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Comment by bigtunacan | Hacker News Reader

Honestly I'm starting to feel a bit alarmed by the growth of solar energy. I live in Midwest farm country and solar farms are just being built in place of food farms at a scary rate.

While I believe in the idea of cleaner renewable energy I'm concerned if it comes at the price of a reduced food supply.

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We've got so much extra food we turn corn into ethanol for fuel, and subsidize that whole process to win votes in the Midwest. We'll be fine.

Sometimes we even pay people not to farm. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2006/07/02/f...

A lot of productive cropland isn't used for food, unfortunately. For example:

Approximately 45% of U.S. corn croplands are used for ethanol production

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn-and-other-feed-gr...

I don't think that's much to worry about. The total energy needs of the US could be met by putting solar panels on only a small percentage of land, far smaller than what's needed for agriculture. Furthermore in some cases the land can be dual use

Yeah people tend to overestimate the needs of solar power and underestimate the extent of America. Take for example California. It could very easily be powered by a PV installation about the size of Edwards Air Force Base, which is << 1% the extent of the state. Not every state is so lucky, but there are grids.

If you sacrificed 10% of Nevada, which history shows we are more than ready to do, that alone would quite easily power America.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/agrivoltaics-solar-and-agr...

Just think of it as crop rotation on a 30-year span.

There's plenty of land for food and energy, we just have to eat less meat.

And really we should optimize the land use in general. Single family housing is also huge waste of energy. A few square meters per person in massive shared places is enough to survive. We could bulldoze all single family homes and then fill the now vacant office spaces with bunk beds for more sustainable living...

Who's advocating that? My point was in response to unspecified concerns that I took to be that we wouldn't be able to support the population if we have too much solar, which is emphatically not true.

You were advocating for absolutely massive lowering of living standards. As clearly eating less meat is making live lot worse. I just took on myself to present next logical and less bad step.

We do not need more than handful of square meters to live. So as quality of life does not matter in this conversation. We should explore next steps we can take to save the planet. By getting rid of anything that is not absolutely needed for survival.

I'm not advocating anything. I'm simply pointing out that there's plenty of land for both solar and food, and frankly that includes a decent quantity of meat. I expect the consequences would be the price of meat might go up.

Moreover, why does eating less meat make living worse? I daresay your view is not universally held.

So are you suggesting moving everyone to shared living spaces is making living worse? I daresay your view is not universally held either.

I expect the consequences be massive reduction in cost of housing.

I'm simply pointing as valid alternative solution.

Nah, you're being snarky. Rooftop PV is common, so reducing housing land area per capita completely fails to make any difference at all to the land area required for enough PV to power those homes.

> As clearly eating less meat is making live lot worse

I have no idea why anyone would think this. I've been vegetarian for as long as I've had a say in my diet without any problem. Food in general is necessary, but any specific diet is only rarely mandatory.

(OTOH, if your entire experience has been vegan "cheese" then I sympathise, that has been a travesty every time I've tried it).

Sounds like a fine modest proposal.

I'm all in favour of getting people off meat, but you don't even need to do that in order to get enough land for PV.

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