That unusual collaboration — along with generous federal subsidies and allotments of public land — has sparked a wholesale remodeling of the American desert.
..Mainstream environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, Defenders of Wildlife and the Natural Resources Defense Council, have been largely mute, having traded the picket line for a seat at the table when development plans were drawn.
The Center for Biological Diversity, one of the nation's most aggressively litigious environmental groups, has not challenged the Ivanpah project.
It signed a confidential agreement not to oppose the project in exchange for concessions for the desert tortoise — mandating that BrightSource buy land elsewhere for conservation.
If you are out in this desert on an ATV and run over one lizard or break one cactus the feds and state cops, EPA and environmental lobbyists will go nuclear on you.
This “solar energy” company gets to turn 3,500 acres of the same public land into something uglier than an auto junk yard and the company is celebrated for saving the environment and creating a dozen or so green jobs. It’s not a double standard it’s insane mass hysteria.