When Bill McKibben calls out your environmentalism

Solar resistance in Santa Fe

Earlier this week, a surprising voice entered the chat about Santa Fe’s contentious debate over the Rancho Viejo solar project: renowned environmentalist Bill McKibben. The author of the first mainstream book on climate change felt motivated to write a letter to the Santa Fe New Mexican, calling out what he described as “liberals spreading misinformation and working against the interests of their neighbors.”

Bill McKibben speaking in Santa Fe in 2024. Watch his talk on clean energy here

First, a quick explanation about why I’m talking about Santa Fe: This newsletter takes a more regional approach than Boomtown did. It’s time we stop treating our towns like isolated ponds—we all share the same swimming pool in Northern New Mexico. My readership is also broader now, geographically, which fits the shift away from Boomtown’s very deliberate hyperlocal focus. And sometimes it helps Los Alamos readers to view policy gridlock at a slight remove—it’s easier to see clearly when the fight isn’t your own.

Keeping things the way they are

OK back to the issue at hand: Bill McKibben wasn’t criticizing the usual foes of fossil fuel interests or climate deniers, but self-described environmentalists opposing a clean energy project. Although he is himself a liberal, and a Boomer (the generation he says is most likely to oppose clean energy projects), he acknowledges the growing rift within environmentalism between those prioritizing immediate climate action and those protecting local landscapes, property values, and aesthetics. As he says in his article for Mother Jones:

I’m thinking of people like me: older white people, a class particularly used to working the system, and perhaps psychologically tilted toward keeping things the way they are.

In Santa Fe, at stake is a 96-megawatt solar facility with 48-megawatt battery storage that could power 37,000 Santa Fe homes—nearly enough for the entire city's residential load. (​​The City of Santa Fe has about 40k households.) The project, proposed by AES Corp. for a site about 3 miles south of Santa Fe, would help New Mexico meet its legal mandate of 50% renewable energy by 2030 and 100% by 2045. For a state at the frontlines of climate change, with increasing wildfire risks and water scarcity, the stakes couldn't be higher.

Map of the project, markups by me showing proximity to an existing power line: “Solar sites must be relatively close to substations and utility lines to do this. A range of roughly 5 miles or less should be maintained between a utility substation and a solar farm. .... By maintaining this proximity, project risk and transportation requirements are lessened for the site.” From “Solar farm land requirements.”

The battle lines of the Rancho Viejo Solar Project

After a contentious two-year review process, the Santa Fe County Planning Commission approved the Rancho Viejo Solar project in February this year by a 6-1 vote. The approval came despite the recommendation of denial from a hearing officer and fierce opposition from nearby property owners in Eldorado and Rancho San Marcos. Opponents have vowed to keep fighting.

Opposition has centered primarily on fears of fires from the battery storage facility and concerns about property values. At public hearings, opponents painted apocalyptic scenarios, with one resident, Rob Welch, claiming neighbors live “three minutes from oblivion” in the event of a battery fire. Another described the project as “jumping from the Hindenburg onto the Titanic.”

These emotional appeals do not jibe with technical realities. According to data presented at the hearings, no battery storage facility fire has ever escaped containment or property boundaries anywhere in the world. The Electric Power Research Institute found a 97% reduction in utility-scale battery incidents per unit of storage capacity between 2018 and 2023. Modern facilities employ sophisticated fire detection, suppression, and containment systems.

Image: from “Insights from EPRI’s Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) Failure Incident Database: Analysis of Failure Root Cause,” white paper, page 2

Project supporters pointed to these safety advances while stressing climate urgency. “We’ve all benefited by pushing pollution onto the Four Corners. Now it’s our turn,” said Phil Undercuffler, a solar expert and firefighter who spoke in favor of the project. Nathan LeBlanc, a self-described Millennial homeowner in favor of the project, offered perhaps the most direct counterpoint: “I am quite concerned that there are a lot of people here today and yesterday to say that ‘I don’t want batteries in my backyard.’ I would [have them] if I could.”

Generational environmentalism divide

Behind the Rancho Viejo solar debate is a generational split in environmental priorities. Younger supporters like LeBlanc and Jenna Rode represent what policy journalist Jerusalem Demsas calls “crisis environmentalists”—those who view immediate climate action as the paramount ecological priority.

“It’s easy to give in to despair about the future world that my daughters will inherit,” Rode said. “We know what is causing climate change. We cannot continue to pump carbon into the air. Doing so is actively causing harm today.”

