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Comment by meerita | Hacker News Reader

This is the same question I've asked myself. One country sacrifices its entire energy production in favor of green alternatives, while the rest of the world doesn't. It doesn't even move the needle. It's just a pitiful way to fail.

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The paradigm was:

Renewables will be that fast in roll-out and much cheaper and then other countries will follow the path.

(which is funny, since China installed more solar in 2024/2025 than US+EU combined - so for them its working, in the beginning they were adptors, now they became shapers; same for africa: now a real option to get cheap energy, the only region where solar is more expensive than it should be, is actually EU + US)

I've seen the consequences of the shift to renewables here in Spain: entire ecosystems destroyed, drought everywhere, wildlife displaced, and native plant species disappearing because of wind turbines and solar farms.

I'm in favor of renewables, but at the individual level (your own home). Meanwhile, the Spanish government has made several moves to ban personal electric vehicles like EUCs and electric scooters, which only pushes people back toward gas-powered vehicles.

Everything is being done wrong.

do you know of any politician in charge who is doing anything/whatever-at-least-one-thing right?

As libertarian, of course not.

Is it official libertarian dogma that solar panels and wind turbines cause droughts?

Seems like an incredibly convenient, yet insane, thing to believe if you want to deflect blame from fossil fuel driven climate change.

That's not libertarian dogma by any libertarian, I know. It is right-wing, but libertarians it will remind you that politics is far too complex to try and move to one axis.

It has to be bait. No one could be that stupid.

It's not the solution the problem, it's who execute it.

Renewables did all that? Are you stupid? If you actually cared about habitat loss there is a big list of things that take up more space than renewables. This is so idiotic it has to be rage bait

Well, they cleared an entire region of trees to make way for renewable energy projects. That also affected rivers, wildlife, and entire ecosystems. They've even decommissioned dams and reservoirs that provided flood protection, irrigation water for agricultural land, and hydroelectric power.

Wait till you hear how much space they clear to make space for agriculture. Renewables are a rounding error compared to that. your just being disingenuous at best. There is more space taken up by golf courses and parks than RE projects in some countries. Turbines take up no space and can be placed around farmland.

Solar/wind farms are great when you have the land suitable for those. My favourite example is replacing the U.S. farms growing corn that is used to produce ethanol (which is then added to the gas) with solar farms. This would produce more energy while not disrupting any ecosystems (at least not more than the existing farms).

So either Spain has no land like that, or the Spanish government has fucked something up. Judging by the rest of your post, I‘m leaning towards the latter :-)

Yeah, they signed against solar. They planted a gazillion of wind turbines that aren't using and producing enough and wildlife is displaced, killed by that. They also destroyed an entire plantation of olive trees and other trees to do solar.

I agree, countries that do not adhere to CO2 targets should be heavily sanctioned. They are killing us, after all.

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