If citizens have heard anything about the upheaval in the U.S. coal industry, it is probably the insistence that President Obama and the EPA have waged a “war on coal.” This phrase is written into President-elect Donald Trump’s energy platform, which promises to “end the war on coal.

Bsumek, Pete

Peeples, Jennifer

Schneider, Jen

Schwarze, Steve

English

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Boise State UniversityScholarWorksPublic Policy and Administration FacultyPublications and Presentations Department of Public Policy and Administration1-8-2017Inside the Coal Industry’s Rhetorical PlaybookSteve SchwarzeUniversity of MontanaJennifer PeeplesUtah State UniversityJen SchneiderBoise State UniversityPete BsumekJames Madison UniversityAuthorsSteve SchwarzeProfessor, The University of MontanaJennifer PeeplesProfessor of Communication Studies, UtahState UniversityJen SchneiderAssociate Professor in Public Policy andAdministration, Boise State UniversityPete BsumekAssociate Professor of CommunicationStudies, James Madison UniversityAcademic rigor, journalistic flairIf citizens have heard anything about the upheaval in the U.S. coal industry, it isprobably the insistence that President Obama and the EPA have waged a “war oncoal.” This phrase is written into President-elect Donald Trump’s energy platform,which promises to “end the war on coal.”The often repeated slogan indexes a set of attitudes and assumptions aboutgovernment regulation and environmentalism. The foremost if the belief that the(liberal, overreaching) federal government has it out for coal and the American wayof life that coal supports.If only the coal industry could get government and its regulations off their backs, the argument goes, thousands of jobs and our economy would come roaring back, apledge Trump made during his campaign while touring Appalachian coal country.After the election, Trump doubled down on this rhetoric, saying that, “On energy, Iwill cancel job-killing restrictions on the production of American energy – includingshale energy and clean coal – creating many millions of high-paying jobs.”Yet most analysts agree that the major front in the “war on coal” lies within themarket itself. Natural gas production, experiencing explosive growth thanks to therapid expansion of hydrofracturing, has dealt the biggest blow to King Coal andexplains coal’s loss of market share for power generation.Still, the “war on coal” rhetoric persists. But why? We investigated the publiccommunication strategies used by the industry and found some consistent patterns.A political sign in West Virginia reflects the claim that the Obama administration, by developing policies to reduce carbon emission, was waging acampaign against the industry. Vicki Smith/AP PhotoJanuary 8, 2017 8.33pm ESTInside the coal industry’s rhetorical playbookFrom the coal industry’s perspective, the war metaphor does capture the situation of an industry under siege and under pressure:Coal production in 2016 fell to historic lows, with a 26 percent drop just in the first half of theyear.Six publicly listed U.S. coal companies, including the iconic Peabody Energy, have declared bankruptcy since April 2015.Advocacy group Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign claims 243 coal plants have been shut downand continues to target the remaining 280.Although Trump has vowed to scrap the Clean Power Plan, the reguations would, if implemented,have outsize effect on coal-fired electricity generation.Casting the coal industry as one under siege provides important cover for industry advocates. Thisframing allows it to shore up government support for big technological projects such as “clean coal” pilot plants and coal export terminals, while at the same time, it justifies the call to get “biggovernment” out of the way by fighting environmental regulations.Importantly, the coal industry’s rhetorical playbook isn’t limited to so-called “climate change denial”– although there is clear evidence that the industry has financed several organizations that questionthe fundamentals of climate science.One rhetorical technique is to claim that coal is ‘clean,’ yet the technology to pump carbon dioxide underground is costlyand still under development. mentatmark/flickr, CC BY-NC-NDLooking for a lifelineInstead, industry campaigns reveal several other rhetorical moves that Big Coal uses to garnersupport from the public and, perhaps more importantly, from government agencies that couldprovide a lifeline to an industry in upheaval. We outline five of their most powerful moves below.1. Industrial apocalpyticRemember how, following the global financial collapse in the late 2000s, big banks claimed theyneeded government bailouts because they were “too big to fail”? Big coal makes a similar move whenit claims the “war on coal” will lead to an economy in ruins and the collapse of the American way oflife.A quintessential example is “If I Wanted America to Fail,” a five-minute video produced by Free Market America, an organization whose mission is “to defend economic freedom against environmental extremism.” The video circulated on websites of coal-friendly groups during the 2012presidential primaries, and it equates environmental regulations on energy production