Several solar farms have gone up near me in upstate New York over the past 5 years. The land was unused and the owners gone. I have had so many conversations with people about how the land is being stolen...this woman is feeding that misconception. No one cared about empty fields until the solar panels went up. I have read some of her op eds and she is not only bank rolled by someone but also spreading false information. She should spend her time fighting against Micron which is building a huge factory near me...they will suck the grid and water dry here. We need the solar panels to keep our grid strong here! I am worried about all the actors like her out there who are spewing fake data and news...we also need this administration out and install one that is ready to help in the fight against climate change. Great article!
I used to have a paid subscription. I just resubscribed for one year. I cannot afford to maintain a regular subscription but reporting of this caliber should be rewarded and this is the best I can do. Thank you, Alex Hannaford and thank you, Emily for your important work.
My first thought was, "Who is bankrolling this propaganda?" That it's apparently not a grift and instead the result of Fasulo being an ideologue is perhaps more concerning. She can play dumb all she wants, but it definitely seems like she's practiced in tailoring her perspective so as not to alienate members of her follower base, coopting progressive language in the progress. Unsettling business.
Through the newly launched Solar Advocates Project, Third Act Upstate New York, in collaboration with Greenlight America, New Yorkers for Clean Power, Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter, and ACE NY, is going into communities to counterinfluence the likes of Alexandra Fasulo.
I was recently asked what we should do about Alexandra Fasulo, I replied, "The same thing she is doing, only we need to do it better!!!". - Michael Richardson, Third Act Campaigns Director, michael@thirdact.org
Alex did a fantastic job of methodically walking us through the initial house of cards to show the conspiratorial foundations that it is built on. Great job of showing how blindered this lady is and how uninterested she is in understanding the context of why we are pursuing solar in the first place. These "deep state" questions apply to any large scale project anywhere, and to single out a solar project's fast track status, while important to document and make sure the local needs and concerns are addressed, apply to data centers, mainstream energy projects, highway projects, and large scale commercial projects in general. This is corporate capitalism (or is it corporate socialism?) at work.
Locally, we have a group using similar tactics against a solar farm proposal being proposed on prime farmland, using destruction of that farmland as a reason to oppose it. But the proposed land is used to grow fertilizer and herbicide intensive corn with soybean rotation to produce commodities for exporting for balance of trade reasons, and the solar farm has the potential for agrivoltaics, providing a permanent ground cover with pollinator plantings around the panels, so I have to ask: which is better use of that prime farmland?
I stumbled on Fasulo on facebook a while ago and then keep seeing her posts. It felt like I was watching an Instagram influencer slowly lose her mind. At some point I starting wondering if she was being paid by fossil fuels.
It got really concerning when it hit close to home. Here in Michigan there is a lot of utility scale solar being proposed, which is good. Nearly ever project being proposed is almost entirely on farm fields, plowed, pesticides, you know, industrial ag. Every time a loud angry local resistance explodes out of the woodwork and now they all passing around Fasulo's posts and tagging her in comments.
I have closely followed a solar proposal in the township directly adjacent to the small city I live in. The anti solar resistance, a group that had probably never been to a township meeting previous to the solar issue are now trying to recall the township board over it. It's a complete mess. These groups mostly just don't want to look at the solar. Local character, viewshed, and all that, but then the internet backs them up with a pile of lies that justify their discomfort about change. It's a real problem and I'm not sure how this is all going to play out. I know that at a minimum it's creating a lot of delay of much needed clean generation.
I wish all this environmentally concerned energy could be put towards getting solar installed well and in the best locations instead of just resisting it all together.
I am so grateful for this post and all the diligent work that went into it @Emily Atkin. It is fascinating how a legit argument and local initiative evolved into an entire conspiratorial shitshow and propaganda machine spreading misinformation. And it is driving me nuts because it is posing as a quasi-scientific (what about the transportation? what about hazardous substances? what about the raw material footprint) and if you do a proper study, you will realize that these impacts are tiny and especially negligible when you put them into the perspective of the benefit they provide: zero emissions electricity for decades to come (I am an LCA professional so I am not just throwing this around).
