Clean Energy and Fossil Fuels: A Polarizing Issue

“Stephen Lacey” is a familiar name to many readers here. Stephen is one of the most impressive young people I’ve ever met. Fresh from a journalism major in college, he learned more about the clean energy industry in a few months than most people can manage in a lifetime and became Renewable Energy World’s star writer. When I began to observe this meteoric rise, he and I became fast friends; I interviewed him for my first book, and corresponded with him frequently.

Recently, he headed to Washington D.C. to become an integral part of Climate Progress, a position in which he feels he can make a bigger difference in the outcome of existential threat represented by global climate change. Last time I was back on the Beltway, I interviewed him in the context of my current project, “Renewable Energy – Following the Money.”

Here’s a wonderful article Stephen published the other day, in which he notes that clean energy vs. fossil fuels has become a politically polarizing issue; he notes that in the last year, people who describe themselves as “conservative Republicans” have become far less likely to support renewable energy.