Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from iHeart Radio. After decades of debate, it is
Speaker 1: now common knowledge that the world is in the midst
Speaker 1: of an ever increasing energy crisis, and that the long
Speaker 1: era of burning fossil fuels for power is contributing to
Speaker 1: our own demise. And yet the transition to alternative energy
Speaker 1: is proving to be more complex than you might think.
Speaker 1: The Harper's Magazine article Boomtown examines the solar land rush
Speaker 1: currently happening in the American West, specifically in the town
Speaker 1: of Beatty in Nai County, Nevada. The Ni County area
Speaker 1: has the capacity to produce enough energy through its prospective
Speaker 1: solar farms to power the entire planet, Yes, the entire planet.
Speaker 1: Close to the entrance of Death Valley National Park, It's
Speaker 1: an area rife with flat land and almost endless sunlight,
Speaker 1: but residents are pushing back on proposals to use its
Speaker 1: land for this purpose. After a series of exploitative boom
Speaker 1: bust cycles like the Gold Rush. Residents are opposing the
Speaker 1: plan on ecological and economic grounds. They argue that covering
Speaker 1: Nevada in solar panels will affect wildlife, recreational spaces, and
Speaker 1: the town's future. The article asks the difficult questions of
Speaker 1: who should sacrifice for our collective future and at what cost.
Speaker 1: My guests today are deep into this inquiry. Dustin mulvaney
Speaker 1: is a solar expert and professor of environmental studies at
Speaker 1: San Jose State University, and he collaborated on the Harper's article.
Speaker 1: But first the author of Boomtown, Hilary Angelo, is an
Speaker 1: urban environmental sociologist and associate professor of sociology at the
Speaker 1: University of California, Santa Cruz. She is also a current
Speaker 1: member of the Institute for Advanced Study, where she is
Speaker 1: working with other scholars on the issue of climate crisis politics.
Speaker 1: I wanted to know how her work in urban sociology
Speaker 1: was related to sustainability and the growing issue of water scarcity.
Speaker 2: I do a lot of work on urban sustainability and
Speaker 2: sustainability planning in general, and so a lot of questions
Speaker 2: about how human settlement relates to the external environment. So
Speaker 2: one of my interests in this topic and in these
Speaker 2: questions about energy is are we making the same decisions
Speaker 2: again as we now confront this new environmental crisis? Because
Speaker 2: much like we've done with water. We sort of created
Speaker 2: these very large scale infrastructure systems in the twentieth century
Speaker 2: that made huge quantities of water available to you know,
Speaker 2: people who lived in cities in Los Angeles and elsewhere,
Speaker 2: and we're now confronting the unsustainabilities of those decisions, especially
Speaker 2: as the West gets dryer. And so yeah, I think
Speaker 2: there's a kind of similar dynamic that's happening now. Obviously
Speaker 2: we're not going to run out of sun, but we
Speaker 2: will run out of land, or you know, we can
Speaker 2: be making different choices about how to use these resources.
Speaker 1: You know, when I was out there, it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, people desperate, a lot of handwringing, a lot
Speaker 1: of pronouncements, and then it would abate and it would
Speaker 1: go away again for a while. But when I read
Speaker 1: your article, I mean, now we pivot from that to Nevada.
Speaker 1: Baity is the city, NI County is the general area.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to use the word nimby, because
Speaker 1: that to me bespeaks rich, privileged people who don't want
Speaker 1: things in their vista that are necessary and they want
Speaker 1: to impose among other people. I don't view those people
Speaker 1: as nimby. How do you describe those residents there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's nice of you not to use
Speaker 2: the term. When I initially heard that there were people
Speaker 2: in the desert protest solar development, I also sort of
Speaker 2: thought or assumed that they were Nimbi's. You know, that
Speaker 2: is the framework that we're used to thinking about these issues,
Speaker 2: which is a question of sort of you know, private
Speaker 2: property or private interests versus questions of public good. When
Speaker 2: I met these people, I mean, I think what I
Speaker 2: found so interesting about them and what made me write
Speaker 2: the article, is that I felt they were actually trying
Speaker 2: to make this very important critique that has more to
Speaker 2: do with what you were just talking about about, for example,
Speaker 2: the choices we made about water and other natural resources
Speaker 2: in the twentieth century. Basically, they were saying, this is
Speaker 2: a question of how we do social change, and we're
Speaker 2: claiming that climate change is this moment of large scale
Speaker 2: social transformation. But actually from our perspective, from their perspective,
Speaker 2: we're making the same decisions about land use, about infrastructure development,
Speaker 2: and so on. So I thought that kind of critique
Speaker 2: that was being made doesn't fit into how we understand
Speaker 2: Nimbi's Public land in the United States is a commons
Speaker 2: or could be described as a commons, which isn't a
Speaker 2: vocabulary that we use in the US very much, but
Speaker 2: people talk ab got it. There's sort of similar fights
Speaker 2: about renewable energy development in Latin America and Africa, and
Speaker 2: people use the term energy grabbing like so they sort
Speaker 2: of talk about this common land being taken by energy
Speaker 2: companies and the implications that has for rural livelihoods, And
Speaker 2: so I think that is actually much more similar to
Speaker 2: what's going on in the American West.
Speaker 1: Now, you know, here in New York, where as everybody knows,
Speaker 1: you know, Robert Moses condemns and through eminent domain takes
Speaker 1: whole neighborhoods in the Bronx so we can build a highway.
