(Ra’s al Ghul sure must be some teacher)
Britain is teetering on the brink of a heat wave. The country faced its third-hottest day in history on Monday, and at the time of writing, was slated to have its hottest day this week.
You know it be bad when Daily Mail changes its rather cavalier approach to climate (or any) journalism.
The government declared a national emergency.
Fans and air-conditioning units were flying off the shelves, as the English went from celebrating the sight of sun, to ducking it — all in a week.
(Fun fact — <5% of domestic units in Britain have air-conditioning).
UK’s climate action, or at least its ‘planned’ climate action, is also teetering. A high court judge in the UK ruled the country’s plans to reach net-zero as unlawful, because it provided insufficient detail and scant evidence of how it would be met.
(Another fun fact — Britain held the rotating COP presidency the previous term, and was alleged to be the beacon of climate leadership. So much for that).
Business-as-usual at Big Oil
Not a lot has changed in the world of fossil fuel companies.
Just this last week, British Petroleum PLC spent a little shy of £100,000 in ads on Facebook (as of Wednesday) in the UK. This was 2.5x the spend of the next biggest ad spender — the International Rescue Committee.
Spending on ads is perfectly acceptable.
But to run a campaign backing more oil and gas production in the UK, while simultaneously taking advantage of war-driven rising gas prices?
Not so much.
Here is the ad run by BP between 4th July and 21st July. It reached > 1 million people. Expected ad spend was anywhere between £200k to £250k for the scheduled time the ads ran.
British Petroleum (BP), or Big Oil for that matter, has a storied history of red herrings and distractions, that it’d make Liam Neeson from Batman stand up and applaud.
They understand our behaviour better than we ourselves will.
If you have ever felt compelled to reduce your personal carbon footprint, you can thank BP for it.
Here is a short excerpt from a piece I wrote for Climes.
The year was 2004. The good folks at British Petroleum resolved this was the moment. Fossil fuels and petroleum continued to receive a "bad rap" for polluting our planet. They had enough and decided to correct it.
They wrote a three-act story.
The first act.
Hello there, this amazing new thing will change your life.
The oil major unveiled its carbon footprint calculator. This allowed regular folks, like you and I, to know the negative impact of everyday activities Cooking, travelling, powering our homes, etc., all have a footprint. […]
The second act.
Ask not what I can do for you, ask what you can do for me.
The year was 2006. BP launched a website that nudged people (and itself) to go on a 'low-carbon diet'. […]
The site was a part of a cleverly-titled ad campaign called 'Beyond Petroleum'. Lol.
The third and the final act.
So long, suckers.
BP successfully assigned responsibility for climate impact on individuals. They made emissions that are invisible into something tangible - your personal carbon footprint.
This is a time-tested tactic that Big Oil deployed for a good part of the last century, and it continues till date.
On the other side of the pond…
… things are a tad bit worse.
Influence Map published a research on climate change and digital advertising by the Oil and Gas industry in the US. Safe to say, the results weren’t shocking.
In the year 2020, just 25 oil companies placed 25,147 ad on Facebook’s US platform at a $9.6 million ad spend. The ads clocked 431 million views.
That’s alright, I’d say. Corporations should be free to spend money on whatever they deem fit.
But the report also found the following
The ads promoted either the climate-friendliness of the industry, including voluntary targets, investments into renewables, and promoting fossil gas as green, or promoted an ongoing role for oil and gas in the energy mix. Crucially, many of these ads either contained misleading content or present information that was misaligned from the science of climate change according to both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s and the International Energy Agency’s reports on reaching net zero by 2050
Influence Map
(Shell wants to hire a TikTok Manager, btw)
When the Lobby is an entire building town
It’s borderline ridiculous the amount of money being thrown around as chump change for Big Oil lobbying in the US and the EU.
The fact-checking division of Agence France-Presse (AFP) published a special report late last month. AFP undertook a detailed analysis of ‘greenwashing’ claims, and published individual profiles of lobbying and communications
Here’s a summary of the results. You can read the detailed breakdown here.
Lobby me this.
Which brand comes to mind when you think of fried chicken? (Exactly! Obama Fried Chicken!)
That’s American Petroleum Institute (API) for fossil fuel lobbying.
A single trade association, representing all fossil fuel interests, methodically places major obstacles in the path towards progressive climate legislation in the US.
API is a pretty powerful organisation, funded by almost every oil major, that single-handedly stalls or weakens environmental legislation.
Between January 26, when the API first specifically referenced the Ukraine crisis, and April 1, the group created and ran 761 ads through its Energy Citizens homepage […] The campaign reached 19.6mn people
API was founded in 1919 when the oil industry came together to cooperate with the government, and supply oil for the first world war. Today, it lists over 600 corporations in the petroleum value chain as its members, and clocks over $200 million in annual revenues.
Their playbook is simple. Its members (Big Oil) tout fossil-fuel alternatives and net-zero claims. API extensively lobbies on behalf of Big Oil, and shapes public perception with fantastic content like the following.
Here is a video embed from their website. Yup, they aren’t mincing their words.
API runs its advertising campaigns on social media through 3 proxy entities: Energy Citizens, Energy for Progress, and Power Past Impossible.
Them names 🤌🏼
Oh, and before I go — here’s another tasteful ad by erstwhile Exxon. It certainly has aged well.
Bonus
— Good on you, KLM
Banter
— Ladies and Gentlemen, The Onion
What do you do when stores run out of fans? Repurpose a tourist attraction into a ginormous mega fan, and set it on maximum speed. Okay maybe, one below maximum.