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The juxtaposition of solar panels and SUVs reflects a broader public appetite not for energy-saving habits, but for technical fixes: ethanol, solar, fuel cells, and hybrid autos that sometimes consume as much gas as many nonhybrids. Vargas is a regular guy – enamored by cool technologies that do worthwhile things. "I don't have a problem driving my gas-powered vehicles." Sure, he drives an electric car – but he also has two SUVs and a diesel pickup. "I've been labeled an environmentalist because of the solar power and the electric car," he says.īut the truth lies more in shades of gray than chlorophyll green. "But to be a producer of electricity, to have my own supply of energy from the sun, I think that's amazing in of itself." Beyond that, Vargas's popular image as a green crusader begins to fall flat. He seems content with his $70,000 investment, yet vague on any altruism behind it. These, along with 80 more on the roof, supply 100 percent of the family's electricity. On the trellis several feet above his head sit 48 solar panels. He ambles into the narrow strip of yard protected from the slanting afternoon sun by the now-famous phalanx of redwoods.
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Vargas says he has grown used to the recognition that comes with TV appearances – from supporters who say "hello" in the Safeway parking lot to silent drive-by gawkers. Vargas tells it, a "crazy woman from Quebec" said, "I hope that you suffer and your family suffers." Three Vargas children and two playmates – ages 3 to 7 – twitter about the living room where police officer Tom Leipelt is telling Vargas's wife, Melissa, not to worry about a voice mail the family just received. The Vargas home is a scene of familial pandemonium. The now-famous electric car sits outside the Vargases's garage, sipping sunlight from the house's 128 solar panels. "If you've planted a tree and watched it grow, you've invested an awful lot in it."īut despite the emotions the case has sparked, it fits poorly with the moral story line into which it has been shoehorned. "People are very, very emotional about their trees," explains Randall Stamen, a Riverside, Calif., lawyer who specializes in tree lawsuits. Chat rooms bristle with invective defending the trees' right to exist, and naysayers ridicule the case as a parable of green hypocrisy. It sounds like an epic struggle of values: trees versus solar Vargas, who drives an electric car versus. CNN visited both households, and Vargas just turned down Jon Stewart of the Daily Show. So, says Treanor who has hired an arborist to do the job, "at 9 a.m.
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Photos from 2001 show that two of the trees didn't shade the panels for the first year after installation, but have since grown to shade more than 10 percent of the collectors between 10 a.m.
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The solar panels were installed in 2001 by Vargas, who moved here in 1993. 10 and ordered two of the eight trees cut down. Bissett.Ī judge convicted the tree owners on Dec. The ensuing paper chase through city ordinances, planning commissions, and permit hearings has consumed seven years and tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, and – through California's obscure 1978 Solar Shade Control Act, which criminalizes the shading of solar panels by trees – resulted in the Santa Clara County District Attorney prosecuting Mr. Accounts of the backyard discussion differ – whether or not Vargas offered to pay for tree removal, or who first threatened legal action – but one thing is certain: The parties haven't spoken since. Perhaps that disconnect foreshadowed what would transpire. So their front doors stand in two different cities – Sunnyvale and Santa Clara. The two families have adjacent backyards, but in suburbia's labyrinth, there is no easy walk between them.
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So, in a suburban odyssey symbolic of the chasm between people with different ideas of how to use nature, he got in his car and drove nearly a mile to his neighbors' front door. They asked Vargas to come discuss the matter in their backyard. But the row of eight 10- to 25-foot redwoods along that edge of the couple's backyard would have to go – or be shortened, or perhaps replaced with smaller trees.
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Vargas said he planned to install solar panels on the trellis behind his house – meaning he needed access to sunlight. Carolynn Bissett and her husband, Richard Treanor, were pulling weeds in their backyard on Benton Street here on a July day in 2001, when their neighbor Mark Vargas peeked over the fence for a chat. It started as a typical over-the-back-fence suburban neighborhood chat, not the kind of thing that would escalate into a criminal prosecution.