basin and Range Watch website captures the true nature of the desert perfectly. They were taken in the “old growth desert” of Ivanpah Valley. BrightSource Energy wants to replace this beautiful and biologically valuable, carbon-sequestering habitat with a 4,000-acre solar project.

It remains to be seen whether the project can achieve its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions when all of the following are counted:

• the loss of the desert’s carbon storing capacity
• diesel emissions from water trucks washing the mirrors every day
• additional greenhouse gas releases involved with expanding a nearby transmission line
• emissions from the on-site gas-fired turbine, used at start-up and on cloudy days
• emissions created by workers driving 100 miles round trip from Las Vegas

Beyond these energy accounting calculations, what will be lost if the BrightSource project is allowed to proceed in this location?

Just a few more rivets on this big ol’ jet airliner we call home. Sure they’re small, many people find these particular ones not very appealing, but how many can we afford to lose? No one knows, because the Earth and its ecosystems are vastly more complex than the simple machine used in this metaphor. What we do know is that we are losing the “pieces” of our ecosystems at a faster rate than almost any other time in Earth’s history, and certainly the fastest rate since humans came on the scene.

Rather than tearing out more rivets and hoping we’ve got a good parachute, the safest bet is to save all the pieces we can. That means choosing technologies and sites that don’t require vast areas of habitat destruction, whether it’s removing a mountain top or scraping a desert.

(If you’re wondering if there are better places for a project like BrightSource’s, you’re right. Check out this map showing better places for large-scale solar projects. For more answers on how we can fight global warming and still protect desert habitats like Ivanpah Valley, check out our Big Solar fact sheet.)

Photo: the blossoms of the Notch-leaf phacelia (Phacelia crenulata), by Kevin Emmerich/Basin and Range Watch. Go see more of this beautiful valley and its wildflowers at their website.

And here’s one more photo:

It may not be pretty, but it’s helping to slow global warming, at no cost to you. Why destroy it? (Dark cryptobiotic crust in gravelly soil, abundant in the Ivanpah Valley. That crust is just one of the components that make desert habitats valuable carbon storehouses, putting them on a par with some temperate forests. Photo by Kevin Emmerich/Basin and Range Watch.)