Speaker 1: In New York City in cooperation with the state, sees
Speaker 1: through eminent domain valleys of land that they evicted everybody
Speaker 1: from and flooded them to make the reservoir system for
Speaker 1: the city's drinking water. But in the area of Nevada
Speaker 1: you were in, do they view it purely as another
Speaker 1: rush companies coming in private companies to alter the landscape.
Speaker 1: Do they see it as a critical element potentially in
Speaker 1: something that we all have to make some sacrifices for
Speaker 1: in some contribution, which is to address climate change.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know. I
Speaker 2: think some of them do and some of them probably don't.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: For some people, there is a very personal emotional reaction
Speaker 2: that any of us would have, right if the government
Speaker 2: was coming and seizing land or you know, building flooding
Speaker 2: a valley and putting a reservoir in your backyard. Of
Speaker 2: that kind of thing, they just got themselves as fighting
Speaker 2: for their lives. So that I think often in that
Speaker 2: framework it doesn't sort of rise to the level of
Speaker 2: the public good questions. But you know, one thing I
Speaker 2: would say is that even within that, like even when
Speaker 2: we start thinking in those terms about you know, what
Speaker 2: is in the national interest or the public interest here,
Speaker 2: and how should these public lands be used, Like, there's
Speaker 2: a real question about what the highest and best use is.
Speaker 2: So for example, in the West, there was a period
Speaker 2: of time when valleys were being flooded for reservoirs.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: So, I mean there have been shifts in the kind
Speaker 2: of American public consciousness and sentiment about these issues over
Speaker 2: time in terms of saying to themselves, well, you know,
Speaker 2: the thing that's really in the public interest is to
Speaker 2: have this reservoir here versus the thing that's in the
Speaker 2: public interest is to save this you know, beautiful valley
Speaker 2: so that we can have that as part of our
Speaker 2: heart fish stocks exactly. And so yeah, I think what
Speaker 2: I find complicated about this question is is that that's
Speaker 2: an open question. Right. There's a climate crisis and we
Speaker 2: have to be carbonized, but there's also an extinction crisis
Speaker 2: and a biodiversity crisis, and so one can argue that
Speaker 2: preserving desert habitat is you know, is also an important
Speaker 2: part of responding to claims.
Speaker 1: Just so if you have where you you mentioned in
Speaker 1: the article, the eighty five percent of the land mass
Speaker 1: in the state of Nevada is federal land. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: is all of that controlled by.
Speaker 2: BLM basically yes. So yeah, So for.
Speaker 1: People who are listening, is Beaty and n County is
Speaker 1: that on federal land that they're allowed to occupy or
Speaker 1: are they in private land?
Speaker 2: It's federal land. So Beaty is a small is a
Speaker 2: town that they describe as sort of landlocked. So it's
Speaker 2: a little island of you know, people have owned parcels
Speaker 2: of land and then it's surrounded by public land and
Speaker 2: for people who are listening. So public lands managed mostly
Speaker 2: by the Bureau of Land Management, which is a department
Speaker 2: of the Interior, sometimes the Forest Service and other things,
Speaker 2: and they're managed under what's called the multiple Use Mandate,
Speaker 2: which means these lands, unlike national parks, are open for
Speaker 2: extractive activities or energy development as well as recreation. And
Speaker 2: it's actually one in ten acres of land in the
Speaker 2: United States, which I found amazing just to learn. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: so it's a little island of a regular town where
Speaker 2: people own properties surrounded by this public land.
Speaker 1: When did the people of NY County get introduced to
Speaker 1: this rush?
Speaker 2: Basically now it's happening now. So there was a sort
Speaker 2: of initial solar rush or you know, phase one of
Speaker 2: the solar rush, which is about ten years ago. And
Speaker 2: Dustin Melvini, who you'll be speaking to later today, has
Speaker 2: been studying that so can talk about this over a
Speaker 2: longer timescale. But much of that took place in California.
Speaker 2: And so the people I mentioned in the article, Kevin
Speaker 2: and Laura, who run a nonprofit called Basin and Range Watch.
Speaker 2: They have been part of a group of sort of
Speaker 2: western desert advocates and desert protectors, who include people trained
Speaker 2: in conservation biology and that kind of thing, but also
Speaker 2: many tribes and indigenous groups and activists and artists and
Speaker 2: kind of other people who care about the desert for
Speaker 2: various reasons. And so they started arguing, you know, ten
Speaker 2: years ago that renewable energy development of this sort sort
Speaker 2: of large scale on what is called undisturbed lands was
Speaker 2: going to threaten deserts and was a problem. It's just
Speaker 2: come to beaty kind of now. And it's come because
Speaker 2: there's a new transmission line that's going to be built
Speaker 2: around the state of Nevada. So it's a big triangle
Speaker 2: and that's going to help carry renewable energy but also
Speaker 2: fossil fuel based energy probably and export that to other states.
Speaker 2: So the solar developers are kind of following where these
Speaker 2: transmission lines are likely to be.
Speaker 1: Now, knowing as we do that similar to the water crisis,
Speaker 1: there's a clock ticking here in terms of climate change
Speaker 1: and global warming, and I'm wondering what you think what
Speaker 1: it's going to take for us to have I never
Speaker 1: used the word Manhattan Project because that bespeaks war. I
Speaker 1: tend to use the word Apollo Project, where we're going
Speaker 1: to really, really the government's going to get serious about
Speaker 1: spending money on these projects, not waiting for private developers
Speaker 1: to do it. What do you think it's going to take.
Speaker 2: What an excellent question. I think we're all we're all
Speaker 2: asking that question right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And to be clear, just since you were talking about
Speaker 2: some of like sort of where nationally we're going to
Speaker 2: be putting renewable energy development, right, I am not. I mean,
Speaker 2: most energy experts agree that we're going to need some
Speaker 2: you know, large scale utility scale solar and wand and renewables.
