A recent resolution by Alberta's ruling United Conservative Party (UCP) to recognize carbon as "a foundational nutrient for all life on Earth" is rooted in fossil fuel disinformation that dates back to the 1990s.
The statement, while technically true in the strictest of biological terms, is deeply misleading in the context of climate change, and was crafted by a front group for a coalition of American coal producers in 1997 to prevent that country from enacting climate policies. It has since continued to circulate, amplified by climate deniers and online conspiracy theorists.
"Arsenic is natural, too, but we don’t want it in our food or water. Or lead. Or mercury," said Naomi Oreskes, a historian of science at Harvard University who has long researched climate denial. "Lots of natural things are bad, especially at high doses. The fossil fuel industry has given us a high dose of atmospheric CO2."
At the party's annual general meeting last Saturday, UCP members overwhelmingly voted to support the motion, which effectively denies that carbon dioxide emissions caused by burning fossil fuels are heating the climate. The resolution also called on the government to ditch Alberta's greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets. Premier Danielle Smith herself endorsed the resolution’s spirit following its passage.
Researchers have been clear for decades that humans burning fossil fuels are driving a massive spike in atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, warming the planet and changing the climate. Far from helping plants — including food crops — climate change is fueling devastating wildfires, floods, droughts and other natural disasters. Rapidly reducing emissions is vital to forestall future disasters.
Still, the claim is "effective," Oreskes said. "[The statement] ‘CO2 is natural’ is not false — it’s not a lie — but it is utterly misleading. And many people are still profiting from fossil fuels, so they have as strong an interest as ever in blocking climate action."
The idea that higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will boost food production and help the environment was first spread in two videos produced by the now-defunct Greening Earth Society, a U.S. non-profit front organization created by the Western Fuels Association. The Western Fuels Association is a cooperative that supplies and transports coal to electric utilities in the western U.S.
Both Greening Earth Society videos made the debunked claim that adding carbon to the atmosphere would feed larger plants and a better, greener world. They were distributed in classrooms, ended up in bibliographies and lectures and one version was distributed on Capitol Hill. By its own admission, producing the second version of the film cost the Western Fuels Association $583,000, enough to prevent it from turning a profit.
Climate advocates at the time slammed the films for spreading disinformation. In a 1998 statement, two U.S. environmental groups released a statement attacking the second movie as "a re-run of the corporate denial we've seen from tobacco companies' paid scientists."
Fast-forward nearly 30 years — and dozens of major climate disasters later — the myth continues to thrive, including in Canadian politics beyond the UCP's recent resolution.
It showed up in B.C.’s recent election, too, when Conservative Party of B.C. Vancouver-Point Grey candidate Paul Ratchford tweeted the myth last January, according to a trove of research attributed to the B.C. United Party. Maria Sapoznikohv, another candidate for the party who lost by less than 50 votes, also made a similar claim on X, the B.C. United research notes.
J. Timmons Robert, a sociology professor at Brown University wrote in an email he expects to see more "rollback" efforts on climate action like the UCP resolution in coming years as the 2030 deadline Canada and other countries have set to fully implement the policies looms.
"It worries me," Oreskes said. "It shows that, despite what many people say or hope, real-life climate change denial is not dead. We know it is alive and well…on social media; now we know it is alive and well in Alberta, too."
Comments
There's no helping people because the majority of them are basically magical thinkers, i.e.
children.
I dunno. I often feel adults are far better at totally ignoring or denying the obvious than children are.
The UCP also forgets that we all love water and salt, and water and salt are essential nutrients for life, but if we drink too much water or eat too much salt, we die.
There is some good news in this, although it is a bit back-handed. The people who really run the oil sands companies are in the final stages of negotiating subsidies with the Federal government to build CO2 capture technology - because they realize that they must be able to claim 'low carbon emissions' for their business. Even if this process is only 70% efficient, it will make giga tons of difference to CO2 emissions.
The downside of course, as readers here will be quick to point out, is that this expense should not be subsidized [but paid for out of profits] and the billions in subsidy would be better spent on alternative technology.
All I can say to that is "Politics is the art of the possible"; the oil companies are paying a good proportion of these costs. You don't always get what you want, but if you, try some time, you might get what you need.
Keep trying guys!
No, this is not remotely good news. The fact we need to face is that either the planet survives or the oil industry does. The oil biz has to go down, it's them or us. And it's not about emissions during extraction, it's about emissions when people burn the crap. Subsidizing CO2 capture at the point of extraction, even if it worked worth crap, is basically just using a ton of public money to pretend it's OK for the oil industry to keep selling the stuff people then burn--it's incredibly expensive advertising. It's an effort to get license to keep making the problem worse.
That public money can then not be spent on actually reducing the problem. Opportunity costs are a thing.
So don't give me this art of the possible crap. Money spent on carbon capture is not a second-best or third-best thing, it is completely counterproductive. It is a directly helping to bring down civilization thing.