Today, World Environment Day, the UN Secretary-General António Guterres made a special address on climate action “A Moment of Truth” in New York. In a speech that covered the impacts already being felt from the delays in taking action, and the injustices this gives rise to, he turned his ire on fossil fuel companies and their enablers (my emphasis):
“Fourth and finally, we must directly confront those in the fossil fuel industry who have shown relentless zeal for obstructing progress – over decades. Billions of dollars have been thrown at distorting the truth, deceiving the public, and sowing doubt. I thank the academics and the activists, the journalists and the whistleblowers, who have exposed those tactics – often at great personal and professional risk. I call on leaders in the fossil fuel industry to understand that if you are not in the fast lane to clean energy transformation, you are driving your business into a dead end – and taking us all with you. Last year, the oil and gas industry invested a measly 2.5 percent of its total capital spending on clean energy.”
He then went on to say:
“Many in the fossil fuel industry have shamelessly greenwashed, even as they have sought to delay climate action – with lobbying, legal threats, and massive ad campaigns. They have been aided and abetted by advertising and PR companies – Mad Men – remember the TV series – fuelling the madness. I call on these companies to stop acting as enablers to planetary destruction. Stop taking on new fossil fuel clients, from today, and set out plans to drop your existing ones. Fossil fuels are not only poisoning our planet – they’re toxic for your brand. Your sector is full of creative minds who are already mobilising around this cause. They are gravitating towards companies that are fighting for our planet – not trashing it. I also call on countries to act. Many governments restrict or prohibit advertising for products that harm human health – like tobacco. Some are now doing the same with fossil fuels. I urge every country to ban advertising from fossil fuel companies. And I urge news media and tech companies to stop taking fossil fuel advertising.”
The active disinformation has gone on for decades, as we well documented in the book, Merchants of Doubt, by historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway (first published in 2010 https://www.merchantsofdoubt.org), and for which companies like Shell were active participants in climate science denial.
The on-going activities of organisations, individuals and PR companies funded by fossil fuel interests did not end in the mid 1990s (even <shocked emoji> in the UK), and has continued in many ways unabated, as Desmog has documented on an almost daily basis https://www.desmog.com. However, now the emphasis is on trying to undermine climate solutions, so as to justify carrying on using fossil fuels, either in electricity generation, or in end-use such as transport and heating. But as the alternatives are now so good, the PR and greenwashing has to be world-class to try to undermine them.
So it was astounding to hear Nick Butler – a Visiting Professor at King’s College – being interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s PM today (5th June 2024) by Evan Davis, being highly critical of the Secretary General’s speech. When asked about fossil fuel companies obstructing public discourse with their lobbying, public affairs, and so on, he said:
“… I think that was the case in the past but from the middle of the 1990s that has changed, certainly for the European companies, certainly BP and Shell, are going in a different direction …” <my jaw drops emoji>
Well being an ex-BP employee he would say that wouldn’t he. He is just one example of what might be called an apologist for climate greenwashing.
And it is incredibly disingenuous to say that adverts for oil and gas don’t appear on TV anymore in the UK. No, but adverts and PR for petrol powered SUVs, or Hydrogen Boilers, or … the list goes on. And to say that its all our fault for making the wrong choices, as Nick Butler suggested, is really the equivalent of victim blaming. I can’t take an EV Bus if there are no EV Buses (or indeed no bus service worth talking about), because car manufacturers and fossil fuel interests have been in cohoots to promote gas guzzlers (and are now whining because the China actually invested in an EV supply chain and market).
The truth is that between 2010 and 2018, Shell dedicated just 1% of its long terms investments to renewable energy, and paying creative agencies to target influencers to improve the brand’s image, etc, as Client Earth’s expose ‘The Greenwashing Files’ reveals. BP and the rest are no different.
You see they have moved on from the mid-1990s. Then the focus was on full front climate science denial, through a myriad of think tanks, influencers writing for the Daily Telegraph, Wall Street Journal, and wherever. Now they are more subtle, more devious. “Oh yes we love renewables”, they will say, but “when the wind doesn’t blow or it doesn’t shine our gas will be needed to generate your electricity”. Gas, I should stress, which they want to grow as a proportion of their business, not phase it out at all. It’s almost as if they are trying to gaslight renewables.
We have an example in the UK of fossil fuel interests – the gas network – producing hit pieces on heat pumps, and claiming that green hydrogen is better, even though all the science shows this is not the case (and in any case, its a ruse by them to carry on extracting natural gas to turn into hydrogen, which will never be green, because they will never be able to afford to bury the carbon dioxide produced in the process). Yet even the Bosch executive vice-president Stefan Thiel now accepts that hydrogen is a lost cause for heating homes. The delays caused by the industry’s disinformation campaign on just this one attack line has come at a cost – being delays in decarbonising UK home heating.
And the greenwashing has been getting worse as the fossil fuel companies try desperately not to be in possession of stranded fossil fuel assets. But they, and their PR / Advertising agencies, are now feeling the heat as one Desmog story Litigation Over Misleading Climate Claims Has ‘Exploded’ Over the Past Few Years reveals:
“Companies are increasingly facing legal action over their false or misleading climate communications, according to a new report examining trends in global climate litigation. That report, released late last week, highlighted a surge in litigation around climate-related greenwashing — what researchers have termed “climate-washing” — over the past few years.”
And to take Shell as an exemplar again, far from “going in a different direction”, as Nick Butler claimed, they are actually reducing investments in renewables because it does not “align” with their strategy to maximise extraction of methane (aka “natural” gas, see what they did there, long ago). They have been pulled up several times for misleading greenwashing advertisements.
As recently as 2022 Shell has had some of its adverts banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for misleading claims about how clean its overall energy production is, as the BBC reported here.
One can forgive Evan Davis for not being as well briefed as he could be on the history and on-going tactics of the fossil fuel companies to delay the green transition through well funded PR, advertising and influencer campaigns, but it would not be a bad idea for BBC PM to do a follow-up with someone who is well informed.
For example, how about inviting Joana Setzer (Associate Professorial Research Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment), and co-author of the report Global trends in climate change litigation: 2023 snapshot, as we know how much the BBC loves a bit of balance.
Richard W. Erskine, 2023
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