#The joshua tree is not liable to die off from the rollout of solar technology into our energy supply

[lightandfireandsunhavegone]

On the one hand: Yeah. Don't fucking cover entire ecosystems in blankets of artificial structure, even ones you don't personally see value in. Especially ones you don't personally see value in. Those are the ones we need to protect the most.

On the other: I am 99% sure this isn't an accurate portrayal of what's going on. There is no earthly reason or mechanism to actually both produce that amount of solar panels, nor to export that energy production from a desert in the middle of the countryside to anywhere where it could get used up.

There is a fixed limit on the movement of electricity determined by the energy infrastructure in an area, up to and including the physical wiring, and I am sure as hell that otherwise wild habitat for the joshua tree has basically no capacity to export that kind of energy production (we are already talking in the order of dozens of gigawatts for any reasonable solar farm that might even vaguely begin to edge on threatening a whole natural habitat and ecosystem in some undefined sense).

Not only would it be hundreds of times cheaper to install solar panels in cities where the energy is mostly used, it wouldn't require basically creating the infrastructure for an entire secondary city just to store, distribute and pump out all that electricity.

Capitalism, including Green Capitalism, is evil, and occasionally even stupid, but even a (green) capitalist knows 1 + 1 = 2 and no good reason + unnecessary effort = lost profit. Horizon-to-horizon coverage in solar panels is indeed a capitalist hellscape nightmare, but just a nightmare.

The Joshua tree is on its way to extinction because so-called green energy companies want to keep the death machine of civilization going by installing large swaths of solar panels over the desert floor, a big metal blanket that will kill everything it covers: the desert tortoise, the sage grouse, the hawks and snakes and beautiful flowers that have flourished for thousands of years. Gone. Gone.

All so that we can keep the dead heart in the rotting corpse of industrial civilization beating into the next decade. These are the "good guys" btw, these are the "renewable" "carbon neutral" options: covering the desert in miles of metal and microchips until every living being without a bank account is dead.