In his first week in office, President Joe Biden committed to a government-wide approach to tackling climate change, signing executive orders committing the United States again to the Paris climate deal, stopping new leases for oil and gas companies on federal land and declaring their intention to conserve 30% of federal land by 2030.
However, while Biden’s climate actions have been praised by many, there are some, often linked to the fossil fuel industry, who vehemently oppose stronger action on the climate.
Many of these detractors use common talking points from the oil industry in their arguments – talking points that were developed in collaboration with public relations firms and lobbyists to undermine clean energy policies and prolong dependence on fossil fuels.
A 2019 report by researchers at George Mason, Harvard University and the University of Bristol describes how the fossil fuel industry deliberately deceived the public by funding research and campaigns against climate denial, while knowing for decades that there is a human-induced climate change.
Aware of science, but fearful of the impacts it could have on their returns, oil executives have funded opposition research that “attacked the consensus and exaggerated the uncertainties” in the science of climate change for many years to undermine support for climate action.
Their message worked for a long time because the Big Oil companies have become really good at stretching the truth.
“What is really important to keep in mind is that part of the reason why oil and gas advertising is so effective is that there is always a grain of truth in it,” said Genevieve Guenther, founder of End Climate Silence, an organization that works to promote accurate media coverage of the climate crisis.
“I call it ‘kind of true’, when there is something in the message that is true, but that grain of truth develops in a tangle of lies that obscures the real story,” said Guenther.
Guenther, originally a professor of Renaissance literature, is also working on a book entitled The language of climate change. I spoke to her to better understand how to recognize – and fight – the Big Oil propaganda.
While the Biden government is taking important steps to address the climate emergency, the fossil fuel industry and its media allies are stepping up the disinformation campaign to distort public opinion and disrupt climate policies. Fox News has started.
So it is more important than ever to be aware of the tools oil and gas companies use to obscure the problem.
My conversation with Guenther, edited for greater length and clarity, is below.
Jariel Arvin
I would like to start with your reflections on how the Biden government is dealing with climate change so far.
Genevieve Guenther
I think the Biden government has come a long way since the beginning of the [2020] primary. I think the staff at the Sunrise Movement and the Evergreen Action, and other activists associated with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jay Inslee, did an incredible job, basically teaching Biden about the weather.
So far, Biden is the best climate president we’ve ever had. But I’m still not ready to do a somersault and wave my pompoms, because I know that his main plan, which is decarbonize the electricity grid by 2035, it will need to be forwarded in some way by Congress.
I am predicting that it will not be easy and I expect a massive flash of public relations [from the fossil fuel industry], which will be timed for the attempt to approve this plan, either directly or through budgetary reconciliation. And I worry that the Biden government, and the climate movement more broadly, may not be ready,
Jariel Arvin
So, what are the talking points that the oil industry uses to try to convince the public in these public relations blitzes?
Genevieve Guenther
People can recognize the talking points of the fossil fuel industry by thinking about what they were designed to do. In general, the fossil fuel discussion points are designed to do three things: make people believe that climate action will harm them, and damage their pockets in particular; make people think that we need fossil fuels; and try to convince us that climate change is not a big problem.
Jariel Arvin
How do they make people believe that taking climate action will hurt them financially?
Genevieve Guenther
At the moment, they are really hammering the argument that climate action will affect jobs and the economy. So, for example, Sen. Ted Cruz released a press release saying that by re-joining the Paris climate agreements, Biden is showing that “he is more interested in the opinions of the citizens of Paris than in the jobs of the citizens of Pittsburgh”.
Jariel Arvin
Yes, and we also saw Rep. Lauren Boebert making a similar statement saying that she works for “the people of Pueblo, not the people of Paris” and that the Paris agreement would put “blue collar jobs at risk”.
Genevieve Guenther
Yes, exactly. Cruz is arguing that Democrats plan to destroy jobs they don’t like, including thousands of jobs in the industry. This is completely untrue, because building a clean energy infrastructure will create millions of industrial jobs in this country that cannot be outsourced.
