Recall that all the electric power I use directly comes from my portable solar panels powering a battery. Indirectly I cause plenty more to be used, from lights in other buildings to the server farms bringing you this writing, to the manufacturing processes that build things I use.

The more I learn about solar power, the more I learn of the environmental devastation in creating solar panels and batteries and in disposing of them. Every piece of solar equipment I’ve used has broken in some way. In time, they’ll become more sturdy and enduring, but for my lifetime, they’ll require extraction and cause pollution. They’ll lower earth’s ability to sustain life.

Meanwhile, nearly all life we know of depends on sunlight (I think some depends on heat from the earth’s core). The power in sunlight is converted to chemical energy to support life through my favorite kind of solar panel, the leaf:

Not only do leafs convert sunlight to stored energy we can use, that energy is delicious. We call it sugar. In the process of storing the sunlight’s energy, leaves and the plants supporting them make the world fertile. They achieve many of the opposites of our solar power industries.

I’m coming to value the leaf as the ultimate solar panel.

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