Trying to kill renewables?

Part of Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign focuses on slowing global climate change through clean energy support.
At a time when the climate is expected to rise more than 2ºC this century, renewable energy is getting a fair share of attention in the hopes of combating that change.
But several conservative organizations, including the think tank American Tradition Institute (ATI) are starting a war on renewable energy.
They call themselves “wind warriors.”  And at a Washington DC convention last year, they discussed a proposal to combat the campaign for solar and wind power.
Senior ATI fellow John Droz Jr. claims to have organized the proposal and convention on his own, though Americans for Prosperity and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have been involved in fighting the energy campaign as well, and the groups could be working together.
Peter Kelley of the American Wind Energy Association believes it is a cooperative effort:

“We do see evidence of co-ordination.  The same rhetoric pops up all over the place.  Things that are disproven, that are demonstrably untrue, continually get repeated.”

The groups have acted in buying up billboards to post anti-wind messages, looking to spend as much as $6 million on advertising, and they want to overturn renewable energy requirements at utilities.
They’ve spread word that the technology, particularly for wind energy, is not yet viable.  Many of the groups, coincidentally, are tied to fossil fuel companies.
But is it really a matter of the climate issues, or is it the presidential race? Kert Davies of Greenpeace thinks it’s mainly against Obama:

“They are going back to the states to create the space for an anti-Obama, anti-green energy thing.  It is really a political attack.  What the right wing wants to perpetuate is that this is a type of energy that never works and requires massive government handouts.”

It really comes down to cost and what we are able to use.  Marita Noon, who attended the DC conference, thinks that “to use more and pay less” is “the American way.”  That’s how it should be, and that’s what she’s fighting for.
But that’s what’s hurting the climate in the first place and what renewable energy companies are fighting against.