https://www.npr.org/2023/06/18/ [login to see] /solar-energy-project-location-debate
Janet McGowan and Steven Roof both live in the town of Amherst, Mass., and they have a lot in common.
They live on the same road, in old houses built amid rolling farmland and maple and birch trees. Both care deeply about the environment and understand that climate change poses a profound threat to people and ecosystems. But they are split over how their community should rein in the emissions making the planet hotter.
Amherst is writing its bylaws for where and how to locate solar projects in the town, and McGowan, a mediator and lawyer who is on the working group to help write those bylaws, has concerns. McGowan says she isn't anti-solar, but like many other residents, she worries about the town's farmland and forests getting converted into solar projects. "To me, it just seems viscerally wrong and counterintuitive," she says. "It just seems really odd to me to cut down a forest to put up a solar facility."