‘Carpetbagger’ is a derogatory term which originated in the US during
the Reconstruction years (1865-1877) after the American Civil War of 1861-1865.
It referred to the opportunistic and mostly fraudulent Northerners who migrated
to the war-torn South in order to take advantage of the Southerners caught up
in the chaos that existed there after the war. The ‘carpet bag’ itself was a
fashionable piece of luggage that looked like it was made from pieces of carpet
that these fraudsters and conmen arrived with in the South.
Today the term ‘carpetbagger’ is used to define those that move – more
metaphorically than literally these days – into areas of dispute in order to
take advantage of a given situation by which they can make money both for
themselves and for their backers.
The climate change debate is one such situation in which ‘carpetbaggers’
can thrive. In particular, climate change deniers, especially those among the mainstream
Murdoch commentariat, who are currently making heaps by cashing in on their
boss’s own interests in non-renewable resources.
The likes of Andrew Bolt, Tim Blair, Piers Akerman, Janet Albrechtsen,
Greg Sheridan and many others are paid handsomely by Rupert Murdoch to demonise
Green energy technology and ideology in order to halt the diminishing demand
for non-renewable energy, a resource Murdoch and many of his fellow businessmen
and associates have heavily invested in.
Contrary to the collective opinion of the extreme right-wing commentators
and neoconservatives who Murdoch and others, including various neoconservative
and right-wing think-tanks around the world financially support, renewable
energy resources are making a huge dent in the bottom line of the non-renewable
energy sector, particularly among the traditional energy providers.
Domestic use of solar energy in Australia generated from both
photovoltaic (p.v.) roof-top panels and wind turbines has risen sharply over
the last decade or so. In South Australia some 20%-25% of domestic energy
consumption is derived from solar energy. Indeed, in July 2014 South
Australia’s wind farms managed to provide up to 43% of the states power needs. And,
as photovoltaic and battery storage technology advances, the commercial and
light industrial sector is also increasingly making use of solar energy.
These advances in both technology and the expanding use of renewable
energy resources has had a considerable affect on the more conventional
non-renewable resources on fuel suppliers and particularly on energy generators
who are experiencing a drop in demands and, therefore, profits and revenue
which, in turn, has forced them to increase their charges. Increasing prices on
non-renewable energy, in turn, leads to customers turning to p.v. panels and
alternative power resources.
The pro-pollutionist carpetbaggers have tried every trick in the book
to get people to ignore green energy. They have attempted to demonise the use
of green energy by pigeonholing green energy advocates as ‘left-wing hippies’. Bolt
has even tried to say that advocates of alternative energy are
like the Nazis because the Nazis were a “romantic, anti-science, nature
worshipping, communal and anti-capitalist movement that tied German identity to
German forests.”
The pro-pollutionist carpetbagger’s biggest ploy is their denialism
about global warming and climate change in which they attempt to argue that
there is no need to stop using non-renewable energy because it doesn’t create
global warming or climate change. They ignore, however, the vast amount of
pollution that coal, oil and gas produce and which can be seen on a daily basis
hanging over the world’s big industrial cities.
The non-renewable energy industry has spent billions on promoting their
coal, oil and gas products while, at the same time, spending further billions
on paying their carpetbagger minions in the media to demean green energy. They
have even offered climate
scientists inducements to become climate change deniers in order to give
their arguments some semblance of credibility while others pay journalists and
media commentators to demean the green energy industry using outlandish and
extremist propaganda which they attempt to link with left-wing politics.
But Tony Abbott’s recent axing of the Renewable Energy Targets program
will unlikely stop renewable energy from continuing to grow as people from all
walks of life get to hear about the huge savings that can be made by using p.v.
panels and, in the not too distant future, going off grid completely as battery
technology makes it increasingly a more realistic option to non-renewable
energy.