Environmental News: Media Center

WASHINGTON, D.C.(September 23, 2010) -- In a counter-advertising campaign launched today, NRDC satirizes the API (American Petroleum Institute) for running recent ads depicting "real people" railing against taxes on the energy industry. In fact, API and its members are desperately trying to escape accountability as the Environmental Protection Agency moves to implement Clean Air Act provisions to further protect public health by restricting toxic pollution from thousands of industrial plants while reducing global warming pollution.

In anticipation of those EPA actions, the API has even sponsored grassroots “rallies” that, as it turned out, were composed of oil and gas industry workers bused in from nearby plants (as the Akron Beacon reported: “Some say they were forced to attend.”).

Such ploys reflect API’s recognition that the public is not on their side. As an NRDC poll released last week found, 72 percent of Americans “strongly” or “somewhat” support EPA’s authority to “take steps that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from electric utilities and other major industrial polluters.”

NRDC’s new video appears on Politico’s website today, and will run on the Daily Show and Colbert Report websites next week.

For more information on the ad go to:  Turning the Tables on Big Oil's Phony "Real People" Ads