The largest solar grazing project in the U.S. will reduce mowing costs and emissions — and make for some happy sheep.
I like it, but wouldn't goats be better?
this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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I'll admit I'm not sure of the pros/cons of either. All I know about sheep/goats is that sheep produce wool, and goats produce milk...and I'm pretty sure the only reason I know that, is due to one of the many city builders I've played 😂
Oh boy this comments section is wholesome and uplifting! :)
I was just trying to share a story I found positive, and made me feel good. I had no idea grazing sheep was such a controversial topic 😃
I guess I'll have to scrutinize any future post I contribute
Not your fault, after the sheep disaster of 2003, people are very mixed on their existence.
But for real, you couldn't do anything about what the comment section became.
Fairly sure 2 of them are those vegans and the other is just being contrarian for the sake of it.
It's a genuinely uplifting post, and there's not much to say other than it being good news, so the more disagreeable sort are poking holes
It is what it is, keep the good posts coming!
where's the article op
The website reduces its carbon footprint by not connecting to the internet or even turning on the web server
Sheep lawnmower go brrrrrrr
*baaaaaaaaaaa
Good Lord apparently Lemmy hates sheep. What is with his comment section? Just miserable sheep haters.
Wake up sheeple
What exactly is uplifting about animal agriculture?
They'd all be dead without it.
I bet a lot of the animals in animal agriculture wish they were dead. This isn't a good argument imo
Neither is animal genocide imo
Who is talking about animal genocide?
They are fully domesticated so if you stop farming them they all need to be killed / will die.
Sheep can, and routinely do, go feral.
I doubt they took into account the emissions and other climate effects due to the animal agriculture they will be supporting.
When I saw your post, I initially dismissed it entirely and thinking how embarrassing it was for you to take a story that does produce a positive net benefit for climate and try to turn it negative from a completely unrelated view. Obviously I assumed from your statements that your opposition was due to you being vegan. A 5 second view of your post history confirms this. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt and understand where you're coming from and what you want to accomplish. It got me thinking about what your thought process was when you posted here on this story. I have some questions about your motives and methods I wouldn't normally ask, but you're putting yourself in the spotlight for your cause so you might be open to a discussion. If so my questions are:
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You clearly support veganism, and I assume you would want others to adopt it too. Did you think your delivery here here would make omnivores suddenly abandon their diets and adopt yours? Did you consider that your message (while containing some accuracy) would actually turn people off from veganism because they didn't want to be associated with people that do what you did here and crap all over otherwise good news?
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How did you decide to just inject your veganism into this story? What criteria did this one meet that you thought "this one, this one needs to have passive aggressive veganism representation"? Was it just random that you saw this one and weighed in with veganism or do you spend lots of time scouring for all stories that don't have an unrelated vegan view and then you inject one? It makes me wonder how effective that is for your movement. Or is this more of a act of martyrdom? Are you "fighting the good fight" whenever and where ever it can be?
If your overall goal is reducing livestock agriculture have you considered your highly negative approach actually working against your goal? Alternatively, are you intentionally cultivating the negative stereotype against vegans for some reason I don't understand? If so, can you explain so I can gain understanding?
Different vegan here. I'll be blunt about it: There's facts about animal agriculture, which are uncomfortable, if you're not vegan.
Actually being ignorant about them rarely happens as a conscious decision, it's more a matter of it just not making for a great smalltalk topic when you're not vegan.
I'm not saying this from some smug position either, as I was non-vegan at some point, too (like the vast majority of vegans), and I know how much shit I didn't know back then.
Animal agriculture organizations will also gladly add to the confusion, by talking only about CO2 emissions, when they should be talking about CO2-equivalents.
This post has too little info to really know what's going on, but it happens that people think grazing animals are 100% climate-neutral, so it mentioning lots of grazing animals and a reduction in emissions also had me wondering, if that is actually true.
If some of these sheep would not have otherwise been raised, then it's possible that mowing the fields with a CO2-exhausting mower would be less bad for the climate. Of course, electric mowers would be even better.
Different vegan here. I’ll be blunt about it: There’s facts about animal agriculture, which are uncomfortable, if you’re not vegan.
Thats just it. This isn't an article about animal agriculture. Its an article about solar power first, and reduction of carbon from mowing second. Both of these are good things! What the OP vegan did was look past all of that positive to try an extra a negative from it.
Actually being ignorant about them rarely happens as a conscious decision,
Strange phrasing, but I believe you're describing "willful ignorance".
it’s more a matter of it just not making for a great smalltalk topic when you’re not vegan.
That can be true of lots of distasteful, but necessary topics necessary for life. I don't usually engage in small talk about mortuary science, sewage treatment, or surgical removal of tumors, but all of those are certainly incredibly important to life as we are biological animals ourselves.
Animal agriculture organizations will also gladly add to the confusion, by talking only about CO2 emissions, when they should be talking about CO2-equivalents. This post has too little info to really know what’s going on, but it happens that people think grazing animals are 100% climate-neutral, so it mentioning lots of grazing animals and a reduction in emissions also had me wondering, if that is actually true.
Assuming the sheep are only fed from the grass they eat on-site, how are they NOT carbon neutral?
