{"id":9262,"date":"2021-01-16T12:00:43","date_gmt":"2021-01-16T12:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=150899"},"modified":"2021-01-16T12:00:43","modified_gmt":"2021-01-16T12:00:43","slug":"oil-industry-reconsiders-donations-to-election-deniers-but-has-its-own-big-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/01\/16\/oil-industry-reconsiders-donations-to-election-deniers-but-has-its-own-big-lie\/","title":{"rendered":"Oil Industry Reconsiders Donations to Election Deniers \u2014 but Has Its Own Big Lie"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A parade of<\/u> oil and gas companies nobly announced this week that they will review their political donations in the wake of last week\u2019s riot<\/a> in Washington, D.C. \u2014 an attempt to distance themselves from the spectacle of election fraud conspiracists and white supremacists attacking the Capitol building and temporarily halting the election certification process.<\/p>\n

Marathon Petroleum, Occidental Petroleum, and the employee political action committees for ConocoPhillips and BP temporarily froze their contributions. Exxon Mobil and Chevron are reviewing their donations. Even energy industry association spokespersons for the American Petroleum Institute, the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, as well as a leader of the Koch network<\/a> said the attack on the Capitol will factor into their future giving.<\/p>\n

Those who have spent years confronting fossil fuel industry-funded disinformation campaigns, raising alarms about the climate crisis, are unimpressed with the moves. The origin of the storming of the Capitol was a series of lies, and there is no indication that the fossil fuel industry is taking a meaningful stance against high-risk deceit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey have been funding disinformation and anti-climate politicians for a very long time.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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In many ways, fossil fuel companies laid the groundwork for the widespread acceptance of lies big enough to cause an existential threat to democracy\u2019s survival \u2014 even humanity\u2019s. \u201cLying has become a habit,\u201d said science historian Naomi Oreskes, whose book with Eric Conway, \u201cMerchants of Doubt,\u201d documents how veterans of the tobacco industry\u2019s misinformation efforts seeded climate denial among the media and lawmakers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have been funding disinformation and anti-climate politicians for a very long time,\u201d she said over email, of the fossil fuel industry. Oreskes said reconsidering political donations for election misinformation is a belated gesture: \u201cA day late and a dollar short. Or, rather, three decades late and hundreds of millions of dollars short.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the industry still has not come close to fully divesting from nor making amends for their spread of lethal climate disinformation.<\/p>\n

To climate scientist Michael Mann, the fossil fuel groups\u2019 announcements that they will review political giving serves to evade attention from the fact that, during the Trump administration, the oil and gas agenda was supercharged by the racist rhetoric and lies that swayed elections in the direction of their favored candidates. Indeed, never has the fossil fuel industry\u2019s agenda been carried to fruition so completely as it was over the past four years, achieved using what Mann described to The Intercept as \u201cred meat\u201d thrown out for the racist right, including election disinformation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the fossil fuel industry, the front groups that they fund along with plutocrats like the Koch brothers \u2014 these are the groups that have been pulling the strings, that have been throwing out the red meat, that have been instigating this racially motivated, treasonous rebellion by the disaffected base of the Republican Party,\u201d said Mann. \u201cThey\u2019re playing with fire, and it\u2019s almost like they don\u2019t really care about democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
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Thousands of Donald Trump supporters storm the Capitol following a \u201cStop the Steal\u201d rally in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021.<\/p>\n

\nPhoto: Spencer Platt\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Links To Election Deniers<\/h3>\n

The fossil fuel companies will presumably be reexamining donations to politicians who supported the \u201cStop the Steal\u201d movement to overturn election results. Some 139 U.S. representatives and eight senators voted against certifying President-elect Joe Biden\u2019s win, including lawmakers like Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who has received extensive contributions<\/a> from some of the oil and gas companies now denouncing the Capitol attack. Perhaps they will also reconsider future contributions to President Donald Trump himself, who incited the insurrection and received $14,696,347 from the oil and gas industry<\/a> for the 2020 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.<\/p>\n

