And you think they wouldn't directly benefit from solar power?
What if the cornfield owners got paid market rates for the power generated when that land is given over to solar? This should be (and ChatGPT agrees) much more profitable given that it is vastly more energy efficient.
Directly? No. Indirectly? Of course they do. Everyone does.
Realistically the solution to NIMBYism is to pay the neighbours, but that's not really practical.
NIMBYism isn't rational, it's a manifestation of fear of change, even if they past state of affairs was worse than the future one. I live in a city where the anti-datacentre campaign isn't about some pleasant locale, but a disused toxic industrial land in a steel-mill complex over half a km away from any actual homes.
> Realistically the solution to NIMBYism is to pay the neighbours, but that's not really practical.
If we pay each farmer to generate solar (and maybe also stop paying them to grow corn beyond what's actually economically viable), why would they care what the next farm over is doing? I thought we were talking about places where people live too far apart for "backyards".
What if the cornfield owners got paid market rates for the power generated when that land is given over to solar? This should be (and ChatGPT agrees) much more profitable given that it is vastly more energy efficient.