This sounds like a "perfect is the enemy of good" situation. Saying using sheep used here to eat the grass around solar panels is not good enough encourages abandoning the idea and going back to fossil fuel based mowing. Or worse, that this is a "problem with solar" and "solar should be abandoned".
If you google the title you find this article which is the one I assume OP used.
That can be true of lots of distasteful, but necessary topics necessary for life. I don't usually engage in small talk about mortuary science, sewage treatment, or surgical removal of tumors, but all of those are certainly incredibly important to life as we are biological animals ourselves.
Yes, but we have experts for these topics, like we also do for animal agriculture. It's just that the broad public has relatively much knowledge for certain topics, like sports, whereas it's quite natural that most non-experts are relatively ignorant of less sexy topics. That's all I wanted to say with that, that I'm not berating anyone for not being an expert here.
Assuming the sheep are only fed from the grass they eat on-site, how are they NOT carbon neutral?
You're correct that they take in the same number of carbon atoms as they eventually exhale/excrete/etc.. So, in that sense, they are carbon-neutral.
But that doesn't mean they're climate-neutral, because when you combine carbon atoms with 4x hydrogen, you get methane, which for physical reasons has a significantly stronger greenhouse effect than CO2.
And ruminants (like sheep and cows) belch out lots of methane: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruminant#Ruminants_and_climate_change
That's why even people who would immediately choke to death, if they ate a vegetable, could still help out on the climate front, if they switched from beef (and mutton) to poultry and pork.
See this graph, for example: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/food-footprints
And yeah, reading through the article, I'm happy that it's being used for solar, I'm happy that if we're already raising sheep, they're at least being used relatively efficiently, I'm even happy that the sheep are living a relatively happy life.
What I'm less happy about, is that OP vegan was pretty spot on.
They're raising additional sheep for this endeavour. And no one had the expert knowledge to ask, if the belching sheep maybe somewhat undermine the climate advantages of solar.
Assuming the sheep are only fed from the grass they eat on-site, how are they NOT carbon neutral?
You’re correct that they take in the same number of carbon atoms as they eventually exhale/excrete/etc… So, in that sense, they are carbon-neutral.
But that doesn’t mean they’re climate-neutral, because when you combine carbon atoms with 4x hydrogen, you get methane, which for physical reasons has a significantly stronger greenhouse effect than CO2. And ruminants (like sheep and cows) belch out lots of methane: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruminant#Ruminants_and_climate_change
I wondered if you were going to go the methane angle. Like most of the points here, you're not wrong, but focusing on it negates the overall good.
That’s why even people who would immediately choke to death, if they ate a vegetable, could still help out on the climate front, if they switched from beef (and mutton) to poultry and pork. See this graph, for example: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/food-footprints
But every conversation has to be injected with this message?
And yeah, reading through the article, I’m happy that it’s being used for solar, I’m happy that if we’re already raising sheep, they’re at least being used relatively efficiently, I’m even happy that the sheep are living a relatively happy life.
What I’m less happy about, is that OP vegan was pretty spot on. They’re raising additional sheep for this endeavour. And no one had the expert knowledge to ask, if the belching sheep maybe somewhat undermine the climate advantages of solar.
Because that wasn't the choices. It was mow with fossil fuels or mow with sheep. This is what becomes so tiresome about the vegan injection. Yes things can be better. Yes this isn't perfect. No, veganism isn't the only way to achieve improved results.
Cool. So, why did you pretend to not know about methane? Was it really necessary to waste my time explaining it?
They didn't do that. They were talking about other aspects of the situation that make this preferable to people mowing the fields. You just assumed that, since they didn't specifically discus methane emissions, they didn't know about it, or pretended not to. This is weird.
I wrote:
it happens that people think grazing animals are 100% climate-neutral
To which they responded:
Assuming the sheep are only fed from the grass they eat on-site, how are they NOT carbon neutral?
Then follows my lengthy explanation about methane. And then they write:
I wondered if you were going to go the methane angle.
So, they knew that climate-neutral ≠ carbon-neutral.
They knew that "Assuming the sheep are only fed from the grass they eat on-site, how are they NOT carbon neutral?" is just the wrong question to ask.
I cannot see how I should have not interpreted that as a technical question by someone who does not know about methane.
I wouldn't care, if they didn't now also tell me off for giving a technical answer.
Ok vegan which is it?
Renewable energy or fossil fuels?
Natural fibres or man made petrochemical based polyester constantly shedding microplastics?
Ethically raised ree range grass fed protein or factory farms?
Ethically raised ree range grass fed protein
How do you ethically raise a being with the intent to kill them and then send them off to a violent death?
Idk, but I got this little sticker on my food that says they did, so I don't really question it.
I think the sheep predate the panels
couldn't they just let it be wild lands instead?
Solar fields and random trees growing out of the ground do not mix well...
Sheep aren't zero maintaince at all though.
So? Op didn’t say they were and it isn’t even relevant anyway
I'm in favor but I'm just not sure that sheep maintenance will be any less trouble and expense than mower maintenance. Mowers don't get contagious diseases, break out of their fences and get on the highway, or have trouble giving birth at 3:00 a.m.