Who will mitigate groundwater leached with cracked panels' chemicals? Who will pay to dispose of panels and batteries (hazardous waste) at end-of-life?
To date, AES has designed only 30% of its project. The County says that fire marshals will review the complete design during construction. Residents, therefore, will not have say in 70% of the project's safety or health impacts. Why would commissioners, AES shareholders or Bill McKibben consider a project that is only 30% designed "safe"?
Who would ignore the BESS failure database, and Monterey County, CA Commissioner Glen Church, who called January 2025's Moss Landing BESS fire the industry's "Three Mile Island?"
Who benefits when Santa Fe County lacks an emergency plan for dealing with a BESS fire?
Until an independent professional engineer's sealed report proves that AES' complete design is safe, commissioners should deny AES' permit.
RETHINKING SOLAR PVs, BESS FACILITIES, DATA CENTERS"AND MORE
While I've focused here on the solar PV and BESS facility that AES proposes to deploy in Santa Fe County, communities around the world face similar projects needing similar scrutiny. (Check out what Elon Musk's massive xAI data center is doing to Memphis-- without permits or pollution controls.)
By 2027, England will require solar panels on all newly-built homes. Former Prime Minister Tony Blair says that a strategy that limits fossil fuels in the short term or encourages people to limit consumption is "doomed to fail". Blair proposes that the UK government focus less on renewables and more on carbon capture so that people don't "make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know that their impact on global emissions is minimal". Blair calls for an international embrace of nuclear power and more work on small modular reactors. I don't agree with Mr. Blair! We've got more than CO2 emissions at stake; we do need lifestyles that reduce our ecological impacts; and nuclear power will not help. Still, I'm grateful that he's initiated discussion about these issues.
Electronic technologies depend on rare minerals like copper, graphite, gallium, niobium, cobalt, tungsten, bismuth and indium. These deposits are often found intermingled with arsenic and uranium, which makes processing them complex and environmentally toxic.
Electronic technologies depend on extraordinary amounts of fresh water.
All electrical equipment-- including solar PVs, batteries and EV chargers-- pose fire hazards. No one benefits when fire risks are ignored.
Isn't it time 1)to stop calling solar PVs and batteries "green," "clean" and
"renewable?" And 2)to study how to live within our ecological means, within the fuel, food, water and ores offered within our watershed?
GOOD NEWS
To prepare for society's collapse, some people go off-grid, champion individual fortitude and hoard provisions, firearms and ammunition. Others focus less on survival, more on building community and mutual aid, on maintaining humanity in the face of calamity. As David Baum says, "Survival is not the goal. The relationship, wisdom and love that one discovers by approaching nature with respect-- that's the goal."
The Rights of Nature Movement is Reshaping Law and Culture with a global movement to grant the natural world legal personhood, driven by Indigenous worldviews. See also the launch of Community Environmental Legal Defense Funds' (CELDF's) Community Resistance and Resilience Program, dedicated to supporting, networking and facilitating the success of grassroots initiatives, actions and campaigns.
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