EcoGeek founder/owner, Hank Green, has blocked advertising from a Coal astroturf organization, America’s Power. Green posted, yesterday, A Letter to the US Coal Industry: Why I blocked your ad.
I’m a little bit angry right now. For the last 12 hours, unknown to me, the U.S. coal lobby has been plastering EcoGeek with B.S. ads for their B.S. clean coal campaign. I’m not really a big fan of helping to spread their heifer droppings so I’ve blocked the campaign.
This is Green’s livelihood, his source of income. He has chosen to put his money (or the money he won’t have) where his mouth and philosophy are when it comes to creating a viable future.
Without a doubt, this type of choice has to be difficult. One has to buy dinner, pay the rent, live … Green takes the opportunity of making this choice to make a statement, a meaningful one, about the truthiness of “Clean Coal” (really, simply Less-Deadly Coal) and coal’s (lack of a) role in the future in his open letter:
No…you’re not green. You’re full of crap.
Yes, I would guess Hank really was/is angered, hiding his emotions so well. And, his is simply correct.
Your industry turns mountains inside out, poisons the water of the rural poor in America and throughout the world. Your industry has never made an environmental move in its long and storied history without being forced to by a government.
The coal industry is fostering destruction of the hability of the planet. It will not act to change its paths unless it is forced to. But, even more importantly, perhaps we will evolve/develop out of our reliance on coal.
We’re moving on without you, and you’re going to have to deal with that. Actual clean technologies are here now. We don’t need you anymore. … You are not renewable…you are not America’s Power…you are not the future and you sure as hell aren’t green. Stop pretending.
“Stop pretending” to be what you are not. Stop paying for Santa Claus to give out “clean” lumps of coal. Stop your support for “C02 is life” adverstising”. Stop pretending …
Hank, passionately, lays out the falseness of the Less Deadly Coal (falsely described as “Clean Coal”) with a passion and strength that merits reading and echoing.
The cleanest coal plants in the world still create more sulfer dioxide than the environment can deal with without acidifying the rain and the soil.
A hat tip to Hank Green at EcoGeek for so powerfully and publicly putting his money where his mouth is.
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[…] faced with astroturfing advertising, EcoGeek’s Hank Green decided to block the advertising. Hank wrote an open letter to the coal industry: I’m a little bit angry right now. For the last […]