WORLDFIRE - Chapter 9, Part I
Climate of Denial
In Chapter 9, “Climate of Denial,” we will be exploring various expressions of climate denial: 1) Fossil Fuel Industry Denial, 2) Republican Party Denial, 3) Democratic Party Denial, 4) Barack Obama’s Denial (included because he was president during my 2010 ride), 5) Donald Trump’s Denial, 6) Joe Biden’s Denial, and 7) Distraction as Denial. I have made every effort to be nonpartisan in my analysis. I hope you’ll stick with me through all seven parts - irrespective of your political views - as we objectively explore how best to dismantle these forms of destructive denial. Thank you.
“The existential threat from climate change is all too real. Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about. If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is.” Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize recipient in economics, columnist for The New York Times
Denial may not be a river in Egypt, but it is a dangerous undercurrent flowing through America’s broken body politic. Before we venture any further on this journey through the heartland, we need to examine the dogged phenomenon of climate denial. With undeniable evidence of climate breakdown all around us, one would think society had moved past the denial stage, but at least here in the United States, we are still having this absurd conversation.
The denial of climate science is not a uniform phenomenon. It comes in many shapes and guises. Most pronounced is the manufactured form of climate denial promulgated by the fossil fuel lobby and given legs by a compliant corporate media. Then there is the denial of settled science embraced by many Republican officeholders. You know, the one where politicians act like they know more than the experts. Less obvious is the subtler form of denial embraced by most Democratic officeholders who acknowledge the climate crisis but refuse to treat it like one. All of this is not just because politicians are showered with campaign contributions from fossil fuel lobbyists. It is because more than 100 members of Congress–from both political parties–have personal investments in the fossil fuel industry. Subtler still is the kind of denial dressed up as pretend progress proclaimed year after year by international climate negotiators, along with other forms of distraction. Let’s examine each in turn.
Fossil Fuel Industry Denial
We’ll begin with the fossil fuel industry. For decades, climate progress in the U.S. has been blocked by a well-funded disinformation campaign spearheaded by fossil fuel corporations and industry think tanks to sow seeds of doubt in the minds of the American people. Flying in the face of settled science–including oftentimes their own scientific research findings–big oil, gas, and coal companies have been playing a lethal game of deny and delay to keep us all chained to the carbon economy, while they rake in record profits.
As early as 1968, the American Petroleum Institute (API) was warned by two Stanford Research Institute scientists that "there seems to be no doubt that the potential damage to our environment [from carbon dioxide] could be severe." Yet API and other fossil fuel-funded front groups have spent millions of dollars annually promulgating the big lie that fossil fuel burning is not the cause of the destructive climatic changes we have seen in recent decades. Not surprisingly, many of their plays were pulled right out of the tobacco industry playbook and are now being run by some of the same dirty players. On their team are also pliable politicians–armed with talking points crafted on Madison Avenue and K Street–who are all too happy to help forestall people demanding action. One of the most sinister purveyors of this deadly deception is oil giant Exxon (now ExxonMobil).
In 2015, the Union of Concerned Scientists uncovered a slew of incriminating internal industry documents, including a 1995 internal memo written for an umbrella trade association called the Global Climate Coalition (founding members included Exxon, Mobil, British Petroleum, Shell, Chevron, Texaco, and the American Petroleum Institute). The 17-page primer included the following statement: “The scientific basis for the Greenhouse Effect and the potential impact of human emissions of greenhouse gases such as CO2 on climate is well established and cannot be denied.” But that did not stop Big Oil from denying.
Consider this: as far back as 1982, Exxon projected that concentrations of carbon dioxide pollution in the atmosphere would rise to approximately 400 to 420 parts per million (ppm) by 2020. Their projections were spot on: the global average for carbon dioxide concentrations was 412 ppm in 2020. Now consider this: the same year that a heat wave claimed 5,000-10,000 lives in the U.S., a 1988 internal Exxon draft memo later published by the Los Angeles Times exposed an Exxon public affairs manager recommending the “Exxon Position” be: “Emphasize the uncertainty in scientific conclusions regarding the potential enhanced greenhouse effect.” But Exxon did more than just emphasize uncertainty. The newspaper would also report: “As many of the world’s major oil companies–including Exxon, Mobil and Shell–joined a multimillion-dollar industry effort to stave off new regulations to address climate change, they were quietly safeguarding billion-dollar infrastructure projects from rising sea levels, warming temperatures and increasing storm severity. From the North Sea to the Canadian Arctic, the companies were raising the decks of offshore platforms, protecting pipelines from increasing coastal erosion, and designing helipads, pipelines and roads in a warming and buckling Arctic.” This is diabolical stuff.
