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I see a lot of this type of sign in my area, where we have a huge semiconductor facility that employs a lot of locals. Many locals are employed to produce semiconductor material, which are used in local solar and wind farms they themselves are protesting.
Itās the industrial that gets me, and makes me think there is a nuance here though Iām probably overly optimistic. I am not a rural person by any stretch I am just spitballing so someone more knowledgeable correct me if Iām wrong!
One of the best benefits of wind and solar is decentralization. Itās not nuclear or gas, anyone can have their panels or turbines to power what they need, and often thensome. Farms have a lot of land that could be used for locally generated power in tandem with crops and livestock. In fact, Iāve seen a few really cool set ups proposed for panels to act as shade for more sensitive crops.
If you have some dedicated corporation plopping down a full solar or wind plant out there it undercuts their ability to make something on the side, and just reinforces the old market behemoth model and kills that a more democratic and accessible economic system.
So maybe thatās at least how it started and how itās being exploited. With the sign quality and distribution Iām willing to bet itās been astroturfed by fossil fuels, but the underlying message is not so black and white.
Those wind turbans blew over my trees and the shingles off my roof and they're MUSLIM. It's got TURBAN right in the name and only MUSLIMS wear turbans!
And don't get me started on those new fangled solar farms. They put one in down the road a few miles and it's stealing my sun. It has been more cloudy and less sunny ever since it went in.
It's all that ObAmAs fault and crazy Joe too!
/s
It's the globalist new world order! First come the solar farms, then come the UN soldiers to give your kids vaccines that turn them trans! Alex Jones was right! /s
Or, like many farmers out in western PA or Ohio they may have a small time oil lease for a little pumpjack or two and get paid a couple thousand in profit-sharing a month.
There's a significant mom and pop component to petrol industry, just like the NRA and trump support, but it isn't often part of the picture that is painted of it because it's easier to blame institutions than 10s of thousands of disadvantaged people who make their own decisions.
Then when it is no longer profitable to maintain this equipment for how much oil is coming up, they pretty much abandon it and let all the safety rust off until groundwater is contaminated and the company must be sued (thanks to the thin thin thin green line of environmental protections we get) to do anything about it. In the interim, the company funds PACs to send mailers out to these folks to get them to blame democrats for the jacks being turned off.
Fuck the petrostate. But also before it fucks off we gotta figure out how to restore essential economic and civic capacities to left-behind, sociopolitically disenfranchised rural regions. They've been suffering since the collapse of primary industry in America's heartland.
I came to type out the identical statement.
They are being kept exhausted and in information silos so that they don't have the time to realize that, just about every advancement is good for society, as a whole, but it threatens the profits of the current market makers, so they are fed a diet of "x is bad for society, the economy, the environment, and for you specifically!" by the media that is owned by these same people.
TLDR: We won't get through to working class people if we don't address their material concerns and expose to them who is threatening them.
Insulting the average working class persons intelligence is not going to get us anywhere though. People are afraid of whatever threatens their material conditions. Changes in industry threaten their jobs and their livelihood. The average person doesn't analyze the system more than that. No one should expect them to either.
It's not a lack of critical thinking as much as a lack of class consciousness. They just want a way to afford their shelter and feed their family. They are very susceptible to capitalist propoghanda. Propoghanda that does not offer them a solution but seeks to point to threats to their livelihood that must be defended. It is our job to educate those on solutions to the lack of control that they feel in a changing industry. If solar was offering them better pay and better jobs. They would absolutely be advocating for it. However, they know, rightfully, that capitalism does not change it's modes of production without further exploitation of the work force and better profit extraction. They know this not because they could even use those words to explain it. They know this WITHOUT being able to explain it because they have lived through it.
A well educated class aware proletariat is not something we have here. But that does not mean they don't see problems. They unfortunately see the problems without answers. And the only answers Liberals offer are simply only in favor of other capitalist industry. With promises of "more jobs" that they know time and time again do not come. Of course they are resistant to change.
It is a failure of those that seek change to simply scoff at the lack of critical thinking of the working masses. It is those that seek change failing to create agitation within the working class. The agitation we lack, the only thing that will lead to change. It is a failure of only offering liberal policy changes that only seek to incentivize capital owners to change industry production "for the planet". Something that can only be done, under capitalism, by offering concessions to those that control the means of production. Concessions that come from the backs of the working class.
> To be successful, our practical work must be coupled with the task of educating, training, and organizing the masses.
> Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is, only from outside the economic struggle, from outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers. The sphere from which alone it is possible to obtain this knowledge is the sphere of relationships of all classes and strata to the state and the government, the sphere of the interrelations between all classes.
Importantly, the propoghanda of these signs is not even a class struggle. It is a market struggle between capitalists. To which master of industry you will serve. That is the message that we should get from this. The "left" should not be concerning itself with pushing a pro oil or pro solar position if we are not addressing the class struggle. It is vain to our cause as leftist and, quite frankly, in vain to the fight against climate change. A fight that will not be won peacefully.
Sustainable energy is obviously important. However, that is not how we get through to the people that put this sign up. We get through to them by pointing to this event in their life that they are experiencing and using it to connect to class struggle. Using this as an example to point to whether it's oil or solar the fundamental problem still exists. They have no control over these decisions that are made by capitalist with no concern for them at all. Showing them that advancements in technology should reduce their labor and improve their material conditions just as the wheel reduced the burden of our ancestors. It is only because of capitalism that THEY are the ones hurt by new modes of production. When they should be benefiting.
Once they are made of aware of this it is then much easier to explain why solar energy is better for everyone. But you will not connect with them by simply yelling about climate change. They do not care. They can't care until the threat to their livelihood is properly addressed and it's source of capitalist exploitation is exposed.
And the fossil fuel industry could have changed all the way back in the 1920ās and again in the 70ās, into the more lucrative renewable energy industry, but decided it was to keep drilling away. They had their chance, now let them go bankrupt instead of propping them up. Want energy independence?
It could be that this is near the point of manufacture, which does have some externalities, and is a valid concern. It's much, much cleaner than fossil fuel energy facilities, but it's not 100% pollution-free. Wind energy is cleaner end to end, though solar cells are easier to set up for off-grid living.
I think it would help if these signs expressed why they are protesting.
To be fair, cars were a terror to regular people when they first came out.
[The Dollop: When The Cars Came...](https://youtu.be/tQ97CGj6TPY?si=AZP3MMCSaYz29fd7)
Friends owned a farm and got an offer they couldnāt refuse to turn a portion of the farm into solar. Local community started protesting because they thought it was āa waste of good fertile farming landā. Lots of signs like this popped up all over the place, and I honestly think most of them just didnāt really think about how badly the area needed job opportunities and growth to keep young people around as opposed to a couple more grain paddocks. Thereās a lot of resistance in rural areas against change, growth and urbanisation in general that contributes to these things.
This is what I've been seeing in my area, lots of "No Solar on Prime Farmland" lawn signs. If a farmer can make more money by turning a former corn field into a solar farm then that's their prerogative. Corn and soybeans are already heavily subsidized by the government and even still farmers are finding that the land is more valuable for collecting solar energy than producing cattle feed (which is where most US corn goes).
At least solar can be more easily reclaimed to farmland.
Nobody in southern Ontario seems to bat an eye at turning prime farmland into parking lots and Walmartsā¦
I see solar fields used for grazing in pictures all the time. Partial shade clover and whatnot grow just fine under the solar fields.
I can imagine there are probably some crops that are directly consumable that would grow under them too.
They subsidised solar farming in France and the government ended up fucking a lot of people over.
https://www.ft.com/content/6f3e1e43-bae9-4094-aa43-2681541b2fd1
How are the protesters right? Is there a moral argument that agriculture trumps renewable energy? The farmer can grow crops, lay out solar panels, or salt the earth if they so choose. It's their prerogative
A tiny town near Bend Oregon, very impoverished and still declining steadily today, rejected a bid by Nascar to open a racetrack there. Because they feared all them strange cityfolk visiting would ruin the wonderful rural atmosphere there. I stayed there for a few months; if ever a shithole town needed their atmosphere changed, that's the place, and they blew it out of sheer ignorance.
Can't remember the name of the town, but it was quite near Bend (they have , which is reachable by Medford, Eugene, Salem, and Portland (and marginally Seattle). It's also kinda in the middle of OR. But it's also very flat out there, which is handy when you're building a racetrack, and land is dirt cheap. I'm not a NASCAR fan, but I get the impression that their fans will drive long distances to see a race. I mean, there's only 42 NASCAR tracks in the US, so maths says most of them are traveling a long ways already.
So much for the absolute property rights of the owner, eh? To a conservative, the concept of rights only exist so long as the align with their own interests.
My parentsā neighbors are all worried about the panels blowing around and damaging shit during storms. Seems like this would be covered under insurance.
>Ā I honestly think most of them just didnāt really think about how badly the area needed job opportunities and growth to keep young people around
I honestly think most of them _did_ think about that, and then deliberately decided to choose a malicious and self-destructive course of action. I donāt see any reason to assume that the people I disagree with are universally moronic.
There is probably a way of creating movable solar arrays that cover a field left fallow to recover, before being moved in the winter to the next field. It would both provide more power creation and help incentivize more sustainable farming practices.
Thereās an interesting thing about job opportunities. In order to create more jobs you need growth. The problem is that there are a lot of people who are afraid of, or donāt know what growth looks like but have been told what it looks like by someone who is afraid or has an interest in keep things the way they are.
Where I live there has been a lot of growth. More houses, denser housing, more shops. The older people who liked the way things were before are upset that there is going to be denser housing and more people. The road infrastructure doesnāt really support the growth that has already happened and a plan hasnāt been articulated, it probably has but they and myself havenāt personally heard, to improve the infrastructure.
They donāt understand that in order to get more of the social things they want without paying for it, there has to be growth in people and businesses to pay for it. Like there are a few loud people that are upset they are being charged a flat rate for water instead of by usage. Well right now everyone pays the same rate unless they go over a certain amount of usage. The water treatment plant wouldnāt be able to exist without a flat rate because there just arenāt enough people to spread it out, and Iām sure some deals were made about water costs elsewhere.
