One claim that I've heard from opponents of clean energy is that oil is progress and that clean energy is stagnation. This claim is a Big Lie. Progress does not consist of ongoing reliance on destructive, resource-intensive technologies. It consists of moving toward better technologies; smarter technologies; technologies that are more brain-intensive and less resource-intensive.
Technologies that will fulfil people's needs at present or greater levels with fewer destructive effects.
What business-affiliated people who are against clean energy do not understand is that clean energy is good for business. It will make more money than oil and coal. As for oil, it will last longer and be used to produce value-added products like styrofoams, plastics and pharmaceuticals. Which means that in the long run it will even be good for oil companies themselves.
Then there is the claim that clean energy is attractive to people with Marxist associations. That it well should be. There were many people who were attracted to Marxism for right reasons. They were not attracted to it because they wanted freebies; they were attracted to it because they did not like to see workers treated like dirt. Communism was a wrong solution, and I have written a detailed deconstruction of Marxist ideology (https://sites.google.com/site/ilyashambatthought/refuting-marxism-once-and-for-all). However many of these people were coming from rightful considerations. With clean energy there will be a large field in which these people can work while remaining true to their rightful ideals. They will be less likely to become disaffected or parasitical and will instead become constructive, productive citizens.
We also hear the claim that global warming is some kind of a liberal ploy for a government takeover of the economy. This is absolutely ridiculous. Clean energy can be just as easily put into place by business as by the government. To me the issue of who puts it into place is incidental. I don't care whether it's done by government or by business for as long as it is done.
These same people then claim that they have family values or that they are Christians. They have the right to neither such claim. A person who actually has family values will not be leaving the world in a worse shape than he has found. A person who actually is a Christian will not be destroying what God has created and what he cannot re-create. And as a dedicated father and a practicing Christian, I will do everything in my power that my daughter does not inherit a toxic hell.
Clean energy is not only good for the planet. It is also good for the economy, and it is good for our children. And anyone who lays any claim on any such values does not only have the right, but has the duty, to support and do what he can to implement clean energy.