The first article in the Mount Vernon News last fall about a planned solar farm simply noted that residents were “expressing their concern.” But soon the county’s only newspaper was packed with stories about solar energy that almost uniformly criticized the project and quoted its opponents.
Then a new “grassroots” organization materialized and invited locals to an elaborate event billed as a town hall, with a keynote speaker who denied that humans cause climate change.
Someone sent text messages to residents urging them to “stop the solar invasion” and elect two county commission candidates who opposed the solar farm. And one day this past March, residents received an unfamiliar newspaper that contained only articles attacking Frasier Solar, a large project that would replace hundreds of acres of corn and soybeans with the equivalent of 630 football fields of solar panels.
To many in the deep-red central Ohio community, it seemed that solar had become the focus of news and politics. They were right. Fossil fuel interests were secretly working to shape the conversation in Knox County.
The same people complaining will act confused when their electric bill goes up later due to relying on fossil fuels.
Fuck O&G.
Fuck them hard - we really need to take off the fucking kids gloves as we’re already clearly feeling the pain of more extreme climate.
Why would they be concerned? Like what is bad about using the land for that instead of growing corn? How would it hurt anyone? That’s how you know it’s bullshit. The article doesn’t even say and I’m assuming it’s because the original campaign didn’t really say either lol
How would it hurt anyone?
I don’t know about the situation there, but in some places in Spain, there are agricultural workers who are upset about the conversion of plant farms to solar farms, because the solar farms require less labor, so they’re unhappy about job losses. From what I’ve read, it’s been something of a political hot topic there.