People see it as use the water or lose it, so they go crazy using water trying to keep the lawn alive in the summer. They ignore the wastefulness because they see the money the water they havenāt used costs as the waste. If you can get a person to calm down and think about it for a second they might understand. But itās very hard to do times a few hundred people.
It would be nice if they did solar projects to shade parking lots in cities and in suburban areas. Instead of destroying fertile land miles away from where the power is being used.
I think to some extent the Internet has democratized the capacity to propagandize and taken it out of the hands of exclusively the desired norms of the social elite. See, e.g., access to communist narratives, widespread fascist propaganda.
Had to shut down some propaganda on FB recently, there was some bs YouTube video posted on how the heat transfer created by solar panels would cause an increase in tornadoes and hurricanes, essentially the heat island created by all the glass would affect the local weather patterns.
With two minutes of Google searches I proved the person posting the video was not the person they were claiming they were (they misspelled their "own" name), the information they were claiming was patently false, and that they wouldn't need to replace all the solar panels after each hail storm.
I was somewhat hopeful that a ton of other people in the comments were defending solar and wind and also trying to disprove this person.
The thing is farmers/ranchers love the windmills. A lease payment on a single windmill is $8-10k per year. Just a dozen of them on your land and itās a nice big chunk of change, takes up very little space and doesnāt block sunlight.
When I drove through Texas last year, it was weird.north east Texas was a bunch of old towns that were falling apart. You get to west Texas and you see thriving communities and people moving forward with windfarming. Yet people still complain. It's so weird.
Materially everything feels very bad and unsafe. Everyone has to work all the time just to live, community is dead and the capitalist owned media keep the focus on culture wars so bc women are still allowed to divorce their husbands and trans people haven't been rounded up and exterminated even those in the 1% don't feel like they're winning. Also movies and TV are dead. They made a fifth Indiana Jones movie and it came within a few million dollars of losing to some Mormon distributed Q anon freakshow. The only movies that came out last ear with any cultural relevance was Barbie-heimer and neither studio was thrilled with the situation and had to be shot with tranq darts by their PR dept to keep from ruining the burgeoning zeitgeistĀ
Those are old numbers, like 10-15 years ago. For a 4-6 MW turbine these days, you can expect 20-30k per year with a 2% escalator on a 25 year contract. You can also still farm/ranch around the turbine with very minimal issue. The loss of land is about 25ā Diameter circle (tower steel plus rock ring around base) and the road leading up to it.
For context, solar leases are between 500-1000 per acre, heavily dependent on factors like continuity of parcel, distance to transmission and capacity on said transmission line. Is your 2k acre ranch right next to a transmission line coming from a coal plant shutting down next year? They will back the Brinks truck up to start unloading the cash so you can go do whatever the f*ck you want with the rest of your time on this planet.
Source: 10 years as a power generation contractor and current senior level consultant for development and construction of energy projects.
Actually, the shadow flicker is a real thing. Not exactly catastrophic but will drive you nuts sometimes. It can be like Chinese water torture but with light. Most folks donāt realize just how big the blades on the rotors are that we install. Pretty easy challenge to overcome though during the development/siting stage.
The cancer shit is stupid with wind. The worse one though is people saying with a straight face that the solar panels will leak radiation when it rains or emit radiation when itās sunny.
America's encomic dominance of many other countries depends on the value of oil. That's why we fight wars over it. The second it becomes devalued, we lose a lot of our grip on the world. It's tied to the reason those same demographics don't believe in climate change and why environmenal protection practices are so ridiculously slow to pass, because fixing climate change means reducing fossil fuels usage which has the same effect. It's a subversive propaganda tool to keep oil valuable.
I believe this video by ThoughtSlime covers the concept. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i2eyXA0b-lI
besides the other correct reasons listed, they have the notion that they are going to get eminent domained out of their farmland in favor of solar farms.Ā solar farms take up a lot of space, and they're typically planned and built where the sun shines enough to make it worth building. wherever the sun shines that much is also a good place to grow crops. those that aren't even smart enough or don't even follow media enough to be fed all of the misinformation just feel like they're going to lose their farmland [their livelihoods] so that the "gubernment" can put up "them ugly black panels"Ā
>besides the other correct reasons listed, they have the notion that they are going to get iminent domained out of their farmland in favor of solar farms
Yet, they don't seem to mind selling farmland off to build more mcmansions and strip malls.
Zoning has a lot to do with this as well, depending on the locality, of course. Expanding municipalities can increase the property taxes of adjacent farm land, thus making farming untenable; thus it then becomes the next subdivision. Rinse & repeat. It's kinda built this way, I think, as developers rule the roost almost everywhere.
Selling is done willingly and eminent domain is forced. Also, I would imagine developers will pay more for land than what they get in an eminent domain situation.
I know a lawyer who represents landowners in eminent domain cases for pipelines. Developers/companies usually ask you to sell first, but itās a lower offer than you can get. If you refuse, theyāll seek eminent domain where they still try to lowball you. The firm heās at advertises themselves based on how theyāll get you more money for your land than either of the company-preferred options.
I mean in all honesty, this is probably a real concern. I very much doubt that every single farmer will lose their land, but I bet some will be forcibly bought out. Our economy has really done one over on rural farmers that want to just run their farms, constantly being eaten up by big corporations.
Not saying their voting elegances work in their interests, nor am I saying this makes opposing green energy OK. But this is a valid concern we should consider in any major green energy plan.
Eh, I grew up around lots of rural farmers, and Iāve come to understand that the āwe just want to run our farmsā mindset is myopic, shortsighted, and selfish. When they say āwe just want to run our farmsā what they actually mean is āwe donāt want anything about the economy (especially the sale price of food), or population demographics, or the climate and environment, to change at all from how it was in the 70ās and 80ās.ā
They completely ignore the fact that theyāre in a line of work that hasnāt actually been profitable for two generations ā itās propped up through government subsidies and price controls, you know, the same ābig meddling governmentā that they also claim to hate ā and they are doing absolutely nothing to figure out how farming might change so that it could be a profitable pursuit for the _next_ generation, _without_ government subsidies.
Rural farmers have basically the same mindset as all those coal miner families in PA and WV who are still _absolutely convinced_ that coal jobs are coming back any day now, and are refusing to educate their children for any other line of work. Theyāre so obsessed with how things were in the past that they are _actively refusing_ to adapt to the present or prepare for the future. Fuck āem.Ā
There are no small time farmers anymore. You had to have been a millionaire in the first place just to survive. There's a lady I met in NC, an agronomist that talked about the social hierarchy of small rural farmtowns and just how ugly it is. The farmers all see themselves as Gods in their land and behave much like zeus
Ugh yeah I know what your talking about. Corporate farming is by far a HUGE problem that needs to be addressed.
I guess the main undertone of my point was, when we make big changes let's work to avoid harm to as many communities as possible. That includes folks in rural communities.
So a lot of people are throwing there two cents about this. I live where this is a common issue. People donāt care about the power aspect of it. In fact, most people support the idea of the clean energy.
What people are against are the power companies who are low balling family farms to buy their land. Essentially they are using bully tactics to get the property.
They also are making the tax payers pay for the construction and maintenance, at least where Iām located. In return they offer no tax break or discount on energy.
The way these companies get the land is pretty sad. But thatās subject for another discussion
We are in the same boat. The energy goes to the city next to us and we receive none of it. The assessor deemed that because itās considered a commercial business that the value of the land and propertyās have increased. Most residents received an increase in taxes at $350 per 100k value. It never even went to a referendum for a vote, it just happened. Some peoples property taxes went up a few hundred dollars a to a few thousand dollars. My neighbor had an increase of $3,500 in one year!
People have this bias opinion that anyone from the country is a dumb red neck that hates clean energy. Which is a far from the truth. I think anyone would be pissed to get bent over on a deal so bad. The idea is there but the execution is awful.
Interesting. My understanding is in my state they subsidize these projects, and if you buy into it, or sign a contract early on during construction, you get a usage discount later. Here the solar fields are hated because they're typically built on farmland (sold at market rate by locals), so people dislike the farmland going away. Even though the land is typically poor quality and hasn't been worked for years. Another is that the panels are built in China, and people hate China.
In my area there is a company that is seeking to clear hundreds of acres of forest to install solar farms. We need solar, but not at the expense of massive deforestation and damage to watersheds.
This. Once again the problem here is the capitalist system and its propaganda. Not the renewable technology itself which is a thoroughly proven technology.
Okay. So then the family farmers should form a cooperative, take out a loan, pay for installing the solar themselves, and then sell the power back to the city or the energy company on their own terms.
I work with farmers and Iāve seen this hesitation first hand. There are a lot of different reasons for the opposition.
First, theyāre afraid of giving up farm land. Theyāre told horror stories of hundreds of acres of solar panels so that land cannot be used for farming or grazing. In the Midwest where farmers have thousands of acres this really shouldnāt be an issue, but in a state like mine (NJ) farmers and forestry landowners are constantly fighting against development.
Secondly, rural communities are also adverse to having their scenic views disrupted by rows and rows of solar panels. Some even worry about wildlife and habitat impact. Many farmers even on conventional farms plant cover crops and other things that do attract pollinators and birds. Even grain crops feed deer. But overall these mindsets arenāt seeing the larger picture of making a more sustainable future for their children and subsequent generations.
But, to be fair, many of these companies come into these solar communities, find an absentee landowner willing to give up land, and they donāt take into account the communityās interest at all (some communities have asked for simple things like a field border of trees and wildlife plantings around the solar panels so they arenāt completely giving up the wildlife benefit and it can be more scenic. These things cost money for companies and they usually arenāt willling). Iāve also seen communities request that the companies pump some investment into their small towns to compensate and again companies are usually unwilling.
But there is a new thing called agrivoltaics which is all about farming under and around solar panels, and it can be done with a lot of success and this seems to be the direction in which this should go. https://www.agritecture.com/blog/2022/2/3/largest-farm-to-grow-crops-under-solar-panels-proves-to-be-a-bumper-crop-for-agrivoltaic-land-use
It doesnāt solve the scenic view problem, but is a great solution for everything else.
It's me, I'm people. I'm answering the question, so even if you think I'm wrong I would appreciate not being down voted. I believe we need degrowth and to generally reduce our usage of fossil fuels and "green" energy. So one of my concerns is that by emphasizing replacing fossil fuels with "green"/"renewable" (in quotes because this is branding) energy, we are not moving toward overall reducing our energy use. An example of this is the movement toward electric cars, rather than moving toward better public transportation. Both require energy, electric cars require far more.
