TIGblogs - Richard Graves

Front Groups.

You know - the groups that are usually paid by industry to pretend that they are somehow “fair and balanced”, and present some “neutral” perspective on an issue that JUST SO HAPPENS to reflect what industry wants? Groups that try to portray themselves as representing a certain constituency or set of views while really working to undermine and disrupt genuine social movements? Most people know not to trust Exxon Mobil on questions of global warming, but do they know not to trust the Competitive Enterprise Institute? (funded by Exxon)

There is no shortage of such groups -from the Center for Consumer Freedom (front for Big Tobacco), to the Global Climate Coalition (funded by oil/gas), to the Wise-Use Movement (logging/timber interests), to everyone’s favorite - Americans For Balanced Energy Choices (the big coal industry front group). Thankfully, we’ve got great allies in SourceWatch - who have been exposing front groups and industry lies on all sorts of issues.

But if industry creates these fake “environmental” groups all the time, why can’t we create a fake “industry” group ourselves?

Today Greenpeace infiltrated the CoalUSA conference in New York using just such a tactic.

A new industry group called the “Institute for Energy Solutions” wanted to co-sponsor the conference - Coal USA accepted. Little did they know that Greenpeace was behind this fake industry group. Not only did the IES’ logo and website URL (www.tomorrowsenergytoday.org) get all over the official program and conference materials, they also were given passes and a booth inside the conference. But while last week the website was simply a dull list of coal and utility companies, today the website suddenly redirected visitors to www.coal-is-dirty.com!

Not only did the website suddenly change, exposing the true intentions of this new front group - but the booth set up inside was staffed by some charming activists (err, Public Relations flacks) who countered the coal-loving chorus in the room. They handed out asthma inhalers to the crowd with the label “Coal–takes my breath away!”, had beautiful gift baskets of coal, gave out free water samples from coal mining regions, and great information about the truths behind coal’s destructive story.

Keep up with the action live on the Greenpeace blog where “delegates” from the conference will be keeping up to date the actions going underway at CoalUSA.