Under Pressure: Coal Industry Rhetoric and Neoliberalism [Hardcover]

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, hypocrites 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 coals 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.?

1.Coal Under Pressure.- 2.Industrial Apocalyptic.- 3.Corporate Ventriloquism.- 4.Technological Shell Game.-?5.Hypocrites Trap.- 6.Energy Utopia.- 7.Coal and the Contradictions of Neoliberalism

This volume addresses rhetorical strategies employed by the coal industry to resist regulatory efforts by the government and environmental groups. & This book is of interest not only to environmental communication scholars and students, but also to those studying integrated marketing communication approaches to advertising and public relations. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. (J. H. Fritz, Choice, Vol. 54 (5), January, 2017)?