"If we cannot put solar power plants in the Mojave desert, I don't know where the hell we can put it."

So exclaimed Arnold Schwarzenegger, governor of California in response to the Feinsteins of the world that NOW proclaim that it would ruin Mojave desert ecosystem after giving the go ahead to renewable energy companies to exploit the region. You can never satisfy these environmentalists because it's not that they love nature and want to conserve it so much as they hate man and his activities. (READ)

California's Mojave Desert may seem ideally suited for solar energy production, but concern over what several proposed projects might do to the aesthetics of the region and its tortoise population is setting up a potential clash between conservationists and companies seeking to develop renewable energy.

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

Feinstein said 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.