And any fossil fuel jobs that were lost last year happened a) under Trump’s command, and b) due to market forces that have absolutely nothing to do with any explicit climate policy approved by any government.
Jariel Arvin
So, if the statement is not true, how did the idea that taking action against climate change cause millions of job losses become so widespread?
Genevieve Guenther
There is a mythology in this country of the coal miner and the oil and gas worker, like the kind of exemplary male figure who acts as America’s backbone.
Jariel Arvin
Do you think there is any truth to that?
Genevieve Guenther
It is true that if we gradually eliminate the fossil fuel industry, there will be people, and even entire communities, who will need to make a living in different industries. This is absolutely true.
But two things about it: number one, you can create policies so that these people don’t suffer, and number two, you can implement incentives for new jobs to be created in geographic regions that are already depopulated and suffering economically, because the industry Fossil fuels are no longer prosperous enough to sustain a vibrant economy in these regions, for a start.
Therefore, you can define both: policies to facilitate the transition and policies to encourage new investments so that the economy ends up more vibrant in these places than before. Nothing is inevitable. The transition can be managed.
Jariel Arvin
Okay, so what is the second point of discussion that oil and gas uses?
Genevieve Guenther
The second thing that oil and gas companies will do is try to make people believe that we need fossil fuels and that oil and gas companies must remain in the market.
One that I saw very recently raises people’s fears about national security with the message that we need to extract oil to maintain our “energy independence”, as if only the fossil energy produced domestically was feeding America’s homes and businesses.
The truth is that, according to the United States Energy Information Agency, in 2019 (the last year for which full data exists) the United States imported 9.14 million barrels of oil per day – half a million more than that we export. They are sources of clean and safe energy, such as wind and solar, which will certainly be produced domestically, and not oil and methane gas.
Jariel Arvin
Thus, they act as if the United States’ independence is lost without fossil fuels, while in reality the United States still depends on other countries for its oil and gas. Understand. What else?
Genevieve Guenther
Another point of discussion created to make us believe that we need fossil fuels is the message that we cannot stop global warming without “innovation”. This is a complicated subject, because you will always hear energy researchers talking about the innovations we want to develop to allow the continuation of aviation and industrial transport.
But saying that new technologies will help us is different from saying that need them, which implies that the world cannot stop using fossil fuels now. Thus, politicians in the pockets of oil and gas producers will proclaim that they support “innovation”, and fossil fuel companies will place ads promoting the money they are spending on research and development – but the money they actually spend is orders of magnitude less than your PR budgets, not to mention your budgets to explore and develop new fossil fuel reserves.
Jariel Arvin
What is the third major point of discussion?
Genevieve Guenther
The third thing Big Oil will try to do is make people believe that climate change is not a big problem. They either call people who try to communicate the dangers of global warming “alarmists” or they just don’t talk about the climate crisis.
In their campaign of silence, they are helped by the vast majority of the media, who mostly proceed as if the crisis did not exist and do not even mention the words “climate change” when reporting on floods, fires, and hurricanes where there are links scientifically established with global warming.
It is strange to think of silence as a message, but sometimes what you don’t say is just as important as what you do.
Jariel Arvin
Okay, now we have the three points that the fossil fuel industry often uses: convincing people that climate action will affect their pockets, suggesting that we need fossil fuels and minimizing the climate emergency. How do climate scientists, activists and the media oppose this narrative?
Genevieve Guenther
We need to keep climate change at the forefront of people’s attention. We need to make it clear why we are making this energy transition – not just because it is a new way of creating jobs, and not just because we like clean air and water.
It’s because if we don’t do that, we can really destroy civilization.
We’re not going to change everything unless it’s necessary, and guess what? We have to. This is what an existential threat means.
I am concerned that the Biden government is not bringing this message to the forefront, because you need this to understand why we are doing this work.
The motivation here is that we are trying to save our world. We are trying to save our children’s lives. I think activists do a good job of keeping that message at the forefront, but I really would like politicians to do it too. I think they’re still scared, and I don’t think they have to be.