Under Pressure

Coal Industry Rhetoric and Neoliberalism

Jen Schneider, Steve Schwarze, Peter K. Bsumek, Jennifer Peeples

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137533159
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book examines five rhetorical strategies used by the US coal industry to advance its interests in the face of growing economic and environmental pressures: industrial apocalyptic, corporate ventriloquism, technological shell game, hypocrite's trap, and energy utopia. The authors argue that these strategies appeal to and reinforce neoliberalism, a discourse and set of practices that privilege market rationality and individual freedom and responsibility above all else. As the coal industry has become the leading target and leverage point for those seeking more aggressive action to mitigate climate change, their corporate advocacy may foreshadow rhetorical strategies available to other fossil fuel industries as they manage similar economic and cultural shifts. The authors' analysis of coal's corporate advocacy also identifies contradictions and points of vulnerability in the organized resistance to climate action as well as the larger ideological formation of neoliberalism.

© The Author(s) 2016

Jen Schneider, Steve Schwarze, Peter K. Bsumek and Jennifer PeeplesUnder PressurePalgrave Studies in Media and Environmental Communication10.1057/978-1-137-53315-9_1

Begin Abstract

1. Under Pressure

Jen Schneider¹ , Steve Schwarze², Peter K. Bsumek³ and Jennifer Peeples⁴

(1)

Public Policy and Administration, Boise State University, Boise, ID, USA

(2)

Communication Studies, University of Montana, Missoula, MT, USA

(3)

School of Communication Studies, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA, USA

(4)

Languages, Philosophy and Communication Studies, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA

End Abstract

“Coal industry stands for progress and prosperity.” So says the headline of an op-ed by Brian Ricketts, secretary-general for Eurocoal, the major trade association for European coal and lignite producers (2015). While claims associating coal with progress have long been a staple of the industry’s rhetoric, contemporary advocates like Ricketts make their case for coal with renewed vigor. And it is a compelling storyline. Whereas most people “lived lives of servitude” before the Industrial Revolution, “progress fuelled by hydrocarbons means that we live longer, healthier, happier, and more productive lives.”

Given this progress, environmental resistance to the coal industry is made to seem absurd. According to Ricketts, anti-coal attitudes represent the height of hypocrisy: “Well-funded green NGOs vilify the coal industry. They employ professionals who wear smart suits and smart phones, the products of fossil fuels. … Many seem happy to take the benefits of fossil fuel use, while telling us to stop producing.” In this light, environmentalists are seen as dangerous to modern society. Their resistance threatens not only the coal industry, but also the hard-won economic and social progress that fossil fuels have made possible. “Stopping that journey,” argues Ricketts, “seems like a route back to servitude.” Indeed, coal is continuing to fuel the journey of progress; it provides the dominant share of electricity worldwide, “a share that is rising as developing countries electrify their people out of energy poverty” (2015).

Ricketts also encourages audiences to believe that technological innovation, if left unimpeded by environmental regulation, will enable the coal industry to handle the challenges of climate change. In fact, according to Ricketts, the industry is already working tirelessly to reduce emissions. “Carbon emissions from the newest coal plants are 30–40 % lower than from the old plants still found in some [EU] member states,” and furthermore, “carbon capture and storage (CCS) is now a proven technology.” In a telling summation, Ricketts synthesizes these arguments to reveal the real driving force behind this story of progress: the power of the market. “Economics will trump ideology and the coal industry will continue to deliver performance improvements. Outlawing coal would be a divisive and backwards step for humanity. Technological progress is the only way forward and coal offers progress” (2015).

These rhetorical strategies tell a compelling story about the centrality of coal in our lives. First, coal is equated with progress and the benefits of living in the modern, “developed” West. Opposition to coal thus raises the specter of apocalyptic outcomes for industry and society. Audiences are invited to identify with coal, the bedrock of Western society, and with coal corporations, which operate as our neighbors and community members: We are coal. Furthermore, this story tells us, coal companies have always been responsive to social and environmental concerns, and they use technological innovation and the power of the market to function as socially responsible citizens. Conversely, opponents of coal are elitist hypocrites and radical outsiders who seek to deny progress to others, and whose ideologies blind them to the hard realities of technology and economics. Finally, this grand narrative emphasizes the ways in which coal lifts people out of energy poverty and delivers the good life to all.

Indeed, Ricketts’ op-ed checks off, one by one, the emerging rhetorical strategies of a global coal industry that is facing multiple political and economic pressures. Yet, the one rhetorical standby that we might expect to see in an op-ed like Ricketts’—climate denial—is notably missing. Ricketts does not challenge climate models or trumpet the alleged benefits of global warming. He briefly acknowledges the “dire warnings about climate change” and admits that, “We know we will have to adapt to a warming climate” (2015). In other words, the text noticeably pivots away from constructing doubt about climate change and toward a broader set of industry advocacy strategies that engage issues of economy, culture, technology, and morality.

This is not to say that climate “denial” is dead as an industry strategy. Scholars who have investigated industry strategies that produce a “climate of doubt” surrounding climate science have made it clear that this is a powerful and productive approach for corporate interests (Bricker, 2014; Brulle, 2013; Ceccarelli, 2011; Oreskes & Conway, 2010). We do argue, however, that fossil fuel industries are foregrounding rhetorical strategies beyond those of climate denial, and that this turn in corporate advocacy requires a new focus and mode of analysis for scholars interested in environmental communication, corporate advocacy, and the public discourse surrounding climate change. Consistent with this turn, we contend that environmental communication scholars and advocates could give greater attention to the ideological dimensions of industry rhetoric, particularly if they want to intervene productively in the conditions that perpetuate environmental crises.

