Coyote Crossing

The introductory chapter of historian Gray Brechin’s must-read Imperial San Francisco is entitled The Urban Maelstrom. The chapter begins with a reference to Edgar Allen Poe’s A Descent Into The Maelstrom, a tale of the now-eponymous sea storm with a whirlpool at its center. It’s an apt metaphor, an only slightly hyperbolic description of the voracious relationship large cities have with the land that surrounds them. As Poe describes the Maelstrom:

Boats, yachts, and ships have been carried away by not guarding against it before they were within its reach. It likewise happens frequently, that whales come too near the stream, and are overpowered by its violence; and then it is impossible to describe their howlings and bellowings in their fruitless struggles to disengage themselves. A bear once, attempting to swim from Lofoden to Moskoe, was caught by the stream and borne down, while he roared terribly, so as to be heard on shore. Large stocks of firs and pine trees, after being absorbed by the current, rise again broken and torn to such a degree as if bristles grew upon them.

That’s almost too good a metaphor for Brechin’s history of San Francisco, whose “imperial” reach extended from the deep-sea whales of the Pacific, caught and rendered in plants around the Bay shore, to the ancient redwoods up and down the coast splintered into house-kindling for the 1906 fire, to the extermination of the inconvenient California Grizzly, a threat to the cattle and vaqueros that fed the burgeoning city. San Francisco’s gravitational pull brought the mountain slopes downstream as hydraulic miners washed away whole watersheds. The gold of the Mother Lode, then Nevada’s silver, then the desert’s mineral riches from borax to mercury to rare earths flowed up and over mountain ranges, then into the bank accounts of San Franciscan magnates like Hearst, Crocker, Stanford.

San Francisco’s not the only city that consumes the earth around it in this fashion, of course. It’s not even the most egregious example. I sit here in Los Angeles ten feet away from a faucet that, when turned on, draws water from a mountainside 250 miles away, in a valley that was literally colonized by the designers of the water utility.

It becomes nearly inevitable when cities grow past a certain size. The gardens within the city walls are insufficient to feed and clothe the people within the city walls, then the fields just outside the city are insufficient, and food and textiles must be imported from a distance. The city’s demand for metal depletes the local supply and metal begins to flow into the city from distant mines. There are not enough people within the city walls to perform the available tasks, so people from away migrate into the cities, accentuating the need for imported food and textiles. Wealth flows from the countryside into the city and the city raises an army to defend that wealth, or the city depletes the country accessible to it and raises an army to conquer more, and the need for metal and for food rises apace. Each large city an empire, each grand empire a conglomeration of powerful cities, some demanding explicit tribute from their vassal territories and others — the cleverer and more sophisticated — remaking the tribute into “trade.”

During the time of the Italian city-states, Brechin reminds us, there was a name for the countryside that fed a particular city. The word “contado,” cognate with our “county,” once implied a reciprocal relationship between a city and its surround. Farmers sold grain to the city’s bakers, and bought tools from the city’s artisans. On a small scale, the relationship can be a benign one, a mere horizontal distribution of labor and reasonably fair exchange, not too far removed from the rural towns from which farmers commute to their own fields each day. The contado nurtured and supported the city as a mother does a child in utero. But at some point, at a certain scale, probably somewhere in the five-figure population range, a city becomes too large for its relationship with its contado to be anything but parasitic.

The city becomes colonialist, a vortex into which wealth is drawn, depleting the contado of its lifeblood, an engorged tick on a vein. People take its demands as immutable, the natural order of things. Colorado, Utah and Wyoming are obliged to provide Los Angeles with 4.40 million acre-feet of Colorado River water each year, even if they must pump other rivers over mountain divides to water the crops they hope to sell to Angelenos. This colonialism is the water in which we swim, and we do not see it. Ranching, logging, and mining to sate the cities’ appetite for beef, timber and gold despoil more of the American west each year, and what do environmentalists suggest as an alternative? “Ecotourism,” so that the sons and daughters of the ranchers and loggers can turn down bedsheets to vacationing urbanites, and serve them cappuccinos come morning.

There have been gigabytes of essays written about the pragmatic problems with the urban-colonial mindset, about the carbon burden inhering in tomatoes shipped cross-country or the concentration of capital in a few transnational merchandisers’ metaphorical pockets, the economic dislocations and inefficiencies that result from an overly top-down economics.

