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Environment
The Fossil Fuel Industry’s War Against Nature and Democracy
What part of climate emergency don’t politicians and fossil fuel businesses get?
Posted December 8, 2019
Oxford Dictionaries recently announced “climate emergency” as its 2019 English language word of the year. All contenders for the top spot were related to the environment (climate crisis, eco-anxiety, ecocide, global heating, and climate action). Oxford defines climate emergency as “a situation in which urgent action is required to reduce or halt climate change and avoid potentially irreversible environmental damage resulting from it.” Oxford lexicographers said that the use of the term rose over 10,000 percent from September 2018 to September 2019.
The Collins Dictionary also acknowledged activist discourse in its choice of “climate strike” for the 2019 word of the year. Dictionary.com picked “existential” as its 2019 word, citing climate change as one of the contexts for the rise in its usage. And earlier this year, the Spanish Fundación de Español Urgente (Fundéu—Foundation of Emerging Spanish), a non-profit organization founded by the news agency EFE and the Royal Spanish Academy, recommended “crisis climática” as the clearest term to describe “the magnitude and consequences of climate change caused by human activity,” while pointing to allied terms of global heating, climate change, and climate emergency among fast-rising idioms. Fundéu’s word of 2018 was “microplástico,” recognition of another fossil fuel product threatening ecosystems and marine life.
The growth in usage of such terms comes in a year when eco-activism is growing, especially the movement of climate strikers and the wider protests they have inspired (eg., Extinction Rebellion). At the same time, thousands of climate scientists have embraced the language of climate emergency to underscore the need for immediate action to prevent planetary devastation.
While this sense of urgency is matched by an increased public concern in the US over climate change, recent research also shows that most Americans doubt their government will take corrective action. According to a Pew Research Center survey, “about two-thirds of U.S. adults (67%) say the federal government is doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change, and similar shares say the same about government efforts to protect air (67%) and water quality (68%).” Unsurprisingly, attitudes regarding government action vary along ideological lines; a basic distrust of government policies is strongest among Republicans, whose most conservative ranks think the government’s environmental policies harm the economy and do little to help the environment. In contrast, so-called liberal Democrats believe environmental policies help both the environment and the economy.
The problem of government inaction also worries the UN Secretary-General, António Guterres. In the lead up to the UN Climate Change Conference COP25 in Madrid, Guterres briefed journalists on the “utterly inadequate” efforts of the international community to reach emission reduction targets set by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC (to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius). Guterres warned that “the world is set to produce 120 percent more fossil fuels than is consistent with a 1.5-degree pathway. And, for coal, the figure is 280 percent.” These data are from The Production Gap, a report prepared by various research and academic institutions in collaboration with the United Nations Environment Programme. The report tracks the “discrepancy between countries’ planned fossil fuel production and global production levels consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C or 2°C.”
The Production Gap’s stark assessment suggests that as long as there’s money to be made from oil, gas, and coal extraction, government leaders in fossil fuel producing countries and those where the major corporations are headquartered are in no mood to help meet the necessary target. Instead, wealthy nations’ energy policies support the fossil fuel industry by approving exploration, extraction, and production, investing in research and development, giving tax breaks, and subsidizing production, while also assuming liability and risk for environmental destruction. With few exceptions, the roll-out of national plans to continue fossil fuel extraction and burning is cheered on by global political leaders. No wonder Guterres refers to a “war against nature.”
It is also a war against democracy. Despite the growing chorus of citizens who have pushed into the mainstream such phrases as climate strike and climate emergency, voters in wealthy countries have yet to find their calls for urgent action reflected in their governments’ policies. As actor and activist Jane Fonda put it in a recent New York Times Op-ed, “Let’s be clear: Over decades the fossil fuel industry has hijacked our political system, and we have failed to elect enough leaders who are not beholden to the industry’s interest.” Fonda cites research from The Center for Responsive Politics on fossil fuel industry lobbying ($218 million in 2018-19) and campaign contributions to both parties. The current campaign cycle is filled with fossil fuel money, which The Center says “continues to dwarf environmental interests in election-related spending.”
And while most aspirants to the Democratic party’s nomination have signed a No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge there are cracks through which such funds can leak (eg., donations from executives at banks, hedge funds, and other financial institutions that back fossil fuels). Also, when green progressives enter Democratic races and begin to garner more voter support than industry-friendly incumbents, the industry wastes no time in adding to the latter's campaign coffers. Their efforts to subvert the democratic process match their zeal to pollute our atmosphere.
In announcing its word of the year, Oxford noted that climate emergency reflects an important change in the use of the word emergency, which is now more frequently linked to the climate crisis than to medical or juridical emergencies (states of emergency, etc.). With a shift of usage, views once associated only with environmental activists and outspoken climate scientists—whom the commercial media largely marginalized as fringe actors—are increasingly central to journalistic representations of the eco-crisis. We can thank Greta Thunberg for the linguistic effort of making “it’s an emergency” a characteristic response to climate change: “I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.”
But there are lingering problems with media representation of the climate emergency, based mostly on the commercial media’s legacy of promoting false claims about climate change and climate science via “two-sides” to their sourcing of stories. For decades, they’ve been happily giving airtime and column inches to pundits and pseudo-scientists who propagated, for a price, the misleading assertions and outright lies of the fossil fuel industry. In an attempt to generate doubt in public opinion, these denialists promoted a powerful lie: that the scientific community is still debating the reality of climate change.
Nevertheless, if activist discourse continues to green our vocabularies, the media can play a progressive role by keeping the climate emergency on our minds while opening their minds, mics, and money to the advocates who stand for immediate action on the crisis. The Guardian was one of the first prominent news outlets to change editorial policy and use the phrases “climate crisis” and “global heating” to frame the issues in the urgent language of scientists and environmentalists. Its environment editor quoted Thunberg’s words as an inspiration: “It’s 2019. Can we all now call it what it is: climate breakdown, climate crisis, climate emergency, ecological breakdown, ecological crisis and ecological emergency?”
We can. But the fossil fuel industry and their media enablers and political allies—our current political leaders—would prefer we didn’t.
