If you follow the Trump administration’s social media posts, you might spot its new mascot: a cartoon lump of coal with big eyes and babylike features. “Coalie” sparked a backlash almost as soon as Interior Secretary Doug Burgum debuted it for the Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation Enforcement in early 2026.

Coalie’s design draws on a type of Japanese anime called Kawaii, a word meaning “cute” or “adorable.” It’s the latest in the White House’s efforts to pass off coal as harmless, despite the well-established environmental and human health harms of mining and burning the fossil fuel.

As a scholar of American literature and culture, I write about media portrayals of coal, beginning in the 19th century with its rise to become the leading fuel in the United States. Coal use grew until the early 2000s, when other sources became cheaper and its health and environmental damage became unacceptable to more of the public.

While “Coalie” might be new, the logic behind it is not. For centuries, coal’s promoters have worked hard to show coal as harmless – as well as “clean” and “beautiful,” to use President Donald Trump’s words.

Humans living with the effects of burning coal have disliked it for as long as they have burned it.

In 1578, Queen Elizabeth complained that she was “greatly grieved and annoyed with [its] taste and smoke” in the air. In 1661, John Evelyne’s treatise Fumifugium outlined negative health effects of breathing coal smoke.

English settlers were drawn to North America in part because of the continent’s abundant supply of timber, a substitute for coal that deforestation had made prohibitively expensive in England.

But by the 19th century, the price of........

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