Your article misses something fundamental, therefore "Barks up the wrong tree", it seems to me,
The fundamental difference between solar energy and all "Renewables", that is that the sun is the only actual energy source. There are no actual energy sources on Earth, only stores, in the form of materials and fields created by nature, from the energy of the sun, and it is our continued destruction of those which exclusively creates pollution.
Further, when we create fuel (Hydrogen), and food from solar (See "Solein"), that is physical product effectively donated from off-planet which adds to the existing economic capital of Earth, and therefore product upon which money has to be issued, bringing money into line with Joules-per-token, as it should be to correctly represent energy, rather than capital oz per token (Stores that energy might be extracted from).
True that as long as solar panels are manufactured from fossil fueled or even nuclear power, we perceive some damage from their manufacture, however now that there are GW of solar in every country, there is no reason that the manufacture of panels itself cannot be solar powered.
I don't believe it is possible to "Decouple economic development from environmental destruction", the two are very intimately linked, but, we can reverse the direction they act in, from something negative (Using energy extracted from capital of Earth), to something positive (exclusively solar), just like trees do.
A tree begins by absorbing all the energy it needs to sprout leaves, from energy extracted from Earth.
After it sprouts leaves, it contributes energy positively to Earth from the solar energy received by its leaves, growing and scaling up considerably to do that more efficiently for the remainder of its life.
Humanity has just sprouted the human equivalent of its first leaves, in the form of solar farms all over the world.
Why should we think we should do anything differently from trees?
On your comments, cautioning and preparing folk to be ready for financial hardship, actually we should turn our attention round to the money issuers.
Why aren't they issuing free money to people, reflecting the solar product received?
How long will the money issuers continue to be able to deny this?