And the sad part is that this is undermining likely the most promising and cost-effective solution that we have for the climate crisis, while not providing any meaningful alternative and staying completely silent on other well-established culprits (chiefly, the fossil fuel industry). I am not the one to advocate that solar should be installed villy-nilly with no considerations for the environment and we can definitely be doing a better job (prioritizing urban installations, rooftops, parking spaces, etc.)- no question. But this type of sabotage built on false premises is very detrimental and dangerous.
Michael Mann in his book, 'The New Climate War', writes about how the fossil fuel industry has pivoted away from trying to cast doubt on climate science to new strategies: stressing people's personal responsibility for reducing their individual carbon footprints as opposed to government action; complaining about the extortionate costs and impracticability of transitioning to renewables; and encouraging a fatalism amongst people that it was already too late to alter the changing course of the climate and better instead to invest in adapting to the new reality.
Since Trump returned to power he has revived the climate hoax strategy and added some of his own unique and novel complaints about 'windmills' killing birds and disturbing whales. His war with Iran has again illustrated the problems with depending on fossil fuels, much as the Ukraine war did earlier. This young lady, Fasulo, has opened a whole new avenue for those who want to resist or at least delay the inevitable transition to cleaner energy, appealing to Americans' strong environmental instincts.
Peter Brannen in his book 'The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything' contends that we must be honest about the difficult decisions that lie ahead of us if we are to make this enery transition - the need to utilise some potential farmland; the need to increase mining activities to obtain the critical minerals necessary for renewable technology; and the inevitable changes that we all must make to accommodate ourselves to the transition.
It's important to remember though that the alternative is truly horrifying and we here in the UK and in Europe are already feeling the consequences of too many years of inaction in reducing emissions with consecutive heatwaves piling in, one after the other. It's no longer possible to think of global warming as something that happens elsewhere. We are also into an El Nino period which scientists say could be the strongest ever recorded so there is more misery ahead next year.
Misery and a lot of preventable death. Methane I hope becomes synonymous with Carbon Dioxide. Methane- when mixed with hydrogen- stays suspended in the air longer. This reporting is stellar and I hope it exposes truth 🙏 💯 and facts. There was an article praising Sheldon Whitehouse and I want to caution- he has been a proponent of carbon capture and sequestration. Please make sure you cover a burgeoning focus of industry on deteurium and drought + reliance on radioactive nuclear waste.
Good piece. I find it hard to believe people can take seriously someone who makes comments like; “Every single scientist is bought in this country...Every single scientist has an agenda.” But I suppose millions of people do. Which is why it's important to investigate these so-called influencers. But my real question is, how the hell did she make $378,000 a year as a freelance writer?
Thanks Joanne. As the article points out, red flags about her true interests appear everywhere, starting with the $378,000 a year in freelance earnings. It seems that CNBC fully accepted this claim without corroborating it. Surprise! According to Google Gemini her current business interests make $400,000 a year and include digital products, real estate and investment holdings, business ventures including newsletters and digital products and book royalties from her book Freelance Your Way To Freedom. Indeed.
Oy! Now I now one more place where the misinformation I hear about solar comes from. We have a lot of folks with a "pastoralist" bent and I'll bet some of them are "followers."
I could blather on. I guess I will.
One point Alex fails to make. Lots of large scale solar farms host large populations of small land animals and lots of birds. Actual measurements have shown increasing (yes, really) biodiversity when solar farms replace plowed ag, maybe even some when they replace intensive cattle grazing. At a conference a postdoc from Cornell related how, 3-4 years after completion, raptors had started hunting in the solar farm as the population of small mammals and snakes had increased along with the vegetation. Large scale solar is only a decade old, mistakes were made and improvements are happening every day in better fencing, reduced soil compaction, more diverse revegetation, and so on. But it's never NO impact.
Folks should check out the Renewable Energy and Wildlife Institute. REWI.org. It can be a bit hard to navigate. Of course they are on LinkedIn, but not Instagram, Tiktok, etc. Some fun critter-filled webinar videos (along with both fun and boring wonks, charts, fancy tracking equip....) at: https://rewi.org/news-events/webinars-and-workshops/
I recall one of Emily's posts where she notes something like "...my people don't like lithium..." and I'll be she could find a fair number of followers who could discuss how they view "industrial" solutions and maybe discuss how far can "degrowth" and "pastoralism" get us in decarbonization.
Oh, yeah. Lead. Toxic heavy metals. EEK! The average rural soil contains 25 ppm lead. So in the top 6 inches there is about 100 lbs per acre. Around the roots of the carrots from the co-op!
