Kate Gordon got a huge shout out from National Geographic’s The Great Energy Challenge today. Mike Casey essentially casts her debate as the definitive blueprint for the defense and advocacy of clean energy.
My time at CAP ends tomorrow and being here for the inception of this coherent platform has been a tremendous privilege. The world is on the verge of something big in clean energy and CAP is going to be at the forefront of articulating its potential.
The video of Kate’s debate at Cato:
Here’s an excerpt from Casey’s post:
Clean Energy Advocate Gives a “How to” Clinic on Rebutting Fossil Energy Disinformation
Over the past few months, I’ve made the case that dirty energy lobby plays a full contact game against clean energy, using lobbying and disinformation as business weapons to drive the idea that clean energy is “expensive, unreliable and not ready.” Cleantech, I’ve said, needs to step up its advocacy game dramatically, including driving an honest debate about who is really “expensive.”
At the WINDPOWER International trade show this week, I spoke on a panel that fielded a number of questions about how to do that. It’s hard to find a better place to start by highlighting the clinic put on by Kate Gordon of the Center for American Progress at a recent “debate” at the fossil-funded front group, the Cato Institute.
Gordon faced off against a rising star in the dirty energy experts-for-rent stable, Andrew Morris, whose disinformation platform is the Koch-funded (and Koch-founded) “Mercatus Center.”
Gordon faced Morris on his home turf, a forum completely stacked against her and the clean energy side. Cato named the debate, “The false promise of green energy,” (I’m not making this up) and “moderated by anti-cleantech Cato Institute “Senior Fellow”Jerry Taylor (typical quote: “if wind energy were a sensible economic investment, it would not need the lavish federal and state subsidies already in place”). There’s got to be an operations manual for fossil fuel front groups to do this sort of thing: functions like a propaganda machine, but sport a neutral, benign and thoughtful name. Position yourself as good guys who just happen to come down on the side of the dirty energy interests that fund them. Invite clean energy advocate who can be counted on to bring a bunch of numbers, armload of facts and a strong belief in intellectual honesty and a reasonableness. Frame the conversation against clean energy advocate, put in well-trained mouthpiece, and route clean energy advocate. Claim victory and intellectual triumph.
Except, it was Gordon put on a clinic of not just how to stand up to dirty energy “experts,” but that you have to stand up to them in the first place.
Read the rest at National Geographic’s The Great Energy Challenge.