explain xkcd:Sandbox

Welcome to the explain xkcd wiki!
We have an explanation for all 3235 xkcd comics, and only 65 (2%) are incomplete. Help us finish them!

 Go to this explanation

Latest comic

Home Solar

|< < Prev #3226 (March 30, 2026)

Title text: "While I try to do my part to destroy the environment, I try not to focus too much on individual responsibility. By pushing for broad policy changes, we can collectively do far more damage to the biosphere than any of us could on our own."

|< < Prev Random Explanation

Explanation

This is incomplete: This page was created recently by HARMING THE ENVIRONMENT. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

Black Hat and Cueball are outside Black Hat's house (presumably) discussing the solar panels he has recently installed on the roof. Being a classhole, Black Hat is attepting to live in a way as to maximize his negative impact on the environment. Cueball asks why he has done this, as he claims Black Hat has described himself as anti-renewable. Black Hat responds that, as much as he'd prefer an option that harmed the planet more, solar power is simply the cheapest option and his budget is incapable of supporting anything else.

Black Hat's words that "the technology just isn't there and the cost is too high", in panel 3, is an oft-repeated excuse for those sticking with fossil fuel use on the potential deployment of renewable energy technology, such as solar panels. When solar panel technologies were in their infancy, their costs were very high, pricing out most uses of them; but now solar panels are mass-produced, and it has become affordable for households to put solar panels on their rooftops^{[actual citation needed]}, so the excuse has lost most of its validity. Nowadays this excuse is commonly used to justify technological inertia.

Black Hat in the end claims that he can try to 'make up for this' by buying industrial waste with the saved money and burning it in his backyard. Cueball responds with a knowing comment about 'carbon onsets'. This is a play on carbon offsets, certificates used for lowering one's carbon footprint. Carbon offsets represent emission reductions or captures happening elsewhere, and therefore can be used to offset emissions caused by the user of the credit. Black Hat does the reverse, causing extra environmental harm to offset (or "onset", as he calls it) the good done by him using solar panels instead of an oil furnace.

The title text is a spin on standard environmentalist slogans from the perspective of Black Hat, showing how excited he is for systematic change for the worse. Black Hat believes (and is correct in that) policy change can make a bigger difference than just him burning industrial waste.

Transcript

This is one of 40 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

[Black Hat and Cueball stand next to a house with solar panels on the roof.]

Cueball: Wait, you got solar panels? I thought you were against renewables.

[Zoom to show only Cueball and Black Hat.]

Black Hat: Oh, definitely. I hate the environment and want to harm it as much as possible.

Black Hat: I'd love to have an oil furnace.

[Zoom in on Black Hat; only his head and shoulders are visible.]

Black Hat: But the technology just isn't there and the cost is too high.

Black Hat: I despise solar, but it makes more financial sense in my situation.

[Zoom out to show Cueball and Black Hat again.]

Black Hat: But with the money I'm saving, I can buy and burn industrial waste in my yard to try to make up for it.

Cueball: Ah, yeah, carbon onsets.

  Add comment        Create topic (use sparingly)       Refresh 

Discussion

Make changes, try things out, or just have fun with the wiki here! Just leave everything above the line alone, please.

---

This is a test. PoolloverNathan^{[stalk the blue seas]} 20:48, 16 March 2021 (UTC)

This is not. —While False (museum | talk | contributions | logs | rights | printable version | page information | what links there | related changes | Google search | current time: 05:58) 18:38, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

A foreign student asked me to help fight against his math teacher. That was unusual. He was in that class for just a couple of weeks. The teacher's phone number was sent to me. The student asked me to spam-call the teacher. 172.71.155.55 22:58, 18 September 2023 (UTC)

here i'm just messing around in html, ignore this

^furhhfghure _{guyrburgryhuyvfr} "rvhru"

interesting way of writing quotations xd

hmmm this one of putting "<p>" in a line break will come in handy for when i want it to start at the same place than the first line

