NY Times Prints More Alt-Energy Propaganda As Renewable Rejections Hit 1,200
Thomas Edsall’s column provides another example of the energy flapdoodle that gets published in the Times. Meanwhile, the renewable energy rejections keep piling up.
Thirteen months ago, I quit subscribing to the New York Times after the paper imposed an 83% price hike. And as I explained here on Substack, there were four other reasons for my cancellation, including the paper’s “energy reporting is often laughably bad.” These days, I seldom look at the paper’s website other than to scan the headlines. But sometimes the paper’s energy coverage is just too appalling to ignore.
That’s the case with Thomas Edsall’s May 12 article, which carried the headline, “This is a Scam, A Giant Scam.”
Edsall’s 2,500-word article is labeled as “opinion.” But opinions should be backed by facts. And therein lies the problem: Edsall’s article is nothing more than Democratic Party/climate-NGO propaganda. His jeremiad reads like boilerplate agitprop from the Natural Resources Defense Council, which is almost comical because Edsall’s article includes a long quote from an NRDC official named Amanda Levin, who claims the Trump administration’s “war on clean energy” is hurting consumers, and has weakened America’s “global standing and industrial competitiveness.”
Of course, Edsall, who has been writing for the Times for 20 years, can quote whomever he likes. But his inclusion of the NRDC is risible. The NRDC (annual revenue: $204 million) is the least credible NGO in America.
Remember, the NRDC played a leading role in the premature closure of the Indian Point nuclear plant, which sits about 40 miles north of Times Square. (I have a special fondness for Indian Point. We visited the plant before its closure, and it — and longtime Buchanan Mayor Theresa Knickerbocker — plays a prominent role in our feature-length documentary, Juice: How Electricity Explains The World.)
In 2021, after the shutdown, a top NRDC official, Kit Kennedy, cheered the closure, claiming in a letter to the Times that “closing this dangerous plant is overdue.”
What has happened since Kennedy made that bullshit claim?
New York’s CO2 emissions have soared, and state residents are enduring huge increases in their utility bills due to the cost of installing large amounts of renewable energy. According to a December 2025 report from the left-leaning Progressive Policy Institute, residential electricity rates in New York jumped by 36% between 2019 and 2024. And as the Institute for Energy Research points out, that increase was “nearly three times faster than the national average and the second-fastest increase in the country during this period, after California.”
Furthermore, in March, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and New York Congressman Mike Lawler (a Republican) held a press conference at Indian Point calling for the plant to be reopened.
Despite these facts, Edsall is carrying water for the NRDC in the pages of the New York Times. It really does beggar belief.
Further — and this really sticks in my craw — Edsall is leading the cheering section for alt-energy while refusing to acknowledge the raging land-use conflicts that are slowing, or in many cases, stopping, the growth of solar, wind, and battery projects all around the world. That caught my attention because the Renewable Rejection Database now contains 1,200 documented examples of local communities saying no to Big Solar, Big Wind, and Big Battery.
Let’s take a look at the facts, not the spin.
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