Thanks to eight months of investigative reporting by Inside Climate News (ICN), we now know that “Exxon conducted cutting-edge climate research decades ago and then, without revealing all that it had learned, worked at the forefront of climate denial, manufacturing doubt about the scientific consensus that its own scientists had confirmed.” Here are some of the more damning passages from ICN’s 2015 exposé called EXXON: THE ROAD NOT TAKEN:
“At a [1977] meeting in Exxon Corporation's headquarters, a senior company scientist named James F. Black addressed an audience of powerful oilmen… Black delivered a sobering message: carbon dioxide from the world's use of fossil fuels would warm the planet and could eventually endanger humanity.”
“By 1981… company researchers had concluded that rising CO2 levels could create catastrophic impacts within the first half of the 21st century if the burning of oil, gas and coal wasn't contained.”
“By 1982, the company's own scientists, collaborating with outside researchers… confirmed an emerging scientific consensus that warming could be even worse than Black had warned five years earlier.”
“Exxon's research laid the groundwork for a 1982 corporate primer on carbon dioxide and climate change… In it, the company recognized, despite the many lingering unknowns, that heading off global warming ‘would require major reductions in fossil fuel combustion.’ Unless that happened, ‘there are some potentially catastrophic events that must be considered,’ the primer said, citing independent experts. ‘Once the effects are measurable, they might not be reversible.’"
“Through much of the 1980s, Exxon researchers worked alongside university and government scientists to generate objective climate models that yielded papers published in peer-reviewed journals. Their work confirmed the emerging scientific consensus on global warming's risks.”
"’Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate,’ declared the headline of a June 1988 New York Times article describing the Congressional testimony of NASA's James Hansen, a leading climate expert. Hansen's statements compelled Sen. Tim Wirth (D-Colo.) to declare during the hearing that ‘Congress must begin to consider how we are going to slow or halt that warming trend.’ With alarm bells suddenly ringing, Exxon started financing efforts to amplify doubt about the state of climate science.”
“After a decade of frank internal discussions on global warming and conducting unbiased studies on it, Exxon changed direction in 1989 and spent more than 20 years discrediting the research its own scientists had once confirmed.”
“Then, in 1998 Exxon also helped create the Global Climate Science Team, an effort involving Randy Randol, the company's top lobbyist, and Joe Walker, a public relations representative for API. Their memo, leaked to The New York Times, asserted that it is ‘not known for sure whether (a) climate change actually is occurring, or (b) if it is, whether humans really have any influence on it.’ The memo declared: ‘Victory will be achieved when average citizens 'understand' (recognize) uncertainties in climate science,’ and when ‘recognition of uncertainty becomes part of the 'conventional wisdom.'"
Victory??
A 2017 Harvard University study confirmed that "ExxonMobil contributed quietly to the science and loudly to raising doubts about it," with the study’s authors concluding that ExxonMobil misled the public. A more recent 2023 study details how remarkably accurate Exxon’s predictions were. Reading all of this reminded me of one of my favorite t-shirts (before it burned in the Marshall Fire climate disaster), which read:
WE DON’T CARE
WE DON’T HAVE TO CARE
We’re EXXON
At Exxon We’re Part of the Problem
ExxonMobil is still part of the problem. They are still funding groups engaged in climate science denial. That Exxon has been willfully lying to the public for decades is hardly shocking. We have come to expect that from oil companies. The problem is their depraved deceit spawned a cottage industry of other industry prevaricators–including the electric utility and auto industries–which together succeeded in manufacturing a false debate over climate science, costing countless lives and decades of precious time we could have been using to save ourselves. Right when Congress started taking the climate crisis seriously was when the fossil fuel lobby cranked up its disinformation campaign to block any real progress. A handful of oligarchs hijacked the future of our children just so they wouldn’t have to change their business models. Think about how twisted that is. Not content to be polluting our politics with their lies, the fossil fuel industry has even polluted K-12 school textbooks with climate denialism. To be clear, it was fossil fuel executives, not fossil fuel workers, who have been lying to everyone.
And it’s not just Exxon funding denial. In 2018, Inside Climate News reported on an uncovered 1988 internal company document showing that oil giant Shell also knew of the risks fossil fuel emissions posed to humankind: “In the light of the possible effects of an increase in greenhouse gases, it is important to examine the likely political responses to expressions of environmental concern,’ Shell's report said. The emerging problem ‘could have major social, economic and political consequences,’ it said – a powerful enough upheaval to be ‘the greatest in human history.’" The confidential report chillingly warned that “by the time the global warming becomes detectable it could be too late to take effective countermeasures to reduce the effects or even to stabilize the situation.” It has also recently been revealed that French oil giant Total also knew the risk its products posed to humanity half a century ago. All the big oil companies probably knew. Let’s be clear about what this means: by knowingly putting every human life on the planet at risk of annihilation, Big Oil has committed premeditated crimes against humanity.
