Big Oil v the planet is the fight of our lives. Democrats
must choose a side
David Sirota
The industry has political supremacy even in left-leaning
states, but immediate action can hold off an environmental state of emergency
@davidsirota
Thu 15 Nov 2018 11.00 GMT Last modified on Thu 15 Nov 2018
14.41 GMT
Burned through trees in California’s Paradise area after a
wildfire burned through the region.
‘As a panel warned of
the countdown to environmental disaster, those oil and gas executives’ message
to planet Earth was unequivocal: drop dead.’ Burned through trees in
California’s Paradise area after a wildfire burned through the region.
Photograph: Peter Dasilva/EPA
The world’s leading scientists issued a report warning of
total planetary dystopia unless we take immediate steps to seriously reduce
carbon emissions. Then, oil and gas corporations dumped millions of dollars
into the 2018 elections to defeat the major initiatives that could have
slightly reduced fossil fuel use.
Though you may not know it from the cable TV coverage, this
was one of the most significant – and the most terrifying – stories of the
midterms. For those who actually care about the survival of the human race, the
key questions now should be obvious: is there any reason to hope that we will
retreat from “drill baby drill” and enact a sane set of climate policies? Or is
our country – and, by extension, our species – just going to give up?
Before answering, it is worth reviewing exactly what
happened over these last few months, because the election illustrates how
little the fossil fuel industry is willing to concede in the face of a genuine
crisis. While the dominant media narrative has been about Democratic voters
euphorically electing a House majority and yelling a primal scream at Donald
Trump, the loudest shriek of defiance was the one bellowed by oil and gas CEOs.
As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that we have only 12
years to ward off an ecological disaster, those oil and gas executives’ message
to Planet Earth was unequivocal: drop dead.
That message was most explicit in Colorado, where a drilling
and fracking boom is happening in the middle of fast-growing suburbs. With oil
and gas companies seeking to put noxious derricks and rigs near population
centers, local activists backed a ballot measure called Proposition 112 that
aimed to make sure new fossil fuel infrastructure is set a bit farther away
from schools, hospitals, residential neighborhoods and water sources.
The initiative was an angry response to a state government
so awash in fossil fuel campaign cash that it has blocked legislation to merely
allow regulators to prioritize the health and safety of residents when those
regulators issue permits for drilling and fracking.
According to an industry analysis, Proposition 112 would
have left much of the oil and gas reserves near Denver accessible for
extraction, but yes, it is true – at a time when climate scientists say we must
keep fossil fuel deposits in the ground, there was a chance the initiative
would have stopped some extraction.
The oil and gas industry could have looked across a Colorado
ravaged by climate-intensified wildfires, droughts and floods and decided to
accept the modest measure, knowing that the initiative is the absolute minimum
that is required at this perilous moment. Instead, fossil fuel companies did
the opposite: they poured $40m into opposing Proposition 112 and spreading
insidious agitprop.
Despite scientists warning that fracked natural gas
threatens to worsen climate change, oil and gas operatives in the state
promoted cartoonishly dishonest claims that burning fossil fuel “is cleaning
our air and improving health”. As Colorado’s local media effectively erased the
term “climate change” from its election coverage, the industry managed to defeat
the measure by outspending its proponents 40-to-1. In the process, fossil fuel
companies’ scorched-earth campaign was a clear statement that in the face of an
environmental cataclysm, oil and gas moguls will not accept even a tiny
reduction in their revenues.
In Washington State, petroleum giants funneled $25m into
defeating a proposal to require polluters to pay some of the costs of the
climate change havoc they are wreaking. The measure, which would have assessed
a $15 fee for every ton of greenhouse gases they emit, was beaten with 56% of
the vote, after the industry’s ad campaign featured criticism from a former
state attorney general – who viewers weren’t told now works at Chevron’s law
firm. In all, $13m of the funding against the measure came from BP – a company
that simultaneously claims to unsuspecting consumers that it supports a carbon
tax.
In sun-baked Arizona, you may have thought solar energy
would be a fairly easy pitch. However, after the owner of the state’s major
energy provider poured nearly $30m into the election, Arizonans soundly
rejected a ballot initiative to force the utility to get more of its power from
renewable sources.
Meanwhile, in a single California county, the fossil fuel
industry spent a whopping $8m to defeat a citizens’ initiative to ban new
drilling and fracking.
Realizing that they may have overreached, some fossil fuel
industry spokespeople are now telling lawmakers that oil and gas companies
really do want to work collaboratively on environmental issues. However, their
behavior in the election proved that the industry is not operating in good
faith. Oil and gas CEOs showed that they will gladly accelerate the climate
crisis if doing so allows them to rake in more money.
