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| Shades of green: The Santa Clara County district attorney pressed criminal charges against Richard Treanor (not shown) for
the shade his redwoods cast on the solar panels that Mark Vargas uses for 100 percent of his home’s power. Jeff Chiu/AP |
Solar energy trumps shade in California prosecution of tree owner
Across a backyard fence: When is the environmentalism greener on the other side?
from the March 18, 2008 edition
Page 2 of 3
The fascination is predictable. It sounds like an epic struggle of values: trees versus solar; Vargas, who drives an electric car versus. Treanor and Bissett, who own a Prius. Chat rooms bristle with invective defending the trees' right to exist, and naysayers ridicule the case as a parable of green hypocrisy.
"People are very, very emotional about their trees," explains Randall Stamen, a Riverside, Calif., lawyer who specializes in tree lawsuits. "If you've planted a tree and watched it grow, you've invested an awful lot in it."
But despite the emotions the case has sparked, it fits poorly with the moral story line into which it has been shoehorned.
The now-famous electric car sits outside the Vargases's garage, sipping sunlight from the house's 128 solar panels.
The Vargas home is a scene of familial pandemonium. 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. As Mrs. Vargas tells it, a "crazy woman from Quebec" said, "I hope that you suffer and your family suffers."
Mr. 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.
He ambles into the narrow strip of yard protected from the slanting afternoon sun by the now-famous phalanx of redwoods. On the trellis several feet above his head sit 48 solar panels. These, along with 80 more on the roof, supply 100 percent of the family's electricity.
He seems content with his $70,000 investment, yet vague on any altruism behind it.
"That's a hard question," he admits. "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.
"I've been labeled an environmentalist because of the solar power and the electric car," he says.
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