Song of the Day 4/29: The Beatles, “I’ll Follow the Sun”
I knew the nation’s NIMBYs will use any argument to fight the scourge of wind farms. The most prominent excuses are that they kill birds (true, but in far fewer numbers than cats and skyscrapers) and they’re eyesores that lower property values (mostly false).
But I didn’t realize there’s even a NIMBY sub-group that’s battling the menace of (dun-dun-DUN!) solar farms. ProPublica’s report opened my eyes to these voices in the wilderness of flyover country. They’ve had enough of them-there glass panels covering up farmland because – seriously, they make this argument – they’re hazardous to human health. Some places are imposing bans like the ones they’ve adopted against data centers, despite the fact that renewable energy generation will lower rather than raise their electric bills.
Locals worry that electromagnetism and even glare can pose a health risk. They wonder if toxic materials could leach into the soil and contaminate groundwater, if not while the solar site is operational, then some decades in the future, when it reaches the end of its life.
Remember, those fields were sprayed for decades with herbicides, fungicides and insecticides, yet the brave common clay of the Midwest is worried about the health effects of (checks notes again)…glare.
Planners in Sussex County are voicing concern about the growth of solar array applications they’re seeing, but nobody there has brought up health problems as a reason. I suppose they’re too busy fighting windmills to do their own research.
Maybe the young Paul McCartney – he wrote this tune when he was “about 16,” he said – was onto something. Even in the face of the Trump administration’s War on Renewables, solar’s share of the energy market keeps growing, especially overseas.
The song appeared on the group’s second LP in 1964, when they were running short on newer material, but it dated to at least as early as 1960. That’s when the Quarrymen made a home demo of it in a more rockabilly style than the later calypso-tinged official release.
