Polluters' Puppets: Why We All Spread Fossil Fuel Propaganda, And How To Stop
In a new book, scholar Genevieve Guenther explains how the fossil fuel industry has appropriated the language of climate advocates to maintain the status quo, and offers a way out of the trap.
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“The fossil-fuel industry and the governments that support it are literally colluding to stop you from transforming the world.”
So states scholar Genevieve Guenther in her new book, The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It, which proposes that the way we talk about climate change has been manipulated by the same vested interests that are causing it. It’s a revelatory study of how we talk about the crisis—and exactly why that matters.
The “why” ought to be apparent. After all, the way we talk about things tends to define the limits of our imagination. Narrative storytelling enabled civilisation to flourish, just as it guides children towards adulthood. It ought to concern us, then, that so little energy has been spent on decoding the language we use to discuss climate change, one of the greatest threats facing humanity.
Guenther builds The Language of Climate Politics around an alarming contention: fossil fuel industry actors have appropriated the messaging of climate scientists, advocates and communicators, in turn causing those same advocates, along with politicians and other public figures, to unwittingly reinforce fossil fuel ideologies in the media and in the public discourse. It’s a bold thesis, but one that Guenther supports with a methodical analysis. The Language of Climate Politics is a practical guide that a) lays bare the terminology and tricks that the fossil fuel sector employs to skew our conversations, and b) introduces readers to new ways to talk about climate to envisage a civilisation beyond our current, fossil fuel-centric one.
Guenther focuses on six key terms that she believes dominate the language of climate politics. These are: “alarmist”; “cost”; “growth”; “India and China”; “innovation”; and “resilience”, each of which gets its own chapter detailing its history and weaponisation. In conjunction, Guenther says, these terms are used to “foment the incorrect and dangerous belief that the world does not need to phase out fossil fuels.” She then offers alternatives for each that cannot so easily be co-opted by vested interests.
Valuable takeaways abound, but perhaps the most fundamental is Guenther’s demonstration that political messaging is almost wholly antithetical to science communication or even journalism. While scientific rigour requires nuance, detail and grey areas, political language, in order to be effective, paints in broad, emotive strokes designed to trigger feelings. This isn’t, of course, a new contention, but Guenther goes a step further in mapping out how Big Oil’s merchants of doubt capitalise on these conflicting properties.
“When scientists were being the most scrupulous in their communications about the climate crisis … they unwittingly echoed the message that there was some ‘uncertainty’ that meant they weren’t sure if climate change was real,” she writes. “In a truly fiendish act of appropriation, fossil-fuel interests managed to recruit scientists into inadvertently spreading doubt.”
This, in a nutshell, is why fossil fuel propaganda can be so devastatingly insidious. The seasoned operative can use the experts’ own words to bamboozle the public into thinking things aren’t so bad, and that the status quo can be allowed to continue. Guenther goes on to delve into more up-to-date phenomena exploited by the fossil fuel lobby, such as the appropriation of the work of first-class researchers like Zeke Hausfather to effectively brand climate advocates as “alarmists”. The power of The Language of Climate Politics is that, pretty soon, the reader begins identifying other instances of the phenomena described. This reviewer recalls the moment during the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, when the conference’s oil executive president, Sultan Al Jaber, claimed there was “no science” to phasing out fossil fuels. Al Jaber’s comments were immediately described as “perfectly reasonable” by none other than Professor Myles Allen CBE, a prominent climate physicist and the man who coined the term “net zero”, who protested that all nations need do is to ramp up carbon capture and storage to scrub that CO2 from the atmosphere. (In a response, Allen’s Oxford colleague Ben Caldecott pointed out that “the fossil fuel lobby often making these arguments have no actual plan to scrub carbon at such scales so quickly”—and for more on the latest CDR happenings, see “Elsewhere in climate news” at this end of this page.)
In later chapters, the fact that Guenther identifies positive-sounding terms like “innovation” and “resilience” as signifiers of propaganda ought to induce nervous shuffling among journalists and other climate communicators, as this terminology shows up frequently in items about “climate solutions”. Many a writer has been seduced into trumpeting the apparent virtues of some new contraption purporting to offer a way out of our predicament. Indeed, none other than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its mitigation pathways, bets heavily on the success of carbon dioxide removal (CDR). Guenther, however, lays out a systems view of the various permutations of CDR currently being touted by techno-optimists and fossil fuel firms, showing that not a single one has been shown to be capable of scaling to the degree required. CDR does have a very powerful effect as far as fossil fuel companies are concerned, though: reports about it tend to weaken public support for climate policy. On this point, Guenther turns to Middlemarch, in which George Elliot notes: “We all know the difficulty of carrying out a resolve when we secretly long that it may turn out to be unnecessary. In such states of mind the most incredulous person has a private leaning towards miracle.” Journalists and scientists, who pride themselves on being “the most incredulous”, are by no means immune to this effect.
