Seriously? “Confidential memo seen by Guardian calls for climate change sceptics to turn American public against solar and wind power”
Try parsing the following. Was the Guardian editor drunk or is this a poorly executed fit up?
A network of ultra-conservative groups is ramping up an offensive on multiple fronts to turn the American public against wind farms and Barack Obama’s energy agenda.
A number of rightwing organisations, including Americans for Prosperity, which is funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, are attacking Obama for his support for solar and wind power. The American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), which also has financial links to the Kochs, has drafted bills to overturn state laws promoting wind energy.
Yeah, so?
Now a confidential strategy memo seen by the Guardian advises using “subversion” to build a national movement of wind farm protesters.
The strategy proposal was prepared by a fellow of the American Tradition Institute (ATI) – although the thinktank has formally disavowed the project.
The proposal was discussed at a meeting of self-styled ‘wind warriors’ from across the country in Washington DC last February.
“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 the Checks and Balances, the accountability group which unearthed the proposal and other documents.
Would that be like Sierra taking money from Chesapeake to bag coal? $26million, wasn’t it?
Among its main recommendations, the proposal calls for a national PR campaign aimed at causing “subversion in message of industry so that it effectively because so bad that no one wants to admit in public they are for it.”
What?
It suggests setting up “dummy businesses” to buy anti-wind billboards, and creating a “counter-intelligence branch” to track the wind energy industry. It also calls for spending $750,000 to create an organisation with paid staff and tax-exempt status dedicated to building public opposition to state and federal government policies encouraging the wind energy industry.
The proposal was reviewed by John Droz Jr, a senior fellow at ATI, for discussion at the Washington meeting, which he also organised. ATI’s executive director, Tom Tanton, said Droz had acted alone on the memo, although he confirmed he remains a fellow at the thinktank.
Droz is a longtime opponent of wind farms, arguing that the technology has not yet been proven and that wind technology should not receive government support. He claims 10,000 subscribers to his anti-wind-power email newsletter.
In a telephone interview, Droz said the Washington strategy session was his own initiative, and that he or any of the participants had been paid for attending the session.
Huh?
I think they purposefully make editing errors that imply, awkwardly due to the purposeful mis-edit, the worst about “the right”.
I once had my local misinformer newspaper “accidently” run an announcement for a discussion forum I held at our local library 3 days late, on a day when the library wasn’t open, and stating that the forum was “tonight”. To do this they had to edit out the day of the week and calendar date from my announcement.
Accident’? Sure, right.
ultra-conservative
rightwing
billionaire
Poor Barry, having to face outrageous odds.
“A network of common sense groups is ramping up an offensive on multiple fronts to inform the American public about wind farms and the radical, leftwing Barack Obama’s energy agenda.”
There, I fixed it.
The Guardian doesn’t even try to hide its bias. Where’s that “no labels” crowd when you need them?
Seems to me if I were writing a strategy document about how I would like to affect Wind energy in a informational campaign, I would not use the word subversion, because I would believe in what I was doing. I would call it convincing, or changing the minds of. Subversion is what your opponents use. It seems like the “memo” is overwrought, and will ultimately be found to be either much different than implied or fraudulent.
I suspect it was written by Peter Gleick.
You don’t need Koch or fossile fuel energy companies to drive opposition to wind from the general pubblic. Just tell folks how much their bill will go up when wind power capacity is expanded. The Brits are well ahead of us in this game and they are looking at energy price increases of 50% over the next 15 years to make their grid low carbon (and this is on top of double digit increases over the last couple of years already).
Wrong PR strategy. Here’s my suggestion:
“SUPPORT ISLAM FUNDAMENTALISM and WIND POWER!”
“UNDOCUMENTED RESIDENTS prefer WIND POWER” 2-1 over coal operations
PRISONER EARLY RELEASE program to build WIND TURBINES in your neighborhood
So Droz wrote an internal memo. Wow. I am stupendified.
John has a great slide presentation at EnergyPresentation.Info for the thinking person who is interested in learning more about the issue.
Another must-read is: The Wind Farm Scam by Dr. John Etherington (available at Amazon.com)