6 ms·

What is the argument against it? I've never heard any logical reasons beyond hating the Left. It's like hating bikers, why? The same people that have pickup

What is the argument against it? I've never heard any logical reasons beyond hating the Left. It's like hating bikers, why? The same people that have pickup trucks and swerve to intimidate bikers, seem to hate solar energy. But why?

rapind 1y ago
Rhetoric mostly I'd say. The idea being promoted is that clean energy subsidies hurt the honest Joe coal miner (details being very hand wavy). I'm not convinced it's really that well thought out though and might just be about owning the libs. Maybe there's a MAGA in here that can educate us.
bluGill 1y ago
Because anything one side says the other must automatically and reflexively oppose no matter what. The example here is Right hating on Left, but the Left as the same illogical hate against the right - though in different areas. This has often been blamed on first past the post voting - if you want to win you have to team up which means your views on Abortion and Environment Policy have to align even though there is no reason to think the two should have anything to do with one another. Since there is no room for thinking each side is correct one one and wrong on the other you have to oppose anything the other does without wondering if maybe they are correct. Now remember that are thousands (millions?) of different issues, and many of them have a range of different answers, yet there can only be one unified position that you support... I'm not convinced that the various alternatives are really better though. They all seem to have issues in the real world, and too often people will look at what they have an ignore the issues because they want to feel better.
- pstuart 1y ago
  > the Left as the same illogical hate against the right Challenge accepted. Receipts please.
  - southernplaces7 1y ago
    Firearms for home and personal defense. Also, not to even dig deeply into the many lunacies that the progressive left became insane about during the pandemic (both sides were guilty here, but it was BOTH sides). Don't get too smug. You really think your entire half of a political spectrum is free of stupidity and irrational thinking?
    - rapind 1y ago
      > Firearms for home and personal defense. Given the current political climate, the left should definitely get on board with this one ASAP. There's lunacy on both sides for sure, but MAGA has a pretty strong hold on blatant cruelty when it comes to their issues. Also, I'd argue the Overton window has shifted pretty far right, so you have to be pretty extreme to be considered a right wing extremist these days. In fact, some of the major MAGA rallying points could actually be points of compromise to most progressives if they weren't so cruel about it (ICE, farm slavery visas, trans sports). Plus curiously the one we could all agree on but don't hear much about on the right anymore; Epstein.
    - adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
      being against the #1 killer of children in the US hardly seems insane to me.
    - blacksmith_tb 1y ago
      Oh sure, the Left has plenty of irrational but deeply held beliefs. Anti-firearms though... when they kill more people through suicide than homicide... 1: https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/new-report-highlights-us-2023-gun-deaths-suicide-by-firearm-at-record-levels-for-third-straight-year https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/new-report-highlights-us-2...
    - specialist 1y ago
      > Firearms for home and personal defense. What current policy, legislation, court decisions, etc do you oppose?
    - pstuart 1y ago
mantas 1y ago
Technically I could see some reasons. Grids need serious upgrades to support personal solar properly. Which is €€€ and, if end-customers would have to foot the bill themselves, very few people would install solar at home. On top of that, at least in my whereabouts solar is receives a fuckton of subsidies. In the long run lower energy prices will pay back those subsidies for the society, but for now I could see why some people ain't happy to foot the bill. Especially when it's usually better-off people installing solar. While poor people end up partially footing the bool. Last but not least, Chinese domination in modern solar equipment is mind-boggling. At least when I was installing solar, buying western-made would have been much more expensive, to the point that it wouldn't be worth to go through. P.S. I got solar on the roof myself. „Free“ electricity is damn nice.
- FrustratedMonky 1y ago
  Isn't US made equipment facing the headwinds of the US being anti-solar. It seems more like the US shot itself in the foot by letting the Chinese get the lead on this technology. And by subsidizing, and maybe regulating buying US, we could support our domestic industry. Seems like all over the place we are giving up and letting China win the technology race. Robots, cars, solar, all the future tech is in trouble. I don't know why anybody is against clean air. It makes no sense.
