Big Oil Front Group Says CO2 Is Green
If you read the Washington Post this week, you may seen an ad decrying Kerry-Lieberman climate change legislation. "The bill is based on the false premise that man-made CO2 is a major cause of climate change," the ad states. “Real, empirical evidence indicates it is not." Or, watching TV, you may have seen this video.
Both ads are the work of a group called CO2 Is Green, which uses the tagline “More CO2 Results in a Greener Earth.” On its website, the organization describes itself as a “pending non-profit” that seeks to “support scientifically and economically sound public policy on environmental issues.”
In reality, according to the New York Times, they’re just the latest front for Big Oil.
The group's spokesperson is none other than H. Leighton Steward, who sits on the board of the oil and natural gas company EOG Resources, Inc., and is an honorary director for the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry's main lobby arm in Washington. Their major funder? Corbin J. Richardson, chief executive of and leading shareholder in Natural Resource Partners—a coal company.
This is hardly the first time Big Oil has advocated against climate change legislation. As Environment blogger Jess Leber wrote just last week, API recently unveiled an ad campaign in ten states to oppose Congressional support for taxes on the oil industry. And last year alone API spent $8 million on lobbying.
But there's something particularly unsettling about so-called "astroturf" groups like CO2 Is Green, which are designed to look like grassroots causes borne of genuine citizen concern. Without knowing who pulls the purse strings, it's easy to see how the public could be duped into believing the group's bogus claims that "...lowering levels of carbon dioxide would actually inhibit plant growth and food production." Or that climate change legislation would provide "Wall Street, a few inside investors and the government a fortune, but...cost everyone else in higher food and utility bills." (You have to hand it to them: The industry knows how to hit Americans where it hurts.)
With so much public uncertainty about climate change, these are precisely the bold claims that tend to grab people's attention, and—more worrisomely—win their support. In the end, the organization’s own website puts it best, when it answers the question “Why do people believe in [global warming] myths?” with this, rather ironic, conclusion: “They have been misinformed by people that benefit financially from propagating the myth.”
Nikki Gloudeman
is a senior fellow at Mother Jones magazine where she writes about the environment and other topics.
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