Clean Coal Carolers

Written by Jake LaBelle

I think Seinfeld put it best: "I’m speechless. I am without speech." That is all I could think about when I saw the ad campaign entitled "Clean Coal Carolers" from our friends at America’s Power. Unfortunately, I can’t share this ad with you because it was taken down after less than a week. They have this site in its place. Apparently the sheer idiocy of the ad was realized.

It was a quasi-interactive website with 6 or 7 lumps of coal with googly eyes and winter garments singing Christmas carols with new clean coal lyrics.  This was something one would find on the EbaumsWorld or CollegeHumor websites. If America's Power was looking to target mature, intelligent adults with these shenanigans, then they missed the mark by about a light-year.  I can’t imagine that anyone in that marketing department is so desperate as to think that this would elicit a positive response.

 

That begs the question of whether clean coal is targeting the children of America; you know, trying to get them while they're young. But here is the ironic part about that tactic.  Obviously they want to use the Christmas theme to make clean coal seem more appealing. But what is the number one fear of children at Christmas time? That's right folks, being on the naughty list and getting a lump of coal underneath the Christmas tree.

Now, aside from the utter ridiculousness of this website, it was inevitably inaccurate.  There is no difference between regular, dirty, polluting coal and “clean coal.”  The lyrics of the songs, though well-rhymed and sprinkled with some decent harmony, were not an accurate portrayal of the environmental effects of so-called “clean coal.”  The fact remains that burning coal still releases millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere; by far more than any other source of energy.  This website provided the perfect analogy of how clean coal is just as bad as its dirty predecessor.  Just like you can’t dress up a lump of coal with some silly articles of clothing and googly eyes and call it better, you can’t throw the word “clean” in front of coal and call it more environmentally-friendly.  For more information on the real coal, check out the Sierra Club’s coal website.

Comments

[Emanuel]

The cool thing is that there was a story on NPR (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98226391) about this brand new "christmas character."

[greenmullet]

I blogged about this this week, along with EnviroWonk, who has posted a copy of the cheery chunks.
- Green Mullet
http://greenmullet.blogspot.com/2008/12/have-coughety-christmas.html

http://envirowonk.com/content/view/398/2/

[Dr. James Singmaster]

For an extra holiday gift for all, let's call for coal to pay a "SIN" tax of 5-10% on sales to establish an environmental goodies fund to reestablish the environment that coal mining has SINNED upon. This fund could develop into quite a few billion dollars before we can get coal dumped as a fuel amd would be used to provide environmental work for miners.
If reforestation programs get set up well, we might have a way to actually reduce the carbon footprint as we could take mature trees and pyrolyze them to get inert charcoal. This pyrolysis process can be set up to have some energy put in recovered as electricity and to get a distillate expelled to be trapped. That trapped distillate can be refined to get a fuel or useful organic chemicals to make drugs. plastics and other products free of oil. The charcoal also may have uses in purifying sewage water and then the charcoal with trapped hazards could be used to smelt iron ore replacing soft coal that makes an environmentak mess in its mining and emits new GHGs and mercury in smelting. The trapped hazards on the charcoal coming from cleaning sewage would be destroyed in the smelting process.
What I have said here may be counterintuitive to many, but trees are not forever traps of carbon dioxide. By establishing the growing of trees to be pyrolyzed, we end up getting inert carbon that if not used can be buried, while we have gotten some better use of energy and some chemicals free from oil .
So let's give ourselves a Christmas bonus by establishing a SIN tax on coal sales.
Holiday Wishes to any readers. Dr. J. Singmaster

[Ben Paulos]

They can all be viewed on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5DR1oyr4g8&feature=related

[Ben Paulos]

They can all be viewed on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5DR1oyr4g8&feature=related