Hill Heat

On Thursday, September 16, the House oversight committee sent letters to U.S. oil executives and to industry trade groups requesting “documents on the reported role of the fossil fuel industry in a long-running, industry-wide campaign to spread disinformation about the role of fossil fuels in causing global warming.” The committee also announced a hearing set for October 28, 2021 in which the executives were requested to testify.

Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), Chairwoman of the Oversight and Reform Committee, and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Environment, sent the letters to the top executives at ExxonMobil Corporation, BP America Inc., Chevron Corporation, Shell Oil Company, American Petroleum Institute, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“We are deeply concerned that the fossil fuel industry has reaped massive profits for decades while contributing to climate change that is devastating American communities, costing taxpayers billions of dollars, and ravaging the natural world,” the chairs wrote. “We are also concerned that to protect those profits, the industry has reportedly led a coordinated effort to spread disinformation to mislead the public and prevent crucial action to address climate change.”

The four companies involved reported nearly $2 trillion in profits between 1990 and 2019. They and the trade groups are now the defendants in a growing number of civil lawsuits from individuals and localities suffering the harms of fossil-fueled climate pollution.

In 2019, Rep. Khanna oversaw a hearing examining the oil industry’s efforts to suppress the truth about climate change.

In 2015, InsideClimateNews and others broke the story of how ExxonMobil led the industry in waging a climate disinformation campaign with full knowledge of the dangers of fossil fuels. Following those reports, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) spoke on the Senate floor calling for a RICO investigation of ExxonMobil’s history of deliberate climate deception. Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Mark DeSaulnier (D-Calif.) called for the Department of Justice to investigate the legality of ExxonMobil’s “sustained deception campaign disputing climate science.”

From the committee’s press release:

Public reporting indicates that these companies and their allies in the fossil fuel industry have worked to prevent serious action on global warming by generating doubt about the documented dangers of fossil fuels and misrepresenting the scale of their efforts to develop alternative energy technologies—similar tactics deployed by the tobacco industry to resist regulation while selling products that kill hundreds of thousands of Americans.

These strategies of obfuscation and distraction span decades and still continue today. Between 2015 and 2018, the five largest publicly traded oil and gas companies reportedly spent $1 billion to promote climate disinformation through “branding and lobbying.”

Fossil fuel companies increasingly outsource lobbying to trade groups, obscuring their own roles in disinformation efforts. Recently, an ExxonMobil lobbyist was caught on video discussing the tactics employed by ExxonMobil to obstruct climate change legislation, including using API and other industry groups as the “whipping boy” to advocate for policy positions that ExxonMobil did not want to be associated with publicly.

The committee requested that the recipients produce documents and communications by September 30, 2021, “related to their organizations’ role in supporting disinformation and misleading the public to prevent action on the climate crisis.”

• The letter to ExxonMobil Corporation CEO Darren Woods
• The letter to BP America Inc. CEO David Lawler
• The letter to Chevron Corporation CEO Michael K. Wirth
• The letter to Shell Oil Company President Gretchen Watkins
• The letter to the American Petroleum Institute President Mike Sommers
• The letter to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Suzanne Clark

Politico, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post are hosting events during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute, one of the organizations called out by Senate Democrats earlier this month for “perpetrating a sprawling web of misdirection and disinformation to block action on climate change.”

The American Petroleum Institute is a notorious front group for ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, and other climate polluters. The organization has long played a key role in the industry’s web of denial, as Sen. Dick Durbin noted on the Senate floor. Durbin read from a 1998 API memo explaining the oil industry’s plan to systematically deny climate science: “Victory would be achieved when uncertainty about the science would be part of the public perception.”

With the paid collusion of Politico and The Atlantic, API is still blowing smoke into the eyes of the public. They are promoting their civilization-threatening Vote4Energy “voter education project,” which calls for an “all-of-the-above energy strategy ” with “increased production of oil and natural gas,” denying the urgent scientific warnings about increased greenhouse pollution.

Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and the Democratic National Platform are all calling for a Department of Justice investigation of the fossil-fuel industry for “corporate fraud” and “misleading shareholders and the public on the scientific reality of climate change.”