Speaker 2: So this is not a this is not an argument
Speaker 2: against large scale solar per se. It's a question about
Speaker 2: where we put it and how we're building it out.
Speaker 2: Human settlements are all kind of unsustainable in their own ways, right,
Speaker 2: So some cities need water brought to them, some cities
Speaker 2: need food brought into them, like New York. So it's
Speaker 2: not again, it's not also to say that, you know,
Speaker 2: we've made a terrible mistake creating cities in the Southwest.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think there's a few things that are
Speaker 2: missing right now. So one is we don't really have
Speaker 2: good frameworks for large scale planning in the United States.
Speaker 2: And I sort of mentioned this, I think in the
Speaker 2: article in passing, probably in one sentence. But there isn't
Speaker 2: other than the Bureau of Land Management, which isn't really
Speaker 2: staffed or funded for playing this kind of role. There
Speaker 2: is not a federal agency that can make really big,
Speaker 2: coordinated decisions about land use. Seems very important. So there
Speaker 2: are you know, there are planned energy corridors like so
Speaker 2: there's a they know where these transmission lines are likely
Speaker 2: to go. There was some federal planning around that, but
Speaker 2: there's absolutely no coordination between different types of activities related
Speaker 2: to renewables, So lithium, geothermal, solar farms, all that can
Speaker 2: kind of happen in the same place. All those permits
Speaker 2: are assessed separately. The planning of transmission lines and location
Speaker 2: of substations takes place separately from questions about where to
Speaker 2: put actual solar farms. So all of these things are
Speaker 2: happening in this really piecemeal way that makes it hard
Speaker 2: to make good decisions. And I think also the role
Speaker 2: that the federal government is playing is one of kind
Speaker 2: of lowering barriers to private development. Right They've tried to
Speaker 2: make it easier for many good reasons for private developers
Speaker 2: to build out solar, to build out renewables, to reduce
Speaker 2: the financial risks that those companies are taking on to
Speaker 2: do it. Which is good in terms of facilitating you know,
Speaker 2: solar happening quickly, it is not as good in terms
Speaker 2: of helping guide projects to the best locations or having
Speaker 2: these kinds of big picture questions in mind. Right, So
Speaker 2: the federal government could be making decisions like should this
Speaker 2: land in central Nevada be part of our twenty five
Speaker 2: y twenty five initiative, which is the goal to build
Speaker 2: out twenty five gigatts of solar by twenty twenty five
Speaker 2: on public lands, or.
Speaker 1: The thirty ontograt for that.
Speaker 2: They're trying to be Yeah, but there's also at the
Speaker 2: same time a thirty by thirty initiative, which is to
Speaker 2: conserve thirty percent of the land mass in the United
Speaker 2: States as you know and whatever they call it, you know,
Speaker 2: intact habitat. And so this land in Nevada be part
Speaker 2: of the energy sort of portfolio or part of the
Speaker 2: conservation portfolio. I mean, those are the kinds of questions
Speaker 2: that I think the federal government could be stepping in
Speaker 2: to help answer.
Speaker 1: You're an urban sociologist, describe for our listeners what that is. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I usually say I'm an urban and environmental sociologist,
Speaker 2: and so a lot of my work is about ideas
Speaker 2: about nature and the environment and how we mobilize them
Speaker 2: when making decisions about the built environment about cities. So,
Speaker 2: before I got my PhD, I worked for the New
Speaker 2: York City Parks Department.
Speaker 1: Actually, so, where are you from.
Speaker 2: Originally I'm actually from Kentucky, but I went to college
Speaker 2: near here. I went to Vassar i.
Speaker 1: Vasa, Yeah, nuts valid, and then you got your PhD.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I worked here in city government and then
Speaker 2: I stayed here. I worked for a program called Partnerships
Speaker 2: for Parks that was actually a public private partnership, but
Speaker 2: it basically existed, exists, it still exists to get communities
Speaker 2: involved in their city parks and to advocate for them,
Speaker 2: and to also help the parks department work better with
Speaker 2: the public.
Speaker 1: I first moved here in seventy nine to go to NYU,
Speaker 1: and then the Conservancy emerged, and there was all this brief,
Speaker 1: as I recall, debate about what union labor no city
Speaker 1: workers who worked there, how much were they being usurped
Speaker 1: by this private group. Now we have this quasi private
Speaker 1: public marriage of the two. I mean Central Park is
Speaker 1: like a business.
Speaker 2: Now it is. And you know this actually relates to
Speaker 2: the other things we're talking about. I mean it's a
Speaker 2: double edged sword. In the West. I mean, national parks
Speaker 2: are much like Central Park. Right. National parks, as many
Speaker 2: people know, are these very controlled spaces. You're shuttled from
Speaker 2: here to there. They're super crowded, there's lots of infrastructure, bathrooms,
Speaker 2: internet for tourists. It's for tourists. Public lands are like
Speaker 2: the interstitial spaces were I mean, I will just say
Speaker 2: so coming from California, there's a lot of state parks there.
Speaker 2: They don't allow dogs in state parks. So it was
Speaker 2: the middle of COVID and I got dog when I
Speaker 2: moved to California from New York because I didn't know
Speaker 2: what else to do with my time, and so I
Speaker 2: discovered public lands because it was a place you could
Speaker 2: take your dog. You can take your dog, you can
Speaker 2: shoot guns, you can ride motorized vehicles, you can live there,
Speaker 2: you can camp for fourteen days without a permit. It's
Speaker 2: a really kind of interesting and amazing place. Again just
Speaker 2: because as an urban nite and a coastal urban nite.