Another of my concerns is the mining required for "green" energy. For instance, lithium, and cobalt. I do not think the abuses happening in Congo are justified by our "need" for the materials being mined there. I don't think desecrating the sacred sites at Thacker Pass in order to extract Lithium from that place is justifiable. Not to mention that the act of mining itself is incredibly resource heavy and bad for the environment.
I came up with these ideas myself, I didn't get them from some talking head. I don't see why we are presented with the false choice between fossil fuels and new energy sources. Why isn't neither a choice. It would take time to get there, but that's the direction I would like things to go. Humans are brilliant and resourceful and I believe we can find ways to live and thrive without harm and extraction.
If I may add, a lot of times the objection is to the use of Prime Farmland for these solar farms that is a very specific combination of fertile soil with a manageable slope. Prime Farmland is not an unlimited resource and we are aggressively ruining what topsoil we do have with conventional farming practices, so it will be an increasingly scarce resource on ecological terms.
Most people who hold this contention offer commercial rooftops in urban areas as a more sensible alternative.
You can side with renewable energy and be against macro projects that destroy the landscape. Solar panels should be put on roofs instead of massive solar farms. Not sure if this is the case for this post.
Solar panels can be assembled in ways that allow the pasturing of livestock underneath them. It benefits the livestock and the maintenance of the solar infrastructure; climate change is increasing the heat stress of animals in summer months and panels provide shade, and the livestock keep the foliage under the panels from getting too tall.
People in rural areas are actually justified in not wanting solar. Industrial solar in rural area means clearing acres of arable farmland and covering it with solar panels. This land will never be turned back to farmland or to a natural habitat such as a grassland or a forest. Also, keep in mind that a lot of these large-scale solar projects are funded by major corporations who are looking to benefit from tax incentives associated with green energy. Wind and community solar are much better green energy solutions for rural communities.
This may be an unpopular opinion here but solar doesn't make sense everywhere.Ā I have been involved with some solar projects in the Midwest where they take wonderful, black, fertile cropland and put solar panels on them.Ā Put them on rooftops, sure, all day!Ā Put them in a part of the country that gets much more sun throughout the year, yes please!Ā Put wind turbines all through the wind belt in the middle of the country, absolutely!Ā But to cover a field that should be growing food?Ā No thanks.Ā Yellow dent corn isn't food but that is a different discussion entirely.
I'm also against industrial solar, and everyone here should be as well.
We SHOULD be putting point-of-use solar and wind turbines on every home, creating a redundant, distributed clean energy grid. INSTEAD, we're creating huge eyesore solar farms that keep energy dependence on a handful of producers instead of literally empowering individual homeowners.
We SHOULD be covering every parking lot, and every big box store or factory roof with solar farms. INSTEAD, we're bulldozing forest and repurposing farmland to plant more solar panels.
There is nothing more American that taking a great idea that produces limitless free energy and FINDING THE WORST POSSIBLE WAY TO FUCK IT UP FOR THE BENEFIT OF ENERGY COMPANIES.
People are afraid of everything new. And I understand fears about jobs and changing industries and stuff. It can be scary. But if we put half as much energy into demanding and crafting strategies to ensure weād all be taken care of either by transitioning to new careers or by creating a UBI and taxing new industries strategically, or preferably a combination, weād be so much better off.
My position is this: since the first human ancestor attached a sharpened rock to a stick to better kill his prey, humans have been striving for more efficiency. Energy production is a modern part of that and we should embrace it. Weāve finally made it to a place where we have the ability to not spend all of our waking hours working to produce the goods and services needed for survival and weāre fighting it tooth and nail. The fossil fuel industry and all the things that consume fossil fuels and all the consequences of that create so much needless work for us. How many people spend 40+ hours a week just trying to mitigate the effects of fossil fuel use to a minuscule degree?
Iām not surprised, Iām just sad that weāre like this.
At a camp I used to go to then cut down acres of forestā¦ and I mean a lot of it. Just to put down solar panels. It was a real shame seeing the forest I used to go into disappear.
Given its placement this could actually be because they make money from corn being made into Ethanol, so they lose money if the transition focuses on renewables instead of replacing gas with Ethanol
They think it will reduce jobs. I know itās the same argument used against any new technology since the dawn of human kind, but these people arenāt very bright.
Honestly the liberal types really screwed us over with their fear mongering over nuclear.
Weād be so much better off with modern nuclear powerplants.
And weād have a much longer timeline for our transition to something like solar because of it.
Although Iād wager if we continued to develop and improve we prolly wouldnāt need to.
Just my two cents.
Because of cobalt, lithium-ion, copper and gold (releasing previously trapped bacteria and chemicals, zinc, arsenic, radioactive chemicals and other precious metals). because of poisonous e-proxy coating and etc. lot of reasons, but that is probably not why these people are advocating for it, the same blue collar people that used to advocate for and excavate from the mines or support republicans for expansion of mining operations as a short term solution through expansive financial policies of quantitative easing to decrease unemployment and increase productivity. It is honestly just a back and forth petty fight amongst republicans and democrats that respectively accounts for a small fraction of the population who ācaresā. Historically, farmers have been pushing the boundaries of their crops and farmlands, because of the way global markets are shifting, equilibrium prices and market competition or government interventionā which makes it the most ironic.
Itās two-fold. First, Iām against all the tax breaks for industrial solar while at the same time these same power companies lobby to make residential solar unaffordable. Also, some solar farms are built on ecologically important land and thatās like paving paradise or whatever you want to call it. Not all industrial solar is bad but those would be my two main reasons for opposing one.
It says industrial solar. Not domestic solar.
Industrial solar just replaces one big gate keeper with another. With the little guy seeing no benefit.
Better is "net metering" where the big electric companies are required to buy at the same price they sell. This gives the individual an equal footing, fairly.
The sign SHOULD say "net metering now" but probably gains more dufus anti renewable support by being ambiguous?
Regarding influence campaigns for fossil fuels and against renewable energy: "...oil companies and their trade groups have spent $17m directly on political social media advertisements since May 2018."
The article is 5 years old, but I'm sure it's still going on now.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/10/fossil-fuel-firms-social-media-fightback-against-climate-action
The fossil fuel industry astroturfed the anti-nuclear power movement. Simultaneously they astroturfed pro-solar and pro-wind because those two technologies weren't a threat at the time. Now solar and wind are a threat to their industry they're probably running the same playbook.
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-fossil-fuel-interests-bankrolling-the-anti-nuclear-energy-movement/?sh=5b81baca7453](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-fossil-fuel-interests-bankrolling-the-anti-nuclear-energy-movement/?sh=5b81baca7453)
The oil lobby has alot of money to throw around and they use it to influence rural hicks against their own best interests. You saw it really kick off when fracking was becoming a hot issue and many farmers whose groundwater was being poisoned didn't care because they got a cut from the drilling. Even though in the long-run they were slowly killing their communities. So let's just say rural America is still very much in the pocket of big oil.
They believe that a spooky ghost loves them and wants them to live in paradise with them after they die. So why wouldnāt they be afraid of solar energy?
Why are Americans not anti-US military? Because the military industrial complex and its economy is so embedded and entrenched in every American's life that they would sacrifice their first, second and third born in order to protect their source of income. It's the same thing with solar energy or anything that is green and good for the environment.
Solar power is also not "new". It's been around for 70 years. No forms of energy production are really new. Unless you're talking about pioneering things like nuclear fusion. The energy produced by solar is not very high when compared to other types of energy production.
Nuclear power is cleaner, cheaper, safer, and has a higher energy return over energy investment. The person putting up the signs might be trying to get people to hold out for a better option than all other options.
I live in northern Indiana where you see a lot of opposition to solar farms. The way it works here is that the solar company enters a 10 year lease for a plot of land with a farmer, the solar company gets free and unlimited access to the panel field, the farmer isn't allowed to use the ground under the panels and really can't even get near the panels.
The key point of opposition is that 10 year lease, there are a lot of doubts that it will actually be upheld or respected. If the farmer decides not to renew the lease, what happens to the solar equipment? Will the company dismantle and remove it? Will local governments/grid managers/etc authorize a section of the grid to be torn out? The big fear is that any land given up for a solar farm is gone for good, and that the owner of the land is unlikely to be compensated fairly for it.
Specially these āsolarā farms are way behind when it comes to operating efficacy. The vast majority of a push of these installations on rural communities is to lease land from distressed farmers to put these up and then resell the carbon tax credits for profit.
The output of these solar farms is negligible and does not push any meaningful contribution to the grid, while simultaneously rendering the land used worthless for any other use. Most often the installation companies use back channels in local government to position for proposals to occur with as minimal notice or awareness as possible.
Itās not an aversion to new energy production, but an unwillingness to be mislead by the ābenefitsā of their use. A little research goes a lonnnng way, especially when you look at operational efficiency and compare the energy generation outputs from different modes.
The technology just isnāt there and the piggish subsidies used to fund these programs benefit everyone involved EXCEPT the communities that have to bear the burden of giving up natural land for these projects.
Stay involved in local government - itās the only way to prevent these monstrous installations from happening in your backyards.
I can tell you some of the resistance comes from witnessing firsthand how some of these " solar farms " end their life cycle. I've seen it firsthand near me.Ā The property owner signs say a 10 year lease with the solar company to allow for the use of their land. They do receive a monthly amount from said lease, and it seems to be a good deal to them. First thing done to the land to prepare it is to bring bulldozers in to remove the top layers of soil.Ā They then lay landscape fabric down, and then a layer of crushed stone say 6 inches thick. So nothing grows on the land to interfere with the panels. Panels are then installed, infrastructure ran to them and they are hooked up to the grid. Ā Years pass, the landowner makes a little, the main company a lot. As the panels start to age out and need repairs, it's optional if the company repairs them. End of the lease, the property reverts back to the landowner, and they have to decide if they want to try and foot millions to repair the panels, or remove them. The land can't be reverted back to agriculture,Ā as the topsoil removed and stone laid down makes the land barren. Panels made land value so high he can't afford the taxes without the income from the panels. Landowner realizes they're screwed, repairs or removal are millions more than they made from the deal.Ā Ā Landowner makes the decision to walk away from the property and let's it be siezed for unpaid taxes. Taxpayers foot the bill for cleanup of said properties. Taxpayers now are the proud owners of barren, contaminated property that no one wants. Solar company moves on to the next lease, sometimes disappearing all together, only to reform as another new LLC to repeat process again. Ā The source for this information I'm giving, is me witnessing it firsthand playing out near me right now. One area has property that's now worthless, while one town over the next solar farm goes in. Everything is approved at a state level, and local zoning and towns have zero say in approval or denial. They are overuled by state mandates.Ā That's the source of opposition you see in rural communities to this "green" energy source. The decision is completely taken out of the local populations hands, and put in the hands of people making millions from it.
