There’s another dreadful Daily Mail (well, Mail on Sunday) article knocking around, this one by a guy called Ross Clark.
There is the usual absolute silence on climate science, and the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
There are a bunch of really interesting techniques Clark uses, but I don’t have time or inclination to examine them all now. The one that leaps out at me is personalisation…
So, I’ve made a new tile to add to the Daily Mail propaganda techniques…
Several heatwaves ago, in late June, I wrote a piece called
The Daily Hate Mail: examining the best climate denial they can do these days.
I also intended to populate “the Daily Mail – how it works” page, but didn’t. There is now, however, a bit of content there. (Also, a link to a long-read by Andy Beckett).
Anyway, I am back for more with some comments (not really at the level of analysis, because life is short) about Richard Littlejohn’s latest contribution to world wisdom – “How eco zealots are to blame for Burn Baby Burnham Britain…”
At the end, I propose a new verb.
The Littlejohn piece is fascinating not for what it says and invokes (more of that momentarily) but for what it DOESN’T. In a full page column Littlejohn manages to avoid using either the phrase “carbon dioxide” or even “climate,” while purporting to offer readers new insights into what is going wrong with the UK’s ecosystems. It’s quite an achievement, and gives us this new tile – “ignore the science.”
For the rest of it, it’s the usual mix of gish galloping (throwing out so many whatabouteries that no response can be given), (en)forced jocularity and bonhomie, appeals to “common sense”, dogwhistles to World War Two (“guilty men“) and so on. I do think the Mail could save a lot of money and just get an AI bot to churn out these columns in the Littlejohn “style.”
There’s endless references to “eco-zealots”, “dysfunctional bureaucracies staffed exclusively by urban, green zealots in Birkenstock sandals”, “mile upon mile of monstrous pylons”, “carpeting valuable farmland with Chinese-made solar panels which are utterly useless when the sun don’t shine”, “rewilding fanatics”, and, of course “loony left councils.”
Some “funny” hyperbole is given to grateful readers.”
“It can only be a matter of time, before this madcap policy extends to those remaining recreation grounds and sports fields which haven’t been sold off to developers for housing.
How long before they get round to cricket pitches? If Beefy Botham was bowling from the Pavilion End at Lord’s these days, he’d have to fight his way through thickets of weeds and long grass, taking extra care not to run into one of the goats hired to maintain the outfield.”
Oh, that one is a thigh-slapper. Huzzah!
So, finally, the promised proposed verb.
To littlejohn, v. To spew out vituperation, anecdotes and poorly sourced factoids while avoiding the central underlying causes of the problems you purport to address, and then invoking an “obvious” solution full of its own problems.
For other Daily Mail techniques (not a complete list yet!) see here.
UPDATE – this is nice from Another Angry Voice
2d ·
“Rewilding link to record wildfires” blares the front page Daily Mail headline.
Even if your scepticism alarm isn’t triggered by the fact it’s the Daily Mail, anyone who knows anything about rewilding is sure to wonder how the Daily Mail has reached such a conclusion.
One of the main objectives of rewilding is restoration of land and waterways to retain more water.
Stuff like reintroduction of beavers to build dams and pools; restoring wetlands; and reintroducing woodland in upland areas to retain more water and prevent flash flooding.
It’s hard to see how a policy of re-wetting the British landscape and slowing water runoff, could lead to more wildfires … unless … the Daily Mail are being deliberately misleading.
The article cites three sources to back up their lurid headline that blames “rewilding” for the record number of wildfires this year (rather than record high temperatures and record low rainfall).
Country Land and Business Association – a landowner lobbying group
The Countryside Alliance – a farmer’s lobbying group
Ian Botham – “the lazy lord”
Not a single one of these cited sources actually makes the claim that “rewilding” is to blame for the wildfires.
What they all complain about is the ban on “controlled burning” of the hundreds of thousands of acres of British uplands that are used (wasted) as grouse hunting moors.
The CLBA spokesperson criticises government ministers for making it “harder for land managers to carry out … controlled burning”.
The Countryside Alliance complain that the government has “more than trebled the area over which the controlled burning of vegetation is effectively banned in our uplands”.
And Ian “lazy lord” Botham accuses DEFRA of “reckless incompetence” over the restrictions on burning off heather.
