Coal company cares about asthma-related bullying—not

At first glance, it looks like a fossil-fuel company is embarking on yet-another public-relations campaign to improve its image.

Today (May 10), a news release attributed to Missouri-based Peabody Energy, which describes itself as the “world’s largest private-sector coal company”, announced the launch of a campaign to fight the stigma of asthma among American kids.

The Coal Cares initiative appears to offer free inhalers—available in Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, Twilight, Dora the Explorer, and other designs—to kids living within 200 miles of a coal plant.

A website associated with the campaign explains:

We at Peabody want to make Asthma-Related Bullying (ARB) a thing of the past. Studies have shown that ARB unnecessarily burdens our children with traumas they may never outgrow, and that may influence them to develop in ways we wouldn’t like. Studies have also shown that the single best way to reduce the stigma of childhood asthma, and therefore stop ARB, is simply to make inhalers cool.

Of course, Coal Cares is a hoax, and an amusing one at that—unless you work in Peabody’s PR department.

A group calling itself Coal is Killing Kids has claimed responsibility for the spoof, revealing it to be the latest Yes Men-inspired media stunt.

Check out this tongue-in-cheek attack on solar energy on the Coal Cares site:

So-called “solar energy,” on the other hand, 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.

The real Peabody Energy responded today with a spoof-worthy statement that said, in part:

Peabody is proud to help hundreds of millions of people live longer and better through coal-fueled electricity. A growing collection of studies demonstrate the correlation between electricity fueled by low-cost coal and improvement in health, longevity and quality of life. The United Nations has linked life expectancy, educational attainment and income with per-capita electricity use, and the World Resources Institute found that for every 10-fold increase in per-capita energy use, individuals live 10 years longer.

In March, Enbridge was the target of a similar hoax called MyHairCares that made it appear that the Calgary-based oil-pipeline company was planning to use human hair to clean up spills.

You can follow Stephen Hui on Twitter at twitter.com/stephenhui.