Deforestation for Solar Farms

Discussions debate the environmental impact of clearing forests—often managed or previously logged—to build solar farms or for other land uses, questioning if it promotes deforestation, desertification, or poor forest management versus supporting renewables.

📉 Falling 0.2x Politics & Society
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#3630
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Keywords

US worldtree.info OP ELI5 net.au hadrian.htm www.abc GIS mandalaprojects.com USA forests forest trees wood cutting land cut tree destruction farm

Sample Comments

nojokes Nov 30, 2020 View on HN

How is taking down more forest environmentally sound idea?

myshpa Aug 31, 2023 View on HN

This doesn't imply that the forest remains untouched, unlogged, or unmanaged.https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37336122

faissaloo May 31, 2019 View on HN

Won't we just end up worsening deforestation?

telchar Mar 1, 2019 View on HN

While it seems like a bad idea to cut down a forest to replace it with a solar farm, that's not virgin forest. As cited by the article, the land has been timbered before. There is almost no virgin forest left in the eastern US at this point.

anonzzzies Jul 22, 2023 View on HN

Probably most, but here (south eu) a lot of forest is being and was cut down for planting shitty fruit trees and other crops (not for animals; for humans & cosmetics) that are no substitute for what was removed.

cassepipe Dec 8, 2024 View on HN

Can you explain the tree-cutting rationale ? Wouldn't cutting all the trees have a masse effect that would lead to desertification ? i.e. can you pitch me your project :) ?

nine_k Jan 23, 2026 View on HN

Cutting off some forest might help.

mistrial9 Jun 30, 2023 View on HN

"forest mismanagement has been corrected" you stand by that ?

Fricken Aug 19, 2023 View on HN

I blame poor forest management.

whatshisface Nov 10, 2023 View on HN

Do they cut down trees at every possibility?