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Notes -
The dream: I live somewhere hot and sunny. I get a solar panel attached to my house or carport or neighborhood. The money I was already spending on energy goes into paying for the solar panel.
The reality: subsidies go to the enormous concentrated solar farm in the middle of the desert. Birds and lizards keep getting burnt to death from the heat, and it looks terrible over much larger areas of land than an equivalent fossil fuel plant and oil pumps. They pay less in taxes than the oil extractors, and maintain fewer roads (I care about this in a large, net oil producing state). Are the giant desert solar farms supplying energy to one of the desert data centers that's competing with traditional chile farmers? Is it running air conditioners somewhere? Where? I could look this up, but neither have most of the people taking the poll.
Result: Meh. It's a good idea to develop the technology, I guess. Not especially "green" in implementation, though.
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