Try to put a cell tower in the desert and you’d have eco wackos coming down on you like a squadron of flying monkeys. But if you want to put acres and acres of solar panels out in the natural habitat of poor gila monsters and cacti, well, that’s OK:

BrightSource, with investors as varied as Google and the VantagePoint venture capital firm — and with advisers that include the environmental campaigner and lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — has refined a decades-old technology. Thousands of small mirrors focus intense desert sunlight on a central tower, where it generates steam to drive a turbine.

Interesting that the limits of what you can do to the land always begins at the point that accommodates liberals and lefties. If they want to put shiny panels over acres of pristine desert, that’s fine. But if you want to ride your off-road motorcycle in the desert, no way, dude.