“What is popular is not always right. What is right is not always popular” - Your 8th grade Social Studies Teacher

Our Social Studies teachers were pretty right on the money when they taught us that, at crucial points of history, important changes in policy took unpopular moves to make the right changes. I immediately think of LBJ signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, or Mahatma Gandhi’s approach of non-violence to end British colonialism in India.

Well, it is probably best that solar power is BOTH popular and right, ‘cause I ain’t no Gandhi.

Hey, transitioning our energy economy from one that is fossil intensive (coal and nuclear) to one that is clean (solar) is certainly going to take some leadership, for sure. But the choice to bring solar to the mainstream is one that is both popular and correct.

Take New York, for example. 90% of the voting public of New York State have asked for public leadership in making the transition to clean, reliable solar power.

Ah, but surely that’s those New York liberals, you say?

Nope. 88% of registered Republicans said the same. And upstate respondents are demanding state action on solar to the tune of 93%.

Okay, okay, so solar is popular. But is it right?

In 2003 the northeast suffered a pretty debilitating blackout. Parts of New York City were out for days. What caused the black out was a stressed out electricity distribution grid. When there is a lot of demand, as there tends to be on hot summer days, high tension wires sag from the excess load. Not to oversimplify electrical engineering, but these wires literally sag like an over-burdened clothesline.

Sagging lines are more susceptible to outages. A tree falling - a tree that normally would have completely missed the lines - takes out a sagging wire.

And that is exactly what happened to New York City in 2003. Only it happened …in Ohio.

One tree falls in Ohio and our complicated interwoven electrical system in the Northeast goes down. That day cost the city of New York 8 billion dollars (I know you want to see those zeros: $8,000,000,000), and still, every summer, we worry that we will suffer another debilitating blackout.

So what does solar have to do with trees in Ohio? Simple. If more folks get their electricity at the point of usage (from the roofs they are under) then electrons have less distance to travel and the grid suffers less congestion, and those power lines stay out of the way of falling trees. And, wouldn’t you know it, the sun provides its greatest benefit at exactly the moments that we are demanding the most electricity.

In fact, just three-hundred million dollars (less zeros: $300,000,000) of solar investment in the northeast (about 500 MW of capacity) would have given coverage against the 2003 blackout.

Solar is looking like a good idea and I haven’t even talked about the need to reinvigorate the American economy with new, good paying, tech sector jobs. Or the immediate concerns of reducing our carbon emissions. Or the costs and dangers associated with mining coal and uranium. Or exactly what we should do with nuclear waste and coal slurry. Or …

The point is clear: Politicians, you want to be popular? Do the right thing.

Vote Solar.