Many more individuals and groups would have to be included in a comprehensive audit of the fossil fuel industry\u2019s involvement in the events leading up to the storming of the Capitol. Among those listed as coalition partners on the March to Save America website, which called on Trump supporters to defend the president, was the Rule of Law Defense Fund<\/a>, a dark-money group started by the Republican Attorneys General Association.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Fossil fuel companies like Koch Industries and Exxon have donated to the attorneys general association and groups backed<\/a> by the industry \u2014 like the Koch brothers\u2019 Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce and the Edison Electric Institute \u2014 have directly contributed to the Rule of Law Defense Fund. The Rule of Law Defense Fund even went so far as to put out robocalls promoting the march, as Documented reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Also listed on the march\u2019s website was Turning Point USA, which recently entered into a partnership<\/a> with the Koch-backed American Legislative Exchange Council. ALEC, as the group is known, brings together lobbyists and lawmakers to promote industry friendly legislation at the state level. Turning Point and ALEC are working together to place right-wing students on university boards of regents, according to reporting<\/a> by the Center for Media and Democracy. Koch-linked groups also helped mobilize<\/a> this summer\u2019s reopen protests \u2014 a movement that significantly overlapped<\/a> with Stop the Steal.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the Twitter account for the climate denial website Climate Depot tweeted on January 6: \u201cStriking fear in politicians is not a bad thing.\u201d A subsequent tweet said, \u201cThomas Jefferson: \u2018The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.\u201d Climate Depot is run by<\/a> the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a think tank that the fossil fuel industry has funded in the past. Its Twitter was just one among several climate denier accounts that DeSmog documented<\/a> supporting the Stop the Steal movement or spreading disinformation in the aftermath of the Capitol attack.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"NEW<\/p>\n

Environmental activists rally for accountability for fossil fuel companies outside of the New York Supreme Court in New York City, on Oct. 22, 2019.<\/p>\n

\nPhoto: Drew Angerer\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Big Lie of Climate Denial<\/h3>\n

Mann, the climate scientist, pointed to parallels between the industry\u2019s attempt to distance itself from election misinformation and its recent move to steer away from all-out climate denial. \u201cThey\u2019ve done the same thing with climate denialism as it has become untenable to deny that climate change is real and happening,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The story of the climate lie<\/a> goes back to the 1980s. In the early part of the decade, a task force of fossil fuel industry representatives was meeting regularly to talk about the emerging climate science they were helping produce. Just as the science was becoming clear, the American Petroleum Institute and companies like Exxon Mobil began pouring money into disinformation. To cast doubt on climate science, the industry lobbied, funded new organizations, published ads, paid for studies, bought scientists who would act as media pundits, and of course lavished millions of dollars on politicians who would advance their cause.<\/p>\n

As a young scientist and author of a key study showing that recent high temperatures were aberrations in the historical record, Mann became a target<\/a> of the industry\u2019s denial machine. Media pundits and politicians attempted to smear his credibility. He received death threats.<\/p>\n

Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., who is among the politicians who have received the highest donations<\/a> from the fossil fuel industry<\/a>, went so far as to call for Mann to be investigated as a criminal.<\/p>\n

By the mid-aughts, under pressure from scientists, environmentalists, civil society, and shareholders, the industry began to distance itself from denial. But the lies were well rooted by then, in part because of how well they fit into dreams of unfettered capitalism championed by the right. (Oreskes, the science historian, and her co-author Conway have a forthcoming book, \u201cThe Magic of the Marketplace: The True History of a False Idea,\u201d which will focus on how ideas about free market fundamentalism helped normalize misinformation.)<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the fossil fuel industry continued to donate money to politicians who purveyed climate lies. A 2019 analysis<\/a> by the Center for American Progress Action Fund of the outgoing 116th Congress counted 150 Republican members who did not believe that human activity causes climate change. They\u2019d collectively accepted $68 million in donations from the fossil fuel industry.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey haven\u2019t given up in their effort to block the clean energy transition and keep us addicted to fossil fuels. They just changed their tactics.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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And Trump himself, perhaps fossil fuel firms\u2019 all-time biggest champion<\/a>, accepted more than $14 million from the oil and gas industry for his reelection campaign. Over the course of his administration, Trump dismantled<\/a> much of the existing government infrastructure for confronting the climate crisis and promoted<\/a> outright deniers<\/a> to positions of power.<\/p>\n

Mann\u2019s book, \u201cThe New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet,\u201d published this week, argues that the industry never truly quit promoting climate disinformation. \u201cThey haven\u2019t given up in their effort to block the clean energy transition and keep us addicted to fossil fuels,\u201d he said. \u201cThey just changed their tactics to tactics they think they can get away with.\u201d He pointed to fossil fuel industry efforts to derail state-level policies<\/a> to incentivize renewable energy development, bolster false solutions like geoengineering, spread the idea that the climate problem is about individual lifestyle choices<\/a>, and promote a sense of doom, that nothing can really be done about the climate crisis \u2014 which, Mann argues, is simply untrue.<\/p>\n

What should the industry do if it truly wants to make amends for sowing chaos? \u201cThat\u2019s easy,\u201d said Oreskes. \u201cStop funding and fomenting disinformation, stop exploring for new oil, gas and coal reserves, and start working on a new business model that shifts to renewable energy, or something else entirely.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it is tragic that it took an insurrection for them to rethink their strategy,\u201d she said. \u201cI hope this will prompt a deeper self-examination. An awful lot is at stake here.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A parade of oil and gas companies nobly announced this week that they will review their political donations in the wake of last week\u2019s riot in Washington, D.C.\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":206,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[393,4,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9262"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/206"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9262"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9263,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9262\/revisions\/9263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}