Los Angeles is set to host the 2028 Olympic Games, with Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine serving as the venue for Olympic baseball. Transforming this iconic ballpark into a fully green-powered facility—and turning its vast parking lots into sources of clean energy—could position LA as a global showcase for a Solartopian future. 

It would hugely further the massive green energy conversion that’ll define human survival. 

AND…it’ll lower both the very high electric rates and soaring temperatures that threaten our city.

Here’s the bottom line: with currently available technology, solarizing Dodger Stadium could be done within three years, as canopy costs drop and electric rates rise. 

Available battery back-ups can keep the park lit for night games. AND help meet the city’s prime time power needs. 

Solar canopy technology is now widely used in both urban and agricultural settings (where it’s known as “agri-voltaic”) .

Numerous parking lots throughout the world are now being covered.

Fans coming to Chavez Ravine in electric cars can leave fully charged, as they do at Sacramento’s Golden1 Arena, the world’s first 100% solar-powered sports center.

About a third of the NFL’s stadia are now at least partly solarized. So are about 30% of the fields and courts for Major League Baseball and the NBA.

Here, Tommy Lasorda’s “Blue Heaven on Earth” is high up and unobstructed. It can slash neighborhood delivery costs from distant fossil/nuclear generators, which regularly top 25%.

So we’re talking about a premier urban solar field cooling a killer “urban oven” whose bare asphalt (and unshielded parked cars) super-heat our city and planet. 

Covering those flat, roasted parking lots with heat-absorbing arrays will also produce cheap, freely-sourced carbon-free electricity and many jobs.

Between the fires and ICE, we need the sane transition to a Solartopian Southern California to help soothe our battered soul and heal scorched face. 

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con't

Dodger Stadium is just one of many sports centers in LA County ready to produce safe, cheap, clean, stable, fast-to-build job-producing electricity

The big-time parking lots at the Rose Bowl, Coliseum, SoFi, et. al, cook us all. So do those innumerable malls, super-stores and fast-dying strip/shopping centers. 

Flying into LA, we all see those big flat super-heated industrial rooftops just waiting to power our city. 

Weirdly enough, photovoltaics gain efficiency when cooled. Floating them atop aqueducts, canals and reservoirs hugely reduces evaporation. Cables in the wet rights-of-way dodge the need for new towers.

Meanwhile, Germany has begun installing flat plate solar collectors inside rail lines. They need to be regularly cleaned. But tied to batteries and existing transmission, they promise gargantuan electric supply. Imagine the impact of using LA’s ubiquitous rail lines to produce power!

Ultimately, the real crux is getting utilities like Edison to pay fair prices for delivering this epic, freely-fueled bonanza. 

But 80% of the world’s new electric generating capacity is now green. 

Donald Trump wants to kill this Solartopian transition. 

Likewise, Gavin Newsom in 2018 agreed to phase-out the twin uninsured atomic reactors at Diablo Canyon, while phasing in renewables. For several hours most days, California now gets 100% of its electricity from wind, solar, geothermal, battery back-up.

PG&E still violates the state and federal clean water laws that long ago required they equip the Diablo nukes with $2 billion atomic cooling towers.

But Newsom, in 2022, bait-and-switched the phase out and today lets PG&E cook the Pacific with Diablo Canyon’s super-hot tsunami. 

Gavin Newsom Can Prove Himself a Climate Champion with Aliso CanyonRead More

con't.

The Trump/Newsom war on renewables has already cost California 17,000+ jobs. It threatens LA County with forever ruin should any of the dozen nearby earthquake faults reduce Diablo’s uninsured reactors to radioactive rubble. It scams rate payers for $11 billion in over-market charges that stuff PG&E’s plutocratic pockets. 

Our Olympic imperative is to use those stolen billions to instead solarize our parking lots, pavilions, industrial rooftops, railroad rights of way, aqueducts and reservoirs while dropping our electric bills, charging our cars, taking our economy to Solartopian heights.

While the Dodgers chase another crown (having hopefully transcended their latest losing streak) let’s chill this looming Donald/Gavin fossil/nuke apocalypse before it burns us all.

Let’s do it by making Chavez Ravine and the 2028 Olympics a true center of the Solartopian Universe.

The opinions expressed here are solely the author's and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the LA Progressive.

CLIMATE CHANGE - OLYMPICSBY HARVEY WASSERMANHarvey “Sluggo” Wasserman’s radio show are Green Power & Wellness podcast 2-3pm Eastern time Thursdays, and California Solartopia broadcast at KPFK-Pacifica 90.7FM Los Angeles, Thursdays 6:30-7pm Pacific time. His 20 books include SOLARTOPIA! Our Green-Powered Earth, Harvey Wasserman’s History of the US, A Glimpse of the Big Light: Losing Parents, Finding Spirit and The Life & Death Spiral of US History: From Deganawidah to the Trumpocalypse to Rebirth, all at www.solartopia.org. With Bob Fitrakis he’s co-authored six books on election protection including The Strip & Flip Disaster of America’s Stolen Elections. He’s also about solarizing LA, and would be glad to hear about your roof.