Town worries that solar panels will "suck up all the sun"
The town of Woodland, North Carolina is desperately in need of a reality check. Residents of the town recently voted down plans for a solar panel farm, for the dumbest possible reasons.
One resident voiced fears that the panels would "suck up all the sun" which would cause businesses and "all the young people to move out."
It sounds like these people should have gone to science class in high school! Like the person who was worried that the panels would block photosynthesis and ruin plants all over town. OH WAIT, that was a retired science teacher who said that.
It's hard to say why the idea of capturing free electricity from the sun is so difficult for people to swallow. Many people clearly do not understand how solar panels work. Here is how they work: they just sit there. Like anything else. Yes they block the sun directly beneath them, just like a sheet of plywood would. But they don't suck the sunlight into themselves like some kind of science fiction light-swallowing vortex.
This doesn't even count as "fear of the unknown." There are solar panels all over the place. They are pretty known!
Sometimes I despair for our species.