#petrostates
Text
Stinkpump Linkdump
Next Tuesday (December 5), I'm at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, NC, with my new solarpunk novel The Lost Cause, which 350.org's Bill McKibben called "The first great YIMBY novel: perceptive, scientifically sound, and extraordinarily hopeful."b
Once again, I greet the weekend with more assorted links than I can fit into my nearly-daily newsletter, so it's time for another linkdump. This is my eleventh such assortment; here are the previous volumes:
https://pluralistic.net/tag/linkdump/
I've written a lot about Biden's excellent appointees, from his National Labor Relations Board general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau chair Rohit Chopra to FTC Chair Lina Khan to DoJ antitrust boss Jonathan Kanter:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets
But I've also written a bunch about how Biden's appointment strategy is an incoherent mess, with excellent appointees picked by progressives on the Unity Task Force being cancelled out by appointees given to the party's reactionary finance wing, producing a muddle that often cancels itself out:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/08/fiduciaries/#but-muh-freedumbs
It's not just that the finance wing of the Democrats chooses assholes (though they do!), it's that they choose comedic bunglers. The Dems haven't put anyone in government who's as much of an embarrassment as George Santos, but they keep trying. The latest self-inflicted Democratic Party injury is Prashant Bhardjwan, a serial liar and con-artist who is, incredibly, the Biden Administration's pick to oversee fintech for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC):
https://www.americanbanker.com/news/did-the-occ-hire-a-con-artist-to-oversee-fintech
When the 42 year old Bhardjwan was named Deputy Comptroller and Chief Financial Technology Officer for OCC, the announcement touted his "nearly 30 years of experience serving in a variety of roles across the financial sector." Apparently Bhardjwan joined the finance sector at the age of 12. He's the Doogie Houser of Wall Street:
https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2023/nr-occ-2023-31.html
That wasn't the only lie on Bhardjwan's CV. He falsely claimed to have served as CIO of Fifth Third Bank from 2006-2010. Fifth Third has never heard of him:
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/the-occ-crowned-its-first-chief-fintech-officer-his-work-history-was-a-web-of-lies
Bhardjwan told a whole slew of these easily caught lies, suggesting that OCC didn't do even a cursory background search on this guy before putting him in charge of fintech – that is, the radioactively scammy sector that gave us FTX and innumerable crypto scams, to say nothing of the ever-sleazier payday lending sector:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/01/usury/#tech-exceptionalism
When it comes to appointing corrupt officials, the Biden administration has lots of company. Lots of eyebrows went up when the UN announced that the next climate Conference of the Parties (COP) would be chaired by Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber, who is also the chair of Dubai's national oil company. Then the other shoe dropped: leaks revealed that Al-Jaber had colluded with the Saudis to use COP28 to get poor Asian and African nations hooked on oil:
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67508331
There's an obvious reason for this conspiracy: the rich world is weaning itself off of fossil fuels. Today, renewables are vastly cheaper than oil and there's no end in sight to the plummeting costs of solar, wind and geothermal. While global electrification faces powerful logistical and material challenges, these are surmountable. Electrification is a solvable problem:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/09/practical-visionary/#popular-engineering
And once we do solve that problem, we will forever transform our species' relationship to energy. As Deb Chachra explains in her brilliant new book How Infrastructure Works, we would only need to capture 0.4% of the solar radiation that reaches the Earth's surface to give every person on earth the energy budget of a Canadian (AKA, a "cold American"):
https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/17/care-work/#charismatic-megaprojects
If COP does its job, we will basically stop using oil, forever. This is an existential threat to the ruling cliques of petrostates from Canada to the UAE to Saudi. As Bill McKibben writes, this isn't the first time a monied rich-world industry that had corrupted its host governments faced a similar crisis:
https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/a-corrupted-cop
Big Tobacco spent decades fueling science denial, funneling money to sellout scientists who deliberately cast doubt on both sound science and the very idea that we could know anything. As Tim Harford describes in The Data Detective, Darrell Huff's 1954 classic How to Lie With Statistics was part of a tobacco-industry-funded project to undermine faith in statistics itself (the planned sequel was called How To Lie With Cancer Statistics):
https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#harford
But anything that can't go on forever will eventually stop. When the families of the people murdered by tobacco disinformation campaigns started winning eye-popping judgments against the tobacco industry, the companies shifted their marketing to the Global South, on the theory that they could murder poor brown people with impunity long after rich people in the north forced an end to their practice. Big Tobacco had a willing partner in Uncle Sam for this project: the US Trade Representative arm-twisted the world's poorest countries into accepting "Investor-State Dispute Settlements" as part of their treaties. These ISDS clauses allowed tobacco companies to sue governments that passed tobacco control legislation and force them to reverse their democratically enacted laws:
https://ash.org/what-is-isds-and-what-does-it-mean-for-tobacco-control/
As McKibben points out, the oil/climate-change playbook is just an update to the tobacco/cancer-denial conspiracy (indeed, the same think-tanks and PR agencies are behind both). The "Oil Development Sustainability Programme" – the Orwellian name the Saudis gave to their plan to push oil on poor countries – maps nearly perfectly onto Big Tobacco's attack on the Global South. Nearly perfectly: second-hand smoke in Indonesia won't give Americans cancer, but convincing Africa to go hard on fossil fuels will contribute to an uninhabitable planet for everyone, not just poor people.