And make no mistake about it: the industry’s roughly $100m
in campaign spending this year was not just about one individual election
cycle. It was a shock-and-awe spectacle designed to intimidate any prospective
campaigns, organizations and movements that want to challenge the political
supremacy of oil and gas – and some prominent Democrats in Washington seem to
be cowering in fear.
Always nervous about the donor class and about electoral
blowback from Republicans, some congressional Democrats now seem intent on
avoiding any direct confrontation over climate change policy.
Indeed, days before the election, the Hill newspaper
surveyed lawmakers and major environmental groups, and found that “Democrats
are unlikely to pursue major climate change legislation if they win the House
majority, despite a growing body of evidence suggesting time is running out to
address the issue.”
As her own state was being incinerated by
climate-intensified wildfires, the House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, faced
pressure for climate action from new lawmakers like New York
Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – but Pelosi would only commit to
reviving a moribund congressional committee to study the issue. The
conflict-averse posture follows the party recently rescinding its policy of
rejecting fossil fuel campaign cash, as well as Democratic Representative
Vicente Gonzalez of climate-ravaged Texas setting up a new Oil & Gas Caucus
to promote the “economic benefits of fully harnessing the country’s natural
resources”.
Taken together, these developments – coupled with the Trump
administration’s opposition to any serious climate policy – have left many
voters and activists feeling despondent, even in the aftermath of a “blue wave”
election. As former Bernie Sanders campaign aide Claire Sandberg tweeted:
“Entire towns are burning to nothing in California. People are being
incinerated alive in their cars attempting to flee. But a majority of Democrats
still won’t reject fossil fuel money, and no one has put forward a climate plan
that is remotely commensurate with the IPCC findings.”
And yet, amid the thick smoke of wildfires and industry
propaganda, there is still reason to believe that our children are not
guaranteed to live in a real-life version of Mad Max: Fury Road. Our fate is
not – yet – sealed, as long as those who want humanity to survive pay attention
to exactly what science, the fossil fuel industry and the political trends are
telling us, and then act accordingly in the arenas where immediate progress is
most likely.
First and foremost, there are now 14 states that have the
trifecta of Democratic control of the governorship and both legislative chambers.
Those include major fossil fuel producing states such as Colorado, New Mexico
and California. Democratic leaders in these states cannot claim that climate
inaction is a product of Republican intransigence – the Democrats in these
locales have uninhibited power. And so if activists work to hold these local
Democratic lawmakers accountable, there is a good chance they can force
legislatures to enact emissions standards, renewable energy mandates and other
environmental rules that will bolster the fight against climate change.
Similarly, states and cities collectively control trillions
dollars of public pension money that can be marshaled for the battle. Shifting
that cash out of oil and gas can at once provide more capital for renewable
energy and drain fossil fuel companies of resources they need for their
extraction binge.
Officials like New York comptroller Thomas DiNapoli,
incoming Connecticut treasurer Shawn Wooden and North Carolina treasurer Dale
Folwell may be unknown compared with the average backbench senator on the
Sunday chat shows, but they and their colleagues who control these massive war
chests have an enormous amount of divestment power that can both support the
climate change fight, and boost investment returns for retirees. There’s a good
chance that at least some of them can be spurred to action if they are no
longer permitted to toil in obscurity, and instead face consistent grassroots
pressure.
The courts are another arena where the climate fight seems
to be accelerating. There, teenagers are mounting a landmark case arguing that
the government’s refusal to restrict carbon emissions is endangering the next
generation’s constitutional right to life, liberty and property. A federal
judge also just blocked the Keystone XL pipeline, saying that the Trump
administration had improperly “discarded prior factual findings related to
climate change”.
At the same time, state attorneys general are pursuing a
lawsuit examining whether the oil industry deliberately buried science that
showed the dangers of climate change. Those cases, which bring even more
pressure on the industry, can be supported by concurrent hearings and subpoenas
from the low-profile House science committee, which is expected to be chaired
by Texas Democratic Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, who has called for
more aggressive action on climate change.
So, considering both the election setbacks and
opportunities, let’s go back to those original questions: is there reason to
hope or are we just going to give up? The answer is contingent on our ability
to focus in an age of distraction.
Will those who truly care about the survival of humanity
muster the discipline to occasionally look away from the Washington DC garbage
fire and focus more activism on the state and local level? Will a media that
obsesses over Trump’s tweets find the will to more diligently cover a climate
crisis that threatens the planet? Will our political class behold the fossil
fuel industry’s sociopathy and realize that we face an existential choice
between profits and ecological survival?
In short, will we as a society finally start treating this
emergency as an actual emergency?
If the answer is yes, then there is still reason to believe
we are not doomed – but we better get to work, because there’s no time to
spare.
David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an investigative
journalist
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