Bread and CircusesAmy Westervelt (@amywestervelt) has posted an excellent in-depth article at The Intercept about the strategies fossil fuel companies use to convince everyone (especially politicians) that we should carry on with business as usual for as long as possible.
I've excerpted a few highlights below, but I encourage you to read the whole thing.
https://theintercept.com/2022/12/24/oil-gas-climate-disinformation/
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As part of its investigation into climate disinformation, the U.S. Congress subpoenaed documents in November 2021 from four of the world’s largest oil companies. The more than 1,500 pages include internal communications about media relations, advertising, and marketing campaigns from 2015 to 2021.
Taken together, they reveal that the industry’s approach on climate really hasn’t changed since scientists first started warning that the burning of fossil fuels was becoming a problem: push “solutions” that keep fossil fuels profitable, downplay climate impacts, overstate the industry’s commitments, and bully the media if they don’t stay on message.
They’re pushing the idea that methane gas — a fossil fuel that emits a greenhouse gas some 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide — is somehow an alternative to fossil fuels. The plan for extending the life of the industry as long as possible appears to lean on “low-carbon solutions”: a reduction in operational emissions and carbon capture and storage, or CSS, which they’re banking on as a way to sell business-as-usual as “low carbon.”
The documents make clear that the industry is intent on maximizing a small window of opportunity for CCS — getting the government to invest heavily in this “solution” before everyone figures out it’s not a solution so much as an enabler of the status quo.
The industry wants to see so much government funding for CCS locked in that there’s no choice but to continue down that path. And the purpose is clear: enabling the continued burning of fossil fuels.
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Amy Westervelt