Throughout the country, the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, the League of Conservation Voters, and similar groups have members on both sides of particular renewable energy projects. But the ensuing conflicts reach well beyond the organizations, and catch all who seek rational energy solutions in an expensive crossfire. Solar power is not nuclear power (unless you call the sun a huge nuclear-fusion reactor), and solar certainly doesn’t have the huge catastrophic possibilities that nuclear fission has. But if the solar industry has to run a gauntlet of lawsuits over every other acre upon which panels and transmission lines can be laid out, very little solar development will happen, at least in America. At some level, environmental groups understand how much of this issue is in their hands. How will they use their power?