Green with idiocy

So I was looking for some information on the internet about how I'd go about setting up some solar panels on my roof. Given that we have $450 per month electric bills mainly paying for 2 A/C units, we obviously have enough sun and ambient heat to suck energy out of. Perhaps we can cool our house down merely by converting energy (sunlight) that is there for the taking into electricity. At the very least, it stands to reason that we could partially power the air conditioners with the solar energy, and cut down on the electric bills.

So I end up running across all of these alternative energy sites with a lot of information about different sources of energy. Across the board, they start by telling people to stop being so greedy and stop using so much electricity. Here's a line from http://www.solarenergy.org/resources/youngkids.html : "The first thing you'd have to do, before you "went solar," would be to cut down on your electricity use."

This is like telling a fat guy that he'll need to turn into a vegetarian to lose weight. Given that I live in a desert, between solar and wind on my own property, I could probably generate enough power to drive 4 or 5 normal houses. But oh no, let's frame it as if you need to turn into a pot smoking hippie and read instead of watching TV to use the energy that the sun is shooting at you every day. I can't think of a better way to get people to continue giving money to power companies.

And oh wow - you can do both! Even if you don't live in the middle of the Mojave, you can still get some of your electricity from solar panels. Imagine that. Who would have thought that if I power some of my low power stuff via solar it will save me money on my electric bill?

It just makes no sense to me that they feel the need to slide in their hippie agenda when they could make logical arguments that would actually convince people to steal some of that energy beating down from the sun.