When I saw a friend watching a clip from the Colbert Report last night, I thought this had to be something Stephen Colbert was fabricating – the federal government suggesting that we carve renewable energy pumpkins.

But no.  A quick trip over to energy.gov revealed this lovely image on the front page.  The U.S. Department of Energy helpfully suggests that you “‘Energize’ Your Neighborhood with Energy-Themed Pumpkins” and provides printable pumpkin carving patterns for windmills, solar panels, and compact fluorescent bulbs, among others.

You have got to be kidding me.

I can’t really add a lot to Colbert’s commentary.  This is just so ridiculous that it’s hard to even talk seriously about it.  But I’ll try.  There are two major points.  The first is that this is clearly an appeal to kids, and it’s misleading and oversimplistic.  It concerns me when the government tries to use a holiday like Halloween (or other events and activities that kids enjoy) to push a political agenda.  And it concerns me even more when, in doing so, they reduce something complicated into a simple good-bad dichotomy.  The truth is, the government does this all the time with energy and other environmental issues.  I wrote a couple years ago about this very issue with regard to Earth Day and schools.  Are compact fluorescents really better?  What about the toxic mercury they contain?  Are wind turbines and solar panels even capable of providing a significant amount of reliable energy?  And what about the birds killed every year by those turbines?

I’m not saying that there’s no place for any of these alternative sources of energy.  I am saying that a “green energy pumpkin” doesn’t effectively engage kids (or adults) in a discussion about pros and cons, about the benefits and limitations of various energy options.  Instead, it promotes a totally thoughtless “Green Energy Good” mentality.  And that’s not helpful.

There’s also a question for me about the priorities of a federal department that I’m funding.  As a taxpayer, I pay the bill for the Department of Energy.  You and I paid the salary of the guy who created the pumpkin carving templates, and the bureaucrats who crafted the campaign, and the web designers who created the relevant web pages.  Everything about this was funded by us.  Government using my money for essential functions like making sure we have an adequate national defense and maintaining law and order so I can safely walk the streets is one thing.  Using it to promote “green energy pumpkins” is something very different.  Is this really what we want our government to be doing?  I’m sure it’s not what I want.