A U.S. anti-coal campaign has gone Hollywood with a new TV spot directed by Academy Award-winning filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen of “No Country for Old Men” and “Fargo” fame.

The Reality Coalition, a project backed by environmental groups Alliance for Climate Protection, Sierra Club, National Wildlife Federation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the League of Conservation Voters, launched the ad this week.

Entitled “Air Freshener,” it features a product pitchman entering a family’s home with a spray can labeled “Clean Coal” that spews black, cough-inducing fumes.

“Is regular clean, clean enough for your family? Not when you can have Clean Coal
clean,” he says.

The ad, designed and produced by ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, is designed as a response to a series of coal industry-backed television spots and other ads promoting “clean coal,” or technology to capture and store the global warming emissions from coal-fired power plants. Environmentalists argue that the industry’s ads are misleading because clean coal does not exist yet on a commercial scale. The industry, however, says coal is an abundant and cheap resource that the U.S. cannot do without.

Despite U.S. President Barack Obama’s green leanings, however, he has been a supporter of research into clean coal technology. Earlier this week, his budget proposal included $15 billion for technologies, including clean coal, that keep carbon out of the atmosphere.

Check it out the Coen brothers’ ad below. It is the first of a series directed by the famous duo.

If you’re tired of feeling guilty about driving a gas-guzzling car or cranking up your air conditioning, you could just try hanging your head in shame about that bottle of spring water you are sipping instead.

Yes, the foes of bottled water are at it again, this time in the form of an advertising campaign that aims to promote tap water and underscore the environmental costs of producing and disposing of plastic water bottles.

Tappening, a group that opposes bottled water, is spending $250,000 on a media campaign to promote its cause. Tappening is a joint venture of ad agency DiMassimo Goldstein and public relations firm Ericho Communications. It most recently launched a campaign called “Message in a Bottle” that aims to deliver one million empty water bottles to incoming Coca-Cola CEO Muhter Kent.

The campaign is the latest of many recent attacks on bottled water, including the urging of boycotts by the mayors of cities including London, San Francisco and Seattle.

“We can use our advertising and public relations abilities to un-sell bottled water hype,” said Tappening’s Mark DiMassimo.

The ads will appear as “wild postings” on construction sites in ten U.S. cities as well as in magazines and community newspapers, the group said. The ads claim that last year, plastic bottles generated more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide and that every year, 38 million bottles end up buried in the ground.