Lorax: I Speak for the Trees, Not for LoraxAG!

by Chris Santiago · 2010-02-08 14:15:00 UTC
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What rhymes with "cease and desist"? Can't think of anything? Maybe that's why the folks at LoraxAG have suddenly gotten so quiet. (Go ahead, try their URL.)

A so-called "green coal" start-up based in Marlborough, Mass., LoraxAG recently found itself slapped with a cease-and-desist letter from Dr. Seuss Enterprises. Why? Well, besides the fact that coal goes against everything the Lorax stands for, the geniuses at LoraxAG never got around to asking for permission to use the name. Yoink!

LoraxAG is just the latest — and arguably most flagrant — example of greenwashing coming out of the coal world. But no matter how many times lobbyists, or the lawmakers they've cozied up to, claim coal is clean, it just ain't.

LoraxAG, for example, proposes to buy "garbage coal," or the high-sulfur stuff that is too toxic for standard processes, and convert it to synthetic gas. "We think this is the greenest use of coal," LoraxAG president Mike Farina claimed in an interview with Mass High Tech.

But as the Wonk Room points out, the greenest way to use coal is to keep it in the ground. 

It's pretty safe to say where LoraxAG's little experiment in copyright violation is headed. On the other hand, the battle to define "clean coal" is just heating up. Contact your representatives today to not to support the expansion of coal power, whatever it calls itself.

Photo credit: Hot Rod Homepage

Chris Santiago is a freelance writer and editor. He most recently worked at McGraw-Hill and "got green" at Oberlin College.
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