Oil/Coal/Gas aggressivenes in promoting their products

[HVPA_research]

There is an interesting discussion going on in the MarcellusGasInfo from the New York State, USA. It is based on an article in The Washington Post Environmentalists Slow to Adjust in Climate Debate.The article contrasts extremely aggressive campaigning by the fossil fuel companies with the sedate approach by the environmentalists. The former use a new technique called astroturfing(love the term!) which means creating fake popular grass root movements. These activities are then highlighted in the corporate mas media and fed inProto the government through a networks of well embedded lobbyists. Projects like universal health care or carbon trading have then little chance to succeed when they have to "run the same gantlet of lobbying and lies". Of course, no grass ever grouws under the astroturf!

The following quote from the post by MB says it all:

While I do think that the good guys tend to be "meeker" (maybe "nicer" or "more honest" would be better words) than the bad guys, I also think there is a huge underlying problem that will be difficult to overcome no matter how fierce the good guys decide to be: the good guys are the ones with the bad news. It's the bad guys--the ones who want to continue business as usual--who have a message of "good" news. It's to the bad guys' advantage to run around telling folks that everything will be fine, fine, fine, and they don't have to change a thing. We, on the other hand, have the wonderful job of telling people that things will be very bad indeed and possibly even horrific unless we all start making some very large, serious, and probably painful changes ASAP. Guess which message most people would rather hear.

Can you see the problem? The gas industry in the Hunter Valley talks about progress, jobs, coal seam methane as a solution to climate change and we worry about fresh water and air contamination. Overseas experience shows that we are right but who wants to hear?