1y ago

Across America, clean energy plants are being banned faster than they're being built

www.usatoday.com

Across America, clean energy plants are being banned faster than they're being built::The clock is ticking toward a deadline to meet renewable-energy standards. But USA TODAY's analysis finds local governments banning wind turbines, solar plants.

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silence7 @slrpnk.net

1y ago

Across America, clean energy plants are being banned faster than they're being built

www.usatoday.com /story/news/investigations/2024/02/04/us-counties-ban-renewable-energy-plants/71841063007/

101 comments

“But a wave of disinformation in 2023, falsely claiming offshore wind projects killed whales, resulted in a sharp decline in public support for offshore wind.”
I can’t believe people fell for that.
- In Mexico we had a dumb politician who said windmills stole the air of the people.
  
  Mexico by way of south korea?
  https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/01/fan-death-korean-moms-think-that-your-electric-fan-will-kill-you.html
  People believe weird shit everywhere, unfortunately
  Edit: couldn't get Wikipedia to give me the urban legend definition and not the metal band. Changed the link
  
  All that air pushing the blades has to come from somewhere!
  
  Korean fan death?
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death
- My dad was absolutely one of them... He mentioned it out of nowhere and I couldn't refute it because I had never encountered that lunacy before then...
  
  He already wanted to hate wind then and this is just his justification. I once encountered someone telling me that wind turbines cause global warming. I told them the only part generating heat was the copper in the motor and that's the same in every power generation. Turn out Faux News misrepresented a study that showed the turbulence caused by wind turbines brought warm air to the ground level.
  
  You absolutely can refute it. Just ask for proof.
  
  I hate that. They'll just say something like "well how can you support solar panels when it kills the rare ballet fork bird?! Or when the solar panels kill the nearby trees!? Or when the toxic chemicals leak into the streams and the kill the river!?"
  It's just like this slew of crap and you can't possibly know it's totally crap when you start talking to them. Then you go back research it and it turns out it's from some (typically CCP or Russian financially backed) fake news website "pRoMOTinG fReeDoM aNd tHe AMeRicAn wAY."
  Then they just don't want to hear about how freedom4everything.scam is a scam and think you're being political and close minded for insisting they check these things out and look for collaborating sources with more credibility, NYTimes, Washington Post, WSJ, etc.
  Then that turns into a whole "but the NYTimes is too liberal to ever mention mutant fish caused by renewable energy" ... and it just goes on and on...
- I can. There is a reason why only two new nuclear reactors have been built since 1972 in the nation that figured the technology out first. It takes almost nothing to scare people out of being smart
  
  I mean... it's quite different for nuclear there has been some big international incidents and it's something that hurted people directly plus invisible stuff that can kill you usually is terrifying. Knowing that a similar technology is used for bombs that cause terrible destruction didn't help either.
  So even though it can be done with no risks... Is quite understandable people being afraid of it.
  Like the whale thing is nothing in comparison.
- The people falling for that are the ones trying to detox off of oxygen addiction.
Wind mills do kill birds, but all you have to do to prevent it is paint one of the turbines black so it doesn't blend into the sky when it is turning, allowing birds to avoid them. But unfortunately thay costs money and smooth brain fossil fuel stans would rather just poison the wind rather than harness it.
- wind energy is going to continue increasing exponentially for a while, it would be wise to mitigate the death of more birds. I also support exterminating stray cats and putting harsh fines on folks who keep outside cats as well. Birds need protecting and we are woefully failing as a species to do so.
  
  I see your data clearly presented and submit my anecdotal. Clearly I win and we should burn more coal.
  
  Gotta love that the same guy who keeps complaining about windmills killing birds is the guy who also got famous building a giant glass tower in New York.
  
  Why would anything kill fields for birds though? Let them do their own damn work.
- The currently existing design of wind turbines is incredibly stupid anyway, I have no idea how we landed on that design. It's one of the least effective designs possible for it's use case. We should be using spiral turbines.
  
  The current three blade design of utility-scale turbines achieves about 80% of the Betz limit, are relatively efficient in materials for their output, and the blades' pitch can be adjusted to control their speed in varying conditions (eg. during storms). I wouldn't call their design "incredibly stupid".
  
  That looks like it would be hard to manufacture and transport at the size requirements that traditional blades are made. It's already a massive pita to transport the traditional blades. I'm sure we'll figure it out eventually, but that's probably the current reasoning.
  
  Yooo that looks sick as hell! Why aren't we using that?
  
  That's too futuristic and only belongs on other planets like mars
- With the size they are, I wouldn't just paint them black. It might throw off the balance. They should be shipping then black from factory.
I wanna make energy without fucking anything up.
"Yeah no, stop that right now. It's illegal."
Who the fuck does this? What's going through their head to make them think there's any justification? How is there multiple idiots collaborating well enough to get in the way!?
- Some are NIMBYs. Most, however, are alt-right reality-hostile whackadoodles who see any “renewable” energy generation as a liberal plot to destroy America.
  These people actively think that renewables will harm America.
  How do I know this? We have the same crazies up here in Canada. Some of them, despite having been born here, routinely confuse the two countries, spouting US legislation - like the constitutions and amendments - in “defense” of their “freedoms” being “infringed upon” by things like wind turbines.
  
