'Frosty the Coalman': King Coal Launches Holiday-Themed Greenwashing Campaign

Rachel, I saw your clip tonight on our new web feature.  Here's a question for you.  If you really wanted to talk about our campaign, don't think it would have been a good idea to call us directly?  I didn't notice journalists asking Barack Obama to critique John McCain's ads during the campaign or vise versa.  Or in the case where they did do that, they at least heard both sides of the story.  You chose not to do that. 

Fact is, clean coal technology (which is under attack by several environmental special interest groups) DOES exist today.  The over $50 billion invested in these technology has produced dramatic results in reducing criteria pollutants and other emissions regulated by federal clean air laws, and has also laid a solid foundation for bringing new, even more advanced technologies to the marketplace to capture and store carbon. 

For those Monday morning quarterbacks who suggest that the coal industry should put more money behind the research and development of advanced carbon capture and storage technologies (instead of advertising), I say this -- what have they done lately?  Most of these groups have a long-standing record of opposing funding for cost-shared projects to bring new advanced technologies to the marketplace. 

Bottom line, in the future at least try to be a little more balanced.  If the story involves us or our issues, call me directly.  I'd welcome the chance to talk about how investments in clean coal technology promotes energy independence, keeps energy costs affordable for American consumers, and promotes a cleaner energy future.

Rachel;

   After Gov. Blagojevich demonstrated a new low in political integrity, Madison Avenue has set a uniquely low mark for others to aspire to with this ad campaign.

   Thanks for being willing to call the "Silent Night" parody "sacrilegious" because it is. I appreciate that you are willing to defend some things as still sacred...

    I'm a different person because of your show...

The Christmas Coal caroling was funny last night and the parody on Silent Night was sacrilgious and in poor taste.

In Newsweek Dec 9 article "Joe Lucas, a vice president for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, says that the technology does exist, although it's still in early development stages. "With the current research being done, we think we can get the technology up and running within 10 to 15 years," he says."

Also in the article was a statement from Brian Hardwick of the ALlicance For Climate Protection  pointed out there is not one coal plant in the United States that is at the point of showing or demonstrating clean coal technology.

So what's the point of the whole campaign if the technology is 10 to 15 years away? 

Well, THANK YOU for explaining Clean Coal to me, because I was afraid to ask. When Joe Biden spoke here in Danville, VA, a lady who looked like the typical poverty-stricken coal miner's wife from West VA was handing out electric-blue shirts reading "Clean Coal." This must be something good, I thought. I must be supporting unions, I thought, as I gratefully took a shirt to bring home to Boyfriend.

Obama's people, who were all over the place, asked all those waiting in line to see Joe Biden NOT to wear the shirts but didn't expound on why. All of us sat on them once inside.

Those creepy, crazed little lumps of coal are somehow sinister, like a cute little animal you KNOW is rabid. How incisive of you to mention how much they blink.

However, ANYTHING is better than nuclear power plants, particularly Indian Point. I wouldn't care if they burned diseased cowflop if they would close these plants.

P.S. I was on line with quite-intelligent folks and NONE OF US were too sure what clean coal was. (I can't tell you how embarrassed I was to admit this, but did so in the interests of full disclosure.)

ANYWAY, I was taught at my mother's knee that coal is what Santa brings you if you're BAD!

Upon reflection (and I'll shut up after this. Really!), the choice may be between "clean" coal and nuclear power. I guess we need more of those wind thingies.

Given a choice, I'd rather have coal than nuclear power. I'd even accept DRIED, DISEASED COW FLOP from heifers in the throes of Mad Cow Disease. Anything but nuclear power!

Those singing pieces of coal reminded me of Mr. Hankey, the singing poo on Southpark. Hmm....

Rachel, thanks for shining a national spotlight on this propaganda campaign.  We need people outside of Appalachia to realize what is going on here, because our politicians are bought and paid for by the coal industry.  They're chopping the tops off of our mountains, throwing them into the valleys and covering streams.  The water is poisoned, air is fouled with silica dust and wildlife is killed or driven out.  The residents' homes are damaged by the blasting and their health is ruined by the polluted air and water.  If they complain, their lives are threatened and property damaged.  Some people have had their pets killed.  If this was New York or California well it wouldn't be happening.  Appalachians are being sacrificed to provide "cheap" energy for the rest of the country.  This has to stop!

Dearest Ravenwood: HA HA HA HA HA! LOL!!!!!!!!

P.S. Are you, too, an undying Jericho fan? Ravenwood was the creepy group of mercs, a takeoff on Blackwater, who trucked in and blew up all the 20-KT nukes.

Hey, buddy!

Dearest Mountain Mama:

God bless you! THAT is terrible. The nice lady who handed me the clean coal shirt was emaciated and lined. You know the look of poverty in Appalachia. I THOUGHT when I took the shirt I was helping my brethren in the unionized coal industry.

Oh, CRAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I really MUST get you all mad at me and relate this. Okay, so coal is really filthy and not green. Radiation poisoning ain't green, either.

The Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant in Buchanan, NY, was but 3.44 miles from the last apartment in which we lived. They feed Kool-aid to their employees you wouldn't believe. I attended Channel 12's Nuclear Town Hall Meeting and another activist and I were clinging together, practically sitting on each other's laps because their entire workforce was there, bellowing epthets and threatening us. Channel 12 Westchester was the Rainbow News cable outlet and EVERYBODY watched it in preference to anything else, including us.

There IS an urban legend there, which I do not believe as a former Peekskill print repoter, that an unnamed activist got a little gift from malevolent plant workers: a spent fuel rod in her front yard.

If Channel 12's daily coverage of IP was a prostate exam, then the doctor had a really long, ragged fingernail on his index finger. Indian Point decided to get even. They BURIED notices of an upcoming siren test in two local weeklies that weren't even SOLD in Peekskill or Cortlandt Manor, where we lived.

THEY DID NOT NOTIFY CHANNEL !2 OF AN EVENING DRILL. I don't think in their entire 50-year history they ever HAD an evening siren test.

The *&%(#)@!* siren went of around 8 p.m. Boyfriend, the proud blue collar African American who claimed to be not one whit afraid of this monstrosity, began to shriek at the top of his lungs after he checked Channel 12 and NOTHING was mentioned.

"GET CHANNEL !2 ON THE *&^%$# PHONE RIGHT NOW!" he screamed. The siren was blaring. Channel-which-has-an-Electra-relationship-with-its-mother was prominent in his verbal assessment of the situation.

A young news intern with an initially deep, mellifluous voice answered their news hotline. "Channel 12?"

I stammered that the IP siren was sounding and held the phone out so he could hear it wailing, loud and clear.

HE began to scream. "HOLY EXCREMENT (I'm cleaning this up), the Indian Point siren is sounding in Cortlandt Manor!" This kid was in Yonkers, far outside the feared 10-mile zone, and HE was scared excrement-free.

BOY, did every news outlet in Westchester get on them after that....

PLUS it got even better AFTER we escaped permanently to VA.

The computer at Westchester County Emergency Management mistakenly sent local stations an alert that there was a breaking emergency at Indian Point. At least a couple of stations announced it. I learned this by perusing RNN's site one day.

I would have died on the spot. If I survived the initial shock, Boyfriend and I and the two cats might still be holed up in a cave somewhere, like some of the folks who thought Orson Welles' 1939 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds was real.

PLUS it got even better AFTER we escaped permanently to VA.

The computer at Westchester County Emergency Management mistakenly sent local stations an alert that there was a breaking emergency at Indian Point. At least a couple of stations announced it. I learned this by perusing RNN's site one day.

I would have died on the spot. If I survived the initial shock, Boyfriend and I and the two cats might still be holed up in a cave somewhere, like some of the folks who thought Orson Welles'1939 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds was real.

Upon reflection, IP's employees are certainly nasty enough to have planted a spent fuel rod in somebody's yard. I never believed it because why the hell wasn't it front page news? Wouldn't the activist have called in the FBI or something?

RNN, a regional liberal news net, had a thread devoted to Indian Point. I posted there and got into huge battlles with these clowns. RNN traced posts with all kinds of death threats and obscenities directed at me and other posters back to IP computers. MANAGEMENT, my friends!

They finally took the thread down. These people are stone-ground crazy, period. The Nuclear Town Hall Meeting swung back and forth from Buchanan Town Hall, where we were, the Ch. 12 studio in Yonkers, and an Emergency Management location in White Plains.

THE MINUTE THE CAMERAS WENT OFF in Buchanan, all hell broke loose. Think of the worst backwater, bigoted Klan types who beat their wives for entertainment, and you'll have the picture.

I knew the guy who was their PR man at the time and HE cursed me. I'd dealt with him when I was a reporter at the small weekly which closed. I reminded him of this and he claimed not to know me, all the time making disparaging remarks about my looks, morals, and sanity.

I pulled his card out of my wallet. I think even the local politicians who were doing their spiels from Buchanan were frightened of these men.

Actually, Ch. 12 was our favorite morning and afternoon news. I rarely missed RNN's evening telecast.

You need to READ some of the crap these IP types posted--they have the Clean Coalies beat all to hell.

A human opponent would post a comment. Within five seconds, a three-page-long boilerplate diatribe would appear about how nuclear power plants would cause us all to have completely free electricity someday. I still wanted them to explain how they would pay their vituperative staff if they gave juice away free.

It was like a robot (or more likely a computer) was posting it. It was eeire.

But every once in a while a real, nasty-mouthed human would begin posting and then it would get really ugly really fast. These types would question the sanity of anyone stupid enough to oppose their god, nuclear power.

After getting threatened and having my intelligence, sanity, and morals insulted, I would lob back something like, "Okay, you fatherless being who probably also has no belly button...."

This was RNN's old site, and they monitored it religiously to get rid of all spam. They now have a site much harder to hack.

It was a great place to be on the weekends BEFORE they caught the spam. You'd get stuff like The Pearl Experiment!

And it WAS management who was rotten, for the most part. I got into a dialog with one union guy at the meeting who PROMISED ME the union would shut down the plant if it got too dangerous. He said their union could get them new jobs in other plants all over the country.

I should explain one thing. The controversy about IP's then-PR guy denying he knew me came about this way. When the cameras were OFF the meeting and they were telecasting from one of the other two locations, folks got to talking. I was asking FBI there if they KNEW that the Beeline Number 18 bus went into the plant (when one of the drivers was on duty, anyway) in light of the fact that this bus picked up at the Peekskill Train Station. I was concerned that a terrorist might ride the train in and then board that bus.

The PR guy started asking me why I didn't shut my fat, ugly, hysterical trap.

I said something like, "Oh, GEE, you were so much nicer to me when I was a reporter and I had to call you for the other side of the story, weren't you?"

He then denied knowing me. I then pulled out his business card and displayed it. The nuclear activists started cheering because I'd limped along on all their marches, covering.

Also, I cannot begin to describe just how weird their Kool-Aid is. To encapsulate it to the best of my ability, it's something like clean nuclear power will run the world. Soon all homes will get their electricity free. There will be a chicken in every pot. There will also be world peace. Anybody who opposes us is the enemy, blocking progress. The world must be protected from the stupid, ignorant people who are afraid of nuclear power. WE KNOW BEST. WE MUST RULE. The ignorant, into which category I fell, must not be allowed to stop us.

It was like frigging Mein Kampf.

EEEEEK!!!!

It is as close to deism as I have ever seen company spirit get.

The really scary part is that the guys running this plant REALLY BELIEVE THIS CRAP.