The fossil fuel industry runs a sprawling, lavishly funded operation spreading lies about the climate crisis. Pushing back against that disinformation needs to be a priority for the climate movement.
August 30, 2024
Source: Jacobin
I live in Rhode Island. Drive through any coastal community in our state, and you will see lawn signs opposing the latest offshore wind turbine project. Show up to a town council hearing on these projects, and you will hear residents arguing not just that climate change is a hoax but that wind turbines kill whales (they don’t) and all manner of other specious claims — disinformation directly funded by the fossil fuel industry.
When I was a state legislator, I experienced the overwhelmingly powerful effects of climate disinformation on an even more regular basis. Every time climate advocates fought the proposed expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure in our state, from new pipelines to a massive gas power plant, we came up against the same (now discredited) propaganda: natural gas is “clean energy,” and investing in this “bridge fuel” would actually lower our state’s carbon emissions. This disinformation made it much harder to persuade potential legislative allies to support all manner of supply-side and demand-side climate initiatives.
So when I first saw the headline of the Jacobin essay that has been making the rounds in climate circles this week, “Obsessing Over Climate Disinformation Is a Wrong Turn,” in which author Holly Buck argues that fighting climate disinformation is “a strategic dead end” — I thought I must have misread it.
There are so many examples like those I’ve experienced of how climate disinformation is — in real, concrete, practical terms — helping the oil and gas industry block and delay what Buck describes as “the actual work of climate action, which, at the end of the day, is remaking physical systems to replace the 80 percent of fossil energy that now powers our lives with clean energy.” That’s why the climate movement’s focus on combating this disinformation is so urgent and essential.
The Disinformation Obstacle
The strongest point Buck makes is that, at a moment when we in the United States “actually have some funds for climate action on the ground” from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the climate movement should be focusing on “things like explaining to people what heat pumps are, campaigning to expedite transmission lines, and helping communities understand the labyrinth of federal funding.” Buck argues that, in these kinds of conversations, climate disinformation isn’t the right organizing or communication framework — and she’s right. But in my experience, she’s mostly arguing with a straw man here; I certainly don’t often hear climate advocates claim that we should dismiss people’s concerns over whether “they can afford electric cars” or whether “wind and solar can power everything” as disinformation and then “write off the people with these concerns as disinformation victims.”
If that were the extent of her thesis, then it would be correct, if somewhat banal. But that’s not the thrust of her piece. Buck is essentially claiming that climate disinformation is not a serious obstacle to climate action, an argument that rests on several incorrect premises.
The first is what seems to be a misunderstanding of how Big Oil’s climate disinformation strategies actually work. Buck writes that “most people are not in fact swayed by corporate reassurances” because “people are profoundly skeptical of not just fossil fuel companies but of all corporations.” But aside from corporate greenwashing campaigns, the fossil fuel industry has never used direct communication as its primary tool for spreading climate disinformation.
Oil and gas companies are not sending representatives to people’s homes saying, “Wind turbines kill whales, trust us” — they’re supporting the creation of a whole network of front groups to deliver that messaging in much more organic ways. They’re not only funding ads to gin up a gas stove culture war — they’re also paying popular social media influencers to do that dirty work for them. And they aren’t just producing materials on their corporate letterheads falsely claiming fracked gas lowers carbon emissions — they’re funding programs and researchers at elite universities to launder these claims through prestigious academic institutions and scientific journals.
To say that people are immune to such efforts because they distrust corporations is to ignore the way these corporations seek, often very effectively, to deliver their disinformation not as corporate missives but as messages of culturally hegemonic common sense.
Second, Buck seems to imply that efforts to address climate disinformation are soaking up resources and attention that should be going into programs focused on helping people access and buy into decarbonization programs. But that’s simply not true. A huge amount of attention and funding in the climate movement is currently being directed toward, for example, IRA implementation. Indeed, Buck references one such program in her piece: the Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grants, which is investing $5 billion into local decarbonization planning efforts. I’m confident that if you added up the funding going into every advocacy effort that deals even tangentially with climate disinformation, you’d still be at least an order of magnitude away from that single IRA implementation program.
The work of deploying climate solutions is also, of course, an entire sector of the economy, with companies like Ford pushing electric cars and multibillion-dollar solar companies advertising for new customers. That’s not to say there isn’t a role for philanthropy and nonprofits, but that too is comparatively well-funded: big climate groups recently launched a $55 million ad campaign touting the economic benefits of the IRA, while new organizations like Rewiring America have raised millions to “tell stories of electric transformation” in order to help “make electrification simple.” The real funding gap in the climate space right now is for frontline communities that are resisting fossil fuel expansion — the very organizing efforts that often have to deal most directly with the political effects of Big Oil disinformation and manipulation.