  - mantas 1y ago
    As an euro, here it's the same. Even though (most of?) europe is pro-solar.
  - adabyron 1y ago
    The US has invested a lot of money, lives, political capital & environment to become a big oil & gas producer. One of it's potential weapons against China is that China imports most of it's oil & gas. China also has a few easy geographical choke points to prevent it from importing gas. Solar & wind plus electrical vehicles destroy this advantage. So China has many reasons to push in this direction while the US is doubling down on it's bet, even while other historical oil countries like Saudi Arabia are diversifying away from oil. It should also be noted that many Chinese companies are selling at a loss or very low margin, especially the electric car companies. https://www.reuters.com/investigations/china-is-sending-its-world-beating-auto-industry-into-tailspin-2025-09-17/ https://www.reuters.com/investigations/china-is-sending-its-...
jtr1 1y ago
I think you'll have a difficult time comprehending the phenomenon if you look for reasoned arguments. A much more productive framework, IMO, is to see it in terms of a feedback loop between funding sources and the aggregate valence of speech on a particular topic. The energy industry is one of the largest in the world, with trillions of revenue on the line. The FF component of that industry has every incentive to turn sentiment against upstart competitors, but you do that at scale less by reasoned arguments and more by gut level appeals: "the people who want renewable energy hate your culture and way of life", "renewal installations are ugly and a blight on the landscape of your home", etc.
pjc50 1y ago
It acknowledges the reality of global warming. Furthermore, and the real reason why it's considered "woke", is that it implies taking some action to reduce the harm done to others. People who enjoy threatening to harm others (such as your biker example) get very angry about that.
- blacksmith_tb 1y ago
  I think guilt plays in also, a sizable fraction of the population don't want to hear that the way they live their lives is damaging everyone (even themselves, poignantly enough). To try and put that in a more sympathetic light, they don't want to hear they need to invest a significant chunk of their income in reducing that harm (like improving the efficiency of their home, installing PV, driving an EV or even biking to work instead of hopping in the pickup). It'd be nice if there were some subsidies to make that easier... except those are now getting the axe.
zdragnar 1y ago
Most of the "real" opposition is against providing further federal subsidies, along with it doesn't eliminate the need for base load during bad weather. The closing of the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility has been making the rounds, as it had received $1.6 billion in funding but can't compete. I think most people would be less opposed if they saw the math behind more of the actual PV installations. > It's like hating bikers, why? Totally off topic, but I was walking through a city yesterday. Cars politely stopped for me as I crossed roads. Bikes didn't, and they also swerved onto sidewalks past me. They obeyed fewer rules of the road and put me at greater risk of harm than did any vehicle. I grew up an avid bicyclist out in the countryside, but people on bikes in the city manage to piss me off far more than most drivers do.
- walkabout 1y ago
  Yeah, I don’t hate bicyclists in the “I would try to make them feel less safe” sense (I tend to go way the opposite way, if anything) but I do dread seeing them when driving or walking in the same spaces. They’re really unpredictable, and their presence creates extremely unsafe-feeling situations for everyone around. When I ride a bike, I don’t do it in places where, when I encounter a bike driving, it makes me especially anxious.
  - AtlasBarfed 1y ago
    Who is driving the two ton vehicle that has killed millions worldwide?
    - walkabout 1y ago
      Yes, of course. But the bikes are the ones making the space those murder-machines operate in operate differently from how it usually does, which is inherently not great. I’d like to see car use reduced as much as the next sane person, but I still go “ah, goddamnit” when I see a bicyclist approaching an intersection or come up on one going uphill on a twisty no-shoulder 35+ mph road.
      - 1y ago
volkl48 1y ago
