May 12, 2009

Why is talking about energy so hard?

It can be very hard to talk about the kind of big changes in our energy infrastructure that we really need. Traditionalists and activists talk past each other. Here's pretty good article
about that - it's also fairly realistic about what's most likely to happen, (though I think it discounts what we could do, if we wanted to...) .

"One executive decried the “cheap shots” taken at the oil and gas industry by climate change activists, and then a few moments later mentioned how much he liked a print ad that offered a false choice between offshore drilling and high gasoline prices."

"An attendee stood before a panel of major oil company executives and ask how the energy industry could engage more fruitfully with policymakers and the public on climate change, then admitted that she had boycotted a recent local presentation by T. Boone Pickens about his energy plan for the country simply because he was an oil baron."

"what I see is both sides—the green/climate change side and the fossil fuel side—retreating to their corners, throwing up walls of propaganda, and demonizing the other side."

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