Similar thing happened at my kids' high screwel. They were given info about Green Empowerment and the "presenter's" asked the kids to sign a petition. Some of them did (and some even gave email addresses). Our kid told us about it, we called the principal and were basically told the same thing..."the teacher had no idea what was in the material or that they'd collect signatures, he collected the petitions, blah, blah."
I looked up the "organization" sponsoring the presentation...it's a part of The Tides Foundation!