Earlier this month, the world recorded its hottest-ever day – three times in the same week.
Greek islands rammed full of tourists are now being evacuated due to wildfires that have seized at least nine Mediterranean countries. Dozens have died as a result of blazes in Algeria.
It’s hardly surprising, then, that oil and gas giants are becoming increasingly determined to deflect blame away from their actions, and their record profits – a strategy that now includes the use of influencers.
After a months-long trawl through the inner depths of the internet, DeSmog has discovered hundreds of examples of fossil fuel giants paying influencers, in an attempt to convince millennials that oil and gas companies are not “the bad guys”.
This was BP’s concern in 2020, when it organised an internal summit to address its poor public perception. In a leaked document from the conference, the company stated its desire to become “more relatable, passionate, and authentic beyond our current centre of influence.”
“What is meaningful empathy in a world where we’re seen as one of the bad guys?” the document lamented.
The solution, it seems, was not to urgently transition away from fossil fuels towards green, renewable energy. Rather, BP said that it needed to change its PR strategy to help “win the trust of the younger generation”.
Our investigation found that both BP and Shell have been major sponsors of influencers in recent years, funding campaigns that have reached billions of people.
This includes a YouTube campaign launched in April this year hosted by former BBC presenter Dallas Campbell, who touts Shell’s investments in green energy and conducts softball interviews with the company’s senior executives.
Fossil fuel companies have deep reserves to deploy on digital advertising. While Shell last year advertised for a new staff member to manage its TikTok campaigns, oil and gas supermajor ExxonMobil has been the highest advertising spender on Facebook and Instagram in the last five years, shelling out $23.1 million since June 2018.
The total combined following of all the influencers who have been paid for fossil fuel partnerships since 2017, in posts analysed by DeSmog, is nearly 60 million.
…to dismantle the administrative state and restore self-governance to the American people…
Seeing as how so much of what Conservatives are pushing is against what the majority actually want, and they only have power by gerrymandering within states, gaming the Electoral College, and leveraging the rural bias of the US Senate, I’d be just fine with “restoring self-governance to the American people.”
The quiet part that they’re only occasionally saying out loud is this:
“The American people” are the minority of white, mostly rural and evangelical, MAGAts. The rest of us aren’t “real Americans.”
So all the electoral shenanigans that the Rs engineer are in service to “restoring self-governance to [those they define as] the American people.”
Project 2025:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/27/project-2025-dismantle-us-climate-policy-next-republican-president
Seeing as how so much of what Conservatives are pushing is against what the majority actually want, and they only have power by gerrymandering within states, gaming the Electoral College, and leveraging the rural bias of the US Senate, I’d be just fine with “restoring self-governance to the American people.”
The quiet part that they’re only occasionally saying out loud is this:
“The American people” are the minority of white, mostly rural and evangelical, MAGAts. The rest of us aren’t “real Americans.”
So all the electoral shenanigans that the Rs engineer are in service to “restoring self-governance to [those they define as] the American people.”