Coal Argument Essay

The coal industry has spent millions of dollars trying to convince people that they can create a product that is environmentally friendly. The coal industry wants the image of being a "clean" energy seems like a new phenomenon, where today there is better technology to understand the risk of coal and the everyday environment impact that can be seen today with the use of coal for more than a century for industrialization.

I found an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal from 1979 in which the American Electric Power advertise that by crushing the coal they can deep clean the "impurities" in a bath of heavy liquids is the solution to "help make the America we see ahead a better America”. The second advertisement shows a more recent ad in 2009 from Peabody Energy (the largest private-sector coal company in the world) exhibits the progression of the ad for the coal industry has gotten worse by adding stats in order to make their point stronger and still trying to promote coal as "clean".

This can be connected to the ecological modernization theory which argues that capitalism has the flexibility in order to be sustainable. The theory states in order to create a solution for the environmental problem there needs to be more modernization in order to create technology that is environmentally

With the advertisements, they are selling doubt in order to confuse the consumer about clean energy. In reality, coal is bad in all forms even if it's washed in heavy liquids to clean the impurity it will not "help make the America we see ahead a better America”. Comparing the two ads illustrates there is a progression of technology, for example, the Peabody ad shows that they are creating new plants in order to reduce their carbon footprint and "eventually" they will capture the CO2 from the plant which implies they do not have that