That's fair and it was less a dig at the specific comment than the overall trend of American fatalism that can be summed up as "a new thing can't possibly work because we live in a weather torment nexus".

While the point that the benchmark favours CA is reasonable what about the other 10+ states on California's latitude? Even as far North as New York is equivalent latitude to Madrid. I just struggle to believe the desert of Nevada for instance or Texas isn't also viable for solar. Plus those states have the advantage of not having California's crumbling transmission infrastructure (though even worse for Texas from what I understand) or anti-building regulatory regime.

This strand of American pessimism seems to only ever lean one way, to ignore lessons from other countries and to oppose new tech.

What would be favourable for that cost curve is not putting tarrifs on Chinese subsidised panels and this fatalism leeches energy from that consensus. When the tech is cheap enough to slap anywhere the optimal deployment is less important and why not make the most of China's 'blunder' with these below cost panels.