Andrew Morris posted yesterday for the organization started by Lois Gibbs of Love Canal fame, the Center for Health, Environment & Justice (CHEJ), Disney Finally Backs Down from Pro-fracking Collabertation with Oil and Gas Industry,

Radio Disney finally backed down from its pro-fracking school tour this week after a petition on CREDO Mobilize reached its goal of 75,000 signatures calling on Disney to cease its public support of the fracking industry. Pressure on Disney also came from groups like the Sierra Club, which called on its supporters to create mash-ups of Disney movies with oil and gas jargon.

In a statement to the Northeast Ohio Media Group, Disney said: “The sole intent of the collaboration between Radio Disney and the nonprofit Rocking in Ohio educational initiative was to foster kids’ interest in science and technology. Having been inadvertently drawn into a debate that has no connection with this goal, Radio Disney has decided to withdraw from the few remaining installments of the program.”

According to Ohio’s The Daily Caller, “Radio Disney of Cleveland and its road crew promoted the Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program, with games pitting all ages of children vs. their peers and even families vs. families and dads trying to beat other dads in a variety of challenges. All the challenges, except perhaps the dads’ dance competition, related back to the science behind oil and gas production and their value as natural resources.”

According to the Daily Caller, “one of the challenges was ˜literally creating our own pipeline,’ Jag [one of the event’s radio hosts] said, using balls and tubing to demonstrate how we get oil and gas to your home.” As contestants shot balls through the “pipeline” to end up in colored pails at the other end, Jag encouraged the audience, “Cheer these guys on like crazy.”

The Center for Environment, Health and Justice’s own Teresa Mills, in a letter to Radio Disney, called the collaboration “just wrong”.

“Drilling is not the best thing Disney could be enlightening our children on,” Mills wrote. “Disney is supposed to be about fairy tales and dreamland, not about oil and gas.”

Disney had already made 26 stops across Ohio, according to Peter Moskowitz for Al Jazeera 9 January 2014, Radio Disney’s pro-fracking elementary school tour sparks outrage.

The program, called Rocking in Ohio, went on a 26-stop tour of elementary schools and science centers across the state last month. It involves interactive demonstrations of how oil and gas pipelines work, and is led by three staffers from Radio Disney’s Cleveland branch. It is entirely funded by the Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Education Program (OOGEEP), which gets its money from oil and gas companies….

OOGEEP pointed out in local media that the word “fracking” is never used during the demonstrations.

This is far from the first education program started by OOGEEP, which was founded in 1998 and has reached 100,000 students with its outreach initiatives, according to the organization’s website.

OOGEEP also claimed “Our country cannot survive without oil and gas,” which is no longer true, now that solar power is cheaper than any other source.

And what other fracking “education” is Disney doing?

-jsq

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