Ciplet says it is time to move past climate disinformation
Like the tobacco industry in its past, fossil fuel giants have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into campaigns to convince us that climate science is not trustworthy.
To understand why they would do so, we need to only look at two numbers. The first is $257 billion. This is the profit made in 2014 by Chevron, BP, ExxonMobil, Shell and others for extracting, transporting, refining, distributing and trading fossil fuels in the United States and in Canada alone.
The second number is even more galling: $5.3 trillion. According to the International Monetary Fund, this is the amount of public money that will go to propping up fossil fuel industries globally in 2015. That’s $10 million a minute to some of the wealthiest corporations on the planet, the burning of whose products are the main cause of climate change. This is creating an uneven playing field, unfairly disadvantaging more sustainable industries that promote renewable energy and energy efficiency.
The fossil fuel industry continues to reap astounding profits in the face of climate change, and it’s doing so on the public’s dime. It is no surprise that the industry would do everything it can to keep the party going.
But like big tobacco before them, the industry and related advocacy organizations haven’t been able to keep their story straight. They used to tell us that climate change wasn’t real. Then, under a flood of scientific evidence, they changed course. They began to acknowledge that it’s real, but argued that people weren’t the main cause.