(To preface: I am strongly in favor of renewable energy overall). To the extent that there is anything real to their dislike: Poorly structured/overly generous homeowner net metering initiatives, especially for solar without storage, legitimately have escalated costs for everyone else in some regions. The excessive subsidy given to those homeowners for power that's often not very valuable (as it comes primarily at a time of day that's already well supplied) comes from somewhere, and somewhere is....the pockets of everyone who doesn't have home rooftop solar. And those people are typically poorer people in rented, denser housing than the average homeowner. Most places have been moving to correct this mistake for the future (ex: CA's "Net Metering 3.0"), but that also gets pushback from people who wanted to take advantage of that unsustainable deal from the government or who incorrectly think it's a part of general anti-renewable pushes. ------ Aside from that, in regions known for production of coal/oil/gas or major processing of, it's seen as a potential threat to jobs + mineral tax revenues that are often what underwrite most of their local/state government functions. While there are plenty of job creation claims for renewables, it doesn't take a genius to see that they don't appear to need all that many workers once built, and that the manufacturing chain for the solar panels or wind turbines is probably not to be put in places like West Virginia, Midland TX, Alaska, etc.
- AtlasBarfed 1y ago
  Highest demand for energy is during the day. Highest output of solar is during the day. Your comment about energy supply implies we just don't need any solar at all. I think we need is a large set of incentives to do home solar with storage.
  - volkl48 1y ago
    My comment doesn't imply that at all. We absolutely need more solar, and a lot of it. Just that we don't necessarily need more of it everywhere without making accompanying storage investments. (+ possibly transmission investments). We shouldn't be overpaying in generous subsidies to homeowners for power mid-day where it's now worth the least. Early net metering schemes were often basically 1:1. You supply a kWh mid-day where it's not worth much and that's "equal" in value to you drawing a kWh at 18:30, even though the market price of electricity then might be 10x what it was when you earned your "credit" and the grid is far more strained. ------- Most regions that already have a decent amount of behind the meter home solar at this point exhibit a strong "duck curve" effect, at least on sunnier days. Mid-day demand is deeply suppressed while solar output is strongest. Meanwhile, the AM/PM peaks remain and are at times of the day when solar output is very low. With more storage - solar can help cover those peaks (+ overnight demand). Without, you're not accomplishing all that much by just depressing mid-day loads even further unless you can restructure society to better match it's energy demands to those solar supply curves. A few illustrations/articles: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=56880 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=56880 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 https://www.iso-ne.com/about/where-we-are-going/solar-power-impact https://www.iso-ne.com/about/where-we-are-going/solar-power-... (New England).
atoav 1y ago
Arguments only matter if we assume totally rational actors. There is ample evidence that this could potentially be a faulty assumption. A questiom: What do you think, do people first have an emotion and then try to rationalize it? Or do they first have a the rational judgment and only after that start to become emotional? If you watch right wing media it is pretty clear that emotions play a huge role for them. And because nobody particularly likes having emotions they can't explain, the rationalizations come after: "Windmills are destroy the landscape" (unlike let's say an oilfield which is somehow totally fine), things about the infrasound (which if a concern you can get rid off by the same way it is done with nuclear waste in the US, just use that massive land mass to your advantage). If we had rational, emotionally distanced actors they would change their mind once all doubts are addressed and the facts are on the table. But that is not the case here in my own experience. Once the last rationalization breaks they go back to the feeling of: "I just don't like it". That means the much more fruitful question to investigate is that particular dislike and where it might come from, emotionally. Surely this isn't just one root. For some it may be the "safe" opinion of their herd/tribe. Others say it, their entertainment (that under traditional media law wouldn't deserve the title "News") says it and so on. For yet others this may be a question of their insecure masculinity. They feel insecure, but men have to be strong! So they try their best to appear strong, by buying manly products, driving manly trucks and spouting manly opinions. You know what isn't manly in their mind? Being sensible. Sensible with other people, the environment, wensible with thought. And then a sensible energy option come around. Guess what, that feels like an attack to them. Suddenly society wants to erect huge pillars thst remind them that being sensible is now required. That really touches their core fear of not being manly enough. Being sensible could be misread as being gay after all. There are probably more reasons. P.S.: I am not saying there are no rational critics of wind energy. Whwt I am saying is the bulk of categorical dislike comes from an entirely uninformed, purely emotional direction