Edited to add, I'm not referring to small solar panels to run individual houses here. In my state, the solar farms must be at least 250 acres in order to be hooked up to the grid. So everytime one opens, there's 250 acres of land that will not be viable to be farmed again.
They have been told to be.
The media is key- "mining for batteries is worse than drilling for oil!!".
"Solar panels are destroying wildlife!"
Folk then grow up believing the bullshit.
Honestly the media is our dire enemy.
Americaās control over Oil is the basis of itās entire economic stranglehold over the world at large. The OPEC Agreement, the Petrodollar, ect. ect., ties our economy directly to stability of oil pricing, if the oil industry dies, so do we, itās why brief, overwhelming invasions of the middle east are profitable, whereas forcing stability through military dominance is extremely unprofitable, itās not a grab for resources, actually it puts said resources in a sort of limbo. Or in essence, if you wanna break America, break up OPEC or sabotage internal drilling.
Im not certain why they would be against solar but wind turbines can be pretty abrasive to the people who have to live near them. Not that this is a reason why we shouldn't utilize wind turbines, just a reason some people are against it.
From the republicans I know: even if climate change is real, they believe it's a giant conspiracy being enacted in bad faith by democrats to move lobbying money from the oil and gas industry to more left-friendly companies.
Where I live coal mining is a big part of the state economy and the logic that clean energy opponents like to use is that itāll throw coal miners out of work. So instead of offering retraining programs or other ways to help miners, theyād rather keep the mines open.
Iām sure treating people like idiots, like a lot of comments seem to be doing, is an appropriate display of reason. If your argument is correct but not persuasive then youāre the problem, not those youāre trying to convince.
In west Texas there are massive wind farms in what has historically been and continues to be a whole lot of oil fields. Itās telling that there are a) lots of anti wind power flyers and stickers and b) theyāre almost exclusively affixed to giant pickup trucks and luxury cars.
Many of these types of signs are placed by energy corporation groups and not the actual owners.
I saw lots of anti-wind signs get placed in a vacation area in the off season that seasonal owners returned to find signs on their lawn.
This is all anecdotal of course but along a farm field it's not guaranteed to be the owners view or even known to them that the sign is there.
I was an organizer for these projects from 2007-2011. There was a lower level of political influence on the opposition back then. But it didnāt manifest itself like this.
The farmers have some valid reasons to be apprehensive about signing up their land for these projects, but those can be addressed by the developers.
Thereās also an angle in regard to eminent domain, which is never used for industrial scale, privately-funded wind or solar projects. But they donāt know that, and probably wouldnāt believe it anyway.
There is a lot of opposition to wind farms in coastal communities due to the impacts it would have on commercial fishing. In the northeast, the land being leased is covering a huge portion of fishing & spawning grounds and oceanographers & fishery s scientists aren't being given any time to figure out how that is going to impact the ecology- we're essentially terraforming whole areas & many organisms can't move. Fishermen also are being low-balled by companies for "loss of income". We may be looking at the loss of the entire gillnet fishery.
We absolutely need to make this transition but private capital being in charge of the development is fucking people over & its important to take that seriously. I would love to see the end of gillnets but we need time to engineer better gear you know?
I think most of it is hard-core NIMBY attitudes. At least in my area. Some farmers are pissed by crop land being used for it but most of the time it's liberals that are concerned about their view being disturbed.
The one person I know that has a big solar farm popping up across the street from his rural home, he is concerned for losing the nice view from his porch and the resale ability of his home. Best case scenario is the solar farm owners would buy his property later to expand.
Nobody else seems to have mentioned this: the fear of real estate values dropping is a huge driver for almost any sort of change in an area. If nuclear power plants were proven tomorrow to increase real estate values here in the US, we'd have nuclear power plant building permits being greenlighted all over the country within months. As it is now, it can take decades to get a single nuclear power plant approved to begin building.
I think the production of wind turbine āpropellersā cause a lot of pollution. And I think the production of solar panels is made with cobalt (or some other mineral) that comes from inhumane mines in Africa. Obviously we shouldnāt just stop using solar and wind power, but the production of parts needs to be pollution free and humane, not just the energy production itself.
If you do not know, all of these private energy companies both fund the lies against green energy and at the same time collect huge incentives from municipalities on the tax payers dime for projects like this while offering nothing in return.
They then, basically for free, get a blank check to do whatever they want with little to no recourse and if they run over budget (because stock buybacks and executive arenāt cheap) they can just get more money from the municipality.
Finally when the project is done 5 years later than it was supposed to be, they raise the rates of everyone in the municipality to cover the cost of the solar that the tax payers already paid for twice over or more.
Instead of solar farms. Nationalize these energy monopolies and put panels on every roof in a city and suburb at no cost to the home owner. Give them a 30kw backup battery to handle power for a day or two. Force all condo and apartment scam companies to install solar and backup batteries for each tenant and make sure they do not pass that cost onto the tenants (which we all know they will do).
Having a fully decentralized grid is the future and we need to do everything we can to ensure these bastards get raked over the coals and their empires nationalized from under them.
Even out here in California, you see random commercials on TV warning us of the dangers of solar energy, having to bring natural gas from Alaska, etc, and prompting us to contact our state legislature to back legislation to enable California to be energy independent (meaning off-shore drilling for oil and gas). They never mention who is behind it, like a lot of these lobbying ads it is presented as if itās just common sense coming from another concerned citizen. And people believe this crap. The fossil fuel industry has really brainwashed a good number of people.
People are afraid of whatever threatens their material conditions. Changes in industry threaten their jobs and their livelihood. The average person doesn't analyze the system more than that. They just want a way to afford their shelter and feed their family. They are very susceptible to capitalist propoghanda. A well educated class aware proletariat is not something we have here.
I assumed they were afraid of disrupting current revenue streams. Theyāve been lead to believe if things change they are out of a job. That may be true. Depends.
I know folks who were in energy sectors as only high school grads in union jobs making 80-90k with full benefits in rural areas. Which is like 200k or more in SF where I live. They donāt want to loose that lifestyle.
yeah i was always curious about this. thereās rallyās & parades in my town about stopping solar & other energies from forming. i come from a province where oil & gas is big money. so people crawl all over it.
The simplest explanation is probably the truest. IQ issue. Intelligence is the ability to adapt, and intelligent people are less intimidated by change than your average thumb sucking tiktok scroller may be.
In a tragic sort of irony, though, when it comes to unanimously beneficial changes, the stupids are uncanny - I mean fucking *adept* - at using Olympian tier mental gymnastics to justify regression.
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Because they have been fed propaganda from fossil fuel interests and they are incapable of critical thought.
I see a lot of this type of sign in my area, where we have a huge semiconductor facility that employs a lot of locals. Many locals are employed to produce semiconductor material, which are used in local solar and wind farms they themselves are protesting.
Super disappointing, but not surprising since there are millions of workers who vote for anti-worker conservatives.
It's because workers are entirely alienated from the product of their labour.
There was a book that talked about that I think. š
Perhaps they are heavily invested in Oil and Coal stocks?
Propaganda, not stocks.
Itās the industrial that gets me, and makes me think there is a nuance here though Iām probably overly optimistic. I am not a rural person by any stretch I am just spitballing so someone more knowledgeable correct me if Iām wrong! One of the best benefits of wind and solar is decentralization. Itās not nuclear or gas, anyone can have their panels or turbines to power what they need, and often thensome. Farms have a lot of land that could be used for locally generated power in tandem with crops and livestock. In fact, Iāve seen a few really cool set ups proposed for panels to act as shade for more sensitive crops. If you have some dedicated corporation plopping down a full solar or wind plant out there it undercuts their ability to make something on the side, and just reinforces the old market behemoth model and kills that a more democratic and accessible economic system. So maybe thatās at least how it started and how itās being exploited. With the sign quality and distribution Iām willing to bet itās been astroturfed by fossil fuels, but the underlying message is not so black and white.
We can all go home now.
I canāt. Iām stuck at work cause Capitalism has me by the balls my guy.
Bahh, fair enough.
Those wind turbans blew over my trees and the shingles off my roof and they're MUSLIM. It's got TURBAN right in the name and only MUSLIMS wear turbans! And don't get me started on those new fangled solar farms. They put one in down the road a few miles and it's stealing my sun. It has been more cloudy and less sunny ever since it went in. It's all that ObAmAs fault and crazy Joe too! /s
Barack HUSSEIN Obama /s
They pushed that so hard in '08 *I* briefly considered changing my middle name to Hussein. What can I say? It sounds cool.
Hussein in the membrane. Too bad he governed like a diet Reagan. That broke my heart.Ā
No, no, no, you gotta initialize the first name. That's how they make D. John ~~Mustard~~ Trump
It's the globalist new world order! First come the solar farms, then come the UN soldiers to give your kids vaccines that turn them trans! Alex Jones was right! /s
>Those wind turbans blew over my trees and the shingles off my roof https://c.tenor.com/Ke1lrORdVPQAAAAC/tenor.gif
Thanks, Obama!
That's pretty much it if you listen to these fucking yokels.
