One of our bloggers, Anna Kramer, wrote recently about re-branding the debate on climate change—the urge people on both sides of the issue have to spin the discussion in a way that suits them best. Can coal be clean? Is natural gas green? It all depends on your spin.
But it’s more than words we’re talking about. It’s consequences. Serious ones.
Take the phrase “renewable energy” and its sister, “alternative energy.” A recent New York Times’s story reported that phrases like these are up for grabs. Everyone wants a piece of them —coal companies, the nuclear power industry, waste-to-energy makers—and with good reason. Suddenly, anything labeled “renewable” has become synonymous with money: tax breaks, grants, loans—all the goodies packed into federal initiatives and state quotas that are now blossoming, along with our consciousness, under the heat of global warming. Billions of dollars are at stake, the story says. Who’s going to get them? It may well depend on the definition of squishy words like “renewable” and “alternative.”
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