rapind 1y ago

Rhetoric mostly I'd say. The idea being promoted is that clean energy subsidies hurt the honest Joe coal miner (details being very hand wavy). I'm not convinced it's really that well thought out though and might just be about owning the libs. Maybe there's a MAGA in here that can educate us.

bluGill 1y ago

Because anything one side says the other must automatically and reflexively oppose no matter what. The example here is Right hating on Left, but the Left as the same illogical hate against the right - though in different areas. This has often been blamed on first past the post voting - if you want to win you have to team up which means your views on Abortion and Environment Policy have to align even though there is no reason to think the two should have anything to do with one another. Since there is no room for thinking each side is correct one one and wrong on the other you have to oppose anything the other does without wondering if maybe they are correct. Now remember that are thousands (millions?) of different issues, and many of them have a range of different answers, yet there can only be one unified position that you support... I'm not convinced that the various alternatives are really better though. They all seem to have issues in the real world, and too often people will look at what they have an ignore the issues because they want to feel better.

pstuart 1y ago
> the Left as the same illogical hate against the right Challenge accepted. Receipts please.
- southernplaces7 1y ago
  Firearms for home and personal defense. Also, not to even dig deeply into the many lunacies that the progressive left became insane about during the pandemic (both sides were guilty here, but it was BOTH sides). Don't get too smug. You really think your entire half of a political spectrum is free of stupidity and irrational thinking?
  - rapind 1y ago
    > Firearms for home and personal defense. Given the current political climate, the left should definitely get on board with this one ASAP. There's lunacy on both sides for sure, but MAGA has a pretty strong hold on blatant cruelty when it comes to their issues. Also, I'd argue the Overton window has shifted pretty far right, so you have to be pretty extreme to be considered a right wing extremist these days. In fact, some of the major MAGA rallying points could actually be points of compromise to most progressives if they weren't so cruel about it (ICE, farm slavery visas, trans sports). Plus curiously the one we could all agree on but don't hear much about on the right anymore; Epstein.
  - adgjlsfhk1 1y ago
    being against the #1 killer of children in the US hardly seems insane to me.
  - blacksmith_tb 1y ago
    Oh sure, the Left has plenty of irrational but deeply held beliefs. Anti-firearms though... when they kill more people through suicide than homicide... 1: https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/new-report-highlights-us-2023-gun-deaths-suicide-by-firearm-at-record-levels-for-third-straight-year https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2025/new-report-highlights-us-2...
  - specialist 1y ago
    > Firearms for home and personal defense. What current policy, legislation, court decisions, etc do you oppose?
  - pstuart 1y ago

mantas 1y ago

Technically I could see some reasons. Grids need serious upgrades to support personal solar properly. Which is €€€ and, if end-customers would have to foot the bill themselves, very few people would install solar at home. On top of that, at least in my whereabouts solar is receives a fuckton of subsidies. In the long run lower energy prices will pay back those subsidies for the society, but for now I could see why some people ain't happy to foot the bill. Especially when it's usually better-off people installing solar. While poor people end up partially footing the bool. Last but not least, Chinese domination in modern solar equipment is mind-boggling. At least when I was installing solar, buying western-made would have been much more expensive, to the point that it wouldn't be worth to go through. P.S. I got solar on the roof myself. „Free“ electricity is damn nice.

