By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent
Sometimes, the dumb is so breathtaking it’s hard to put into words. Such was the America First Energy Conference, which Reuters reporter Collin Eaton dutifully reported on this week from New Orleans.
If Reuters doesn’t provide him some hazardous duty pay for locking himself in a room with these people for a day, then there is something seriously wrong with the system.
I’ll let Eaton’s lede stand on its own because, whoa boy, it sorta sums it all up:
Pumping carbon dioxide into the air makes the planet greener; the United Nations puts out fake science about climate change to control the global energy market; and wind and solar energy are simply “dumb”.
Honestly, it’s amazing the attendees at this conference can dress themselves, let alone navigate New Orleans.
Based on Eaton’s reporting – and I must admit I’m not sure I could do what he did – 40 speakers took to the podium to bash renewable energy, pimp for coal and expound on any number of insane theories about how climate change is fake and pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will actually lead to a greener planet, all the while dismissing actual scientific consensus that climate change is not only real but is having a deletrious effect on the United States and its people.
The worst part of the whole thing is that this gathering of cranks and crazies was attended by actual members of the Trump Administration, though they clammed up when asked by reporters whether they agreed with some of the nuttier theories at play.
And then there were the jokes. So many with the jokes. Here’s what one attendee had to say about wind and solar (and while I recognize this person is just testing out material for his second career as a stand-up comedian, I’m here to tell him, in true concern-troll fashion: Don’t quit your day job.):
“The deep state is real,” said Congressman Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican, addressing the conference. “They’re certainly anti-fossil fuel.”
Higgins joked about renewable energy sources, like wind and solar, saying there is probably a conference somewhere in the United States where people are talking about “how the future of the world’s engine will be provided by rainbow dust and unicorn milk.”
A member of the House of Representatives from your state, Louisiana. Seriously, what is wrong with you?
Eaton does an excellent job in his reporting of contrasting all the climate-change denial with the fact the Louisiana – New Orelans in particular – is investing like crazy in technology to combat climate change because, well, you know, Hurricane Katrina proved that New Orleans is going to bear the brunt of increasingly violent storms engendered by climate change. It’s certainly worth reading the whole thing, although I suggest hip waders and respirators, ’cause it gets deep in there.
Fortunately, the rest of the country recognizes this cranks and kooks for what they are and are bravely ignoring their attempts to march us back to the 19th Century. The Clean Energy Revolution, with solar in the vanguard, is moving forward apace – and it will manage to keep this planet alive and well even for those who attended this conference.
I’ll leave you with one last killer quotation from someone Eaton spoke to outside of the conference, which brought a little reality into an otherwise unreal piece:
“It’s a nice world they live in,” said Steve Cochran, campaign director of Restore the Mississippi River Delta, an environmental consortium involved in coastal restoration programs, referring to the attendees of the America First Energy Conference. “It’s not the world we live in.”
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At ‘America First Energy Conference’, solar power is dumb, climate change is fake