Clean Coal's Propagandists Spar Through Advertising

Clean coal isn’t about science; it’s about name-calling, influence games and shifting voter opinion. The NYTimes has a piece, pulled from Greenwire, detailing the growing “propaganda war” between the coal industry and environmentalists set on shutting the business down.

The Times piece is just the latest to detail the essentially information-free publicity battles taking place, and it does a pretty good job of painting the ongoing big picture: Big Coal and the enviros are each spending about $50 million a year between ads and lobbying, but both voters and politicians are still split.

But to see the actual ads being referenced, you’d have to be watching plenty of TV — something many of us aren’t these days. For BNET readers, I’ve gathered the exchange between the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity and The Reality Coalition, in rough chronological order.

First, this was supposed to be a viral internet campaign by the ACCCE, but it’s so unsophisticated as to almost come off as a satire by anti-coal campaigners:

A couple more early ACCCE ads:

The Reality Coalition’s first ad sent a pretty direct message:

And in an appeal to anti-business sentiments of their liberal base, the next Reality ad painted coal executives as manipulative liars:

Taking note of the opposition, the ACCCE started getting a bit more sophisticated with its message. They followed up with an ad that neatly co-opts President Barack Obama’s “change” message, with repetitions of “I believe,” followed by “We can, we will — clean coal.”

Staying on message, Reality got together with Crispin Porter + Bogusky and the Coen Brothers for their next effort. This one got plenty of publicity due to the involvement of the famous film-makers:

And the latest ad to come along is from the ACCCE. “We have to say so-long to our outdated conceptions about coal … If we don’t, we may have to say goodbye to the American way of life,” the announcer apocalyptically predicts to the homey sound of a banjo.

For more on the actual science behind clean coal (or the lack thereof), check out BNET on coal technologies and carbon capture and sequestration.