Give the gift of Asthma and a Warmer Planet this Christmas

onDec 9, 2008 @ 16:22 PST

I don’t even know what you call the latest marketing ploy by the coal industry lobby group the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE). But if there’s one thing that is for certain it’s that ACCCE has way too much time and money on their hands.

I encourage you to check out ACCCE’s Clean Coal Carolers – I really don’t mind sending a bunch of traffic their way because this latest publicity stunt is absolutely absurd and shows just how far the coal lobby is willing to go to market their dirty product as somehow being clean. In fact, I think you should send this to everyone you know, show them how ridiculous this clean coal marketing has actually become.

ACCCE’s dancing coal carolers actually remind me of another marketing campaign from a few years back, maybe it’s where they found their inspiration:

Or maybe it was this wonderful Christmas campaign:

At least so far it appears that nobody’s buying into this marketing garbage if you take the ACCCE carolers Facebook fan page as any type of metric:

Does ACCE honestly think that people will send this around like we all did the OfficeMax Dancing Elves last Christmas? What about the families of the estimated 24,000 people a year in the US who die prematurely because of pollution from coal-fired power plants? I wonder if they think these little coal carolers are funny?

Nothing like mercury emissions, asthma attacks and melting polar ice-caps to get me in the holiday spirit.

Maybe ACCCE thinks that this all very funny and maybe people like me pointing out the absolute idiocy of their coal carolers will look like the Scrooge. Who knows what they were thinking, but I can’t imagine that even the coal companies footing ACCCE’s multi-million dollar lobbying campaign will think that this latest stunt is anything but blatant over-the-top marketing blather.

By Kevin Grandia

Kevin is a contributor and strategic adviser to DeSmog. He runs the digital marketing agency Spake Media House. Named a “Green Hero” by Rolling Stone Magazine and one of the “Top 50 Tweeters” on climate change and environment issues, Kevin has appeared in major news media outlets around the world for his work on digital campaigning. Kevin has been involved in the public policy arena in both the United States and Canada for more than a decade. For five years he was the managing editor of DeSmogBlog.com. In this role, Kevin’s research into the “climate denial industry” and the right-wing think tank networks was featured in news media articles around the world. He is most well known for his ground-breaking research into David and Charles Koch’s massive financial investments in the Republican and tea party networks. Kevin is the first person to be designated a “Certified Expert” on the political and community organizing platform NationBuilder. Prior to DeSmog, Kevin worked in various political and government roles. He was Senior Advisor to the Minister of State for Multiculturalism and a Special Assistant to the Minister of State for Asia Pacific, Foreign Affairs for the Government of Canada. Kevin also worked in various roles in the British Columbia provincial government in the Office of the Premier and the Ministry of Health. In 2008 Kevin co-founded a groundbreaking new online election tool called Vote for Environment which was later nominated for a World Summit Award in recognition of the world’s best e-Content and innovative ICT applications. Kevin moved to Washington, DC in 2010 where he worked for two years as the Director of Online Strategy for Greenpeace USA and has since returned to his hometown of Vancouver, Canada.