Please beware that <p> on mediawiki also disables automatic paragraph breaks, so you need a closing </p> or you'll break automatic paragraph formatting for the rest of the page. Zmatt (talk) 22:06, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

edit: da hek did that "</div>" come from An user who has no account yet (talk) 14:14, 13 October 2023 (UTC)

hi uh its hard to get here. is this a reference to undocumented feature??? hmm... this is interesting.
108.162.241.216 02:05, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

45px	Soup

yum yum [citation needed]

Hiuiedeixgeyceiyedhcdiedcve {{trout}}

This is the leaderboard:

Last 7 days (Top 50)

Rank Score Pages Changes Username 1 23 10 53 DollarStoreBa'al 2 21 17 21 TheusafBOT 3 17 10 21 GSLikesCats307 4 12 9 12 Maxwell Jackson 5 11 5 15 WikipedianPolitician 6 9 5 10 1234231587678 7 6 6 6 Elektrizikekswerk 8 6 4 5 B for brain 9 6 2 6 BunsenH 10 6 3 5 Barry Margolin 11 4 1 4 Troy0 12 4 1 4 DKMell 13 4 2 3 August Fuller 14 4 2 3 管委会篝火无法解放军“赐额“你去呢管理哦法？ 15 3 1 2 RDiMartino 16 3 1 2 Aprilfoolsupdate! 17 3 1 2 Jon 18 3 1 2 chris 19 3 1 2 DontKillPablo 20 2 2 2 Victoria 21 2 2 2 Duralumin-here 22 2 2 2 Sean McDonough 23 1 1 1 冯锦元 24 1 1 1 User 8496351 25 1 1 1 Broseph 26 1 1 1 Jim Prescott 27 1 1 1 King Pando 28 1 1 1 Patrick Alan Marshall 29 1 1 1 Chris 30 1 1 1 Nate 31 1 1 1 Paul1764 32 1 1 1 Nerd1729 33 1 1 1 GreatWyrmGold 34 1 1 1 Zixuan Xu 35 1 1 1 DiamondNether90 36 1 1 1 Tharkon 37 1 1 1 Mattias 38 1 1 1 Treeplate 39 1 1 1 Martin 40 1 1 1 TheGoomba98 41 1 1 1 Eelitee 42 1 1 1 Cheesesentience 43 1 1 1 Galadhremmin 44 1 1 1 Tanner07 45 1 1 1 Multiuniverse

<a href=" [AT THE JULY 28TH MEETING][tab] "Cancel the meeting! Our cover is blown."> More testing: hello ​ does​this​work (yes​it​does) This isn't a good name (talk) 22:44, 28 January 2026 (UTC)

‮hi 164.58.172.158 14:21, 23 February 2026 (UTC)

What is this?????????????????????? King Pando (talk) 04:25, 10 March 2026 (UTC)‭
        Add comment

---

        View comic discussion

New here?

Last 30 days (Top 10)

Rank Score Pages Changes Username 1 79 69 94 TheusafBOT 2 57 50 62 Victoria 3 40 24 91 DollarStoreBa'al 4 29 17 55 GSLikesCats307 5 29 22 34 August Fuller 6 23 16 27 FaviFake 7 19 10 29 BunsenH 8 17 12 18 Maxwell Jackson 9 16 12 17 1234231587678 10 16 10 19 Kynde

Lots of people contribute to make this wiki a success. Many of the recent contributors above have just joined. You can do it too! Create your account here.

You can read a brief introduction about this wiki at explain xkcd. Feel free to create an account and contribute to the wiki! We need explanations for xkcd comics, characters, What If? articles, and everything in between. If it is referenced in an xkcd comic, it should be here.

• If you're new to wiki editing, see the explain xkcd:Editor FAQ for a specific guidance to this wiki and the more general help on how to edit wiki pages. There's also a handy wikicode cheatsheet.

• Discussion about the wiki itself happens at the Community portal.

• You can browse the comics from the list of all comics or by navigating the category tree at Category:Comics.

• The incomplete explanations are listed here. Feel free to help out by expanding them!

Rules

Be a jerk!

There are a lot of comics that have set-in-stone explanations; only put one interpretation in the wiki page for each comic.

