Suddenly, solar power is hot.

And no, I don't mean the special oil heated by fields of mirrors in the Mojave desert (although that's hot too).

No, what I mean is that perhaps Malcolm Gladwell's famous "tipping point" may have been reached.

Prodded, no doubt, by the constant pleas on this blog and the mighty influence of the Thin Green Line's 13 regular readers, both the House and Senate this month passed by large margins, legislation that will extend tax breaks for investment in renewable energy sources like wind and solar power.

Of course, this being Washington, the bills are different so the two houses of Congress have to negotiate something they can both agree on, never a sure thing in this day and age when everyone talks the bi-partisanship talk, but almost universally fails to walk the walk.

According to this Sept. 26 article in The New York Times, "the tax credit would increase domestic investment in the solar industry by $232 billion by 2016 and generate 440,000 jobs, many in manufacturing, construction and engineering."

But now that we have Washington on board (we hope) with taking advantage of the most free, most renewable, most dependable energy source in the solar system, we turn around to find our fellow tree huggers raising a fuss.

What am I talking about?

Well according to this Sept. 23 article in the Times, environmentalists in the southern California desert are protesting massive solar projects planned for flat land where the sun shines 364 days a year.

Their problem? The Mojave ground squirrel, the desert tortoise and the burrowing owl. (Why is it always an owl?)

Time for a little hypocrisy.

Yes, this blog supports protecting old-growth forests from logging for the spotted owl. Yes, this blog, with some reservations, believes hydro-power (another green source) needs to take the needs of migrating fish into account.

So do we need to worry about the squirrel, the tortoise and the owl too? Aristotle would argue that we cannot support the preservation of one habitat and support the disturbance of another only because it's hot and dry and only crazy people would want to live there. (Sorry mom).

But Aristotle, hemlock and all, lived in a world of theoretical absolutes and we live in a world where even crazier people live in an even hotter desert half a world away and sometimes you have to choose the lesser evil.

Condemn me if you will green purists, but I'm afraid I have to come down on the side of massive solar power installations on this one. And for justification, I will turn to a justification so often over-used by the administration I love to criticize.

The answer, folks, is national security. This country can simply no longer afford to depend on a fossil fuel technology. When Barack Obama talks about building a new energy infrastructure in ten years, he is talking about a necessity, not a frill.

If you doubt me, ask the Pentagon.

Meanwhile, it's not just in California's deserts that such projects are being proposed.

According to this Sept. 24 article in The Mercury (written by yours truly), one use being championed for the former OxyChem site in Lower Pottsgrove is a solar power park.

The proposal comes within the framework of a joint project of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Dept. of Energy. It is a push to put alternative energy projects on former industrial sites, often called "brownfields," on which it is often difficult to attract redevelopment. Talk about a win-win.

(Click here to learn more about this program.)

Meanwhile in the win-win department, and also to show that not all Californians lean toward lunacy, I point to yet another article in the Times which is cause for hope.

In the far-left bastion of Berkeley, the city council is doing something innovative.

As this Sept. 17 article illustrates, the city is starting a low-interest loan program to encourage the installation of solar power in its homes.

"The loans, which are likely to total up to $22,000 apiece, would be paid off over 20 years as part of the owners’ property-tax bills," according to the Times. This will make solar power more accessible to people who cannot afford the up-front costs and thus cannot benefit from the usual tax-break incentive government favors.


Already cities from San Francisco to Annapolis, Md., and Seattle, to Cambridge, Mass., are calling to get the details.

Here in Pottstown however, we're actually trying to limit solar power installations under the rationale that they could ruin the lines of our historic architecture.

According to this Sept. 13 article in The Mercury (also written by yours truly), the Pottstown Planning Commission has proposed changes to the zoning law that would regulate how solar panels could be installed. Borough Council has agreed to hold a public hearing on the subject, but no date has yet been set.

This may once again be an occasion for hypocrisy as I am not sure, despite my love for old homes (I live in a house built in 1916 after all), whether its wise to deny energy-efficiency to those whose homes are least likely to have it.

We may even have to get the police may have to get involved.

For it seems that solar panels are popular not only with city councils and other law-makers and law-abiding citizens. According to this Sept. 23 article in the Times, solar panels are now in such demand that people are stealing them!

"Police departments in California — the biggest market for solar power, with more than 33,000 installations — are seeing a rash of such burglaries, though nobody compiles overall statistics," according to the Times.

"Investigators do not believe the thieves are acting out of concern for their carbon footprints. Rather, authorities assume that many panels make their way to unwitting homeowners, sometimes via the Internet," the paper reported.

So (wait for it....) when I said solar power is "hot," I meant it in more ways than one!

(Oh come on, don't groan. That one was sweet!)

