The fossil fuel development industry has no shame when it comes to promoting their agenda. They will exploit every human need to feed their greed.
A cornerstone of their strategy has always been how good their industry is for jobs and the economy. But why stop there? Why not take advantage of another abundant natural resource: the boundless optimism and energy of American youth?
Why not give high school students an opportunity to use their innate desire and talents for making videos of themselves to serve the petroleum industry? And who better to target for this effort than students whose desire for higher education is suddenly at odds with the reality of assuming a lifetime of college debt?
It's a genius idea, really. Truly Don Draperesque. I bet somebody got a nice bonus or promotion for this one.
©2014 Rob Rogers/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Reprinted with permission.
No matter how much your parents have saved for you to attend college, the costs are still astronomical. Worse, most college financing arrangements are rigged to put a student in debt no matter what happens. That's because always included in college financial aid awards, no matter how generous, is the "student responsibility" component, aka student loans and work-study.
So finding scholarship and grant money is more important than ever.
And with enough time and patience, you can find quite a few of these if you are willing to look beyond the online scholarship-finding services. However, not all scholarships are created equal.
Many are mere shams set up to collect personal information so they can market to you. Those are pretty obvious to spot, so you can easily just skip them. But others have more insidious hidden agendas.
A prime example is a creepy way to enlist students desperate for college funds to collude with the climate change drivers who are destroying their world. It's a scholarship contest called "Think Positive Be Positive" sponsored by a greenwashing agency oxymoronically called the US Environmental Petroleum Education Council. To enter this "no-essay" scholarship contest, students simply create a short video about how things are improving for the environment.
The idea is to get young people to provide free original video material that the greenwashers can then use for a TV ad to promote fossil fuel development and use. See, everybody? Young people think the environment is doing just fine! Now go gas up the SUV!
This is particularly heinous because the agency awarding the scholarship has absolutely NO interest in supporting a student's future, but instead, every intention of destroying it. Luring the students into contributing to their evil plans with scholarship money is as ugly as offering food to hungry children and then selling them as sex slaves.
It's sneaky, despicable and unsurprising.
Watch their cheesy 2.5 minute video promoting the scholarship here.
I hope every entrant makes their video about how we must continue to fight fossil fuel development and instead promote green energy use. Nobody will win the scholarship (if it even exists), but at least it might send a message.
Just in case they really care about what young people think.