ABSTRACT
This chapter presents campaign against the production and use of coal. The campaign against coal in the United States provides a useful contrast to Keystone XL and divestment for evaluating the activists' motivations. Coal plants produce about 36.5 percent of the electricity generated in Texas, where the average retail cost of electricity is the 14th highest in the US at 10.34 cents per kilowatt hour. To understand the issue of target audience, it is critical to understand that anti-coal mobilization is much less politicized along the traditional left–right, or progressive–conservative, lines. To summarize, while the coal campaign differs from Keystone XL and divestment in several important respects, it shows what an ideal set of conditions for mobilization can achieve. Coal has been a prime target for environmental activists not only because it has more global warming potential than oil or gas, but also because global coal reserves are so large that they alone could raise global temperatures by several degrees .