Fewer people comment on the inherent moral and ethical deficiencies of this form of colonialism. Almost no one asks what right cities have to rake the surrounding lands for wealth. Almost no one wonders whether the local economies, the communities, the ecosystems and other species in the contado might not have a right to the fruits of their own biological labors, and that depriving them of that right ought not be done at all even in the direst circumstances if an alternative exists.

After all, as the citizens of an imperial city are to their subjects in the contado, so is human society, urban and rural both, to non-human society. The natural world is our contado, and the human empire has exploited it to the breaking point. But who thinks of the rights that contado may have?

Who thinks about the rights of desert tortoises, for instance? We argue over the letter of the law, about possible impacts and probable outcomes of mitigation procedures, about acceptable losses of translocated tortoises to coyote predation, about the existence of viable populations elsewhere. We do not talk about whether, when cities decide to exploit the sunshine of the contado for electrical power, the tortoises to be displaced for concentrating solar construction might not have rights to be left undisturbed that outweigh our reluctance to use electricity less profligately.

What we hear instead, from serious environmentalists engaging in high-level negotiations with policymakers and industry representatives, is that we face a climate crisis dire enough that some tortoise habitat will very likely need to be converted to industrial solar facilities. The tortoise will have to “take one for the team,” so to speak. As will the bighorn whose habitat will be bisected by the transmission lines bringing power from the former tortoise habitat to the cities. As will the pupfish in the springs that will go dry sooner when groundwater is sprayed into the air to wash the solar plant’s mirrors.

If we did consider the rights of the contado’s human and non-human inhabitants when discussing our inevitable conversion to non-carbon-generating energy supplies, our list of solar-electric policy options would very likely look like this, with options listed in declining order of preferability:

1. Enact widespread sensible conservation measures
2. Install as much decentralized photovoltaic generating capacity as possible, on existing and new structures
3. Develop and install concentrating solar technology on unused urban land
4. Claim land currently occupied for human industrial use and convert to concentrating solar
5. Claim land currently occupied for human residential use and convert to concentrating solar
6. Ration electrical power if demand exceeds power supplied by the above measures

Instead, depriving our contado-dwellers of their rights to home, to privacy, to life becomes option number one, and thus the Imperial City’s vortex begins to consume the very light shining on the contado. A singularity: the city as black hole.

The climate change emergency is a frightening one, profound enough that environmentalists are advocating turning public lands over to industrial development, and accusing those who object of short-sightedness. And the climate change to which we have already committed ourselves ensures a bleak future, with grotesque human suffering an almost-certain consequence. But again, here we see evidence of a reluctance even to consider that the non-human inhabitants of our contado possess rights. The emergency is of our own creation. The livelihood of non-human creatures is mainly mentioned as a rationale for destroying their habitat, as if to say that if we don’t destroy the desert now, there won’t be any desert left to destroy later.

An analysis based on the assumption that the contado has rights, however, would point out that climate change poses a much greater threat to species other than humans — we are not faced with extinction, while many hundreds of our fellow species are, at the very least — the obvious ethical conclusion being that they have already taken enough for a “team” they never intended to join, and that if sacrifices are to be made to fix a crisis we humans caused, it is we humans who bear the ultimate moral obligation to make those sacrifices.

Which I think casts those who insist sacrifices must be made, but who quail at the thought of spending two hours a day without electricity, in a light harsher than any you’ll find in the desert.

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A little happy news for fans of the Mojave National Preserve:

(Kelso, CA) – The Beanery lunch counter is open for business at the Kelso Depot Visitor Center in Mojave National Preserve. The counter’s operator, Mike Williams, is serving light food items and refreshments five days a week, Friday through Tuesday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The current menu includes spring, tossed, and spinach salads; bagels and spreads; ham and swiss, turkey and provolone, tuna, and vegetarian sandwiches; coffee, hot chocolate, soda, tea, water, and fruit smoothies; and ice cream, milk shakes, pie, and brownies.

Mojave NP’s superintendent, Dennis Schramm, said that re-introducing lunch counter service completes the historic dimension of the restored Depot.

“It has been a pleasure for us at the park service to help this much-admired building return to its position as a center of attention in the preserve,” Schramm said. “Longtime visitors and former residents are telling us that it’s just like it used to be.”

The lunch counter was a center of town life in Kelso from the time the Depot opened in 1924 until its closing in the mid-1980s. People who grew up in Kelso report that their families often took meals at the counter alongside railroad staff and passersby.

The Depot itself is a significant part of the history of ranching, mining, and railroading in the California desert from the early to the mid-twentieth century. The atmospheric old California building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in August 2001.

