How to claim the energy battleground

The Democrats have lots of good ideas on energy and climate change – and lots of good people pushing them. We all now about Jerry McNerney’s big upset against Pombo. Harry Reid has put up a website called Energy Independence 2020. Most recently, Bill Richardson signed an executive order to cut greenhouse gas emissions in NM.

Despite all this, I worry that energy policy will end up being captured by the right, because they still hold on to a major asset: their closeness to the corporate world, and, more to the point, the perception by the business world that they are more friendly to them, and thus that they are more likely to bring about less painful (for the corporations) energy plans.

Until not so long ago, this was not such a problem, because the debate was (to simplify) between big industry and the greens, and the sides and the parties were easy to identify. The main area of dispute was whether to focus on industry as polluter or as provider of jobs.

But now, two things have changed:

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