>A single federal agency oversees nearly a quarter-billion acres of public lands — and those acres could play a key role in fighting climate change by hosting vast fields of solar panels and wind turbines that limit our need to burn fossil fuels
Government land is often vast tracts of desert or poor grasslands. It may seem like there's nothing there to protect, not like a forest.
But it's a fragile ecosystem, the plants an animals hanging by a thread, living off bare drops of rain and poor soil.
Sure a solar farm will harbor other life, even preserve moisture. But any change will have winners and losers. The upshot: a solar farm remakes the environment that it shades. Essentially erasing what was there, and letting a new equilibrium form.
No less than clear-cutting forests or strip-mining. I use those examples to press the point: this will have enormous ecological impact.
Sure, it's becoming necessary. We'll all benefit. It's just the planet that suffers.