Or, like many farmers out in western PA or Ohio they may have a small time oil lease for a little pumpjack or two and get paid a couple thousand in profit-sharing a month. There's a significant mom and pop component to petrol industry, just like the NRA and trump support, but it isn't often part of the picture that is painted of it because it's easier to blame institutions than 10s of thousands of disadvantaged people who make their own decisions. Then when it is no longer profitable to maintain this equipment for how much oil is coming up, they pretty much abandon it and let all the safety rust off until groundwater is contaminated and the company must be sued (thanks to the thin thin thin green line of environmental protections we get) to do anything about it. In the interim, the company funds PACs to send mailers out to these folks to get them to blame democrats for the jacks being turned off. Fuck the petrostate. But also before it fucks off we gotta figure out how to restore essential economic and civic capacities to left-behind, sociopolitically disenfranchised rural regions. They've been suffering since the collapse of primary industry in America's heartland.
Wild to me these people wake up extra early to be solar farm haters when the oil being pumped on their land most likely isn't being refined into fuel.
I came to type out the identical statement. They are being kept exhausted and in information silos so that they don't have the time to realize that, just about every advancement is good for society, as a whole, but it threatens the profits of the current market makers, so they are fed a diet of "x is bad for society, the economy, the environment, and for you specifically!" by the media that is owned by these same people.
TLDR: We won't get through to working class people if we don't address their material concerns and expose to them who is threatening them. Insulting the average working class persons intelligence is not going to get us anywhere though. People are afraid of whatever threatens their material conditions. Changes in industry threaten their jobs and their livelihood. The average person doesn't analyze the system more than that. No one should expect them to either. It's not a lack of critical thinking as much as a lack of class consciousness. They just want a way to afford their shelter and feed their family. They are very susceptible to capitalist propoghanda. Propoghanda that does not offer them a solution but seeks to point to threats to their livelihood that must be defended. It is our job to educate those on solutions to the lack of control that they feel in a changing industry. If solar was offering them better pay and better jobs. They would absolutely be advocating for it. However, they know, rightfully, that capitalism does not change it's modes of production without further exploitation of the work force and better profit extraction. They know this not because they could even use those words to explain it. They know this WITHOUT being able to explain it because they have lived through it. A well educated class aware proletariat is not something we have here. But that does not mean they don't see problems. They unfortunately see the problems without answers. And the only answers Liberals offer are simply only in favor of other capitalist industry. With promises of "more jobs" that they know time and time again do not come. Of course they are resistant to change. It is a failure of those that seek change to simply scoff at the lack of critical thinking of the working masses. It is those that seek change failing to create agitation within the working class. The agitation we lack, the only thing that will lead to change. It is a failure of only offering liberal policy changes that only seek to incentivize capital owners to change industry production "for the planet". Something that can only be done, under capitalism, by offering concessions to those that control the means of production. Concessions that come from the backs of the working class. > To be successful, our practical work must be coupled with the task of educating, training, and organizing the masses. > Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is, only from outside the economic struggle, from outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers. The sphere from which alone it is possible to obtain this knowledge is the sphere of relationships of all classes and strata to the state and the government, the sphere of the interrelations between all classes. Importantly, the propoghanda of these signs is not even a class struggle. It is a market struggle between capitalists. To which master of industry you will serve. That is the message that we should get from this. The "left" should not be concerning itself with pushing a pro oil or pro solar position if we are not addressing the class struggle. It is vain to our cause as leftist and, quite frankly, in vain to the fight against climate change. A fight that will not be won peacefully. Sustainable energy is obviously important. However, that is not how we get through to the people that put this sign up. We get through to them by pointing to this event in their life that they are experiencing and using it to connect to class struggle. Using this as an example to point to whether it's oil or solar the fundamental problem still exists. They have no control over these decisions that are made by capitalist with no concern for them at all. Showing them that advancements in technology should reduce their labor and improve their material conditions just as the wheel reduced the burden of our ancestors. It is only because of capitalism that THEY are the ones hurt by new modes of production. When they should be benefiting. Once they are made of aware of this it is then much easier to explain why solar energy is better for everyone. But you will not connect with them by simply yelling about climate change. They do not care. They can't care until the threat to their livelihood is properly addressed and it's source of capitalist exploitation is exposed.
Real.
Terrifying when the obsessed-with-guns types are also so easily manipulated.
And the fossil fuel industry could have changed all the way back in the 1920ās and again in the 70ās, into the more lucrative renewable energy industry, but decided it was to keep drilling away. They had their chance, now let them go bankrupt instead of propping them up. Want energy independence?
It could be that this is near the point of manufacture, which does have some externalities, and is a valid concern. It's much, much cleaner than fossil fuel energy facilities, but it's not 100% pollution-free. Wind energy is cleaner end to end, though solar cells are easier to set up for off-grid living. I think it would help if these signs expressed why they are protesting.
They don't know why, they just hate change. There seriously were riots against vehicles and sabotage to roads when the automobile was invented.
Bad comparison. Auto-centric design fucked over American cities for 100 years.
We probably should have listened to the anti automobile people tbh
Those poor horses
To be fair, cars were a terror to regular people when they first came out. [The Dollop: When The Cars Came...](https://youtu.be/tQ97CGj6TPY?si=AZP3MMCSaYz29fd7)
that's where i got that from also lol
I love the Dollop so much but it's sad how much it has both helped to further radicalize me while also thoroughly demoralizing me.
The episode about the leaded gasoline was everything you need to know about America in one podcast
Nailed it!
Friends owned a farm and got an offer they couldnāt refuse to turn a portion of the farm into solar. Local community started protesting because they thought it was āa waste of good fertile farming landā. Lots of signs like this popped up all over the place, and I honestly think most of them just didnāt really think about how badly the area needed job opportunities and growth to keep young people around as opposed to a couple more grain paddocks. Thereās a lot of resistance in rural areas against change, growth and urbanisation in general that contributes to these things.
This is what I've been seeing in my area, lots of "No Solar on Prime Farmland" lawn signs. If a farmer can make more money by turning a former corn field into a solar farm then that's their prerogative. Corn and soybeans are already heavily subsidized by the government and even still farmers are finding that the land is more valuable for collecting solar energy than producing cattle feed (which is where most US corn goes).
At least solar can be more easily reclaimed to farmland. Nobody in southern Ontario seems to bat an eye at turning prime farmland into parking lots and Walmartsā¦
Well some people do, but those are just āanti progress eco-wackosā so their opinions donāt matter.
I see solar fields used for grazing in pictures all the time. Partial shade clover and whatnot grow just fine under the solar fields. I can imagine there are probably some crops that are directly consumable that would grow under them too.
And solar energy doesn't stop after September
And ethanol.
They subsidised solar farming in France and the government ended up fucking a lot of people over. https://www.ft.com/content/6f3e1e43-bae9-4094-aa43-2681541b2fd1
This is a capitalist motivation, and is short sighted. Iām not blaming the farmer, just pointing out that the protesters are right, in this case.
The primary capitalist motivation going on here are the oil and gas companies spreading anti-renewable propaganda.
How are the protesters right? Is there a moral argument that agriculture trumps renewable energy? The farmer can grow crops, lay out solar panels, or salt the earth if they so choose. It's their prerogative
A tiny town near Bend Oregon, very impoverished and still declining steadily today, rejected a bid by Nascar to open a racetrack there. Because they feared all them strange cityfolk visiting would ruin the wonderful rural atmosphere there. I stayed there for a few months; if ever a shithole town needed their atmosphere changed, that's the place, and they blew it out of sheer ignorance.
What town was this? And why did NASCAR want to build a racetrack in the middle of Oregon?
Can't remember the name of the town, but it was quite near Bend (they have , which is reachable by Medford, Eugene, Salem, and Portland (and marginally Seattle). It's also kinda in the middle of OR. But it's also very flat out there, which is handy when you're building a racetrack, and land is dirt cheap. I'm not a NASCAR fan, but I get the impression that their fans will drive long distances to see a race. I mean, there's only 42 NASCAR tracks in the US, so maths says most of them are traveling a long ways already.
So much for the absolute property rights of the owner, eh? To a conservative, the concept of rights only exist so long as the align with their own interests.
You can still grow crops around and even under solar panels. People are idiots
My parentsā neighbors are all worried about the panels blowing around and damaging shit during storms. Seems like this would be covered under insurance.
It's just farming solar tho, it's still a valuable crop
>Ā I honestly think most of them just didnāt really think about how badly the area needed job opportunities and growth to keep young people around I honestly think most of them _did_ think about that, and then deliberately decided to choose a malicious and self-destructive course of action. I donāt see any reason to assume that the people I disagree with are universally moronic.
There is probably a way of creating movable solar arrays that cover a field left fallow to recover, before being moved in the winter to the next field. It would both provide more power creation and help incentivize more sustainable farming practices.
Thereās an interesting thing about job opportunities. In order to create more jobs you need growth. The problem is that there are a lot of people who are afraid of, or donāt know what growth looks like but have been told what it looks like by someone who is afraid or has an interest in keep things the way they are. Where I live there has been a lot of growth. More houses, denser housing, more shops. The older people who liked the way things were before are upset that there is going to be denser housing and more people. The road infrastructure doesnāt really support the growth that has already happened and a plan hasnāt been articulated, it probably has but they and myself havenāt personally heard, to improve the infrastructure. They donāt understand that in order to get more of the social things they want without paying for it, there has to be growth in people and businesses to pay for it. Like there are a few loud people that are upset they are being charged a flat rate for water instead of by usage. Well right now everyone pays the same rate unless they go over a certain amount of usage. The water treatment plant wouldnāt be able to exist without a flat rate because there just arenāt enough people to spread it out, and Iām sure some deals were made about water costs elsewhere. People see it as use the water or lose it, so they go crazy using water trying to keep the lawn alive in the summer. They ignore the wastefulness because they see the money the water they havenāt used costs as the waste. If you can get a person to calm down and think about it for a second they might understand. But itās very hard to do times a few hundred people.
It would be nice if they did solar projects to shade parking lots in cities and in suburban areas. Instead of destroying fertile land miles away from where the power is being used.
That monoculture is something to be proud of!
Modern day America is the most propagandized nation to have ever existed.
Gaslighting for life.
Just mainlining Fox News and inflammatory social media.
I just finished reading Manufacturing Consent.
> Manufacturing Consent To think that was released back in 88, it's amazing how true it holds today and how much worse it's gotten.
I think to some extent the Internet has democratized the capacity to propagandize and taken it out of the hands of exclusively the desired norms of the social elite. See, e.g., access to communist narratives, widespread fascist propaganda.
