There is SO much empty ass space in the south west of the US, why the fuck would you go out of your way to deforest an area? Stop proposing solar in areas that don’t get as much sun as the south west, this is political nonsense bullshit. Put pressure on Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Colorado to install more solar. California already has the most solar of any state by a huge margin.
That hurts my brain. We made it to the fucking moon, figured out nuclear power, and yet we have people doing that shit? Reality is an amazing inequitable shit show.
I know people who argue that burning wood pellets is grean because it’s marketed as “renewable”. It’s difficult to convince them that the wood their burning is not part of a renewable cycle and neither is it just wood scraps that would be there anyways. Same as growing “biofuel” for consumer cars. It’s just not a good use of the limited resources we have
If we want to build a stable 100% renewable energy electrical grid we need backup power station for when there is no sun or wind.
Right now coal and gas power stations are mainly used but renewables option are limited.
Hydro can help to an extent but the locations and power output are limited, battery storage help to smooth production but it’s not enough for seasonal variation.
Nuclear could work perfectly but I’m losing hope on trying to convince people that a bit of nuclear would help to each a 100% renewable energy grid.
The last option is biomass, it can be vertuous is the wood resource is well managed or terribly damaging for the environment if not.
Do I think biomass power station are needed of we want to transition.
While I agree with you, there are infrastructure issues if you try to transport that much energy across the country. Current infrastructure pretty much demands you have your power source be within a certain range (the range varies depending on available infrastructure.)
The obvious solution is to build out infrastructure alongside solar farms, but that’s a whole other beast to manage.
It’s never been about climate, it’s always about the money.
There are a lot of “forests” that are actually stupid monoculture wood farms. So even alleged forest protection can be purely about the money…
Is monoculture the word of the week on Lemmy? Let’s be clear, carbon dioxide doesn’t care what kind of tree converts it to oxygen.
I don’t know. But maybe it should be word of the week, month, year or decade given that the concept seems to not have been stressed enough in education and people constantly miss the issues created by monocultures, wether it’s soil damage, higher need for fertilizers, susceptibility to diseases or parasites (reqiring again more chemicals) or the simple fact that plants for monocultures are rarely chosen based on perfect climatic conditions (so even more at risk with changing climate). Ffs… regarding trees in particular the ones planted are often just picked for their straight trunks, so the wood is easier to sell later…
There’s already so many places that have been cleared of trees, that also happen to be right near where the power is needed. They’re called rooftops.
Definitely not an outcome of underregulated capitalism here