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Comment by schiffern | Hacker News Reader

I had a friend who actually moved when a 100+ acre solar farm was built just upstream, and maintained by heavy regular spraying of herbicides.

Solar is great, but IMO we should be somehow encouraging rooftop solar (which, yes, is more expensive!) in order to reduce pressure on wilderness and agriculture.

Before someone jumps in with the efficient market hypothesis, fundamentally the problem is that wilderness services aren't easily priced correctly, but solar has suddenly made chopping down wilderness (more) easily monetizable.

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I think parking lots are the ideal place for large scale solar. They have already destroyed the local environment, and anything shading black asphalt will be an improvement for local temperature.

Other plusses are that they are close to electric demand (business, homes, and EVs), and people prefer to park in shade.

The downside is there's no existing structure to install the panels, so that's more steel used to mount the panels.

> I think parking lots are the ideal place for large scale solar.

There are numerous examples of that around where we live, in the foothills of the mountains north of Phoenix, where there are also lots of recent modern construction projects. One nice installation at a school a few minutes away has the panels on structures providing shade, all over blacktop, as you thought of.

Not to mention the good effects from shading the cars parking there so they're not so hot when you get into them in the summer.

This is quite upsetting, and yet not at all a surprise. We're taking the same damaging approach to power that we always have, but now with solar.

In addition to the sibling comments, another better approach is to blend solar with farming, to grow shade-loving crops and reduce evaporation. They'll still use pesticides, no doubt, but not more than ordinary farming.

https://theconversation.com/how-shading-crops-with-solar-pan...

I have seen in many places they use sheep to cut the grass and herbs so no need for herbicides.

Yes, this should definitely be the standard.

Agriculture and, more importantly, grazing land can be frequently integrated with solar and wind.

That wilderness isn’t going to be there anyway if we don’t address climate change as fast as we can.

The problem is that agriculture is limited in hilly uplands (which are ecologically the most important places to avoid deforesting) because you don't want a tractor to tip over. However those places can now be cleared for solar.

>That wilderness isn’t going to be there anyway if we don’t address climate change as fast as we can.

By the same token, fixing climate change won't matter if we don't have any wilderness services left.

Either crisis will be catastrophic, and we need to fix both. I sometimes worry that we focus too much on just GHG climate change, to the exclusion of other issues like biodiversity, water, soil, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVFSJINGueM&t=892

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