Inside the Power Plant Fueling America’s Drought

From your third link: "New York State’s Public Service Commission is overhauling its rate system to keep transmission owners profitable as more consumers produce their own power". So the rest of us are subsidizing solar owners through income taxes (federal) and the rates we pay for electricity.

However, since you care about this subject, I feel compelled to point out that:

- Neither produce power all the time (i.e. at night for solar), and can be transiently unreliable (i.e. weather). This is OK if all you care about is moving water around from one large reservoir to another, but less so for anything else.

- Both are (currently, granted) much more expensive than nuclear if you care about generating large amounts of power.

- They both kill about 5x more people than nuclear (deaths/injuries per tWh), even taking into account nuclear waste disposal.

Subsidizing rooftop solar is one of the stupider things we have done as a society. Subsidizing large plants makes a lot more sense, since at least large scale solar plants are somewhat safe.

My disposal plan will add approximately half a cent per kilowatt hour to the price of electricity, and I have a minimum order size of 10000 casks, or the waste of 5,860,000 households. My half billion dollars will be primarily invested in: 1) storing the casks in my backyard as a depot while I load them onto a container ship. 2) A single container ship which I'll float over deep ocean trenches, dodge hurricanes, and run fuel and supply ships out to. 3) Approximately 1/4th of a presidential campaign ($250 million) worth of advertising, marketing, and education about the safety of 3rd generation nuclear reactors.

I will then sell the "waste" back to the resulting 3rd generation reactors for $100,000 per cask (for around 5000 household-years worth of energy per cask). I figure I should net a profit on the scheme of around a billion dollars per iteration of this scheme, once I factor in my expenses.

Seriously. The "waste" problem is not a problem. It's a massive profit opportunity waiting for an entrepreneur.

otherwise, we need a bit more study..

e.g. I vaguely remember some factoid about how some significant amount of top-soil in the Amazon rain forest is attributed to top-soil/sand from Africa? Also, I just googled "deforestation affect wind" and got some interesting results.