Splicetoday

Consume
Jan 05, 2009, 06:10AM

Reality isn't enough

The anti-"clean coal" campaign is making clever ads that are unfortunately zero-sum if not outright counterproductive.

Message control isn't everything, but it's something:

I called them the “anti-clean-coal Reality Campaign” but I can’t tell whether they are against clean coal or just against the coal industry claiming there is clean coal when there isn’t. Some of the coalition members support an aggressive effort to develop carbon capture and storage (which I wouldn’t call clean coal, but many do), while others strongly oppose such an effort. These too-clever ads may be an attempt to finesse that huge, and I would argue unbridgeable, difference.

If the point of the ad campaign is to convince people that clean coal doesn’t exist, then a logical conclusion — unless they run an ad saying otherwise — is that we should work hard to develop clean coal. Is that a message the Campaign members endorse?

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