Coal Industry and Environmentalists Wage "Clean Coal" Ad War

Clean coal doesn’t exist. We know it, but for many Americans the jury is still out. Environmentalists and the coal industry are battling for public opinion.

While proponents of carbon capture technologies try to ride on the coat tails of Barack Obama’s approval ratings by quoting his pro-coal sentiments from the ’08 campaign trail, the Reality Coalition has stepped up their ad campaign in coal-heavy states like West Virginia.

We’ve even seen some of their anti-coal ads here on Planetsave, but as you can imagine, not everyone appreciates their message.

The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity’s ads like to co-opt Obama’s message by using language like “Yes we can” and this quote from Obama: “This is America. We figured out how to put a man on the moon in 10 years. You tell me we can’t find a way to burn coal that we mine right here in the United States of America and make it work.”

“To the folks who are against coal, they’d be against coal no matter what we do about it,” said Phil Smith, communications director for the United Mine Workers of America. “They have their opinions for the future of coal and we don’t share that opinion with them.”

“The Reality Campaign is so named because in reality, there is no such thing as clean coal in America today,” said a spokesperson for the Reality Coalition, which includes groups such as the League of Conservation Voters, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Sierra Club. ”

“Its mission is to promote reality in our country’s energy policy, specifically calling upon the coal industry to live up to its promise of so-called clean coal.”

The non-partisan FactCheck.org recently examined the ads and determined that the Reality Coalition’s ad and position is indeed accurate because “clean coal technology” does not yet exist in a commercial scale.

Learn more about the myth of clean coal:

Clean Coal? Storage Failure Covers 12 Homes, 400 Acres with Toxic Ash

5 Dirty Aspects of “Clean” Coal

‘Clean’ Coal? Don’t Try to Shovel That.

Check out the latest ads from both sides of the fence:

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