Blogger's Note: Sorry for the delay folks, nasty Trojan virus (no, nothing to do with the Pottstown mascot) in my home laptop made The Thin Green Line very thin reading over the past couple of days. But enough about me.

How about that George W. Bush administration huh?

Remember way back when in 2000 when he said on the campaign trail that he would regulate carbon dioxide as an air pollutant, and then 12 seconds after being sworn in changed his mind?

Well, in case you haven't noticed, things haven't changed much in the ensuing eight years.

Remember when "Clear Skies" was unveiled with as much fanfare and pomp as it lacked in content and effectiveness?

Well, see previous answer.

The most aggressive aspect of that made for television initiative, the Clean Air Interstate Rule, was thrown out Friday by a federal appeals court in Washington D.C.

According to this article in The Washington Post, "the rule represented the Bush administration's most aggressive action to clean the air over the next two decades. The EPA estimated that the rule would help prevent 17,000 premature deaths and reduce levels of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides by as much as 70 percent by 2025. An unusual alliance of power companies and environmental groups supported the measure. "

An unholy alliance of other interests including, (????!!) North Carolina, challenged it in court.

"Our air isn't getting any healthier as we battle new clean air regulations in the courts and Congress continues to stall in passing strong clean air legislation," Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate clean air and nuclear safety subcommittee, said in one of those hard-hitting prepared statements senators love so much.

The primary beneficiaries of the rule would have been those of us who breath air in the eastern and mid-western states.

But there's a silver lining in a court decision would have prevented 17,000 premature deaths because as this article in the San Francisco Chronicle points out, despite the ever-rising cost of keeping a person alive, over the past dozen years, the federal government has been steadily decreasing the value of a human life.

Seriously! I'm not making this up.

"The value of a 'statistical life' is $6.9 million in today's dollars, the Environmental Protection Agency reckoned in May — a drop of nearly $1 million from just five years ago," the Associated Press reported.

Now if you were going to guess how this could occur when nothing about living is getting any less expensive, you have to think like a bureaucrat, specifically, particularly one opposed to regulations. Sound like any vice president you know?

Given reports about all the deep down regulation changes that have been overseen by Darth
Cheney's office in the last seven years, the answer becomes obvious.

This is how AP described it: "When drawing up regulations, government agencies put a value on human life and then weigh the costs versus the lifesaving benefits of a proposed rule. The less a life is worth to the government, the less the need for a regulation, such as tighter restrictions on pollution.

I mean I know the little people don't mean much to Dick and his big oil pals at Halliburton, but to actually memorialize it officially in government statistics, it's breath taking. If only we could have applied that kind of thoroughness to war planning.

But I digress. Back to devaluing our lives.

"Consider, for example, a hypothetical regulation that costs $18 billion to enforce but will prevent 2,500 deaths. At $7.8 million per person (the old figure), the lifesaving benefits outweigh the costs. But at $6.9 million per person, the rule costs more than the lives it saves, so it may not be adopted," wrote the AP.

And, in the category regulations that won't be adopted, let us view with alarmed amusement, this particular piece of wisdom from the Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA spent months and money to put together a 588-page examination of the issues of greehouse gas, which found that "such gases could cause disastrous flooding and drought and affect food and water supplies," according to this article in the Los Angeles Times.

Then, in its Orwellian wisdom, the EPA refused to adopt its own staff's findings.

Why?

The ever-impartial White House provides the answer. Those regulations, which the Supreme Court had ordered last year by the way, "would impose crippling costs on the economy," according to The White House.

And how might we determine that the costs outweigh the benefits? One way might be to drive down the statistical value of human life. Irony of ironies, this has the added benefit of driving down the actual value of our lives, no statistics required It's two ironies for the price of one. Too bad we're paying the price.

And just to add a sprinkling of insult to the irony icing, one staffer who worked on the report said the administration has added a new outrage to its practice of ignoring experts who say things they don't want to hear.

It seems agency staffers did not have a chance to respond to other agencies' criticism of the report. "How do you respond to comments you've never even seen?" he asked the Times.

The bureaucratic result of the EPA's decision to seek public comment on rules it has no intention of adopting is that the public comment period will end squarely in the term of the next president.

Set and match.

Add the fact that Bush returned from the G8 summit with no binding commitment to cut emissions with the revelation that Cheney's office "had worked to alter sworn congressional testimony provided by a federal official in January to play down global warming and head off regulation of greenhouse gases," as the Times reported, and you might start to get the idea that this administration is (SPOILER ALERT!) not so serious about confronting global warming, and might, just might, be actively and quietly undermining efforts by others.

SURPRISE!

I know, I know, with all they've done so far to protect us, who could have guessed?

But that's just the kind of plot twist we've come to expect from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Is it 2009 yet?