Sixteen years ago, on this day, April 27, 2007, a US gas company had to stop smearing coal…
Washington – The founder of a group that ran a series of newspaper ads attacking the coal industry for selling a product that they called “filthy” says the campaign is ending.
The effort, promoted as pro-environment, was sponsored by a rival energy company, a natural-gas-production company, and sparked a round of protests from members of Congress and trade associations.
Fialka, J. 2007. Ad Campaign Bashing Coal Is Ended After Uproar. Wall Street Journal, 27 April.
This had started in early February 2007–
“the ads were placed anonymously by a two-week-old group called the Texas Clean Sky Coalition. Only one of the nation’s largest gas producers, Chesapeake Energy Corp., acknowledged helping finance the advertising campaign — which easily cost several hundred thousand dollars.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 386.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 420ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that a natural gas company had been trying to use climate concerns to boost its own product. And this is something that the gas industry has been looking at with more or less interest in – throwing coal under the bus, framing coal as the dirtiest fuel. Therefore gas automatically becomes sort of some kind of “transition fuel”.
What I think we can learn from this
It’s a seductive myth. That, yes, we need a long term transition. But while we’re getting there, gas can help. What we learn is that this fossil fuel industry is not in any sense united, though, we should note that people who do gas and oil tend to have the same bosses.
What happened next
Didn’t the guy who founded Cheseapeake Energy do suicide by Porsche? Yes, yes he did.
And threw loads of money the Sierra Club’s way to help them fund their anti-coal campaigns…
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.