  Nah man, it's some, not most, which makes it all the more depressing. My hometown is a farm town, and some are crying and moaning about turbines, some aren't.
  The Business-minded Farmers see the green, the local Liberals see the other green, the Hicks see an eyesore, and the Yokels see da librul nrg and shit themselves because "it's happening in their town".
  Yokels panic and lie to the hicks, hicks then get scared and hateful towards the one thing that's not a Dollar General promising new jobs for the town in the last several decades.
  
  Ooh I'm stealing "Reality-hostile" great saying. Cheers.
  
  It's not just NIMBY or alt-right trolls that are against windmills. There are legitimate issues with living next to one that get discounted by people that aren't exposed to it.
  Having noise regulation on the windmills that prevents people living near from hearing them would prevent that from being an issue, but ridicule is the chosen response.
  The blade causing a repetitive shadow is annoying for people and there isn't a good solution.
  Giving residents within .5-1 miles of a windmill free or reduced electricity would also probably solve 90% of the backlash. It would reduce profits though so it won't happen.
  
  In other words, the Fox News virus continues to spread, and we all suffer for it.
  Seems to be a bit of a recurring theme these days…😷
- Who the fuck does this?
  Republicans.
  
  Is that those things I run into in caves in a JRPG?
- To explain the farmer view on wind: I don't want Industry/ugly ass turbines right next to me.
  But banning solar is the dumbing fucking shit I've ever heard of. Bumfuckistan, Buckfuck Nowhere, my hometown at least has solar without a complaint.
  
  Zero farmers want to ban wind. They want to lease their land to power generation companies. They do it all the time, especially where they just graze cattle or sheep. They can do both at the same time.
  Farmers own land to make money, not look at it.
  
  Cry more. I don't want the climate change to kill everyone.
  Edit: also if we're complaining about ugly, let me make a list. I'll start at people rolling coal and end at the fat acceptance people in my fit girls porn.
- Windmill cancer.
  
  I had my conservative professor uncle tell me we can't use windmills because "they use up all the wind."
  imagine having to explain to your elders that wind isn't some finite resource.
- Republicans retain power by sabotage
Each time there's a new climate change fueled war, I'll remember who was spouting lies during this pivotal period.
- The water wars were won by desalinators
OMG this is the dumbest thing.. In NY the town of Florida banned a windmill on waste property, then in racquet lake where they get all sorts of outages they stopped a battery from being installed because they might catch fire. These were BYD LFP batteries, and they were referencing LG chem batteries catching fire in Arizona as the reason.
- Upstate NY is just the cold weather version of the Bible Belt.
- I live in wny the windmills fucking suck. You spend your life savings buying property in the country with gorgeous scenery and views and bam farmer under the thumb of the state gets conned into putting windmills up and your peaceful piece of property is now staring at some dystopian looking shithole landacape. I dont do the conspiracy theories but i totally get voting to not allow windmills in an area you own property in.
  
  I saw them in the little falls area they look fine to me. I'm sure they are noticed when people have lower energy bills.
  
  These things look beautiful though
  
  All you have to do is sell power cheaper then them from a source that is also clean or decrease the usage and bam less demand for windmills
Awful, we really need some kind of federal fast track for these sorts of badly needed projects that cuts through the NIMBY bullshit.
Are you kidding me? I opened the article in order to find reasons for banning but after like reading 10min, I gave up, it is such a repetitive article with so many useless words.. Has someone a TLDR?
- Former President Donald Trump often denigrates wind and solar power in his speeches. In December in New Hampshire, he said, falsely, that wind farms only last 10 years, that they kill “all the birds,” that solar energy isn’t powerful enough to run factories and that wind is 42 times more expensive than natural gas.
  (...)
  “It’s going to change our lifestyle and the landscape and everything around here,” he said.
  (...)
  The opposition sometimes leads to surprising arguments about property rights, in which some landowners invoke concepts like a claim to a "viewshed" – views they want free of wind turbines or solar panels. These opponents clash with others who champion a different view of private property rights, saying landowners should be free to build what they want.
  
  I see, the oil and coal lobby, who would have thought
  
  Ok. I want to be free of sky scrapers. Ban them. Remind me again why my opinion about this doesn't matter.
- What's this from?
  
  Good Omens
  https://www.youtube.com/shorts/9Pxj3eXeTzI
I mean, this isn't so bad. While the rest of the world lives in a solar punk future, the US could be like some secluded cyberpunk bubble that would give many scholars in the future stuff to write their thesis about, while also providing a good source of memes for the rest of enlightened humanity.
- Here in NZ
- I don't want share a land border with that cyberpunk bubble, thank you very much.
  Fix your shit, America.
  
  They'd be walled in to prevent their filth from physically reaching any of the other countries
- Everyone living in megacities on top of nuclear reactors
I live in one of the most progressive cities in the US and have had the same issue here. We have no driveway and park on the street but regulations say we cant use the grass strip (the area between the srreet and the curb) to install a charging station for an ev in front of our house. For 5 years we tried to get permission to do this without luck and have given up on ever getting an EV. I dont get how there is any hope for electric vehicles if there arent any working solutions for the millions of people in the United States who dont have a driveway or garage.
Its time to grab a beer kick back and watch as the planet is destroyed by slow moving bearacratic regulation.
- I gave up on humanity decades ago. I've got a bottle of SoCo set aside for the end of the world.
Who knew that America was the very thing they taught us the enemy was when we were growing up.
- ...but like, so do fossil fuels, you just don't immediately see it. It's lead to so much contamination and death you'll never directly witness and is actively destroying everything vs "oh no, that pretty hill!".
- Checks out since your country's economy is founded on oil but you all deny it

101 comments