Greenpeace Crashes Coal Meeting with Fake Identity

It’s like Silverleaf Resorts in reverse! Greenpeace got into the 2008 McCloskey Coal USA conference by posing as a pro-coal organization. Calling themselves the Institute for Energy Solutions, Greenpeace was able to become a co-sponsor and set up a booth at the conference. The McCloskey group figured out who they were, but decided to let them speak anyway.

From Reuters:

Greenpeace spokesman Carroll Muffett was allowed to speak against coal as a polluting fuel for a few minutes, and the team manned a booth offering information and anti-coal paraphernalia.

“It’s a lot of value for the money,” said Muffett of the $8,500 co-sponsorship fee that made the Greenpeace front group publishers of the conference brochure.

In the brochure, an ad for the fake Institute seems pro-coal, but if readers go to the www.tomorrowsenergytoday.org website, they are redirected to www.coal-is-dirty.com.

The Greenpeace team handed out business cards that read: “The Institute for Energy Solutions is a joke. So is clean coal.” The cards were signed Greenpeace.

Awesome! We’re glad to hear they were able to get their message out. Of course, they did manage to offend a few people by using Muffett’s 9-year-old daughter and two boys aged 10 and 11 to hand out athsma inhalers and masks. Muffet rebuffed the criticism by declaring that the real issue is the fact that the coal industry causes athsma in children.

Props to our friend Kevin Grandia of DeSmogBlog for getting his Coal-is-Dirty.com site linked up!

Link [Reuters]
Photo credit: Flickr user greenpeace.italia

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