Speaker 2: I really had no sense that this land existed in
Speaker 2: the United States and that it still exists. And it's
Speaker 2: not to say that it's a free for all, but
Speaker 2: those are the kinds of questions that are coming up
Speaker 2: now about about these landscapes. I think in a similar way,
Speaker 2: and the changes in parks in New York, I think
Speaker 2: can show us how public relationships to these spaces changes
Speaker 2: so dramatically. Right, Central Park went from being a dangerous
Speaker 2: place that was not particularly valued or was seen as
Speaker 2: like a liability.
Speaker 1: We don't go in the park. Right, the park was
Speaker 1: dangerous as a very dangerous space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everybody, it's like the mall.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: Central Park.
Speaker 1: No, No, No. Urban and environmental sociologist Hillary Angelo. If
Speaker 1: you are interested in conversations about energy sources and our future,
Speaker 1: be sure to check out my episode with journalist Nicholas Narkos,
Speaker 1: who investigated the cobalt rush in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Speaker 3: Just like chatting with his kid ZICKI. He was working
Speaker 3: in mind since he was three, basically, and then there
Speaker 3: was this moment where I showed him my phone. I said,
Speaker 3: the new iPhone is going for a two hundred dollars
Speaker 3: and everybody there knows that it's going into batteries something
Speaker 3: like fifty percent of the cobalt. Mind there it goes
Speaker 3: into letting my own batteries. How do you feel about this?
Speaker 3: And he was just like, I feel terrible, And I
Speaker 3: think he sort of thought, you know, how can people
Speaker 3: sort of sanction such violence against people like me?
Speaker 1: Hear more of my conversation with Nicholas Narkos that Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing dot org After the break, Hillary Angelo proposes
Speaker 1: new ways of thinking for the solar model. I'm ATLEC.
Speaker 1: Baldwin and you were listening to Here's the Thing. For
Speaker 1: her article on the solar boom in the West, Hillary
Speaker 1: Angelo dug deep into the history of the area and
Speaker 1: the exploitation of its land. I wanted to know if
Speaker 1: places like Ni County were deemed off limits for development,
Speaker 1: what spaces might be used instead.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great question. People talk about locating large
Speaker 2: scale solar on disturbed lands, that's what they call these.
Speaker 2: So this is sort of industrial I think in terms
Speaker 2: of things like brown Field. So yeah, where there was
Speaker 2: a factory and it's polluted. They talk about areas where
Speaker 2: there was strip mining, and Appalachia so often prison top, yeah, mountaintop.
Speaker 2: So often prisons come to those regions now because they're
Speaker 2: sort of, you know, undesirable land uses. People don't want
Speaker 2: prisons near their houses. But it's also not the best
Speaker 2: thing for a community in Appalachia, right, Maybe you'd prefer
Speaker 2: to have a solar farm in a prison. There's also farmland.
Speaker 2: This is in California, so exhausted farmland that can't be
Speaker 2: used for farming anymore, or that they don't have water
Speaker 2: to farm on anymore, Like that's another good place for it.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think those are all possible.
Speaker 1: Now, the energy that could be accessed by the residents
Speaker 1: of Ni County doesn't have to be part of a
Speaker 1: solar farm that they're constructing. You could literally in the
Speaker 1: bargaining say you're going to build us our own solar farm.
Speaker 1: In other words, we're going to have free energy for
Speaker 1: everybody that lives here, free for the rest of our lives.
Speaker 1: And that's the gift you're going to give us, an
Speaker 1: exchange for us not getting in the way of your project.
Speaker 1: When you say this energy goes elsewhere, that's the reality.
Speaker 1: It goes elsewhere. They don't get it they don't get
Speaker 1: to wet their beak. As we say in the mafia.
Speaker 2: It's tricky to answer that question. It does. Like the
Speaker 2: very simple way that it could be stated is, yeah,
Speaker 2: it goes elsewhere. This is like large scale renewable energy
Speaker 2: being generated to send and be purchased by companies. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: But you know, as I've heard the Bureau of Land
Speaker 2: Management and other people say, like once you get the
Speaker 2: electrons in the transmission line, that you can't really parse
Speaker 2: it out in those ways. So there is a you know,
Speaker 2: obviously there is local energy being generated and used in Baby,
Speaker 2: So I assume they get some of it, but.
Speaker 1: It feels like maybe they should get more of it.
Speaker 2: Maybe they should get more of it. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 2: I don't think. I don't know. I mean, I think,
Speaker 2: you know, again, the bigger question for them is what
Speaker 2: is the economy of this town, And for them, this
Speaker 2: kind of tourism model seems to have a better long
Speaker 2: term future for them, and it makes them less reliant
Speaker 2: on a company that may be kind of here today,
Speaker 2: gone tomorrow. Renewable energy not just solar, but also things
Speaker 2: like lithium and geothermal, Like there's a lot of speculation.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a new in just and so there
Speaker 2: are many companies that are trying to get their hands
Speaker 2: in it. And some of them are good and stable
Speaker 2: and some of them are not. And so they yeah,
Speaker 2: they I think they worry about, you know, becoming a
Speaker 2: new company town basically, and then the company folds.
Speaker 1: And then do you like writing? I do like writing? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Because I'm not saying this to be kind. What really
Speaker 1: hooked me was that this is such so well written,
Speaker 1: this piece you did you mean you're writing? It is fantastic.
