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Dead Sea of Solar Cells: Antinuke Little Benny Sovacool Discovers that Deserts Are Actually Vital Ecosystems.
The paper to which I'll briefly refer, written with a co-author for whom I obviously have no use, is this one: Dunlap, A., Sovacool, B. K., & Novaković, B. (2024). ‘A Dead Sea of Solar Panels:’ solar enclosure, extractivism and the progressive degradation of the California desert. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 52(3), 539–573.
Benny Sovacool is a fairly famous antinuke, who seems to have finally landed at Boston University after an international peripatetic academic career, where he heads some department or another, and waxes in a way I regard as disingenuous, about enslaved cobalt miners digging cobalt to back up so called "renewable energy" with glib "suggestions" about how to make it all hunky dory.
Now he seems to have discovered that, good golly, gee, maybe there's a little problem with tearing the shit out of a major ecosystem to build industrial plants for unreliable energy sources in sunny California.
The paper is free to read. Feel free to suffer through it (or admire it) as the case might be:
An excerpt from the paper for a taste of it:
Overly simplified conceptions of, and active disinterest in, desert landscapes is a detrimental ecological hazard.Footnote1 The ‘knee-jerk’ impression of deserts, and its perpetuation by public institutions and companies, as unoccupied, unproductive and barren wastelands – full of dust, rocks, tumble weeds, shrubs, spiky cactus and devoid of lush forests and charismatic animal life – makes the occupation and extraction from desert habitats all the more acceptable. While fragile and, to most humans, inhospitable ecosystems, deserts are home to an abundance of life above and below ground. The Mojave Desert, in southeast California, USA, is home to ‘>3300 native plant and animal species, including ∼700 endemic plants’ (Smith et al. Citation2023, 1). This desert life and its resilient capacities either remain hidden under the surface of the desert or missed by the inattentive eye.
‘Working both above and below this marvelous [desert] crust,’ pronounces Robin Kobaly (Citation2019, 14), ‘plants are breathing in massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the air, reassembling the carbon into sugar, then transporting it underground to grow roots.’ This root growth, or photosynthesis, described by Kobaly captures carbon and stores it underground in mineral formations and desert flora for hundreds, if not thousands of years. ‘Small shrubs like Blackbrush can live at least 400 years,’ says Kobaly (Citation2019, 14), continuing to explain that:
‘Mormon Tea can live over 250 years. Our Mojave Yuccas are youngsters at 500 years old, and may live to several thousand years old. And even more impressive are Nolinas, Desert Ironwood trees, and California junipers that may live to over 1000 years.’ In order to survive, and over many years, these ‘carbon-eating plants’ develop enormous root systems that grow to 150 feet (53 meters) and more underground (Kobaly Citation2019, 14; see also Allen et al. Citation2024).
Desert plants and trees have extensive vertical and horizontal root systems extending to great depths and connected by root-partnering fungi (e.g. mycorrhizal fungi; Allen Citation2022), establishing what many call an ‘upside-down forest’ under the desert (Kobaly Citation2019, 14). There is an entire vertical forest growing beneath the desert, which is discounted as barren unoccupied land, which across landscapes is used to justify extractive development (White et al. Citation2012; Fairhead, Leach, and Scoones Citation2012; Franquesa Citation2018; Dunlap Citation2019; Stock and Birkenholtz Citation2021; Chagnon et al. Citation2022). Deserts, in reality, are thriving with life, fungi and root systems that store enormous amounts of carbon in organic plant life and inorganic mineral deposits (e.g. calcite/caliche deposits). Considering climate change and the politics of carbon sequestration (Lennon Citation2021; Dunlap Citation2023b), and contrary to popular policy beliefs, this makes deserts vital to climate change mitigation and planetary health.
Viewing deserts as barren wastelands combines with national and international climate change and energy commitments. This spread of solar panels in the Mojave and Colorado deserts, Dustin Mulvaney (Citation2017, 494) shows, begins in 2006 when The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) made land rights available to solar energy developers on federally held ‘public lands,’ initially seized from Mojave, Chemehuevi and other First Nations (see Krakoff Citation2013)...
