Camp from the Road
Rensselearville
Driving through Rensselearville on a mid-September afternoon.
Himnine Swamp in Alpine
Hole
Be cognizant of environmental impacts of renewables
Climate change action is important but let’s be cognizant of the environmental impacts of renewables
Burning fossil fuels has largely known and well documented impacts. From the much touted carbon emissions to air pollution and acid rain to acid mine discharge from coal mines and scarred landscapes from mountain top removal and strip mines to drilling cuttings, fracking chemicals and produced water to cracked casings and oil spills the impacts of fossil fuels are well documented and somewhat regulated and controlled but probably not to ideal levels as production and low cost is often emphasized over safety and environmental protection.
But what is much less discussed and documented is renewable energy impacts. It must be green so there is no environmental impacts or the impacts are de minimus. But that’s far from the truth. Renewable energy consumes enormous amounts of land, it in future years has a real possibility of urbanizing enormous parts of countryside, paving over farm land and forest, producing enormous amounts of toxic waste like wind turbine blades and discarded, broken solar panels to impacting watersheds and fisheries alike, reducing scenic beauty and take land out of other uses. Things that deserve serious consideration and environmental analysis.
To be sure we do need to build more renewable energy but we have to always thinking about the consequences of our choices, not blindly building it because renewables are good and climate change is really bad and scary. Being aware of the environmental impacts of renewables doesn’t mean you’re pro fossil fuels, it means that you are a thinking society, trying to avoid negative environmental problems down the road.
- We need to take a serious look before we leap – is the solar plant or wind farm appropriate for the place we are sitting it
- We need to mitigate like planting pollinators friendly or native grasses around solar farms
- We need to look at building more renewables in cities – be it mandatory solar panels on buildings, over highways or in urban waste lands like old garbage dumps, highway medians, or contaminated industrial sites
Why build a solar farm over green farm fields or forests when you can build over Love Canal?
Niagara Valley
Those nights camping at the State Horse Camp on Christmas 🤶
I was listening to Joni mitchell this evening as I wandered around Bender Mellon Farm Preserve as the sunset.
But it don’t snow here
It stays pretty green
I’m going to make a lot of money
Then I’m going to quit this crazy scene
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
I wish I had a river so long
I would teach my feet to fly
I was reminded of that Christmas Eve almost a year ago I spent alone at the State Horse Camp. I was on a pre-Christmas at Stoney Pond and then Charles Baker State Forest, riding road and camping, ended up staying through the day after Christmas due to my parents being sick and quarantining. I roasted chestnuts and cranberries on the fire and listened to Joni Mitchell’s River song among other Christmas music.
Spending Christmas alone at a State Horse Camp without presents to open, just cool cloudy and long evenings alone sounds kind of depressing. But I liked the serenity of it all, the time alone spent with nobody but myself as a few snow flurries flittered around, as I enjoyed Greek yogurt with chestnuts and other holiday nuts roasted on the fire along with cranberries. In the cold of the night, the darkest time of the year as we celebrate Christ’s birth.
I am struck by the lyrics, “I’m going to make a lot of money, then I’m going to quit this crazy scene.” I love being out in a place like Madison County, the deep rural yet I am stuck here in Albany except when I can get away on a crazy cold evening like that weekend in the deep rural as I heard the cows moo and the coyotes call out in the distance. I keep almost craving homelessness, the simplicity of being a traveler. At the same time, I think about buying some land and making a tent my permanent home, assuming the government workers in some rural township within commuting distance to Albany would permit such an unconventional way of living. Or maybe just a hammock, traveling from place to place, living on the street. That said, I really want to get away from the city. It’s not the cannabis that has me thinking this way but the podcast I was listening to about preparing for homelessness. It’s a silly way to think when I’m a hard working director.
The vinyl siding, carpeting, drywall and central heating does nothing for me. I crave the mountains and the small towns like I was in as I camped at the State Horse Camp last Christmas. Away from the endless lines of code, data dumps and the garbage dumps and the pollution. Places that tap into my soul and give me a feeling I so lack in Albany while I try to keep my head afloat, survive and make the best of my life in the very problematic world that I currently live in.