Fossil fuel industry in full spin mode

Many governments, companies and communities are taking action to reduce their use of fossil fuels. The petroleum industry is responding to this threat by ramping up their campaigns to manipulate public opinion. People like to believe they aren’t susceptible to the dark art of marketing, but Canadian advertisers wouldn’t invest nearly $20 Billion dollars annually if it didn’t work.

In the midst of a dangerously heating planet, something is shifting our opinion on climate change. We’re constantly finding reasons not to invest in urban densification, electric vehicles, clean electricity and energy efficiency. At the same time, we’re overestimating the economic importance of the petroleum industry.

You may have heard recently that “natural” gas is a climate solution. You might support the lobbyists that are vilifying municipalities for wanting their buildings to be heated by cleaner and more efficient methods. Perhaps you think the Alberta War Room was justified in sending thousands of letters to Nanaimo city councillors when they voted to ban gas hookups for new buildings.

The Alberta government recently spent $8 million on a nation-wide advertising campaign to scare Canadians into thinking renewable energy would quadruple their electricity bills and leave them freezing in the dark. The solution, of course, is Alberta’s cheap and reliable gas.

It’s a travesty that political advertising is not held to the same standard of truth as commercial advertising. Honesty is optional whenever politics are at play, but when political advertising is used to promote commercial enterprises and industry groups, this free pass should no longer apply.

Lobbyists also have free reign to spread misinformation in the media and in the back rooms of ruling governments. The result of their marketing effort is a growing desire to release Canadian petroleum producers from the shackles of Canada’s global commitment to treat climate change as a real emergency.

A majority of Canadians are rightfully concerned about affordability. Conservative media, politicians and advertisers amplify these economic concerns and use them to turn us against taxes and government spending. A Conservative government will tell us the cupboards are bare and we can no longer afford policies to address the climate crisis or protect nature.

History has demonstrated the effectiveness of propaganda and marketing unrestrained by the rules of ethical conduct. A 2018 article in Psychology Today discusses how ideological brainwashing leverages an existential fear and empowers the spread of anxiety-reducing ideas.

People are witnessing climate destabilization, the collapse of biodiversity, ecosystem loss, war and social polarization. The resulting anxiety, depression and fear make us vulnerable to assurances that economic growth will eventually solve everything.

This soothing message is often followed by the assertion that burning more fossil fuels will lead to greater prosperity and help pay for technical solutions to global warming. Greenwashing rounds out the comforting fantasy by assuring us that Big Oil is working hard on the problem. Carbon capture will get us to net zero! We’re all going to be just fine.

Natural gas was a clever rebranding of a fossil fuel that is essentially methane. Methane is a heat-trapping gas, eighty times more harmful than CO2, but let’s think of it as something pleasing and natural. Professional marketers are now pushing the narrative that methane is one of the world’s best climate solutions. It’s a bridge fuel!

At a major Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) networking event in April, Pierre Poilievre embraced the simplistic math being used to promote Canada’s liquefied natural gas (LNG) as a climate-saving miracle. We just need to get China and India to switch from coal-fired electricity to natural gas.

What a great idea. Canada does nothing to honour its global commitment to reducing the country’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, makes a pile of money selling LNG and contributes to a massive reduction in CO2 emissions worldwide. This is music to the ears of the petroleum executives in the audience and sounds pretty darn reasonable to the average voter.

The United States Energy Information Association (EIA) determined that switching from coal to natural gas electricity generation results in a 32 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions. This is significant, but it’s not enough to stop the arctic from melting.

It would be a far better investment to add zero-emissions capacity in the form of wind, solar and energy storage. California is a clear example of how an electrical grid can operate reliably without a heavy dependence on natural gas. In April 2024, solar reached a new record by generating 86.4 per cent of electricity demand during the day and for several hours after sunset, battery storage was the largest source of supply to the California grid.

The climate friendliness of gas-generated electricity was recently challenged by a new study out of Cornell University. The research indicated that upstream CO2 emissions and methane leaks from fracking, gas flaring, pipelines, compressing the gas into a supercooled liquid and shipping LNG around the world, exceeds the GHG emissions from burning the fuel to generate electricity.

Methane leaks are self-reported by industry and their numbers are now being challenged by satellite-based monitoring systems. Methane may yet prove to be a greater source of planetary heating than coal, especially if you include methane emissions from the millions of furnaces, fireplaces, gas stoves, barbeques and associated delivery infrastructure.

Does it make sense to ship LNG around the planet and build pipeline networks to feed electricity plants in India and China? Alternatively, these countries could use their wind and solar resources to meet the lion’s share of electricity demand while building a grid that isn’t reliant on foreign gas.

Despite the promise of renewable energy and energy storage, the fossil fuel industry is spending heavily to spread misinformation about renewables and to fund politicians that will put up roadblocks to slow the energy transition. The only way to fight back is to reduce their capability to manipulate us.

NDP MP Charlie Angus has proposed a ban on fossil fuel advertising. There are also a growing number of lawsuits seeking to make Big Oil accountable for their deceptive practices. A far more drastic measure would be to nationalize the world’s largest oil corporations and change their mandate from serving shareholders to serving the public good. This may eventually come to pass if fossil corporations fail to accept their responsibility to reduce production and stop trying to mislead us.

Rob Miller is a retired systems engineer, formerly with General Dynamics Canada, who now volunteers with the Calgary Climate Hub and writes on behalf of Eco-Elders for Climate Action, but any opinions expressed in his work are his own.