Abstract
“The Technological Shell Game” examines the industry’s persistent use of the “clean coal” trope to resist environmental regulation. The chapter interprets “clean coal” as a case of strategic ambiguity in which the industry invokes different definitions of “clean coal” to play a “technological shell game” with audiences, offering the promise of clean coal while hiding what exactly is meant by clean coal. This rhetorical strategy can unite disparate audiences in support of “clean coal,” but it obfuscates the coal industry’s resistance to regulation by appearing to work voluntarily and proactively toward technological solutions to environmental problems. The shell game enables the industry to finesse contradictions between its neoliberal calls for smaller government and deregulation, and its demand that the federal government subsidize carbon capture and sequestration technologies.
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Notes
- 1.
On the America’s Power blog, Joe Lucas, VP of Communications of ACCCE wrote: “I’ll put my ears as a Sunday school teacher, church deacon and church musician up against just about anybody else when it comes to understanding hymnology and respect for religious traditions. That said, before we even received one response to our blog, we decided to remove the ‘Silent Night’ tune from the Clean Coal Caroler feature” (Lucas, 2008).
- 2.
It is perhaps for this reason that ACCCE rewrites history in its clean coal rhetoric by attributing the term to congressional action in the 1980s. Such a rewriting is used to point to the fact that “clean coal technology is real,” with the implication being that industry and government worked in partnership to address the pollution crisis (“Our Commitment,” n.d.). Again, any sort of a conflict or resistance on the part of industry to such regulations is erased.
- 3.
Scientists and governmental officials in Canada and Australia panned these efforts, calling, instead, for the quick adoption of “ultra-clean coal” technologies to end acid rain (e.g., Pockley, 1991).
- 4.
For more about these technologies and why they have received more attention than others, see Pielke, Jr. (2010, pp. 134–135).
- 5.
Another utility-scale CCS project was scheduled to launch in the US in 2014: the Kemper County Project in Mississippi (see Van Noorden, 2014). The project, like many that came before it, has since been delayed and is now scheduled to begin operations in 2016.
- 6.
The bill passed the House, but failed in the Senate.
- 7.
The website was first launched in 2007 as a precursor to the larger ACCCE information campaign and is periodically updated to reflect current regulatory challenges.
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Schneider, J., Schwarze, S., Bsumek, P.K., Peeples, J. (2016). The Technological Shell Game. In: Under Pressure. Palgrave Studies in Media and Environmental Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53315-9_4
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