MONGABAY • July 23, 2024
Journalist and author Judith Schwartz lives near a forest in New England where a company plans to install an 85-acre solar power project and export the resulting energy to Connecticut, 100 miles to the south. She discusses why these types of projects are ecologically inappropriate for developing atop natural forests and how they can make adapting to climate change harder for local residents. Massachusetts offers a snapshot of the kind of damage that can occur without a policy preventing it: clearing forests and using natural working lands, such as farmland, has already converted more than 5,000 acres for solar energy production.