Let’s get one thing straight: Solar panels don’t suck up all the sun’s energy. They aren’t giant funnels that capture the sun’s energy for miles around, leaving the plants dead around them. However clearly false that may seem it is exactly what two concerned citizens voiced at a town hall meeting in Woodland, North Carolina last month.
Jane Mann, a retired science teacher from Woodland, worried that photosynthesis would no longer occur if a solar farm was created, thereby allowing vegetation to die. Bobby Mann, her husband, agreed and argued that the solar farms would suck up all the energy from the sun. After their comments, the Woodland Town Council voted down the proposed solar farm by a 3-1 vote.
Instantly, the story spread like wildfire. Headlines reading “North Carolina town rejects solar farm over fears it would ‘suck up all the energy from the sun’” made newspapers from New Delhi to London. Just under 250 articles were published about the story, and while it was laughable, ludicrous and completely absurd, the rate at which the story spread was deeply troubling because the story was largely untrue.
The world read that a North Carolina town had rejected a solar farm based on evidence no more plausible than the existence of unicorns. Naturally, they reacted. A commenter on a Native American newspaper wrote that the “U.S. is moving from [a] developed country to [a] stone age nation,” and a commenter on a U.S. newspaper wrote that “this would be why your state [North Carolina] is a worldwide joke.”
Our nation and state was ridiculed at home and abroad, and the ridicule would have been just if only the story was this simple, but, as with many news articles, the story spread far faster than the facts could be sorted out.
The true story of Woodland, North Carolina reads much differently than the shocking, view-attracting headlines would have you believe. In truth, the Woodland town board, before the fateful sun-sucking vote, had already approved the construction of three solar farms. So, when the town council voted down the fourth solar farm project, the council didn’t vote it down because they believed the farm would actually suck up the sun’s energy, they did it, as the town’s mayor puts it, “to grant the zoning request (to construct the fourth solar farm) would create a situation in which the town would be completely surrounded by solar farms.”
As it turns out, the Manns had no sway on the council’s voting decision. The two were none other than lunatics at the meeting, spewing ludicrous facts that were quickly dismissed. The council made its decision not on the Mann’s crazed testimonies, but on a reasoned argument that perhaps three solar farms were enough for the town.
Now whether or not you believe the town council of Woodland still made the wrong decision in voting not to approve the fourth solar farm, the story of Woodland’s sun-sucking voting was clearly blown far out of proportion. A town of 766 people which has three solar farms doesn’t sound like a town so against solar that it makes up ridiculous reasons to support it, instead, it sounds like a town leading the charge to make solar a widespread energy source.
Despite what the numerous articles may have led the world to believe, Woodland is a town largely in support of solar as a clean, smart and beneficial energy source in a state that ranks second nationally in building new solar capacity.
False and dramatized stories like the sun-sucking one bring a bad name to our state and the communities within it. There is no doubt we still have a long way to go in the solar energy game, but right now I think we do a pretty good job at it. So the next time you hear a story so ridiculous it’s hard to even believe, take a step back — it just might be because the story is actually false.
