Forget saving the planet. Clean energy leaders sharpen a new message: Money and jobs
Saving the planet is so 2024
WASHINGTON — Saving the planet is so 2024. Clean energy leaders across the globe are now tailoring their messages to emphasize the greener side of green: wealth-building. It's an idea that sells far better in the new world of nationalism and tycoon leaders.
Messaging from the U.S. renewable energy industry and the United Nations on climate change has typically focused on the urgent need to cut greenhouse gas emissions for the sake of environmental and human health. To bolster the argument, they cite record-shattering heat around the world, the frequent climate disasters costing billions of dollars and the human toll of it all.
But a sharper emphasis on profit potential has become evident as President Donald Trump stormed into office with a flurry of rollbacks to clean energy initiatives and an emphatic declaration of plans to “unleash” oil, gas and mining. In a lobbying blitz in Washington this week, solar, wind, hydropower and other clean-energy interests touted their role in a “robust American energy and manufacturing economy” and sported lapel pins that said “American energy dominance” — a favorite Trump phrase.
Meanwhile, in a major policy speech Thursday in Brazil, the U.N.'s top climate official played up the $2 trillion flowing into clean-energy projects and recalled a friend telling him that appealing to people’s “better angels” only goes so far.
That friend, according to U.N. Climate Executive Secretary Simon Stiell, added: “In the great horserace of life… ‘always back self-interest… what’s in it for me.' ”
It's not that clean energy backers haven't made the case before. But a different landscape, especially in the U.S., stands to make it more potent.
“It’s a very winning message
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