Oh yeah, soil carbon. A big fave of "regenerative ag" folks. Best practice soil carbon increase is about 5 tons CO2e/acre-yr which may plateau after a few decades. (And may involve increased N2O.) CO2 emissions from coal generation avoided by solar farm are about 500 tons CO2/acre-yr. No typo. 100x, 50x-ish vs. gas generation!
And soil carbon cycling stays the same or improves under the panels.
Fasulo may or may not being financially aided by fossil fuel-affiliated groups, or maybe she's making (or trying, anyway) to make coin with her social media efforts. What is beyond dispute is that there's a lot of money out there with oil (or, mostly natural gas these days) on its hands, supporting the development of astroturf groups, lobbying efforts, and organizations that oppose or delay clean energy projects, up to and including efforts directed at state legislators. Earlier this year I spent some time trying to uncover such anti-clean energy influence efforts and I found plenty, as seen in https://davidguenette.com/the-architecture-of-obstruction/. We need more research reports and articles that follow the money...
I just had the chance to read this. Thank you for researching and reporting on this. This young woman is the prototype of misinformation - half truths masked as scary facts and repeated ad nauseum. This article is why I am a paid subscriber - I can't get his information anywhere else. Thank you Emily and company!
OMG...What it must be like to be an expert in the field and deal with the likes of Fasulo. I just want to shower you with praise for your determination, commitment and doggedness. It is an excellent piece and really educated me. Thank you...and keep on keeping on.
I wish someone would take her on a trip to the Permian or Cancer Alley so she can see what the fossil fuel industry’s footprint and community devastation really looks like. Set climate aside and let her see the impact on wildlife and communities from those industries. Solar is going to look one heck of a lot better.
Several solar farms have gone up near me in upstate New York over the past 5 years. The land was unused and the owners gone. I have had so many conversations with people about how the land is being stolen...this woman is feeding that misconception. No one cared about empty fields until the solar panels went up. I have read some of her op eds and she is not only bank rolled by someone but also spreading false information. She should spend her time fighting against Micron which is building a huge factory near me...they will suck the grid and water dry here. We need the solar panels to keep our grid strong here! I am worried about all the actors like her out there who are spewing fake data and news...we also need this administration out and install one that is ready to help in the fight against climate change. Great article!
I used to have a paid subscription. I just resubscribed for one year. I cannot afford to maintain a regular subscription but reporting of this caliber should be rewarded and this is the best I can do. Thank you, Alex Hannaford and thank you, Emily for your important work.
Thank you DB!!
My first thought was, "Who is bankrolling this propaganda?" That it's apparently not a grift and instead the result of Fasulo being an ideologue is perhaps more concerning. She can play dumb all she wants, but it definitely seems like she's practiced in tailoring her perspective so as not to alienate members of her follower base, coopting progressive language in the progress. Unsettling business.
Through the newly launched Solar Advocates Project, Third Act Upstate New York, in collaboration with Greenlight America, New Yorkers for Clean Power, Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter, and ACE NY, is going into communities to counterinfluence the likes of Alexandra Fasulo.
https://thirdact.org/upstate-ny/2026/06/24/solar-advocates-upstate-new-york/
I was recently asked what we should do about Alexandra Fasulo, I replied, "The same thing she is doing, only we need to do it better!!!". - Michael Richardson, Third Act Campaigns Director, michael@thirdact.org
Alex did a fantastic job of methodically walking us through the initial house of cards to show the conspiratorial foundations that it is built on. Great job of showing how blindered this lady is and how uninterested she is in understanding the context of why we are pursuing solar in the first place. These "deep state" questions apply to any large scale project anywhere, and to single out a solar project's fast track status, while important to document and make sure the local needs and concerns are addressed, apply to data centers, mainstream energy projects, highway projects, and large scale commercial projects in general. This is corporate capitalism (or is it corporate socialism?) at work.
Locally, we have a group using similar tactics against a solar farm proposal being proposed on prime farmland, using destruction of that farmland as a reason to oppose it. But the proposed land is used to grow fertilizer and herbicide intensive corn with soybean rotation to produce commodities for exporting for balance of trade reasons, and the solar farm has the potential for agrivoltaics, providing a permanent ground cover with pollinator plantings around the panels, so I have to ask: which is better use of that prime farmland?
