In 1998, an oil industry insider leaked details of a secret scheme to spend millions to undermine a key global environmental accord and to convince Americans that the science behind climate change was shaky.
That draft action plan was led by the powerful American Petroleum Institute (API). It was developed at the Institute’s Washington-based offices, with contributors from fossil fuel giants including Exxon, Chevron and Southern Company, and conservative front groups with names like the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, Frontiers of Freedom, and The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition.
The Kyoto Protocol, adopted in December 1997, brought into effect the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change committing industrialised countries and economies in transition, to limit and cut greenhouse gases emissions, in keeping with agreed individual targets to counter global warming.
In March 2001, shortly after taking office, President George W. Bush announced the United States of America (USA) would not implement the pact brokered by former Vice President Al Gore, signed by his predecessor President Bill Clinton, and later ratified by 140 countries. The US Senate refused to ratify it, citing potential higher energy prices and damage to the country’s economy required by compliance.
“The Kyoto Treaty would affect our economy in a negative way,” Mr Bush said, during his 2000 presidential campaign. “We do not know how much our climate could or will change in the future. We do not know how fast change will occur, or even how some of our actions could impact it,” ABC News reported.
With more than 600 members, including Guyana’s dominant operator, the behemoth ExxonMobil (XOM), the API is the leading trade association that represents the heavily influential private industry, evolving into a major US political force with nearly US$240M in annual revenue. Shell donated about US$10M to API last year alone, and funding has come too from conglomerates like ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP, although these were not made public, the Guardian said.
It is focused on influencing public policy and lobbying from the US Congress, to State Governments and the media. Founded in 1919 as a standards-setting organisation, the API sets industry-slanted guidelines for environmental protection, health and safety regulations, and training programmes.
Recently, the Guyana National Bureau of Standards (GNBS) signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the API, as the local sector expands, ignoring independent entities like the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Of course, officials publicly defended the decision, declaring that the Bureau had approached the API, and insisting that the Institute had not lobbied for the deal. If they were instructed by the political bigwigs, as they must have been, no one is saying, but given ExxonMobil’s much criticised, already lopsided exploration agreement with the Government, this latest incestuous move cannot be very good news for the Guyanese people.
Days ago, Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo, asserted at a Houston conference that the PPP/C supports the swift development of the sector to extract as much of the over 9 billion barrels of oil estimated in reserves found by ExxonMobil as possible, come what may and before the tide turns fully against fossil fuels.
The Bureau spokesman, Lloyd David told the Stabroek News, (SN), “We are concerned with adopting the best standards, which will satisfy the needs of stakeholders across our local sectors. We do not choose to associate with other organisations based on their ability to be good watchdogs, but rather to establish benchmarks based on the best and critically needed standards.”
Earlier, the Ministry of Natural Resources representative Bobby Gossai maintained such standards will ensure that Guyana adheres to international best practices for the industry. SN reported. “The GNBS…did its research and determined that API has the standards and support needed to propel the GNBS adequately to develop its capacity to serve the Oil and Gas sector,” Mr David said.
Titled the “Global Climate Science Communications Plan,” the API’s climate change denial scheme was publicised by the New York Times (NYT) in April 1998, after it received related documents from the National Environmental Trust. Calling for climate sceptics to be given “the logistical and moral support they have been lacking,” the API plan proposed spending to bolster “uncertainty” in the public policy arena, and to “maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours on Congress, the media and other key audiences.”
With target audiences from the media to policy makers, industry leaders and teachers, the aim was clear: “Victory will be achieved when average citizens understand uncertainties in climate science…” Since nicknamed the “Victory” memo, the eight-page brief is now well-documented online as an infamous part of the disinformation campaign against established science, seeking to make those embracing the consensus on climate change appear to be out of touch with reality. Our own lessons may be next.
In damning testimony before the US House of Representatives, during an October, 2019 hearing examining “the oil industry’s efforts to suppress the truth about climate change,” a copy of the April 3, 1998 API plan was submitted by Chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland. Legal Counsel, Sharon Eubanks, cited the “climate emergency” saying “We see its effects in coastal flooding, increased severity of storms, changes in precipitation patterns, and sea level rise.”
Yet, back in 1958 “the industry as a whole was studying carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through its industry organization, the API. From 1968 onward, the industry was repeatedly warned of the climate risks of its products,” including by its “own scientists,” she stated.
The Counsel noted, “Indeed, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Exxon and other companies and industry associations, like the API, worked at the forefront of climate science research. They also funded academic scientists, especially those who were doing climate modelling. They examined the emerging issue, both in terms of the existential threat to their business, they looked for potential technological solutions, including alternatives to fossil fuels, and evaluated the potential impacts on society and ecosystems. The oil company scientists reported their findings to supervisors and executives within their corporations.”
Asking, “What did these companies do with the knowledge and information that they amassed about the cause and effects of global warming?” Ms. Eubanks answered, “They kept it to themselves. Instead of disclosure, the industry leaders funded a campaign of disinformation (and denial).”
The project’s first goal, as mentioned in the memo, spotlighted Congress, hoping to get a “majority of the American public, including industry leadership, to recognise that significant uncertainties exist in climate science, and therefore raise questions about those, e.g., Congress, who chart the future US course on global climate change.” She acknowledged, “It appears that some form of the plan was implemented, and yet that was only the tip of the iceberg. The denial campaign continues today…”
Just this month, the international media revealed that soon after then US Presidential candidate Joe Biden released his US$2 trillion climate plan last year to push the use of clean energy, the world’s major oil and gas majors, and lobby and advocacy groups like the API immediately struck back with a deluge of advertisements on Facebook promoting fossil fuels.
According to InfluenceMap, a London-based watchdog that tracks corporate influence on climate policy; of the 25 companies and groups, Exxon and API were the largest users of paid ads on Facebook’s American platforms in 2020, accounting for 62 percent. For 2020, the some 25, 000 ads logged over 431M views, bringing Facebook almost US$10M in revenue, the NYT said.
Veteran Harvard University researcher, Dr Geoffrey Supran, who has long examined the industry’s climate messaging, acknowledged that presenting oil and gas as part of the solution on climate change, has become part of the playbook. Over the past decade, “the industry has gradually shifted from outright disinformation about climate science to more subtle and insidious messaging,” he said. But those messages “work to muddy the waters to the same end — which is to stop action on climate change,” he told the NYT. “Media and communication platforms need to stop being used — they need to stop being pawns of fossil fuel propaganda and to protect the public.”
ID recalls that the Exxon lobbyist, Keith McCoy secretly recorded by Greenpeace, described API as the industry’s “whipping boy” to direct public and political criticism away from individual firms like ExxonMobil.