Fight the Power!

by Tony Chavira

America’s not becoming energy independent quickly enough. We all know it, and we all know exactly why. Energy companies built on unsustainable resource mining have been fighting and counteracting environmental and green-incentive legislation with their seemingly endlessly wells of money for a while now, and when you are faced with companies that with that kind of bankroll it’s easy to get intimidated. Worse, you may feel helpless. I, for example, would love to own an electric car. But right now electric cars are ridiculously rare and way out of my price range. I’d love to go completely solar, installing panels all over my home. But I don’t have the financial ability to buy or the know-how to install solar panels. To put it simply, the energy companies have cornered me.

Vicious dogs fight harder when backed into corners, and I’m getting pretty damn tired of just sitting back and taking their obvious bullshit about “300 mile per gallon cars” that never seem to be rolled out or “research in the sustainable sector” that never seems to develop anything. The sustainable energy sector isn’t new, even though you still hear Investor Relations and Financial PR “experts” speak about sustainability as if it were “too risky.” But they need to get with the program already, because change is inevitable. Take the risk or die. No amount of money given to politicians, no amount of investment into “research,” and no amount of wealth thrown into false environmental claims can stop the fact that once we go solar, wind, or water powered, we just won’t need them anymore. For anything. We’ll power ourselves, our own cars and our own homes, thank you very much.

But right now they have a clear stranglehold on the American political and economic system, despite the fact that everyone wants to go green. Yeah, conserving is good and all, but it doesn’t do much to stop the fact that these companies will still exist. Let me put it this way: if everyone buys cars that get 400 miles per gallon, the economics of demand will dictate that gasoline should increase in cost to something like $20 per gallon (since we’re using less of it). Besides, cars that run at 400 miles per gallon still use gas, genius. It is clear, we have no choice. Conserving alone just isn’t cutting it. We need to work to actively fight the actions and intentions of these energy companies ... companies that have no interest at all in helping reduce the world carbon footprint and would be perfectly comfortable watching the polar ice caps melt for a few trillion dollars.

offshore oil wells at Summerland, California, ca. 1915

With this in mind, I’m going to give you five things to do at absolutely no cost to aggressively counteract these industries, on the personal, local, financial, and federal level. None of these points are concerned with simply “‘conserving,” and all are aimed at neutralizing and possibly even damaging energy companies. Let’s do this:

ONE: Don’t buy anything new for your home for a year.

Just one year. Fix the car you have, buy vintage clothes, get your pots, pans, and furniture from estate sales, swap meets or Goodwill. The amount of energy it costs to produce everything around us is immense, and finding materials to make things requires a huge energy output. Of course, I don’t mean “buy used food or hygiene products.” I’m not crazy. You just want to hit the energy sector hard right away through the production companies, who expend a crazy amount of their budgets on gas and coal-based energy. This is ultimately aimed to serve two agendas, though: first, to reduce the energy use of the production sector, and then to force them to find ways to cut their energy costs by looking more seriously into sustainable energy alternatives.

TWO: Send postcards to Wall Street Energy Analyst Forum President Gerry Scott:
1324 Lexington Ave #254 / New York NY 10128.

Mr. Scott is the President of the Wall Street Energy Analyst Forum and generally sets the forum’s agenda for each event. They’ve spoken about sustainable energy plenty of times, but they’re clearly not fully aware of public demand for energy independence if many base their judgments on energy company investor relations strategy. In fact, I’ll even tell you what to write:

Mr. Scott,

As the grave realities of America’s dependence on oil and coal power come to light, I would like to bring to your attention information that may be relevant to the Wall Street Energy Analyst Forum:

[And write a reference from a newspaper, journal, or online article that either shows them what terrible things the current energy sector is doing or shows how things can be better through the use of sustainable energy alternatives. Just the article title, author, publication, date, and maybe a website URL. No need to get fancy or explain it to them. Just cut right to the point.]

