Hard realities like these have posed a challenge to the highly paid spin doctors employed by the extractive industries, the ones who had grown accustomed to being able to gloss over pretty much any controversy with sleek advertising showing blond children running through fields and multiracial actors in lab coats expressing concern about the environment. These days that doesn’t cut it. No matter how many millions are spent on advertising campaigns touting the modernity of the tar sands or the cleanliness of natural gas, it’s clear that a great many people are no longer being persuaded.
