Big Oil - Looking for Hopefully Vulnerable

 

Big Oil - Looking for Hopefully Vulnerable

“Levanta Tu Voz” (Raise Your Voice)

For decades, BIG TOBACCO hired doctors to prepare academic papers to deny that smoking caused cancer. Ads like the one above showed doctors smoking and touting the safety of smoking. All that time, BIG TOBACCO had absolute proof that smoking caused serious cancer. In 2011, CBS News reported “Has big tobacco been holding out on its customers? New research suggests that tobacco companies have known for 40 years that cigarette smoke contains cancer-causing particles, but deliberately hid the information from the public.” And then the state lawsuits formed a tsunami of litigation that eventually marginalized smoking in the United States. BIG OIL seems to realize that sooner or later, gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles will be relics of the past, but taking a lesson from BIG TOBACCO, BIG OIL is mounting a massive rear guard delaying action to keep fossil fuels as our primary energy source for decades to come.

Pretending to build out huge alternative energy programs touted in their ad campaigns, behind the scenes, they are using their massive lobbying and litigation capacity to make sure that sympathetic legislatures and courts assist in pushing green energy back. It’s going to cost jobs, they say, even as alternative energy is creating millions of new jobs and opportunities. Like Big Tobacco, Big Oil has known for decades that using fossil fuels is the main driver of devastating climate change. Over the years, they found fewer and fewer climate experts willing to make the case that our increasingly obvious climate change was simply natural cycle… and then changed the rhetoric to talking about the “transition” to alternative energy, the place of natural gas and presenting all sorts of their own green energy initiatives.

But finding easily accessible constituents, beyond the energy-producing state regulars, became an increasingly delicious target for big oil, particularly when they could enlist (read: pay) local leaders to make their case to clearly defined demographic cohorts. One of the most vigorous ethically targeted campaigns has focused on California’s (and neighboring states’) Latino community, preying on their economic fears… people open to swallow disinformation and pure falsehoods wholesale, they believed. But as this October 22nd Los Angeles Times Editorial Board piece tells us, Latino does not mean gullible or stupid:

“The Western States Petroleum Assn., one of the state’s most powerful lobbying groups, earlier this year launched a messaging campaign called Levanta Tu Voz that seems clear in its objective: to exploit Latinos’ economic anxieties to slow the transition to zero-emission vehicles and equipment.

“As part of that program the oil industry group spent nearly $1 million advertising on Spanish-language television and radio across the state, running a 30-second commercial that aired for six weeks in May and June. It features close-ups of people making tortillas, starting up gardening equipment, fixing a vehicle and picking produce. A concerned-sounding voice warns in Spanish that ‘new laws in California require our new vehicles and machines be electric’ and that ‘if they take away the option of buying gasoline, living here will be more expensive.’

“WSPA’s ads tell its target audience to ‘join the conversation if you agree,’ and directs people to a website that says that ‘Latino families can’t afford a rushed transition to electric’ and urges them to leave their comments and contact information to ‘share your story and tell policymakers.’… This type of campaign is not uncommon for the fossil fuel industry, which has a long history of using front groups, astroturfing, and other disinformation tactics to mislead the public and manufacture doubt about climate change and its solutions.

“But the attempt to influence California’s largest ethnic group is especially cynical because it tries to take advantage of a community that is among the hardest hit by fossil fuel pollution and would benefit most from policies to slash emissions. It’s twisted for the industry to try to use Latinos to resist the state’s transition to renewable energy and electric vehicles so it can keep selling its polluting, health-damaging and planet-endangering products for as long as possible.

“When the Times editorial board met with WSPA’s leaders in August, they insisted that support for electrifying the economy and phasing out fossil fuels was out of step with California’s Latinos, who they claimed are more focused on day-to-day survival than air quality or their future under climate change… Argelia León, WSPA’s director of strategic partnerships and Southwest policy, who leads the Levanta Tu Voz campaign, said she’s heard from Latino communities that ‘we’re not prepared, this is too fast, too soon, we’re not ready for it, we can’t afford it.’ She said California’s climate goals are aspirational and at odds with the reality the state’s 15 million Latinos live every day…

“The industry profits from every year that climate action is delayed, and WSPA spent $7.3 million last year lobbying lawmakers and other state officials to kill, delay or weaken measures that would protect the public from health-damaging pollution, cut greenhouse gases and protect consumers from price gouging at the pump, among other actions… Spending six figures on ads is pocket change for an organization with members, including Chevron and Valero, that posted their highest profits ever last year while everyday Californians struggled to fill their tanks with gas that reached an average of $6.44 a gallon last summer, a record high.

“It’s shameful that the oil industry is trying to use the Latino community for its advantage because its future is clouded by policies that are expected to reduce petroleum consumption in the state by more than 90% over the next two decades… They have fought all manner of environmental, consumer and public health protections, but lie and claim they don’t oppose climate action… They now say they have the public’s interests at heart and will ‘elevate and give voice to Latinos who are often ignored.’… Why would we believe them?”

That Latinos live disproportionately in some of the warmest areas of the state, many working outdoors in places where heat levels can kill and perhaps make entire regions uninhabitable, seems to make this effort a particularly cruel irony. Younger generations, especially Latinos, seem convinced of their profoundly threatened future with less water, more expensive food, huge climate disasters mounting in frequency and intensity, and intolerable heat. Ethnicity has nothing to do with it!

I’m Peter Dekom, and the level of the fossil fuel industry’s exceptionally harmful efforts to maintain their profits borders on criminal.