Speaker 1: And I'm an old Harper's junkie. Louis Lappham is an
Speaker 1: old old friend of mine, and I don't mean old chronologically,
Speaker 1: which he's old chronologically too, but he's a dear friend
Speaker 1: of mine. So I'm a big Harper's reader. What are
Speaker 1: you working on now.
Speaker 2: I'm working at a book. So I'm working at a
Speaker 2: book on public lands and the energy transition, so basically
Speaker 2: looking at the future of public lands in some ways
Speaker 2: that we've just talked about, like basically, climate change is
Speaker 2: this moment of large scale transformation. Old infrastructure systems are crumbling,
Speaker 2: old ways of doing life on Earth are crumbling, and
Speaker 2: we're building a bunch of new systems. So I'm curious about,
Speaker 2: you know, how that's happening and whether we are actually
Speaker 2: able to kind of change the way we do things,
Speaker 2: change the political economy, change the relationship to the environment
Speaker 2: in fundamental ways. I just want to say one thing.
Speaker 2: I'm going to invite myself to say one thing before
Speaker 2: we sign off, which is, you know, as an urban sociologist,
Speaker 2: a lot of what my work was about was looking
Speaker 2: at kind of the decisions we made in the name
Speaker 2: of nature that were not sound decisions environmentally, Right Like,
Speaker 2: we often oppose housing construction because we want to preserve
Speaker 2: open space, but in not building housing, we push people out,
Speaker 2: out and out and out, We increase commuting, we increase emissions, right,
Speaker 2: we fragment habitats, you know, and that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: So I think this is a similar thing, right Like,
Speaker 2: we need to decarbonize, we need to do it fast.
Speaker 2: We're in the middle of climate crisis, but there are
Speaker 2: multiple there are you know, competing issues here, including habitat
Speaker 2: and biodiversity crisis, and in using this land for scholar,
Speaker 2: I think we are sort of failing to think about
Speaker 2: the big picture of all of the environmental challenges that
Speaker 2: we're currently facing, different ways to solve them. Well, thank
Speaker 2: you very much, Thanks so much, thank you. That's a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Institute for Advanced Study scholar Hillary Angelo my next guest.
Speaker 1: San Jose State University Professor Dustin mulvaney is the author
Speaker 1: of Solar Power, Innovation, Sustainability, and Environmental Justice, and he
Speaker 1: is also a source for the article Boomtown. I was
Speaker 1: curious to learn what the people of NY County know
Speaker 1: and understand about our climate crisis timeline and the sacrifice
Speaker 1: that is being asked of them.
Speaker 4: I do think that these communities have a long history
Speaker 4: with extractive industries, and I think that that's the lens
Speaker 4: through which they're interpreting a lot of the land us
Speaker 4: change that might be coming their way and is already
Speaker 4: coming their way for solar development. These folks who live
Speaker 4: out there tend to be very tuned into the natural world,
Speaker 4: so to speak, the desert ecosystem, and they know things
Speaker 4: are changing. I have a sense that they they're familiar
Speaker 4: with the climate change overarching challenge that we're all facing.
Speaker 4: I think that they just have had these experiences where
Speaker 4: when let's say, you know, a major city like Las
Speaker 4: Vegas or Los Angeles needs a dump, they go to
Speaker 4: the desert. When they need lithium, like they need today,
Speaker 4: where do they go? They go to the desert. Where
Speaker 4: do they need in this case, lots of sunshine. You know,
Speaker 4: they feel like their resources are being somewhat squandered in
Speaker 4: the sense that they also look around and see areas
Speaker 4: that are disturbed, meaning they're not just living in these
Speaker 4: rural areas that are rich ecosystems. They're living in a
Speaker 4: rich ecosystem that also has pockets of extractivism all over it.
Speaker 4: There's mining all over the California Desert. There has been
Speaker 4: for a long time.
Speaker 1: What are they mining were now?
Speaker 4: Primarily there's gold mining, there's silver mining in Nevada. The
Speaker 4: there's new mining projects that are being proposed in and
Speaker 4: around the area where the solar development's happening as well.
Speaker 4: Lithium mining. We have somewhere on the order of last
Speaker 4: I checked, it was something like seventeen thousand plaster claims
Speaker 4: for lithium in the state of Nevada, which is you know, lithium.
Speaker 4: That's another major challenge, right we don't right now have
Speaker 4: the supplies of lithium to get to the electrification of
Speaker 4: vehicles that we are hoping to see in the future.
Speaker 4: So I guess the way I think some of these
Speaker 4: communities are seeing what they're being asked to sacrifice here,
Speaker 4: they see it as somewhat of a false choice because
Speaker 4: if you zoom out of the Mohave Desert and the
Speaker 4: areas of the Colorado Desert, which is southern California, if
Speaker 4: you zoom out, there's a lot of agriculture there. You know,
Speaker 4: if you look at blythe a major city on the
Speaker 4: Colorado River, they're growing lots of alfalfa for export for horses. Now,
Speaker 4: those are opportunities to cite solar farms in these agricultural
Speaker 4: areas the Imperial Valley.
Speaker 1: So in an area where there's a lot of agriculture,
Speaker 1: the solar is built adjacent to that. It's land that
Speaker 1: they're not farmingland. It was one of the conditions there
Speaker 1: that makes it less problematic for them.
