How Do We Win?
by Clean50 Founder / Executive Director, Gavin Pitchford
How do we get the climate action we so desperately need, and the future we want, when our political “leaders” are so often absent as “leaders”. The answer is pretty straight forward – but the execution is hard. After 15 years of watching and trying, here’s what I propose.
There was a day when every large corporation’s mainframe computer purchasing decision led to IBM. The company was seldom the technology leader nor the least expensive, but as competitors emerged, they trained their sales people to become masters of spreading what IBM called “FUD” (fear, uncertainty and doubt) about alternatives, literally advertising at one point “No one ever got fired for buying IBM”. It was the hugely effective misinformation campaign of its day.
The tobacco industry, faced with what they knew all along (smoking is very, very bad for you) defended their turf for years with fake studies, and false advertising. They even invented “light cigarettes”, nominally as a gateway for people to quit, but which perversely improved their sales, as people needed more light cigarettes to achieve the same levels of nicotine.
Today, the oil and gas industries do the same. They spend literally hundreds of billions of dollars spreading FUD through lobbyists and overt TV advertisements, as well as through far more nefarious ways.
Their narrative: “The economy / the government / your province or country won’t survive without us, oil is a necessary ingredient of everything we buy, from paint to cars to plastics, down to the plastic wrapping the wires that power your day, batteries aren’t reliable, the sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow, retired solar panels and windmill blades are full of bad materials that cause pollution, batteries are full of precious minerals and harmful chemicals, ‘range anxiety’ and EVs don’t work on cold days” – we’ve all heard the incessant drumbeat of big oil’s FUD.
More nefariously, they pay through foundations for others to spread FUD even they can’t plausibly manufacture: Ratepayer groups roused to fight windmill farms because of the “cancer-causing noise” (or the lost view); conservation groups funded to protect the birds and bats being killed by windmills (let’s ignore the ducks landing in tailing ponds or that domestic cats kill far more birds than anything else, followed by tall buildings); farmer groups decrying the loss of farmland to solar farms (but urban sprawl or highways are okay).
And the new, ultimate lie: “Decarbonized Oil” (like it was an actual thing) – and that “LNG is a transition fuel that displaces the much worse coal” (ignore the fact that LNG contains large amounts of methane, and that there’s studies that suggest that by the time we account for methane, leaks during transmission, and the transportation, shipping LNG from Alberta to India produces more total emissions than burning the coal would have done).
Supported by willing investors and bankers, and beholden politicians, ripe with massive amounts of cash, the sector (in Canada via CAPP) spreads an endlessly false narrative during everything from World Series games to news programs, and prevails in persuading Canadians that “energy super power” is our only way forward. The Prime Minister and multiple Premiers echo their narratives, with “decarbonized oil” being the most odious.
Against such formidable and cash-rich opponents, just how bad will our situation need to be, before ENGOs have even a chance of winning?
And the answer is, absent a plausible economic argument and an alignment with members of the clean economy, either “never” – or “way too late”.
ENGOs are very adept at telling governments what to do, but seldom how to achieve the effort and desired outcome. “Don’t build homes there” – “don’t allow those chemicals” – “don’t build that pipeline” – “don’t allow those ships / fish-farming/ mining there” – are all common (and legitimate) cries. And many within the ENGO world genuinely believe that capitalism is inherently evil, the cause of all of these problems and so ergo, “all capitalism is bad” and all capitalists are, if not evil, at least not trustworthy – and so into that not-to-be-trusted category they thrust anyone and everyone who includes profit as a motive, essentially believing them to be impure.
But here’s the thing: Without a viable economic case on offer to replace all the things ENGOs want stopped, ENGOs will never prevail.
Almost every boss believes in “don’t come to me with problems – come to me with solutions” as the preferred strategy. Yet ENGOs ignore this obvious success factor. Even though the solutions are available – and obvious.
There’s a three-legged stool that can solve this.
The first leg is for ENGOs to pivot to provide solutions as well as problems, and support what is loosely defined as the “Clean Economy”: For-profit companies doing everything from renewable energy development to making “clean tech”, “climate tech”, building net-zero homes and doing large scale energy efficiency retrofits, restorative agriculture and habitat / forestry restoration, to bio-tech companies making bio-degradable plastics from seaweed.
None of these are emissions-free, nor perfect solutions – but they are far less environmentally harmful and they also offer the prospect of more than enough employment and profit to support our economy, enable a just transition, and replace the taxes paid by the oil industry – all without the abandoned well-heads, polluted waterways and health impacts in their wake.
The second leg in this stool is for members of the clean economy writ large to come together to tell their story far more effectively. At the moment the renewable energy folks tell their story to politicians – but not to Canadians. Ditto some parts of the clean tech / climate tech industry. The energy efficiency retro-fit / property tech folks employ thousands of people across Canada – but to most Canadians they are invisible.
Collectively these groups have more clout and bigger impact on the economy than the oil industry – but you’d never know it. In fact, per StatsCan figures, the climate and clean tech companies in Canada already impact GDP at a level two-thirds that of the oil industry ($80 billion combined vs $120 billion) and FOUR times the $20 billion of GDP from the steel, aluminum and forestry industries combined! And in industries expected to TRIPLE in growth world-wide in the next 10 years. Meaning twice the size of the oil industry today – but without a single abandoned well-head. Once you factor in all the parts of the “clean economy”, the numbers get better and better.
ENGOs fight for a “just transition” – how to help people in the oil industry land on their feet if those jobs go away? This is the solution. An industry tripling in size needs people!
We need to take a page from the fossils’ playbook. All messaging that supports the desired outcome is useful.
We will not win without an economic argument Canadians can believe in. And right now the fossil fuel industry is fighting tooth and nail – and with hundreds of billions of dollars spent on lobbying in North America – to persuade us there is no economic argument that doesn’t rely upon them.
And when Anti-Greenwashing legislation prevented the industry from selling myths, they fought that (177 meetings with Carney cabinet ministers) – and won! So this won’t be easy. But we need to do it.
To that end, the Clean50 is already a place where all of these groups come together – and so going forward, we will strive to make these connections, drive this collaboration, and advance a comprehensive narrative that Canadians can believe in as the truly transformative nation-building effort of the future: Not just identifying the problem and the risks of climate change – but sharing the solutions and dispelling the FUD.
If you’re interested in being a part of the conversation about how that might look, please reach out.
