It’s no secret that clean energy is under attack from the traditional energy industry; the oil and coal folks are spending a fortune through their PR firms and lobbyists to discredit all alternatives.
Has it been effective? You bet.
It wasn’t more than a couple of years ago that almost all educated Americans understood the peril in which we’ve placed our civilization via our ever-expanding use of fossil fuels. Almost everyone was conversant with the dangers associated with weakened national security brought about by our dependence on foreign oil, the damage to our collective health caused by coal, and perils represented by climate change, ocean acidification, etc. Three or fours years later, we have people who ran for president of the US who promised to close the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency, in order to enable a free market economy to regulate itself.
What makes people who think and speak like this credible? Disinformation. Factual errors being spouted out with amazing speed and dexterity. The dangers of our current energy policy are being covered up by the most powerful industry on Earth, with the largest and most vigorous PR smear campaign since the Nazis in the 1930s.
Not only is a huge swath of the American electorate influenced by these lies, but, as suggested above, so are our elected leaders.
EnergyFactCheck.org contains a large and expanding set of “myth-busters,” presented in a very intuitive, easy-to-use format.