Welcome, Tesla (?)

So it's official. It's finally happening. And of course, it's the talk of the town all over Reno.

Just moments ago, CNBC broke the news that Tesla has chosen Northern Nevada to house its new gigafactory. And already, a special session of the Nevada Legislature is being set for next week. And of course, we're already starting to hear all sorts of political spin and economic happy talk.

So what's the deal? We know Tesla is planning to spend $5 billion to build its 10,000 square foot gigafactory. What we don't yet know is how much Tesla is expecting the State of Nevada to kick in for construction.

We strongly suspect this deal will involve some Nevada taxpayer money, as a special session looks to be necessary. It's also been no secret that Tesla has demanded public subsidies for this gigafactory.

So how much will this cost us? Most likely, a cool $400 million.

And what are we getting out of this? Potentially 6,500 new jobs for the Reno/Sparks region, along with a breakthrough that may open the door to electric cars becoming more affordable for more consumers.

Here's the good news: This has the potential to actually make a dent in the long promised drive to diversify Nevada's economy. This also has the potential to kick-start the green tech sector and take it to new levels here in Nevada and nationally. Oh, and this can help quite a bit in our efforts to take on the challenges posed by climate change.

Here's the disturbing news: We're once again relying upon corporate welfare for any sort of economic development. And that's just not a sustainable business plan going forward. After all, take a look at how far Reno and Nevada have gone with Apple. Apple continues to laugh all the way to its offshore bank accounts while we're left holding the bag (full of holes, thanks to the many budget cuts we've endured over the past half-decade).

This is why we're experiencing mixed reactions now. On one hand, it's exciting to think that Nevada may be home to the next generation of transportation & energy innovation. But on the other, this achievement seems awfully tainted due to the $400 million we're having to bribe spend to convince Tesla to build the gigafactory in Northern Nevada. Is that money truly well spent? Or is it just more money being diverted from our already "grossly underfunded" schools and other critical parts of public infrastructure?

Right now, let's just say the 63 Nevadans who may soon have to head back to Carson City are about to step into a rather sticky situation.

Why Do Joe Heck & AFP Want the Wind (Energy Jackpot) to Pass Us By?

Back in June, we were reminded of Joe Heck's odd opposition to efforts to bring more green jobs to Nevada. Today, we were reminded again. Despite other Republicans supporting the wind energy tax credit, Joe Heck is following Mitt Romney's lead in opposing it.

And of course, Mitt Romney is following Americans for Prosperity's lead in opposing clean, green energy. So of course, Sierra Club and ProgressNow Nevada decided to go to the source of all this. They went to AFP Nevada headquarters.







Sierra Club has already been mounting a big grassroots and media campaign to save the wind energy tax credit along with thousands of well paying green collar jobs. And this morning, the campaign arrived in full force in Downtown Las Vegas. AFP Nevada may like to "astroturf" its way onto the evening news with overhyped "bus tours" and "rallies", but they clearly weren't ready for some real grassroots action that literally landed at their doorstep!

Again, Joe Heck clearly takes his lead from AFP. How else can one explain why he'd oppose a tax break to encourage job creation here in Nevada?

If it's because "clean energy is nonsense", then he's the one spouting nonsense. After all, Nevada now has the largest wind farm in the country. And we still have more potential to harness even more of our wind for clean, green energy. Oh, and global wind generation is set to grow another 40% by 2017, so why shouldn't Nevada be a part of that action? Really, why are Joe Heck, Mitt Romney, and their ideological bosses at AFP opposing common sense efforts to create more good Nevada jobs?

That's what the grassroots Sierra Club & ProgressNow activists were asking at AFP headquarters today.

Our Choice: Green Jobs, or Gruesome Catastrophe

So much for the desperate attempts to smear clean, green energy. It looks like we will be seeing even more renewable energy projects emerge soon.

The Obama administration moved Tuesday to streamline the development of large-scale solar projects on public lands by approving 17 vast tracts across the West it says has the highest power-generating potential and the fewest environmental impacts.

As developers scramble to secure utility-scale solar sites, the plan will move the Department of the Interior away from having to consider individual projects on a case-by-case basis and instead direct development to land already identified as having fewer wildlife and natural resource obstacles. [...]

The zones cover a total of 285,000 acres, with five sites in Nevada, four in Colorado, three in Utah, two each in California and Arizona, and one in New Mexico. Originally 677,000 acres of the 253 million acres managed by the BLM had been considered. Proximity to transmission lines also was considered.