So what is to be done? Guenther concludes each chapter by offering alternative terminology that climate advocates can use so as to avoid falling into the traps outlined. For instance, after demonstrating that the term “resilience” has been co-opted to shore up continuance of the fossil-fuel economy (by such odious figures as Florida’s Ron DeSantis, no less), Guenther recommends adopting the term “transformation”—a process that is antithetical to the status quo, while also being a necessary condition not only for reducing emissions generally, but for achieving climate justice. Indeed, in her admonitions against “resilience”, Guenther handily summarises the broader philosophy of her work: systemic transformation might be hard, but we must side-line those who, out of self-interest, claim that it is impossible. After all, as is becoming increasingly clear, transformation is the only realistic option if humanity is to sustain any form of organised civilisation.
While this subject-matter can be complex, Guenther never loses sight of the point of it all. Her central message is that the way we visualise and talk about climate and our response to it must not be defined and bounded by those who seek to prevent the change that is so desperately required. Rather, it should come from a place of intellectual and emotional courage from which we dare to imagine a more just existence for all people.
“The goal is to transform yourself into someone who rises to this epochal moment,” she writes. “Always remember: this is a battle against the forces of destruction to save something of this achingly beautiful, utterly miraculous world for our children.”
And who, in their right mind, doesn’t wish for that?
The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It, by Genevieve Guenther, published by Oxford University Press, is slated for release in July 2024.
Elsewhere in climate news …
Fossil fuel industry villainy has been laid bare like never before this week, to the extent that it’s been hard to keep track of it all. But let’s begin with:
Dharna Noor for The Guardian covered a report from the US House Oversight and Accountability Committee on the fossil fuel industry’s systematic attempts to evade responsibility for climate change, while downplaying its effects. Titled “Denial, Disinformation, and Doublespeak: Big Oil’s Evolving Efforts to Avoid Accountability for Climate Change”, the joint staff report details how oil majors have attempted to greenwash their image while doing everything they can to undermine climate policy behind the scenes. (The Guardian)
Coming out of the US House report, a trove of internal documents from BP shows executives with the company knew that “natural” gas was incompatible with the goals of the Paris Agreement, but went ahead and marketed it as a “green” alternative to coal, Grist reports. Per BP’s own words, circa 2017: “[O]nce built, gas locks in future emissions above a level consistent with 2 degrees.” Covering the same trove, DeSmog reveals how, in 2016, BP was warned by researchers from Princeton that “new global supplies of shale gas could lead to catastrophic events such as ‘mass extinctions and unprecedented famine’”—a warning that the company, needless to say, chose to ignore. (Grist; Desmog)
Sticking with the malign influence of Big Oil, Heatmap’s Jeva Lange has a useful piece detailing how much cash the industry has been pumping into Donald Trump’s legal defence—some $6.4 million in the first three months of 2024 alone. The fossil fuel majors are extremely keen to keep the Orange One out of jail, and there’s no mystery as to why. Climate Power’s senior advisor on oil and gas Alex Witt is quoted as saying: “There’s absolutely no doubt that he would deliver Big Oil’s wish list wrapped up in a bow.” (Heatmap)
For the FT, Kenza Bryan and Clara Murray reveal that Shell sold millions of carbon credits that resulted in no CO2 removal at all. The Alberta provincial government in Canada allowed the firm to sell the credits to oil sands companies, including Chevron and ConocoPhillips, to help them write off their own emissions. The credits registered, however, were equivalent to twice the volume of CO2 captured by Shell’s Quest carbon capture facility, located near Edmonton. It’s a particularly stark example of what critics claim carbon capture technology is actually for—ie. that it gives polluters the cover they need to continue polluting. (Financial Times)
Ending with a ray of good news, UK think-tank Ember reported that in 2023, for the first time, more than 30% of electricity generated globally came from renewables[PDF]—mainly wind, solar and hydro. Factoring in nuclear, some 40% of electricity came from low-carbon sources of generation. These milestones, however, should not hide the fact that renewables aren’t growing anywhere fast enough to meet global climate targets—in fact, that 40% represents just a 1% increase in total clean power generation year-on-year, per Ember’s 2022 report. And while the growth of fossil fuel generation is now lower than 1% (0.8%, to be precise), that figure needs to be in the negative before we can really start popping corks. (Ember)