The Big Event

As the sun rises on February 14th, 2014 you stand at the bottom of one of three solar towers at the Ivanpah Solar Plant. The mirrors all around you start moving, tracking the motion of the sun for their very first time, reflecting the sun's rays onto the tower above with a reflection so bright it hurts just to look at. It's an incredible day for your company, but soon enough the narrative will take a dark turn as the first victim flies through the solar flux next to the tower, its feathers igniting due to the intense heat. The bird quickly loses altitude and ends up crashing into the ground nearby. As you run over to check it out, you see a mangled corpse of a Yuma Clapper Rail. As you pick it up, you realize as you run your fingers over the feathers that the bird's feathers have charred as they ignited above you. The smell of cooking bird won't be one you soon forget.

Chapman, Bradley "BrightSource Energy Luz Power Tower 550" 5/25/15 via wikimedia. Public Domain License.

This is the start of a controversy that will drag on for months, starting with a story written by the Associated Press on August 18th, with the horrific quote that 28,000 birds die a year at the Ivanpah plant. A slew of rushed stories soon follow, citing the AP story as gospel and distributing the false information to millions across the globe, inciting a controversy about the environmental impact of the plant and the implications that such a finding will have on the future of renewable energy.