There are some semi-humorous videos running around the Internet from a group called the Environmental Policy Alliance, a project of the Center for Organizational Research and Education. The organization is supposedly “devoted to uncovering the funding and hidden agendas behind environmental activist groups and exploring the intersection between activists and government agencies.”

Environmental Policy Institute ad opposing local control in Colorado. Click to enlarge

But the group is really a front for pro-drilling interests that want to turn public opinion against those who seek to stop uncontrolled oil and gas drilling. It’s the brainchild of Washington, DC attorney and lobbyist Rick Berman, once called “Dr. Evil” by CBS News.

Under the umbrella of the Center for Organizational Research, the group has launched advertising efforts aimed at discrediting the EPA, challenging the validity of the US Green Building Council’s rating system for sustainability and efficiency of buildings, and mocking local residents who seek to control oil and gas drilling in their communities.

One of the key tactics of the group is to manufacture doubt about scientific issues and creating confusion through the media. In the case of oil and gas drilling, that means citing as sources such groups as two well-known climate change-denying organizations, the Heartland Institute and the George C. Marshall Institute.

Here are two of their videos. You’re permitted a small smile of amusement, but then you should think of what the oil and gas industry is funding here. They want to depict those who are concerned about protecting their property, their water, and their way of life — that means you — as superficial, self-centered idiots who have no interest other than to derail job growth based on made up fears about safety and the environment.

Videos removed for now. They’ll be back.

If they spent the same money that they used to create these ads on utilizing industry-standard best practices in the communities they are ravaging, perhaps they wouldn’t find themselves at war with people from Texas to Pennsylvania to New York to Colorado to Montana.