Oil & gas lobbyists feel the heat on the industry’s pollution-caused global warming, but remain committed to misleading the public. Wow, just wow.

Cenovus embraces net-zero emissions goal as carbon becomes competitive yardstick

Cenovus Sets Bold Sustainability Targets

Well cleanup in the cards after Alberta energy company announces plans

Cenovus aims for ‘net zero’ GHG emissions by 2050 Way too late, even if it were possible.

Oil’s slick rebranding is more like disinformation by Chris Tomlinson, Jan. 10, 2020, Houston Chronicle

Oil and gas lobbyists are finally feeling the heat on climate change, but sadly, they remain committed to misleading the American people.

The American Petroleum Institute [sleazy equivalent in Canada is CAPP, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (and Progandizers)], the premier industry organization that establishes standards and engages politicians, is out with a nationwide advertising campaign. Oil and gas companies, the group would have you believe [Ha, like Encana spawn, Cenovus?] , have been fighting climate change and possess the solution.

“Our paths are not all the same, we have different perspectives on the best way forward,” a new television ad says. “But on issues that matter, like climate change, we’re more alike than we think. We want cleaner solutions, and that means working with each other.” [SYNERGY!! STAY AWAY!]

“So, the innovators in America’s natural gas and oil companies have teamed up with the country’s brightest minds and reduced carbon emission levels to the lowest in a generation,” the narrator continues, as happy, well-dressed millennials file past. “Let’s make tomorrow better, together.”

CANADIAN OIL PATCH PROPAGANDA CHECK:

“Our environmental practices, low-emissions oilsands operations [HA!] and the relationships [SYNERGY!] we’ve built with residents in areas where we operate – including Indigenous communities – demonstrate our commitment to sustainability leadership,” [PFFFFT. CAN’T BELIEVE IT. IT’S HOCKY POCKY CAPP-COPYING PROPGANDA] said Alex Pourbaix, ‘[Cenovus] president and chief executive officer, in a news release.

END CANADIAN OIL PATCH PROPAGANDA CHECK

Rarely has a copywriter packed so much poppycock into 30-seconds. Let’s break it down.

“Our paths are not all the same; we have different perspectives on the best way forward.” True, because the bottom line is we must ban greenhouse gas emissions, something API adamantly opposes.

“But on issues that matter, like climate change, we’re more alike than we think. We want cleaner solutions, and that means working with each other.” Hogwash. [Ha! That’s what I say!]

For over fifty years, API [and CAPP et al] and its members have disputed climate change and fossil fuels’ role in warming the planet. The most duplicitous move came in 1998 when the API drafted the “Global Climate Science Communications Plan.” The goal was to derail the United Nations’ Kyoto Protocol to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

API launched a similar campaign that exaggerated “uncertainties” in climate science. API lobbyists then used their influence to kill proposed regulations and turn climate science into a partisan issue where Republicans feel obliged to ignore science. [Same in Canada, terrifyingly the same]

The API communications team secretly recruited five scientists to stir debate, while hiding the industry’s financial backing for their research, according to internal API documents made public in 2015. [not much of Canadian academia is untainted by oil and gas money and control]

“These will be individuals who do not have a long history of visibility and/or participation in the climate change debate,” the API memo said. “Rather, this team will consist of new faces who will add their voices to those recognized scientists who are already vocal.”

One of those scientists was Wei-Hock Soon, who from 2003-2012 incorrectly declared that solar flares play a significant role in global warming. The scientific community has since discredited his work.

API also produced teaching materials questioning climate change for the National Science Teachers Association. The API said it hoped “to erect a barrier against further efforts to impose Kyoto-like measures in the future.” That continued through 2015.

2013 11 13 Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers pushing propaganda on grade 3s

A creepy oil patch propaganda tool used by the patch in Canada:

In 2011, API fought the EPA’s decision to regulate carbon dioxide [just like CAPP does in Canada!] under the Clean Air Act as well as proposed limits on methane, one of the worst greenhouse gases. [Just like CAPP does in Canada!] In May 2017, senior API lobbyist Howard Feldman urged EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to relax methane limits, and last year the group celebrated victory. [Just like how CAPP wins in Canada, again and again and again]

When it comes to climate change and addressing greenhouse gas emissions, no API, we are not “more alike than we think.”

The day API acknowledges its past behavior and embraces a ban on all methane and carbon emissions, then we might be alike.

Lastly, the ad’s final line implies that a happy accident was intentional: “The innovators in America’s natural gas and oil companies have teamed up with the country’s brightest minds and reduced carbon emission levels to the lowest in a generation.”

The developers of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing were innovators who forever changed the world. But they were not fighting climate change.

Oil and gas companies experimented with fracking because natural gas was $13 for a million BTUs. Fracking has since brought the price down to $2, which is why electricity companies shut down dirty coal plants and replaced them with natural gas, reducing carbon emissions. [but, not really, electricty from frac’d natural gas has been proven to be dirtier than burning coal]

The reduced emissions were coincidental since most of the industry rejected climate change while developing the technology.

Today, wind and solar energy costs are dropping so low they compete with natural gas [but is our global particulate pollution so extreme, and steadily worsening to the point where solar will not work anymore?], and Democrats want to phase out fossil fuels. Young people detest the oil and gas industry. [Young people don’t much like being lied to. They get lied to enough by their parents, they dont’ appreciate being lied to by politicos or oil and gas] These are the reasons for API’s “natural gas and oil” campaign, with the emphasis on natural.

Above propaganda by Encana in cahoots with master synergizer Pembina Institute, in this case librarian turned water “expert” Dr. Mary Griffiths, hit Alberta schools, after Ernst went public with documented evidence of Encana illegally frac’ding community drinking water aquifers. Published in Strathmore Standard and other local media in 2006.

API strategists know climate change denial no longer works, so they are rebranding their polluting industry as clean energy. [which is what Encana spawn Cenovus is doing]

For the first time in 150 years, the industry is worried about its future.

Not to worry too much, the world will always need oil and gas, we just need to combust less of them. But what we don’t need is API’s cynical disinformation campaign; we’ve had plenty of that already.

Refer also to:

Even our courts are enabling/pushing oil patch fraud: Synergizing Canadian Courts Enabling Polluters: BC Judge gives Painted Pony Energy PR gift (makes the company look good by “giving” to NGOs) instead of ordering real punishment for killing migratory birds in frac fluid tank

In Canada, a Stern Critique of University-Industry Collaborations

Updated with some frac’d academia details. Jeremy Klazsus on Jason Kenney’s Year Of Attack. Alvin Finkel: “I would characterize this era as a kind of massive fraud that’s being perpetuated on the people of Alberta.”

CAPP-funded Big Propaganda Project to tour Canadian schools with Canadian Geographic (to try to give CAPP some credibility)

Canadian Geographic accused of spreading CAPP oil and gas ‘propaganda’ in schools, including to Grade 3′s

Alberta Petro State: Cenovus (split from Encana), Syncrude and Suncor and other oil and gas companies “helping draft” curriculum for students from kindergarten to Grade 12!

U of Calgary, U of Alberta get $75 million *each* from Canadian taxpayers to legitimize (synergize) and spread AER/CAPP/petroleum industry propaganda, to enable continued devastation and harms to Alberta’s environment, communities and people and spread them across Canada

Poster by Will Koop, BC Tap Water Alliance

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