Speaker 4: Well, the key thing is the habitat. So you know,
Speaker 4: when we're talking about the controversies in this particular region
Speaker 4: of California and Nevada, the controversies are usually around the
Speaker 4: public lands, and these public lands have been in conservation
Speaker 4: by default because they have never been developed. So that
Speaker 4: means that they're very good habitat for desert tortoise, which
Speaker 4: we've lost almost ninety percent of that population of that animal,
Speaker 4: that species that's been in that area since there were
Speaker 4: sabertoothed cats, right, that species has been there for a
Speaker 4: long time, and now we're we're damaging its habitat. So
Speaker 4: when a solar farm is cited in agricultural areas, it's
Speaker 4: usually a decision made by that farmer to convert either
Speaker 4: out of agriculture or maybe you know, in some cases,
Speaker 4: Blithe and the Imperial Value are going to be asked
Speaker 4: to retire land because we're over extracting water from the
Speaker 4: Colorado River as well. So there's this opportunity to kind
Speaker 4: of put that puzzle together. As agricultural lands are retired,
Speaker 4: maybe those are the opportunities to put the solar farms
Speaker 4: because you don't damage the habitat.
Speaker 1: And when you say damage the habitat, when you have
Speaker 1: these installations in these places and quote unquote habitat is disturbed,
Speaker 1: are they talking about one or the other of boat
Speaker 1: or both of habitat for wildlife? You talk about the
Speaker 1: tortoises and so forth are not necessarily baby in Nevada,
Speaker 1: but are different areas worried about. They want things left
Speaker 1: absolutely pristine and you know natural or is it They
Speaker 1: want to be able to tear it up with an
Speaker 1: ATV and have a dirt bike track. And there's cultural
Speaker 1: imperatives and there's preferences they have that are not necessarily
Speaker 1: in harmony with nature. Is it a combination of both.
Speaker 4: It is a combination of multiple factors, partly because the
Speaker 4: public lands system, which is managed by the Bureau of
Speaker 4: Land Management in the Department of Interior, is the one
Speaker 4: federal agency without a mission, meaning the National Park Service
Speaker 4: has a mission to provide park services and get people
Speaker 4: to see nature. The Forest Service has a mission to
Speaker 4: manage sustainable yield of forests in some places and manage
Speaker 4: wildernesses and others. But the Bureau of Land Management has
Speaker 4: multiple priorities. Conservation is one of them, but energy development
Speaker 4: is another, mining is another, Recreational ATV use is another.
Speaker 4: So in some ways this controversy embodies the challe faced
Speaker 4: by this federal agency since it was developed. You know,
Speaker 4: the history of that agency is the General Land Office
Speaker 4: was a federal agency that gave away land for development
Speaker 4: the Homestead Act. As the West was settled, the General
Speaker 4: Land Office offered out these lands for if you were
Speaker 4: going to develop these lands and work them, farm them,
Speaker 4: you could have it. And the desert areas were not farmable,
Speaker 4: so the General Land Office could never give away these lands.
Speaker 4: In fact, in the nineteen twenties, the Bureau Land Management
Speaker 4: tried to give away lands back to the states and
Speaker 4: that didn't happen. So the General Land Office gets merged
Speaker 4: with a grazing agency, and that's the land that the
Speaker 4: Bureau Land Management manages today. It's the nation's largest landlord.
Speaker 4: It manages two hundred and fifty million acres across the West,
Speaker 4: and it manages for all these different activities. Take the
Speaker 4: desert tortoise again for an example. The desert tortoise. We
Speaker 4: spend more money conserving that species than grizzly bear, bald eagle,
Speaker 4: and gray wolf combined. So that species we make a
Speaker 4: lot of federal investments in it. And on the flip side,
Speaker 4: we've now permitted somewhere on the order of ten gigawatts
Speaker 4: of solar on public lands. That's more than any other
Speaker 4: state has, So that means that there's this kind of
Speaker 4: inevitable clash of conservation because those lands were never developed.
Speaker 4: And the Energy Policy Act of two thousand and five
Speaker 4: was actually the biggest energy law that we had until
Speaker 4: this most recent inflation Reduction Act. So the Energy Policy
Speaker 4: Act of two thousand and five mandated that the Bureau
Speaker 4: of Land Management develop for solar and the idea there
Speaker 4: was partly, hey, we've been given out public lands for coal,
Speaker 4: oil and gas for all these years. Now it's the
Speaker 4: solar and other renewables industries turned to have the public lands.
Speaker 1: Professor Dustin mulvaney, if you're enjoying this conversation, don't keep
Speaker 1: it to yourself, Tell a friend and follow here's the
Speaker 1: thing on the heart radio app, Spotify or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts. When we come back, Dustin Mulveny shares
Speaker 1: a potential way to move forward for the communities that
Speaker 1: will be affected by solar expansion. I'm Alec Baldwin and
Speaker 1: this is here's the thing. Dustin Mulveny's research focuses on
Speaker 1: the production of emerging technologies and their environmental impact, and
Speaker 1: specifically solar energy commodity chains. I wanted Mulveny to share
Speaker 1: what if any dangerous byproducts we might have to worry
Speaker 1: about from the expansion of the solar industry.
Speaker 4: So solar doesn't seem to have the same level of
Speaker 4: challenges that batteries do up the supply chain. The key
Speaker 4: ingredient for solar panel is quartz. Most of the solar
Speaker 4: panels made out of glass, so by weight, quartz goes
Speaker 4: into that glass, but there's a semiconductor grade quartz that's
Speaker 4: mined and that's turned into a very very pure type
Speaker 4: of silicon that eventually becomes the wafers that you see
Speaker 4: in a solar cell. The key metal that is interesting
Speaker 4: that the solar industry uses is silver. So on a
Speaker 4: given year, the solar industry uses somewhere around fifteen percent
Speaker 4: of the global silver supply, which is quite incredible. Now.
