Former VP Al Gore  has just enjoyed a 20-year ride becoming a carbon credit billionaire off the fraud of global warming.   Since Climate-gate, that cash cow isn't going to be milking as much anymore, it's on to the next great thing!

Gore is now entering the "clean water" zone, sponsored by .....Big Chemical.

Dow Chemical is sponsoring "Live Earth" activities around the world as it now seeks to reconstruct itself as a good, clean citizen of the world with the "blessings" of Al Gore, who accepted Dow's sponsorship check.

Oh, the irony.

Dow Chemical, for decades a notorious polluter, bought Union Carbide, another polluter, which had owned a pesticide plant which blew up in Bhopal, India in 1984.  The purchase was seen as a legal "dodge" for Union Carbide, as Dow refused to accept responsibility for the mess. At least 20,000 died immediately from poisoning from the explosion. Hundreds of thousands are still forced to drink polluted water-leavings. The citizenry still suffers birth defects and brain damage.  Almost 30 years later, whatever poison-stew it is still sits on the ground in Bhopal while arguments continue over who is to blame and what to do.  Settlements have been minimal.

There is also Dow's home town of Saginaw, Michigan where you still shouldn't eat the fish, or touch the water or the mud in the Saginaw river.  "Good citizen" Dow dumped so much cancer-causing dioxin for a century, the river, and some of its tributaries, are an EPA Super-fund site. There has long been concern that the toxins have flowed from Saginaw Bay into water sources for the Chicago area.  The current EPA schedule has the cleanup concluding in the year 2086.

It gets more ironic.

In a freakish (or cynical) attempt to resurrect its image, Dow Chemical has been sponsoring a walleye fishing tournament in the Tittawabassee river near Saginaw in recent years.  The company sells fishing hats which are printed with "Dioxins, My A--." It then donates the contaminated catch to the poor.

Meanwhile, Dow Chemical's plant in Norco, Louisiana just this past week expelled a cloud of poisonous titanium tetrachloride, which caused evacuations of nearby residents and closed schools.



 

Read more about Dow Chemical's "Toxic Century" here.

See pictures of Bhopal gas tragedy here.

The hypocrisy of Dow "going green" is causing angst in the eco-nut ranks, but the only ones complaining are those who apparently aren't getting paid by Dow.

 Amnesty International tried unsuccessfully to "shame" Live Earth to back off the Dow-bucks. 

But GreenPeace, which has articles on its own website criticizing Dow Chemical for the Bhopal and Michigan disasters, won't say anything critical at all about Live Earth. In past years, GreenPeace has criticized such Live Earth sponsors as Daimler-Chrysler for their polluting ways. Why the silence about Live Earth now, GP?  GreenPeace is also involved in the event, which certainly must mean it also enjoying Dow Chemical buck$.

Why is Dow Chemical suddenly so "interested" in clean water after decades of destroying drinking supplies around the world and denying it?

UK Independent:

"Dow has branched into water purification technologies in recent years. Campaigners claim the sponsorship deal is part of its wider strategy to exploit business opportunities in water scarcity. Tim Edwards from the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal said: "This is categorically a green-washing exercise. It is one plank of Dow's Human Element campaign which started in 2006 to clean up their image by marketing themselves as a sustainable, environmental, caring company and repair the damage caused by scandals such as Bhopal."