Luminant, the Dallas-based electricity generator, doesn't have the greenest public image. It's aging fleet of coal-fueled power plants includes some of the dirtiest in the country. It pumps millions and millions of tons of greenhouse gases and other pollutants into the atmosphere. Then, when pushed to modernize its coal plants, it decries EPA overreach and threatens power outages. The Sierra Club has officially declared jihad.
The company, it seems, does not like this soot-tarnished reputation, and it's doing its best to scrub minds of images of black clouds of coal ash billowing from towering smokestacks. Case in point, today's announcement of a major gift to the Dallas Arboretum. Luminant is giving 100 pitcher plants saved from one of its East Texas lignite mines. The specimens are carnivorous. They already have a spot reserved in the soon-to-open children's garden.
See also: -Texas' Biggest Power Supplier Wants to Blame the EPA for Future Blackouts -EPA: Dallas-based Luminant Produces a Hell of a lot of Greenhouse Gas
The picture that immediately comes to mind, which is pretty tough to shake, is of the ravenous Venus flytrap from Little Shop of Horrors gobbling up screaming preschoolers.
That's probably not going to happen, though Luminant's press release does ominously boast that the carnivores will have access to 100,000-plus children, preschoolers and up, who pass through the arboretum's "interactive bog ecosystem display." Pitcher plants digest insects, not children.
That said, given Luminant's track record as a steward of the environment for future generations, it's probably best to slather your arboretum-bound kid with kale extract. Man-eating plants hate vegetables.
