Back then the greenwashing campaign faced protests from environmental organizations such as Klimax and Greenpeace. And last week the “Yellow Army Fraction” liberated 44 of these yellow plastic men from one of Vattenfall’s offices in Sweden:

“Yellow plastic figures has been Vattenfall’s way to try fool the public that they’re actually doing something about the climate change other than pollution through large scale coal fire power plants. What they didn’t take into consideration was the fact that the figures would come alive and organize! Today the Yellow Army Fraction liberated 44 of their fellows in their struggle to crush Vattenfall and their dirty industry and saving the planet in the process. No more coal!”

Watch the liberation:

Their website: http://autonomarotter.net

If you live in northern Europe you might have heard about a new “climate manifesto” from Vattenfall, Europe’s third-largest energy company which is wholly owned by the Swedish government.

With this “climate manifesto” Vattenfall is a trying to influence politicians and governments to put a global price on CO2 emissions, support (read financial support) climate friendly technologies and implement climate requirements for products. It all sounds good but this is just another greenwashing campaign from a dirty energy company.

Vattenfall (Swedish for waterfall) is a company that owns 20 coal powered plants around Europe (none in Sweden), three of them are the dirtiest in Europe.

And even when we face a man-made climate crisis beyond our wildest dreams Vattenfall is still investing more money into fossil fuels such as coal, which is alone responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. They are currently building a new coal plant outside of Hamburg in Germany that once completed will become the biggest in Europe.

And during the last two years Vattenfall have invested nearly 400% more money in fossil fuels, such as nuclear energy and coal, than in renewable energy sources. As a result Vattenfall last year released more greenhouse gases than all of Sweden combined (85 million tons compared to Swedens 55 million tons).

And now their “climate manifesto” is facing protests from environmental organisations. Greenpeace in Sweden is for example encouraging people to send in a new and more honest version of Vattenfall and its logo.

And the Swedish climate group Klimax (Climax), known in Sweden for their campaigns against private motorism, the aviation and meat industry last week blocked the entrance to Vattenfall’s head office. The protestors demanded that Vattenfall should stop its latest greenwashing campaign and end their investments in dirty coal.

If Vattenfall cares so much about the current climate crisis why don’t they just reduce their investments in dirty fossil fuels, close their coal plants and invest more in clean renewable energy? And why try a cheap greenwashing gimmick to influence politicians? After all, they are already owned by the Swedish government.

Photo credit: Photo Mojo

John McCain, the Republican Presidential candidate, who failed to mention climate change in his acceptance speech, who picked a climate change denier as his running mate, who won’t regulate greenhouse gases, whose energy plan is mainly about offshore drilling and nuclear energy is continuing on his failed environmental and energy trail.

While campaigning in coal-rich Pennsylvania, the Washington Post reports, McCain promised he is a “coal booster” and that he would encourage the export of coal to other countries. He also claimed that coal will “create hundreds of thousands of jobs”.

“My friends, you know what Senator Obama said about a year ago, he said he had not been a, quote, coal booster,” he said, as the crowd booed. “My friends, I’ve been a coal booster and it’s going to create jobs, and we’re going to export coal to other countries and we are going to create hundreds of thousands of jobs. That’s going to help restore the economy of the great state of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”

In reality coal exports in USA is just a tiny little part of the coal industry. According to the Energy Information Administration, only 2 percent of the coal was exported from USA in 2007. And the coal industry hasn’t had “hundreds of thousands of jobs” since the 1950s. Now the coal industry only employ about 80 000 people. And that sum is likely not to go up.

Dan Weiss, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, said that “U.S. coal exports is a way for the U.S. to export global warming pollution,” and that “instead, we should be exporting wind and solar technology.”

But McCain and his fellow Republicans don’t care about common sense and they are now making so called robocalls in Pennsylvania and other coal-producing states around the U.S. warning that Barack Obama would “bankrupt the coal industry”.

The Climate Progress blog has a nice piece about this that I think you should read:

“Ironically, only the coal industry (and its conservative allies) can bankrupt the coal industry, by continuing to stick its head in the ground and not support funding an aggressive effort to see if carbon capture and storage can work.”

Today you will be able to choose if you want four more years of the same failed politics from George Bush and the Republican Party, or if you want some well-needed change and a way in the right direction for USA and the world. Make your vote count!

“Did you notice the ads after last night’s presidential debate? ABC had Chevron. CBS had Exxon. CNN had the coal lobby. But you know what happened last week? ABC refused to run our Repower America ad — the ad that takes on this same oil and coal lobby”, said Cathy Zoi, CEO of the We Campaign, in an email newsletter to the campaigns member two days ago.

ABC is still, after more than two days, refusing to say or even respond to the We Campaign about why they won’t run the Repower America ad.

“As our country faces deep economic problems, we need to be able to have an honest debate about the root causes of our problems. As Al Gore has said, “We’re borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the future of human civilization. And every bit of that has to change. As oil and coal backed groups outspend even major party committees in this political year, it’s outrageous that ABC would deny our ad”, said Cathy Zoi.

In response to the refusal the We Campaign launched an online petition site to make ABC change their mind. In just 24 hours over 100,000 have signed it and sent messages to ABC in support of the Repower America ad.