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Update: Peabody Punked by Fake 'Coal Cares' Asthma Site

This article is more than 10 years old.

Peabody Energy, the world's largest coal company, is not, repeat, NOT, giving kids free asthma inhalers decorated with pictures of Justin Beiber, My Little Pony or Miley Cyrus.  The Coal Cares™ Website unveiled today, promising free inhaler actuators to children living within a 200-mile radius of a coal plant (and a $10 coupon toward the purchase of asthma medicine) claims to be sponsored by Peabody.

"There’s even 'My First Inhaler' for tots," according to a press release attributed to Peabody.

"It's a hoax," Peabody spokesperson, Meg Gallagher, confirmed by telephone this morning.

Despite the slick flash graphics, the Coal Cares™ Website is clearly satire with a bite, although no group has claimed responsibility for the site.

UPDATE: I received this press release from the group taking responsibility for the Website:

The Coal Cares™ hoax was devised by a group called Coal is Killing Kids (CKK), a small environmental and public health group that aims to challenge Big Coal’s expensive lobbying against sensible updates to the Clean Air Act. “We don’t have their millions, but we do have a knack for incredibly tasteless jokes,” said Veronica Tomlinson, a pediatrician and member of CKK. CKK worked with the Yes Lab, which is a project of The Yes Men to help activist groups carry out media-savvy creative actions on their own.

End Update

The custom-branded Puff-Puff™ inhalers and their tag-lines should be a dead giveaway (pardon the pun). The caption below the Harry Potter inhaler, for example, reads, "Accio breath-o!"

Hmm...sound a bit suspicious?

And then there are the mock attacks on "clean" energy. (Quotation marks in the original.)

So-called “solar energy” ... refers to the direct use of the violent fusion reactions occurring deep within our nearest star. As you might expect, this kind of “solar energy” naturally comes with a host of dangers that coal’s million-year buffering is designed to avoid. Some scientists refer to so-called “solar energy” as “mainlining the sun”—and it doesn’t take an Einstein to see an overdose looming.

Beneath a picture showing a flock of seagulls flying into the blades of a wind turbine, the parody site points out:

Wind turbines can kill up to 70,000 birds per year, or 4.27 birds per turbine per year. Coal particulate pollution, on the other hand, kills fewer than 13,000 people per year.

How could anyone think this parody could fly? Maybe because previous campaigns by the coal industry (not Peabody per se) are almost as ridiculous.

Who can forget the Clean Coal Carolers?

Or the coloring book, Let's Learn About Coal!, by Friends of Coal.

You can find more of these "treasures" here. Don't miss the ringtones!

Campaigns like these invite parody.






Here's a classic short video made by Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan.