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© 2024 AFPClimate change solutions not always good for biodiversity
By Delphine PAYSANT PARIS©2025 GPlusMedia Inc.
The requested article has expired, and is no longer available. Any related articles, and user comments are shown below.
© 2024 AFP
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GBR48
You can't have your cake and eat it. Sometimes you will have to choose between people and wildlife. There are no perfect solutions. We are a large species. Our impact is not going to go away. At best, a small percentage will be skimmed off it. And we need to speedily engineer more resilience into our infrastructure.
Desert Tortoise
Placing solar arrays on roof tops and over parking lots and freeways, especially in arid sunny regions, makes more sense than tearing up fragile desert ecosystems to build solar arrays. Put the solar power as close to the end user as possible and leave the desert and its critters alone!
Moonraker
No, this was never sound; it was stupid from the off and many people knew it. On the other hand, thanks to the effects of our thoughtless, ignorant, fat-fingered attitude to the environment in the past, considered as a negative externality in the economic system (profit making and capital accumulation), we are now in the position of trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again with only a limited idea of how he looked and uncertain whether even that will work.
wallace
Solar highway with panels laid on the road.
NB
The highway leading to salvaging the planet, including its wonderful biodiversity, and salvaging humankind, is shifting from the carbon age to the age of solar energy. We receive energy from the sun in vast abundance, and it is cheap and easy to convert it to electricity. This includes storing energy for the night. Nuclear energy should also be used, as a backup. Solar panels are not made to be laid on the roads. The roads and railroads should accommodate electrical transfortation platforms.
Zaphod
Desert Tortoise
True. And even if more so if agricultural or forest land is covered with these contraptions. And the pressure to do so exists, as this is an extremely low-density power source.
Desert Tortoise
Crops and trees don't grow well shaded by solar panels but there is movement in California to cover irrigation canals with solar panels. It has the added benefit of shading the canals reducing evaporation.
NB
A panel of 2 square meters produces many hundreds of Watts. These beautiful devices are very suitable for roof tops, but are not suitable for parking lots and for freeways. By allocating a little bit of sesert area or other unused area it is possible to produce an immense amount of electricity.