Plans call for expanding the menu eventually to include additional items, including plate lunches. Visitors can choose to have their meals at the restored horseshoe-shaped counter or at picnic tables on the grounds just outside the Depot.

Depot staff report a crowded lobby at midday since the Beanery reopened, with visitors occupying every counter seat and outdoor picnic table for the lunch hour, and many strolling in the lobby for the rest of the day, drawing out their milkshakes and light snacks. Military, former Kelso residents, and veteran desert travelers, especially, are spending more time at the Depot reminiscing about the Depot’s younger days, one park ranger said.

Mojave NP’s facilities manager Steve Carlson said restoring the Depot Beanery was a long and complicated process and that the result is a pleasure to see. He praised Williams’s perseverance in working to help bring it about.

“We appreciate his patience,” Carlson said. “And we know he’ll do a great job.”

1 comment on "Beanery open at Kelso Depot"

Sunflowers and Castleton Tower, Castle Valley, Utah. Photo by Richard Schwartz

Welcome to the third edition of Carnival of the Arid, kicked off this time with another wonderful photo by the sadly blog-less Richard Schwartz. Another of his photos ends the CotA this month, so be sure and read all the way through!

Larry Hogue at DesertBlog brings us some photos of the desert bloom happening this week in Southern California’s Anza Borrego Desert State Park, with links to more of his own and other photographer’s floral captures.

Bill Worzel steps in to team up with his spouse Leslie Sobel at her blog Painting With Fire, and recounts the story of a slickrock hike a generation ago. It’s a charming, algae-flecked idyll and memoir, accompanied by a number of Leslie’s wonderful slickrock photos.

At Desert Survivor, Gretchen sends along two “desert destination” posts (a regular Friday thing there at Desert Survivor) for CotA#3. Number one describes a speleologists’ meetup and subsequent hike with caving near Barstow, and offers some wonderful photos of the Barstow Formation lakebed sediments which are way prettier than that description might sound to the non-geologists among us. Gretchen’s second submission describes a hike and scramble on Crystal Peak, a striking outcrop of volcanic tuff in Utah’s Snake Valley.  Some great photos there too. I need to go!

Speaking of places I need to go, my own submission this time around is my post on the campaign to protect Gold Butte, a desert treasure perilously near the metastasizing hamlet of Mesquite, Nevada.

At Journey to the Center, Bev Wigney has an encounter with javelinas, the gregarious peccaries of the Sonoran Desert. Bev describes the biology and natural history of the beasts, and shares with us a friend’s video which it’s hard to resist referring to as “eight little piggies.” But javelinas aren’t true pigs, so I will resist.

Silver Fox, coming in from a bit to the north of the preceding submissions, reminds us that there’s more to the desert environment than heat. There are few places in the lower 48 that feel as remote as central Nevada, and being there in the middle of a late winter storm when you were expecting spring only accentuates that isolation. Oh, the wanderlust those photos inspire. Highway 50 through those parts is one of my favorite places, and I haven’t been for 25 years.

Can you tell I’ve been in the city too long?

And to close with a fantastic first submission to Carnival of the Arid, Sarah Koschak and Andrew Skeoch not only expand CotA3’s repertoire past North America to the Australian Outback, but also past the literary and visual arts to the realm of sound. Sarah and Andrew are accomplished nature sound recordists, and they offer us a post on recording the (painfully) early morning song of the pied butcherbird echoing off the rock walls of Ormiston Gorge in Oz’s Macdonnell Ranges. Sarah’s photos are sublime, and the sample track from their nature sounds CD “Spirit of the Outback” — available for sale through their site — is just stunning. Crank up the speakers. (On a side note, Andrew and Sarah’s post 10 Misconceptions About Nature Recordings, while not specific to arid land sounds, is a great answer to those who think such albums are mainly suitable for the chiropractor’s waiting room.)

Thanks to all the submitters! Whether you’re a submitter or not, if you drop a link to us here at CotA3 to spread the arid joy, all of us will be grateful. And don’t forget to submit something for CotA4 on May Day, deadline April 30.

Rainbow and Adobe Mesa. Photo by Richard Schwartz

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0 comments on "Lasthenia in Antelope Valley"

Our pal Bev over at Magickcanoe describes a heretofore undiscussed hazard of ATVs.

1 comment on "“Dumb-ass-teroids”"

Arduous day of job huntage here, but I wanted to share a couple things of a non-April Fool nature.

