Pickens, Clinton and Gore at NV Clean Energy Summit
Monday, August 10, 2009
LAS VEGAS - The University of Nevada-Las Vegas is host today to a major clean energy summit. Former President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore and Texas oil and gas industrialist T. Boone Pickens, among other dignitaries, are expected to attend.
Local advocates, like biologist Gregg Tanner with the Nevada Wilderness Project, call this a major chance to support clean energy and the jobs it will bring to Nevada. However, Tanner also wants attendees to focus attention on the need to take a "smart from the start" approach to where clean energy projects are built in the Silver State.
"We need to be smart about the siting of the generation facilities themselves, and how we move that power - the transmission infrastructure."
Tanner says projects like these have the potential to adversely affect Nevada wildlife habitat, but he credits the companies that are getting into the renewable energy business with being open so far to looking at ways to locate their projects in areas that are the least important to wildlife.
The summit is sure to draw attention - both from those who are concerned about global warming pollution and those who doubt that climate change is happening or that human activity is to blame. As a biologist, Tanner points to plenty of examples that climate change is happening in Nevada.
"We've seen a dramatic decline in the level of Lake Mead in the south, more frequent droughts, and an increased frequency of and magnitude of forest and range fires."
Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Senate majority leader Harry Reid also will attend the two-day summit, which starts at 10 a.m. at the Cox Pavilion.
More information about the meeting is available at www.cleanenergysummit.org. Additional "smart from the start" information is available at www.wildnevada.org.
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