It is clear that we have to prepare for a future with only clean energy sources in it. Well we used to think everyone agreed with that. But now comes the rich billionaires who have taken over the Republican Party and sucked in all the people who can’t or won’t tolerate change. They want their incandescent lights back.
Source: Clean Technica (http://s.tt/1c0hi)
David Roberts of Grist had a great post the other day portraying clean energy as a culture war. I think it’s highly worth a read, so I’m reposting it in full from Grist to make it easy as pie to not pass up (note: there’s also a Part II linked at the bottom of the post that is worth a read):
by David Roberts
Not that long ago, some folks were arguing that clean energy — unlike climate change, which had been irredeemably stained by partisanship (eww!) — would bring people together across ideological lines. Persuaded by the irrefutable wisdom of wonks, we would join hands across the aisle to promote common-sense solutions. It wouldn’t be partisan, it would be … post-partisan.
Some day, I will stop mocking the people who said that. But not today. The error is an important one and it is still made regularly, especially by hyper-educated U.S. elites. They think clean energy is different from climate change, that it won’t get sucked into the same culture war. They are wrong.
On clean energy, the material/financial aspects of the conflict are the easiest to understand. Wind, solar, and the rest threaten the financial dominance and political influence of dirty energy. Last week, the Guardian broke the story of a confidential memo laying out a plan to demonize and discredit clean energy, meant to coordinate the plans/messages of several big right-wing super PACs funded by dirty-energy money.
At the bottom of that same piece, though, is one of the best expressions I’ve ever seen of the cultural and psychological aspects of the conflict
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Go there and read. More tomorrow.
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