When Worlds Collide

Formerly a scenic forest on a side hill, now cleared for a solar field.

Kevin Brown, Ag Resource Specialist, BCCD
As you get older, and as things continue to change now more than ever, it strikes me every day about how much one person’s passion (and maybe even agenda) goes so much against another tried and true way of doing things.  As we push more and more to do “x”, we could be going completely against something very important on the other end of the spectrum.  I often think about, “when do those worlds collide?” and “what does it look like when they do?”  Maybe giving some examples will make this easier to understand.  I will try to tread lightly.  Every new “thing” could be guilty.  I once heard a person on TV say that, on electric cars, the pollution potential remains the same in a lot of these cases (fossil fuels vs. rare earth metals and batteries to dispose of), we are just trading one kind of pollution for another.  Is that accurate?  I don’t know.  I do know that the new ways of doing things are usually not quite as rosy as what they want you to believe.  I can use this with most anything.  Solar, wind, organic, even complete protectionism (like in a forest or something that DOES need to be managed, not just protected forever).  Again, will these two worlds collide?  And if so, when?

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I can only ask questions about the ones I know the most about.  I am NOT saying that I am against any of these things.  I am just saying that it isn’t as one-sided as “they” like to make it out to be.  I run into this one a lot at work.  Organic.  For farms that are doing organic animal products, one of the requirements by the overseeing organization is that they have “x” amount of access to the outdoors every single day.  That sounds like a really good concept, right?  However, the more they are outside, the more destruction they cause to the environment.  If not managed really, really well; now they have large bare areas that get too many nutrients (manure) applied to them, those areas will erode more, you have potentially taken away habitat for something else that made that area home, and if that bare area is next to a stream, and losing nutrients into that stream, polluting the water.  Is that better than having them inside?

Forestry.  There are several issues here that really have negative effects.  One can even be protectionism.  Not ever harvesting timber can be the worst thing to do.  There are many more plants and animals that can thrive in a recovering clear-cut than they can in a very mature forest.  In a mature forest, there is no cover, no food, only the largest trees can grow, no growth on the forest floor, etc.  Very few animals prefer this kind of forest.  However, cutting it completely down and building houses or solar arrays or anything like that is just as negative.  Rainwater infiltrates the ground better in a forest situation than anything else out there.  Take away the trees and add concrete or solar panels or anything impervious and only negative things happen.  Even if solar is a net positive, cutting down a forest (or even just reclaiming fallow ground) to put it there can be very negative.  Less water infiltration equals less groundwater and more flooding, habitat destruction for all kinds of animals-pollinators (is a big one), rabbits, deer, etc.  And they fence these areas completely off to protect it, so it is off-limits to most animals for the lifetime of the project.  I just heard a guy mention “cut all of the softwoods down.  They aren’t really good for anything anyway”.  Must be he doesn’t know what houses are built with.   Anyway, my point is, when we do one thing, it sets off a cascading set of dominos where many things are affected, and there is a large part of the time that this effect can be a huge negative on the other side.
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There are just a couple things for example.  I find that it really can apply to many, many things. As you go through life, it is worth really digging into a lot of the decisions that you make, especially if someone is really trying to sell you on it.  There may be as many negative things there as there are positives.  It is never an easy decision or it would be one that we would have already been making for the last few hundred years. 
 
The Bradford County Conservation District is committed to helping people manage resources wisely.  You can visit the Bradford County Conservation District at 200 Lake Rd in Wysox across from the Wysox Fire Hall. Contact us at (570) 485-3144 or visit our web page at www.bccdpa.com.