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.
“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?
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
Hero. Right here.
That is a really good find
All that air pushing the blades has to come from somewhere!
The current president of Mexico banned almost all.the eco technologies because od absurd ramblings like thst one of that politician, but his maim goal was to steal the money that the government invested in those.
Korean fan death?
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.
Everything you just said can apply to coal. There are monthly incidents involving coal mines and plants. It puts out plenty of stuff that is invisible and can kill you. Plus hydrocarbons are the lifeblood of all warfare almost as much as gunpowder.
Go spend a few years of your life building scrubbers for coal and low grade diesel then get back to me about how nuclear is dangerous. Bunch of rednecks with screwdrivers and drunk ex-Sovits with wrenchs. I have seen them do some scary stuff. At least with a nuclear plant you can’t wipe your butt without ten PEs signing off on it.
The total death toll and the number of people suffering health issues (past and present) due to coal are orders of magnitude larger than those due to nuclear power (not to even mention the damage to the environment!). The problem is that people respond more to one-time big disasters than to numbers over time. Something like Chornobyl is terrifying and a big deal, so people remember it. They don’t remember every Tom, Dick and Harry that’s died over the years due to black lung or accidents or other stuff from coal.
You can even see this attitude in other ways too. It seems like a lot of Americans are still suffering mass trauma from 9/11 and accept the most horrific Patriot Act-type shit because of it. But in the end, it was less than 3000 people who died in the attack (and don’t get me wrong, it was terrible!), but waaaaaaay more people die (and have died) from lack of (access to) healthcare, and it seems that still barely anyone is actually trying to fix that. Or a mass shooting that kills 11 people, that’s a big deal, right? But the fact that over a million Americans died due to Covid didn’t really register as a disaster for a lot of people.
Nuclear power is such a no-brainer to me, but it sounds ‘scary’ and lots of people don’t understand it, which makes it even more scary. Plus, of course the fossil fuel industry propaganda and lobbying, and the memory of people who know other people who used to work in coal towns and had pretty decent lives. Or the “what about nuclear waste!”-crap that always comes up. Yes, nuclear waste is a thing, but let’s put it next to all the damaging crap that coal mines produce, accumulated. It’s way worse.
Anyway. It’s hard to fight all that, even when rationally, statistically, nuclear power should be a no-brainer. Edit: and there is no political will either, it seems. Whether it’s because they love their fossil fuel bribes or because they’re too scared to lose some voters… they’ll never do good things just to do good.
Edit: just to be clear, it’s definitely not a USA-exclusive problem. I currently live in Germany and their weird relationship to nuclear power is also batshit. All based on fear and bullshit.
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.
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!?
Who the fuck does this?
Republicans.
Is that those things I run into in caves in a JRPG?
No, they’re much scarier.
Evasion spammer?
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.
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…😷
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.
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.
All that precious wind we need for top soil erosion
What else exactly did he think we needed wind for anyway?
Wind is finite, and there has actually been research done to estimate the impact slower winds would have (a few degrees iirc), it’s just that this is massively offset by the pros of using wind.
Seriously? What Facebook University source did you get that from?
no, wind is not a finite resource. it’s produced by the heating and cooling of the earth. Wind turbines aren’t doing anything to stop the sun from coming up and going down.
Hate to break it to you but wind is a finite resource, it’s unlikely that earths inhabitants would ever saturate it -it is still quite possible just excessively unlikely.
Republicans retain power by sabotage
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.
Awful, we really need some kind of federal fast track for these sorts of badly needed projects that cuts through the NIMBY bullshit.
What’s this from?
Good Omens
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.
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
Here in NZ
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.
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…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!”.
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