This is an important wrinkle. Wealthy countries have repeatedly demonstrated a deep willingness to profit from death and privation in the poor world – but we're less tolerant when it's our own necks on the line.
What's more, it's far easier to put the far-off risks of emissions out of your mind than it is to ignore the present-day sleaze and hypocrisy of corporate crooks. When I quit smoking, 23 years ago, my doctor told me that if my only motivation was avoiding cancer 30 years from now, I'd find it hard to keep from yielding to temptation as withdrawal set in. Instead, my doctor counseled me to find an immediate reason to stay off the smokes. For me, that was the realization that every pack of cigarettes I bought was enriching the industry that invented the denial playbook that the climate wreckers were using to render our planet permanently unsuited for human habitation. Once I hit on that, resisting tobacco got much easier:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/03/i-quit/
Perhaps OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al-Ghais is worried about that the increasing consensus that Big Oil cynically and knowingly created this crisis. That would explain his new flight of absurdity, claiming that the world is being racist to oil companies, "unjustly vilifying" the industry for its role in the climate emergency:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/27/opec-says-oil-industry-unjustly-vilified-ahead-of-climate-talks-.html
Words aren't deeds, but words have power. The way we talk about things makes a difference to how we act on those things. When discussions of Israel-Palestine get hung up on words, it's easy to get frustrated. The labels we apply to the rain of death and the plight of hostages are so much less important than the death and the hostages themselves.
But how we name the thing will have an enormous impact on what happens next. Take the word "genocide," which Israel hawks insist must not be applied to the bombing campaign and siege in Gaza, nor to the attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank. On this week's On The Media, Brooke Gladstone interviews Ernesto Verdeja, executive director of The Institute for the Study of Genocide:
https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/genocide-powerful-word-so-why-its-definition-so-controversial-on-the-media
Verdeja lays out the history of the word "genocide" and connects it to the Israeli government and military's posture on Palestine and Palestinians, and concludes that the only real dispute among genocide scholars is whether the current campaign it itself an act of genocide, or a prelude to an act of genocide.
I'm not a genocide scholar, but I am a Jew who has always believed in Palestinian solidarity, and Verdeja's views do not strike me as outrageous, or (more importantly) antisemitic. The conflation of opposition to Israel's system of apartheid with opposition to Jews is a cheap trick, one that's belied by Israel itself, where there is a vast, longstanding political opposition to Israeli occupation, settlements, and military policing. Are all those Israeli Jews secret antisemites?
Jews are not united in support for Israel's oppression of Palestinians. The hardliners who insist that any criticism of Israel is antisemitic are peddling an antisemitic lie: that all Jews everywhere are loyal to Israel, and that we all take our political positions from the Knesset. Israel hawks only strengthen that lie when they accuse me and my fellow Jews of being "self-hating Jews."