Yikes and thank you. Yet another super tangled web of a story that should be on the front page of almost every newspaper.
Huge thank you for this reporting.
I stumbled on Fasulo on facebook a while ago and then keep seeing her posts. It felt like I was watching an Instagram influencer slowly lose her mind. At some point I starting wondering if she was being paid by fossil fuels.
It got really concerning when it hit close to home. Here in Michigan there is a lot of utility scale solar being proposed, which is good. Nearly ever project being proposed is almost entirely on farm fields, plowed, pesticides, you know, industrial ag. Every time a loud angry local resistance explodes out of the woodwork and now they all passing around Fasulo's posts and tagging her in comments.
I have closely followed a solar proposal in the township directly adjacent to the small city I live in. The anti solar resistance, a group that had probably never been to a township meeting previous to the solar issue are now trying to recall the township board over it. It's a complete mess. These groups mostly just don't want to look at the solar. Local character, viewshed, and all that, but then the internet backs them up with a pile of lies that justify their discomfort about change. It's a real problem and I'm not sure how this is all going to play out. I know that at a minimum it's creating a lot of delay of much needed clean generation.
I wish all this environmentally concerned energy could be put towards getting solar installed well and in the best locations instead of just resisting it all together.
I am so grateful for this post and all the diligent work that went into it @Emily Atkin. It is fascinating how a legit argument and local initiative evolved into an entire conspiratorial shitshow and propaganda machine spreading misinformation. And it is driving me nuts because it is posing as a quasi-scientific (what about the transportation? what about hazardous substances? what about the raw material footprint) and if you do a proper study, you will realize that these impacts are tiny and especially negligible when you put them into the perspective of the benefit they provide: zero emissions electricity for decades to come (I am an LCA professional so I am not just throwing this around).
And the sad part is that this is undermining likely the most promising and cost-effective solution that we have for the climate crisis, while not providing any meaningful alternative and staying completely silent on other well-established culprits (chiefly, the fossil fuel industry). I am not the one to advocate that solar should be installed villy-nilly with no considerations for the environment and we can definitely be doing a better job (prioritizing urban installations, rooftops, parking spaces, etc.)- no question. But this type of sabotage built on false premises is very detrimental and dangerous.
This is a great article.
Michael Mann in his book, 'The New Climate War', writes about how the fossil fuel industry has pivoted away from trying to cast doubt on climate science to new strategies: stressing people's personal responsibility for reducing their individual carbon footprints as opposed to government action; complaining about the extortionate costs and impracticability of transitioning to renewables; and encouraging a fatalism amongst people that it was already too late to alter the changing course of the climate and better instead to invest in adapting to the new reality.
Since Trump returned to power he has revived the climate hoax strategy and added some of his own unique and novel complaints about 'windmills' killing birds and disturbing whales. His war with Iran has again illustrated the problems with depending on fossil fuels, much as the Ukraine war did earlier. This young lady, Fasulo, has opened a whole new avenue for those who want to resist or at least delay the inevitable transition to cleaner energy, appealing to Americans' strong environmental instincts.
Peter Brannen in his book 'The Story of CO2 is the Story of Everything' contends that we must be honest about the difficult decisions that lie ahead of us if we are to make this enery transition - the need to utilise some potential farmland; the need to increase mining activities to obtain the critical minerals necessary for renewable technology; and the inevitable changes that we all must make to accommodate ourselves to the transition.
It's important to remember though that the alternative is truly horrifying and we here in the UK and in Europe are already feeling the consequences of too many years of inaction in reducing emissions with consecutive heatwaves piling in, one after the other. It's no longer possible to think of global warming as something that happens elsewhere. We are also into an El Nino period which scientists say could be the strongest ever recorded so there is more misery ahead next year.
Misery and a lot of preventable death. Methane I hope becomes synonymous with Carbon Dioxide. Methane- when mixed with hydrogen- stays suspended in the air longer. This reporting is stellar and I hope it exposes truth 🙏 💯 and facts. There was an article praising Sheldon Whitehouse and I want to caution- he has been a proponent of carbon capture and sequestration. Please make sure you cover a burgeoning focus of industry on deteurium and drought + reliance on radioactive nuclear waste.
Thank you for covering this complex issue, and for doing the extensive research as well.
