'Gaslighting' Europe on fossil fuels
https://www.socialeurope.eu/gaslighting-europe-on-fossil-fuels
Devastation in Karachi—this year’s extreme weather events highlighted the urgency of climate action
Rarely does the public get the chance to see the fossil-fuel industry’s lobbying strategy laid out so clearly and in such detail. Such corporate information is normally kept under lock and key—while citizens are left wrestling with the consequences of repeatedly diluted climate policies and continued reliance on fossil fuels.
That’s what makes strategy documents which were posted on the International Gas Union’s (IGU) website so unique. Previously unseen, they detail the advocacy, communications and outreach strategies of a group which boasts more than 150 members and claims to represent over 90 per cent of the global gas industry. Unsurprisingly, they have now been removed.
As part of InfluenceMap’s work in tracking climate-policy lobbying by the fossil-fuels sector, we have analysed dozens of these documents, covering several years to late 2021. They provide an insight into the highly organised and co-ordinated nature of the global gas industry. They also supply the industry’s global disinformation playbook—in its own words.
‘Existential’ threat … to value chain
This year, the world has witnessed catastrophic weather events devastate Pakistan and Nigeria, while Europe experienced the hottest summer on record (again). These episodes were further proof of the ‘code red’ signal to humanity from accelerating climate change. In developing its 2021 position statement, the IGU itself discussed the ‘potentially existential’ threat of climate change—but with a crucial difference. For the organisation, the threat of climate change was not to humanity but to the ‘global natural gas value chain’. This ‘understanding’ of the problem also characterised its response: rather than look at how fossil gas contributed to climate change, the IGU argued that it must instead find a ‘positive message to defend and enhance the role of gas’.
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look a lot like what that picture looks like ... in order to support 8B human beings ... without the cheap (e.g. at a high EROEI) bounty of MILLIONS of years worth of energy (i.e. solar power) striking the earth and having been stored in the cells of MILLIONS of generations of plant and animal life, and then being buried by natural processes ... for our eventual discovery and exploitation to grow the human population and improve its quality of life ... in a BLINK on the timescale that 'nature' on this planet normally operates, outside of meteors striking the earth.
I don't know why so many people are loathe to recognize this simple fact of physics, but barring a miracle, either billions of people will need to die off (and in addition, not be born in the first place, I.E. we need a lot less than ZPG), or the entire world would need to move back to living in Middle Age-levels of squalor and poverty ... in order to cut fossil fuel use to the levels we'd need to in order to avoid the laws of physics and nature eventually doing both of those things for us ... through the effects of climate change.
This is not purely a question of 'political will' and 'evil giant corporations', it's more like the Laws of the Universe.
The majority of all of us are, quite literally, alive today ... because fossil fuels made our lives possible. We're almost-literally 'made of them'. In most every way, this is just the circle of life. Like worms and insects and fungi sustain themselves on dead/decaying matter ... we are feeding off of dead plants/critters to sustain our lives. It's a much less-direct process, so many don't 'see it that way', but it's essentially what's going on.
Many people instinctually need to think 'well, there's an answer, there must be, there always has been, we'll figure it out and avoid the worst impacts somehow'. But I don't think so, and I don't have a need to believe so. I accept that we have, as a species, massively fucked up here, and there's no getting out of it. We have outstripped earth's carrying capacity, and the eventual suffering and death that will result will be on a scale most can't currently imagine.
Just because I say that in NO WAY means I'm denying climate change, nor that we should do nothing but continue our current course, to be clear. Nor am I saying that these fossil fuel companies were not involved in a massive conspiracy to mislead us all, and have basically fucked all humanity ... out of greed. I can believe all these things at once, they're not dichotomous.
Honestly, the PEOPLE at the corporations that conspired since at least the 1970's to squelch progress towards phasing out their products should be at a fucking Nuremburg-like trial, with their lives hanging in the balance, that's how bad this betrayal of humanity was. We HAD a chance, 50 years ago, to avert this catastrophe they KNEW was coming. And they did worse than nothing about it.
I'm still extremely dubious of the chances of finding any practical solution, this late in the game, that doesn't involved one and/or the other of what I stated above. It would take ... A Miracle.
Happy Holidays! 