Comment by LUmBULtERA 11 hours ago
I don't disagree about it being politicized, but if you look at the states with the highest amounts of renewable generation, your second sentence is not supported. There is a LOT of wind energy in Republican-led states in places where wind makes sense.
Oh, that's fair point, except solar isn't relatively sparse in a lot of Republican led states too. Texas, Florida, North Carolina all have a relatively decent amount of solar, and Arizona does too which is... mixed?
And solar does show up in red states. I am not sure how this short administration would have had an impact on it. I don’t agree with the politicization of it but I suspect this has more to do with the parent energy grid and any constraints due to geography. Without a doubt I would expect the Midwest to have more.
It's lovely to see actual data swat away ideological mosquito bite sniping points.
The curious thing is that so many of these kinds of claims can be disproven in literally seconds to minutes in any debate, yet they persist.
Certain tendencies aside, republican and conservatives types aren't utter idiots and do know how sidestep some rally talk to serve their own benefit if they think it's practical, profitable and useful.
Not to mention that many conservatives love the field of off-grid prepping to this day and would certainly know about the value of solar, wind, hydro and any other robust renewable power technology. You're not going to build a coal plant or an oil refinery next to your deep-woods Utah cabin.
Indeed. I live in a pretty red state, and have lots of red or red-leaning family and friends, and practically nobody I know is "anti-solar" or even considered it a political stance. I do run into more anti-windmill though, but the reason is clearly that nobody likes looking at them across the landscape (windfarm in SE Utah was controversial for this point). Also in the southwest solar is often not favored because some amount of water is used to clean the dust off, and water scarcity here in the SW US is starting to finally creep into peoples' minds.
I'd imagine a lot of the lack of solar farms in the rural midwest and southwest is due to land use conflicts with ag and ranching. I don't have data to back that up though, just a hunch.
Their first sentence could be called into question by that, not the second. The second specifies solar.