Not surprisingly, the lawsuits are piling up. In 2016, ExxonMobil shareholders filed a class-action lawsuit against the oil giant, alleging the company deceived its investors by failing to disclose the risks posed to its business model by global heating. In 2020, Minnesota’s Attorney General filed suit against ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute (API), and others for decades of climate deception. In 2022, New Jersey sued five oil giants and the API to pay for the harm they have caused. In 2023, California sued five of the oil majors for damages caused by climate disasters. Other states, and cities, including Boulder, Colorado, also have suits pending against Big Oil for climate damages. In response, the oil barons are angrily lashing out and have deployed an army of lawyers to defend their lethal fraud. Behind the scenes, the fossil fuel lobby has also been discretely funding legislation in numerous states to chill the American peoples’ Constitutional right to peacefully protest the fossil fuel industry. Things are going to get interesting when industry whistleblowers inevitably start coming forward. I say this as someone who has worked with whistleblowers in the past.
The oil barons know the fossil fuel era is ending, but that is when they hope to flee to their gated compounds, their luxury lifeboats, and their private islands. They know they can’t win. They are just buying time to keep the music playing while the Titanic goes down. But what they fail to understand is that they, too, are in danger, for no compound, no matter how highly gated, is immune to climate-fueled fires. No yacht, no matter how large, is a match for climate-charged hurricanes. No island, no matter how strongly fortressed, can hold back the climate-driven rise of the sea. Sure, they may live a little longer than the rest of us, but to what end on a barren and tumultuous planet? If humanity goes down, we all go down together.
In a thoughtful piece titled, “The Case for Climate Reparations,” Jason Mark, editor of SIERRA Magazine, writes: “There is one group that, through its actions as well as its inaction, has perpetuated one of the greatest crimes in the history of civilization: the knowing destruction of Earth's essential life system… This is not to say that the Carbon Barons alone should bear the costs of climate-change-related disasters and adaptation. There is no question that each of us, as individuals, carries some blame. A fair reading of history would conclude that the public at large has known about the dangers of our daily energy consumption at least since 1994, when the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change went into effect. Commonsense morality demands that we do what we can to reduce our individual emissions: take the train instead of the plane, go by bike rather than by car, forgo the steak in favor of the vegetarian option, have fewer children. If that sounds like sacrifice, it is. Such sacrifices could also be viewed as virtues–the old-fashioned values of temperance, frugality, and patience. We cannot, however, reasonably expect moral behavior from the Carbon Barons, whose controlling ethic is meeting shareholder expectations. But at the very least we must demand that they be held accountable. For they, unlike us, are uniquely culpable.” The industries that knowingly put us all in danger must be made to account for their actions. One recent study puts a price tag on what the world’s largest fossil fuel companies owe society for the economic burden of climate damages. Their conservative estimate is $209 billion a year.
Another form of accountability is removing Big Oil’s social license to operate. I was interested to learn this fact from writer Jeffrey Kaplan: “As late as 1840, state legislators closely supervised the operation of corporations, allowing them to be created only for very specific public benefits, such as the building of a highway or a canal. Corporations were subject to a variety of limitations: a finite period of existence, limits to the amount of property they could own, and prohibitions against one corporation owning another. After a period of time deemed sufficient for investors to recoup a fair profit, the assets of a business would often revert to public ownership.” We have strayed far afield from that original vision, but the fact remains that states grant corporate charters and states can dissolve them. It is time for states to start exercising their power to revoke the charters of rogue corporations that are endangering the future of humanity.
They may not be household names like Al Capone, John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, and Baby Face Nelson, but the carbon barons of today are far deadlier than the gangsters of old, for they have been knowingly committing ecocide. Mass planetary extinction is the endgame of Big Oil’s business model. If they don’t think justice is going to eventually catch up to them, they are living in their own state of denial. Not surprisingly, a 2013 Harris poll found the only industry less trusted than Big Oil is Big Tobacco. Only 3% of Americans view tobacco companies as “generally honest and trustworthy” versus 4% for oil companies. The oil barons must take us all for rubes if they think we’re buying the snake oil they’re selling. Yet their mouthpieces just keep spouting their lies, like the lobbyist who made the absurd claim to a chuckling Fox News host that the hazardous orange haze from more than 400 Canadian wildfires shrouding New York City for days in 2023 posed “no health risks” and had “nothing to do with climate.” I don’t know how these people sleep at night.
Similar to the tobacco industry that preceded them, the oil industry’s day of reckoning is coming. Just as the tobacco industry’s lethally deceptive TV and newspaper ads were ultimately banned due to their destructive impact on human health, so too must the fossil fuel industry’s advertising orgy be outlawed for its destructive impact on human existence. But banning ads, ending subsidies, and making the polluters pay is only the beginning of holding the oil giants accountable. It is time for Department of Justice and International Criminal Court investigations. They must be made to pay for their crimes against humanity.
NOTE: The written form of WORLDFIRE is the authoritative version. Any inadvertent errors in transcribing the recordings are mine and mine alone.