KEEP OFF THE ASTROTURF

What looks green but is in fact absolutely artificial?

Answer: Astroturf.

You know the stuff. It's used for all-weather sports pitches. It's plastic, but it looks a bit like the real thing.

What you might not know is that, since 1985, "astroturfing" has had another meaning altogether. It was in that year that a Texas-based Senator used the term to refer to a fake kind of "grassroots" movement.

Typically, what the US pioneers reaches us sooner or later. So, what exactly is "astroturfing"?

Basically, it's a cynical attempt by PR consultancies and lobby groups to create the semblance of public pressure. Early forms of it were developed in the States to lobby on behalf of the tobacco industry. Since then, similar campaigns have been used to oppose climate change legislation. One example concerned a supposedly amateur film, entitled "Al Gore's Penguin Army", which appeared on YouTube. The Washington Post revealed in 2006 that the "amateur" film actually came from a Washington-based PR firm working for ExxonMobil and General Motors.

Where astroturfing becomes most suspect is when the lobbyists pretend to be something quite the opposite of what they really are. Less than two years ago, another Washington-based PR firm sent out letters which appeared to come from organisations such as NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People). This was in fact an attempt at undermining the Clean Energy and Security Act. Needless to say, NAACP and its sister organisation Crecendio Juntos had nothing to do with the letters.

Now, it's not just the US that has specialised in this sort of misleading behaviour and black propaganda. China has been up to it for some time, too. But what's interesting to note is that it is seemingly invariably a right-wing exercise in manipulating public opinion and political decision-making. So when a group calling itself the "Save Our Species Alliance" turned out to be a front created to lobby on behalf of the timber industry against the Endangered Species Act, no one should have been too surprised.

Here in the UK, the renewables industry is being opposed by a group calling itself the "Renewable Energy Foundation". This group is cagey about its funding (like so many astroturfing organisations). But let's face it, when a right-wing newspaper quotes the "Renewable Energy Foundation" it sounds as if this is the voice of the renewables industry, or at leat an organisation that has the best interests of renewables (and the country as a whole) at heart.

It doesn't, of course. In reality, it is lobbying against renewables in order to force the government to invest more in dirty fossil fuels and nuclear. Which, in the long term, and given the problems we face, is madness.

But it doesn't stop there. Astroturfing is more than just posing as something you're not. It also involves stooges posing as ordinary members of the public in order to bombard websites and local media with misleading nonsense. This is meant to look like a massive public outcry - the essence of a grassroots movement. But remember, astroturf has no roots. It's completely fake.

The sad fact, though, is that it's having an effect, as the atrocious Leadsom debate in Westminster the other week made clear. Republican Party-style trickery is beginning to affect the debate about renewable energy in the UK. Or rather, to derail it altogether by making sure that inadequate and foolish politicians spout endless garbage, supposedly on behalf of their constituents but in reality on behalf of those industries which want to see renewables stopped altogether so that they can poison our earth, air and water and get paid by the tax-payer to do so.

No doubt, like us here at Wind of Change, you find the arrival of disgraceful astroturfing tactics in the UK a depressing and disturbing development. You will also quite possibly begin to wonder about the kind of media outlets which foist the idiocies promoted by these astroturfing lobbyists on the public. You'll find it hard to believe that clean green energy can have become the victim of unprincipled right-wing attacks by cynical lobbyists. And you'll realise that the anti-windfarm nimby movement is essentially just a cover for their dangerous activities.

This makes it all the more important for people to hear the truth about wind power, and about renewables in general. Because astroturfing lobbyists (like the laughably misleading Renewable Energy Foundation) exist to lie about the best hope for our energy future.

And they use the morons of VVASP and similar groups to do their dirty work.

As the Arctic Monkeys said, "Don't believe the hype." Submit their claims to scrutiny. You'll find that, time after time, the anti-windfarm dunces are lying.

Lying to keep the oil, gas, coal and nuclear industries in state-funded profit, and to deny our children a future.