Allowing livestock to graze under renewable developments gives farmers a separate income stream, but solar developers in Australia have been slow to catch on.
  • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world
    28·
    19 days ago

    I just yesterday passed a bunch of fields in Germany near München that were full of solar panels with sheep underneath. Thought it was a great idea

    • growsomethinggood@reddthat.com
      748·
      19 days ago

      I’m all for the humane treatment of animals, but domestic sheep need to be sheared or they end up like Baarack here. Meanwhile, wool is a sustainable textile source, unlike synthetic fibers.

      If we want domestic sheep to live good lives, it requires humans embracing sustainable practices quickly to address the climate crisis.

      • PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee
        4012·
        19 days ago

        These people always neglect to mention that their endgame is the complete genocide of all domesticated animals since they literally cannot survive on their own without human caretaking, almost like we’ve evolved a symbiotic relationship with these creatures and trying to end that relationship because you personally find it morally objectionable will have disastrous consequences for huge parts of the entire world’s biosphere…well except Antarctica, those penguins couldn’t care less if the cows are being wiped out because “uNnAtUrAl!!!”

        ETA, you can tell these people are totally not eco fascists because they didn’t dispute the charge of wanting to exterminate entire clades of the tree of life, they just started justifying it by ranting about why “the bad ones” “totally deserve it” because pregarnart. I’m sure you wouldn’t find any genocidal dictator in recent history who has conjured the image of a barefoot and pregnant member of “the bad ones” to rant about how they’re producing too many children, or that “the nation” isn’t keeping pace enough, to rile a scare out of their audience, nosiree!

        Nevermind how their position also involves exterminating service animals for also being domesticated, and fuck their disabled owners for “defying nature” or “being abusers”, that epileptic who needs help calling medical assistance should have thought about how it makes some internet weirdo feels to see dogs doing things before they tried being allowed to live despite their condition!

        • _NoName_@lemmy.ml
          167·
          19 days ago

          Meat cows specifically should be wiped out for their methane production being so high. I’ve heard that if we managed to stop beef consumption we’d have something like a 10% decrease in emissions just from that alone.

          • jeffw@lemmy.worldOP
            184·
            19 days ago

            It would actually probably be more than that if you’re talking global demand. So much deforestation is due to cattle (typically the land needed for their feed), not to mention repurposing some existing land used for cattle feed for human food.

            Plus, all that feed needs to be transported, which influences the shipping industry.

        • Longpork3@lemmy.nz
          109·
          19 days ago

          We have billions of captive animals that will be forcibly impregnated every year in order to replace those thag are killed, and even under the most “humane” conditions will still be killed at a fraction of their natural lifespan, yet you consider cutting out the forced impregnation part in order to end the cycle of violence to be “genocide”?

          You don’t think that label might be more appropriately applied to the systematic killing of billions every yeat which will happen in perpetuity until we end animal agriculture?

        • stabby_cicada@slrpnk.net
          48·
          19 days ago

          Yawn.

          “Genocide” only applies to humans. The correct term for animals is “extinction”.

          And I remind you: we humans control when and if our domestic livestock breed. And we let specific breeds of domestic livestock go extinct all the time. There are dozens of breeds of cows and chickens and sheep that are now extinct because they were replaced by other, more useful breeds - or the cultures that bred them were wiped out. Consider the Tautersheep, for example.

          Let me be blunt. If scientists developed synthetic wool that was chemically identical to sheep wool but ten times cheaper, domestic sheep would be extinct within a decade. And nobody but sheep farmers would complain. So when carnists argue we have a moral duty to the species of domestic sheep to continue breeding them for human use I just roll my eyes.

            • photonic_sorcerer@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
              86·
              19 days ago

              Sheep genocide! Woohoo!

              Even if we stop, what do we do with the ones we still have? Sanctuaries for millions of animals are far too expensive.

              How about we keep shearing them and let them graze under our solar?

              • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
                95·
                19 days ago

                You can’t, and I’m not recommending, get rid of sheep overnight. That’s a scenario you made up on your own.

                If you would castrate all domestic sheep today, that would be akin to what we do to cats and dogs. Slowly the population would dwindle.