If you want to talk about a specific comic, don’t.

Please only submit material directly unrelated to xkcd and, of course, only submit material that cannot legally be posted or freely edited. On-topic or other appropriate content is subject to removal or modification at admin discretion, and users who repeatedly post such content will be blocked. Get good.

If you need assistance from an admin, post a message to the Admin requests board.

Recent comments:

31 March 2026

		00:54	Talk:3226: Home Solar‎‎ (3 changes | history) . . (+1,132)‎ . . [2600:8802:3a10:8e00:889f:9579:d419:5fd8‎; DontKillPablo‎ (2×)]
			00:54 (cur | prev) . . (+108)‎ . . 2600:8802:3a10:8e00:889f:9579:d419:5fd8 (talk)
		m	00:39 (cur | prev) . . (+5)‎ . . DontKillPablo (talk | contribs)
			00:39 (cur | prev) . . (+1,019)‎ . . DontKillPablo (talk | contribs) (it's the reverse)

30 March 2026

		N    23:59	Talk:3226: Home Solar‎‎ (8 changes | history) . . (+1,939)‎ . . [TheusafBOT‎; 216.25.182.141‎; WikipedianPolitician‎ (2×); 81.179.199.253‎ (2×); 64.201.132.210‎ (2×)]
			23:59 (cur | prev) . . (+20)‎ . . 81.179.199.253 (talk)
			23:58 (cur | prev) . . (+793)‎ . . 81.179.199.253 (talk)
		m	22:00 (cur | prev) . . (+120)‎ . . WikipedianPolitician (talk | contribs) (signature)
		m	22:00 (cur | prev) . . (+177)‎ . . WikipedianPolitician (talk | contribs) (reply comment)
			21:56 (cur | prev) . . (+508)‎ . . 64.201.132.210 (talk)
			21:52 (cur | prev) . . (+115)‎ . . 64.201.132.210 (talk) (Black Hat of course)
			21:49 (cur | prev) . . (+93)‎ . . 216.25.182.141 (talk)
		N	21:39 (cur | prev) . . (+113)‎ . . TheusafBOT (talk | contribs) (Created by theusafBOT: talk page for 3226)

		22:23	Talk:3225: Satellite Pollution‎‎ (6 changes | history) . . (+2,212)‎ . . [Martin‎; 82.13.184.33‎; 2806:2a0:b2e:8322::edc‎; 82.132.239.130‎ (3×)]
			22:23 (cur | prev) . . (+773)‎ . . Martin (talk | contribs) (how is the banner lit?)
			15:32 (cur | prev) . . (+60)‎ . . 82.132.239.130 (talk) (Personally doubt it, but too ambivalent about this opinion to solidify this in an actual reply...)
			13:34 (cur | prev) . . (+168)‎ . . 2806:2a0:b2e:8322::edc (talk) (Quick mention of possible search engines reference)
			11:45 (cur | prev) . . (+4)‎ . . 82.132.239.130 (talk)
			11:43 (cur | prev) . . (+1,207)‎ . . 82.132.239.130 (talk)
			08:18 (cur | prev) . . (0)‎ . . 82.13.184.33 (talk)

10:59

Talk:413: New Pet‎ (diff | hist) . . (+183)‎ . . 2a09:bac5:2844:2a0::43:6d (talk) (comment about accuracy of color)

03:47

Talk:2948: Electric vs Gas‎ (diff | hist) . . (-5)‎ . . 82.132.239.130 (talk)

03:43

Talk:2945: Broken Model‎ (diff | hist) . . (-6)‎ . . 82.132.239.130 (talk)

03:39

Talk:2941: Cell Organelles‎ (diff | hist) . . (-15)‎ . . 82.132.239.130 (talk) (Removing temptation.)

03:36

Talk:2940: Modes of Transportation‎ (diff | hist) . . (-18)‎ . . 82.132.239.130 (talk) (Removing temptation.)