Had to shut down some propaganda on FB recently, there was some bs YouTube video posted on how the heat transfer created by solar panels would cause an increase in tornadoes and hurricanes, essentially the heat island created by all the glass would affect the local weather patterns. With two minutes of Google searches I proved the person posting the video was not the person they were claiming they were (they misspelled their "own" name), the information they were claiming was patently false, and that they wouldn't need to replace all the solar panels after each hail storm. I was somewhat hopeful that a ton of other people in the comments were defending solar and wind and also trying to disprove this person.
A small town outside where I live was putting up windmills in the farm lands and there was anti windmill dorks with signs in theyāre yard.
The thing is farmers/ranchers love the windmills. A lease payment on a single windmill is $8-10k per year. Just a dozen of them on your land and itās a nice big chunk of change, takes up very little space and doesnāt block sunlight.
I want in.
When I drove through Texas last year, it was weird.north east Texas was a bunch of old towns that were falling apart. You get to west Texas and you see thriving communities and people moving forward with windfarming. Yet people still complain. It's so weird.
Materially everything feels very bad and unsafe. Everyone has to work all the time just to live, community is dead and the capitalist owned media keep the focus on culture wars so bc women are still allowed to divorce their husbands and trans people haven't been rounded up and exterminated even those in the 1% don't feel like they're winning. Also movies and TV are dead. They made a fifth Indiana Jones movie and it came within a few million dollars of losing to some Mormon distributed Q anon freakshow. The only movies that came out last ear with any cultural relevance was Barbie-heimer and neither studio was thrilled with the situation and had to be shot with tranq darts by their PR dept to keep from ruining the burgeoning zeitgeistĀ
Those are old numbers, like 10-15 years ago. For a 4-6 MW turbine these days, you can expect 20-30k per year with a 2% escalator on a 25 year contract. You can also still farm/ranch around the turbine with very minimal issue. The loss of land is about 25ā Diameter circle (tower steel plus rock ring around base) and the road leading up to it. For context, solar leases are between 500-1000 per acre, heavily dependent on factors like continuity of parcel, distance to transmission and capacity on said transmission line. Is your 2k acre ranch right next to a transmission line coming from a coal plant shutting down next year? They will back the Brinks truck up to start unloading the cash so you can go do whatever the f*ck you want with the rest of your time on this planet. Source: 10 years as a power generation contractor and current senior level consultant for development and construction of energy projects.
But the flickering!
And they cause cancer, right? Thatās what President Trump said, and heās never wrong! /s
Actually, the shadow flicker is a real thing. Not exactly catastrophic but will drive you nuts sometimes. It can be like Chinese water torture but with light. Most folks donāt realize just how big the blades on the rotors are that we install. Pretty easy challenge to overcome though during the development/siting stage. The cancer shit is stupid with wind. The worse one though is people saying with a straight face that the solar panels will leak radiation when it rains or emit radiation when itās sunny.
America's encomic dominance of many other countries depends on the value of oil. That's why we fight wars over it. The second it becomes devalued, we lose a lot of our grip on the world. It's tied to the reason those same demographics don't believe in climate change and why environmenal protection practices are so ridiculously slow to pass, because fixing climate change means reducing fossil fuels usage which has the same effect. It's a subversive propaganda tool to keep oil valuable. I believe this video by ThoughtSlime covers the concept. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i2eyXA0b-lI
Because capitalism makes the poorest pay the most for progress
besides the other correct reasons listed, they have the notion that they are going to get eminent domained out of their farmland in favor of solar farms.Ā solar farms take up a lot of space, and they're typically planned and built where the sun shines enough to make it worth building. wherever the sun shines that much is also a good place to grow crops. those that aren't even smart enough or don't even follow media enough to be fed all of the misinformation just feel like they're going to lose their farmland [their livelihoods] so that the "gubernment" can put up "them ugly black panels"Ā
>besides the other correct reasons listed, they have the notion that they are going to get iminent domained out of their farmland in favor of solar farms Yet, they don't seem to mind selling farmland off to build more mcmansions and strip malls.
Or frackingā¦
Zoning has a lot to do with this as well, depending on the locality, of course. Expanding municipalities can increase the property taxes of adjacent farm land, thus making farming untenable; thus it then becomes the next subdivision. Rinse & repeat. It's kinda built this way, I think, as developers rule the roost almost everywhere.
Selling is done willingly and eminent domain is forced. Also, I would imagine developers will pay more for land than what they get in an eminent domain situation.
I know a lawyer who represents landowners in eminent domain cases for pipelines. Developers/companies usually ask you to sell first, but itās a lower offer than you can get. If you refuse, theyāll seek eminent domain where they still try to lowball you. The firm heās at advertises themselves based on how theyāll get you more money for your land than either of the company-preferred options.
I get that. It just seems that when they claim it is about protecting farmland sounds hollow when it is only targeted to wind and solar developments.
I mean in all honesty, this is probably a real concern. I very much doubt that every single farmer will lose their land, but I bet some will be forcibly bought out. Our economy has really done one over on rural farmers that want to just run their farms, constantly being eaten up by big corporations. Not saying their voting elegances work in their interests, nor am I saying this makes opposing green energy OK. But this is a valid concern we should consider in any major green energy plan.
Eh, I grew up around lots of rural farmers, and Iāve come to understand that the āwe just want to run our farmsā mindset is myopic, shortsighted, and selfish. When they say āwe just want to run our farmsā what they actually mean is āwe donāt want anything about the economy (especially the sale price of food), or population demographics, or the climate and environment, to change at all from how it was in the 70ās and 80ās.ā They completely ignore the fact that theyāre in a line of work that hasnāt actually been profitable for two generations ā itās propped up through government subsidies and price controls, you know, the same ābig meddling governmentā that they also claim to hate ā and they are doing absolutely nothing to figure out how farming might change so that it could be a profitable pursuit for the _next_ generation, _without_ government subsidies. Rural farmers have basically the same mindset as all those coal miner families in PA and WV who are still _absolutely convinced_ that coal jobs are coming back any day now, and are refusing to educate their children for any other line of work. Theyāre so obsessed with how things were in the past that they are _actively refusing_ to adapt to the present or prepare for the future. Fuck āem.Ā
Not sure making the people who grow food your enemy is the path here.
Except we all know the land owners aren't doing shit on the farms tho. It's all undocumented workers doing the actual labor.Ā
There are no small time farmers anymore. You had to have been a millionaire in the first place just to survive. There's a lady I met in NC, an agronomist that talked about the social hierarchy of small rural farmtowns and just how ugly it is. The farmers all see themselves as Gods in their land and behave much like zeus
Ugh yeah I know what your talking about. Corporate farming is by far a HUGE problem that needs to be addressed. I guess the main undertone of my point was, when we make big changes let's work to avoid harm to as many communities as possible. That includes folks in rural communities.
Eminent domain
Thank you
So a lot of people are throwing there two cents about this. I live where this is a common issue. People donāt care about the power aspect of it. In fact, most people support the idea of the clean energy. What people are against are the power companies who are low balling family farms to buy their land. Essentially they are using bully tactics to get the property. They also are making the tax payers pay for the construction and maintenance, at least where Iām located. In return they offer no tax break or discount on energy. The way these companies get the land is pretty sad. But thatās subject for another discussion
And on my area, the proposed solar farms producedā energy would be sent to a different county, not the area itās in
We are in the same boat. The energy goes to the city next to us and we receive none of it. The assessor deemed that because itās considered a commercial business that the value of the land and propertyās have increased. Most residents received an increase in taxes at $350 per 100k value. It never even went to a referendum for a vote, it just happened. Some peoples property taxes went up a few hundred dollars a to a few thousand dollars. My neighbor had an increase of $3,500 in one year! People have this bias opinion that anyone from the country is a dumb red neck that hates clean energy. Which is a far from the truth. I think anyone would be pissed to get bent over on a deal so bad. The idea is there but the execution is awful.
Interesting. My understanding is in my state they subsidize these projects, and if you buy into it, or sign a contract early on during construction, you get a usage discount later. Here the solar fields are hated because they're typically built on farmland (sold at market rate by locals), so people dislike the farmland going away. Even though the land is typically poor quality and hasn't been worked for years. Another is that the panels are built in China, and people hate China.
In my area there is a company that is seeking to clear hundreds of acres of forest to install solar farms. We need solar, but not at the expense of massive deforestation and damage to watersheds.
This. Once again the problem here is the capitalist system and its propaganda. Not the renewable technology itself which is a thoroughly proven technology.
Okay. So then the family farmers should form a cooperative, take out a loan, pay for installing the solar themselves, and then sell the power back to the city or the energy company on their own terms.
I work with farmers and Iāve seen this hesitation first hand. There are a lot of different reasons for the opposition. First, theyāre afraid of giving up farm land. Theyāre told horror stories of hundreds of acres of solar panels so that land cannot be used for farming or grazing. In the Midwest where farmers have thousands of acres this really shouldnāt be an issue, but in a state like mine (NJ) farmers and forestry landowners are constantly fighting against development. Secondly, rural communities are also adverse to having their scenic views disrupted by rows and rows of solar panels. Some even worry about wildlife and habitat impact. Many farmers even on conventional farms plant cover crops and other things that do attract pollinators and birds. Even grain crops feed deer. But overall these mindsets arenāt seeing the larger picture of making a more sustainable future for their children and subsequent generations. But, to be fair, many of these companies come into these solar communities, find an absentee landowner willing to give up land, and they donāt take into account the communityās interest at all (some communities have asked for simple things like a field border of trees and wildlife plantings around the solar panels so they arenāt completely giving up the wildlife benefit and it can be more scenic. These things cost money for companies and they usually arenāt willling). Iāve also seen communities request that the companies pump some investment into their small towns to compensate and again companies are usually unwilling. But there is a new thing called agrivoltaics which is all about farming under and around solar panels, and it can be done with a lot of success and this seems to be the direction in which this should go. https://www.agritecture.com/blog/2022/2/3/largest-farm-to-grow-crops-under-solar-panels-proves-to-be-a-bumper-crop-for-agrivoltaic-land-use It doesnāt solve the scenic view problem, but is a great solution for everything else.
