Even as King Coal is trying to put a $6 billion coal plant in Virginia, Al Gore and a whole lot of DC green groups are beginning a campaign to point out that there is no such thing as clean coal. Their web site is This is Reality. This is part of a larger movement to wean us off of fossil fuels, which Congresswoman Donna Edwards has already endorsed.
The Reality campaign is the first TV campaign to go after the coal industry directly, and hopefully it will demystify this industry's power.
Gore's group sent out the following email promoting the ad on Sunday. It's rare to send out two emails bunched up so closely together, so it's likely that the group is subtly covering for their earlier email on Thursday calling for Congress to stay in session with an attack on drilling.
This commercial, with Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi, was put out eight months ago by Al Gore's 'We Campaign' on climate change. It was a perplexing choice, because Gingrich was one of the most ardent opponents of climate change action for most of his career in politics, and featuring him as a good guy on the issue would give him credibility he might misuse. Sure enough, two months ago, Newt Gingrich, backed by coal companies and billionaires, started the Drill Here Drill Now campaign, and the talking point about taking care of the environment was a key part of the message that 'environmental moderate' Newt Gingrich delivered (Gore has bitterly referred to the Drill Here Drill Now campaign as 'drinking the hair of the dog that bit you').
Gore's rationale for including Newt Gingrich was that the movement on climate change must be bipartisan, so he must feature people like Newt Gingrich in his campaign or else it will fail. I was curious if there was a larger strategy here, or if Gore had accidentally greenwashed Gingrich, who is now referred to as an 'environmental moderate'. It looks to me like it wasn't an accident, that Gore has continued to hire Beltway hacks that sabotage his aims and spew out a conventional wisdom that is harmful to the movement to change our climate policies. Here's an email the group's CEO, Cathy Zoi, sent out on Friday, the day Congress went on recess.
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