with America’seconomic failure.Industrial apocalyptic arguments close off critique, shore up status quo approaches to energy policyand build the specter of environmental regulation as catastrophic.2. Corporate ventriloquismCoal also enlists a wide array of voices to speak in ways that advance its interests. We call thiscorporate ventriloquism. It creates the appearance of broad public support for coal and conflatessupport for “America” with support for coal through the use of voices ranging from local “grassroots”organizations to national campaigns. Campaigns and organizations such as Friends of Coal, a WestVirginia-based advocacy group, and America’s Power, a coal industry trade association, emphasize themonolithic support the coal industry claims to enjoy among everyday Americans.Corporate ventriloquism also allows the industry to position itself as a grassroots citizen voice,blurring the line between corporation and citizen to seize a rhetorical advantage. In conjunction with conservative foundations, think tanks and sympathetic public officials, the coal industry can use itsfinancial resources to circulate a neoliberal, industry-friendly message and make it appear to be apopular, “common sense” position.3. The technological shell gameThe industry also plays what we call a technological shell game. It misdirects audiences to priorpollution abatement efforts, such as reducing dust and acid rain, to suggest the industry is proactivelyaddressing carbon emissions. But this story conveniently ignores both the problems with carboncapture and sequestration technologies, as well as the history of government regulation and financingneeded to make environmental and public health gains.For example, according to the industry-supported group America’s Power website, the coal industry is“ensuring [America’s] future is cleaner than ever before.” The website then points to two “clean coal”plants – the Kemper plant in Mississippi and John W. Turk plant in Arkansas – as technologicalsolutions to the problem of climate change. Yet Kemper has been beset by cost overruns and engineering challenges. Turk’s technologies make it somewhat more efficient than other coal-firedpower plants in the U.S. – leading to slightly lower emission levels – but even these levels are well above the emission rates articulated in the now-threatened Clean Power Plan.When the industry consistently characterizes these two plants as technological fixes to coal’s massivecarbon emissions, both of which are heavily subsidized by federal investment and which performunevenly at best, this is an example of the technological shell game.4. The hypocrite’s trapThe hypocrite’s trap is a move that gets used with startling frequency against environmental activists,and especially against students advocating for fossil fuel divestment. It silences voices critical of fossilfuel use by pointing to the activist’s own fossil fuel consumption.We can see this at a celebrity scale when pundits snark about actor Leonardo DiCaprio’s transcontinental flights as a climate activist or former Vice President Al Gore’s electricity bills. At asmaller scale, it’s used to make activists seem naïve about their own complicity in an energy systembuilt on fossil fuels. If you can’t make it without coal and oil, the argument goes, then you can’t say weshould divest from those industries.The counterargument, of course, is that we can critique conditions as they are, even if we also benefitfrom them. But the hypocrite’s trap is effective because it builds on common conceptions ofenvironmental activists as idealistic dreamers, fossil fuel advocates as hard-eyed realists, and a systemthat can’t be changed, so why try? The trap turns activists back toward their market role as consumersand silences political dissent.5. Energy poverty/energy utopiaGiven the downturn in domestic markets and environmentalists’ success in branding coal as a “dirty” source of energy, the industry and its allies have attempted to build a “moral” case for expanding theuse of coal: its ability to create a utopic future for the world’s poor.Peabody fashions an entire campaign around this strategy, with images and videos that consistentlypositions coal as a solution to energy poverty and the key to providing a Westernized version of thegood life. Doubling down on the rhetoric of clean coal and the hypocrite’s trap, Peabody’s campaigndeflects complicated questions about energy justice and climate change that will be necessary toaddress in an era of energy transition.We don’t see these moves as limited to the coal industry – once you understand them, you’ll see themall over the place. They’re used by big industries (oil, gas, nuclear, agribusiness) that see themselves“under pressure” thanks to declining markets or proposed environmental regulations. By namingthese rhetorical tools, both academics and activists will be able to do the important work ofresponding effectively to industry’s standard moves. Coal Carbon capture and storage Rhetoric Political rhetoric US energy policy War on coal

Inside the Coal Industry’s Rhetorical Playbook

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Inside the Coal Industry’s Rhetorical Playbook

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