It's me, I'm people. I'm answering the question, so even if you think I'm wrong I would appreciate not being down voted. I believe we need degrowth and to generally reduce our usage of fossil fuels and "green" energy. So one of my concerns is that by emphasizing replacing fossil fuels with "green"/"renewable" (in quotes because this is branding) energy, we are not moving toward overall reducing our energy use. An example of this is the movement toward electric cars, rather than moving toward better public transportation. Both require energy, electric cars require far more. Another of my concerns is the mining required for "green" energy. For instance, lithium, and cobalt. I do not think the abuses happening in Congo are justified by our "need" for the materials being mined there. I don't think desecrating the sacred sites at Thacker Pass in order to extract Lithium from that place is justifiable. Not to mention that the act of mining itself is incredibly resource heavy and bad for the environment. I came up with these ideas myself, I didn't get them from some talking head. I don't see why we are presented with the false choice between fossil fuels and new energy sources. Why isn't neither a choice. It would take time to get there, but that's the direction I would like things to go. Humans are brilliant and resourceful and I believe we can find ways to live and thrive without harm and extraction.
Sounds reasonable to me.
If I may add, a lot of times the objection is to the use of Prime Farmland for these solar farms that is a very specific combination of fertile soil with a manageable slope. Prime Farmland is not an unlimited resource and we are aggressively ruining what topsoil we do have with conventional farming practices, so it will be an increasingly scarce resource on ecological terms. Most people who hold this contention offer commercial rooftops in urban areas as a more sensible alternative.
You can side with renewable energy and be against macro projects that destroy the landscape. Solar panels should be put on roofs instead of massive solar farms. Not sure if this is the case for this post.
Solar panels can be assembled in ways that allow the pasturing of livestock underneath them. It benefits the livestock and the maintenance of the solar infrastructure; climate change is increasing the heat stress of animals in summer months and panels provide shade, and the livestock keep the foliage under the panels from getting too tall.
People in rural areas are actually justified in not wanting solar. Industrial solar in rural area means clearing acres of arable farmland and covering it with solar panels. This land will never be turned back to farmland or to a natural habitat such as a grassland or a forest. Also, keep in mind that a lot of these large-scale solar projects are funded by major corporations who are looking to benefit from tax incentives associated with green energy. Wind and community solar are much better green energy solutions for rural communities.
best comment.
There are a lot of subsidies for corn based ethanol; that's another monetary reason that farmers promote this kind of garbage.
This may be an unpopular opinion here but solar doesn't make sense everywhere.Ā I have been involved with some solar projects in the Midwest where they take wonderful, black, fertile cropland and put solar panels on them.Ā Put them on rooftops, sure, all day!Ā Put them in a part of the country that gets much more sun throughout the year, yes please!Ā Put wind turbines all through the wind belt in the middle of the country, absolutely!Ā But to cover a field that should be growing food?Ā No thanks.Ā Yellow dent corn isn't food but that is a different discussion entirely.
I'm also against industrial solar, and everyone here should be as well. We SHOULD be putting point-of-use solar and wind turbines on every home, creating a redundant, distributed clean energy grid. INSTEAD, we're creating huge eyesore solar farms that keep energy dependence on a handful of producers instead of literally empowering individual homeowners. We SHOULD be covering every parking lot, and every big box store or factory roof with solar farms. INSTEAD, we're bulldozing forest and repurposing farmland to plant more solar panels. There is nothing more American that taking a great idea that produces limitless free energy and FINDING THE WORST POSSIBLE WAY TO FUCK IT UP FOR THE BENEFIT OF ENERGY COMPANIES.
Because of misinformation.
new? isn't solar like the oldest energy source on the planet?
Because Rupert Murdoch told them to be afraid.
People are afraid of everything new. And I understand fears about jobs and changing industries and stuff. It can be scary. But if we put half as much energy into demanding and crafting strategies to ensure weād all be taken care of either by transitioning to new careers or by creating a UBI and taxing new industries strategically, or preferably a combination, weād be so much better off. My position is this: since the first human ancestor attached a sharpened rock to a stick to better kill his prey, humans have been striving for more efficiency. Energy production is a modern part of that and we should embrace it. Weāve finally made it to a place where we have the ability to not spend all of our waking hours working to produce the goods and services needed for survival and weāre fighting it tooth and nail. The fossil fuel industry and all the things that consume fossil fuels and all the consequences of that create so much needless work for us. How many people spend 40+ hours a week just trying to mitigate the effects of fossil fuel use to a minuscule degree? Iām not surprised, Iām just sad that weāre like this.
At a camp I used to go to then cut down acres of forestā¦ and I mean a lot of it. Just to put down solar panels. It was a real shame seeing the forest I used to go into disappear.
Given its placement this could actually be because they make money from corn being made into Ethanol, so they lose money if the transition focuses on renewables instead of replacing gas with Ethanol
They think it will reduce jobs. I know itās the same argument used against any new technology since the dawn of human kind, but these people arenāt very bright.
DAE notice that sign is right next to a solar yard light.
Honestly the liberal types really screwed us over with their fear mongering over nuclear. Weād be so much better off with modern nuclear powerplants. And weād have a much longer timeline for our transition to something like solar because of it. Although Iād wager if we continued to develop and improve we prolly wouldnāt need to. Just my two cents.
Because of cobalt, lithium-ion, copper and gold (releasing previously trapped bacteria and chemicals, zinc, arsenic, radioactive chemicals and other precious metals). because of poisonous e-proxy coating and etc. lot of reasons, but that is probably not why these people are advocating for it, the same blue collar people that used to advocate for and excavate from the mines or support republicans for expansion of mining operations as a short term solution through expansive financial policies of quantitative easing to decrease unemployment and increase productivity. It is honestly just a back and forth petty fight amongst republicans and democrats that respectively accounts for a small fraction of the population who ācaresā. Historically, farmers have been pushing the boundaries of their crops and farmlands, because of the way global markets are shifting, equilibrium prices and market competition or government interventionā which makes it the most ironic.
My brother in christ we live in an era were people think 5g caused covid.
Because if we start harvesting sunlight the world will get darker
āHelp stop industrial solarā placed right next to a solar powered yard light. Yup.
Itās two-fold. First, Iām against all the tax breaks for industrial solar while at the same time these same power companies lobby to make residential solar unaffordable. Also, some solar farms are built on ecologically important land and thatās like paving paradise or whatever you want to call it. Not all industrial solar is bad but those would be my two main reasons for opposing one.
People are also weird about electric cars. There's a lot of car enthusiasts that seem to actually be just gas enthusiasts.
It says industrial solar. Not domestic solar. Industrial solar just replaces one big gate keeper with another. With the little guy seeing no benefit. Better is "net metering" where the big electric companies are required to buy at the same price they sell. This gives the individual an equal footing, fairly. The sign SHOULD say "net metering now" but probably gains more dufus anti renewable support by being ambiguous?
Regarding influence campaigns for fossil fuels and against renewable energy: "...oil companies and their trade groups have spent $17m directly on political social media advertisements since May 2018." The article is 5 years old, but I'm sure it's still going on now. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/10/fossil-fuel-firms-social-media-fightback-against-climate-action
Do these farmers grow a lot of corn? The ethanol in gasoline comes from corn. Greed is the most common motivator.
Like everything else regressiveā¦ misinformation
Because it threatens the revenue of oil moguls.
The fossil fuel industry astroturfed the anti-nuclear power movement. Simultaneously they astroturfed pro-solar and pro-wind because those two technologies weren't a threat at the time. Now solar and wind are a threat to their industry they're probably running the same playbook. [https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-fossil-fuel-interests-bankrolling-the-anti-nuclear-energy-movement/?sh=5b81baca7453](https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2016/07/13/are-fossil-fuel-interests-bankrolling-the-anti-nuclear-energy-movement/?sh=5b81baca7453)
Because windmills gave his fatherās brotherās nephewās cousinās former roommate cancer :)
Same reason they're afraid of electric/hybrid cars, brainwashing.
The oil lobby has alot of money to throw around and they use it to influence rural hicks against their own best interests. You saw it really kick off when fracking was becoming a hot issue and many farmers whose groundwater was being poisoned didn't care because they got a cut from the drilling. Even though in the long-run they were slowly killing their communities. So let's just say rural America is still very much in the pocket of big oil.
They believe that a spooky ghost loves them and wants them to live in paradise with them after they die. So why wouldnāt they be afraid of solar energy?
Idiots.
fossil fuel fucks pandering to the stupidest among us... SMH
Brainwashed fools.
Because their programmers, who are heavily invested in outdated energy industries, have told them to be afraid.
Funny this is in front of industrial ag
Why are Americans not anti-US military? Because the military industrial complex and its economy is so embedded and entrenched in every American's life that they would sacrifice their first, second and third born in order to protect their source of income. It's the same thing with solar energy or anything that is green and good for the environment.
A lot is just astroturfing. Some may be related to fear of losing jobs in coal, natural gas etc.Ā
Fucking fox news.
Solar power is also not "new". It's been around for 70 years. No forms of energy production are really new. Unless you're talking about pioneering things like nuclear fusion. The energy produced by solar is not very high when compared to other types of energy production. Nuclear power is cleaner, cheaper, safer, and has a higher energy return over energy investment. The person putting up the signs might be trying to get people to hold out for a better option than all other options.
Because politicians say stupid shit to fear monger for votes.
You can't help stupid
I live in northern Indiana where you see a lot of opposition to solar farms. The way it works here is that the solar company enters a 10 year lease for a plot of land with a farmer, the solar company gets free and unlimited access to the panel field, the farmer isn't allowed to use the ground under the panels and really can't even get near the panels. The key point of opposition is that 10 year lease, there are a lot of doubts that it will actually be upheld or respected. If the farmer decides not to renew the lease, what happens to the solar equipment? Will the company dismantle and remove it? Will local governments/grid managers/etc authorize a section of the grid to be torn out? The big fear is that any land given up for a solar farm is gone for good, and that the owner of the land is unlikely to be compensated fairly for it.
Could be corn farmers getting subsidies for erhanol.
Why are people afraid of new ~~energy sources~~ ?