This leads to the absurd circumstance in which gentiles police Jews' views on Israel. It's weird enough when white-nationalist affiliated evangelicals who support Israel in order to further the end-times prophesied in Revelations slam Jews for being antisemitic. But in Germany, it's even weirder. There, regional, non-Jewish officials charged with policing antisemitism have censured Jewish groups for adopting policies on Israel that mainstream Israeli political parties have in their platforms:
https://jewishcurrents.org/the-strange-logic-of-germanys-antisemitism-bureaucrats
Antisemitism is real. As Jesse Brown describes in his recent Canadaland editorial, there is a real and documented rise in racially motivated terror against Jews in Canada, including school shootings and a firebombing. Likewise, it's true that some people who support the Palestinian cause are antisemites:
https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/is-jesse-a-zionist-editorial/
But to stand in horror at Israel's military action and its vast civilian death-toll is not itself antisemitic. This is obvious – so obvious that the need to say it is a tribute to Israel hardliners – Jewish and gentile – and their ability to peddle the racist lie that Israel is Jews and Jews are Israel, and that every Jew is in support of, and responsible for, Israeli war-crimes and crimes against humanity.
One need not choose between opposition to Hamas and its terror and opposition to Israel and its bombings. There is no need for a hierarchy of culpability. As Naomi Klein says, we can "side with the child over the gun":
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/11/why-are-some-of-the-left-celebrating-the-killings-of-israeli-jews
Moral consistency is not moral equivalency. If you're a Jew like me who wants to work for an end to the occupation and peace in the region, you could join Jewish Voice For Peace (like me):
https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org
Now, for a jarring tone shift. In these weekend linkdumps, I put a lot of thought into how to transition from one subject to the next, but honestly, there's no good transition from Israel-Palestine to anything else (yet – though someday, perhaps). So let's just say, "word games can be important, but they can also be trivial, and here are a few of the latter."
Start with a goodie, from the always brilliant medievalist Eleanor Janeaga, who tackles the weirdos who haunt social media in order to dump on people with PhDs who call themselves "doctor":
https://going-medieval.com/2023/11/29/doctor-does-actually-mean-someone-with-a-phd-sorry/
Janega points out that the "doctor" honorific was applied to scholars for centuries before it came to mean "medical doctor." But beyond that, Janega delivers a characteristically brilliant history of the (characteristically) weird and fascinating tale of medieval scholarship. Bottom line, we call physicians "doctor" because they wanted to be associated with the brilliance of scholars, and thought that being addressed as "doctor" would add to their prestige. So yeah, if you've got a PhD, you can call yourself doctor.
It's not just doctors; the professions do love their wordplay. especially lawyers. This week on Lowering The Bar, I learned about "a completely ludicrous court fight that involved nine law firms that combined for 66 pages of briefing, declarations, and exhibits, all inflicted on a federal court":
https://www.loweringthebar.net/2023/11/federal-court-ends-double-spacing-fight.html
The dispute was over the definition of "double spaced." You see, the judge in the case told counsel they could each file briefs of up to 100 pages of double-spaced type. Yes, 100 pages! But apparently, some lawyer burn to write fat trilogies, not mere novellas. Defendants accused the plaintiffs in this case of spacing their lines a mere 24 points apart, which allowed them to sneak 27 lines of type onto each page, while defendants were confined to the traditional 23 lines.
But (the court found), the defendants were wrong. Plaintiffs had used Word's "double-spacing" feature, but had not ticked the "exact double spacing" box, and that's how they ended up with 27 lines per page. The court refused to rule on what constituted "double-spacing" under the Western District of Tennessee’s local rules, but it ruled that the plaintiffs briefs could fairly be described as "double-spaced." Whew.
That's your Saturday linkdump, jarring tone-shift and all. All that remains is to close out with a cat photo (any fule kno that Saturday is Caturday). Here's Peeve, whom I caught nesting most unhygienically in our fruit bowl last night. God, cats are gross:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/53370882459/
It's EFF's Power Up Your Donation Week: this week, donations to the Electronic Frontier Foundation are matched 1:1, meaning your money goes twice as far. I've worked with EFF for 22 years now and I have always been - and remain - a major donor, because I've seen firsthand how effective, responsible and brilliant this organization is. Please join me in helping EFF continue its work!
