The sore losers of the renewable-fantasy hope you don’t expect them to apologize
We are at the beginning of the big-flip. The activist pundits are suddenly realizing that renewables aren’t cheap and worse, that the public know it. Without blinking, they’re switching from telling us how cheap renewables are to saying of course, it’s going to be difficult, like everyone knows this and they haven’t been completely wrong for twenty years and wasted trillions of dollars.
They hope of course to erase the past, skip the apology, and slide the public straight into acceptance — that the transition will cost more, of course.
Take Peter Lewis, of Essential Polling. He writes snidely in The Guardian:
Here’s the truth: energy transition is hard. Not everyone gets a pony
The climate crisis has long been defined by its lies: From the original sin of science denial, to Tony Abbott’s confected carbon tax panic, to the latest yellowcake straw man. But the most damaging porky of all might be that the transition to renewable energy will be easy.
Did you see what he did there? He blamed and named conservatives and then pretends they were the ones selling the lie that the transition would be easy? It’s writing like this that makes The Guardian the tabloid trash can of history. The most damaging porky may well be that wind and solar would be cheap, but it was a progressive fantasy and Mr Lewis himself was practically on the sales team. Pity he doesn’t have the honesty to admit it.
Here’s the same Peter Lewis in 2017 — smug, wrong, and condescending to the end
Clean energy is plummeting in cost, and the smart technology solutions that will make it work are proving themselves. The coal club can huff and puff but it’s too late to blow the renewable house down.
The new reformed Peter Lewis now says the transition is “hugely disruptive”:
Both gloss over the hard truth that fundamentally changing the way Australia produces, shares and uses energy is hugely disruptive, particularly in the regions where new infrastructure is earmarked for land and sea.
Given Peter Lewis’s childishly patronizing attitude, and dishonesty, we have to wonder how biased are those “Essential Polls”?
The reason he’s flipped is that the latest polls show most people don’t believe renewables are cheap anymore:
And, as this week’s Guardian Essential Report shows, one of the fundamental building blocks driving this narrative is unstable: people don’t believe renewables are cheaper.
When asked to rank energy sources in order of cost, renewables are rated the most expensive. Fossil fuels are seen as a cheaper solution, while nuclear is preferred by those who don’t support the transition anyway.
…
Back in 2015 fully 47% of the voters, or almost half, thought renewables were the cheapest source of electricity, but that’s fallen to 34%. In 2015 only 20% of people thought fossil fuels were cheaper. Now 33% do. And 40% say renewables are the most expensive of all.
Things are shifting fast — last October 28% of Australians thought fossil fuels were the most expensive, but six months later, that has fallen to 24%.
So get ready to hear them say “we always knew it would be expensive”. It’s coming. They’re going to want to stuff “renewables are cheap” down the memory hole.
Never let them forget. We need those grovelling apologies, and with letters of resignation.
h.t to Ben Beatty @EnergyWrapAU