The role of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in global climate change is widely recognized as a real and pressing problem. Policymakers are under pressure to present solutions, preferably ones that are easy to understand and consistent with widely-held public views and values. In Southern California, one solution that is gaining ground is the development of large-scale solar thermal plants in the Mojave Desert. Prospective developers have won enthusiastic federal and state government support in the form of fast-track permitting and economic incentives. Public debate on the environmental consequences of this technology has been notably muted, however. Why have environmentalists encountered so many difficulties in their attempts to secure ecologically sound siting processes for large-scale solar thermal plantsâ??a technological solution heralded as salvation in the face of global climate change (itself a consequence of reckless environmental degradation)?We investigate the contradiction present in that question, as well as the ironies and conflicts that will continue to define the important processâ??now only in its earliest stagesâ??of ecological modernization in the United States. Instead of representing a fundamental shift toward environmental stewardship and sustainability, we argue, the discourse of the "Solar Grand Plan" (Zweibel, Mason, & Fthenakis, 2007) to develop renewable energy installations in the deserts or semi-deserts of the American Southwest actually closely parallels past, high modernist narratives of the past century: initiatives intended to promote grand technological projects while legitimating or concealing their true environmental repercussions. Partisans in the Grand Solar Plan construct their positions on the basis of very different conceptions of space and place. Following an overview of the solar renaissance across the American Southwest, we identify three discourses that intersect, compete, and coexist to shape the contours of the debate. The Grand Solar Plan, as articulated by its proponents, comprises interlocking policymaking and public relations discourses developed by government, industrial proponents, and the media to present the case for solar development to the public. The Grand Solar Plan has begun to generate an environmentalist counternarrative that seeks to minimize habitat and landscape destruction but has yet to have a substantial impact on policy. We make sense of this failure in terms of a third discourse that precedes the arrival of solar energy technology by centuries. This is a persistent view of the desert as a barren, useless, and undifferentiated wastelandâ??a culturally dominant construction that undermines efforts to balance the need for renewable energy against the protection of natural resources. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]