TEA PARTY STANDS UP FOR SOLAR

The Tea Party leader taking a stand for solar energy: 'I will do what's right'; Debbie Dooley is a self-described ‘crusader’ for solar power in Florida, where she is up against major public power utilities. But she has already won a similar battle in Georgia, and she says her message is that of a true conservative

Richard Luscombe and Tom Pietrasik, 6 December 2015 (The Guardian)

“Debbie Dooley is a firebrand Republican and an outspoken founding member of the Tea Party…Along with a diverse grassroots citizens’ coalition including environmentalists and other left-leaning activists, Dooley is taking on Big Energy and its big-spending conservative backers…She is at the spearhead of a campaign to place an initiative before Florida voters next year that would give consumers the freedom to choose to buy their solar energy from smaller private companies and bypass the mega-bucks utilities…[Dooley’s] Green Tea coalition of environmentally conscious conservatives is a key component of the Floridians for Solar Choice amalgam…[Big public power utilities like] Florida Power and Light, Duke Energy, Tampa Electric and Gulf Power are among the donors who have ploughed millions of dollars into a rival group, Consumers for Smart Solar, which is promoting its own initiative…[T]he attacks from right wingers on Dooley [have become more caustic in recent months but she says she is fighting to save the environment for her grandson while her ‘fellow Republicans’ deny their policies damage the environment because they are] ‘greedy for economic reasons.’” click here for more

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