To that end, this book investigates the rhetorical strategies used by the US coal industry to advance its interests in the face of growing economic and environmental pressures. We contend that the corporate advocacy of the coal industry reflects a complex and at times contradictory engagement with neoliberalism, a discourse and set of practices that privilege market rationality, and individual freedom and responsibility above all else. Those espousing neoliberalism purportedly oppose social liberalism, the welfare state, government interference in the market, and collective bargaining rights and, in turn, advocate for deregulation, privatization, and reduced taxation to encourage high corporate profits and economic growth (Antonio & Brulle, 2011, p. 196). Drawing on critical approaches from the fields of environmental communication, rhetoric, and cultural studies, we identify five prominent rhetorical strategies in coal industry advocacy that shape the broader public discourse surrounding coal. Each chapter of the book explores one of the strategies through a detailed rhetorical analysis of coal industry discourse:

• Industrial Apocalyptic, a set of rhetorical appeals that constitute the imminent demise of a particular industry, economic, or political system and the catastrophic ramifications associated with that loss.
• Corporate Ventriloquism, a rhetorical process by which corporations transmit messages through other entities, usually of their own making, in order to construct and animate an alternative ethos, voice, or identity that advances their interests.
• The Technological Shell Game, a rhetorical process of misdirection that relies on strategic ambiguity about the feasibility, costs, and successful implementation of technologies in order to deflect attention from environmental pollution and health concerns.
• The Hypocrite’s Trap, a set of interrelated arguments that attempts to disarm critics of industries that provide particular goods or technologies, based on the critics’ own consumption of or reliance on those goods.
• Energy Utopia, a set of rhetorical appeals that position a particular energy source as the key to providing a “good life” that transcends the conflicts of environment, justice, and politics.

Ranging from the rise of “grassroots” front groups in the early 2000s, to debates over “clean coal” in the context of climate legislation, to the push for increased coal exports as a solution to global energy poverty, this book undertakes a fine-grained analysis of how the coal industry’s rhetorical strategies draw on neoliberal presumptions. These strategies normalize neoliberalization, of course, but they also expose ideological contradictions that open opportunities for rhetorical and political resistance. And as our opening example demonstrates, these strategies are not limited to the US context, although that is the focus of this book; the global reach of the coal industry and persistence of neoliberalism make these strategies relevant for examining coal’s corporate advocacy in other locations.

In the remainder of this chapter, we elaborate on the context, assumptions, and motivations that are shaping our analysis of coal’s corporate advocacy. First, we extend our discussion of why the coal industry is an ideal site for examining how the fossil fuel industry has been relatively successful at forestalling regulation. Then, we explain why attention to neoliberalism is essential to understanding the rhetoric of the coal industry’s opposition to environmental policy and regulation. Finally, we situate our study relative to other scholarship on environmental communication and corporate advocacy, and discuss how our perspectives on rhetoric and neoliberalism inform our analysis of coal’s advocacy campaigns in the rest of the book.

The Coal Industry and Corporate Advocacy

For decades, coal dominated electricity production in the US, generating approximately half of the nation’s electricity. In the spring of 2012, coal’s share of total electricity production in the US dropped to less than 40 % for the first time, and through mid-2015 its share has continued to hover in the high 30s (US Energy Information Administration, 2015). The industry faces pressure from several directions. Market competition from cheaper natural gas has made a significant dent in coal’s share of electricity generation, at times with the two sources providing nearly equal amounts. On the regulatory front, the Obama administration has been more amenable than its predecessors in enforcing Clean Water Act provisions applicable to mountaintop removal mining (Broder, 2012). As “the single biggest contributor to global warming,” the coal industry also is girding for a protracted struggle over the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan, which aims to reduce carbon emissions from the electricity sector by 30 % (Black, 2014). Perhaps most notably for our purposes, a vocal and well-organized movement is challenging the industry on a variety of fronts, including mountaintop removal, retirement of old power plants, coal exports to Asia, and institutional divestment from coal and other fossil fuel industries.

Coal, it appears, is under pressure: It has become the leading target and leverage point for those seeking more aggressive action to mitigate climate change.¹ As a result, coal’s corporate decline may be a bellwether for controversies involving other energy industries and environmental policy and legislation. Following that logic, our analysis of coal’s advocacy may foreshadow rhetorical strategies available to other industries, particularly those who are coming up against environmental opposition as well as legal and social pressure to measure the costs of externalities as they negotiate significant economic and cultural shifts in the age of climate change. In other words, the coal industry is the proverbial canary in, well, the coalmine. The way it responds to and attempts to manage its current situation provides insight into the ways that other industries with significant environmental footprints can be expected to manage similar economic and cultural shifts. For example, we have already seen the natural gas industry use some of the same rhetorical strategies we identify as they deal with increasingly effective public advocacy campaigns designed to regulate or ban “fracking,” or hydraulic fracturing.

The significance of coal’s rhetorical strategies lies in how the industry manages the tensions and contradictions of neoliberalism while serving the aims of stalling regulatory action and marginalizing environmental concerns. The coal industry has interrupted the passage of a climate bill and dodged repeated attempts to regulate and prohibit the practice of mountaintop removal mining, and yet it continues to face significant economic and regulatory pressur...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Under Pressure
• 2. Industrial Apocalyptic
• 3. Corporate Ventriloquism
• 4. The Technological Shell Game
• 5. The Hypocrite’s Trap
• 6. Energy Utopia
• 7. Coal and the Contradictions of Neoliberalism
• Backmatter