cause there was a severe need to work together, it turned us to a much more pragmatic stand, focused primarily on industry goals." It also led the Lobby to moderate its rhe,toric in terms that suited the new mood. Thus, advocates began to emphasize that solar power was "good for business" and important for "national security." Reference to progressive programs and ideas was reduced. At the same time, Reagan was putting energy policy on the back burner. Solar lost the media spotlight it had enjoyed during the Carter years, and that hurt the Lobby financially. Pressure mounted to divert resources from the networking project. "When energy left the headlines, our job became a whole lot harder," says Munson. "That forced us to concentrate somewhat more on events and activities that would generate media coverage and sustain interest in us. If people don't continue to read about some important solar energy initiative in the paper every two weeks, they are much less likely to spend $15 or $20 to become a member." The networking project was of lfrtle help in meeting the pressing financial needs of the Lobby, Munson says. Ultimately he decided to close it down, laying off the activists who had provided the most consistently progressive voice in the organization. Reagan "realism," the growing influence of the solar industry, and the need to produce the kind of visible results that would build and hold membership-all gradually.diffused the Lobby's commitment to grassDetailfro111 Stepping Stones poster by Diane S.chatz November/December 1984 RAIN 'Page 17 roots organizing, alternative economic development, and low-income energy assistance. The self-described consumer orga~ization became more and more an advocate for solar business. And the solar energy movement lost what had been a powerful voice for social change. ' Some solar advocates believe that the hope of advancing society through renewable energy may have been overstated from the beginning. "The progressive community.ought to come clean," says Scott Sklar, a director of the National Center for · Appropriate Technology from 1979to1981. "As a broadscale policy it has been a dismal failure to force politics into solar development." ·Most renewable-energy systems need capital-intensive production, complex engineering, special materials. They ·are ill-suited to producer coops and worker-owned shops. Most Americans, Sklar says, have no interest in worker-owned solar businesses, cooperatives, or help for low-income people. They simply "want to wake up in the morning and turn on a switch, and they dµn't care where the hell the energy comes from." Peter Barnes, co-founder of the San Francisco-bas.ed Solar Center-one of the few worker-owned solar businesses-agrees. "People are not going to get empowered by fighting for solar energy," he says. "Take the Solar Center as an example. We have sold thousands of systems and I doubt seriously whether any of the people we sold solar to were transformed politically in any significant way.' "Solar's not so different from your water system," he continues. "Suppose I got water from a well in my backyard instead of from the city water company. That is not going to radically affect my politics." Whatever the potential appeal of solar politks, many activists were unrealistic about how a solar transition would take place. They hitched their hopes to technology, assuming that the technology itself, once widespread, would make our energy system-indeed, the nation-more egalitarian. But renewable energy systems, it turned out, are not as simple, inexpensive, and easily controlled as many had supposed: Most require capital-intensive production, complica.ted engineering, and specialized materials. They are ill-suited to producer cooperatives and worker-owned businesses. Solar activists who tried to help low-income people become energy self-sufficient by building "bread-box
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