Speaker 4: That is also interestingly hasn't led to an increase in
Speaker 4: silver mining, partly because of the photo industry going away.
Speaker 4: Silver was widely used in developing photographs, and that supply
Speaker 4: basically now has kind of slid over to the solar industry,
Speaker 4: not the direct supply, but has basically substituted that demand
Speaker 4: over time. So a solar panels a somewhat simple technology
Speaker 4: which poses some challenges for recycling. So that means that
Speaker 4: like the solar panels not very valuable inside problematic elements
Speaker 4: that are in a solar panel might be lead at
Speaker 4: the end of its life, there's a little bit of
Speaker 4: lead in the sod or it's not like a television
Speaker 4: set that has a real lot of lead in it.
Speaker 4: But that's probably the exposure of concern. For example, if
Speaker 4: you're recycling solar panels, they've recycled ninety five percent of
Speaker 4: their solar panels in Europe.
Speaker 1: By the way, cadmium as an element in solar panels,
Speaker 1: what role does that play.
Speaker 4: So there are two major types of solar panels. Most
Speaker 4: of them ninety five percent of them are crystalline silicon,
Speaker 4: so they rely on that quartz and that very very
Speaker 4: refined silicon. There's a different technology, a technology actually people
Speaker 4: thought would be more widespread today, which is called thin film.
Speaker 4: The silicon ones are exceptionally thin, but these thin films
Speaker 4: are actually like one hundred times thinner. They're on the
Speaker 4: order of one hundred nanem of thickness, and those are
Speaker 4: the semiconductor layers that generate the electricity. So there's one
Speaker 4: major manufacture of cadmium telluride solar panels, and that is
Speaker 4: a thin film technology that is based on cadmium compounds,
Speaker 4: so there's no quurts in that technology at all. It's
Speaker 4: literally a totally different solar technology. The materials are totally different.
Speaker 1: Now in France where recently they ruled that you have
Speaker 1: to have a solar on every new parking structure that
Speaker 1: is built, and we have a little bit of that
Speaker 1: in this country. Without getting too political, Where in the
Speaker 1: triptich of what I understand in terms of the menu
Speaker 1: of renewable energy, where does geothermal fit in and does
Speaker 1: it really work? Is geothermal something to your understanding, something
Speaker 1: that only works site specific meaning your home. You drill
Speaker 1: a geothermal well to provide certain resource is heating and cooling,
Speaker 1: but it only works on a house by house basis.
Speaker 1: Or are there is there the potential for geothermal to
Speaker 1: work in the utility sense?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you're describing kind of the two different types
Speaker 4: of geothermal. There is a household level heating cooling geothermal
Speaker 4: where there's no electricity generation involved unless there's a heat
Speaker 4: pump associated with that, which could be the case. Geothermal
Speaker 4: at the utility scale is very location specific because it's
Speaker 4: taking very hot steam or hot water and bringing it
Speaker 4: up to the surface to turn a turbine. So there
Speaker 4: are some advances that people are talking about enhanced geothermal
Speaker 4: where they essentially go deeper and they may even fracture
Speaker 4: some rock, some of that heat source rock that's down low,
Speaker 4: to increase its surface area to get a little more
Speaker 4: steam out of it. But that is certainly another area
Speaker 4: that's growing right now. Geothermal power is growing and it
Speaker 4: also has the potential to provide some other resources as well,
Speaker 4: So not just generating electricity from these power plants, but
Speaker 4: district heating, so you could potentially so geothermal tends to
Speaker 4: have a lot of waste water cooling water associated with it,
Speaker 4: so you could potentially deliver just like we have our
Speaker 4: water systems in our under our streets, you could have
Speaker 4: a geothermal hot water system linked under the seats. In fact,
Speaker 4: New York City has the largest i think district steam
Speaker 4: system in yes, so you could do that.
Speaker 1: What are some of the byproducts as well? It seems
Speaker 1: like every time we address a problem, renewable energy as
Speaker 1: an attempt to address a problem, and every time we
Speaker 1: do that, not that we have an equivalent number of
Speaker 1: problems we create, but we create some. What are some
Speaker 1: of the problems as far as you're concerned that the
Speaker 1: move to solar, that the build out of the solar future,
Speaker 1: what are some of the problems that result from that.
Speaker 4: Well, there are man issues, as I mentioned at the
Speaker 4: end of life, I think that are important. There are
Speaker 4: chemical stewardship questions around some of the very easy to
Speaker 4: deal with chemicals. The industry actually doesn't use extremely toxic materials.
Speaker 4: It uses materials that could be relatively easily treated even
Speaker 4: in regular municipal wastewater treatment facilities in some cases, so
Speaker 4: I'm not overly worried about that, I'll be honest, I
Speaker 4: think the big issue is the land issue. We really
Speaker 4: are moving from subterranean energy resources where you just poke,
Speaker 4: you build a pad and poke a hole in the
Speaker 4: ground and get tremendous quantities of dense energy to a
Speaker 4: very diffuse resource that does require a lot of space.
Speaker 1: But as far as I'm concerned, if I may, when
Speaker 1: you make that point, the first thing that comes to
Speaker 1: mind for me is you poke a hole in the
Speaker 1: ground and you have presumably less damage to the crust
Speaker 1: if you will to the exterior, But once that stuff
Speaker 1: comes out of the ground, it more than makes up
Speaker 1: for it and the toxicity and the damage it creates. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: we punch a few holes in the ground, we inject
Speaker 1: water into rock formations and force gas out with God
Speaker 1: knows what the byproduct of that is. Who really knows
Speaker 1: what the long term consequences of fracking are nobody, But
Speaker 1: the resultant energy is far more what we want. Do
Speaker 1: you see it that way?
