They Paved Paradise And Put Up Solar Panel Lots

Deforestation For Solar Panels Will Destroy Michigan

Your betters claim that drag area similar to this photo should be used for solar panels. Miles of solar panels

They took all the trees and put 'em in a tree museum

And they charged the people a dollar and a half to see them

No, no, no

Don't it always seem to go

That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone?

They paved paradise and put up a parking lot

Big Yellow Taxi - Joni Mitchell

Increasingly we in Michigan are having conversations that we thought we would never have. Insanity has swept over our state, and the love of nature and beauty that most people claimed to have had that we celebrated in our music, books and entertainment has evaporated in favorable of renewable energy. Our state will deforest 100 of thousands of acres for solar panels.

In 2022 we had a chance to assert that our rights we possess regardless of Constitution or state law mattered more than political popularity and Covid panic, and truth would sweep away the awful leaders who lied, who didn’t follow their own guidelines and threw people in jail. When these people remained in power I had this really bad feeling deep down that the insanity would be cranked not to 11 on a scale of 1 to 10, but up to 13 or higher. I could easily see governor Gretchen Whitmer and the controlling elite operating unfettered, and auctioning off our resources and destroying the Great Lakes much like the Ogallala Aquifer. Or worse.

Within the past two weeks the Michigan Department of Natural Resources announced they are leasing parcels of state forests for the purpose of solar panel installations. The first parcel is near Gaylord, Michigan with a total of 420 acres.

420 seems like a small number. And to many who are clear on the dimensions of what encompasses an acre, this may not appear alarming. Fortunately Jason Hayes, of the Mackinac Institute, put things in perspective with this very simple model. Anyone can use it get a better grasp of the sheer size, and the horror, of what is about to happen.

1 Walmart parking lot is roughly 4 acres.

So let's do a thought experiment. In your mind, drive to Walmart, park your car. Or for Michiganders, drive to Meijer’s. Take away the buildings and now you have a large lot. No shade.

That’s just 1 Walmart parcel.

Now let’s do some gorilla math. Yes, this is knuckle scraper level but this is something everyone SHOULD do because the scale of what’s about to happen is escaping us. We’re not thinking because we can’t visualize the results.

Divide 420 by 4 and you get 105 Walmart parking lots.

420/4 = 105

That’s just one parcel the DNR is offering.

You see, part of our problem is the sentiment of the metro areas in Michigan, who have shaped the politics of the state, are ignorant of the scale and scope of what is going to happen in regions that they rarely see. And honestly, when you look at an aerial view on screen or on a printed map, the scale is not apparent.

But when asked “Hey, how do you feel about 105 Walmarts being built next to, replacing Holly Recreation Area or Seven Lakes State Park with solar panel lots” is that enough to wake people up?

But at least it’s only 420 acres, right?

Except that it isn't. The DNR has announced 5 of these projects in the past two weeks. They are:

• Gaylord - 420

• Iosco Twp - 1200

• Hayes Township - 2000

• Arbela Township - 1500

• Raisin Township - 827

Total acreage is 5,947.

And the total acreage is larger than Detroit Metro Airport which is 4,850 acres. This is just the start of what the state has planned.

Are you getting it now? In your mind, recall the last time you drove to DTW, all the way out to the Delta Terminal. That’s quite a drive. Now add the runways, the hangers, the parking lots.

Let’s do another experiment for the Oakland county folks. We need one more formula for this. To convert acreage to square miles you divide by 640.

420/640 ~= .65 square miles.

Hell, that’s tiny, right? It would, in fact, replace the entire William Beaumont Hospital campus at the crossroads of 13 Mile and Woodward. Drive around that area, and you have the scale of the smallest project.

How would you like to lose all of downtown Birmingham, one of the richest metro downtowns in Oakland county. Look at the graphic below, it's roughly the area that the Gaylord project entails. I used Google maps and you can see I’m not exaggerating. Not only would this wipe out the beautiful old library, Shane Park and Booth Park would be gone. Gone.

One parcel. Are you rethinking the phrase “it takes a village now”? Because we just wiped out Birmingham with the smallest of proposed parcels.

One more simple gorilla math demonstration, and it is to show the pernicious nature of the DNR leasing small parcel packages individually. And yes they have to do this because when you understand the vast territory that will be needed, you’ll understand.

To meet the 2040 100% renewable energy requirements for Michigan, 209,000 acres are projected to be required for solar.

So we divide that by the Walmart parking lot dimensions and you get 52,250 Walmart parking lots. Lansing is I lucky I’m not heading up the DNR. To get the scope, drive from Williamston past Grand Ledge on 96.

209,000 / 4 = 52,250

On 1/16.2025 The DNR announced that it is “pausing” the lease process. Many have declared victory over one parcel. That is supremely foolish to think because some people screamed on Twitter that we have ended this mad rush to deforest our lands. There are billions of dollars that are changing hands, and the agencies don’t answer to us, nor to the legislature.

What many don’t realize is that we no longer have rights to make zoning decisions on renewable energy projects. In 2023, Michigan foolishly passed Public Act 233, which empowered the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) with the final zoning authority over these initiatives. That’s correct - the counties and townships no longer have say over whether they want to live next to miles of solar panels or wind turbines. The MPSC has only 3 members who are appointed. Additionally, the budgets for the DNR have been set for 2025, so our legislature has no pull of threatening to defund the department.

We have 2 years until the next election, and if the goal of identifying and doling out parcels to meet the 2040 energy goals is to be met, look for the number of parcels to increase. We have 5 now, and how are we going to track each additional one?

Will the media help us? If you read the title of the latest from BridgeMI.com, I think you can see the answer. “What furor over drab Gaylord land says about Michigan’s energy transition”. The photos in the article are tinted grey, depicting winter scenes. This is in contrast to other photos of winter in the region. There’s an irony to the Bridge MI photo that proves my point further regarding the sheer idiocy of solar panels as a solution for our state. Apparently Bridge MI can’t recognize cloud cover.

We must not let them destroy the beauty we have been blessed with.

Bridge MI photo:

Gaylord in Winter: