Greenwash Watch: May the F.O.R.C.E. Be With You
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 07. 9.08
That's "Families Organized to Represent the Coal Economy", saying that coal is "now clean and green with new technologies." Their mission: "to be a unified voice in support of Pennsylvania coal, the families and businesses whose livelihoods depend upon it and the importance of a healthy coal industry to our regional, state and national economies."
Dennis at the Greenwash Brigade says that it's time there were transparent standards "that can compare business practices within sectors (and potentially across sectors). Some of the best ones include LEED standards for green building and an emerging tool called STARS being put together by AASHE to weigh green cred between college campuses. We need to keep improving and expanding user-friendly standards for folks to gauge the greenness of different companies and their goods." And can't flagrantly lie in advertising.
After all, you can't put out food products where you lie on the packaging (oops, yes you can)
You are not allowed to market to children and brainwash them (oops, yes you can if you are supporting coal, with thisThe F.O.R.C.E. "Eyes For Frosty" Story & Coloring Book" (danger, 41 meg pdf)
No, in America you can say whatever you want, and you don't have to prove it, you just have to hire somebody to build a website. ::FORCE found via ::The Greenwash Brigade
Other Greenwashers of coal to look out for:
The full page ad in the New York Times placed by "Americans for Balanced Energy Choices" says "Our commitment goes beyond clean." Greenwash Watch: AmericasPower
The King was sorely vexed, and founded "Kansans for Affordable Energy" to run ads that say that these men are smiling “Because the recent decision by the Sebelius Administration means Kansas will import more natural gas from countries like Russia, Venezuela, and Iran.” Greenwash Watch: Kansans for Affordable Energy
Vending Machine for Bike Parts Introduced by Trek
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Coral Reefs Dense With Unusual Wildlife Discovered in Brazil
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Another opportunity for the state to earmark funds for alternative power solutions and have workers migrate to jobs that provide sustainable power with lower impact. Families need jobs, no question. In the end, I don't mind paying power companies for electricity if they were providing it in a cleaner way.
But "Americans for Balanced Energy Choices" is telling the truth! Their commitment does go "beyond clean." Right on into "Cheap energy at any cost."
What will it take to teach us that sticker prices don't include all the costs? Coal has climate change and public health costs, and fly ash must be dealt with a radioactive waste. Nuclear has no climate change or (unless you live in the collapsing soviet union and your reactors are unsupervised and poorly built and maintained) public health impact, but it, too, has nuclear waste to deal with. Wind and solar have none of these problems. Neither do wave, tidal, and geothermal, for that matter.
We always say we have a 250 year supply of coal, but how much of that will be cheap to access? I really don't know. Just as we have drilled essentially all the cheap oil and only expensive oil is left, maybe 20 years into that 250 year time frame coal gets a lot more expensive or energy intensive to get to, or is lower in quality. Even if we do have 250 years worth of coal to use at today's usage level, if expected world energy consumption growth happens and if more of that energy comes from coal as oil gets harder to find... we could rip through the supply in 50, 60 years. I'd say natural gas might get harder to find also, but it may get all to easy to get methane out of the ice it is trapped in as Earth's ice melts in the coming decades.
This ad is shameful and disheartening in many ways, but my point is that even if coal was clean, we'd still need to start depending on the other available energy sources starting now. Unless, of course, we WANT our civilization to collapse because we do not have a long-term, stable energy source.
Coal is dirty as shitte. These people should be educated.
It's fantastic how any other green technology takes so much time, work and development but "green technology" for coal just seems to burst out of nowhere faster than we can say "paradigm change"
How very sad and corrupt! I find it hard to believe that companies and organizations are still feeding the "clean coal" lie. What is worse is that many people choose to believe this propaganda than really learning about the issue.
Yes, people need jobs, families need support, but "No one can be employed if they're falling down dying..." (Fulton County Superior Court Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore) We need to invest in clean energy; we need to invest in our future.
On a better note: One of my favorite things about visiting family in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area is driving past the wind farm they set up outside of town.