More Interviews. Same Story I’m seeing across the midwest.
Citizens for Responsible Solar is part of a growing backlash against renewable energy in rural communities across the United States. The group, which was started in 2019 and appears to use strategies honed by other activists in campaigns against the wind industry, has helped local groups fighting solar projects in at least 10 states including Ohio, Kentucky and Pennsylvania, according to its website.
“I think for years, there has been this sense that this is not all coincidence. That local groups are popping up in different places, saying the same things, using the same online campaign materials,” says Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.
Citizens for Responsible Solar seems to be a well-mobilized “national effort to foment local opposition to renewable energy,” Burger adds. “What that reflects is the unfortunate politicization of climate change, the politicization of energy, and, unfortunately, the political nature of the energy transition, which is really just a necessary response to an environmental reality.”
Citizens for Responsible Solar was founded in an exurb of Washington, D.C., by a longtime political operative named Susan Ralston who worked in the White House under President George W. Bush and still has deep ties to power players in conservative politics.
Ralston tapped conservative insiders to help set up and run Citizens for Responsible Solar. She also consulted with a longtime activist against renewable energy who once defended former President Donald Trump’s unfounded claim that noise from wind turbines can cause cancer. And when Ralston was launching the group, a consulting firm she owns got hundreds of thousands of dollars from the foundation of a leading GOP donor who is also a major investor in fossil fuel companies. It’s unclear what the money to Ralston’s firm was used for. Ralston has previously denied that Citizens for Responsible Solar received money from fossil fuel interests.
Ralston said in an email to NPR and Floodlight that Citizens for Responsible Solar is a grassroots organization that helps other activists on a volunteer basis. The group isn’t opposed to solar, Ralston said, just projects built on farmland and timberland. Solar panels belong on “industrial-zoned land, marginal or contaminated land, along highways, and on commercial and residential rooftops,” she said.
But her group’s rhetoric points to a broader agenda of undermining public support for solar. Analysts who follow the industry say Citizens for Responsible Solar stokes opposition to solar projects by spreading misinformation online about health and environmental risks. The group’s website says solar requires too much land for “unreliable energy,” ignoring data showing power grids can run dependably on lots of renewables. And it claims large solar projects in rural areas wreck the land and contribute to climate change, despite evidence to the contrary.
They must be really upset about all of the farmland being wasted on corn for ethanol. Right?
“Hi, I’m a farmer. Gosh I hate solar energy. The Sun has no use for anything, and never did me any good!”
Here is some “expert” slinging some bullshit about EV trucks and forklifts:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rnoRavhrwPQ
And another guy named Bradbury who says the grid can not supply enough juice to charge EV’s by 2050:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/zcP3aXnmhNA
I made the mistake of watching the first video, so I didn’t have the stomach to watch the second.
For Andrew Boyle:
“2MW factory”?
Do they even make wind turbines that small any more? This generation offshore turbine = GE Haliade-x 14MW up to Ming Yang 18.x-28xMW…
I understand the behavior of the fearful, rageful psychopaths opposed to all climate solutions. But I’m utterly baffled by those rolling over in the face of such intransigent resistance to the solutions. Their denial that the right wing is completely insane is remarkable—irrational in itself. If this unwillingness to see how unwilling the right wing is to act rationally or to follow the rules continues for just a few more years it will be too late to save anything. There comes a point when a person, and a society, has to do whatever is necessary. What will be necessary to avoid betraying all future generations 100% is a revolution removing virtually all the current rulers in the US and other countries from power and upending the entire system of government and society. Likely? Not as far as I can tell. But necessary.
I for one would very much prefer it to be peaceful, at least on our side. (It’s obviously not going to be on theirs.) But we’re almost certain to end civilization if we don’t radically change the way decisions are made in the US & other places almost immediately.
WE HAVE TO KEEP USING FOSSIL FUEL USING VEHICLES!
FOR…REASONS!
The core of the problem is human psychology, and you ain’t gonna change that.
On the contrary, it’s exactly what I do.
It is not humans. It’s a disease some humans have that can be healed. Until we recognize it as such we will continue to be driven by the disease into fascism & ecological catastrophe.
https://ketanjoshi.co/2020/05/08/the-great-giving-up-and-the-film-that-made-it-worse/