Biden administration prepared final plan to unleash solar energy across the West.

The land surrounding Blythe, California, about 200 miles east of Los Angeles, is not a particularly hospitable place. Summer temperatures in this corner of the desert routinely reach well above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, rain is sparse, and dusty soil covers much of the bare earth. But that doesn’t mean the land is useless. Rows of solar panels now cover around 4,000 acres just outside of town, capturing that harsh sunlight and generating 485 megawatts of renewable energy – enough to power about 145,000 homes.

This solar farm was built by NextEra Energy Resources. However, the land is controlled by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a federal agency that oversees nearly 250 million acres of public land in the United States—land that belongs to every American.

Renewable energy development on these public lands could be a way to speed up the country’s transition away from fossil fuels. The nonprofit Wilderness Society notes that “public lands and waters have some of our nation’s best solar, wind and geothermal resources, but [as of 2021,] they account for less than five percent of clean energy capacity in the US.” 

This August, the BLM released an updated proposal to its Western Solar Plan, a framework that outlines where solar energy can be developed on public lands in the western half of the country. The proposal would facilitate solar energy development on 31 million acres of public lands, a major boon to climate action. But that solar development should also be planned carefully. Public lands are also home to wildlife that make their homes in deserts and grasslands, recreational sites among canyons and forests, and an array of Native American cultural sites–and papering over sensitive areas with solar panels could be devastating.

The new proposal attempts to balance solar development with these concerns. Some groups have lauded the BLM’s latest proposal, while others have expressed concern. But if the country wants to wean itself off fossil fuels, figuring out how to rapidly expand renewable energy capacity on the nation’s public lands–without neglecting people and wildlife–could be vital.

BLM lands have long been used for many purposes, from conservation and recreation to mining, logging and cattle grazing. And over the past decade and a half, the agency has released some plans to guide renewable energy development on public lands, including the first version of the Western Solar Plan, released in 2012 and was specific to the Southwest.

The new Western Solar Plan would expand the agency’s guidance to the rest of the West and designate 31 million acres of land as potentially available for solar development. That doesn’t mean all 31 million acres would be automatically open for business, however. “It's easy for your mind to kind of jump to this vision where literally 31 million acres are blanketed in solar panels, and that's not what this is,” Rachael Hamby, the policy director with the nonprofit Center for Western Priorities, said. 

The BLM notes specifically that “proposed projects will still undergo site-specific environmental review and public comment.” In addition, the agency expects just 700,000 acres of this land to be developed. Yet by narrowing the scope of land potentially available for solar development, the plan could simplify the process of developing solar farms on public land.

Reflections on God are common right now.

We are about to enter a new year. Many of us are getting ready to celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah. With 2024 “virtually certain” to be the hottest year on record, some may look at the symptoms of the climate crisis—the extreme heat, the fires and floods, the climate-charged cyclones—as signs of God’s wrath.

Whether you believe in the Bible, the Torah, or the Quran, or you're an atheist, we can all agree there is a moral imperative to address the climate crisis. After all, it kills people and destroys lives. The cause of the climate crisis—the burning of fossil fuels—is also responsible for plenty of death and destruction.

President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for secretary of energy, Chris Wright, and one of his picks to co-lead the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Vivek Ramaswamy, seem to have a different message. It is one that turns the concept of morality on its head and distorts reality. Wright has invented a warped “moral case” for the rampant extraction and burning of fossil fuels. Wright portrays fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal as virtuous. He has even called goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions “perverse.”

What he leaves out is that the current and future American economy is powered by clean energy. The clean energy revolution is behind the rebirth of American manufacturing and is lifting people out of poverty. The jobs created pay well and are safer. And consumers are saving money with renewable clean energy sources like solar and wind because they are now both more resilient and less expensive to produce than fossil fuels.

And if we want to talk poverty, what about the countless families that have been bankrupted and sent into poverty because of pollution, fossil fuel leaks and explosions, and unbearable health-care costs to treat the diseases fossil fuels cause? Or the extreme weather disasters we see ravaging communities with increasing frequency and intensity?

Ramaswamy said last year, “The reality is more people are dying of bad climate change policies than they are of actual climate change.” It is a claim utterly backwards, even Orwellian. The New York Times fact-checked the statement and correctly rated it "false" with "no evidence to support this assertion."

To pretend there is a moral case for fossil fuels requires more than mental gymnastics. It requires willful dishonesty. But let us look to scripture. It is as good a place as any to start, since the Bible and its lessons help guide so many people’s idea of morality. In it, God gave us a formula that certainly seems to be coming into focus today.

In the Book of Genesis, God charged people with being stewards of the Garden of Eden. He told Adam and Eve to cultivate and care for it. This early commandment recognizes nature—also known as God’s creation—as something to be grateful for and respected.

Going back all the way to the beginning, God gave us the means to our own salvation or our demise. He gave us free will—along with his many commandments was the free will to choose whether or not to follow them. The other thing God gave us was fire. Ultimately fire became electrical power. But it was the tool that allowed humanity to thrive; to give us light in the dark and warmth in the cold.

So the energy we needed for warmth, light, and eventually transportation and more, came from burning things. And what people burned were the things that were most readily accessible and easy to harness—starting with wood, then oils from animals and trees, then coal, then petroleum, and so on. Over the eons, as the number of people increased exponentially, the accessibility of these finite sources began to shrink exponentially. Whale species were hunted to the brink of extinction for their oil. Island nations and huge swaths of the continents were deforested. 

For a long time, we thought the answer was to replenish the finite things to burn as best we could. But along the way, we realized God gave us infinite sources of energy that had always been abundant in the Garden: the sun and the wind. We realized the terrible cost of burning through the finite sources was not simply running out of things to burn; it was extreme weather and our planet becoming ever less hospitable due to warming. The signs all pointed to the need to make the switch from the finite sources of energy—and the destruction they cause—to the infinite sources, which are kinder both to people and to all of God’s creation. We can power our world and tend the Garden at the same time.

In the Bible, when humans finally understood the message and acted in ways God wanted, flood waters receded; fires stopped. So if saving lives, improving health outcomes, and expanding economic opportunity through more and better jobs are not enough of a moral calling to prioritize the clean energy transition, look to the Bible and listen to God. His message seems to be pretty clear.