This Dooley woman likes to show up on MSDNC. That ought to have said it all.
Posted on 04/14/2015 8:47:03 PM PDT by Citizen Zed
A key leader of the conservative group is almost as passionate about renewables as Mr. Inconvenient Truth.
I have been covering the environment for more than a decade, and I’ve rarely encountered such strange bedfellows as I did this week at “The Future of Energy Summit 2015,” a conference run by Bloomberg New Energy Finance that’s taking place in New York City this week.
The keynoter was Al Gore—no surprise there—and the former U.S. Vice President gave his usual optimistic, wonky, and rousing speech on how technology will save us if only we find the political will to combat climate change. He says the signs are positive. Canada, China, and California are implementing carbon cap-and-trade systems. Leaders in the developing world are getting savvy about solar. Gore cited how in Kenya it costs only $200 to hook up a home to solar power compared to $4,000 for the traditional power grid.
Yes, Al, but what about all those pesky American conservatives trying to block anything that has to do with combating climate change? The ones who charge that the Obama administration is waging a war on coal? Well, the answer appeared on stage directly following Gore. The speaker was Debbie Dooley, one of the 22 organizers of the first nationwide Tea Party protest in 2009 and the co-founder of the group’s Atlanta branch. I had heard rumblings that some Tea Party members were getting behind solar, but I was shocked at the extent of Dooley’s passion and fight.
“I’m trying to put conservation back in the Republican Party,” the feisty grassroots leader told the audience. “I believe in free-market energy. I don’t believe government should be picking winners and losers in the market place.” Dooley’s belief in the free market has led her to the startling political conclusion that the Tea Party, arguably the most conservative branch of the Republican party, should love solar power—once the purview of tree huggers and radical enviros. “I want consumer choice,” she said, “and clean air and clean water and solar is the best way to create a competitive choice.”
All talk? Hardly. Dooley waged a recent campaign to persuade Georgia’s public utility commission to make Georgia Power add more solar to its portfolio. (Many traditional utilities in the south and Midwest who have billions invested in coal plants are fighting renewables.) Georgia Power fought her vigorously, she recalled, but today the power producer has installed a solar farm that generates electricity at 6.5 cents a kilowatt-hour without subsidies, which is below the national average.
Dooley was careful never to use the term climate change. But she did take shots at the conservative Koch brothers, whom she says are using their wealth from fossil fuels to support government-granted utility monopolies. And she said that promoting decentralized solar energy is also a national security issue (a favorite topic of Tea Party types). “Our centralized power grid is open to terrorist attacks,” she told the crowd.
Her rallying cry? “Solar equals independence and freedom!”
Loving solar energy is not the same as loving obama/al gore energy policy. If solar energy is the best then it will naturally win in the market
Fortune magazine is the financial equivalent of mushy leftist pap like Time and Newsweek.
Like most political parties that might make a difference, the Tea party is getting watered down by the left.
Debbie WHO? I never heard of her and she doesn’t represent me.
Rule #1 of Fight Club is: There is no address or organizational structure to the amorphous thing known as the Tea Party.
One of the greatest strengths of the movement is precisely that it was a spontaneous reaction, with no fixed agenda or leadership. A bunch of people went out and registered organizations like “Tea Party of _______, LLC”, but that doesn’t make them the head of the movement or even representative of it.
So, when this person claims to be a representative of the Tea Party, one should doubt everything after that point.
I can’t take this stress anymore from liberals. Stop stop. Save me Frank..........
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KfHgUAdWCA
“Like most political parties that might make a difference, the Tea party is getting watered down by the left.”
If there is any way to trick leftist into voting for Tea Party Candidates I’m for it.
Nonsense.
The measure of efficiency and effectiveness must include ALL costs.
Subsidies come from the taxpayer, whether they go to the “green” provider or consumer.
The true break-even point for the consumer, is much further away than anyone is willing to admit.
The presstitutes are writing what they’re instructed to write, lies supporting the move to Technocracy where ‘energy’ or ‘carbon credits’ replace money under global totalitarian rule by Bzrezinsky types un David Rockefeller type eyes..
Uh,
No.
One idiot who claims she's part of the Tea Party doesn't mean the rest of us have fallen for Al Gore's stupid energy policy.
Isn't his policy, "you little people conserve, I'll continue to waste as much as I want"?
Yes, if I hear one more Tea-Partier who won’t shut up about how great Al Gore is...
Gee, I recycle Aluminum Cans. I must be a Goron.
it’s not like the tea party (whatever it is) is having any influence anyway
Nope, especially not in 2010 and 2014.
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