I have to take issue with the many recent editorials concerning green energy in Mississippi.
First of all, Mississippi seems like the worst place on the planet to set up solar panels. Sure, when it’s not raining or cloudy things are great, but how many hours of sunshine can a solar farm expect to suck energy from the sun around here? How long will a hailstorm or tornado take to completely wipe out that solar farm? Not to mention the windmills.
We don’t have to guess at this. We have evidence of it all over the world.
But here are questions that haven’t been answered. What are the environmental consequences of setting up solar panels on vast swaths of land? The editorial last week mentioned sheep grazing the grass underneath solar panels, but how much grass grows in the shade? And what do these solar panels do to the ecosystem as animals, both small and large, find that their natural habitat has disappeared or been so dramatically changed that they can no longer thrive there?
What is the ecological damage done by the heavy metals used in these panels? I’m asking about the mining of dangerous and toxic minerals by usually very poor people in Third World countries and the impact of all those toxic metals that will very quickly end up in landfills.
What about the damage done by the windmills in destroying natural habitats and killing birds, often the largest and most endangered? It’s my understanding that wind farms get special legal protection from the federal government in killing endangered animals. They are allowed to kill bald eagles.
What happens to our ecosystem when these birds are destroyed and no longer participate in the food cycle? Of course, we have to expect these windmills to be taken out by the inevitable tornadoes, so what about the damage from windmills crashing to the ground?
What about the disposal of the toxic windmill blades that end up in landfills?
I just have to wonder why we’ve embraced this technology that has such devastating impacts on our environment. That doesn’t sound very green to me.
— Bruce Bridges, McComb
