Paul Rogers gets the mood, if not much info, into his lede on this one for the San Jose Mercury News: “Talk about a clash of cherished green values.”

In California, redwood trees are among the central totems of environmentalism. Preserving remaining old growth stands has a status approaching scriptural. But what about some young, fast-growing and ornamental backyard redwoods? And how about them if their shadows crimp the output from a neighbor’s solar panels?

What is about them is a big legal fight, is what. This global warming good-citizenship task may be noble, but it’s not simple. It turns out that, on the books, is something called the California Solar Shade Control Act, signed way back in 1978 but, it says here, never actually used before to club anybody over the head. Just a guess for how this’ll end: supremely “green,” carbon-neutral redwood chip biofuel.

ps – Rogers reports this story is receiving more comments and other reader reaction than anything in his 19 years at the paper. And folks are about evenly split between freedom for trees, and freedom for sunlight and PV cells.

-CP

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