The policy of restricting moorland burns has nothing to do with “rewilding”. If we actually listen to what rewilders say (like the Daily Mail studiously refused to) they’d argue that grouse moors should be replaced with upland forests. Not pine forestry monocultures either. Proper British forests, populated by native species. The kind of upland rainforests that existed before our ancestors burned them off and created the barren moorlands that exist today.
Actual rewilders say that we should replace grouse moors with temperate rainforest to retain more water, and the government has restricted the amount of grouse moorland that can be burned off, and the Daily Mail is pretending that the two things are the same.
It’s a convenient fiction to pretend that “rewilders” who say the barren uplands need to be restored to temperate rainforest, are responsible for wildfires on the barren upland grouse moors this summer.
It’s obvious that organisations like the CLBA and the Countryside Alliance, who represent the interests of the British grouse hunting industry, are up in arms about government restrictions on their practice of burning off swathes of moorland every year, but they’d be even more opposed to the idea that grouse moors should be replaced with the kind of natural temperate rainforest that existed before humans destroyed them.
They want to keep the moors barren, so rich toffs can go up and shoot birds for fun, and if they can get the Daily mail to blame the wildfires on people who say the barren grouse moors should be restored to temperate rainforest, good for them, right?
Ian Botham is a game shooter and owns a grouse moor in North Yorkshire. A massive conflict of interests that the Daily Mail “forgot” to mention in their article.
What is there to learn from reading the Daily Mail? “Not much” I hear the more polite among you say. Other, more Anglo-Saxon, phrases are possible, and I’d agree, knowing from personal experience that the wretched tabloid just makes shit up to suit its ‘angle.’
But nonetheless, we are in a climate emergency (or worse) and so it is worth looking at two articles appearing in the June 26, 2026 edition for what they tell us about how its writers think (or “think”, if you’re being arch) and what they expect readers to swallow.
It’s especially useful to name a few tactics that are used, since these crop up elsewhere.
The two articles are
I’ll start with a very brief history of climate change and the responses to it (“the Beforetimes”), before discussing the articles in turn. I will then point to the similarities between them, close out with some further reading and ‘what is to be done?’ I am interested in what you think,and what you think I have missed or got wrong. Let me know. If you’re a denialist though, I am not gonna respond; the Fafocene has begun and our time is shorter than you think.
In May 1953, building on the work of John Tyndall (1), Svante Arrhenius and Guy Callendar, the Canadian physicist Gilbert Plass set a cat among the pigeons by declaring that “The large increase in industrial activity during the present century is discharging so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that the average temperature is rising at the rate of 1.5 degrees per century.”
This claim went around the world (but, curiously, received scant media attention in the UK). Through the 1950s, however, other scientists (American and Swedish, primarily) joined in. By the mid-1960s carbon dioxide was one of the many potential threats being described as industrial growth surged. By the late-1970s there was a consensus among climate scientists that there was trouble ahead. In 1979 the Daily Mail was capable, at this stage, of reporting on this without losing its “mind.”
Efforts were to get Thatcher and Reagan interested in the problem. Thatcher was incredulous – “you want me to worry about the weather?”. It wasn’t until 1988 that the physical problem became a political issue. The Americans were able to force the essential idea – of targets and timetables for emissions reductions by rich countries – off the agenda for the 1992 “United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.” Since then, globally emissions of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide is the main one, but not the only one) have surged, and temperatures have surged too. To quote myself
“When Plass spoke out, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide was at about 310 parts per million. Today, they’re [430] or so. Every year, as we burn more oil, coal and gas, the concentration climbs and more heat is trapped.”
Unfortunately, a well-funded and extremely determined campaign of denial, doubt, technosalvationism and (predatory) delay has been going on for decades. The Daily Mail has been a part of that. In 2013, for example you get this . People complain, but the toothless watchdogs usually say “nothing to see here.”
So, with that out the way, brace yourselves for…
For those lucky enough not to be familiar with him, first some context –
“Richard Littlejohn (born 18 January 1954) is an English author, broadcaster and opinion column writer, having started his career as a journalist. As of May 2023, he writes a twice-weekly column for the Daily Mail about British affairs.”
He is also a reliable source of spleen and invective – “Littlejohn has been criticised for insufficient fact-checking[4][5] and for alleged anti-gay bigotry.[6]”
The headline (nb not normally chosen by the writer) demonises and trivialises climate action advocates as “Net Zero nutjobs”.
