If “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” aren’t eyesores, too? But there’s a certain strain of trendy conceit that deplores the differing tastes of others, and holds itself entitled to impose its superior aesthetic tastes on everybody. A recent contribution to this space (“Solar Storm,” January 11) manifests that conceit by declaring “it’s time to stop seeing solar panels” on an adjacent property, but in one’s face, “as eyesores and start seeing them as lifelines to a more livable world.”

Well, pardon me. I don’t find beauty in pock-marking our rural, agricultural landscape with these sore-thumb patches of glazing. I find that ugly.

And for what are we required to sacrifice our bucolic vistas (which were so cherished when threatened by fracking)? The connection between these backyard solar contraptions and a “more livable world” is tenuous. Backyard solar, in these hills, is grossly uneconomical. It’s so expensive to mine the raw materials and heavy metals needed, smelt them, manufacture them (exposing workers to toxic hazards), transport them around the globe, erect them on site and install them, that they’re not slightly viable without massive taxpayer-funded subsidies and tax gimmicks.

Even the best-case claims for saving money on kilowatts project dividends so low that installations may not pay for themselves—even after subsidies—for decades (by which time, the equipment is likely obsolete, to be piled onto landfills).

The “reverse metering” requirement forces electric utilities to saddle ratepayers (mostly of modest means) with buying the electricity expensively produced by their (well-heeled) neighbors. That’s Robin Hood in reverse.

Maybe solar can work on an industrial scale. Maybe solar can work in sunnier places on earth. (We’re lately down to nine-and-a-half hours of daylight here, much of it overcast.) Maybe solar can work if adequate and cost-effective batteries are ever invented (for those days with fourteen-and-a-half dark hours, and snow days).

Maybe we should change the subject altogether, and concentrate on perfecting carbon-free nuclear.

Meanwhile, spare me the eyesores, please.

Backyard “solarizing” is assuming the posture of a jihad, its true believers demeaning any disagreement, willing to mow down whatever’s in their way. That sort of self-righteous elitism fueled the recent backlash across this fair land, in the form of “Trumpism,” which does not appear to be a fruitful strategy for actually saving the planet. Showing respect for the views and property of others (along with feasible economics) would be a better one.

[Ron Litchman is a resident of Callicoon.]