Here’s a piece found recently that DeSmogBlog readers might be interested in.

It’s from a primarily politically focused blog, also based here in British Columbia, and it’s a scathing critique of Americans for Balanced Energy Choices and their use of children in their PR, spouting off misleading facts about the coal industry. The author did some digging and

It turns out that “Americans for Balanced Energy Choices” (ABEC) who pays for these ads and runs the website in question is nothing but an astroturf front group for the coal industry trade organization Center for Energy and Economic Development (CEED). Even though it claims to be “non-partisan” ABEC‘s president Stephen Miller is a registered lobbyist for coal-related industries and its executive director Joe Lucas used to work for the Kentucky Department of Mines and Minerals (a state with an abysmal record when it comes to pollution control). Lucas actively lobbied to subvert the Clean Air Act during the first Bush administration and then went on to be a shill for the Center for Energy and Economic Development, another front group that lobbied to promote the interests of coal-fired power plants. Non-partisan, my ass!

The ABEC website really is fairly appalling. Be prepared to feel sorry for the poor children it exploits who will one day grow up to realize that they were used as spin-doctors for the unethical money-grubbers in the coal lobby. Hardly seems fair, does it?