Littlejohn goes in, as usual, studs and all
There is that knowing “skepticism” “we are informed officially” (pointy-headed venal experts’ and ‘comic hyperbole ‘since records began in 1066’ – a call back to the classic ‘1066 and all that’). Littlejohn wants you to remember the 1950s, even if you weren’t there.
There is the inevitable “council jobsworths’ and London Mayor “Genghis Khan” (a play on Sadiq Khan – geddit?)
After tiring himself out with being ‘fair’ by dissing the Conservatives, and showing he is above the fray by casting doubt on Reform, Litlejohn turns his attention to the Guardian.
Note, Littlejohn does NOT ascribe the view that these temperatures (“The sun has got his hat on”) are going to be normal and in all probability surpassed, to scientists at the Met Office or elsewhere. That would make his ‘argument’ awkward. So he has to (only) shoot the Messenger, those hated lefties at the Guardian.
After more jabs at the congestion charge (no mention of the radical reduction in hospital emissions), Littlejohn comes to the crux – those warning about heatwaves and worse are “climate hysterics”. We will come back to this.
There is, inevitably, the invocation of “plucky” Brits (tied up with the whole Keep Calm and Carry On thing).
Christopher Stevens
Who he? According the this website
“With an unfailing ability to pinpoint the details that define a story, combined with a readiness to write about his own deep personal experiences, Christopher Stevens is arguably the most wide-ranging feature writer in British newspapers.”
Stevens’ basic argument, if you want to call it that, is that there is nothing new under the sun, that the heatwave in 1957 (in the UK) is no different from what is going on now.
Before we dive into this one, what is fascinating (to me at least, but I am odd) is that 1957 was a very important year. The International Geophysical Year began and among the many many measurements being taken around the world by many scientists of many nations was… carbon dioxide. Stevens, like Littlejohn, is eerily silent on carbon dioxide.
Stevens is similarly dismissive of the danger to the poor, the sick, the elderly – the fall of the temperature record was “met with much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and hailed as proof that our planet will soon be uninhabitable because of global warming.”
Stevens claims that “on that roasting Saturday there was no hysteria, [that word again], no climate scientists predicting the end of the world.” (This is wrong, insofar as the fact that climate scientists WERE already predicting that there would be serious consequences if we kept on burning fossil fuels. See, for example, these)
Stevens then writes about El Nino as a factor, withOUT mentioning the build up of CO2. He mentions a “heatdome” over Europe. Anything to avoid mentioning carbon dioxide build-up. He then pivots to more nostalgia for the 1950s – “A plummy BBC reporter, shirt collar buttoned with a smart striped tie, ventured with his camera crew into the East End to discover how families in the capital’s poorest streets were coping…”
Stevens watched this clip here, surely, but, failing to mention this totally accidentally gives the impression this is all personal reminiscence.
So, the narrative, as with Littlejohn, is of “plucky” Brits, no-nonsense, ‘keep calm and carry on time’”. Inevitably, Winston Churchill gets a cameo –
“Aged 73 he joined Queen Eizabeth for the Garter ceremony in full regalia at St George’s chapel, Windsor.”
So, you see, the two situations are entirely comparable. And then, of course –
“Now amid similar temperatures we have seen a mood of doom-mongering from Left-wingers and climate campaigners.”
Inevitably, the Guardian is derided, and El Nino is invoked as a “natural phenomenon”.
The word natural here is interesting and telling.. Cobra venom is natural. Bubonic plague is natural. Stevens is, however, using natural in the sense of ‘benevolent and/or inevitable’.
Grasping at straws Stevens invokes some experts who he can quotemine to agree with his thesis. Without pointing out the decades of warnings by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) , Stevens says “In other words, El Nino is always unpredictable, often disruptive and now is as good a time to panic as any.”
To fill out space, and hammer home the 1950s point, Stevens again returns to the 1950s (when, as he well knows, many of his readers were young and carefree) “Or we could fall back on the amiable, understated attitudes of our forebears in 1957. They just rolled up their trouser-legs and had an ice-cream. But such insouciance is frowned on now.”
In both cases, there is a resolute silence on the fact of carbon dioxide build-up. Neither can bring themselves to mention the basic facts that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas and that levels of it in the atmosphere have risen very sharply. Stevens is a little more sophisticated (it’s a low bar), and focuses on the El Nino as a way of NOT talking about carbon dioxide.
Both invoke weak-willed people, coddled for too long by an incompetent and intrusive Nanny State – the same old playbook.
Both, to no feminist’s surprise, reach for the adjective ‘hysterical’ to nail home their point.
