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Comment by threeseed | Hacker News Reader

> But they are fragile, and no amount of mitigation can counter the damage that industrial-scale renewable energy projects would cause

They can't possibly be serious.

How much damage could solar or wind even cause ?

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A ton. I was involved in the successful opposition against a wind farm project in Canada that was proposed for just north of a major internationally protected migratory bird habitat[1]. Habitat destruction is just a big an environmental problem, and actually probably bigger, than climate change in North America. We are down to less than ten percent of native grasslands remaining in our continent which is the biggest slow-motion environmental disaster that doesn't get talked about much.

What's the point of renewable energy if not to help protect natural areas like the ones being proposed for development?

https://leaderpost.com/business/energy/chaplin-lake-wind-tur...

Actually a lot, especially at scale. Solar PV is not as bad but wind is a significant threat to hoary bats as a species and to large threatened birds like eagles, owls, etc. Yes cats kill 1000x more birds than current wind but they kill swallows and robins and stuff, not damned eagles.

Mining and fabricating the amount of low-density energy harvesters and storage systems needed to fill in the intermittency also requires dozens of times more materials, land, and waste than the major carbon-free competition (nuclear).

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