This thread title is a quote from [Link: remotecentral.com]. I think it deserves its own discussion.

When someone touts the efficiency of solar panels, I never hear A THING about how much energy it takes to make the panels, nor about the environmental impacts of the manufacturing process.

Recently it's come to light that California's environmental regulations make it impossible to manufacture some of the parts needed to make the trains for the high speed rail boondoggle in California. As a result, those parts are made in China where there aren't such regulations.

That is, environmentalists and the State of California have managed to move the environmentally damaging activities out of the state. They have NOT stopped them from happening.

Is it the same with solar cells? Are they clean now that they are here, but their damage has already been done somewhere else?