FrustratedMonky 1y ago
Isn't US made equipment facing the headwinds of the US being anti-solar. It seems more like the US shot itself in the foot by letting the Chinese get the lead on this technology. And by subsidizing, and maybe regulating buying US, we could support our domestic industry. Seems like all over the place we are giving up and letting China win the technology race. Robots, cars, solar, all the future tech is in trouble. I don't know why anybody is against clean air. It makes no sense.
- mantas 1y ago
  As an euro, here it's the same. Even though (most of?) europe is pro-solar.
- adabyron 1y ago
  The US has invested a lot of money, lives, political capital & environment to become a big oil & gas producer. One of it's potential weapons against China is that China imports most of it's oil & gas. China also has a few easy geographical choke points to prevent it from importing gas. Solar & wind plus electrical vehicles destroy this advantage. So China has many reasons to push in this direction while the US is doubling down on it's bet, even while other historical oil countries like Saudi Arabia are diversifying away from oil. It should also be noted that many Chinese companies are selling at a loss or very low margin, especially the electric car companies. https://www.reuters.com/investigations/china-is-sending-its-world-beating-auto-industry-into-tailspin-2025-09-17/ https://www.reuters.com/investigations/china-is-sending-its-...

jtr1 1y ago

I think you'll have a difficult time comprehending the phenomenon if you look for reasoned arguments. A much more productive framework, IMO, is to see it in terms of a feedback loop between funding sources and the aggregate valence of speech on a particular topic. The energy industry is one of the largest in the world, with trillions of revenue on the line. The FF component of that industry has every incentive to turn sentiment against upstart competitors, but you do that at scale less by reasoned arguments and more by gut level appeals: "the people who want renewable energy hate your culture and way of life", "renewal installations are ugly and a blight on the landscape of your home", etc.

pjc50 1y ago

It acknowledges the reality of global warming. Furthermore, and the real reason why it's considered "woke", is that it implies taking some action to reduce the harm done to others. People who enjoy threatening to harm others (such as your biker example) get very angry about that.

blacksmith_tb 1y ago
I think guilt plays in also, a sizable fraction of the population don't want to hear that the way they live their lives is damaging everyone (even themselves, poignantly enough). To try and put that in a more sympathetic light, they don't want to hear they need to invest a significant chunk of their income in reducing that harm (like improving the efficiency of their home, installing PV, driving an EV or even biking to work instead of hopping in the pickup). It'd be nice if there were some subsidies to make that easier... except those are now getting the axe.

zdragnar 1y ago

Most of the "real" opposition is against providing further federal subsidies, along with it doesn't eliminate the need for base load during bad weather. The closing of the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility has been making the rounds, as it had received $1.6 billion in funding but can't compete. I think most people would be less opposed if they saw the math behind more of the actual PV installations. > It's like hating bikers, why? Totally off topic, but I was walking through a city yesterday. Cars politely stopped for me as I crossed roads. Bikes didn't, and they also swerved onto sidewalks past me. They obeyed fewer rules of the road and put me at greater risk of harm than did any vehicle. I grew up an avid bicyclist out in the countryside, but people on bikes in the city manage to piss me off far more than most drivers do.

walkabout 1y ago
Yeah, I don’t hate bicyclists in the “I would try to make them feel less safe” sense (I tend to go way the opposite way, if anything) but I do dread seeing them when driving or walking in the same spaces. They’re really unpredictable, and their presence creates extremely unsafe-feeling situations for everyone around. When I ride a bike, I don’t do it in places where, when I encounter a bike driving, it makes me especially anxious.
- AtlasBarfed 1y ago
  Who is driving the two ton vehicle that has killed millions worldwide?
  - walkabout 1y ago
    Yes, of course. But the bikes are the ones making the space those murder-machines operate in operate differently from how it usually does, which is inherently not great. I’d like to see car use reduced as much as the next sane person, but I still go “ah, goddamnit” when I see a bicyclist approaching an intersection or come up on one going uphill on a twisty no-shoulder 35+ mph road.
    - 1y ago

