https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/10/oil-ads-lights-on-energy
"The American oil lobby has launched an eight-figure media campaign this week
promoting the idea that fossil fuels are “vital” to global energy security,
alarming climate experts.
“US natural gas and oil play a key role in supplying the world with cleaner,
more reliable energy,” the new initiative’s website says.
The campaign comes amid record fossil fuel extraction in the US, and as the
industry is attempting to capitalize on the war in Gaza to escalate production
even further, climate advocates say.
Launched Tuesday by the nation’s top fossil fuel interest group, the Lights on
Energy campaign will work to “dismantle policy threats” to the sector, the
American Petroleum Institute (API) CEO, Mike Sommers, told
CNN in an
interview this week.
The ad blitz – which uses images of farm vehicles, footballers under
floodlights and concert goers holding phones lit up – comes after US oil
production reached a record high in 2023, which was also the hottest year ever
recorded.
“We’re already moving in the wrong direction on fossil fuels,” said Timmons
Roberts, professor of environment and sociology at Brown University. “They want
to push us further.”
Roberts said the new ad blitz is rife with the kinds of “discourses of climate
delay” that the fossil fuel industry commonly uses to thwart climate action, as
documented in a 2020 study he co-authored on the topic. A video ad posted on
Tuesday, for instance, says “demand for energy is growing and so is the need
for American oil and natural gas”, positioning the sector as essential to
continued human flourishing – a form of discourse Roberts and his co-authors
call an “appeal to wellbeing”.
In his
CNN interview, Sommers said clean energy can currently only play a
limited role. “Renewable sources have a role to play, but oil and natural gas
will be needed for decades,” he said.
In doing so, he employed a second discursive strategy known as “change is
impossible”, which denies the ability for large-scale transformation, Roberts
said, adding that the statement may be a “self fulfilling prophecy”, as fossil
fuel companies still invest minimally in carbon-free energy.
The claim also ignores copious evidence that the world can begin to phase out
fossil fuels, and must do so to avert the worst consequences of the climate
crisis, said Caleb Heeringa, campaign director of Gas Leaks, a nonprofit
attempting to counter pro-gas messaging.
“We aren’t saying we can turn off the spigot tomorrow,” he said. “But [the
industry] is trying to expand the fossil fuel system, expand pipelines, expand
fracking, and make more of our economy and our existence dependent on fossil
fuels, even though clean energy is advancing at a rapid rate.”"
Via Anonymiss and Nora Qudus.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
