hat was my pleasant experience this evening in Old Town Alexandria. It was the fourth time I had participated in a focus group run by Luntz's organization. The other three -- for American Candidate, dicussing ads for Pharma, and on Israeli issues -- were all led the the guru of the dials himself. Tonight there was a somewhat more pleasant lady, and the subject was energy.
If you would like to know what to expect from power companies, that is, especially from one major power industry player, read more below the fold.
The session began with a general exploration of what we thought of our idnividual power companies. Most people had positive things to say. The 28 of us, evenly balanced male and female, but the vast majority over 40, were mainly served by Dominion and Pepco, but people included Baltimore gas & Electirc he works in Washington) and several other smaller outfits, including one co-op. I probably expressed the most negative attitude, since (a) Dominion had unecessarily slashed branches on a 60 year old black walnut in such a way as contributed to its demise, and then (b) would NOT come to trim branches that were on powerlines, even bouncing, before they took the lines down, as they did, taking out our power for several days.
But this was general. We were asked generic questions about different forms of power, we read generic statements about power. We saw generic tv spots about a generic power company. And then we started seeing real literature, and watching real ads. It became clear that this focus group was being run on behalf of Southern, which owns a lot of power companies in the SE states, inclidng Georgia Power.
I could probably recount in detail much of what we went through in the 3 hours we were there (for which we got a free meal and $100 each). But there were certain things that struck me, so let me share just those, so that this diary does not become too boring.
- Expect to see power companies and the industry associations expressing things in terms of the so-called Clear Skies Initiative. I saw far too much which would talk about reduction of three categories of emissions, and even specific references to Clear Skies, but almost no addressing of CO2, which of course the current administration has removed from its list of air pollutants -- btw, this is something about which Howard Dean used to quip -- if you no longer count one of the four key components to air polution as a pollutant, it is pretty easy to claim a 25% reduction in air pollution. The only specific reference I saw in any literature did not talk directly about reducing CO2, but did talk about the trading of caps.
- Expect to see a major push on coal, especially in places where it is readily accessible. You will hear all about the new "clean coal" initiatives, with rhetoric about how much the emissions have been decreased by 26% even as coal usage has gone up 77%. Of course, the 26% reduction does not address the additional CO2 as the result of burning 77% more coal. Yep, sulfur polution is down, but that is as much a factor of using lower sulfur coal, but what the heck. And when the talk about how much more environmentally friendly "clean coal technology" is, they neglect to mention anything of the environmental damage created in the process of mining that coal. Just remember, if they brag about how cheap it is to produce electricity from coal, they keep it cheap by ripping off the top of mountians and dumping the waste into the valleys -- in other words, you can kiss goobye large chunks of places like WV and KY.
But heck -- we even saw ads that bragged about how clean coal was, and talked about things like brushing your teeth with coal (because coal produces so much electricity) or too bad dog food isn't as clean as coal (I am not making that one up).
Another selling point will be energy independence -- that is, coal is plentiful and cheap here in the US -- and you will hear figures like 250 years of supply while oil is running out. And oh by the way, we won't be dependent on foreign oil, or it might be mideast oil, or it could even be Saudi oil. This will be offered as a national security issue.
3) Expect to see a major push on nuclear. It will also be pushed as an energy security / independence issue, as was coal above. You will be told that it is cheap, and that it is the cleanest form of energy, because there are absolutely no emissions, so that it is enrivornmentally friendly (nothing of course about how the fuel is created, or any issues of disposal).
You may hear that 1 in 5 American homes now gets it electricity from nuclear, or that Vermont gets 70% of its electricity from nuclear. You might even hear that France gets 80% of its electricity from nuclear.
You WILL hear that in order to avoid energy shortages such as those in California we need to expand nuclear (hmm, funny there was no mention of Enron manipulation, ...).
Now let me give you what passed for the good news. First let me offer a caution. As I often find, the level of thinking of some of the people in the group was smewhat shocking. I even heard one guy argue that no one had ever died from an accident at a nuclear pwoer plant (I had to bring up Chernobyl in a different context to not violate the rules by slapping him down for his idiotic statement). Even so, there were people who raised issues with knowledge about things like Yucca Mountain, and the problem of transporting nuclear waste. One woman, when asked why she worried about nuclear,answered simply 'Jack Lemmon" -- one of the other participants had to explain to the moderator about the movie "The China Syndrome."
There was a viserally negative reaction to any direct mention of "Clean Skies Initiative." Everyone, and I mean everyone, who knew the term, reacted negatively, so that may be one framing issue on which the Republican tactics have not worked.
The quality of the real ads were saw varied greatly -- people had positive reactions to some by BP and one by Shell. In general they had at best mixed and often engative to the real ads offered by Southern or its subsidiaries.
Unfortunately, the video ads we saw from Sierra Club did not work - they were counter productive, and turned people off. When the same content -- which was strongly negative on the current administration -- was offered in print ads, some people actually liked it. They did not, hwoever, like being browbeaten in the video ads. If anyone is apying attention, ti might be well worth the cost to environmental groups to try using some focus groups, and not just of committed environmentalists, to see how their ads are actually playing. These ads did not work.
Okay, that's enough on this diary. I would be interested in comments. And I will try to respond to anything that is in the form of a query, but it is getting late, and I ahve to be at school (25 mile drive) at 7:15, and it is now past 11:15, so I won't be around and online that much longer.