volkl48 1y ago

(To preface: I am strongly in favor of renewable energy overall). To the extent that there is anything real to their dislike: Poorly structured/overly generous homeowner net metering initiatives, especially for solar without storage, legitimately have escalated costs for everyone else in some regions. The excessive subsidy given to those homeowners for power that's often not very valuable (as it comes primarily at a time of day that's already well supplied) comes from somewhere, and somewhere is....the pockets of everyone who doesn't have home rooftop solar. And those people are typically poorer people in rented, denser housing than the average homeowner. Most places have been moving to correct this mistake for the future (ex: CA's "Net Metering 3.0"), but that also gets pushback from people who wanted to take advantage of that unsustainable deal from the government or who incorrectly think it's a part of general anti-renewable pushes. ------ Aside from that, in regions known for production of coal/oil/gas or major processing of, it's seen as a potential threat to jobs + mineral tax revenues that are often what underwrite most of their local/state government functions. While there are plenty of job creation claims for renewables, it doesn't take a genius to see that they don't appear to need all that many workers once built, and that the manufacturing chain for the solar panels or wind turbines is probably not to be put in places like West Virginia, Midland TX, Alaska, etc.

AtlasBarfed 1y ago
Highest demand for energy is during the day. Highest output of solar is during the day. Your comment about energy supply implies we just don't need any solar at all. I think we need is a large set of incentives to do home solar with storage.
- volkl48 1y ago
  My comment doesn't imply that at all. We absolutely need more solar, and a lot of it. Just that we don't necessarily need more of it everywhere without making accompanying storage investments. (+ possibly transmission investments). We shouldn't be overpaying in generous subsidies to homeowners for power mid-day where it's now worth the least. Early net metering schemes were often basically 1:1. You supply a kWh mid-day where it's not worth much and that's "equal" in value to you drawing a kWh at 18:30, even though the market price of electricity then might be 10x what it was when you earned your "credit" and the grid is far more strained. ------- Most regions that already have a decent amount of behind the meter home solar at this point exhibit a strong "duck curve" effect, at least on sunnier days. Mid-day demand is deeply suppressed while solar output is strongest. Meanwhile, the AM/PM peaks remain and are at times of the day when solar output is very low. With more storage - solar can help cover those peaks (+ overnight demand). Without, you're not accomplishing all that much by just depressing mid-day loads even further unless you can restructure society to better match it's energy demands to those solar supply curves. A few illustrations/articles: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=56880 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=56880 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42915 https://www.iso-ne.com/about/where-we-are-going/solar-power-impact https://www.iso-ne.com/about/where-we-are-going/solar-power-... (New England).

atoav 1y ago

Arguments only matter if we assume totally rational actors. There is ample evidence that this could potentially be a faulty assumption. A questiom: What do you think, do people first have an emotion and then try to rationalize it? Or do they first have a the rational judgment and only after that start to become emotional? If you watch right wing media it is pretty clear that emotions play a huge role for them. And because nobody particularly likes having emotions they can't explain, the rationalizations come after: "Windmills are destroy the landscape" (unlike let's say an oilfield which is somehow totally fine), things about the infrasound (which if a concern you can get rid off by the same way it is done with nuclear waste in the US, just use that massive land mass to your advantage). If we had rational, emotionally distanced actors they would change their mind once all doubts are addressed and the facts are on the table. But that is not the case here in my own experience. Once the last rationalization breaks they go back to the feeling of: "I just don't like it". That means the much more fruitful question to investigate is that particular dislike and where it might come from, emotionally. Surely this isn't just one root. For some it may be the "safe" opinion of their herd/tribe. Others say it, their entertainment (that under traditional media law wouldn't deserve the title "News") says it and so on. For yet others this may be a question of their insecure masculinity. They feel insecure, but men have to be strong! So they try their best to appear strong, by buying manly products, driving manly trucks and spouting manly opinions. You know what isn't manly in their mind? Being sensible. Sensible with other people, the environment, wensible with thought. And then a sensible energy option come around. Guess what, that feels like an attack to them. Suddenly society wants to erect huge pillars thst remind them that being sensible is now required. That really touches their core fear of not being manly enough. Being sensible could be misread as being gay after all. There are probably more reasons. P.S.: I am not saying there are no rational critics of wind energy. Whwt I am saying is the bulk of categorical dislike comes from an entirely uninformed, purely emotional direction