Reality Check
Joe Romm has some interesting criticisms of the “Reality Campaign” ads against clean coal propaganda that you may have seen:
I think I like the ads a bit more than he does. But on another level, I think they’ve fundamentally got the wrong target. Fundamentally, it’s extremely difficult to move a specific policy agenda through the mechanism of issue advertising to the public. The clean energy community has done a good job of convincing voters that they want clean energy. Which is why the coal industry and its lapdog politicians are for “clean coal.” But if you spend months and vast sums of money convincing the public that that slogan is bogus, it won’t be so difficult to change the slogan. Ultimately, you need to identify some bad people and go after them to try to teach other pols the lesson that it’s a bad idea to anger the clean energy community.
Meanwhile, there’s a larger story here about progressive groups’ uncomfortableness with some of the seamier aspects of politics. When people give money to support high-minded causes, they tend to want that money to be spent in high-minded ways that make them feel better about themselves rather than in crass, effective ways.
27 Responses to “Reality Check”
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December 24th, 2008 at 9:19 am
Actually the ads are pretty smug and pretentious – especially that one with the dude in the hard hat. Instead of investing that $$ in acting like dicks, maybe they should invest that $$ in creating and promoting alternative energy solutions.
Its been said thousands of times that people will only change their behavior when you present them with viable alternatives, and so far that has not been done.
December 24th, 2008 at 9:30 am
BTW read up on Vattenfall’s Schwarze Pumpe in East Germany which just went live in early Sept. That plant now captures most of its CO2 and sends it off to be pumped into the ground for enhanced Natural Gas production. Clean Coal is here.
December 24th, 2008 at 9:51 am
I think Joe’s pretty well dead on. These ads are aimed at people watching MSNBC and CNN. They’re not wonks. They’re barely familiar with the phrase ‘clean coal’ to begin with. These ads, if aimed at anyone at all, are aimed at the small audience they’ve already converted and Washington insiders– so why are they making big national ad buys?
And Jimbo has an excellent point in that this is a really, really weird thing to be focusing on. Contrast it with, say, a positive ad set at a wind farm, showing how much energy is being ‘farmed’ and what an impact it makes– that seems a much better way to introduce their organization. Then they could follow it up with a few simple, fact-based ads about ‘the myth of clean coal’ and the like.
December 24th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Actually the ads are pretty smug and pretentious
That’s being too harsh, but their ads on the DC metro do have the feel of a modern art exhibit. There’s a mermaid with a piece of coal with no accompanying text and sometimes they don’t reference or show coal at all.
December 24th, 2008 at 10:22 am
This doesn’t seem to be chiefly about policy. It probably has more to do with fund raising. Most casual donors to these groups probably had no idea that “clean coal” is basically a fiction and are now sufficiently riled up by the ads to open up their pocketbooks.
Actually the ads are pretty smug and pretentious
Why is the hard hat ad smug and pretentious? If you sit there lying your ass off and I have the bad taste to call you on it, that makes me pretentious?
December 24th, 2008 at 10:28 am
it’s pretty predictable that coal is going to get seamy.
December 24th, 2008 at 10:45 am
And if I call abortion murder and make ads saying that Obama or Reid or Pelosi are supporters of murdering babies then you would be okay with that?
You would be okay with an ad like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anieuWFWe8s
Or would Obama respond by calling abortion survivor Gianna Jenson a despicable liar?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEBDNGLl5TQ&feature=related
December 24th, 2008 at 11:08 am
Ugh, those adds irritate the hell out of me. First of all, I don’t really believe CO2 emissions are “dirty”. Certainly they aren’t good if there’s too much. But that’s like calling pizza “dirty” because it has too much fat.
Obviously, if you eat to much fat you’ll get sick and eventually die, but it’s not the same thing as eating a slice of pizza that fell on a nasty bathroom floor.
Secondly, I think the issue is serious enough that we can talk about the difference between carbon sequestration and scrubbing (or whatever it is they do) to prevent particulate matter and smog.
People understand the stakes with global warming and we don’t need to be dishonest and confusing. I think it’s sad that people feel the only way they can affect change is by lying their asses off. Ultimately it delegitimizes the whole enterprise.
Also, the add is just fucking annoying. The guy’s voice is irritating and all the “wind noise” they have at such a loud volume is just unpleasant to listen too.
December 24th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
I love the clean coal ads. During the debates clean coal was brought up repeatedly as one of our options, as if it were currently an option. It is not something that is currently viable and often what is billed as reducing CO2 emissions simply trades off by creating another type of pollution. The public has been lead to believe that clean coal technology exists and thus there is no need to reduce our use of coal. I’m glad these ads are there to inform people that its not quite true.
December 24th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Given that the coal companies are spending large amounts promoting “clean coal”, in the belief that its a sound business investment in terms of the prospects of shifting the carbon capping outcome away from where sound public policy would place then …
… these are not designed to achieve direct policy outcomes, they are designed to undermine the Clean Coal advertising campaign while raising the funds to make the process self-funding.
The critique of the effectiveness of the advertisements does not address the strategy unless it addresses the dual aims of fund raising and message blocking.
In terms of the argument:
… that’s a claim that need some backing with evidence. If it was that easy to gain traction for a slogan in the first place, there’s no reason for the coal companies to be spending the money they are in establishing it. And if the ads themselves generate most of the funds required for the advertising campaign, its not as if the organization spent vast sums of its own money.
December 24th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
No. But here’s the thing:
1. As I understand it, the “Reality Campaign” people think that the general public doesn’t realize that ‘clean coal’ is decades away, if possible at all.
2. They want to make this clear to the general public.
3. The way they do it is by making insider-y, confusing ads, that mostly will make sense to people who…already know that ‘clean coal’ is decades away if possible at all.
Smug and pretentious is assuming everyone should have the same knowledge as you do, and putting on a tone of mockery if they don’t.
December 24th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
Weren’t we told all through the last election that Obama’s high-minded approach wouldn’t be able to compete against the “crass, effective” adds of Clinton and McCain? And what was the result?
December 24th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Uh, Matt – “uncomfortableness”? How about plain old “discomfort”?
December 24th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Obama’s website still says he’ll develop and deploy clean coal technologies.
December 24th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
NBC Nightly News just ran a story on the Tennessee coal sludge spill.
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