Everyone Should Watch The “Power of Big Oil”

American Petroleum Institute documents that acknowledge scientific consensus. Discussion of ExxonMobil's "ethical credo." Dr. James Hansen using the phrase "shilly-shallying."

These are just a few of the gems revealed in The Frontline's new dig into the oil industry's lies: The Power of Big Oil. The STOP team watched part one, Denial, and is here reporting back on some key takeaways and reasons to add The Power of Big Oil to your watchlist. 

The story begins in the 1970s, when Exxon was a big company with big dreams about expanding operations to new kinds of energy production, from nuclear to solar. We hear from bright young scientists, attracted to Exxon's vision and investment in cutting edge scientific research—and about how some of those folks made the earliest discoveries about the impact of burning fossil fuels on the climate. 

Researcher Ben Franta, one of hundreds interviewed for the series, says what we begin to gather, crystal-clearly: as early as the 1980s, oil, gas, and coal companies all had conclusive evidence that business as usual would lead to global disaster. He refers to this understanding as foreknowledge, a stark contrast to Exxon's description of its early research. The company claims that it never had "unique" information on the impact of its fossil fuel extraction. 

Throughout the history of climate research, the idea of consensus has held a lot of weight. At the time of Exxon's early investigations, other scientific bodies came to the same conclusions about the greenhouse effect, and the warming of the Earth; there was consensus. Al Gore also talks about consensus, and the now-bygone era of bipartisan action on issues deemed urgent enough; he describes a brief moment of consensus that action on climate was needed. 

But around the same time, the oil and gas industries started to pick up on the power of consensus too. Instead of deputizing their deep understanding of the relationship between fossil fuels and global heating, they poured resources into sowing doubt about this scientific consensus. 

Today, we are still feeling the impacts of this disinformation campaign. Despite effortful public education to combat the effects of decades of big oil lies, action on climate has become a deeply partisan issue, although we are all impacted by the increasing inhabitability of the planet we all call home.

But there’s hope. In recent years, Clean Creatives has mobilized the PR industry to recognize its role in this decades-long deception. Firms have signed the Clean Creatives pledge to reject work from fossil fuel clients—it's a concrete way for the PR industry to demonstrate a commitment "to a future for the creative industry that doesn’t include promoting pollution." Nearly 300 agencies have already taken the pledge.

And despite decades of Big Oil disinformation there are still areas of consensus when it comes to energy and climate policy. One of them? The idea of a Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax. Polling earlier this year found that 80% of voters support the measure (that includes 73% of Republicans, a group not always receptive to taxes or climate action).

For more on how the oil and gas industry used denial to break consensus and mislead the public for crucial decades, check out The Power of Big Oil. And for more on how you can help pass the Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax, stay tuned to this site and @StopBigOil.