Third, as climate activist and scholar Thea Riofrancos observed in a response to Buck’s piece, Buck seems to be conflating two very different questions: Is Big Oil disinformation a problem? And is it the best framework for climate organizing? In many circumstances, the answer to the second question may be no. But that does not tell us the answer to the first question.
Take, as one example, Buck’s call that the climate movement should be focusing on “things like explaining to people what heat pumps are.” Sure. But the fossil fuel industry is spending millions of dollars to derail efforts to electrify homes and buildings by flooding social media with disinformation about heat pumps. Yes, organizers working to effectively respond to such disinformation need to meet people where they’re at and should not simply say, “You’re a victim of disinformation, those concerns are dumb, snap out of it.” But that doesn’t negate the severe threat that such disinformation campaigns pose to our clean-energy transition.
We Need to Take on Disinformation
This last point speaks to what I think is the biggest weakness in Buck’s overall analysis: her underestimation of political as opposed to technical obstacles to decarbonization. Certainly, the work of transitioning our entire economy from fossil fuels to clean energy requires solving a million technical challenges, one of which is the effective implementation of programs like the IRA, which, in turn, requires developing buy-in from regular people who may have legitimate questions and concerns regarding this transition.
But humanity can overcome technical challenges, even massive ones. When it became clear that we were destroying the ozone layer, humanity came together, phased out the CFC chemicals causing ozone depletion, and solved the crisis. We were able to do so, in large part, because the CFC industry did not have the inclination or capacity to engage in a massive campaign of disinformation to sow doubt about the existence of the ozone problem and delay and block solutions to it, as Big Oil did and continues to do regarding the climate crisis.
The fossil fuel industry remains the biggest obstacle to the clean-energy transition, and climate disinformation remains its most potent tool. It is very much in Big Oil’s interest for climate advocates to, as Buck suggests, stop “obsessing over climate disinformation.” But we should resist such suggestions. The climate movement can walk and chew gum at the same time; we can work hard to fight climate disinformation while using other on-the-ground organizing frames when they’re more appropriate. Indeed, given the urgent tipping point deadlines the climate crisis imposes on us, we don’t have time for anything less.
Aaron Regunberg is a progressive organizer, former state representative, and senior climate policy counsel at Public Citizen.
I live in Rhode Island. Drive through any coastal community in our state, and you will see lawn signs opposing the latest offshore wind turbine project. Show up to a town council hearing on these projects, and you will hear residents arguing not just that climate change is a hoax but that wind turbines kill whales (they don’t) and all manner of other specious claims — disinformation directly funded by the fossil fuel industry.
When I was a state legislator, I experienced the overwhelmingly powerful effects of climate disinformation on an even more regular basis. Every time climate advocates fought the proposed expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure in our state, from new pipelines to a massive gas power plant, we came up against the same (now discredited) propaganda: natural gas is “clean energy,” and investing in this “bridge fuel” would actually lower our state’s carbon emissions. This disinformation made it much harder to persuade potential legislative allies to support all manner of supply-side and demand-side climate initiatives.
So when I first saw the headline of the Jacobin essay that has been making the rounds in climate circles this week, “Obsessing Over Climate Disinformation Is a Wrong Turn,” in which author Holly Buck argues that fighting climate disinformation is “a strategic dead end” — I thought I must have misread it.
There are so many examples like those I’ve experienced of how climate disinformation is — in real, concrete, practical terms — helping the oil and gas industry block and delay what Buck describes as “the actual work of climate action, which, at the end of the day, is remaking physical systems to replace the 80 percent of fossil energy that now powers our lives with clean energy.” That’s why the climate movement’s focus on combating this disinformation is so urgent and essential.
The Disinformation Obstacle
The strongest point Buck makes is that, at a moment when we in the United States “actually have some funds for climate action on the ground” from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the climate movement should be focusing on “things like explaining to people what heat pumps are, campaigning to expedite transmission lines, and helping communities understand the labyrinth of federal funding.” Buck argues that, in these kinds of conversations, climate disinformation isn’t the right organizing or communication framework — and she’s right. But in my experience, she’s mostly arguing with a straw man here; I certainly don’t often hear climate advocates claim that we should dismiss people’s concerns over whether “they can afford electric cars” or whether “wind and solar can power everything” as disinformation and then “write off the people with these concerns as disinformation victims.”