‘Working both above and below this marvelous [desert] crust,’ pronounces Robin Kobaly (Citation2019, 14), ‘plants are breathing in massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the air, reassembling the carbon into sugar, then transporting it underground to grow roots.’ This root growth, or photosynthesis, described by Kobaly captures carbon and stores it underground in mineral formations and desert flora for hundreds, if not thousands of years. ‘Small shrubs like Blackbrush can live at least 400 years,’ says Kobaly (Citation2019, 14), continuing to explain that:
‘Mormon Tea can live over 250 years. Our Mojave Yuccas are youngsters at 500 years old, and may live to several thousand years old. And even more impressive are Nolinas, Desert Ironwood trees, and California junipers that may live to over 1000 years.’ In order to survive, and over many years, these ‘carbon-eating plants’ develop enormous root systems that grow to 150 feet (53 meters) and more underground (Kobaly Citation2019, 14; see also Allen et al. Citation2024).
Desert plants and trees have extensive vertical and horizontal root systems extending to great depths and connected by root-partnering fungi (e.g. mycorrhizal fungi; Allen Citation2022), establishing what many call an ‘upside-down forest’ under the desert (Kobaly Citation2019, 14). There is an entire vertical forest growing beneath the desert, which is discounted as barren unoccupied land, which across landscapes is used to justify extractive development (White et al. Citation2012; Fairhead, Leach, and Scoones Citation2012; Franquesa Citation2018; Dunlap Citation2019; Stock and Birkenholtz Citation2021; Chagnon et al. Citation2022). Deserts, in reality, are thriving with life, fungi and root systems that store enormous amounts of carbon in organic plant life and inorganic mineral deposits (e.g. calcite/caliche deposits). Considering climate change and the politics of carbon sequestration (Lennon Citation2021; Dunlap Citation2023b), and contrary to popular policy beliefs, this makes deserts vital to climate change mitigation and planetary health.
Viewing deserts as barren wastelands combines with national and international climate change and energy commitments. This spread of solar panels in the Mojave and Colorado deserts, Dustin Mulvaney (Citation2017, 494) shows, begins in 2006 when The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) made land rights available to solar energy developers on federally held ‘public lands,’ initially seized from Mojave, Chemehuevi and other First Nations (see Krakoff Citation2013)...
He and his students prattle on for quite a while about this. Read it if you must.
Among other things connected with the "renewable energy will save us" antinuke fantasy that Benny did so much to hype, Benny has recently discovered, from his recent writings - which somehow I fail to avoid - that critical metals matter. His "solution" is to tear the shit out of the ocean floor, ( "sustainably" and "sweetly" of course) :
Sustainable minerals and metals for a low-carbon future
Subtitle:
Policy coordination is needed for global supply chains.
Benjamin K. Sovacool and Saleem H. Ali and Morgan Bazilian and Ben Radley and Benoit Nemery and Julia Okatz and Dustin Mulvaney, Sustainable minerals and metals for a low-carbon future, Science, 367, 6473, 30-33, 2020.
You don't say? Metals for "renewable" energy aren't renewable? Who knew?
This year, 2025, on the date of the Summer Solstice in sunny California, the output of all the solar facilities across a ravaged desert, peaked at 5:00 in the afternoon, at 17,663 MW of power.
Just 3 hours later, the vast array of wires connecting the solar cells was producing zero energy, sucking about 10 MW out of the operating generators in a minor power drain.
CAISO "Today's" Outlook 06/21/2025
All day long, that same day, the single nuclear power plant in California, the two reactors at Diablo Canyon, on a combined 12 acre physical footprint, were producing an average of 2281 MW of continuous power, not varying in a 24 hour period by more than 4 MW in either direction.
It follows that 8 Diablo Canyon sized facilities, with a land footprint of less than 0.2 square miles (about 100 acres) could continuously produce, without interruption, as much electricity as all of the solar facilities spread across vast trashed ruined desert landscape produced, on the longest daylight period of the year, the summer solstice, for a few minutes at its peak. Effectively the nuclear plants could (and often do for long stretches) operate at full power 24/7, close to 365 days a year, except for brief refueling interludes every other year or so, generally in the low demand spring.
You know what?
Benny Sovacool can go fuck himself. He owns those trashed deserts.
The planet is burning. It's a little late to find out than land use matters and that there is something far more dangerous than nuclear energy, something far more expensive, myopia being just one such thing, and a cause of far worse things, one of which is the destruction of the planetary atmosphere, not to mention vast damage to ecosystems such as the desert and beyond.
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