Feeling Cornered, Coal Industry Borrows From Tobacco Playbook, Activists Say

"Like so many elements of climate change, coal is a polarizing issue for political parties. The 2016 GOP platform strongly supports a continued role for coal, referring to it as “an abundant, clean, affordable, reliable domestic energy resource,” and calls for killing the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which would continue the process of reducing dependence on coal for producing energy .The 24-slide “Survival Is Victory” presentation was given a year ago at the convention and annual meeting of the Rocky Mountain Coal Mining Institute, an industry group representing coal interests in Western states. The slides did not acknowledge the scientific consensus on climate change, but stated that public opinion had shifted so substantially that the question was moot.“We need to get out of the binary debate on climate change,” one slide read. “Right, but dead, is not a victory.”