Is Canada’s biggest billboard advertiser censoring green messages?

So you can say sunshine causes climate change but you can’t promote solar energy?

If you’re in Calgary, you may have noticed a new giant advertistment on a Pattison Outdoor Advertisement billboard carrying the ludicrous claim that climate change isn’t caused by humans or CO2. Rather, “the sun is the main driver of climate change.”

Yes. The sun causes climate change. THE SUN.

This message comes to us by way of “Friends of Science,” an astroturf group that promotes climate change denial and is linked to Big Oil funders, notably Talisman Energy, who previously gave the group $175,000 in start-up money.

But that’s not the half of it.

Turns out Pattison refused a few years back a request from Greenpeace Canada to put up their own billboard carrying a fairly innocuous, tongue-in-cheek message promoting solar energy. It read: “when there’s a huge solar energy spill, it’s just called a nice day.”

Pattison didn’t reply to a request for clarification from PressProgress. Greenpeace Canada, meanwhile, has confirmed that the ad buy was all set to go, but the company rejected it at the last minute afterseeing the artwork.

Take a look for yourself. Does it make any sense why one would be rejected and the other approved?

This is not the first time Pattison has been accused of a double standard.

In 2011, Pattison rejected an ad from Vancouver-based Voters Taking Action on Climate Change that had an anti-coal message.

Last December, Pattison was criticized after declining to run billboards for the Centre for Inquiry Canada, a group that promotes secular humanism and atheism despite having run ads for pro-life groups.

At the time, CFIC complained that Pattison didn’t offer any reason for their decision or provide guidelines explaining how they make their decisions.

Greenpeace Canada is now asking Pattison to explain itself.

Photo: David Climenhaga.