Al Gore Joins Tea Party in Battle Against Utilities
by Alex Nussbaum
5:09 PM EDT
April 13, 2015
If you go far enough left or right on the American political spectrum, you end up in the same place: trashing utilities for trying to kill the solar-power revolution.
If you’re Al Gore, former Democratic vice-president and climate change activist, you blast Big Power for “using the atmosphere as their sewage infrastructure” to suck up carbon emissions and trying to shut down competition. The industry is waging a “war on solar,” he told investors today at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance conference in New York City.
If you’re Debbie Dooley, a national Tea Party activist who says state laws discriminate against residential solar, you tell the same audience that Americans want “energy freedom” and not “government-sanctioned monopolies” that tell consumers where they must buy power.
In back-to-back speeches, the political Odd Couple struck surprisingly similar tones on clean energy’s future, even if Gore dwelled on renewables’ role in avoiding catastrophic global warming while Dooley didn’t use the words “climate change” at all, focusing on consumer choice.
“This is a battle that we will win,” said Dooley, a board member of the National Tea Party Patriots group. “I am literally floored with the response I have been getting from conservatives with the right message.”
more:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-13/al-gore-joins-tea-party-in-battle-against-utilities
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