This is a Think Progress repost. Click on cartoon to see the whole coloring book.
Friends of Coal (FOC) is a front group created by the West Virginia Coal Association. Its mission is to “inform and educate West Virginia citizens about the coal industry” and “provide a united voice” for the industry. To make dirty coal seem appealing, FOC has sponsored or initiated license plates, football games, basketball practices, plane jumps, fishing events, and scholarships.
FOC is now selling coal to children. ThinkProgress obtained the “Let’s Learn About Coal” coloring book, which asks children to unscramble statements about the “advantages” of coal, such as “Than coal other cheaper is fuels” (”Coal is cheaper than other fuels”). Kids also learn that coal is “important” and “provides jobs for lots of people!”
The FOC Ladies Auxiliary has been handing the coloring book out to children around West Virginia as part of a “Coal in the Classroom” campaign. Coal officials go into schools and give presentations about the importance of coal. “We’d really like this to be statewide, that it be mandatory in the schools that they learn about coal,” said FOC ladies auxiliary president Regina Fairchild in January. The ladies auxiliary is also recruiting members for its “junior” FOC group, open to “girls and boys ages 8 to 16.”
Additionally, FOC ladies auxiliary members have visited children in West Virginia hospitals to give them a “special present“: Mr. Coal, “a small, black Labrador stuffed puppy meant to bring a smile to kids’ faces during hospital stays.” (Coal pollution kills 24,000 Americans each year.)
Last year, American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), another industry front group, also tried to make coal seem warm and fuzzy by creating the “coal carolers” — illustrated lumps of coal singing Christmas carols whose altered lyrics praised coal power. After widespread scorn, ACCCE took down the carolers. Find out more on what coal is really doing to Appalachia at Appalachian Voices.
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This is the most hilariously obnoxious PR promotion since the yuletide coal ads of last year. Well at least I can sleep safe knowing that Scooby Doo has found a new gig after the famed cartoon went off the air.
Forgive them o Lord for they know not what they do…
IMPACT DAY, Nov 27? “International Motivate the President to Act on Climate Day,” currently stumbling to a computer near you. aka “Levitate the President Day” to those so inclined. Dedicated to “E-mail bomb” the White-House on Thanksgiving Day to show support for climate action. Truly grass root. Take it and run.
Anybody out there who could create and also distribute the exact opposite of that coloring-book where you have pages eg. for “DISadvantages of coal” or “Coal comes from the inside of the earth AND IT SHOULD STAY THERE” or “Coal and the RAVAGED environment”.
This is really just sugar coated evil, which is the worst kind.
The good news is that it will fail. I lived in rural Oregon for many years, where the logging industry dominated the economy. Schoolkids weren’t fooled. Even if their parents worked in the mill, they saw what logging did to the land, and they hated them for it.
Unbelievable.
Fox News had such great success with “Mr. ‘Splainer Man”, this just had to be next.
Angry lemmings on propaganda, led by a financial elite that just crossed the line dividing businessman from criminal.
Rumor has it that the FOC is now sponsoring a COALering poster contest … for our children using the words shown below!
SEQUESTERED COAL
BEATS SEQUESTERED CARBON
LEAVE IT BURIED!
Will the FOC [Friends of Our Children -> no ... Coal] use this poster contest idea? Maybe they’ll throw in a box of COALering crayons too!
Note that all of the official FOC crayons come in true colors only; blue-black, brown-black and black-black! The FOC R&D team is now developing a new color, never before seen, called white-black … ‘awesome’! Should be ready ‘fer’ commercial scale testing by 2200!
I didn’t realize that they care so much for the well being of our children. Oh how thoughtful they are! Just goes to show ‘ya’ how misinformed i’am.
If the FOC won’t go for this maybe Sierra Club will!
I guess it’s time for MOTHERS AGAINST FUNERARY ADVERTISING “MAFA” This really is bottom of the barrel stuff.
Someone tell those idiots they spelled “squirrels” wrong on their “Other Things” page (14).
The coal mining industry is doomed, IMO. The true cost of carbon pollution to our environment could be infinite, if we set off a methane catastrophe with our continued fossil fuel use.
Even with Carbon Capture and Storage, it’s hard to make a case for continued coal mining, IMO.
But the coal fired power plants, themselves, could be nationalized and transformed in to carbon negative Bio-Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) power plants, and could transform themselves from climate criminals to climate saviors:
http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Bio-energy_with_carbon_capture_and_storage
We should not abuse the CO2 storage capacity of the earth. We ought to run these BECCS plants only long enough to reverse the climate damage done by the industrial revolution, and then concentrate on repairing the damage, if any, done by BECCS itself.
Some capitalists are destroying capitalism, IMO.
There just has to be a better way to run things that doesn’t involve entrenched spoiled rich people lying their asses off.
Leland: “There just has to be a better way to run things that doesn’t involve entrenched spoiled rich people lying their asses off.”
Wow, talk about a line that’s just begging to be on a bumper sticker…