From Reuters:
A little girl blows away dandelion fluff as an announcer says, “Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution; we call it life,” in an advertisement targeting global warming “alarmists,” especially Al Gore.
The television ads, screened for the press on Wednesday and set to air in 14 U.S. cities starting on Thursday, are part of a campaign by the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute to counter a media spotlight on threats posed by worldwide climate change.
The spots are timed to precede next week’s theatrical release of “An Inconvenient Truth,” a documentary film on global warming that features Gore, the former vice president and Democratic presidential candidate.
Fred Smith, president of the institute, a lobbying group closely allied to the Bush administration that stresses limited government regulation and a free-market approach to environmental issues, said he had seen the film and found it “very alarmist,” although well-produced.
“There’s a lot of pictures of Al Gore pensively looking into the sunset,” Smith said. “I don’t think he’s running for president, but he might be running for arch-druid.”
View the ads here.
According to SourceWatch.org, Coca-Cola, Exxon Mobil, Ford, Pfizer, Phillip Morris and Texaco have all contributed, at one time or another, more than $10,000 to the CEI. Maybe they’re just big fans of Carbon Dioxide.
