In typical fashion, the energy industry is attempting to crush any promotion of renewable energy, even if it means engaging in a battle over pumpkin carving.
Both the Department of Energy (DOE) and the American Petroleum Institute (API) are marketing to trick-or-treaters and their parents this Halloween by advertising through pumpkin carving ideas, according to The Hill.
This month, the DOE celebrated “Energyween” by releasing some energy-themed pumpkin carving ideas featuring, among others, an energy-saving light bulb and a wind turbine. October is also National Energy Action Month, which urges people to think about ways to save energy at home.
The API seemed to take offense to the renewable energy-themed campaign, and wrote the following blog post on the Energy Tomorrow Blog:
With colder weather creeping across the country, we think of the energy the U.S. oil and natural gas industry is providing for Americans’ lives, including heating homes and businesses. So when the Energy Department blog highlighted ways to “energize your neighborhood” with a series of energy-themed pumpkin stencils in time for Halloween – but didn’t include any for the sources of 62 percent of the energy Americans use – we thought maybe it was some kind of holiday trick.
The American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade association for the oil and gas industry, doesn’t even want families to think about alternative energy sources during National Energy Action Month. The DOE’s renewable energy pumpkin patterns mattered so much to the API that they decided to release their own set of patterns.
API’s blog post includes a set of “High Energy” pumpkin stencils including a barrel of crude, a drop of oil, and an American flag. Because all good Americans should hate the environment. The stencils also feature clever one-liners advocating the nation’s use of crude oil and natural gas, and touting the notion that the US may soon become “the world’s number one oil and natural gas producer.”
Never mind that the industry and its lobbyists have been preventing research and implementation of cleaner energy sources for decades, or that natural gas extraction is poisoning water tables and land across the country. Or the fact that US energy companies are struggling to find uses for the excessive surplus of gas that has depressed domestic prices and “spawned wide-ranging efforts to find new markets for the cheap fuel,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Instead of progressing as a society, and teaching our children innovation, let’s revel in our use of dirty energy sources, and be proud of the fact that we are destroying the environment that sustains us for future generations.
Despite the absurdity of the API’s response to the DOE’s Energy Action Month, it’s true that the powerful lobbying group is only doing its job. It’s a job that we and our government have allowed it to keep for decades, because the energy industry big business. And, unfortunately for us, they’ve been quite successful.
Pumpkin pattern via: energy.gov
Alisha is a writer and researcher with Ring of Fire. Follow her on Twitter @childoftheearth.
