Is the manufacturing process clean? Absolutely not — mining, refining, and fabrication all carry real impacts, and pretending otherwise insults your intelligence. Can we make it cleaner? Most definitely, and domestic manufacturing under stricter US environmental standards is doing exactly that.
But here's the accounting that matters: a panel pays back its manufacturing energy in 1-3 years, then produces clean power for another 25+. It's a one-time cost with a 25-year dividend — and at end of life, 95% of it is recoverable. Fossil fuels invert every part of that: fuels that took millennia to form, destroyed instantly with every burn, polluting continuously, recyclable never. When was the last time you heard of an innovation in oil & gas beyond "drill baby drill"? Solar's imperfections are engineering problems on a solving trajectory. Combustion's imperfections are physics.