Good piece. I find it hard to believe people can take seriously someone who makes comments like; “Every single scientist is bought in this country...Every single scientist has an agenda.” But I suppose millions of people do. Which is why it's important to investigate these so-called influencers. But my real question is, how the hell did she make $378,000 a year as a freelance writer?
Here is some background on her:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t9L7VqneT2FBKmQX1O5uUP4b_jl76Acp/edit?usp=drivesdk&ouid=102964078200638701034&rtpof=true&sd=true
Thanks Joanne. As the article points out, red flags about her true interests appear everywhere, starting with the $378,000 a year in freelance earnings. It seems that CNBC fully accepted this claim without corroborating it. Surprise! According to Google Gemini her current business interests make $400,000 a year and include digital products, real estate and investment holdings, business ventures including newsletters and digital products and book royalties from her book Freelance Your Way To Freedom. Indeed.
This is excellent research. Thank you for compiling and sharing it.
Oy! Now I now one more place where the misinformation I hear about solar comes from. We have a lot of folks with a "pastoralist" bent and I'll bet some of them are "followers."
I could blather on. I guess I will.
One point Alex fails to make. Lots of large scale solar farms host large populations of small land animals and lots of birds. Actual measurements have shown increasing (yes, really) biodiversity when solar farms replace plowed ag, maybe even some when they replace intensive cattle grazing. At a conference a postdoc from Cornell related how, 3-4 years after completion, raptors had started hunting in the solar farm as the population of small mammals and snakes had increased along with the vegetation. Large scale solar is only a decade old, mistakes were made and improvements are happening every day in better fencing, reduced soil compaction, more diverse revegetation, and so on. But it's never NO impact.
Folks should check out the Renewable Energy and Wildlife Institute. REWI.org. It can be a bit hard to navigate. Of course they are on LinkedIn, but not Instagram, Tiktok, etc. Some fun critter-filled webinar videos (along with both fun and boring wonks, charts, fancy tracking equip....) at: https://rewi.org/news-events/webinars-and-workshops/
I recall one of Emily's posts where she notes something like "...my people don't like lithium..." and I'll be she could find a fair number of followers who could discuss how they view "industrial" solutions and maybe discuss how far can "degrowth" and "pastoralism" get us in decarbonization.
Oh, yeah. Lead. Toxic heavy metals. EEK! The average rural soil contains 25 ppm lead. So in the top 6 inches there is about 100 lbs per acre. Around the roots of the carrots from the co-op!
Oh yeah, soil carbon. A big fave of "regenerative ag" folks. Best practice soil carbon increase is about 5 tons CO2e/acre-yr which may plateau after a few decades. (And may involve increased N2O.) CO2 emissions from coal generation avoided by solar farm are about 500 tons CO2/acre-yr. No typo. 100x, 50x-ish vs. gas generation!
And soil carbon cycling stays the same or improves under the panels.
https://ecovoltaicscolorado.wixsite.com/ecovoltaicscolorado/read-our-research
But where are my 70,000 "Likes!"
lol. Here’s one ❣️and I’m going to share as well.
Fasulo may or may not being financially aided by fossil fuel-affiliated groups, or maybe she's making (or trying, anyway) to make coin with her social media efforts. What is beyond dispute is that there's a lot of money out there with oil (or, mostly natural gas these days) on its hands, supporting the development of astroturf groups, lobbying efforts, and organizations that oppose or delay clean energy projects, up to and including efforts directed at state legislators. Earlier this year I spent some time trying to uncover such anti-clean energy influence efforts and I found plenty, as seen in https://davidguenette.com/the-architecture-of-obstruction/. We need more research reports and articles that follow the money...
I just had the chance to read this. Thank you for researching and reporting on this. This young woman is the prototype of misinformation - half truths masked as scary facts and repeated ad nauseum. This article is why I am a paid subscriber - I can't get his information anywhere else. Thank you Emily and company!
Appreciate you!
OMG...What it must be like to be an expert in the field and deal with the likes of Fasulo. I just want to shower you with praise for your determination, commitment and doggedness. It is an excellent piece and really educated me. Thank you...and keep on keeping on.
Thank you!!
I wish someone would take her on a trip to the Permian or Cancer Alley so she can see what the fossil fuel industry’s footprint and community devastation really looks like. Set climate aside and let her see the impact on wildlife and communities from those industries. Solar is going to look one heck of a lot better.