Incoming! Coal ad campaign on its way

If ever there was a potential to answer the question, “Are we too shortsighted to fix the climate change problem?”, it seems the upcoming ad campaign from our friends in the coal biz will provide it.

Coal Ad Blitz Launches New Spot as Industry Sees Political Gains:

An advertising campaign that previously pushed the phrase “clean coal” launches new spots this week focused on jobs and low-cost power, the latest offering in a three-year, nearly $120 million effort to sell Congress and the White House on coal’s future. Increasingly, there are signs that it is working.

Coal companies and utilities that use coal in the past year have won a number of gains. Top policymakers, including President Obama, are echoing a key message from the ads, that technology in the future could reduce coal’s carbon pollution and keep coal a part of the energy mix.

The Obama administration last week created a task force charged with advancing five to 10 commercial demonstrations of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology by 2016. Obama told a White House gathering, “If we can develop the technology to capture the carbon pollution released by coal, it can create jobs and provide energy well into the future.” That followed the inclusion in the stimulus bill earlier this year of $3.8 billion for research, development and deployment of carbon capture and sequestration projects.

…

“There’s a reason companies do these campaigns,” said Kenneth Green, resident scholar at American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “It’s because they tend to work.”

At the same time the industry has marked some gains, it has seen significant resistance in other areas. Mountaintop-removal coal mining proposals are getting increased scrutiny under the Obama administration, and plans for new coal-burning plants have stalled in the face of rising uncertainty about possible climate regulations. Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) last week criticized the administration for what he called inconsistent messages about the future of coal. Coal interests say it shows more education efforts are needed.

Coal’s ad campaign dates back to the summer of 2007, when Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, a precursor of the coal trade group that later became American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), told its members it needed to commit to a lengthy and expensive effort to protect coal. They would have to spend $35 million to $40 million a year through 2010 as Congress decided major energy issues, said Joe Lucas, senior vice president for communications at ACCCE.

The group spent $37 million on ads in 2009 and $38 million in 2008, Lucas said. About the same is budgeted this year, he said, although that could increase if climate and energy legislation activities pick up in Congress. The campaign could stretch into 2011 if there is no vote on a climate bill this year, Lucas said.

Seriously–how am I supposed to write about this without resorting to imagery that involves drug dealers selling “a good time” to kids in a playground, or something equally offensive?

There’s no way to avoid the obvious message in the Times article above: The closer we get to doing what science says we must regarding our CO2 emissions, the harder the fossil fuel companies and their hangers-on will fight. Right now, talking about cheap energy and jobs will almost surely make this campaign a winner. Economic stress makes people even more myopic than they normally are, and such promises will appeal to a public that’s desperate for ways to avoid further pain, even if it requires them to not think about what they’re doing to their own children and grandchildren.

And yes, for the newcomers in the audience (I see a few new faces in the crowd today), I’m saying that I’m not at all optimistic about CCS as a solution to CO2 emissions from coal-fired electricity generation. The combination of technical and economic hurdles involved mean CCS has very little chance of helping the US (or China or India or …) significantly reduce our CO2 emissions. The US gets half its electrons from coal plants and virtually none of them were designed or sited with CCS in mind. And even if you build a new CCS-equipped coal plant, you get 30% less electricity per unit of coal compared to a non-CCS facility.

So, the coal companies will run their ads, and we’ll see how this plays out. My guess is that it will result in a further retreat from our already meager environmental commitments.