... but of course, the fact that wind power has the prospect of playing both sides of the street, of being both Serious^(TM) and serious about the future ... that's part of what makes it suspect among Serious People^(TM).

That is, in the list of how to be serious, Big Coal does that because it has to. It is fully committed to being Serious^(TM), because if the WeSaySoInc tactics fall over, they are dead companies walking.

OTOH, no matter how much wind power companies engage in WeSaySoInc tactics ... its always suspect that they are having the Serious People^(TM) on, because they can pretty much at the drop of a hat switch to being forward looking and progressive and relying on actual economic cost versus benefit as opposed to free riding economic costs to make financial costs look good.

Their loyalty to Serious People^(TM) is suspect for good reason: they have a real future, and while they could well act like perfectly respectable corporate psychopaths, their long term survival does not rest on acting like perfectly respectable corporate psychopaths.

The flip side of not being all-in to a Serious People^(TM) strategy is that they are in a position to play both sides of the street. And indeed, the complaints from the Dirty Fucking Hippies about "utility scale wind turbines are a conspiracy to maintain corporate power in energy markets in the face of Peak Oil" (true story ... just hunt in the eighty or so comments in my Agent Orange diary) can be useful, here: they should be answered, honestly, in the forums they occur, but also quoted when around Serious People^(TM).


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.