In 1998, when countries around the world agreed to reduce carbon emissions through the Kyoto Protocol, US fossil fuel companies devised their response, including an aggressive strategy to stoke public skepticism. “Victory,” according to the American Petroleum Institute memo, “will be achieved when ordinary citizens ‘understand’ (recognize) the uncertainties of climate science.” If “climate change does not become an irrelevant topic… it may be timeless.” if we can claim victory.”
The memo, which was leaked to The New York Times later that year, goes on to describe how fossil fuel companies manipulate journalists and the general public by suppressing evidence, playing “both sides” of the debate, and describing those who seek to cut emissions as “irrelevant to reality.” Nearly 25 years later, the reality of a changing climate is now clear to most Americans as heat waves and wildfires, rising sea levels, and violent storms become more frequent. Last week, President Joe Biden announced measures to expand offshore wind power, though he stopped short of declaring a national climate emergency.
A Supreme Court ruling last month limited the federal government’s ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants, meaning it will be up to a divided Congress to pass any meaningful emissions limits. Although polls show that the public, in general, is increasingly concerned about climate change, many Americans distrust the scientific consensus. The tragedy is that you see tens of millions of Americans everywhere on social media who think scientists are lying, even about things that have been proven for decades, “says Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University who wrote about the history of climate change disinformation.” They have been influenced by decades of misinformation.” The denial runs deep. ” And so on.
Last month, despite record heat in London, wildfires raging in Alaska, and historic flooding in Australia, the Science and Environmental Policy Project, a fossil fuel think tank, said every scientist was wrong. “There is no climate crisis,” the group wrote in its newsletter. Years before COVID-19 unleashed a wave of disinformation, as former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election helped topple the U.S. Capitol, fossil fuel companies, in large part, sought to garner support for emissions reductions to undermine themselves.
Even as those same companies support investment in renewable energy, the legacy of all the climate misinformation remains. It also contributes to a broader scepticism of scientists, scientific institutions, and the media that report on them, a mistrust that is reflected in doubts about vaccines or public health measures during pandemics, such as masks and quarantines. “This opens a Pandora’s box of misinformation that has proven difficult to control,” said Dave Anderson of the Energy and Policy Institute, an organisation that criticises oil and coal companies for covering up what they know about the dangers of climate change.
Beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, as public awareness of climate change grew, fossil fuel companies poured millions of dollars into public relations campaigns that were critical to gathering evidence supporting the idea of climate change. They fund supposedly independent think tanks that pick apart the science and promote fringe views designed to make it look like there are two legitimate sides to the argument. Since then, the approach has softened as the impact of climate change has become clearer. Today, fossil fuel companies are more likely to achieve their so-called environmental record through renewable energy sources such as solar and wind, or initiatives to improve energy efficiency or offset carbon emissions.
