Greenpeace Just Kidding About Armageddon (from the Washington Post)

Friday, June 2, 2006; Page A17

The environmental activist group Greenpeace wanted to be prepared to counter President Bush's visit last week to Pennsylvania to promote his nuclear energy policy.

"This volatile and dangerous source of energy" is no answer to the country's energy needs, shouted a Greenpeace fact sheet, decrying the "threat" posed by the reactors Bush visited in Limerick.

But after that assertion, the Greenpeace authors were apparently stumped while searching for the ideal menacing metaphor.

"In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly [FILL IN ALARMIST AND ARMAGEDDONIST FACTOID HERE]," the sheet said.

The Greenpeace spokesman who issued the memo, Steve Smith, told the Web site that a colleague was making a joke in a draft that was then mistakenly released.

The final version did not mention Armageddon; instead it warned of plane crashes and reactor meltdowns.

PLANE CRASHES???????

This is just the sort of thing that tugs at the CC’s heart – smug, self-righteous young liberals stymied by their own ignorance and a complete lack of real data. Let’s help them out by supplying some alarmist factoids:

"In the twenty years since the Chernobyl tragedy, the world's worst nuclear accident, there have been nearly –

a dozen movies starring Adam Sandler

over 130 million issues of National Geographic printed and mailed – where are all the old ones going?

six Windows operating systems – all of which can crash!

two hundred reality TV shows

three million hours of Paris Hilton footage filmed

a kajillion Harry Potter books and spinoffs

zero meltdowns or serious accidents at US nuclear power plants

Have some of your own? Post away in the comments.