3226: Home Solar

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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."

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Explanation

This is one of 65 incomplete explanations: 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 discussing the solar panels he has recently installed on the roof. (Or alternatively outside another house, e.g. Cueball's, with its solar panels having initiated the comparison.) Being a classhole, Black Hat is attempting to live in a way that will maximize his negative impact on the environment. Cueball asks why he has installed solar panels, since he knows Black Hat, and that he has described himself as anti-'renewables'. Black Hat responds that, as much as he'd prefer an option that harmed the planet more, solar power (photovoltaics and/or solar thermal energy) is simply the cheapest option and his budget is incapable of supporting anything else.

Black Hat's words in panel 3, that "the technology just isn't there and the cost is too high", is an oft-repeated excuse for those sticking with fossil fuel use rather than potentially deploy 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, together with some potential periods of official subsidy (with varying likelihood, by both location and time) as the manufacturing/installation industries were encouraged to be more developed, and it has become more affordable for households to put solar panels on their rooftops, so the excuse has lost much of its validity. Nowadays this excuse is commonly used to justify technological inertia.

This may also be reference to the high oil/gasoline prices recently, going up over 30% in the past two weeks prior to this comic's publication, overwhelingly due to military activity disrupting fuel (and other) trading, and its knock-on effects globally.

In the end, Black Hat claims that he can try to 'make up for this' by using the saved money to buy industrial waste and burn it in his backyard. Cueball responds with a knowing comment about 'carbon onsets'. This is a play on carbon offsets: certificates used for demonstrating mitigation of one's own carbon footprint, by effectively crowd-funding larger projects that are 'carbon negative' but are difficult to properly coordinate directly and individually. Carbon offsets represent emission reductions or captures happening elsewhere, and can be used to offset emissions caused by the user of the credit. This is rather than just relying upon random altruistic third parties to put the effort and finance into such a scheme to counteract others' care-free carbon emissions, or to allow a way to reward those who would indeed just do this off their own back.

Black Hat does the reverse, causing extra environmental harm to offset (or "onset", as Cueball calls it) the good reluctantly done by him by using solar panels instead of an oil furnace. This doesn't really make sense since it's not clear what target he would be trying to 'onset' to; there is no 'ideal' level of emissions that he would be trying to achieve, although one can assume that he'll be aiming to be at least the wrong side of 'carbon neutral'. While the solar panels will have a much lower carbon footprint than the oil furnace, they will still have had some, in manufacture, and other options (such as burning coal) could provide him with even more emissions than the oil.

The title text is a spin on a standard argument about personal responsibility in tackling environmental issues, distorted through the perspective of Black Hat. Low amounts of action to address personal impact is sometimes excused by pointing out that it will be a 'drop in the ocean' relative to the scale of the problem, and suggesting that only action at a global institutional level can really address it. Black Hat believes (correctly) that policy and other systemic change can cause bigger damage than just him burning industrial waste, and is excited about the potential for this to change things for the worse. This is ironic, because ingrained institutional and systemic factors have played a significant role in causing the problems we now have, and holding up the finding of solutions to them.

Transcript

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

Cueball: Wait, you got solar panels?

Cueball: 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.

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Discussion

Beep Boop 216.25.182.141 21:49, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

Black Hat, because who else??? 64.201.132.210 21:52, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

Title text may refer to policy decisions in the second Trump administration which promote the use of fossil fuels or undo existing policies which promote the use of renewables. The burning of industrial waste in his front yard may or may not be an oblique reference to the environmental damage being done in the current war in Iraq, in which petroleum-processing facilities and ships containing oil are being set on fire. 64.201.132.210 21:56, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

Possible, and logical. Let's not ignore the possibility that this is just random environmental activism from Randall though, like what he seems to be exhibiting in xkcd #2948. WikipedianPolitician (talk) 22:00, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

Just to note, for future readers who might get confused (who knows what they remember of this particular moment in time, and what's going on in their era), the war is in Iran right now (and/or the region in general, but not particularly in Iraq more than also in plenty of other places nearby). The "War in Iraq" was Bush's thing (Senior or Junior, either or both), mainly, give or take what spilled over into subsequent Administrations. And, by the way, the current President always said that the Iraq thing was a bad idea, and that starting wars was always a bad thing, and... (I could go on. But one can't really do much satire about it, because straight reality is already being plainly ridiculous in its own right.) 81.179.199.253 23:58, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

A side-note from Poland - Przemysław Czarnek, the candidate for the future prime minister of the right-wing Law and Justice (if the win the upcoming elections) was recently talking against renewable sources of electricity... when he was reminded that he put solar panels on the roof of his house a few years ago (and he admitted that thanks to solar panels he saves on electricity bills. --JakubNarebski (talk) 07:18, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

My guess is that it's a reference to Trump's forcing coal power plants to stay open (or in some cases, re-open), which ends up raising the price of power in many of the affected areas. 206.193.5.5

Could be just replacing an environmentalist's excuses for not getting solar with the exact opposite, because Black Hat. Picture the following:

   [Black Hat and Cueball stand next to a house with an oil fill spout outside]
   Cueball: Wait, you have an oil furnace? I thought you were against fossil fuels. 
   [Black Hat and Cueball are still discussing]
   Black Hat: Oh, Definitely. I love the environment and want to save it as much as possible.
   Black Hat: I'd love to have solar panels.
   [Zoom on Black Hat]
   Black Hat: But the technology just isn't there and the cost is too high.
   Black Hat: I despise oil, but it makes more financial sense in my situation.
   [Return to previous zoom]
   Black Hat: But with the money I'm saving, I can buy industrial credits to try to make up for it.
   Cueball: Ah, yeah, carbon offsets.

Granted, that's far less amusing. --DontKillPablo (talk) 00:39, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

There's only one problem with that; the character would then probably be Megan or Ponytail, not Black Hat. 2600:8802:3a10:8e00:889f:9579:d419:5fd8 (talk) 00:54, 31 March 2026 (UTC) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Or White Hat... 45.178.3.49 15:56, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

being eco-friendly is OUT. being eco-antagonistic is IN 171.33.202.199 12:26, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't quite understand the comic. Solar panels provide electricity and oil furnaces provide warmth. How does installing solar panels help with heating? You'd have to install a heat pump or use solar thermal energy instead of solar panels. Or is it supposed to mean using AC for heating because it can act as a heat pump? Imurik (talk) 19:38, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

Pretty sure it's referring to an electric heat pump since they are generally significantly cheaper than oil heating, especially at latitudes where rooftop solar is economical (due to higher average winter temperatures). 206.193.5.5 21:14, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

It could be solar water heating, rather than PV. But some places will use electric heaters (centrally or as individual units dotted around the house) rather than fuelled boilers, and they can be supplied/augmented from solar panels energy.

Especially as oil-fired boilers require deliveries of oil, and seem to be more common in in places without mains-gas (gaseous gas, that is, not 'gasoline' gas) or electricity, so probably already logistically less convenient and more expensive, day-to-day, than just converting captured sunlight into heat, one way or another. Assuming you're set up to do enough of that with the available energy (and Black Hat wouldn't skimp).

More efficient is the Heat Pump/exchanger method, of course, leveraging the electricity to just move heat around rather than try to generate it. Or possibly even something using the Peltier Effect. 81.179.199.253 22:34, 31 March 2026 (UTC)
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