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Polling shows anti-clean-energy BS is working
Sobering opinion numbers from the Pew Research Center on “Americans’ Shifting Views on Energy Issues”:
The share of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who say the country should prioritize oil, coal and natural gas over wind and solar power has doubled to 71% over the last six years.
I won’t quote extensively; the gist is that respondents generally have shifted away from preferring clean & renewable energy, and toward fossil fuels. This is especially pronounced among Republicans. You can click through if you want to see the rather depressing numbers and charts.
They word all of this very passively, which may be the impartial style that suits an opinion research organization. But presuming that’s the case, they shouldn’t title a section of this article, “Why are views changing on wind and solar energy?”, because they do not even try to answer that question. The answer is very simple: the billionaire class generally, including companies as well as individuals, and the Republican party specifically, have long waged a very concentrated and very well-funded campaign of lies to achieve these very results.
Because – pardon my language – how the fuck could any sensible person, let alone 20% of “Republican/Lean Republican” people, think that solar is “worse” for the environment?! (The 4% of “Dem/Lean Dem” in the same category are equally mystifying, but that number is almost low enough to just chalk up to the uninformed and the fools.) I mean, really. Worse! How??
It’s so tragically comical that I won’t even interrogate it on the merits. There are no merits! This is like a doctor telling an unhealthy, pre-diabetic person with obesity that they should switch from drinking a gallon of soda a day to drinking a gallon of water, and then their crazy (red-pilled, Fox-news-addled, MAGA) buddy convincing them that that would be worse for them. It’s just pure nonsense.
When getting into specific projects, there can be issues to figure out. Land-use by large solar and wind farms, who pays for what and who benefits (i.e., keeping for-profit utilities from ripping off consumers), and so on. But in the big picture, as portrayed by this survey and the people being asked broad questions like “Is solar good or bad?” and “Is coal good or bad?”, anti-clean-energy propaganda is just that. It’s craven, self-serving, for-profit bullshit.
This is the fight: to educate those who need it, and to un-misinform those who have been fed these lies.
Here’s your cheat-sheet if you ever get included in a survey like this:
- Production of wind and solar power: encourage 👍
- Use of electric vehicles: encourage 👍
- Production of nuclear power: discourage 👎
- Oil and gas drilling: discourage 👎
- Coal mining: discourage 👎
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Virginia, showing how to do it
That Democratic trifecta in Virginia is showing how it’s done. From this overview from Canary Media, here are some of the initiatives they’re taking to promote cleaner, faster-to-deploy, and – maybe most important in this economy – cheaper energy solutions:
A slew of bills that would maximize use of the state’s grid, pave the way for more batteries and solar arrays of all sizes, and take other steps to lower energy bills are poised to become law with Spanberger’s signature in the coming weeks.
…the state hasn’t wavered from a law mandating 100% carbon-free electricity by midcentury — even as the Trump administration has repeatedly threatened to derail Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, the largest offshore wind farm in the country
In the face of ongoing self-defeating anti-clean-energy nonsense from the Trump administration, it’s up to states, counties, cities, HOAs, PTAs – whoever! – to do the work of moving away from fossil fuels. Virginia understands the assignment.
Democrats’ strategy for tackling those worries was twofold, said VanValkenburg: to boost solar and storage, and to better utilize existing transmission and distribution infrastructure. “These are the two things we can do that are the cheapest, the fastest to get online, and the fastest way to save ratepayers money,” he said.
He nailed it: we have the solutions right now, and they are cheap and fast. These politicians know they can score quick, solid, and lasting wins. Even when the nation is dragged into unnecessary wars.
“Storage is really a critical affordability component, especially over the long term,” said Nate Benforado, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “If we can build storage, that is going to obviate the need for a lot of this gas, which is expensive and risky for customers.” Noting the war in the Middle East as the latest global conflict to impact fossil fuel prices, Benforado added, “If we continue to invest in gas infrastructure, expect your bills to go up and up.”
I loved this article, too, for this insight:
“There were a whole lot more from other members,” said Hernandez [sponsor of several key pieces of clean energy legislation]. “This moment that we’re in is all about having 1,000 great ideas, because there’s no one thing you can do to fix every problem.”
