Oklahoma Wingnuts Want To Ban Renewable Energy, Just Because

Now that Donald Trump is headed back to power and they’re feeling empowered, far-right Republicans in Oklahoma have decided it’s time to make pollution great again by outright banning any new renewable energy projects in the state. Sure, Oklahoma has a huge and expanding wind and solar industry, but it competes with oil and gas by being cleaner and cheaper. Clearly, now is the time to stop it, these loons say. After all, didn’t Trump’s election conclusively negate climate science?

Problem is, as Heatmap News reports, the loons may succeed, even though Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt solidly supports renewable energy and the economic growth it’s bringing. There’s a very real backlash against renewable energy, driven both by disinformation from fossil fuel interests, and by the sheer cussedness of rejecting anything that might be liberal, like cheap clean energy. The folks who think it’s hilarious to “roll coal” by blowing diesel exhaust on bicyclists and Prius drivers are now in a position to set policy.

The fight to ban renewable energy is a classic case of Republicans at war with their own supposed economic conservatism. There’s a lot of money to be made from renewables, and so far, that’s led to Oklahoma becoming the nation’s third largest generator of wind energy, as well as having a growing solar energy sector and other renewable energy development by companies seeking to cash in on the clean energy incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act. (No problem; just kill the IRA and those industries will go away. Nobody will miss jobs that weren’t added, right?)

Now, to be clear, these activists say they only want to ban new renewable energy development for no good reason; they don’t (yet) want to eliminate existing, very profitable renewable energy resources, which provide much of Oklahoma’s electricity already.

At the state Capitol building in Oklahoma City earlier this week, hundreds of supporters of a ban on renewables gathered for a jamboree, calling on Stitt to issue an executive order that would prohibit any new wind and solar energy facilities in the state. If you’re really a glutton for punishment, here’s a video of the full rally, full of lies about how wind and solar are supposedly more polluting than oil, because did you know wind turbines and solar cells are made of chemicals?

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who came into office in 2023, kicked off the event by bragging that the heat in the Capitol was very definitely dirty:

“Welcome Oklahoma, for braving the cold out there into this very warm and receiving Capitol. And y’know what? Our warmth today was not brought to us by green energy. The warmth that you and I enjoy was brought by good old-fashioned oil and gas.”

Drummond couldn’t go thirty seconds without launching into some flagrant bullshit. In reality, wind turbines and solar panels “repay” their carbon costs fairly quickly — six months to a year for wind, and around four years for photovoltaic panels. Both technologies have a service life of 20 to 30 years. Drummond nonetheless lied that both take more fossil energy to make than they ever produce, because he is a liar, and he got a big round of applause when he insisted that green energy is a “scam.”

As we say, Stitt remains a business-oriented Republican, and he’s not likely to grant the rallygoers’ wish for a renewables ban. He’d never be so outré as to say climate change is real, or even to use French words, but he’s solidly behind wind and solar because they’re Good Bidniss. In August, he twote that he had no problem with them, saying

Oklahoma is an oil and gas state through and through, but we also generate about 47% of our electricity from renewable sources. I just don’t think the government should pick winners and losers or force us to choose between one or the other.

Let the free market rule!

In December, Stitt even signed an agreement with Denmark to collaborate on wind energy projects as part of what he calls a “‘more of everything’ approach to energy.” (No word yet on whether he’ll back away from that now that Trump wants to take Greenland from Denmark and tow it to US territorial waters.)

However, Stitt and other bidniss-minded Republicans may have to contend with anti-renewable activists whether they like it or not. Drummond just might run for governor himself, and at the rally, he said he would join state legislators to fight against Stitt’s agreement with Denmark, that “quasi-socialist” bunch of greenies. Also in attendance was another dickhead with aspirations to higher office, Bible-humping Education Secretary Ryan Walters, most recently in the news because he thinks teachers unions cause terrorism.

Renewables-banner Charity Linch, founder of yet another rightwing activist group with “Freedom” in its name, is confident that “pro-renewable Republicans” are headed for extinction in Oklahoma, predicting,“If they haven’t figured it out yet, they will very soon.” Her particular freedom outlet, “Freedom Brigades,” helped organize the rally, and supported a successful primary challenge to Kevin Wallace, a long-serving GOP legislator who lost his seat in 2022 to a newbie who was dead set against renewable energy.

Opponents of renewables say they have very excellent reasons to want a moratorium on new renewable projects, ranging from flat out lies about wind turbines causing “hazards to the health, safety, and welfare of the people” to anger that their federal taxes support things they actively hate and believe are evil. (They should meet some peaceniks who want to reduce military spending, huh?)

There’s also the more practical argument that wind and solar projects don’t create a lot of new permanent jobs once they’re actually built. That one’s even true: Wind, solar, and battery-storage facilities just keep producing and distributing carbon-free energy without anything close to the amount of constant repair, additional fuel supplies, and new drilling required to keep oil and gas infrastructure going. Dirty energy may be inefficient and kill people, but it also has meant jobs, and that’s a powerful incentive for many.

And of course there’s the resentment, the massive resentment of snotty liberals who talk about efficiency and climate and economics like I’m doing here. Saundra Traywick, the activist whose petition calls wind a health and safety hazard, explained:

“They resort to calling us names instead of listening to us,” Traywick told me. “None of us wanted to get involved in any of this. We didn’t want to be involved in politics. These are farmers that are dealing with freezing temperatures,” referencing the temperature outside the rally.

Okay, but none of that makes renewable energy dangerous, even if that sounds like name-calling. You don’t just want to be listened to, you want your not-true beliefs to win and keep the economy dependent on dirty energy. That argument hasn’t saved coal, and in the long term, it’s not going to save fossil fuels.

But a lot of red states, even the ones where renewables have what looks like a solid foothold, may decide that backlash is good policy, and that could well spell trouble for the energy transition going forward.

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[Heatmap News]

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