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BostonPilot t1_izf74gt wrote

Reply to comment by person749 in Residents ‘Horrified’ Over Proposed Solar Farm Near Waltham/Lexington Line by ak47workaccnt

Being a local pilot, I can see that most of what is now "beautiful wilderness" was farmland 150 years ago... I'm not saying I don't love wooded land, just that most of it wasn't wooded in the 18th and 19th century. The vast wide areas we see how is a fairly recent thing.

When we have alternatives to solar arrays, it'll go back to wooded land very quickly. Assuming global warming doesn't kill off all the species of trees...

>Why not tear down abandoned buildings and parking lots and put them there? There's a ton of spots of urban decay around the state.

The same reason we aren't mostly doing rooftop installations. Cost. The major cost of solar isn't the panels, it's the installation cost. It's much more cost effective to install on a fairly large space, on the ground, than in many little installations scattered around.

Not saying I 100% support converting green space to solar, just saying it's why it's happening the way it is. There have been some good studies over the last couple years about sharing solar fields with agriculture ( plants and animals below the panels ). I'm hoping we'll go more this way, so the land doesn't have to be dedicated to just solar...

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person749 t1_izmwn1v wrote

>18th and 19th century.

But was it wooded in the the 16th and 17th centuries? We can never get back what we had before colonization, but I think it's sad to think of any wildlife habitat as dispensible just because the land had been altered before.

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BostonPilot t1_izne2un wrote

Actually a lot of it was open fields being farmed by native Americans, at least according to one book I read. The names of towns reflected that... Mansfield, Marshfield, Springfield, etc. etc. was already open agricultural fields when the Europeans showed up. So you probably have to go back 5,000-10,000 years to find a time when it was all untouched aboreal landscape.

Also, my point wasn't that:

>I think it's sad to think of any wildlife habitat as dispensible just because the land had been altered before.

But that it's not a one way path... It's gone from wilderness to open field and back to wilderness before... And in a relatively short amount of time.

Also, if it was a new Walmart these people would probably be shrugging and saying "that's progress". I don't see any of them calling for a halt to all new construction. Just, you know, construction next to their house... Quite literally NIMBY.

While loss of habitat due to construction etc. is a real thing, it's nothing compared to the damage coming from global warming. Entire ecosystems across huge amounts of the country are going to be decimated over the next 100 years. If we can minimize that by converting a small percentage of previously farmed land into solar farms, it's arguably a worthwhile strategy, especially when it will quickly go back to wooded land once we no longer need the solar array.

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person749 t1_j1i7sq1 wrote

Another great response. I'd still rather see windmills and nuclear take up the slack, but this makes a little more sense.

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