Earlier this week, Donald Trump presented to the American public a modification to his proposed border wall between Mexico and the United States. A border wall between Mexico and the U.S. is already a terrible idea all around, but what makes Trump's "Solar Wall" different from his original idea?
Basically, Trump wants to add an addition to his border wall. And those additions happen to be solar panels. First of all, this DOES NOT mean that Trump is becoming more environmentally friendly (hey, remember when he pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement? Or when he said that global warming was manufactured by the Chinese?). Secondly, adding solar panels to the wall will only make it more expensive. According to Buzzfeed News, the solar paneled wall "would add $1.4 to $4.2 billion to that cost, according to one preliminary industry estimate, with the solar panels possibly generating more than $100 million of electricity every year."
Considering that Trump has already loosened Obama-era environmental laws, the fact that Trump wants to use solar energy is slightly surprising. If Trump goes through with the Solar Wall, the US solar output would be multiplied by a remarkable fifty times. However, the economic outcomes from this would be catastrophic for the U.S. economy, and precious time will be wasted when other more effective and easier environmental policies could be put in place. Geoscientist Raymond Pierrehumbert even said to Buzzfeed News; "Putting solar panels on a stupid wall does not change the fact that the wall is a stupid and pointless waste of money." And apparently, most other scientists agree with this notion.
Instead of putting in this much money for a "Solar Wall", why doesn't the United States government acknowledge that climate change is real and is moving at an extremely dangerous rate? Putting solar panels on a border wall would waste precious time and money that the government could be using to put protections on threatened ecosystems and species, or investing in renewable energy. However, with the Trump administration, that is not the case.
There is one interesting tidbit that comes with Trump's environmental policies. If you look into the Paris Climate Agreement, it turns out that backing out of it is a very tedious process. And it turns out that this process ends on November 4, 2020 (4 years after the agreement was put into force). However, November 4 is literally the day after Election Day. The general public has a choice this day- to support environmental policies that are based on facts and common
