Fossil Fool's Weekly
Late last night volunteers with Portland Rising Tide blasted the city with over 3,000 fake newspaper covers wrapping the Willamette Week. With content including an interview with Bigfoot about pipeline plans through Mt. Hood and a chart explaining the Columbia River Crossing project as understood by Glen Beck. The action was part of Fossil Fools Day, a national day-of-action with the tag-line, “Pull a prank that packs a punch” meant to inspire playful actions targeting the fossil fuel industry.
The action was pulled off to provide light-hearted education to the public and simultaneously call out those corporations and projects that have been using an elaborate public relations campaign to “green” their image.
Ryan Caraway with Portland Rising Tide explained the action, “Our region is threatened by a number of projects
that would increase our dependency on fossil fuels as well as threaten some of the most pristine areas left in this country. Unfortunately, we feel that we don’t see enough critical media surrounding these issues and we wanted to change that – at least for one night.”
Portlanders decided to heavily target NW Natural for their foolish plan to rip through hundreds of rivers and streams, rural farms and Mt. Hood National Forest. While the company has spent millions to project an image of climate leadership and environmental stewardship, the company is aggressively pursuing the Palomar pipeline and Liquefied Natural Gas development.
Some of the articles included headlines activists would like to see, such as NW Natural canceling their plans for the Palomar pipeline. While others were of a more humorous nature, such as an interview with Bigfoot, who is angry because the Palomar pipeline project would require a huge clear-cut through Mt. Hood National Forest.
In addition to targeting NW Natural, other targets included: the Columbia River Crossing project, PGE’s coal fired Boardman power plant, and Chinook Ventures, a controversial petroleum coke processing plant located in Washington.
As one volunteer placed the fake cover into the display window of the newspaper box she playfully sighed, “Finally, news I can trust”.
If you can’t use the display above you can download a PDF file here. (If you can’t read PDFs, download the free Adobe Reader!)