It's not even close to as large as the footprint of oil and gas. The Thacker Pass project, which is one of several that are all individually described as satisfying global demand, will ultimately disturb only 7000 acres. Fossil fuel wells usually disturb 5 net acres each, and there are five million such wells in America alone.
Additionally, that area in Nevada can be - at best - charitably described as moonscape.
Which, for those of us that like moonscape, is a bit sad. But there is a lot of moonscape in that region, and there aren’t a huge number of moonscape fans. At least that are going to try to picket any projects. So overall, meh.
That area of Nevada is also pretty economically ‘challenged’, so why not.
Also, at some point you need to tell people "you don't own this land, so you don't get to say what gets done to it."
I'm half expecting the future more conservative SCOTUS to shoot down land use regulation as a taking, requiring such regulation to be combined with payment for the value lost instead.
Thacker Pass appears to be federally owned (Bureau of Land Managment) land.
The public does own this land and does deserve some degree of a say in what's done with it.
I have no issue with this project, and I certainly don't think that means a loud but tiny opposition should be able to derail it, just noting that this isn't private property and thus public oversight should be higher.
Public land in Nevada (and many other western states) has a long history of being ‘stolen’ in various ways. There is quite a racket around it, actually.
For instance, if you drive along I80 east of Reno, once you get away from the city, that land is all BLM. Yet it’s gated off, with incredibly difficult to get gate access. If you call around, you’ll eventually talk to the person who controls those gates, and eventually figure out that those gates are closed for a variety of ever changing reasons.
For a given gate, I’ve heard everything from ‘National security’ to ‘Nevada state law and interstates’ to ‘only utility companies’ to ‘only directly approved persons’.
Once you know the local roads, it’s trivial to get to the other side of those gates though, just a bit more out of the way.
I’ve also seen BLM land gated off by private gates, and individuals threaten people trapped on BLM land due to those gates with fines for ‘trespassing’.
They shut up pretty quick when I pulled out the map showing it was public land, and started quoting the Nevada law they were violating with the presence of their gate though. All the sudden, the lady they were threatening (in this case) was free to go.
When I was in Nevada, I kept a pair of bolt cutters in my truck. And a gun.
This is a particularly tricky year to argue voting, particularly for the president, is the right level of public oversight. We were offered two candidates with comparatively little say or visibility (compared to the last few decades) during the primaries.
Trump effectively sat out of the primary season, though primary voters did overwhelmingly support him they did so without ever having the chance to hear him pressed during a debate or contentious interview. There is at least a case with Trump to argue voters already knew they wanted him and simply didn't need a primary, the democrats don't have that argument to make.
The democrats didn't even bother to have a primary and went out of their way to pressure debate organizers to block Kennedy entirely before swapping out their candidate last minute.
