Greenpeace's Freudian Eco-Slip

Before President Bush touched down in Pennsylvania Wednesday to promote his nuclear energy policy, the environmental group Greenpeace was mobilizing.

"This volatile and dangerous source of energy" is no answer to the country's energy needs, shouted a Greenpeace fact sheet decrying the "threat" posed by the Limerick reactors Bush visited.

But a factoid or two later, the Greenpeace authors were stumped while searching for the ideal menacing metaphor.

We present it here exactly as it was written, capital letters and all: "In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]."

Had Greenpeace been hacked by a nuke-loving Bush fan? Or was this proof of Greenpeace fear-mongering?

The aghast Greenpeace spokesman who issued the memo, Steve Smith, said a colleague was making a joke by inserting the language in a draft that was then mistakenly released.

"Given the seriousness of the issue at hand, I don't even think it's funny," Smith said.

The final version did not mention Armageddon. It just warned of plane crashes and reactor meltdowns.

I'm sure you're all as shocked as I am. Or maybe not...

Thanks to Radley Balko for the pointer.

UPDATE: Looks like the word is getting out, as the Competitive Enterprise Institute blog, Open Market, has picked up on this news too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More blogs are picking this up, including Instapundit (that'll leave a mark). And here's a post from HolyCoast.com. Texas Rainmaker noticed too. And here's another one.

ANOTHER UPDATE: And the hits keep coming! Click here, here, here, here and here. And don't miss takes from Coyote Blog, The Consumerist, As Far as I Have Gone and Nick Schweitzer.

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Environment, Energy, Politics, Technology, Economics, President Bush, Exelon, Greenpeace

Comments

Anonymous said…

BFD ... I'm sure the nuclear industry makes plenty of pithy comments in its internal drafts that are never meant for the public eye.

May 31, 2006 at 6:03 PM

Brian Mays said…

But it's so darn funny. It's nice to find out that someone in Greenpeace has a sense of humor -- although apparently, it's not Steve Smith. It doesn't seem like Anonymous has much of a sense of humor either.

June 1, 2006 at 7:59 AM

Matthew66 said…

The draft memo strikes me as having been written by a particularly cynical employee, perhaps one that is not a "true believer" in the Greenpeace cause. Plenty of people take jobs with employers whose policies they don't support. Usually the incentive is a paycheck. I would advise the author of the memo to jump ship before s/he is pushed.

June 1, 2006 at 2:24 PM

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