"This is a really big milestone in terms of environmentally sensitive and responsible solar development," said Helen O'Shea of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Having a roadmap for development and conservation and striking the right balance between the two is going to be critical for protecting our western landscapes as we build our clean energy economy."

As we've discussed before, Nevada stands to gain so much from clean energy investment. One only has to look at all the facts on the ground to notice the big picture. It's brighter than many think.

However, there's another picture that isn't looking all that bright now. In fact, this one is downright frightening.

In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecast a temperature increase of 4ºC for the Southwest over the present century. Given a faster than expected build-up of greenhouse gases (and no effective mitigation), that number looks optimistic today. Estimates vary, but let’s say our progress into the sweltering future is an increase of slightly less than 1ºC so far. That means we still have an awful long way to go. If the fires we’re seeing now are a taste of what the century will bring, imagine what the heat stress of a 4ºC increase will produce. And these numbers reflect mean temperatures. The ones to worry about are the extremes,the record highs of future heat waves. In the amped-up climate of the future, it is fair to think that the extremes will increase faster than the means.

At some point, every pine, fir, and spruce will be imperiled. If, in 2007, Swetnam was out on a limb, these days it’s likely that the limb has burned off and it’s getting ever easier to imagine the destruction of forests on a region-wide scale, however disturbing that may be.

More than scenery is at stake, more even than the stability of soils, ecosystems,and watersheds: the forests of the western United States account for 20% to 40% of total U.S. carbon sequestration. At some point, as western forests succumb to the ills of climate change, they will become a net releaser of atmospheric carbon, rather than one of the planet’s principle means of storing it.

Contrary to the claims of climate deniers, the prevailing models scientists use to predict change are conservative. They fail to capture many of the feedback loops that are likely to intensify the dynamics of change. The release of methane from thawing Arctic permafrost, an especially gloomy prospect, is one of those feedbacks. The release of carbon from burning or decaying forests is another. You used to hear scientists say, “If those things happen, the consequences will be severe.” Now they more often skip that “if” and say “when” instead, but we don’t yet have good estimates of what those consequences will be.

Climate change is now happening at an accelerated pace. It's even worse than forecast just in 2007! Already, we're seeing huge swaths of Western forests succumb to epic wildfires, drought, and insect infestations like never seen before. And if we lose our trees, which capture our carbon emissions, we're in store for the kind of catastrophe that was once thought as only possible in a Biblical story.

Yes, it's really that bad. Climate change has officially become the climate crisis. And if we ignore it for any longer and pretend it doesn't exist, then we're only sealing the fate of our own extinction.

Do we really want to seal the fate of our own extinction? Or do we want to keep hope alive for survival? Wouldn't we rather start adapting to our new reality and give our economy a boost while we're at it?

The weather outside is truly frightful, but it's not too late to take action. But really, we need to do something now, before this catastrophe worsens into something we can no longer survive.

Can Nevada G-O-TEA Afford to Keep Denying Reality?

On Monday, we discussed the mounting evidence pointing to a very real climate crisis in dire need of bold solutions. Apparently, some in DC are finally waking up and smelling reality. And funny enough, these CONSERVATIVES are leading a new effort for not just any climate solution... But a carbon tax!



And really, it makes sense. A tax on carbon emissions is much simpler to implement than a cap-and-trade system, and it can even be made revenue neutral. With less bureaucracy and less in net tax payments, why shouldn't conservatives love this?

Apparently, it's because of the usual "tea party" suspects badmouthing any and every attempt by even conservatives to start an honest discussion on climate change! For some time now, the G-O-TEA troops have been thumbing their noses at proven science. They even forced Mitt Romney to renounce his belief in sound science and buy his membership in "The New Flat Earth Society".

However, it's still been an open question as to how far Nevada Republicans will follow Mitt Romney off that cliff of climate denying idiocy. After all, there's strong bipartisan support here in Nevada for renewable energy investment that's proven to benefit our economy. It's not as if we have to go far to see the impact green energy is making here.



And in fact, we may have been UNDERESTIMATING our ability to transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. The capacity, the technology, and the economic incentives for America to take action on climate change are already here. And of course, current events should be a powerful motivating force as well.



I understand Dean Heller is looking for something to make him seem altruistic and heroic. And I understand Joe Heck is looking for issues to make him look like he's doing something to create more Nevada jobs. So why not step up now and take the lead on creating solutions to climate change while also bringing more green jobs to our state? Come on, even conservatives are coming on board (again)! Do they really want to follow the dinosaurs, the wooly mammoths, and Sharron Angle on the path to (political) extinction?