Right wing stepping up attacks on renewable energy

[GliderGuider]

16. How much time and money do you think they have?

Last edited Thu May 10, 2012, 09:38 AM - Edit history (1)

This is an environment board on DemocraticUndergound. It's not a blog associated with "Science" or "Nature", or with the wind power industry, or even RealClimate.org. This board is essentially a water cooler, with exactly the sorts of conversations one would expect to find in such a place. Very few people come here looking for authoritative information on renewable energy. Given that somewhat humbling fact, no commercial PR campaign worth its salt would waste a minute or a dollar on our impoverished opinions. And if they did, what on earth would they gain?

There might be a few commercial RW campaigns that target DU in general on the political side, but even there the motivation would seem to be lacking. This is a committed progressive board after all, and as such is automatically unfertile ground for swaying public opinion (which is what anyone with money to spend on the effort wants to do).

That same logic goes double for this little corner of the DU-niverse. The simple fact that there are some participants here who think renewables are unlikely to help, or even that nuclear power might be acceptable, is not evidence of some nefarious commercial RW campaign against us. It's just evidence that people have very broadly varying opinions on any topic one cares to name.

The idea that the Koch brothers or the American Enterprise Institute would care enough about what we think about renewables - especially that they would care enough to spend money to disrupt the flow of conversation here in E&E - seems more than a touch grandiose. I'd go so far as to say that it's a narcissistic perception. The idea that they are already here, lurking around and fomenting their evil agenda in our little outpost of banter and opinion, is IMO frankly paranoiac.

You repeatedly insinuate that anyone whose opinion is more than a sigma or two away from your own is a RW shill. I've always been horrified that you would resort to slander like that, but I've realized that it's part of a longstanding pattern. Recognizing the pattern makes it easier to have compassion, but it doesn't mean I will capitulate to paranoid, megalomaniac bullying, and I don't think anyone else here should either. The idea that the RW is spending money on us is, as far as I can tell from my eight years of membership, nothing but a figment of your own febrile imagination.