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Nothing New About "Clean Coal" September 20, 2012 : 8:38 PM

The coal industry has spent decades promoting the idea of clean coal, instead of actually helping us switch to cleaner fuels:

“The coal industry’s push to brand coal as “clean” seems like a new phenomenon. In fact, as a new database of coal advertisements shows, this messaging strategy has been used by the industry since at least the 1920’s.”

“The database was put together by Greenpeace’s Quit Coal campaign. It features ads questioning global warming, obscuring the impact of acid rain, and railing on Environmental Protection Agency regulations.”

“Here’s an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal from 1979 in which American Electric Power touts clean coal as the solution to “help make the America we see ahead a better America.”

Source: Climate Progress

Try that again: I really wish this presidential election presented as stark an ideological choice as the two candidates say it does. ~Christopher Hayes


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Yet a recent Obama ad show improvement

geomoo's picture

There is a graph with bars going up. Then Obama says, most definitively, "We are not going backward! We are moving foward!"

I think, "Yay. I like going forward better than going backward. Yay."

And the worst thing of all is looking back. Right now, it's time not to look back at the last four years, just the way it was three and a half years ago.

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We are creating jobs so quickly that if ...

BruceMcF's picture

... we don't have a recession, sometime before 2020 we will have as much total employment as we had in 2007.

Hip, hip, hooray.

Lack of a "and this much job growth would be adequate" line is critical for that ad. Otherwise he'd have to run against the Do-Nothing Congress, and that is too scrappy a campaign where he would have to promise to try to do too many useful things, so its, "blah blah months of job growth. We're not there yet, but ...".

Why does the "We're not there yet, but ..." sound like the warning when they are selling a disease so you will ask your physician to prescribe 'Hypaxia' "If any of your fingers or toes turn purple or fall off, inform your doctor."

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Its like 'clean arsenic'.

BruceMcF's picture

"sure its a deadly poison, but it has none of the contaminants that used to be found in arsenic".

"As long as the coal is as clean as the law requires, we'll call it clean. Plus on average it kills you more slowly than it did before!"

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I got a call from Environment America today

geomoo's picture

Does anyone know if I should give them money? If I've stopped spending any money on politicians, does it follow that I also should stop spending on lobbyists? I don't think so, but not sure.

I learned something. They said that this year the federal subsidies for clean energy are set to expire. That seems important. That seems like a good thing to work for. I wonder if there's a chance of keeping those subsidies. I asked him who they can count on in Congress. Alas, he was just in the fund-raising end, but he was at their offices and not from some hired fund-raising scam. I was so bitter, angry, and cynical while speaking with him, but he made it through his script.

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Don't mess with MADD

LaEscapee's picture

They have been the impetus for making all drinking and driving laws more stringent around the country. I know down here any judge D.A. or prosecutor thought to coddle anyone with a DUI is toast. I know for a fact that people cooking meth have gotten off easier than some driving drunk. Hell that's why the last one lost.

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I do too sartoris

LaEscapee's picture

just my opinion and I know it's not accepted in polite company but that organization focuses it's fury in the wrong direction. Instead of any attempt to help people that might need it they do just what the prison industrial complex wants they lobby for jail over justice for everyone involved. Consider the fact that the offender might actually need help or had a lapse in judgement, if no loss of life is involved shouldn't we attempt to educate instead of punish?

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they have the perfect trump card,the ultimate conversation ender

sartoris's picture

It's an opinion that really can't be discussed in public without looking like a complete louse and MADD takes wonderful advantage of that fear. MADD was founded by a mother who lost her child to a drunk driver. The woman channeled her rage into reforming lax drunk driving laws. I understand that completely. I'm nearly certain I would have done something similar. However, they moved beyond that and into the the realm of the temperance movement. One cannot argue for relaxation of the DUI laws without looking like one wants to climb behind the wheel drunk. It's the ultimate lose lose. I agree with you though, I think the focus should be more on education and less on incarceration - if there is no loss of life.

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You do know she left that organization, right?

triv33's picture

Even spoke out against them for a while because of what they turned into. I wonder if you'd care to read something that will show you exactly what MADD is or was--the first step we all took in handing over our Constitutional rights and happily marching towards a police state...
The DUI Exception To The Constitution
http://www.duicenter.com/lectures/exception01.html

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it is a crime hiding in plain site

sartoris's picture

yeah, no one is really too interested in this issue. I just don't understand how it has gone on for so long without generating any type of interest. I suppose it's the whole poor thing, when it happens to poor people it's just not that big of a deal. I can't remember who said it but I always thought this quote was brilliant: The poor are boring, they always lose.

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It's the poor and it's local

geomoo's picture

I think the local aspect is significant--it's a lot easier to control rural communities. Then they have a judge in Richmond who protects them. Relative to where they are especially, they have a lot of money, and with that money they dominate the local power structure and what they need beyond. Btw, all the up to the presidency, having received help from Clinton, but I still think it springs from being contained to a local are with people elsewhere unconcerned about the horror of mountaintop removal.

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Triv they are making it a felony

LaEscapee's picture

because she had Hash. Reading the article and from past experience one person claims it and takes the lick, that's how this shit works but a felony because it was the good shit? They act like it's a different drug or something.

I wonder if they found "pins and a glass" ;^)

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Again it's the have and have nots.

Glinda's picture

I don't believe for a second that when elected officials were diagnosed and being treated for cancer, including chemotherapy, that they weren't ingesting or smoking some marijuana.

Steve Jobs, for instance, I don't believe for a second for all the horrendous illness and subsequent treatment he endured, that marijuana never was a major factor. As a for instance.

And who would ever "catch" him with it? No one. No law enforcement officials would ever get close enough, not unlike the common person.

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