That’s the spirit! “1,000 great ideas” is exactly what we need. Couple that with the crazy rate of innovation happening with solar (and wind, and batteries), and we have our work cut out for us. We need to stop wringing our hands, stop waiting for some silver bullet, and start doing the work. Go, Virginia!
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Today in idiotic and self-defeating moves that increase energy prices by undermining clean energy projects: Trump is paying nearly $1 billion to stop offshore wind projects
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The Guardian, with some cool pictures and full shade: Donald Trump insists there are no wind farms in China. Here are 20 of them – in pictures
The US president has made the easily debunked claim that there are no wind farms in China
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European nations reinforce wind power commitment with 100 GW pledge
“We are standing up for our national interest by driving for clean energy, which can get the UK off the fossil fuel rollercoaster and give us energy sovereignty and abundance,” said British energy minister Ed Miliband
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Good news (again/for now): Judge reverses Trump order halting Revolution Wind
Judge Lamberth said the government had failed to explain why the new information warranted a halt to construction, calling it an “unreasonable and seemingly unjustified” change in position.
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We Need Wind Power, Especially in Winter
The day after a severe winter storm hit the midwestern and northeastern US, leaving tens of thousands of people without power, is as good a day as any to underline the belligerent stupidity of Trump’s assault on the wind power industry. Aging grids, energy-hogging data centers sprouting up like dandelions, power costs continually climbing, and here’s this fool doing everything he can to undermine a key source of clean energy.
As Canary Media reports in an article last month titled Feel the cold? Offshore wind alleviates grid woes in winter, study says, the power generated by the wind turbines that Trump dislikes are especially useful this time of year:Along the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions, offshore wind can play a critical role in keeping the lights on year-round, especially through the winter, according to a study published this month… offshore wind is well suited to “meeting the moment,” in part because gas plants are reliable in the summer but can buckle under winter weather, according to the study. Ocean winds in the Northeast are at their strongest and steadiest in winter months, making turbines there a way to boost the reliability of power grids connected to underperforming gas plants.
The article goes on to say:
The periods in which offshore wind performs best also align with the time of increasing grid strain: winter mornings and evenings, when people tend to crank up the heat.
So generating power from the wind in the northeast is a good fit, on both a seasonal and a daily basis. And these are the projects that are being capriciously cancelled by the fossil fuel superfans that Big Oil helped get elected to run this country. Projects like Revolution Wind, the big wind farm project off the coast of Rhode Island, which Trump tried to kill even though it was 80% complete. Thankfully construction has resumed (for now), after a federal judge found that the stoppage was indeed as arbitrary as it seemed.
Susan Muller, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told Canary Media that if Revolution Wind were killed, the impact would be most acutely felt in winter months. That’s when the region’s limited supply of fossil gas is stretched even thinner, since the fuel is used for both building heating and power generation.
Losing Revolution Wind’s electricity entirely would have cost New England consumers about $500 million a year, according to Abe Silverman, a research scholar at Johns Hopkins University.
Look, wind isn’t quite as lovely and scalable as solar. These are huge projects, with all the attendant costs, timelines, and complications. But as with solar, once they’re online the fuel is free, forever. Exxon Mobil can’t make any money from that – in fact, it cuts right into their business – so they don’t like it. Just like all of Trump’s rich cronies, they don’t care if the American people get shafted for half a billion dollars. For Big Oil, that kind of money is just the going rate to buy politicians in the Trump era.
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Great story – with great pictures – from @Science.org, who named the surge in renewable power their 2025 Breakthrough of the Year:
China’s solar power generation grew more than 20-fold over the past decade, and its solar and wind farms now have enough capacity to power the entire United States.
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This is what’s known in the business as, “bullshit”: Trump officials halt offshore wind-farm projects over ‘national security risks’. It’s a disgusting & arbitrary overreach that will only drive up energy prices (and deadly emissions, of course)
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Good news: US judge strikes down Trump order blocking wind energy projects
A federal judge on Monday struck down Donald Trump’s order blocking wind energy projects, saying the effort to halt leasing of windfarms on federal lands and waters was “arbitrary and capricious” and violated US law
It's high time to go solar