In both there is an invocation of “plucky” British resilience and a harkening back to a simpler, bucolic past.
In both there is a focus on the messengers – specifically the Guardian – rather than the sources of the message themselves – various scientific bodies (IPCC, Met Office, Royal Society etc), because this would complicate/undermine the ‘nothing to see here’ message.
For both, there is an insistence that we must focus on individual solutions (put aircon in your house, with or without planning permission) and don’t think about (because otherwise you might have to worry about) collective solutions and the problems of equity. (Life doesn’t HAVE to be a shit sandwich, you know.)
Maybe a typology already exists and I am wasting my time? If so, please point me to it.
That last one is something most advocates of climate action don’t even address. Their implicit theory of change seems to be that if we just name and shame the oil companies enough, and deride the ‘doomers’ as ignorant or unwitting dupes of said oil companies, then somehow the new Jerusalem (hopefully with lots of shade trees) will be builded here.
On the way the word ‘hysterical’ gets trotted out
byarcadia.org/post/hysteria-as-a-misogynistic-construct
Two recent examples
(June 5 2026) in the climate denial junk tank the Institute for Public Affairs
How fear and hysteria fuels politics of climate science
(June 23, 2026) “Why the heatwave hysteria won’t change how I run my school” in the Spectator
I haven’t read these but they look good
Clarke, I. (2024). The discourses of climate change denialism across conspiracy and pseudoscience websites. In The Routledge handbook of discourse and disinformation. Taylor & Francis.
Forchtner, B., & Özvatan, Ö. (2022). De/legitimising EUrope through the performance of crises: The far-right Alternative for Germany on “climate hysteria” and “corona hysteria”. Journal of Language and Politics, 21(2), 208-232.
I think the Propaganda Model of Herman and Chomsky is a pretty good starting (but not necessarily ending) place
See also the way that the denialists figured out how to use journalistic norms of ‘balance’ to force journalists to keep saying there was a ‘debate’ on the science.
Maxwell T Boykoff, Jules M Boykoff, 2004. Balance as bias: global warming and the US prestige press, Global Environmental Change, Volume 14, Issue 2, Pages 125-136,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2003.10.001.
I haven’t yet read this
McAlister et al. 2021. Balance as bias, resolute on the retreat? Updates & analyses of newspaper coverage in the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia and Canada over the past 15 years
Carbon Brief, January 16, 2016-
Analysis: UK newspaper editorial opposition to climate action overtakes support for first time
I just listened to a Drilled podcast – The Black Thread Pt 2: Petroganda, and you should to.
It’s a nice investigation of the way Statoil (since rebranded as Equinor) has a virtual death grip on Norwegian culture and “common sense.” Nobody says “Gramsci” or “hegemony”, but maybe they should. Nice interview with the Statoil Veep of Communications too.
Here’s a definition
The term “petroganda” was coined by journalist and Drilled founder Amy Westervelt to describe the fossil fuel industry’s approach to the information ecosystem, an approach that goes far beyond simply “disinformation,” which Westervelt describes as just the most visible symptom of this problem. In this context “petroganda” is defined as: The intentional warping of information ecosystems by corporate interests, such that everything from the basic building blocks of information—university research, surveys, white papers—to public-facing campaigns crafted by PR and advertising experts are driven by a profit or power motive as opposed to the desire to understand and communicate.
“Petroganda” is perhaps a little clumsy, and is hardly new (but then, they don’t claim it is). It’s simply the way that the oil companies (and in Australia it was/is the coal companies) go for full spectrum dominance – making sure they are in people’s minds and hearts from a very young age. The usual stuff – museums, sponsoring sports and cultural stuff, games for the kiddies etc etc. And it creates what one interviewee calls “oilsplaining” – whenever she raises Statoil’s carbon emissions she gets all the oily talking points, from people who don’t think they’ve been indoctrinated at all…
I quite like Emily Atkin’s
of oilsplaining, drawing on (of course) Rebecca Solnit’s “mansplaining.”
Oilsplaining,” our word for when some random dude who doesn’t fully understand climate change explains the benefits of fossil fuels to you .
See also
2023 academic article “The language of late fossil capital.”
And my piece about Shell and its corporate propaganda, from late 2015. On existentialism, guilt, Godard and … Shell’s corporate framing strategy
A Statoil guy talking about climate change in 1980.
