solarpunk memes

In the past I've been bullish on nuclear fission for a similar reason. But we're at a point where fission is very expensive, and solar is extremely cheap - even including battery cost it's now the cheapest form of energy production. When fusion is working it's also going to be very expensive. Fusion isn't going to fix all of the problems with fission either - fusion also produces radioactive waste, and IIUC Tokamak designs require a steady supply of metal to replenish the blanket. (Although I thank all that is good ITER switched their blanket material from Beryllium to Tungsten.) We should keep up the research to hopefully get to a point where fusion and fission are cheap some decades in the future. But solar is there now, so current production expansion should be solar.

Yes, solar uses a lot of land. But we have a lot of land to use. For example the US has about 30 million acres devoted to growing corn to produce ethanol. Not food - ethanol. Solar produces far more power per acre than ethanol. Here's an article on a PNAS study with some details, including this quote:

[I]f farmers took a bold leap and covered 46% of land currently used to farm ethanol with solar panels, that would then generate enough energy to reach the 2050 decarbonization goal for the US.

There's also a detailed Technology Connections video on renewable energy FUD that I recommend.