"The industry is still running the same five-step plan, to the same end: preserving power, subsidies, and social license."
"It’s remarkable how little some industries’ strategies change over the decades. How little they need to change, given how effective they are. That holds especially true for the fossil fuel industry, which has revealed itself via documents submitted to Congress to be hopelessly, permanently trapped in the 1990s.
As part of its investigation into climate disinformation, the House Oversight Committee subpoenaed documents in November 2021 from four of the world’s largest oil companies; their U.S. trade association, the American Petroleum Institute; and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The chamber did not comply with the subpoena, but the rest submitted a variety of responsive documents, the most salient of which have been published by the Oversight Committee in two batches. 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. It’s the same five-step plan, deployed to the same end: preserving power, subsidies, and social license."
Amy Westervelt reports for The Intercept December 24 2022.
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