I didn't say the end of the world. I specifically used the modifier "as we know it". The world is always changing, but the problem with trying to use history as a guide is that guessing which events will soon repeat is a highly subjective and speculative endeavor.
It does, because there are a million different ways of calculating. Most of the ones that aim to show the downsides of renewables take into account things like "land clearing", using assumptions of solar or wind replacing green space in all or most cases, and that's an assumption so flawed as to cross over into intentionally misleading. In my state, there seem to be two types of utility-scale solar: those installed on brownfields and otherwise blighted land and those installed on former farmland. The latter could, I suppose, be considered "land clearing" but for an accurate environmental accounting you'd then have to weigh the loss of the plant life the panels replaced against the environmental impacts of the type of farming used on that land before the transition.
I can answer some of this, at least from a midwest perspective, because I've been researching home-scale solar with an eye toward that being one of our next major home projects. Yes, they could theoretically blow off but between their weight and the anchor system used in mounting they're less likely to do so than standard roofing materials. It would take the kind of direct hit that destroys neighborhoods, which is highly unlikely but not impossible in my corner of Michigan. The materials are actually relatively benign; there's some lead, copper, and of course silicone in the PV cells, but the bulk of the panel is glass and aluminum - less toxic in the case of natural disaster than the asbestos insulation and lead paint on the housing stock in my area. And solar panel recycling is starting to take off - the volume of waste is still small, only a fraction of the e-waste generated by replacing cell phones, but the materials are valuable enough to make the effort attractive given the expected increase over time - so by the time we have end-of-life panels to dispose of (estimated lifespan of 20-25 years) safe disposal should be a well-established process.
Our insurance company quoted us a small increase in homeowners premiums for installing the system, because we do have a replacement value policy and rebuilding with solar is obviously more expensive than rebuilding without, but to put it in context the increase would be about 1% of our annual premium. Less than the amount we saved when we replaced our natural wood fireplace with gas. Our house is almost all electric, so with the new tax incentives the payback period on solar is quite attractive and the prices are much more reasonable than when we first looked into it a decade ago, but for a project of this scale I put in a lot of research before committing and I'm not 100% sold yet.
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