Dealing With the Public Relations Campaign Against Renewable Energy Is No Picnic

I think I’ve mentioned my quest to find a strategic partner for my client in New Zealand whose breakthrough in solar thermal hot water heating promises such excellent potential.  I’ve enjoyed this project thoroughly, and I’ve turned up some really solid, red-hot prospects for such a relationship, though, of course, I’ve run into a number of brick walls as well.  Some object on the basis that, right now, there are minimal federal rebates in the area. 

When he saw that I was running into this, my client asked, “Do you think that the whole Solyndra situation and subsequent fallout has perhaps killed off the subsidy incentive across the whole market?”

I respond:

That’s certainly part of it.  It’s very much a PR game.  Indeed, there have been a few failures in government-backed cleantech, and the opponents of clean energy are hard at work using them as proof that the whole renewable industry needs subsidies – and, worse, often implodes even with these subsidies. This, of course, is totally specious, but the PR masters are having a good run with it, ignoring both the incredible successes, and, more importantly, the fact that cleantech is essential to our survival – both our literal survival as a species, and our economic survival in a world in which this is rapidly becoming the dominant industry.

As amazing as it may seem to you, our fossil-based energy industry here remains hell-bent on extracting the last hydrocarbon molecule in the Earth’s crust, even at the expense of misleading the public with a fantastic network of lies, and threatening the health and well-being of every living creature on the planet.

But at the same time, even the most effective PR campaign can’t fool all the American people, as more of us every day are catching on to the incredible amount of damage that fossil fuels do to our lungs and our environment.  Also, as the cost of solar and wind continue to fall, they become increasingly attractive – even in the face of cheap natural gas.

I’m anything but an expert on this, but I’m told that our mid-term elections later this year are important.  If the Democrats take back the House of Representatives, I hear that some progress can be made. Having said that, our system is monstrously corrupt; the vast majority (if not all) of our 435 Representatives work not on behalf of the people who elected them, but to further the wishes of the powerful interests that financed their campaigns.  Worse, this corruption is baked into our campaign finance laws; it’s going to be tough to eradicate.