After Decades Of Climate Lies, API Claims Big Oil "Stepping Up To The Plate" On Sustainability

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Mike Sommers, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, was at CERAweek pushing the idea that the oil and gas industry were leading on solutions to the climate crisis. “While politicians haven’t been able to figure out a strategy on climate change, this industry has stepped up to the plate,” he said. Seeing how the API led high-dollar efforts to persuade the public and politicians that climate change was a myth (and how it accounts for half of all lobbying and ad dollars spent by energy trade groups), this statement rings a bit hollow. Is it a sign that the industry and its top lobbying organization have truly had a change of heart on climate change? Nope.

The industry “solution” that the API is marketing is the myth that gas is the future of clean energy production, claiming it is addressing the climate crisis. While oil and gas producers like to say that gas replacing coal power is a climate solution, they conveniently ignore the fact that overall greenhouse gas emissions rose in America in 2018, despite this transition. While burning natural gas (methane) for power is cleaner than burning coal, the combined lifecycle of gas production including methane leaks, methane flaring and venting methane into the atmosphere means that natural gas is not a climate solution and could be potentially worse for the climate than burning coal.

But that hasn’t stopped the industry from partnering with the likes of The New York Times and Washington Post to place paid advertisements (“branded content”) into forms that look stunningly similar to actual articles written by the news outlets themselves, helping push industry talking points without any journalistic fact-checking or context. This is how the industry is “stepping up to the plate” on climate change — by continuing to spend lots of money to convince the public and politicians the industry has solved climate change with a product it conveniently is selling.

In The Washington Post, the American Petroleum Institute ran a major piece of branded content in this fashion. But because this isn’t a story written by The Post, it is full of industry propaganda, featuring quotes from the likes of Wayne Winegarden, senior fellow at the Koch-funded Pacific Research Institute. “Renewable technologies aren’t ready for prime time,” Winegarden says in the advertisement, “Until then we still need traditional fossil fuel power sources.”

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https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/03/25/oil-industry-ceraweek-american-petroleum-institute-equinor-climate-threats