3 Coloring Books That Are Brainwashing Your Kids

Child abuse? Oil companies think kids want to color a weird world of dancing smoke stacks and violently cheerful smog clouds.

By Madison Kotack

December 9, 2014

Petroleum Play

Photo of Petroleum Play by Madison Kotack.

Coloring books are used widely by early childhood educators and parents. The benefits of coloring books are obvious: they don’t have zombifying digital screens, they’re better than most babysitters at occupying a child (and they probably won’t teach them how to turn their t-shirt into a belly top), they can positively shape kids’ world views, and kids love them. If you have young children, a refrigerator, and magnets, you already know these things.

What you might not know is that due to the fracking revolution there are 485 active/new oil and gas wells within 1 mile of a school. As oil and gas developments get closer to kids, respiratory and skin symptoms get higher; when they’re closer to moms, birth defects increase. Yikes.

Instead of cleaning up their acts, unfortunately, some oil companies have hit on a new way to acclimatize kids to oil and gas. What better way to sneak into a kid’s subconscious than with the trusted coloring book?

Color in your dancing smokestacks and then go slurp up some arsenic-polluted frack water from the drinking fountain.

1.) Chevron's Richmond Oil Refinery Kid's Brochure (2014)

Chevron's Richmond Oil Refinery Kid's Brochure

It’s hard stay mad at Chevron’s Richmond oil refinery for its inadequate pollution control and sub-par public safety when they’ve got such a cute bus.

Chevron's Richmond Oil Refinery Kid's Brochure

It's true, the Richmond Refinery is a lot different: These smoke stacks just want to dance, not give your kids asthma or other respiratory-related illnesses.

Chevron's Richmond Oil Refinery Kid's Brochure

If jailing smog makers is the goal, why does Chevron oppose California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which puts half-a-million-vehicles-worth of smog makers in jail?

2.) Talisman Terry's Energy Adventure (2011)

Talisman Terry, your friendly fracosaurus, wants to brainwash your children

Talisman Energy "racked up more violations (238) than any other driller," (like a 21,000-gallon fracking fluid spill a couple years ago), but Talisman Terry, your friendly fracosaurus, promises a clean and safe energy adventure.

Talisman Terry, your friendly fracosaurus, wants to brainwash your children

Fracking creates more rainbows; that's the only difference we can see. It is just like the National Geographic's photo of a post-fracking rainbow.

Talisman Terry, your friendly fracosaurus, wants to brainwash your children

Natural gas: The carnival of your dreams.

3.) Petroleum Play (2002)

"Petroleum Play," an activity book from the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board

We are hoping this is the only time these words have been used in a sentence together.

Petroleum Play, Alberta Oil and Gas Coloring Book

"Conserve energy? Hey, I don't even know how to drive yet!" Yeah, putting on a sweater when it's chilly and turning off the lights when you leave a room is comparable to rocket science, Conservation Kid.

Petroleum Play, Alberta Oil and Gas Coloring Book

No one makes Sedimentary Sandwiches quite like Mother Earth.

Petroleum Play, Alberta Oil and Gas Coloring Book

"..it's more expensive to go over hills, cross rivers...Try not to put your pipeline through farms or recreational areas." But if you must, we will find a way.

Want more? Check out Stephen Colbert's "Anti-Frack Attacks," where he calls out Talisman Terry for "encouraging us to use the remains of his own dead relatives to heat our homes," and reveals a few hilarious bonus pages. 

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