(What kid wouldn’t want asthma if it means getting a free Dora the Explorer inhaler? – promoted by eli_beckerman)

Every now and then I sit down to write a parody, only to find out it has already been written. Sometimes by the very group I intended to parody! But this latest initiative of the group Coal is Killing Kids and the Yes Men portraying the coal industry as seeking to reach out to American youngsters with asthma “to help them keep their heads high” so surpasses what I could have ever have imagined that it literally takes my breath away.

Peabody Energy (formerly Peabody Coal) is depicted offering free cartoon-character-decorated inhalers to children living within 200 miles of a coal-fired power plant, plus an entire $10 towards the life-time cost of the inhaler medicine the kids now require thanks to the coal plant’s emissions.

In this alternate cartoon universe, the coal industry demonstrates its concern for those who are suffering asthmatic reactions not by cleaning up its act but by offering a one-time remedy for a chronic disease!

Back in the real universe, however, their actions are even worse.  

The coal industry’s response to the hoax site is to   deny there’s even a problem!   Coal, it claims, leads to improvements in public health.

Too bad science backs up the claims of the hoax site and not the real one.

As the physicist Rabi once said, “nothing is so sad as to see a beautiful theory mugged by a gang of ugly facts.”

Guess we all better sit down and take a deep breath, before the coal industry makes life even better. Savor those breaths while you can!