If that were the extent of her thesis, then it would be correct, if somewhat banal. But that’s not the thrust of her piece. Buck is essentially claiming that climate disinformation is not a serious obstacle to climate action, an argument that rests on several incorrect premises.
The first is what seems to be a misunderstanding of how Big Oil’s climate disinformation strategies actually work. Buck writes that “most people are not in fact swayed by corporate reassurances” because “people are profoundly skeptical of not just fossil fuel companies but of all corporations.” But aside from corporate greenwashing campaigns, the fossil fuel industry has never used direct communication as its primary tool for spreading climate disinformation.
Oil and gas companies are not sending representatives to people’s homes saying, “Wind turbines kill whales, trust us” — they’re supporting the creation of a whole network of front groups to deliver that messaging in much more organic ways. They’re not only funding ads to gin up a gas stove culture war — they’re also paying popular social media influencers to do that dirty work for them. And they aren’t just producing materials on their corporate letterheads falsely claiming fracked gas lowers carbon emissions — they’re funding programs and researchers at elite universities to launder these claims through prestigious academic institutions and scientific journals.
To say that people are immune to such efforts because they distrust corporations is to ignore the way these corporations seek, often very effectively, to deliver their disinformation not as corporate missives but as messages of culturally hegemonic common sense.
Second, Buck seems to imply that efforts to address climate disinformation are soaking up resources and attention that should be going into programs focused on helping people access and buy into decarbonization programs. But that’s simply not true. A huge amount of attention and funding in the climate movement is currently being directed toward, for example, IRA implementation. Indeed, Buck references one such program in her piece: the Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grants, which is investing $5 billion into local decarbonization planning efforts. I’m confident that if you added up the funding going into every advocacy effort that deals even tangentially with climate disinformation, you’d still be at least an order of magnitude away from that single IRA implementation program.
The work of deploying climate solutions is also, of course, an entire sector of the economy, with companies like Ford pushing electric cars and multibillion-dollar solar companies advertising for new customers. That’s not to say there isn’t a role for philanthropy and nonprofits, but that too is comparatively well-funded: big climate groups recently launched a $55 million ad campaign touting the economic benefits of the IRA, while new organizations like Rewiring America have raised millions to “tell stories of electric transformation” in order to help “make electrification simple.” The real funding gap in the climate space right now is for frontline communities that are resisting fossil fuel expansion — the very organizing efforts that often have to deal most directly with the political effects of Big Oil disinformation and manipulation.
Third, as climate activist and scholar Thea Riofrancos observed in a response to Buck’s piece, Buck seems to be conflating two very different questions: Is Big Oil disinformation a problem? And is it the best framework for climate organizing? In many circumstances, the answer to the second question may be no. But that does not tell us the answer to the first question.
Take, as one example, Buck’s call that the climate movement should be focusing on “things like explaining to people what heat pumps are.” Sure. But the fossil fuel industry is spending millions of dollars to derail efforts to electrify homes and buildings by flooding social media with disinformation about heat pumps. Yes, organizers working to effectively respond to such disinformation need to meet people where they’re at and should not simply say, “You’re a victim of disinformation, those concerns are dumb, snap out of it.” But that doesn’t negate the severe threat that such disinformation campaigns pose to our clean-energy transition.
We Need to Take on Disinformation
This last point speaks to what I think is the biggest weakness in Buck’s overall analysis: her underestimation of political as opposed to technical obstacles to decarbonization. Certainly, the work of transitioning our entire economy from fossil fuels to clean energy requires solving a million technical challenges, one of which is the effective implementation of programs like the IRA, which, in turn, requires developing buy-in from regular people who may have legitimate questions and concerns regarding this transition.
But humanity can overcome technical challenges, even massive ones. When it became clear that we were destroying the ozone layer, humanity came together, phased out the CFC chemicals causing ozone depletion, and solved the crisis. We were able to do so, in large part, because the CFC industry did not have the inclination or capacity to engage in a massive campaign of disinformation to sow doubt about the existence of the ozone problem and delay and block solutions to it, as Big Oil did and continues to do regarding the climate crisis.
The fossil fuel industry remains the biggest obstacle to the clean-energy transition, and climate disinformation remains its most potent tool. It is very much in Big Oil’s interest for climate advocates to, as Buck suggests, stop “obsessing over climate disinformation.” But we should resist such suggestions. The climate movement can walk and chew gum at the same time; we can work hard to fight climate disinformation while using other on-the-ground organizing frames when they’re more appropriate. Indeed, given the urgent tipping point deadlines the climate crisis imposes on us, we don’t have time for anything less.
Aaron Regunberg is a progressive organizer, former state representative, and senior climate policy counsel at Public Citizen.
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