How Big Coal Keeps America Stupid
By JEFF GOODELL
The New York Times has a good piece today about the $153 million ad blitz the fossil fuel industry is running to oust President Obama. The Times points out that this is a big change from the last election when green ads greatly outnumbered those for fossil fuels and global warming was openly discussed. And it's certainly true -- you can't turn on the TV right now without seeing ads touting the wonders of coal, gas, and oil.
But Big Oil and Big Coal have always been as skilled at propaganda as they are at mining and drilling. Like the tobacco industry before them, their success depends on keeping Americans stupid. Over the years, they have become masters at distorting science, dodging innovation, and predicting economic mayhem if anyone or anything gets in the way of their divine right to mine, burn, and profit off America's natural resources.
Coincidentally, Greenpeace has just unearthed a bunch of old coal industry ads, and the results are pretty amusing for anyone who tracks the propaganda campaign waged by America's biggest energy thug. Take the phrase "clean coal," for example, which sounds like it emerged from a focus-group session on Madison Avenue in the late 1990s. In fact, the industry has been using the phrase in advertising copy since at least 1921, when a New York coal company pitched clean coal as if it were a forerunner of Viagra, promising that "clean coal will develop more heat and make for mutual satisfaction."
There are a number of ads from the 1970s, just after the Clean Air Act was passed, hitting on another favorite theme of Big Coal: that measures to reduce the amount of deadly pollution emitted from power plants stacks are either unreliable or too expensive. One ad from 1974 refers to smokestack scrubbers designed to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions as "monstrous contraptions"; another talks about the environmental dangers of the "oozy gook" that the scrubbers produce; yet another predicts blackouts if utilities are forced to meet the requirements of the Clean Air Act.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/how-big-coal-keeps-america-stupid-20120914
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