YES, I AM AN ENVIRONMENTALIST

NOW, BEFORE YOU GASP AND SAY WHAT; keep reading.  For any one who may be a bonified tree hugger, this is not that kind of post.  For those who care for the land, see what you think of these ideas.  I think I have addressed this subject in past posts, so this will probably be just an expansion of that post, where ever and when ever it may be hidden in the past drivel.
That having been said, bear with me. Oh, and speaking of Bear's, the Mesa. AZ. bear was finally captured and released into the wild. Hope he was able to get what he wanted for Christmas before that happened.  OK, sorry for the side trip.  On to the purpose of the post. 
In a recent article in an actual news paper, someone wrote that the public service utilities should be more involved in promoting natural energy and move away from fossil fuels and that type of thing.  The object of the article was to transform to wind and solar. And I have nothing against either of these types of power, but lets look at the underlying problems and aims of this movement.
First, in past decades, even in past centuries, the land suffered from several things that were not governed. Lets look at some of them. This will not be an all inclusive list. I am going to mention 3 or 4 things.
1st, ranchers.  Cattle ranchers, for the most part, have taken care of the land, because they depended on it to take care of them. Cattle, like the buffalo of past decades, fertilize the land and cultivate it with their hooves. And ranchers do move cattle from pasture to pasture to rest the land and let it rejuvenate.  Loggers, under the direction of the Forest Service, cut and hauled trees to the mill to be cut into lumber, and as a result the forest was kept healthy. Clear cutting was done only on private land and even then, for the most part, the land was taken care of, as the timber companies depended on the land to grow more trees. Mining and oil and gas drilling was a little different matter. However, in recent decades, environmental rules came into play that more or less forced these companies to clean up their act. And even though I spent my youth on a cattle ranch, spent some little time in the logging and timber industry, I retired after 40 years in the mining industry. And I saw a lot of the changes that came about over the past few years.
So now lets get to the purpose of this post.  The above mentioned news paper article, as I stated, was slanted toward the energy companies going more to wind and solar. So, lets explore that for a minute.  Power plants are fueled by coal or natural gas. One is mined and the other is drilled for. Both are extracted from the earth. And they have to be extracted from the location where they are located. You can't get coal or gas from an area where they don't exist.  Duh. And I have no problem with environmental rules being brought into play to keep these companies aware of any damage done to the land and to restore it to the extant possible. But, still, these items are needed. The current administration, however, is doing all it can to bring more strict environmental rules into play against power plants that burn coal, because of coal ash. Too the extant that these plants may have close down. And that will be devastating. Why?  Well, lets explore that and the transferring over to wind and solar.
Just use your imagination for a minute. I don't think it will take much longer than that. In order to provide all the electrical power that this country uses, and to do so by wind and solar, just imagine how much land will be needed to build that many solar or wind farms. Sure, an individual family can install solar panels and sell the electricity to the utility company, and I have no problem with them doing so. But in order to supply all the power needed for the millions of people in this country, The land would be covered with solar and wind turbine farms from sea to shining sea. And then, the utility companies cannot control mother nature.  If there are a lot of cloudy days, the solar power will not be very efficient. If the wind don't blow, the turbines won't turn. And when you log on to your computer to read this blog, your computer won't come on, cause the power just won't be there. 
So, yes, I am an environmentalist. I do believe we should take care of the land. But let's be practical about it. Let's mine and use the coal. Let's drill and use the oil and gas. Let's log the forests and run the cattle on the land. But we can do all these things and still take care of the land. We need not go off on a knee jerk direction just because a group of people think that we should leave the land like it was in the days of Adam and Eve.  Just ain't gonna happen.
AND THAT'S THE VIEW FROM THE DITCH BANK