THIS IS a heads-up to incoming Negros Occidental Governor Eugenio Jose “Bong” Lacson and San Carlos City local officials: Are you climate change denialist ideologues?
Such an ideologue deny science for profit, political advantage or ego satisfaction in your push to build a coal-fired power plant.
Michael E. Mann, a leading climate scientist, climate denial actually follows in the footsteps of earlier science denial, beginning with the long campaign by tobacco companies to confuse the public about the dangers of smoking.
Mann pointed out that by the 1950s, these companies knew that smoking caused lung cancer. Instead of caveat emptor on tobacco smoking, tobacco companies invested heavily on propaganda to prop up a Potemkin Wall to obscure the health hazards so they could keep earning profits.
In many ways, climate denialism resembles cancer denialism. Businesses with a financial interest in confusing the public — in this case, fossil-fuel companies — are prime movers.
BP has the highest annual expenditure on climate lobbying at $53 million, followed by Shell with $49 million and ExxonMobil with $41 million. Chevron and Total each spend around $29 million annually.
Part of the lobby spend goes toward sophisticated efforts to engage politicians and the general public on environmental policies that could impact fossil fuel usage such as coal. BP has reframed in its social media channels and advertising platforms that the climate crisis as a “dual” energy challenge.
In fact, their lobbying expenditures with a financial outlay of $195 million annually for focused branding activities that imply that they support action against climate change. The most common tactics employed are drawing attention to low carbon, positioning the company as a climate expert and acknowledging climate concern while ignoring solutions.
That’s ideological propaganda masquerading as “science.”
For coal, companies invest $1,741,000 in 2019, according to OpenSecrets.org. Or as the New York Times’ Dominique Browning pointed out, “We are not told that mercury is released from the combustion of coal and emitted into the atmosphere from the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants. It rains down on land and water, where it is passed up the food chain as methylmercury.”
So what fossil fuel lobby propaganda are our incoming governor and San Carlos local officials use against the Negrenses? (bqsanc@yahoomail.com)