March 21, 1980 – chair of Statoil board acknowledges the “social cost” of the “CO2 problem”
The battle for the public mind is never-ending. And one of the key weapons remains… wait for it… books.
This below is inspired by reading Royce Kurmelovs’ review of a new tiresome pronuclear abundance tome that makes utterly baseless allegations about the funding behind “Friends of the Earth.” (Full disclosure, Royce is a friend, we’ve collaborated in the past and I had a very minor role in the research of this review).
A book is a “hook” – the author(s) get, er, booked, to appear on radio shows, tv programmes. The book is excerpted in newspapers, which are then quoted by columnists in papers and by politicians in parliament. The book can be the excuse for a tour of cities. The book gets you on podcasts. The book can get turned into instagram posts and tiktok videos.
None of this is new, but it is worth remembering.
Two particular (albeit American) examples should be part of any intelligent media-observer’s toolkit.
The first is the statement by Julian Simon about what the “conservative” movement needed. This from Jane Meyer tells you what you need to know.
His father evidently lost his mother’s fortune, motivating Simon to make his own. On Wall Street, he became a hugely successful partner at Salomon Brothers, where he was an early leader in the lucrative new craze for leveraged buyouts. But what neither Olin nor Simon had was influence over the next generation. “We are careening with frightening speed towards collectivism,” Simon warned.
Only an ideological battle could save the country, in Simon’s view. “What we need is a counter-intelligentsia. … [It] can be organized to challenge our ruling ‘new class’ — opinion makers,” Simon wrote. “Ideas are weapons — indeed the only weapons with which other ideas can be fought.” He argued, “Capitalism has no duty to subsidize its enemies.” Private and corporate foundations, he said, must cease “the mindless subsidizing of colleges and universities whose departments of politics, economics and history are hostile to capitalism.” Instead, they “must take pains to funnel desperately needed funds to scholars, social scientists and writers who understand the relationship between political and economic liberty,” as he put it. “They must be given grants, grants, and more grants in exchange for books, books, and more books.”
Under Simon’s guidance, the Olin foundation tried to fund the new “counterintelligentsia.” At first, it tried supporting little-known colleges where conservative ideas — and money — were welcome. But Simon and his associates soon realized that this was a losing strategy. If the Olin foundation wanted impact, it needed to infiltrate prestigious universities, especially the Ivy League.
Mayer 2016 (emphasis added).
The second is the Joan Peters debacle. Somebody wrote a book, published under her name in 1984, about how there weren’t any Palestinians in the 19th century – “a land without people for a people without a land” stuff, and the US academics lapped it up. Then along came Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky… I URGE you to read Chomsky’s account, here.
The beauty of the book technique is that – if it comes from a ‘reputable’ publisher – it gives any old bullshit argument a heft, a solidity, it doesn’t deserve. It sells copies (publisher happy) and the author gets exposure, and bandwidth gets taken up, nonsense talking points get repeated and regurgitated, no matter how many times the book is “demolished” (see Chomsky above)
See also
On this day, 9 years ago, yet another promise of imminent “low emissions technologies” was made…
2014 INDUSTRY LEADERSHIP TO DEVELOP LOW EMISSION TECHNOLOGIES Statement from Brendan Pearson, Chief Executive, Minerals Council of Australia The Minerals Council of Australia today announced the establishment of an industry-led Leadership Roundtable for the development of Low Emissions Technologies for Fossil Fuels. The Roundtable will be chaired by Mr Stewart Butel, Managing Director of Wesfarmers Resources Limited, Chair of COAL21* and a Director of the Minerals Council of Australia. Membership will include senior representatives from the coal, oil and gas, and power generation industries, research organisations, federal and state governments and the Global CCS Institute.The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 400ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that although Tony Abbott was now Prime Minister (though not for much longer, it turned out!), the fossil industry still felt the need to say the right things.
What I think we can learn from this
Endless promises. It would be funny if it were not tragi.
What happened next
The usual – nothing substantive.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Thirty years ago, on this day, September 14, 1993, the New York Times reports on industry efforts to intimidate scientists into shutting up.
As the Clinton Administration prepares to announce in the next few weeks a plan for controlling waste industrial gases that trap heat in the atmosphere, conservatives and industry groups have mounted a renewed assault on the idea that global warming is a serious and possibly catastrophic threat.
