Oh boy, here we go:

PITTSFORD – Neighbors of the site proposed for a solar farm that would be owned by a Waterbury company are voicing their discontent about the project that would be on town land behind their homes.

This story — available only behind the Mitchell Family Paywall — is exactly the kind of thing that drives me nuts about the segment of Vermont’s “environmental” community whose agenda is a toxic combination of NIMBYism, denialism, and Tea Party-style Know-Nothingism. Stuff like this:

“Why can’t the industrial solar be in the cities?” asked George Clifford, who lives across from the site. “I think it’s absolutely ridiculous. I didn’t pay thousands of dollars to have industrial crap in my backyard.”

And this:

[Amy] Moriglioni, who said she heard about the meeting only when Clifford mentioned it a couple of hours beforehand, said there are pros and cons to solar farms, especially in how they are made.

“We are not fond of them in our house, at least not here,” she said.

Makes me grind my teeth. Which four out of five dentists do not recommend.  

To answer Clifford’s nonsensical question, you can’t put large-scale solar in cities because THE BUILDINGS BLOCK THE SUNLIGHT. Just like you can’t put wind turbines in Lake Champlain because the winds aren’t strong enough. But really, Clifford doesn’t care about the question; he just wants no solar farms anywhere near his house. That’s all. Same with Moriglioni, who wants the field kept open so she and her kids can walk across it.

This is not environmentalism. Indeed, since our biggest environmental threat is climate change, this is the exact opposite of environmentalism.  

If we are going to do our part to limit climate change, then we’re going to have to find places to site renewable energy facilities. If we’re not going to do our part, then we are no better than the Koch Brothers or Exxon Mobil or Jim Inhofe.

And despite our pure-hearted efforts to preserve Vermont as some kind of turbine-and-panel-free Eden, the effects of climate change will come barreling across our borders and turn our state into something profoundly different.

Vermont’s climate will be similar to that of southern Tennessee and northern Georgia by 2070 if CO2 emissions continue to climb, the Union of Concerned Scientists reports.

And please don’t tell me that the answer is small-scale, community-scale, Vermont-scale renewables. That’s part of the solution, to be sure; but it can’t possibly provide all the energy we need or anything close to it.

(Straying off topic for a moment: if you’re concerned about bird and bat kills at large-scale wind turbines, how many critters would die in the blades of countless home-scale windmills?)

The best approach to a clean-energy future is a balanced development of (large and small scale) wind, solar, in-state hydro, and any other renewable, low-carbon option we can come up with, as well as all the efficiency efforts we can muster. If you do without one option, you increase reliance on the others. Take anti-wind carpetbagger Luke Snelling, whose “clean energy plan” cuts out ridgeline wind; instead, he calls for a massive increase in solar power (along with continued heavy reliance on nuclear and Hydro Quebec, both of which bear heavy environmental costs). How massive? Try a 2,592% increase in solar in the next 17 years.

Problem is, as proposals start coming for new solar arrays, the vocal opposition starts to appear —  as in Pittsford and earlier in Charlotte. If this trend continues, we won’t be able to get anywhere near Snelling’s target. Or anywhere near any reasonable target for reducing our carbon footprint. And our efforts to create a greener, cleaner energy system cannot possibly succeed.

And, in the name of NIMBY-driven denialism, we will have done our part to kill the planet. But at least we’ll protect George Clifford’s “thousands of dollars.”