Not only is California Governor Jerry Brown, along with the federal government, intent on paving over the Mojave Desert with photovoltaic solar farms, Brown is also deliberately ignoring laws protectING  the environment so more fracking can occur.
Did I say “paving over the Mojave”? Why, yes I did. The feds have offered incentives on 285,000 acres of Mojave desert for solar energy plants and opened up 19 million more acres. That’s not a typo, it really is 19 million acres. The desert tortoise, the habitat, concerns about increased water usage by concentrated solar power plants, dust from the hundreds of roads that will be built with heavy trucks on them, well, all that can take a hike says the federal government and Jerry Brown.
Not only is Brown encouraging fracking, he’s outspokenly ignoring existing law by granting exemptions so fracking can occur.
Despite major complaints by farmers and environmentalists in Kern County, state regulators have waived environmental review for dozens of controversial new gas and oil drilling operations. The drilling permit issue has highlighted Gov. Jerry Brown’s open hostility to the California Environmental Quality Act. “I have never seen a CEQA exemption I didn’t like,” the governor said last summer.
That came after Brown fired two officials of the Department of Conservation who had been slow to grant waivers. Their replacements have since handed out more than two dozen drilling permits with scarcely any environmental review.
This is a quote from High Country News storyon the Kern County Oil Industry. The way they treat water is the same as the frackers.
And now they’re using water for fracking on top of that.
Maybe fracking the crap out of the san andreas fault will finally bring on the Big One so we don’t have to keep waiting for it – the suspense is killing me.
Bad idea. We live ten miles from the San Andreas fault line. 🙂