counterpoint - get rid of car parks and cars
I totally agree and I’ve been saying this for a little while. But get this, since there are plenty of unused grassy properties out there in America, there’s somewhere they’re making deals with sheep heard owners where the sheep are regularly brought over to the property to eat grass around and under the solar panels. Apparently trying to keep the grass cleaned up and not overgrowing the panels is a problem because of all the little nooks and crannies, getting mowing done under and around them as a pain in the ass. But the sheep can just come in there get a free meal and do the job perfectly well. It’s win-win.
Here in the West they’re just covering up all the desert areas that are not being used anyways. And they also bring in livestock of various kinds to take care of a lot of the weeds and keep it cleaned up as well. I think it’s a great use of space since there is so much of it in such wide abundance of sun. There’s also quite a few of the car parks here that have been installing solar panels over the cars and that’s a great use as well but that’s also quite a huge expense overall.
Desert areas can still have rich ecosystems that get severely affected by solar farms.
Someone said to me yesterday, why don’t we redirect the Ord River (WAus) down to Kalgoorlie (also WA) and irrigate and farm the desert. Some real-life Fremen mind at work there. My eyes rolled so hard, the “its desert, nothing lives there”, is strong with that one.
sheep wouldnt exist without humanity. its also -like all other bred animal races with similar situations- serious damage for their bones to carry 10kg’s of extra fur(bred to be wooly).
So no, this is not a win-win
Not a win because it’s not vegan? Most people don’t share your beliefs.
Most people are happy to use the animals we have spent thousands of years making useful
I see this as a win/win/win - the sheep farmer gets rent for the land the panels are on, the weeds are kept down by the sheep, we get clean electricity, we get wool
Ed. “Animal races” the word is species, races is for the variation in humans, or in fantasy it’s the humanoid species
I suppose it would be reasonable to talk about races of sheep to talk about all the different types of sheep
Breeds. When is animals they’re different breeds. Interestingly there’s fewer differences between human ethnicities than between different animal breeds
Among humans I have heard that there is more variety within human races than between them
Music says we’re the whole human race
even for non-vegan people the climate impact of sheep farming should be concerning.
Goarts then, whatever. You can hang out with goats even if youre not exploiting them more than you would a human.
“No profit, not work-ey” - unless we change the system to make accumulation impossible of course
anything else would be ignorant to compare to the commonness of parking lots - as in not worth to compare to begin with, like the handful of animal sanctuaries or whatever u’d think of here
Maybe we live in a society that just has more goats, and goats are a bigger part of everyones lives.
Id rather not have any parking lots if it were entirely my choice.
look, im car free by choice - couldve owned a newer A4 avant. So we agree on the parking lots in its prevalance are too much.
This doesnt change the fact that the whole sheep input is still absurd - no matter how romanticized the cartoony picture looks like… the realist view on your idealist idea could be “agrar solar” -> here an example picture
There is a big ass vehicle turning the soil in that pic. I dont think thats a phase of modern agriculture typically presented in the pr photos, and its not pretty even when you do it by hand.
i dont follow, maybe its because im not native english/american? id be happy if you could make the point clearer for me here…cause currently youre discribing the thing but there seems to be no full argument without further context?
Why not both?
In the UK we’re getting a lot of large solar projects approved on farmland, and locals are predictably upset.
But at the same time those people didn’t actually support farmers and buy their stuff at a price that meant they would be better off growing crops rather than covering fields in panels.
And 90% of the complaining is oil industry shills, as per usual.
@Viking_Hippie certainly cover car parks *first*…
Why not both?
Panels on grazing areas and some fields has repeatedly been proven beneficial
Cover every dead roof that has sunshine beating down on it, yes.
But there’s an actual benefit to covering fields. Livestock can get shade and keep the grass in check for one thing.
@Viking_Hippie But since we will remove all individual cars, there won’t be any car parks on which to build…
Got 'em. We should wait until we get rid of all the cars before we start putting up solar panels. One thing at a time people!
Akshualy, covering your fields (partially) with solar increases crop yield by up to 20%. And also feeds your tractor environmentally friendly.
Cover the corn fields that are 95% being used to produce ethanol for fuel mixture into gasoline. Replace a one-time-use fuel that takes a ton of water to produce, contributes to pesticide usage, and requires a bunch more energy for processing (and makes your car run less efficiently anyway) with fuel that can power homes, vehicles, industry, etc. starting now and lasting for decades with a one time investment into fully recyclable materials that is already pretty low cost and lowering all the time.
Fuck it let’s go all the way. Replace the cars entirely
Also reduces fertilizer use, that comes from natural gas extraction.
It’s actually only 25% to 45%, that is turned into ethanol, depending on the source. Most of the rest of the corn is animal feed. You are correct that humans only eat about 5% of the corn we grow.
Fair, but that’s still plenty of land for massive amounts of solar without losing much at all
Oh, absolutely. I wasn’t disagreeing, in fact I’m working with my brother to try and get him a loan to buy a corn farm that he would convert into a solar farm.
Subscribe! That would be quite interesting to follow along in future updates, if you don’t mind sharing
And livestock can eat under the solar panels, so even less corn lost.
I thought agrivoltaics gives a better yield as it protects the grass from too much sunlight that would cause it to dry out? I know in my garden the patch with the most grass growth had a wood sheet hanging over it.
Not going to comment on the fields, but car parks for sure. Keeps the car cool on hot days, can pack your shopping away without getting wet on rainy days, keeps snow off, etc.
this is the synergy the middle managers were looking for
@Viking_Hippie it might become helpful to cover the fields - many crops benefit from shade these days. Higher crop yields PLUS energy harvest. Win Win. Check for Agro-Solar or Agro-PV.
- yes, absolutely, we should be putting solar in car parks
- you deploy agricultural solar panels in grazing lands where the panels act as shade for grazing animals