In contrast, many older opponents embody a “cautious environmentalism” that prioritizes the preservation of existing landscapes and minimal disturbance. This approach, common among homeowners who’ve settled in scenic areas like Eldorado, values stability and aesthetic continuity—values that once aligned perfectly with environmental goals when stopping development meant stopping pollution.

McKibben addresses this shift in his op-ed: “These Santa Feans have latched onto a particular kind of NIMBY-ism—one that pretends to support renewable energy but always insists it should be built somewhere else. They’ll seize on any argument—factual or not—to make that case, even when the potential benefits to their community are sizable.”

This critique cuts especially deep coming from McKibben, who has impeccable environmental credentials as the founder of 350.org and author of “The End of Nature.” His involvement tells us that the debate isn’t so much about environmentalism vs. development as about competing environmental priorities in a climate emergency.

What are we worried about, exactly?

Sometimes opponents inadvertently expose motivations beyond environmental concern. Nearly every testimony against the project began with some variation of “I support clean energy, but...”—a phrase McKibben flags as a fig leaf.

At the February hearing, speakers regularly pivoted from fire concerns to property values. “Your high power lines that would parallel us would absolutely devalue our property,” said resident Cindy Fuqua. “Does a home that is uninsurable have any market value?” asked Jim Wheeler. “Will AES guarantee that we have affordable insurance going forward?” echoed Paul Laur. Nancy Peterson said “I can’t afford to have my property value tank…I would leave Eldorado, but I won’t be able to sell my house.”

These economic concerns are perfectly understandable but fundamentally different from environmental or safety arguments. Fortunately, this common complaint has been thoroughly studied and the data show conclusively that proximity to a solar plant does not significantly reduce home values. For example, a paper from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory concludes that home prices 0.5 mile or less from a large-scale solar plant experience an average price reduction of only “1.5% compared to homes 2-4 mi away,” while “statistically significant effects are not measurable over 1 mi” from a large-scale solar plant.

The median sales price of a home in Eldorado is $657,000, according to Redfin data

Moreover, the juxtaposition of house-value concerns with claims that residents would be “downwinders” of “toxic” battery emissions—language appropriated from nuclear testing victims—suggests that opponents of the project are deploying a rhetorical political strategy rather than engaging in good faith with the facts.

Worries about battery fires also ignore the routine occurrence of fires associated with fossil fuels. For example, as Andrew Rodney, a project supporter, said at the hearing: “Every year, there are on average 4,000 gas station fires in the US. The Clean Energy Coalition doesn’t seem to worry about the gas station a block from Eldorado. A car catches fire every five minutes in this country. The CEC doesn’t seem to worry about the thousands of cars in Eldorado.”

The real environmental math

What McKibben and other climate-focused environmentalists want people of his generation to understand is that blocking renewable energy projects does far more harm to nature in the long term than building them could ever do.

“January 2025 was the hottest January ever measured. We’re in an emergency,” McKibben wrote. “If you’re really worried about fires, solar and storage will help us move away from fossil fuels, controlling rising temperatures and the out-of-control wildfires they’ve brought in recent years to New Mexico.”

Without massive deployment of renewable energy resources, rising temperatures will transform the Southwest, bringing more intense droughts, larger wildfires, and widespread ecosystem collapse. The trade-off isn’t between undisturbed nature and industrial solar farms, he argues—it’s between acting now to preserve livable conditions or allowing runaway climate change to permanently alter landscapes anyway.

Photo by Intricate Explorer on Unsplash

As Lucy Foma, a project supporter, said at the hearing: “Let’s not quarrel over crumbs when we can fight together.” In a climate emergency, there is not always an “elsewhere” to send our energy infrastructure. The choice facing Santa Fe—and communities nationwide—is whether to be part of the solution or to push both the infrastructure and the moral responsibility somewhere else.

In my next installment on this topic, I’ll explore practical solutions to this seemingly intractable problem. I’ll examine approaches from Denmark, Germany, and U.S. states like Michigan and New York that share benefits more equitably, streamline permitting while enhancing productive community participation, and overcome the concentrated costs/diffuse benefits dilemma. Pitting local concerns against planetary survival is a false dichotomy—we can redesign our systems to protect both. Stay tuned as I delve into how communities like Santa Fe can move from opposition to opportunity in the clean energy transition.