this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
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Odds are that they are Republican counties because wind and solar tend to be built in rural areas and rural areas tend to be Republican. I would actually expect Democrat held areas to also oppose them because people in general are NIMBY.
That said, there are a bunch of valid reasons to oppose large scale projects that can be addressed. A primary problem is the disruption to the local area, either by destroying roads not designed for the heavy machinery or the government taking land from locals that is necessary to implement the project. Both could be handled differently than they tend to be as the large companies that implement these projects tend to not care about locals already living in the area. Some ways they could improve the process would be to improve the roads and offer better compensation for affected locals, but there are valid reasons that some retired person who lives in the home they grew up in to oppose a power plant even if it would be a net benefit to society.
That is to say it is complicated and the best that can be done is better treatment of the people that are impacted by these projects while understanding that some are just complaining to complain and some really do have valid complaints that need to be better addressed so progress can be made.
I’ve lived in left leaning areas for decades. Solar is everywhere, from rooftops to open fields. We don’t have a ton of wind, but there’s a lot of offshore farms and quite a few in the hills. Nobody is “taking” land, it’s sold by the landowner.
If right wing areas are blocking renewables it’s far more likely to be done so it props up the fossil fuel/power generation companies and has little or nothing to do with any actual drawbacks of renewables or their installation.
If someone "owns" land that land was taken by somebody.
Rural folks don't care about other people having rooftop solar panels. I am also not talking about offshore farms, which should be clear by my example about someone's house being impacted.
Large scale wind and solar do require some legal action in rural areas to make them feasible. The most common is needing to run the extremely large power lines across fields to the centralized distribution centers.
It needs to be done, and people will be impacted, but they are still people and shouldn't be ignored completely. In general, they should probably be conpensated more than they are for the inconvenience of having land forcibly purchased from them, or for the negative impacts on their area that are unavoidable for such large scale projects.
Not sure why you're being downvoted, I'm pretty sure you're correct.
From reading more about the blocked installs here, most of them have to do with the distance between wind turbines and nearby property lines. Many states are passing laws that the turbine has to be far enough away from property lines that it can't fall onto someone else's property, which seems reasonable. However these restrictions make building turbines difficult and limits what land is viable. Many counties require 1.1x to 1.5x the height of the turbine as a safety distance, which with the typical turbine height of 600' means 660-900 ft radius around the tower that doesn't overlap someone else's property. Some counties have really high distance requirements, that go up to 1320' (a quarter mile) or farther.
The other concern is sound levels, with some counties limiting how loud the turbines can be to nearby properties.
Solar has less restrictions than wind, places with restrictions on it seem to just be limiting the max solar farm size. I'm not sure what the purpose behind that limitation is.
Your link clearly explains how counties are setting excessive limits to effectively ban wind farms, like having a 1 mile radius near any property when only 1000 feet is required or demanding it makes less noise than a dishwasher.
The reasons for these limitations are to keep us dependent on gas and coal for as long as possible. This is outright corruption, shame on the ones defending it.
You try sleeping with a dishwasher in your bedroom...
Do you plan to sleep on a wind turbine?
If I put a dishwasher 100ft away, can you still hear it? What about 100ft and an insulated wall?
They could just build shorter turbines, but the big energy companies will whine it doesn't make them enough money.
Based on replies I don't think people read the whole post or just don't understand nuance.
This is true across the web. Not only do some people not read through it all and not understand the nuance even if they did read all of it, they also tend to play follow the leader and downvote when others already have instead of taking a minute or two out of their day and deciding for themselves.
I really wish we could get away from the up/down votes. Despite knowing better and honestly not giving a flying fuck, I find myself obsessed with it at times and it's not healthy. As much as I dislike the emoticons that have taken over, I'd almost prefer that. Use hearts or smiley faces or something and show the actual ratio of up/down, ie 5 hearts and 5 frowny face or whatever.
I'll take imperfect up/down vote usage that helps filter out the worst takes the majority of the time over letting horrible people appear to be on the same level as a reasonable take.
In general I try to go back on downvoted posts to see if I was unclear to improve it for next time. But I am guilty of relying on prior voters knowing about context and end up using group concensus to vote posts up or down when they are a bit unclear on intent, so can't really blame others that donthe same.
I try and not assume the worst in people, but over time it is getting really hard not to knowing how common it is for malicious actors to use subtle hints to sway opinion.
I'm not sure why, but it was the beginning of your second paragraph where my urge to reflexively downvote you (after having been primed by seeing the existing score) was strongest. It might be because I skimmed over the "that can be addressed" part, or just that "disruption to the local area" is a relatively weak criticism and citing it as your primary example set off my reactionary spidey-sense a little.
Frankly, I'm not sure what you could've done differently. Maybe change that first sentence to something like "That said, the reasons locals oppose large scale projects aren't always entirely invalid?"
This is great feedback!
I feel like trying to start positive feels like saying "I agree with everything, BUT..." so I tend to reinforce at the end to reinforce my overall point with context. Maybe that is just me and how many times I see people say they agree and then completely disagree for the rest of the post.
Thank you for taking the time!
My issue with the downvotes is that it is regularly brigaded even if it's not an organized effort. Legit contributions get shouted down to being hidden while other non helpful or downright dangerous info is kept above it. On reddit with the smaller subs it doesn't matter especially when it's a post because it's still going to show in the sub. And while lemmy/fediverse is still small and growing, this will most definitely push plenty of people (likely me included) to not be as active because the majority of people don't seem to be capable of having a real conversation and instead just downvote and move on.
The one thing lemmy and the fediverse has going for it is not having karma attached to your account so you don't have people looking for upvotes for legitimacy and you don't have downvote troll farmers who see how far negative they can get.
I could also see keeping the up/down and total so long as it's hidden (but accessible to those that want to see it). I'd also be okay if downvoting enough of a specific accounts comments or posts automatically hid it from you (without blocking them completely).
And to make my point even clearer. Multiple someones have been going through my comment history and downvoting everything they can. The only ones they haven't are probably the ones that the post was deleted so while I can see my comment, I can't see any responses or the ones I responded to. And lemmy doesn't do that random bullshit that reddit does so I know they are real.
And even more on the nose here. I'm sure this addendum will sound like I am crying to a few or more of the drive by downvoters here and will bring in an onslaught of downvotes because as you already brought up, way too many people don't take the time to think about what they are reading and just react silently or by responding as if they are a 3rd grader bullying a toddler on the playground, likely because no one loves them enough (because they are hell to be around).
I'll get ahead of it. Bring on the downvotes mfers.
What a giant load of conspiracy nonsense
As I lamented a few days ago, I still miss Slashdot's moderation system.
I feel like we always do things exactly the opposite of whatever rational would be.
"These people aren't using the land to it's full potential so we're justified in murdering them and taking the land." - About the people living half naked off the land.
"You can't just make people move, even if you compensate them and are doing it for the greater good." - About the people who drive a pickup truck to Walmart.
I know there's more nuance, it's just funny to me.
Are you serious? Boo fucking hoo.
Not OP but the thing about locals is serious, in Brazil I know about some wind farms that had disrupted the life of locals because was made too close of their houses, and these windmills are very loud. Now ppl can't live a decent life there and energy companies gave compensation to them.