Everyone seems to be getting into the holiday spirit, even…lumps of coal? A coal trade group called American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) has sponsored a holiday campaign called “The Clean Coal Carolers” which features lumps of cartoon coal singing songs like “Frosty the Coalman” and “Abundant, Affordable.” The website allows you to choose which hats and scarfs to dress the coal in. But all the scarves in the world can’t hide the fact that “clean coal” is more a buzz word than an actual technology.
Last month Casey Miner reported for Mother Jones that:
The types of technology the industry says it will use are expensive and ineffective at best, and potentially catastrophic at worst—in other words, even if we were able to get our technology up to speed and somehow capture the carbon leaving every coal plant in the country, we wouldn’t have anywhere safe to put it.
The Clean Coal Carolers also have a Facebook page with 22 fans, including one named “Asthma” and another “Black,” short for Black Lung. Those are either parts of ACCCE’s elaborate ruse or they are smart-ass kids who have studied Al Gore’s “Reality” ad campaign, launched last week to “debunk the clean coal myth,” and Mother Jones’ past coverage of clean coal like “Follow The Money Deep Under Ground” by Shadi Rahimi and “Scrubbing King Coal” by James Ridgeway.
