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Residents of Affluent California Suburb Protest Solar Panels, Say They'll Ruin "Beautiful" Parking Lots

Of all the reasons to protest solar power, I present to you the dumbest.
A gorgeous parking lot. Whither else hath thou seen such beauty? Image: Washington Wheels

“The parks in Ventura County are absolutely spectacular, and parking lots are beautiful, and the district is going to ruin it with the solar panels," Eileen Casanova, a resident of the affluent California suburb of Thousand Oaks, told the Ventura County Star. "It’s really, really sad."

Of all the reasons to protest solar power, I present to you what is clearly the dumbest.

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Yes, Eileen Casanova hates solar panels, and she loves those beautiful parking lots. She and seven other Thousand Oaks residents have taken time out of what must be very busy days to formally write in protests to the city's proposed addition of solar panels to a nearby public park. See, Thousand Oaks just recently brokered a deal with a solar power company to install solar panels over carports at four local parking lots. It seems, at first blush, to be a great deal: due to the partnership, the panels will cost residents nothing, and the arrays will generate clean electricity to power the lights at the park.

But it may not go through, because Eileen Casanova thinks parking lots are too beautiful to be meddled with. I wonder what it is about parking lots Eileen Casanova finds most beautiful? The deep, craggy black of the asphalt, which beckons us to consider, is thine own soul so dark, so immense, and so slightly spongy when it gets really hot outside? Or perhaps she delights in spotting that rare flicker of a rainbow over a veneer of spilt motor oil—who would have known so many colors live in this mortal world! And those flawless white lines, bespotted though they may be with gum, dogshit, and candy bar wrappers; how could it be that any machine might paint with such confidence, such finesse? White dashes of order over the black abyss, what symbolic complexity, what beauty, ye paved Sistine Chapels of stone!

Oh, Eileen. Do you know who else thinks parking lots, as a rule, are beautiful? Nobody. Nobody but you, and whoever has bought what has to be the worst-selling mug on Zazzle.com.

In fact, I thought that if humanity agreed on just one thing, it is that parking lots suck. They are hot. They are purely utilitarian. They prevent anything useful from being built in their stead. They are wasted space. And they are, above all else, ugly. Trash collects in them. Dogs poop in them. Teenagers flick cigarette butts in them. There is no better place in the universe for solar panels than parking lots. Ugly-ass parking lots.

No, the only feasible explanation for this idiotic facade is that these eight people have an ideological objection to solar power, seeing as how they are now Things Liberals Like. Give me the names of those eight solar power protesters, and I'll give you eight Tea Partiers.