Fossil fuel industry’s anti-climate, anti-renewables playbook goes back 57 years
A new report says fossil fuel lobbyists have been using the same playbook to delay the transition to renewables for 57 years.
But the use of this playbook has been ramping up fast since 2005 as governments around the world begin to take climate change seriously
The report particularly points the finger at the American Petroleum Institute (API), FuelsEurope, and Fuels Industry UK who have refined three main arguments since 1967.
Those arguments centred around solution scepticism, policy neutrality and affordability and energy security.
The impact of these coordinated assaults is a dilution of climate related policy and a steep rise in cumulative emissions.
While these lobby groups were advocating against controls on fossil fuels and support for clean energy, the cumulative emissions of their members between 1950 and 2022 hit 350 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
That figure is about 18% of the total global total cumulative CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry since 1750.
That fossil fuel companies and their lobbyists have been fighting to turn the world against climate science and scientists isn’t new.
In 1998, fossil fuel companies including ExxonMobil and Chevron hired PR consultant Joe Walker to develop a plan to wreck the Kyoto protocol via a global misinformation campaign, using a network of friendly scientists and think tanks to cast doubt on the science.
In 2017, a front group backed by the billionaire anti-renewables Koch brothers launched a video attacking electric vehicles.
Since then, academics have built a case that a global network of companies and wealthy individuals are funding anti-climate campaigns around the world.The latest campaign are claims offshore wind farms kill whales.
Australia’s fossil fuel lobbyists have been equally effective at blocking climate policy – as everyone who can remember the 2011 carbon tax drama will know.
A 2020 study showed that three quarters of the groups which took positions against climate regulations had a pro-fossil fuel agenda.
BHP, Rio Tinto, and Glencore, were in the top three in terms of indirect negative impact. Coal companies Yancoal and Whitehaven, and oil and gas companies Santos, Woodside, and Shell also made the top ten.
At the time, Australia was deep in the COVID-19 crisis and the influence of the fossil fuel lobby helps to explain why the federal government at the time rejected a “clean recovery” in favour of fossil-focused recovery measures.
The narratives used in Australia have been more direct, incorrectly claiming that climate science and basic economics backs the continuation of fossil fuel industries.
Fossil fuel companies operating in Australia pushed back strongly on attempts to reference reducing fossil gas demand in Australia’s Future Gas Strategy which was released in May, while strongly advocating for new gas supply and investments.