Stevens, W. 1993. Scientists Confront Renewed Backlash on Global Warming. New York Times, September 14.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that Clinton had already lost the BTU energy tax battle and was trying to recover some reputation by proposing other forms of CO2 legislation. But crucially those members of the coalition that had defeated the BTU were not downing weapons, they were up for another fight, to consolidate the break, as they say in tennis…
What I think we can learn from this is that at-will lose the opponents of action are gonna keep coming at you. And they learn from both their defeats and victories…
What happened next
The industry goons’ next famous victory was rendering Kyoto meaningless before it even happened.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Fifteen years ago, on this day, January 12, 2008,
NEW South Wales Minerals Council CEO Nikki Williams (later to head up the Australian Coal Association) called on the industry “to get on the front foot in selling its sustainability message.” (see here)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 385.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 419.
The context was that Australia was in the grip of another awareness of its fragility and of serious trouble ahead. Mining companies were understandably looking to burnish their images with the usual bag of tricks – sponsorships of sports teams, tree planting and the like. Doing it as individual companies is expensive and open to easy sneering. Getting your trade association to do it helps you a) spread costs and b) gain more “respectability,” at least in the eyes who choose not to see what their eyes can see.
What I think we can learn from this
We live in a propaganda-ised society. A major function of trade associations is to pump out propaganda when it is needed, to deflect, slow or soften the actions of the state. See that Chomsky fella, or Alex Carey.
What happened next
Lots of propaganda. Lots of lobbying. The Rudd government spent two years faffing and selling its arse. Its “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme” was a farce. Then the Gillard government had to try to pick up the pieces. Meanwhile, the emissions climbed and people got (rightly) cynical about how much politicians would prance and preen while doing nowt.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
References
Carey, A. 1997 Taking the Risk out of Democracy: Corporate Progaganda versus Freedom and Liberty. University of Illinois Press.
On this day in March 4 2003, the Luntz memo was exposed. Frank Luntz was a Republican communications PR guru, and his memo advocated continued casting of doubt.
In the words of the Guardian’s reporter
The memo, by the leading Republican consultant Frank Luntz, concedes the party has “lost the environmental communications battle” and urges its politicians to encourage the public in the view that there is no scientific consensus on the dangers of greenhouse gases.
“The scientific debate is closing [against us] but not yet closed. There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science,” Mr Luntz writes in the memo, obtained by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based campaigning organisation.”
The broader context is that the Bush administration having already reneged on promises to reduce carbon dioxide and pulled the US out of Kyoto needed to continue its perception management, and that’s what Luntz was proposing, as part of the broader war, to keep people in the dark, ignorant, confused, demoralised and it’s been a very successful effort. So here we are.
Why this matters.
We need to see how “common sense” (in the Gramscian sense) is endlessly confected and defended…
And here’s the memo, btw
LuntzResearch.Memo.pdf (sourcewatch.org)
What happened next?
Luntz changed his tune, but the damage was done. And the emissions continue to climb.
On this day, eight years ago, Peabody Coal started an advertising campaign called “Advanced Energy for Life.” Because as the dirtiest fossil fuel, coal had a serious image problem, and therefore needed to conflate itself with notions of energy poverty.
Why this matters
What they’re trying to do when they do this is insinuate that anyone who is opposed to the burning of ever more coal somehow wants people in Africa to die young, after a miserable impoverished life.
What you’ll find, of course, is that the many of same people who are protesting about environment also would like debt relief (cancellation), democratisation technology transfer and all the rest of it.
But Peabody would rather have you believe that all environmentalists are racist Malthusian assholes all the time. Now, it is indisputable that some environmentalists historically and down into this present day, racist assholes, and explicitly and unashamedly others, confused or ignorant, and of course, most buy into the myths of it being possible to have everything for everyone and there being no trade offs.
What happened next
One of Australia’s briefer Prime Ministers, Tony Abbott, used the “coal is good for humanity” line when opening a coal-fired power station later that year.
Peabody is making money at the mo’, because gas prices have spiked and so coal is competitive. For now.
Further reading.
The truth behind Peabody’s campaign to rebrand coal as a poverty cure | Coal | The Guardian
I’d recommend an article by James Meek in the London Review of Books about Scottish offshore wind energy and who is building the towers and the kits and under what conditions. But I digress.
What happened next
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s later that year when opening a coal mine, use one of the Peabody talking points. Coal is good for humanity. So that’s When for pee buddies, PR people,
Peabody has, of course, entered bankruptcy proceedings chapter 11, I think. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not that some people aren’t making money. It just means that times are tough for call my heart’s bleeding.