Say that survival depends on healthy ecosystems-- made from clean water, clean air and healthy soil.
The late Millan Millan, an engineer, physicist and weather forecaster, observed two things about water:
1)Healthy soil absorbs and holds it.
2)Paved roads, parking lots, electric power plants, shopping malls and data centers do not absorb or hold water. Actually, these things-- on which our society depends-- change an area's rainfall and the relationship between land and the atmosphere. Cutting down a forest (i.e. for a large-scale solar PV facility) can cause water vapor to burn out of the soil. Deforestation destroys the land's cooling mechanism, its evapo-transpiration cycle.
As Millan observed, harm to water cycles can make land "incapable of supporting the region's climate." Of course, manufacturing anything (i.e., cement and transistors-- or refining ores) requires vast amounts of water that are returned to waterways"toxic.
What to do? Step One: learn about your region's water. Trace your water from precipitation to tap and back to precipitation. How much rainfall do you get in a year? What percentage of your region's water goes to residences? What percentage goes to industries-- including mining, batteries, cleaning dirt off of solar panels, data centers and golf courses? What toxins does water use generate in your region? How is the water treated? Could your community live within the resources offered by your watershed? Step Two: study soil and water cycle health with Didi Pershouse. See her wonderful book, Understanding Soil Health and Watershed Function. For more about Millan Millan, read Rob Lewis.
Solar PVs can disrupt ecological health The American Farmland Trust reports that energy companies have covered huge amounts of prime farmland with solar PVs. Alice Friedemann, the Energy Skeptic, reports that about 83% of new solar projects are installed on farmland and ranchlands. By 2040, to meet the U.S.'s goal of eliminating greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector, solar could be deployed on over seven million acres. Between 2001 and 2016, the U.S. lost an average of 2,000 acres of farmland and ranchland per day to urban and highly developed and low-density residential land uses (Freedgood et al. 2020). At the same time, increasing population led to converting more farmland and ranchland to housing, business and industrial uses. Food production is increasingly threatened. See American Farmland Trust's Farms Under Threat. See the Vermont Daily Chronicle's July 26 story, America's shrinking farmland threatens food security. In Water Consumption of AI, How Tech Giants are Draining the Planet 2024, HyperScaler reports that by 2027, AI could consume between 4.2 and 6.6 billion cubic meters of water. Meanwhile, Brigham Young University scientists report that the Great Salt Lake, the source of drinking water for more than 40 million people and 339 species of birds, could dry up within five years; and they blame climate change and agriculture. Patricia Burke and Kate Kheel question whether water consumed by the area's data centers contribute to the Great Salt Lake's demise.
Natalie Koch, with the Middle East Research and Information Project, reports that covering deserts with solar PVs reduces them to barren, lifeless places. Utility-scale solar facilities also require new transmission lines and roads-- and regular replacements of equipment due to the degrading effects of extreme temperatures. Solar megaprojects can threaten local water supplies.
The NY Times reports that a labor shortage is one big obstacle to installing more solar power. To speed things up, energy companies have turned to robots-- which means yet more engagement with the global super-factory.
Some countries have put the brakes on solar PVs India has put solar out to pasture. Italy has banned solar panels on agricultural land.
Isn't it time?
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