Democrats – including representatives of the Hillary Clinton campaign – appear to be giving the “web of denial” social license with their participation in Big Oil propaganda events during the Democratic National Convention.

The participants in the “Vote4Energy” Atlantic (“Striking A Balance”) and Politico (“Energy and the Election”) events focused on energy policy include:

• Gov. John Hickenlooper (CO)
• Gov. Jay Inslee (WA)
• Rep. Jerry McNerney (CA-9)
• Rep. Henry Cuellar (TX-28)
• Rep. Gene Green (TX-29)
• Rep. Dave Loebsack (IA-02)
• Trevor Houser, Energy Advisor, Hillary Clinton campaign
• Heather Zichal, former White House climate advisor

Planned participants in the other “Vote4Oil”-sponsored events during the week include:

• Sen. Chris Coons (DE)
• Rep. Joe Crowley (NY-14)
• Rep. Ben Ray Lujan (NM-03)
• Rep. Xavier Becerra (CA-34)
• John Podesta, chair, Hillary Clinton campaign
• Neera Tanden, President and CEO, Center for American Progress
• Ruy Teixeira, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress
• And other Democratic advisors and former top officials

It is a troubling state of affairs that the journalists of the Atlantic and Politico are accepting payment from dangerous propagandists. It is even worse that Democrats who recognize the seriousness of the climate emergency and the crisis of fossil-fuel influence and deception are rolling in Big OIl’s muck.

Climate Hawks Vote has launched the following petition to Democrats attending the DNC:

“Pledge not to participate in any event during the 2016 Democratic National Convention sponsored by the climate-denier group American Petroleum Institute.”

A key hurdle for the controversial Keystone XL transnational tar-sands pipeline will be removed by the Obama administration this week, the nation’s top oil lobbyist predicts.

American Petroleum Institute (API) president and CEO Jack Gerard, citing “sources within the administration,” told reporters that the State Department will issue its final environmental impact statement in favor of TransCanada’s pipeline “as early as Thursday,” two days after President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address. Reuters correspondent Jeff Mason writes:

The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s top lobbying group and a big Keystone backer, said it expects the State Department’s report to come out as early as Thursday.

“It’s our expectation it will be released next week,” the group’s chief executive, Jack Gerard, said last week during an interview, citing sources within the administration.

“We’re expecting to hear the same conclusion that we’ve heard four times before: no significant impact on the environment,” Gerard said.

The draft State Department supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS) was written by ERM Group, an oil-industry consultant with membership in API and business ties to TransCanada. That draft statement found that “impacts could potentially be substantial,” including impacts to wetlands, streams, and endangered species; and that spills could threaten groundwater and surface water. However, the report also concluded that “there would be no significant impacts to most resources along the proposed Project route assuming” TransCanada follows all laws and recommended procedures.

The “no significant impacts to most resources” language has been mistakenly reported as “no significant impact on the environment.”

The draft SEIS assessed the greenhouse pollution impact of the tar-sands pipeline by measuring it against a business-as-usual scenario, a common practice that is however incompatible with President Obama and the State Department’s commitments to international climate targets. The pipeline’s carbon footprint alone — not taking into account the economic and political realities of how Keystone XL approval would unlock further tar-sands development — is in fact quite significant. The lifetime footprint is at least six gigatons of carbon-dioxide equivalent, the same as 40 coal-fired power plants.

“We as a nation must have the foresight and courage to make the investments necessary to safeguard the most sacred trust we keep for our children and grandchildren,” Kerry said in his first speech as Secretary of State. “So let’s commit ourselves to doing the smart thing and the right thing and truly commit to tackling this challenge.”

“Today scientists tell us—the best we have, the best minds we have, the John Holdrens, the Jim Hansens, and everybody else tell us-we have a 10-year window here to try get this right and even that before catastrophic climate change takes hold,” Kerry said in 2009. “Now ladies and gentlemen, this is our memo. And the question is whether or not we’re going to act on this in time.”

A finding of “no significant impact on the environment” by Kerry would call into question his seriousness on climate policy when he had the power to act.