Letter: Don't be fooled by recent ‘greenwashing' ad

Letter: Don't be fooled by recent ‘greenwashing' ad

By Pat Bradley - 09/30/2009

You can fool some of the people some of the time, which is apparently what PlantsNeedCO2.org is trying to do with their silly ad in last Thursday's Standard, stating that carbon dioxide is "green" and we need it. Duh.

They neglect to say that the high concentration of CO2 in the air today - 380 parts per million - has transformed the earth's atmosphere and is currently causing the rise of acidity in the world's oceans, harming the natural equilibrium of exchange of gases between the water and the atmosphere. Since the start of the industrial revolution, humans have burned enough coal, oil and gas to produce some additional 250 billion metric tons of carbon. The problem is the accumulated rise in CO2 that causes excess pollution, not the fact that it is "green." Big Oil's red herring ad tries to avert us from addressing the problem, a scientific fact and one that is harming our way of life.

PlantsNeedCO2.org is registered to Quintana Minerals Corp. which provides oil and gas exploration services to the energy sector. Spokesman H. Leighton Steward is a director at EOG Resources, an oil and gas company, and former chair of the U.S. Oil and Gas Associa-tion. A member of "Big Oil," this advertising ploy seems to be an effort to protect record profits of the oil industry by derailing clean energy legislation.

This kind of advertising, along with a profusion of mean and absurd mendacities these days, is insulting. It is on a par with the furious "tea party" participant who screamed at a congressman, "Keep your government hands off my Medicare." Get real; we must all be responsible to recognize ridiculous lies and half-truths. Urge your congres-sional representative to pass legislation to make our planet cleaner and provide thereby more jobs and a cleaner world for our children. And don't be fooled - even some of the time.

Pat Bradley P.O. Box 272 Twin Bridges