How to spot five of the fossil fuel industry’s biggest disinformation tactics

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1. >Swayed for 30 years by fossil fuel industry propaganda, the media has been as likely to unknowingly amplify falsehoods as they were to bat them down. It’s only in recent years that more journalists started to shy away from “both-sides-ing” the climate crisis – decades after scientists reached an overwhelming consensus on the scope of the problem and its causes.
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   >The good news is that while the fossil fuel industry’s PR tactics have shifted, the stories they’re telling don’t change much from year to year, they are just adapted depending on what’s happening in the world.
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   >When politicians talk about how much it will cost to act on climate change, for example, they almost always refer to economic models commissioned by the fossil fuel industry, which leave out the cost of inaction, which rises with every passing year. When politicians say that climate policies will increase the cost of gas or energy, they count on reporters having no idea how gas or energy pricing works, or how much fossil fuel companies’ production decisions, not to mention lobbying for particular fossil fuel subsidies or against policies that support renewable energy, impact those prices.
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   >Both journalists and their audiences have more power to combat climate disinformation than it might feel when they’re awash in it. Understanding the industry’s classic narratives is a good starting point.

   The public needs to keep the pressure on media and elected representatives to act in everyone’s best interests especially where our shared environments are concerned.

   For those interested, these are the 5 issues identified:

   1. Energy security
   2. The economy v the environment
   3. ‘We make your life work’
   4. ‘We’re part of the solution’
   5. ‘The world’s greatest neighbor’

2. Journalists (minus the small handful of competent professionals out there) truly are the enemy of the people, just not for the reasons Trump had in mind. More often than not they leave the public misinformed rather than just uninformed.