Again, the attitude here is that species unique to the desert environment are worthless; that more familiar species that humans like have value; that somehow its better for every life form to have more shade and water and less sunlight. This is untrue for the desert environment. And hard for many people to comprehend.
"More life" has never been the ecological impact metric. Why, a cattle feedlot has more life than the prairie that came before. And so on.
The desert is by no means lifeless. Some 50 species of mammals, endless snakes and arachnids (scorpions etc), many species of grass and brush. Even in the relatively-less-inhabited sand dune 'oceans' there is life.
But nobody is putting solar panels in the sand dunes. It will have to be on solid ground - rocky plateaus. Which are the most-populated of the Sahara environments.
You have to make relative impact judgement eventually. Pure relativism will just paralyze you.
No reasonable person is going to think that replacing 1km^2 of the central Sahara is equivalent to bulldozing 1km^2 of the Amazon. "More life" might be simplistic, so call it more life*biodiversity for total impact or whatever you want.
And in this specific example, the fact is that you are impacting almost no desert species in the dry parts of the Sahara. I suspect you are conflating low-moisture "deserts" like the Sonoran desert, where there is in fact life to impact:
Nobody is building anything on sand dunes. That's a straw man, right? Its the rocky places that have life, and are also useful for construction projects.
The Sahara has been there for centuries now. Its not a local disturbed weather pattern by now. So as an ecological issue, its significant. It should be considered when proposing megaprojects that alter square miles of ground. Yet it hardly gets mentioned. I take this as evidence we are not serious about ecological impact issues.
Sure, it's ~5-15,000 years old. The snowball started a feedback loop when people cut down local forests and over grazing killed off a lot of grass land. Altering local wind patterns etc. But, that's still an eye blink in terms of ecology.
"More life" has never been the ecological impact metric. Why, a cattle feedlot has more life than the prairie that came before. And so on.
The desert is by no means lifeless. Some 50 species of mammals, endless snakes and arachnids (scorpions etc), many species of grass and brush. Even in the relatively-less-inhabited sand dune 'oceans' there is life.
But nobody is putting solar panels in the sand dunes. It will have to be on solid ground - rocky plateaus. Which are the most-populated of the Sahara environments.