A couple weeks back climate activist Joseph Romm posted a screed on his blog Climate Progress against those shortsighted people who would blithely defend the desert against massive, slightly green-tinged industrial developments. Romm’s done some exemplary work pointing out the likely effects of climate change, and his book The Hype About Hydrogen: Fact And Fiction In The Race To Save The Climate is one of the most important texts written in English on the topic of energy and climate change, ever. Romm has no trouble seeing through the PR pushed by hydrogen boosters, but seems to have trouble being as dispassionate about concentrating solar on wild lands. Among the passages that got me especially riled in his post:

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) appears to like deserts so much that she wants them to stretch from Oklahoma to California and cover one third the planet.

The AP reported Friday, “Feinstein seeks [to] block solar power from desert land“:

“Nineteen companies have submitted applications to build solar or wind facilities on a parcel of 500,000 [Mojave] desert acres, but Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Friday such development would violate the spirit of what conservationists had intended when they donated much of the land to the public.

“Feinstein said Friday she intends to push legislation that would turn the land into a national monument, which would allow for existing uses to continue while preventing future development.”

I am sympathetic to “conservationists,” but mostly to those who are trying to conserve what matters most, a livable climate.

And:

Deserts are certainly fragile, inhospitable eco-systems — a key reason that nobody should want them spreading over one third the planet or the entire U.S. Southwest for 1,000 years.

Some people may see progressive sentiment there. I see a guy sitting in a comfortable chair in Washington DC making pronouncements about how the desert has to sacrifice so that some grand plans can be carried out. Scratch a DC “serious environmental policy player,” get Floyd Dominy.

Larry Hogue let me know about the post so I could post a comment that made his look reasonable, and he then held forth a bit at Desert Blog. Have a read.

In that post Larry talks about a Google Map to which he gave me editing access, and I highlighted a few areas in the Mojave that might theoretically actually be amenable to concentrating solar development. These are areas that have already had the desert flora and most of the fauna removed, have been graded and deprived of any ecological value, areas in which a massive industrial solar development might actually constitute an environmental improvement.

They are alfalfa farms. The Mojave Desert is a leading US producer of alfalfa. Alfalfa is a low-value crop — grossing maybe a couple thou an acre in a good year — that needs abundant water. Mojave Desert alfalfa farmers irrigate either with water from the California Aqueduct, which could be used more efficiently elsewhere or left in the rivers for struggling salmon, or they pump groundwater, which is fast being depleted. Either irrigation method adds to the carbon burden because of pumping.

Here’s a spot The Raven and I drove past last weekend:

View Larger Map

That’s just east of the Palmdale Airport. Each of those big circles is an alfalfa field, watered via center-pivot irrigation, each occupying much of a quarter-section — a quarter square mile, or 160 acres. Larry points out that eSolar offers a concentrating solar technology that could be deployed on a site that size, with output in the 46 megawatt peak load range.

I see 23 quarter-sections of almost completely disturbed land there, all adjacent. 23 times 46 megawatts is a little over a terawatt of generating capacity.  That would power 2/3 of the homes in San Bernardino County at their 2007 electricity consumption rates, more if conservation measures were instituted. The land is close to a city with good housing, meaning that workers wouldn’t offset most of the carbon savings of the plant by commuting several hundred miles to work each week, and that less of the power would be lost in transmission to end users.

The Mojave ranks second only to Wisconsin in US alfalfa production, an artifact of unnaturally cheap energy and water. An ecologically sane society would stop desert alfalfa farming altogether as a waste of both water and energy on a crop that can be grown without irrigation in the humid east. Repurposing those environmentally destructive desert alfalfa farms to produce solar electric power.

You might tool around the desert with Google Maps and see how many of those center-pivot irrigation fields you can find. Helendale, CA has one, and 46 megawatts generated there would generate three times the power consumption of the whole town. Talk about a source of municipal income.

And if you have Google Earth installed on your machine, you can download a dataset from NRDC that shows protected areas in the desert, from National Parks and Preserves to BLM wildernesses: places that deserve better than to be paved with mirrors because policy analysts in DC decide getting people to spend forty bucks on an LED light bulb is too big a sacrifice.

3 comments on "Desert solar updates"

Because I know there are one or two people scrambling to come up with something for CotA, I’m going to publish it on Thursday rather than Wednesday. Send in your submissions! And thanks to those of you who’ve submitted already. The list is a little shorter than for the previous CotAs, but there are some damn fine posts here.

1 comment on "Pushing CotA back one day"