Speaker 4: I agree with that. Where I try to take a
Speaker 4: little different approach to that is to not think of
Speaker 4: it as training off one bad energy for another bad energy.
Speaker 4: Meaning it's absolutely the case that even if the worst
Speaker 4: case land use, solar is still better than what we're
Speaker 4: doing right now in terms of the level of fossil
Speaker 4: fuel extraction. That's not the question, But the question is
Speaker 4: how to do it better because we have so many
Speaker 4: other alternatives. That's the one beauty of this solar technology
Speaker 4: is that it's the only technologlogy we can live under
Speaker 4: that generates electricity. It's the only technology that we can
Speaker 4: integrate into the built environment. It's the only technology that
Speaker 4: we could easily integrate into agricultural areas. So to some extent,
Speaker 4: I think the challenge is exactly what how you framed
Speaker 4: it at first, which is that we tend to silo
Speaker 4: these issues. We're only thinking about solar development from the
Speaker 4: narrow lens of carbon. We're just like in the past,
Speaker 4: we'd clean up water. You know, when I lived in
Speaker 4: New Jersey, I was a site engineer cleaning up MTBE
Speaker 4: spills MTBs an additive and gasoline. And the way we
Speaker 4: cleaned up the groundwater pollution based on the rules that
Speaker 4: we're supposed to follow, was to put it in the
Speaker 4: air in New York, So we just shift problems from
Speaker 4: water problem to air problem. Air problem the water problem,
Speaker 4: like we have acid rain from coal, right that we
Speaker 4: somewhat solve that problem by taking the acid rain potential
Speaker 4: out of the air. But now we have solid weight
Speaker 4: problems and fly ash problems at all these coal fire
Speaker 4: power plants because the scrubbers have collected all that toxic
Speaker 4: stuff and now it's sitting at the coal plant. So
Speaker 4: with the case of solar, we need to be thinking
Speaker 4: more than just about like the trade offs on the
Speaker 4: carbon question. We need to be thinking about how could
Speaker 4: we build this in an integrative way where we're thinking
Speaker 4: about water we're thinking about land, we're thinking about air
Speaker 4: pollution at the same time, instead of trying to just
Speaker 4: solve the carbon problem and then we'll figure out what
Speaker 4: we'll do with the land problem later.
Speaker 1: Typically, for what you'd see on its solar farm, how
Speaker 1: long do solar panels last? If you're wondering if a
Speaker 1: material that the urns generates energy is nonetheless banking in
Speaker 1: the one hundred and twenty degree sun, a wind turbine
Speaker 1: is out there in the ocean in salt water, and
Speaker 1: how long do those last. Let's just stick with solar.
Speaker 1: Solar panels typically last.
Speaker 4: How long a typical solar panel is warranteed to last
Speaker 4: twenty to twenty five years, So that's unlike any other
Speaker 4: products that we really see. And the way the warranties
Speaker 4: work is that they put out a certain amount of
Speaker 4: power of their initial amount. So if you have one
Speaker 4: hundred watts solar panel, it will put out eighty watts
Speaker 4: by the end of its life twenty twenty five years.
Speaker 4: Because impurities in those very hostile environments on your roof
Speaker 4: in the desert, impurities creep into those solar cells and
Speaker 4: that's what takes away their ability to generate power over time. However,
Speaker 4: we've seen solar panels that are operating now fifty years,
Speaker 4: so we certainly are seeing solar panels that are made
Speaker 4: very very well. They go through all sorts of advanced
Speaker 4: degradation tests, hail tests, corrosion tests, all sorts of tests
Speaker 4: to make sure that they last a long time. In fact,
Speaker 4: they have to do those in order to get to
Speaker 4: ensure the warranties for the solar panels that they're selling.
Speaker 1: What do you think is one step that we can
Speaker 1: take that you think is triage? We need to do
Speaker 1: this now. Now what do we need to do now?
Speaker 4: I'll say two things. One, I think community ownership of
Speaker 4: some of these assets is really critical. So it might
Speaker 4: not be resolvable in its current situation, but we know that,
Speaker 4: for example, when ranchers get together and they own the
Speaker 4: wind farm, no one fights it. They all welcome it
Speaker 4: because they're definitely they're going to receive direct benefit from that.
Speaker 4: But I think it's really important to also note that
Speaker 4: when we're talking about building out solar, the US will
Speaker 4: need somewhere on the order between five thousand and fifteen
Speaker 4: thousand square miles of solar to power its portion of
Speaker 4: the great according to some modelers, so five to fifteen
Speaker 4: square miles. We have three hundred thousand square miles of
Speaker 4: brown fields, degraded lands, salt contaminated agricultural lands. All to
Speaker 4: say that I've often I feel like this conservation versus
Speaker 4: solar energy development is a false choice, because I think
Speaker 4: there is a path forward where we could keep many
Speaker 4: of the lands that we value for their conservation benefits,
Speaker 4: for their cultural resources, and find the places where the
Speaker 4: disturbed lands could be utilized because we have so much
Speaker 4: of that already and we know that those projects don't
Speaker 4: face any opposition.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to say thank you so much. You
Speaker 1: are so authoritative about this. It's been my great pleasure, truly,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. My thanks to Dustin mulvaney and
Speaker 1: Hilary Angelo. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in
Speaker 1: New York City, where produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach MacNeice,
Speaker 1: and Maureen Hobin. Our engineer is Frank Imperial. Our social
Speaker 1: media manager is Danielle Gingrich. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the
Speaker 1: thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.