With every season comes a new way to say the same thing.
Those who really, really hate Duke Energy are taking advantage of this by styling protests outside the energy giant's regional headquarters with seasonal accoutrements.
The theme at a Thursday demonstration was, of course, Christmas, Santa and all.
There were hokey Christmas carols with altered lyrics jeering Duke. And, as one might imagine, this Santa went down a giant list of ways in which the energy company has been — what else — "naughty."
"It looks like Duke charged Floridians $3.2 billion for nonexistent and failed nuclear plants," 'Santa' said. "What do you think of that?"
"Naughty!" said the crowd of a dozen or so 'elves.'
They went down a list of ten other things — among them Duke's cutting its renewable energy goals by 90 percent, overcharging customers, showing interest in fracking, etc. — before leaving two coal-stuffed Christmas stockings at the building's front door.
"We thought because coal was tied to so many toxic pollutants in the atmosphere and on earth that it would be appropriate for Santa to bring coal to Duke," said Christine Wallace, a spokeswoman for Greenpeace, the group that spearheaded the event. "To remind them that it's another fossil fuel that we need to move away from, to clean, renewable energy."
Indeed, Duke operates a coal-fired plant in Crystal River as well as the Carolinas, Indian and Kentucky.
As to why all the protests against Duke even though the election's over and the seeming unwillingness to budge on the part of company and the Public Service Commission, the state agency that "regulates" power companies, Wallace said repeating environmentalists' message over and over may eventually cause change someday.
"I think this is something we're just going to keep bringing up to Duke Energy, that the public wants renewables, that we don't want their dirty energy anymore, their coal, their fracking, nuclear technologies," she said. "We want to move to renewable energy. So we're going to be constantly reinforcing that message whenever we have the opportunity to."
Good luck with that. Seriously.
This article appears in Dec 11-17, 2014.