Coal

Academy Award winners Joel and Ethan Coen, known for their grimly comic portrayals of human nature, are poking fun at a new target: the coal industry. The filmmaking brothers have directed a TV spot for an environmental coalition that's trying to demolish the notion that there's anything clean about so-called clean coal.

Mike Roselle is in his element -- fighting a controversial coal industry practice called mountaintop removal mining in the town of Rock Creek, W. Va. "I had to bail some people out of jail," the 55-year-old rumbles happily by phone from the office of Climate Ground Zero. "We've been unleashing hippie hell on them." By "them," he means Massey Energy, the coal megalith that controls huge swaths of West Virginia and employs a fair percentage of its residents. Roselle is a stranger there, but after seven months he finds himself in familiar territory.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa drew cheers from environmentalists just over two months ago when he issued a new political promise: eliminating coal from the Department of Water and Power's fuel mix by 2020. Instead of waiting a decade to see if that promise comes true, a Sacramento-based advocacy group decided to stage a publicity campaign thanking the mayor. It bought advertising space on city bus kiosks showing a smiling picture of Villaraigosa and the word "Successful."