As Saudi Arabia unveils a $100 billion plan to wean itself off fossil fuel and go solar, conservative think tanks in the U.S. are attacking energy legislation that would support development of wind farms. Of course, there is no way to tell this story without mentioning Charles and David Koch, owners of the Keystone Pipeline. The oil sands billionaires fund both Americans for Prosperity and the American Legislative Exchange Council which are now attacking President Obama’s clean energy plans. Ever since the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based public-policy think tank funded by Koch Industries, was exposed to be systematically undermining climate research in order to further their claims that climate change is a hoax accountability groups have been reasonably skeptical of anti-wind groups that deny the safety and efficiency of wind power in order to rally support for the expansion the Keystone Pipeline and natural gas fracking. They want us to forget the fact that a wind industry would create jobs because they only want more jobs for big oil and gas.
Checks and Balances, an accountibility group, unearthed a strategy memo showing plans to create a national movement of wind farm protesters. Documents showed suggestions to:
- Start a PR campaign for the purpose of “subversion in message of industry so that it effectively becomes so bad that no one wants to admit in public they are for it.”
- Spend $750,000 to create an organization dedicated to building public opposition to state and federal government policies encouraging the wind energy industry – and this organization would have a paid staff and tax-exempt status.
- Set up a “dummy businesses” to buy 400 foot anti-wind billboards [Likely in order to cast wind farms as visual blight].
- Forming a “counter-intelligence branch” to track the wind energy industry.
“These documents show for the first time that local Nimby anti-wind groups are co-ordinating and working with national fossil-fuel funded advocacy groups to wreck the wind industry,” said Gabe Elsner, a co-director of Checks and Balances. The strategy was prepared by John Droz, Jr., a senior fellow at the American Tradition Institute, although ATI claims he acted alone. In February, Droz and Illinois lawyer Rich Porter held a meeting with wind-opponents from around the country in Washington DC to discuss the anti-wind campaign.
Saudi Arabia’s oil minister called global warming “among humanity’s most pressing concerns” earlier this year and just months later they have produced a plan to scale up solar power to one third their domestic electricity production by 2032. It seems baffling that conservative groups in the US are moving in the opposite direction. And yet a March Pew poll suggests 78 percent of the American public supports increased funding for wind and other forms of alternative energy. Perhaps more baffling is how Koch has x amount of money, spends a great deal of it trying to keep Americans in the dark, and yet somehow they are not yet a household name. Their clever PR has managed to wipe it from many headlines. Remember the name Koch (pronounced Coke) Industries and next time you hear big oil, tar sands, or Keystone news.
Sarah Rae is a writer and editor in Brooklyn. She has an MFA in writing and MA in psychology. Follow her on Twitter below or read more at readsarah.com
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As usual, the right is at war with itself. The modern wind industry — sustained by a package of tax breaks that pays for more than two-thirds of a project and the ability to sell the energy a 2nd time as “carbon credits” — was pioneered by Enron with the help of George W. Bush. The American Wind Energy Association’s PR firm is Revolution, the Republican agency whose clients include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Center for Individual Freedom, and American Energy Alliance, all of them actively fighting for the Keystone pipeline.
While big wind puts the right’s love of cheap energy in conflict with its love of heedless development and corporate socialism, it also puts the left in conflict, pitting local concerns about heedless development against global concerns about the climate.
When those of the left look more critically at industrial wind, however, that conflict dissipates. People faced with actually assessing a wind project have for many years been discovering that the evidence of a carbon benefit from wind on the grid is utterly lacking (due to the need for backup). Combined with the subsidy schemes that serve only to move taxpayer money into the bank accounts of energy investors, the encroachment of big wind into rural landscapes and wild habitats is all the more intolerable.
Sarah:
I’m going to assume that you are an honest, well-intentioned person who has simply been duped.
Unfortunately, although I am easy to access, you did not contact me before repeating the several false statements and innuendos above.
First: I personally selected a cross-section of 20 citizens (Republicans & Democrats, men & women, young and old, rural & urban, Phds & lawyers, etc) from across the US to come and discuss how to bring about a science-based energy policy. They paid for their own transportation, food and lodging and received no compensation of any kind. We met for two full days in early February, in Washington DC. No organizations were involved in any way.
Second: “clean energy” is a marketing slogan that is a dishonest characterization of the actual choices. For example there is nothing “clean” about wind energy once one fully understands the whole picture.
Third: the real issue here is whether our energy (and environmental) policies will be driven by lobbyists or by science. (That was the major topic of our DC discussion.) To date it has been the former, and that is why we go down fruitless paths like ethanol.
So you have an opportunity to publicize the REAL conflict of our times — or to spread misinformation. See EnergyPresentation.Info to get a better grasp on our energy options.
Sarah, I am responding as a concerned US citizen. I fully supported Wind Energy, since it was free energy and it would do no harm to the environment. Besides, it was cool to look at, Then, I looked at it critically and listed as many of the good aspects that I could find on the left side of a ledger and listed as many of the bad aspects on the right. After lengthy reflection, I came to the unwavering conclusion that this technology would not do what I had previously read.
For instance, in Holland, where that country is the world-wide leader in Wind Energy, the price for electricity used in the home is nearly four times that of my local rate — why is that? Is it all taxes, while the energy is free? It turned out that there is a delicate mix of taxes, public money (more taxes?) and rate=payer bill add-ons that support this sustainable technology, without which the projects would lose money and eventually cease.
A few years ago, I purchased energy credits to help offset my carbon footprint. I did this by agreeing to pay a higher electricity premium that would go to green energy to help them establish a sustainable electric generation technology (wind power). After a couple of years of doing this, I asked them to demonstrate to me just how my house got this green energy (as opposed to the dirty energy already in the grid). I was somewhat naive to have expected a technical reply….what I got was “trust us, you are getting green energy”. When I pursued the issue, they stopped communicating with me, so I stopped my payments and switched back to my local utility.
Since I am an Engineer, I can’t help myself…..I need to investigate stuff, although sometimes it takes a while to get the answers that impress me. At first, I was impressed with the idea of Wind Power; now, I am unimpressed. Why is it that I find a lot of technical information concerning wind power’s downside, while finding a lot of PR (but not technical) on wind power’s upside?
Why is it that after all these years of pushing for Wind Power throughout the Western World, there is not one instance where that alternative source of energy has prompted the
shutting down of just one conventionally fired electric generation plant? Not one!
There are a lot of smart people on both sides of this issue — find the answers for yourself. Just give science a chance to help us go down the right road.