When You Think The Neighbors Are Eating Cats & Dogs … – CleanTechnica

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More likely than not, you are aware there was a debate last night for the two candidates who could be elected the next president of the United States. I’m going to bring this short article around to cleantech and climate matters in a moment, but I think one has to note a couple of other matters and how they do actually relate to these cleantech and climate matters.

Probably one of the “highlights” of the debate was when Donald Trump claimed that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs. It was hilarious. This is a nonsense, debunked story that JD Vance somehow picked up somewhere, presumably on the best source of misinformation on the planet (X, formerly known as Twitter). It’s clearly a wild conspiracy theory, but it has apparently spread in a certain echo chamber social media bubble that is prone to accepting crazy right-wing conspiracy theories. If you want some more laughs regarding this story, I’ll include some memes on the bottom of the article, but let me just close out this topic for now with this post from a journalist focused on the economy and business:

What is actually happening in Springfield, Ohio. https://t.co/auimgumnSJ

— Stephanie Ruhle (@SRuhle) September 11, 2024

How is this related to cleantech and the climate?

Tell me if this sounds familiar: Political operatives decide “Topic A” is a topic to focus on. They push out misinformation about Topic A. They push out more misinformation about Topic A. They push out more, more, and more. They get extra creative and start pushing out wild misinformation about Topic A that will make a normal person laugh but somehow still flies with the people locked into a hyper-online misinformation bubble who are prone to believing wild conspiracy theories.

In the example above, we’re talking about hyper-online JD Vance and his team, and Donald Trump and some of his team, falling for the nonsense that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs. But that same methodology has been applied to clean energy, electric vehicles, and climate science for years, or even decades. And we have evidence of that from Trump as well.

On solar energy, Trump tried to argue that solar was bad for the environment because it requires a lot of desert land. He didn’t even make the argument well, but this is what he was trying to say. Quoting from the debate: “So, they said let’s go back to Trump. But if she won the election, the day after that election, they’ll go back to destroying our country and oil will be dead, fossil fuel will be dead. We’ll go back to windmills and we’ll go back to solar, where they need a whole desert to get some energy to come out. You ever see a solar plant? By the way, I’m a big fan of solar. But they take 400, 500 acres of desert soil–”

Okay, this is not as extreme as the one about people eating their neighbors’ pets, but these are again ridiculous talking points that make no sense. We shouldn’t use solar power — solar power isn’t good for the environment — because it uses desert land?

In his closing arguments, Trump somehow thought it was useful to focus on energy policy in Germany, and he got the story wrong in the process.

“You believe in things like we’re not going to frack. We’re not going to take fossil fuel. We’re not going to do … things that are going to make this country strong, whether you like it or not. Germany tried that and within one year they were back to building normal energy plants. We’re not ready for it.”

Just two months ago, we wrote about record electricity from green power in Germany in 2023. Germany has been a leader in renewable energy for years, and it continues to be a leader, while it continues to shut down fossil fuel power plants. And, actually, renewable energy has been soaring across Europe, and is now the #1 source of electricity generation.

Looking at supply stats for 2023 vs. 2022:

• Brown coal supply down by 24.2%, to 222,840 million tonnes
• Hard coal supply down by 20.4%, to 130,437 million tonnes
• Fossil gas supply down by 7.4%, to 12.8 million terajoules (TJ)
• Oil/petroleum electricity supply down 1.5%, to 526,862 thousand tonnes
• Renewables supply increased 4.4%, up to 10.9 million TJ.

Looking at production stats for 2023 vs. 2022:

• Electricity production from fossil fuels decreased by 19.7%, to 0.88 million gigawatt-hours (GWh), or 32.5% of total EU electricity production.
• Electricity production from renewables increased by 12.4%, to 1.21 million gigawatt-hours (GWh), or 44.7% of total EU electricity production.
• Electricity production from nuclear energy increased by 1.2%, to 0.62 million gigawatt-hours (GWh), or 22.8% of total EU electricity production.

Of course, you don’t even have to look to Europe. Almost 100% of new electricity production capacity comes from wind and solar power (and batteries) in the United States. Where’s the problem with that?

In 2023, renewables passed up coal for electricity consumption in the USA. It’s already happening here. Renewables are already phasing out fossil fuels, because they’re more competitive. But Trump somehow isn’t aware of that and thinks “we’re not ready for it.”

Though, Trump actually stayed away from some of his more extreme claims on wind power and climate change in this debate. Perhaps he learned that he looked crazy making those claims. For years, he regularly claimed that wind turbines caused cancer and climate change was a hoax. In fact, when he ran for president in 2016, my first article about his candidacy as he picked up momentum was specifically about his susceptibility to conspiracy theories and how regularly he spread them. That’s actually how he rose to political relevance too — by pushing the conspiracy theory that Obama wasn’t born in the United States. The unfortunate thing I had realized by then is that many, many, many people are also prone to conspiracy theories. That’s why the aforementioned article was titled, “Could The US Really Elect A Conspiracy Theorist?” I was afraid the answer was yes.

In any case, the point is that Trump pushes the anti-solar, anti-wind, anti-climate stuff because he’s all in for fossil fuels. He is heavily supported by the fossil fuel industries, as is the Republican Party at large, and he and Republican politicians at the national level routinely pass laws and regulations that help the fossil fuel industry to pollute more and make more money. Many normal people (common Republicans and Democrats alike) may wish it to be otherwise, but the Republican Party is the party of fossil fuels and is generally opposed to cleantech progress.

And many people — common people as well as politicians — fall for misinformation about solar, wind, batteries, and EVs too easily due to a well established process for spreading myths and slowing progress. When we’ve got the nominees for president and vice president on one side of the aisle believing that Haitian immigrants are stealing their neighbors’ cats and dogs and eating them, what hope do we have of convincing people they are being duped when it comes to clean energy and electric vehicles?

Okay, if you’re now a bit depressed from all of that, cheer up, we’ve got memes!