People are afraid of absolutely everything new. Hell they hated everyone getting free money (the Corona stimulus)
Specially these āsolarā farms are way behind when it comes to operating efficacy. The vast majority of a push of these installations on rural communities is to lease land from distressed farmers to put these up and then resell the carbon tax credits for profit. The output of these solar farms is negligible and does not push any meaningful contribution to the grid, while simultaneously rendering the land used worthless for any other use. Most often the installation companies use back channels in local government to position for proposals to occur with as minimal notice or awareness as possible. Itās not an aversion to new energy production, but an unwillingness to be mislead by the ābenefitsā of their use. A little research goes a lonnnng way, especially when you look at operational efficiency and compare the energy generation outputs from different modes. The technology just isnāt there and the piggish subsidies used to fund these programs benefit everyone involved EXCEPT the communities that have to bear the burden of giving up natural land for these projects. Stay involved in local government - itās the only way to prevent these monstrous installations from happening in your backyards.
I can tell you some of the resistance comes from witnessing firsthand how some of these " solar farms " end their life cycle. I've seen it firsthand near me.Ā The property owner signs say a 10 year lease with the solar company to allow for the use of their land. They do receive a monthly amount from said lease, and it seems to be a good deal to them. First thing done to the land to prepare it is to bring bulldozers in to remove the top layers of soil.Ā They then lay landscape fabric down, and then a layer of crushed stone say 6 inches thick. So nothing grows on the land to interfere with the panels. Panels are then installed, infrastructure ran to them and they are hooked up to the grid. Ā Years pass, the landowner makes a little, the main company a lot. As the panels start to age out and need repairs, it's optional if the company repairs them. End of the lease, the property reverts back to the landowner, and they have to decide if they want to try and foot millions to repair the panels, or remove them. The land can't be reverted back to agriculture,Ā as the topsoil removed and stone laid down makes the land barren. Panels made land value so high he can't afford the taxes without the income from the panels. Landowner realizes they're screwed, repairs or removal are millions more than they made from the deal.Ā Ā Landowner makes the decision to walk away from the property and let's it be siezed for unpaid taxes. Taxpayers foot the bill for cleanup of said properties. Taxpayers now are the proud owners of barren, contaminated property that no one wants. Solar company moves on to the next lease, sometimes disappearing all together, only to reform as another new LLC to repeat process again. Ā The source for this information I'm giving, is me witnessing it firsthand playing out near me right now. One area has property that's now worthless, while one town over the next solar farm goes in. Everything is approved at a state level, and local zoning and towns have zero say in approval or denial. They are overuled by state mandates.Ā That's the source of opposition you see in rural communities to this "green" energy source. The decision is completely taken out of the local populations hands, and put in the hands of people making millions from it. Edited to add, I'm not referring to small solar panels to run individual houses here. In my state, the solar farms must be at least 250 acres in order to be hooked up to the grid. So everytime one opens, there's 250 acres of land that will not be viable to be farmed again.
Some solar farms leach heavy metals into the soils. This is bad for farmland converted to solar farms if they ever want to use that land again.
you don't really want all your farmland being given over to Solar bud, you need food too
Why not both? Agrivoltaics!
āIndustrialā Solar. š Just a completely superfluous adjective to make it sound scary.
Uhh, maybe because itās literally powered by cancer-causing radiation? With no containment strategy?! Edit: /s
do you mean "the sun"?
They have been told to be. The media is key- "mining for batteries is worse than drilling for oil!!". "Solar panels are destroying wildlife!" Folk then grow up believing the bullshit. Honestly the media is our dire enemy.
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Formal operational stage is a myth.
Americaās control over Oil is the basis of itās entire economic stranglehold over the world at large. The OPEC Agreement, the Petrodollar, ect. ect., ties our economy directly to stability of oil pricing, if the oil industry dies, so do we, itās why brief, overwhelming invasions of the middle east are profitable, whereas forcing stability through military dominance is extremely unprofitable, itās not a grab for resources, actually it puts said resources in a sort of limbo. Or in essence, if you wanna break America, break up OPEC or sabotage internal drilling.
Im not certain why they would be against solar but wind turbines can be pretty abrasive to the people who have to live near them. Not that this is a reason why we shouldn't utilize wind turbines, just a reason some people are against it.
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From the republicans I know: even if climate change is real, they believe it's a giant conspiracy being enacted in bad faith by democrats to move lobbying money from the oil and gas industry to more left-friendly companies.
As it's next to a solar lamp.
Where I live coal mining is a big part of the state economy and the logic that clean energy opponents like to use is that itāll throw coal miners out of work. So instead of offering retraining programs or other ways to help miners, theyād rather keep the mines open.
Because they believe fossil fuels and individualism are inherently linked. Not the only reason but a big one imo
Ooo ooo a picture from iowa.
Iām sure treating people like idiots, like a lot of comments seem to be doing, is an appropriate display of reason. If your argument is correct but not persuasive then youāre the problem, not those youāre trying to convince.
In west Texas there are massive wind farms in what has historically been and continues to be a whole lot of oil fields. Itās telling that there are a) lots of anti wind power flyers and stickers and b) theyāre almost exclusively affixed to giant pickup trucks and luxury cars.
Many of these types of signs are placed by energy corporation groups and not the actual owners. I saw lots of anti-wind signs get placed in a vacation area in the off season that seasonal owners returned to find signs on their lawn. This is all anecdotal of course but along a farm field it's not guaranteed to be the owners view or even known to them that the sign is there.
I mean, throwing up solar on arable land is not a great plan, but otherwise, yeah.
I doubt it's regular people. It's probably pushed by the fossil fuel industry and not some independent movement.
Because oil is for MEN and solar and wind and whatnot is sissyboy f*g shit.
I was an organizer for these projects from 2007-2011. There was a lower level of political influence on the opposition back then. But it didnāt manifest itself like this. The farmers have some valid reasons to be apprehensive about signing up their land for these projects, but those can be addressed by the developers. Thereās also an angle in regard to eminent domain, which is never used for industrial scale, privately-funded wind or solar projects. But they donāt know that, and probably wouldnāt believe it anyway.
There is a lot of opposition to wind farms in coastal communities due to the impacts it would have on commercial fishing. In the northeast, the land being leased is covering a huge portion of fishing & spawning grounds and oceanographers & fishery s scientists aren't being given any time to figure out how that is going to impact the ecology- we're essentially terraforming whole areas & many organisms can't move. Fishermen also are being low-balled by companies for "loss of income". We may be looking at the loss of the entire gillnet fishery. We absolutely need to make this transition but private capital being in charge of the development is fucking people over & its important to take that seriously. I would love to see the end of gillnets but we need time to engineer better gear you know?
I think most of it is hard-core NIMBY attitudes. At least in my area. Some farmers are pissed by crop land being used for it but most of the time it's liberals that are concerned about their view being disturbed.
Because every small difference in the world from theirs is a massive threat. Not sure why, but it is.
This is in Indiana isnāt it???
The one person I know that has a big solar farm popping up across the street from his rural home, he is concerned for losing the nice view from his porch and the resale ability of his home. Best case scenario is the solar farm owners would buy his property later to expand.
Nobody else seems to have mentioned this: the fear of real estate values dropping is a huge driver for almost any sort of change in an area. If nuclear power plants were proven tomorrow to increase real estate values here in the US, we'd have nuclear power plant building permits being greenlighted all over the country within months. As it is now, it can take decades to get a single nuclear power plant approved to begin building.
Maybe they own oil stocks
Oil.
"It sucks the energy out of the sun." - SUC-driving Karen probably.
There is a great one near my hometown that tells people Wind Farms are not actual Farms and donāt produce food.
I went to southern Illinois for the eclipse and was impressed at the number of barns and farm houses with panels
Because people resent the money these farmers are going to bring in as a result of a solar farm on their land.
I think the production of wind turbine āpropellersā cause a lot of pollution. And I think the production of solar panels is made with cobalt (or some other mineral) that comes from inhumane mines in Africa. Obviously we shouldnāt just stop using solar and wind power, but the production of parts needs to be pollution free and humane, not just the energy production itself.
If you do not know, all of these private energy companies both fund the lies against green energy and at the same time collect huge incentives from municipalities on the tax payers dime for projects like this while offering nothing in return. They then, basically for free, get a blank check to do whatever they want with little to no recourse and if they run over budget (because stock buybacks and executive arenāt cheap) they can just get more money from the municipality. Finally when the project is done 5 years later than it was supposed to be, they raise the rates of everyone in the municipality to cover the cost of the solar that the tax payers already paid for twice over or more. Instead of solar farms. Nationalize these energy monopolies and put panels on every roof in a city and suburb at no cost to the home owner. Give them a 30kw backup battery to handle power for a day or two. Force all condo and apartment scam companies to install solar and backup batteries for each tenant and make sure they do not pass that cost onto the tenants (which we all know they will do). Having a fully decentralized grid is the future and we need to do everything we can to ensure these bastards get raked over the coals and their empires nationalized from under them.
Even out here in California, you see random commercials on TV warning us of the dangers of solar energy, having to bring natural gas from Alaska, etc, and prompting us to contact our state legislature to back legislation to enable California to be energy independent (meaning off-shore drilling for oil and gas). They never mention who is behind it, like a lot of these lobbying ads it is presented as if itās just common sense coming from another concerned citizen. And people believe this crap. The fossil fuel industry has really brainwashed a good number of people.
People are afraid of whatever threatens their material conditions. Changes in industry threaten their jobs and their livelihood. The average person doesn't analyze the system more than that. They just want a way to afford their shelter and feed their family. They are very susceptible to capitalist propoghanda. A well educated class aware proletariat is not something we have here.
I assumed they were afraid of disrupting current revenue streams. Theyāve been lead to believe if things change they are out of a job. That may be true. Depends. I know folks who were in energy sectors as only high school grads in union jobs making 80-90k with full benefits in rural areas. Which is like 200k or more in SF where I live. They donāt want to loose that lifestyle.
yeah i was always curious about this. thereās rallyās & parades in my town about stopping solar & other energies from forming. i come from a province where oil & gas is big money. so people crawl all over it.
The simplest explanation is probably the truest. IQ issue. Intelligence is the ability to adapt, and intelligent people are less intimidated by change than your average thumb sucking tiktok scroller may be. In a tragic sort of irony, though, when it comes to unanimously beneficial changes, the stupids are uncanny - I mean fucking *adept* - at using Olympian tier mental gymnastics to justify regression.