Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson on Instagram: "A++ greenwashing for…
“Today, America’s natural gas and oil keeps the country moving, growing and building, and makes every day a little easier,” the ad’s narrator says. “But energy demand is growing, and the infrastructure built today will help secure a more affordable, reliable future, with enough energy to go around.”
It’s strange, given the current geopolitical situation, hearing the oil industry tell us that the only way we’re going to have an affordable, safe, and consistent future is to continue to invest in fossil fuels (reminder: even “American” oil is still priced on a volatile global market).
But this type of messaging is not just limited to this political moment, or to The Daily. A new report from the advocacy group Clean Creatives reveals that the oil industry has systematically reshaped its advertising over the past four years to portray fossil fuels as permanent, indispensable, and necessary for economic stability and national security.
Put another way, fossil fuel companies are no longer trying to convince us they are good-faith partners in the fight to preserve a safe and stable climate.
Now, they are focused on convincing us that the world is only safe and stable if they are in charge.
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Before we get into the details of this new report analyzing fossil fuel advertising, it’s important to just ground ourselves briefly in why we care about these advertisements in the first place.
Oil companies spend nearly $7 billion a year on media, creative advertising, and PR. They do this for one reason, and one reason only: because it works.
Ads are one of the most effective ways the oil industry buys social license to operate—that is, permission from the public to maintain business as usual. Without that social license, the industry would be more vulnerable to regulation or other attempts to reform it or (gasp!) transition away from it.
“The fossil fuel industry’s ad campaigns are state of the art propaganda developed in partnership with public relations experts and based on almost a century of collaborative experience,” Geoffrey Supran, a Harvard University researcher who studies fossil fuel communications,
