Last week, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) reversed its previous ruling on large-scale concentrated solar facilities in the southwest. After placing a 22-month moratorium on solar facilities to conduct an environmental impact study, the BLM found that most of the public wasn’t really behind them.

The initial complaint came after – get this – environmental organizations in the southwest fiercely opposed the transmission lines and solar facilities themselves. It was said that the solar facilities would disrupt the fragile desert ecosystem, would be too expensive, weren’t tested and wouldn’t work, and would release more carbon than they offset. High-voltage transmission lines would cross state parks and impact birds and other wildlife. Instead, the opposition groups stated, we should be investing in small-scale, distributed renewables and efficiency.

The solar debate blew up in the environmental community, hearkening a divide in the environmental community similar to the persistent wind turbine debate. While many of us believe that stopping global warming is our number one priority, we also think that we should be reducing our overall impact on the environment. While we believe in a swift and strong development of renewables, we also believe in democracy, justice and local economic control. What happens when these values clash? Is NIMBYism, classism, and fossil fuels behind this, or are these legitimate claims? What do we stand for?

I’ll be honest – I don’t know a whole lot about solar power. But I’ve been studying a similar problem with industrial wind farms for a while. Wind is the environmentalist’s no-brainer. It’s already cost competitive with coal, the technology is proven and efficient, and its environmental impact is minimal. Yet it’s incredibly controversial.

The Cape Wind case received the most famous opposition, meticulously documented by Cape Wind: Money, Celebrity, Class, Politics, and the Battle for our Energy Future on Nantucket Sound, lamented by Break Through and satirized by The Daily Show. Cape Wind is almost certainly an example of a class divide and not-in-my-back-yard (NIMBY) sentiment. The struggle over the placement of a wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts had huge ramifications, resulting in a temporary moratorium (sound familiar?) as the FAA studied wind farms impacts on military radar.

But it’s not alone. Wind farms are being opposed across the US, sometimes with great success. National groups like the National Wind Watch and the Industrial Wind Action Group connect smaller groups from Texas to Wisconsin, Oregon to West Virginia (not to mention across the pond). According to opposition groups, wind turbines are noisy, bird-killing, cancer-inducing, intermittent, inefficient eyesores. These opposition groups will stop at nothing to stop a wind project, complaining, commenting to environmental impact statements (EIS), suing, starting their own political parties, and writing fiction novels about their struggles.

It’s very easy to write these people off as insane. Many of the opposition leaders will do anything to stop the turbines. Their hyperbolic claims undoubtedly hurt more than help, and make it easy to categorize the responses as classic NIMBYism. But every once in a while, they’ve got some very legitimate aesthetic and environmental concerns. Bird and bat deaths from poorly placed turbines at sites like Altamont Pass, California and intrusive, aesthetically backwards siting like the farm in Elk River , Kansas have local caused resentment and frustration. The cultural importance of many areas gets ignored in favor of finding that one sweet spot with a good wind resource and nearby transmission. Development models in many areas have treated wind just like any other extractive resource. And because there’s often no legitimate democratic outlet for opposition, the truth gets muddled because both sides end up fighting over values and will manipulate sources and evidence to “win.”

It could easily be said that the temporary solar moratorium is just another attempt by the Bush administration and global warming deniers to disrupt the growth of renewable energy and divide the environmental community. And to a certain extent, this is true. A few of the opposition groups have ties to conservative politicians and fossil fuel lobbying groups. The fossil fools will do anything to continue the status quo, and stopping renewables is high on their list.

Some of the cases certainly have classist backgrounds, Cape Wind being the premier example. Massachusetts elites have refused to have wind turbines intruding on their precious, private coast. The wind turbines then get sited in areas that will affect poorer rural communities or federal land, or even worse, don’t get built. The greater population is then subject to air and water pollution that cause health problems, not to mention global warming.

Instead, I would argue that what we’re really seeing in many renewable opposition groups is the beginnings of a serious clash of values within the environmental community. These clashes do not necessarily apply to any specific groups or people; rather, they’re snippets of conversations and arguments that people are having. Many wind opponents are just average people who are a little freaked out by giant corporations, intimidated by 400 foot towers, and worried about their children’s health. And they’re sick of being ignored.

The first clash is between old-school preservationist/conservationist values and new-wave energy advocates. Traditional environmentalists proclaim that renewables are great, but just don’t belong everywhere and are legitimately concerned about the impacts of human development on relatively undeveloped land. On the other side, new-wave energy advocates focused on ramping up renewables as quickly and efficiently as possible, creating green jobs and economic growth, and are flabbergasted by the apparent short-sightedness of conservation groups. New energy advocates see the world in a utilitarian light – we’re displacing carbon emissions which will ultimately improve human and nonhuman well being. Conservationists may see the world in a more Rawlsian, contextually-based, or even NIMBY view – What if it was your backyard? We should invest in small-scale renewables that we can all live with. Is one of these groups simply wrong?

The second clash is speed and scale vs. democracy and participation. Many developers and national environmental advocacy groups call for ramping up our renewables as quickly and large as possible. Meanwhile, other groups argue for allowing democratic community participation and even ownership of renewable operations. Speed and scale advocates point out that we need to be decommissioning as many coal plants as possible as quickly as possible by developing everything possible. On the other hand, democracy advocates point out that large corporations can profit from the exploitation of communities; we need to return cooperative control through community-based energy development.

Finally, the third clash is whether we base decisions on objective science and facts, or if we debate the values and systems inherent in our choices. Classic developers might think that their logic will prevail, that wind turbines don’t kill that many birds, they aren’t that noisy and won’t be visually intrusive. Post-modernists might note that it’s impossible to objectively assess aesthetic or even wildlife impacts. This clash is subtle and difficult to separate into “sides.” Rather many groups are forced to commission junk science reports from experts rather than revealing that their arguments are subjective.

It could be argued that these value debates are a result of America’s poor education system, seriously mucked up energy policy, anthropocentricism and lack of ecological consciousness, consumerism and unchecked capitalism, the failure of old media, the failure of old environmentalism, the failure of American culture, and a very rich and savvy public misinformation campaign. But most of that is in the past, and we’re the ones who have to figure out how to fix this mess NOW!

Many posts on It’s Getting Hot in Here present a position, but I wrote this post because I don’t have the answers (although I’ve got some opinions). I really hope all of you weigh in. I don’t want to paint a picture of despair. But I’m genuinely a little perplexed and confused. What do we do when a community in eastern Wisconsin through democratic means successfully blocks the development of a four-turbine community-owned project because they believe the turbines will use up their drinking water and cause seizures? What steps do we take? What do we stand for?