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by Frondo 1772 days ago
I have noticed, more and more, energy concerns (like NS Energy seems to be) attempting to discredit environmental groups with this exact accusation:

"We, the energy industry, came up with a Green Solution but environmental groups stopped it for reasons x, y, z"

Where x, y, z is some plausible, fungible combination of "they care more about the spotted owl/some other endangered species" and "they care more about punishing us than being solution-focused" and "it's more of a modern-day religion" -- whatever the reader needs to be willing to accept the energy industry's story about how they're trying to do better but it's the environmental groups' fault.

What's interesting about this to me is, where seeing the propaganda round the Iraq War was obvious and obviously crafted, this is much sneakier.

But I think you'll see this more and more -- the energy industry is trying to solve our environmental problems, they say, and would be able to lead us to a greener world if not for those irrational, quasi-religious, badly-prioritizing environmental groups.

1 comments

There may be propaganda here, but it also does happen. In California, every solar power station has been sued by the Sierra Club at some point. Usually over some endangered toad, but the real force (and funding) behind the suits is the labor unions, who want the projects to pay them more. It’s a big shakedown.
I cannot tell you how much "the labor unions are using environmental groups as muscle to shut down the good work the energy industry is doing" sounds like propaganda.
I know right? It is hard for me to repeat to be honest, because it sounds exactly like crazy Fox News fantasy. But, I have seen it with my own eyes. The phenomenon first came to my attention in the matter of "Kern County Citizens For Responsible Solar" versus First Solar's Willow Springs Project. The bogus citizens' group is a front organization for union labor who are trying to extract higher wages in project labor agreements. They file their objections on the draft environmental impact reports, which preserves their standing under CEQA to delay the project in the courts.

This site has an extensive archive of such DEIR comments and subsequent lawsuits for hundreds of projects around the state. It's just how labor negotiations are done in California, now. All the letters and motions are the same, all the front groups have the same name except with different cities or counties, and they are all drafted by the same law firm. A typical example is at [1].

https://phonyuniontreehuggers.com/

1: https://phonyuniontreehuggers.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01...