Eco War

Eco-weenies battle it out in California:

Wrangling Californian neighbours have recently concluded a bitter six-year legal battle, as a judge ordered a treehugging couple's lovingly-tended redwoods cut down in order to prevent them shading solar panels installed by the man next door.

Prius driver Richard Treanor, owner of the proscribed foliage, said the decision wasn't ecologically sound. The lost redwoods, he argued, had been a carbon sink, a wildlife habitat and had served to cool the air around them. He and his wife Carolyn Bissett weren't against solar power, he said, "but we think there's a rational way to implement it."

His neighbour Mark Vargas, whose $70,000 solar panels now operate at full efficiency, said that the tree-loving duo had been selfishly snaffling his sunlight.

"I think it's unfair that a neighbor can take away this source of energy from another neighbor," he told AP. Vargas added that it would take acres of trees to match his rooftop and back-garden solar panels in terms of carbon reductions. He also considered that he had out-greened Treanor and Bissett's low-emissions Prius hybrid, having purchased a plug-in electric car.

After years of legal scuffling, a California judge ruled that Treanor and Bissett had violated the state's Solar Shade Control Act, which says residents have to keep their plants from shading more than ten per cent of a neighbour's solar panels between the hours of 10am and 2pm. The couple are the first to be convicted under the 30-year-old law.

Trees already in place when solar panels are set up don't have to be cut down, but new growth causing shading is unlawful once the panels are in place. It seems that two of Treanor and Bissett's redwoods grew in an illegal fashion and had to be chopped down.

That's priceless, the guy with the all electric car looking down on his neighbors because they drive a hybrid. That's what happens when you live a holier than thou existence; there's always someone willing to go the extra holy, with a smidgen more thou.

It would be great if NPT could do a documentary on this tiff as it slowly grows into
the inevitable Green Hatfield-McCoy feud. (I can see them battling across the hedges with their ergonomic gardening tools because of concerns over the CO2 released by gunpowder)

"Damn your eyes Treanor, I know you've been stealing from my compost pile!"
"Bullcrap Vargas! I was just checking to be sure it didn't contain any recyclable plastics!"
"And don't think you can get away with paper napkins. I've been checking your trash, and keeping a log, and I plan to bring up your wasteful habits at the next city council meeting!"
"You stinking consumer! Go to Detroit! Republican!"
"I'll have you know I have (some) Native American blood, you Rush Listener!!!"
"Native American my butt! You're so white you glow!"
"Honky!"
"Nazi!"
"Christian!"
And then the carnage.