on that easy fix - the land under solar panels can still be used for farming or ranching

Sure but compare that to the amount of land used for oil and gas extraction. The difference is that mines and drills can only go where there's stuff to extract and solar panels can go anywhere. Including near residential areas. That's also due to the fact that they are so environmentally neutral.

And you can do some agriculture near and under the panels. That's not the case with an oil well.

Or under the plume of heavy metals from coal. That land, near the transmission infrastructure of a coal plant, is only good for solar farms.

> And you can do some agriculture near and under the panels. That's not the case with an oil well.

You can absolutely do agriculture near oil and gas wells. I grew up next to land routinely leased to ranchers. That land was spotted with lots of active oil and gas wells. The cows would eat our flowers whenever they got out due to the oil company leaving gates improperly secured. Today I drive past fields of sorghum, corn, and wheat with little spots where active wells operate. Once drilled they usually don't take that much space to operate.

Also, when you’re done with the solar farm you simply take the panels off, disassemble the aluminium frame, then you have your field back. Unlike a coal mine.

You need to read about agrivoltaics. This is being used to huge effect elsewhere in the world to improve farming & soil. Here's an example from China:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...

I cry more when I think about the amount of farmland being used for bioethanol, something which is barely energy positive. If the US would switch the subsidies and regulations propping that up to propping up solar, it would easily free up a huge amount of land.

and I cry again when I see mountains of fly ash from coal burning.

That and the excess amount of farming just to feed cows for beef.

Credit to our current system, if there was a need to cut back, we have a lot of easy cuts to gain some wiggle room.

The standard alternative to a solar farm is a monoculture corn farm producing ethanol. That monoculture corn farm regularly gets sprayed, plowed and harvested, each time decimating its animal population. Your solar farm is probably filled with a diverse selection of grass and weeds, supporting a far higher animal population than that corn farm.

The solar farm powering BEVs also uses maybe 1/200th the area of the equivalent bioethanol farm powering ICVs.

Technology Connections did the math on this and found that if you ONLY replaced fields used for ethanol production with solar panels, the amount of space would be enough solar panels to power the entire power grid in the US.

> use up perfectly usable farmland

It's still farmland! They're just farming energy now.

Cutting out the middlemen. Getting rid of the pesky chlorophyl syndicate.

> A part of me cries a little when I see so much beautiful land and trees cut down and these lifeless panels taking up so much space.

Where are you seeing healthy forests or other "beautiful land" being destroyed for solar farms? There's plenty of low-yield farmland and other similar land that's already been denatured by industry out there, lots of which already has major transmission infrastructure nearby, beautiful land tends to be expensive, and clearing trees costs money. It just doesn't make sense to do something like that outside of isolated areas where there's no other choice.

Here in the midwestern US every single solar or wind farm I've seen has either been on active farmland, former farmland, or a corporate/university campus.

This guide to the UK’s Land Use Framework says that the amount of land required for renewables by 2050 is comparable to the amount of land used by golf courses.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-what-englands-new-land-use-fr...

Also see the amount of land used for beef and dairy. Before industrial farming, Britain was a rainforest.

were you crying when you considered the myriad of negative effects of burning fossil fuels?

What do you have against farmers using their land as they see fit? Are you against property rights? What other freedoms do you oppose?