Wednesday, May 09, 2012

Who Do Conservatives Hate Alternative, Clean Energy?

More evidence of how far today's radical right is prepared to go to subvert the adoption of alternative, clean energy.

"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.

"Now a confidential strategy memo seen by the Guardian advises using "subversion" to build a national movement of wind farm protesters."

"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.

"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.'

"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."

1 comment:

kootcoot said...

"Who Do Conservatives Hate Alternative, Clean Energy?"

Simple, because Cons are all heavily invested in dirty energy and don't have enough money yet! Maybe if we all agreed to donate to the Koch brothers monthly...........they would shut the eff up and go away.