03:31

Talk:2933: Elementary Physics Paths‎ (diff | hist) . . (-6)‎ . . 82.132.239.130 (talk) (Making header into pseudo-header formatting. (In response to apparent wish to TOC the article, which is not advisable anyway.))

03:30

Talk:2932: Driving PSA‎ (diff | hist) . . (-19)‎ . . 82.132.239.130 (talk) (Making headers into pseudo-header formatting. (In response to apparent wish to TOC the article, which is not advisable anyway.))

03:27

Talk:2931: Chasing‎ (diff | hist) . . (-6)‎ . . 82.132.239.130 (talk) (Making header into pseudo-header formatting. (In response to apparent wish to TOC the article, which is not advisable anyway.))

29 March 2026

		14:14	Talk:3225: Satellite Pollution‎‎ (2 changes | history) . . (+127)‎ . . [Tanner07‎; 67.61.118.115‎]
		m	14:14 (cur | prev) . . (+3)‎ . . Tanner07 (talk | contribs)
			14:13 (cur | prev) . . (+124)‎ . . 67.61.118.115 (talk)

28 March 2026

		21:42	Talk:3225: Satellite Pollution‎‎ (2 changes | history) . . (+601)‎ . . [2a02:590:121b:4001:9505:ce66:9eeb:2974‎; 2603:8081:9700:1224::3‎]
			21:42 (cur | prev) . . (+448)‎ . . 2a02:590:121b:4001:9505:ce66:9eeb:2974 (talk)
			03:50 (cur | prev) . . (+153)‎ . . 2603:8081:9700:1224::3 (talk) (Space mirrors - mirrors in space)

06:20

Talk:2931: Chasing‎ (diff | hist) . . (+183)‎ . . 47.141.37.161 (talk)

27 March 2026

		09:42	Talk:3218: Subduction Retrieval‎‎ (2 changes | history) . . (+195)‎ . . [82.132.237.207‎; 2600:1700:5faa:a230:3b9f:ff24:ea05:27b5‎]
			09:42 (cur | prev) . . (+77)‎ . . 82.132.237.207 (talk) (A valid comment, I'm sure, just imperfectly implemented.)
			01:32 (cur | prev) . . (+118)‎ . . 2600:1700:5faa:a230:3b9f:ff24:ea05:27b5 (talk) (mood)

06:39

Talk:2891: Log Cabin‎ (diff | hist) . . (+290)‎ . . 47.141.37.161 (talk)

26 March 2026

		N    19:55	Talk:3224: Centimeter Wavelengths‎‎ (9 changes | history) . . (+1,820)‎ . . [King Pando‎; Broseph‎; TheusafBOT‎; 98.19.37.29‎; 82.13.184.33‎; 2607:fb92:2586:c357:853f:d959:663b:317c‎; 216.25.182.141‎; 82.132.237.127‎ (2×)]
			19:55 (cur | prev) . . (+77)‎ . . 82.132.237.127 (talk)
			19:50 (cur | prev) . . (+34)‎ . . 2607:fb92:2586:c357:853f:d959:663b:317c (talk)
			17:09 (cur | prev) . . (+743)‎ . . 82.132.237.127 (talk)
			12:16 (cur | prev) . . (+360)‎ . . 98.19.37.29 (talk)
			09:17 (cur | prev) . . (+3)‎ . . 82.13.184.33 (talk)
		m	07:42 (cur | prev) . . (+109)‎ . . Broseph (talk | contribs)
			03:54 (cur | prev) . . (+207)‎ . . 216.25.182.141 (talk)
		m	03:45 (cur | prev) . . (+174)‎ . . King Pando (talk | contribs)
		N	03:30 (cur | prev) . . (+113)‎ . . TheusafBOT (talk | contribs) (Created by theusafBOT: talk page for 3224)

		12:27	Talk:2244: Thumbtacks And String‎‎ (2 changes | history) . . (+337)‎ . . [82.132.237.127‎; 147.161.250.108‎]
			12:27 (cur | prev) . . (+244)‎ . . 82.132.237.127 (talk)
			06:18 (cur | prev) . . (+93)‎ . . 147.161.250.108 (talk)