Thank you,

[your name here]

If you would like postcards, e-mail me and let me know. I have a ton of official FourStory postcards you can use. All we need him to do is sway a few analysts into the light, and the amount of information you can find online is absolutely exhaustive.

THREE: Constantly E-mail America’s first Federal Chief Information Officer, Mr. Vivek Kundra.

This agenda item is also twofold. First and most important, Mr. Kundra’s position is meant to develop an agenda for technology integration and use throughout the levels of government. He has the ability to look into efficient IT and computer hardware that can greatly affect the federal government’s energy requirements.

But we’re going to take this one step further. I want you to e-mail his office and address the message to him directly. All you need to write (or copy and paste) is this:

To CIO Kundra, Regarding Energy Independence

We demand that you develop a sustainable program for the Federal Information Division that not only promotes efficient energy use now, but makes a planned commitment to becoming completely energy independent by 2020, regardless of the proposed Climate Bill currently in the U.S. Senate.

Thank you.

Go ahead, send him an e-mail right now. Send ten. Send it to your friends and tell them to send ten too. Maybe send a few each week, whenever you get bored. I just sent one right now, and I’ll send another when we publish this article. If the Federal Chief Information Officers Council starts releasing proposals for green sector jobs and sustainable energy IT solutions, you’d better believe everyone else will too. Plus it’ll drive the cost of green IT way way down.

FOUR: Re-link bad press to pull down stock prices.

Here’s where things get ugly. You’re a tech-savvy person: go onto your Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, or whatever accounts and call the energy companies out on their human rights-abusing, energy solution-stalling, politician-bribing bullshit. Check out their press releases and call them on that shit on forums like Daily Kos and Open Salon or in a comment right on the newspaper’s online article. Put the really damaging articles onto link sites like StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg, Technorati, Slashdot, GoogleLinks or Del.icio.us. Make them look as bad as you know they are.

If I were you, I’d start looking for lies here. The U.S. Energy Corp. (like many of the energy companies themselves) might talk a good game, but they’re natural resource mongers looking to solidify the industry with cheap tricks like “clean coal” and “reduced emissions.” So hit the companies where it hurts most: devalue their stocks. Look for articles written by any of these financial public relations firms, and if you see an energy company in there fact-check the information. Don’t let them get away with anything, and don’t let up. We want to see their investors get riled up, we want to see them re-launch aggressive rebranding campaigns, we want them to squirm and squeal. Most of all, you want the incredibly negative perception of their companies to cause a drop in both customer satisfaction and their stock prices.

Believe it or not, the longer you keep this up, the more their stock will fall. Image is everything, and perception is reality. Right now they’re perfectly comfortable lying to you about their environmental efforts. Is it working?

FIVE: Contact your city manager, so that your city only releases contracts that promote energy independence.

My personal favorite way to fight unsustainable energy companies is also the most effective. It’s a three step process:

1. Put together a small group of dedicated people and go to your local city council meetings (don’t worry, you won’t have to get rowdy yet).
2. All of you get to know both your City Manager and the person in charge of your City Redevelopment Agency, and ask about their RFP (Request for Proposal) process.
3. Lobby and convince them and the council to only release RFPs that demand energy independence for the city.

The reason I like this process so much is that for once apathy will be on your side. So few local politicians are in the pockets of major energy companies that they won’t care either way what happens to big coal or oil. Adding something like “This project will be LEED-certified Gold” to their RFP is easy for them to approve of, and buying products from vendors that only sell sustainable or recycled products is just as good a start. If every city around Los Angeles developed and purchased with the goal of 100% energy independence, the city of Los Angeles won’t have any choice but to catch up.

I also like this process because a small group of very vocal citizens can change the course of local government ... and it’s such a simple agenda that it’s hard for other people in the community to refute it (or even care if it comes up). You might even be the only people who care to talk about it, and (again) indifference will be on your side for once.

So get to work! Stop lying down, get out there and start fighting the power produced by insidious anti-environment, anti-green economy, and anti-economic sustainability energy companies!

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