Energy Matters

  Food or Energy: Do We Have To Choose? Climate-anxious Liberal: “Whew, finally solar installations at scale are helping to turn the tide on fossil fuel generated electricity! Put it everywhere! Life’s a trade-off!” Food-security-anxious Liberal: “Horrors! The solar farms are stealing all the agricultural land, we’ll starve!” Tree-hugging Liberal: “The solar armies will spare no forests in their quest to dominate the surface of the planet!” Landscape enthusiast Liberal: “Ughh, I’m getting a headache just thinking about the future endless monotony of photovoltaics dominating my cherished views!” Can these over-wrought liberals find solace and mutual understanding on the subject of deploying renewable energy infrastructure? Unsurprisingly, we recommend they start by looking at some numbers. In a recent column we mentioned that, of the 10 acres of forest per person in Maine, if one acre were replaced with solar panels that would more than compensate for the average carbon footprint....