Reality Check
You won’t often hear me promote something I saw on T.V…but there’s a commercial circulating that offers a fresh dose of, well, reality. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, watch it here:
Part of a multimedia effort called “The Reality Campaign,” the commercial is the result of a collaborative effort by the Alliance for Climate Protection and other big names like the Sierra Club and League of Conservation Voters. And, in my opinion, it is also the first example of refreshing common sense I’ve seen involving an issue that has exasperated me ever since I saw doe-eyed hippies toting around little green-black chunks of matter and crooning, “Have you heard of clean coal?” at Green Frontier Fest in Denver this past summer….
Let’s be serious once and for all, no matter how fervent of an Obama supporter you may be (myself included), if environmental protection truly tops your list of worldly priorities, the president-elect’s persistent support of this strange and terrible “clean coal” ideology must make you squirm on the inside.
Not to mention, the name’s warm and fuzzy quality only serves to cloud the definition of real clean and renewable fuels for the large population of people in this country that rarely take time to investigate the validity of the current “green” buzzword.
I guess what pleases me most about this commercial is that it doesn’t try to be too clever; it doesn’t bombard you with images and abstract music-concept pairings- it simply says what logical people have been scratching their heads and exclaiming for years now: There is no such thing as clean coal!
I suggest we call the proposed technology (scrubbing, sequestering, etc) what it is- a lame attempt to paint a pretty mask on a dark and ugly thing. A new title for an old atrocity. A last ditch effort by a dying industry to continue to obliterate mountains, decimate habitats, and peddle their poisonous wares into the atmosphere for just a few more years. Why should we waste our time trying to salvage a flawed resource when that time (and money) would be much better spent developing actual renewables?
The Website for the Reality Campaign isn’t too meaty, just a copy of the T.V. spot, some facts about climate change and some info on the sponsors, but just it’s existence and the fact that somewhere it makes the Kings of Coal very uncomfortable. And that makes me smile.