The Radical Right Wing Is Becoming An Unlikely Advocate For Solar Power

Originally published on ClimateProgress
by Ryan Koronowski

Readers of Glenn Beck’s email list received a sponsored message from a source that might surprise some: a solar generator vendor. Solutions From Science sells heirloom seeds, emergency food, and solar products designed to “make people more self-reliant,” according to the Clinton Herald.

Bill Heid, the company’s president, wrote in the email that solar generators are great in emergencies, “run quietly, emit no dangerous fumes, and produce free electricity from the sun.” The email throws in a special deal for Beck’s readers after it makes the case for preparing to live off the grid:

And whether it’s hurricanes, ice storms, brownouts, or blackouts… with a Solar Generator, you won’t have to worry about painful power outages ever again. As I’m writing this, there are power outages in the news from wild fires, wind, flooding, heavy snow, copper thieves, cars hitting power poles and even an explosion on one college campus. Many experts are even saying the whole grid is going down.

A solar-powered generator that allows consumers to get clean power during emergencies like wildfires, high winds, flooding, brownouts, and blackouts (among the other more apocalyptic scenarios), being sold under Glenn Beck’s name.

The name of the company and the products it advertises could lead people to believe it was just in the business of taking what top climate scientists say, going back to nature, getting off the grid, becoming energy-independent, and freeing its customers from reliance on carbon-based fuels and large agricultural corporations.

Until you get to the About Us page:

Over the last century, America has consciously turned away from its Christian heritage, and the effects have been devastating. The problems our nation currently faces are serious, not just for us, but for our children and grandchildren. Our liberties and freedoms are being threatened (and even slowly taken away) and there is a nation-felt concern for the direction our country is headed.

The road ahead is long and hard, but not impossible. We believe that the only way back for America is a return to the Biblical principles that brought us true freedom in the first place — freedoms that our Founding Fathers understood were ones given by a Creator, not a king or state. As we seek to restore America, we must remember that ‘unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.’ (Psalm 127).

Now the Beck endorsement makes a bit more sense.

Back when Glenn Beck was on Fox News, he said “there aren’t enough knives” for climate scientists to kill themselves with in response to the 2007 IPCC report. He brought a member of the Exxon-funded evangelical “Cornwall Alliance” onto his show to talk about how climate change is a “false religion.”

In 2009, he talked (video) on his show about “that green stuff” and how “I haven’t bought it for a long time.” He then breathed a dramatic sigh of relief over the failure of a ballot measure in Los Angeles that would have brought 400 megawatts to the city.

And yet earlier this year, Beck tweeted out a photo of his ranch being “almost 100% powered by ‘green energy.’”

Dig at Al Gore aside, he decided to invest his money in renewable energy. This isn’t to say he held back from mocking it, saying that when he and his family went to his ranch to be “off the grid” during the summer of 2012, his solar powerit left his ice cream soggy, causing him to run generators.

But right-wing embrace of solar energy — however awkward — is taking place all over the country, with the Atlanta Tea Party pushing their utility to allow them access to solar energy and Barry Goldwater Jr. advocating for solar in Arizona. What remains unclear is how a sincere embrace of renewable energy could affect the partisan and ideological schism regarding beliefs about climate change.

More of the Beck email below: