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). [2] 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 [3] - 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:
[4]
Does ACCE honestly think that people will send this around like we all did the OfficeMax Dancing Elves [5] last Christmas? What about the families of the estimated 24,000 people a year in the US who die prematurely [6]because of pollution from coal-fired power plants? I wonder if they think these little coal carolers are funny?
Nothing like mercury emissions, [7] asthma attacks [6] and melting polar ice-caps [8] 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 [9] will think that this latest stunt is anything but blatant over-the-top marketing blather.