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/02/melange/#defendants_motion_to_require_adherence_with_formatting_requirements_of_local_rule_7.1
Stinkpump Linkdump
#pluralistic#israel palestine#israel#palestine#linkdump#linkdumps#moral injury#occ#office of comptroller of the currency#Prashant Bhardjwan#finance#fintech#cop#bill mckibben#petrostates#Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber#jesse brown#on the media#genocide#Adnoc#saudi arabia#Oil Development Sustainability Programme#odsp#language#caturday
56 notes
·
View notes
Text
On Awareness
Some part of me wishes that people both within and without conflict zones understood that concern is universal, and empathy isn't a failing.
See, the problem's two-pronged. On the one hand, you've got people from wealthy corners of the globe love-bombing Palestine and Ukraine when they themselves probably couldn't place either country on the map not four years ago. That's who the "White people, shut up!" posts are targeted for - not you out there, who's sitting by on your News app, well aware of the fact that we're slipping into authoritarianism just a tiny bit more each day. If you're aware of the fact that Palestinians have been voicing their own struggles and that several Reblogs on here are packed with local journalists to source, you're not part of the problem.
On the other, I've seen people who more or less just voice concerns be attacked, because justifiably frazzled Palestinians are pushing for the other extreme, in response. All they want is more Palestinian voices, which is fair, but their level of investment makes their demands seem occasionally hostile.
So, please - consider this as a basic plea for patience. We're watching the world burn collectively and while pushing for local sources is well and good, the only persons who really should be told to shut up are the love-bombers and the concern-fishers, those who clearly co-opt Palestinians' and Ukranians' struggles for the sake of exposure or clout. Taking five to mention that you're worried about the state of the world, no matter your race, should be seen as acceptable.
Just keep that in mind, this morning, if you're doomscrolling through stories about both wars and on the way petrostates should be given even more environmental slack to maybe reach intended carbon emissions targets by... 2030.
The world sucks and we're all worried. Just - don't talk over one another, alright?
2 notes
·
View notes
Photo
1 note
·
View note
Text
Sustainable future: they own and we don't
they host #climate conference in a "petrostate", is it a #joke?
should emissions be #captured to stop climate change? #technology to do that doesn't exist!
COP28: "aim at planet-warming food"..
means no more #meat,#diary & a lot more #bugs, GMO #soy cubes
https://salvatoremercogliano.blogspot.com/2023/12/sustainable-future-they-own-and-we-dont.html?spref=tw
0 notes
Text
Canada's ambassador to the European Union has voiced concern with proposed EU rules to curb deforestation.
A November letter from Ailish Campbell said the rules add "burdensome" requirements and will hurt trade between Canada and the EU.
The EU regulation aims to limit the trade of products linked to deforestation worldwide.
Climate campaigners have called Canada's resistance to the rules "shocking".
In March, a group of more than 90 scientists penned an open letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau outlining concerns about Canada's rate of industrial logging in old-growth forests, which they said had "unique and irreplaceable ecological values".
(continue reading)
youtube
#Canada is one of the most regressive ecocidal petrostates on Earth lol#but they're also the most thoroughly green-washed petrostate#please tag every Canadian you know. Because I know they pride themselves on being progressive.#Canadian people need to see this and understand they are 100% responsible for Canada's emissions and deforestation#It's their responsibility to keep their government in check. Take to the streets Canadians!!!#cc#Youtube
9 notes
·
View notes
Text
My sea is a mass grave
My sky is clean and blue, but heavy like a casket lid
My first language is my third language
This is all a mess
#personal#yes it's about me living through my country being invaded by a giant necrophiliac nuclear terror petrostate empire
11 notes
·
View notes
Text
is Mesque meant to be Iberia or Latin America
#because on one hand it's in the 'old world' and has a franco/salazar style right wing dictatorship and a monarchy#on the other hand it's a petrostate and also has mariachi music and the boiadeiro concept seems to be heavily rooted in latin America#disco elysium#mesque
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
#'Insanity': petrostates planning huge expansion of fossil fuels says UN report#climateactionnow#healearth
0 notes
Text
Venezuela’s oil crisis combined with poor government has made the US suffer the wrath of it all. Now, the huge influx of migrants is causing even more problems for an already damaged US economy—
These people are sitting outside of gymnasiums, police stations and are sleeping in tents. It breaks my heart to see them living in these types of conditions. How is this ok? Our country is in shambles.
0 notes
Video
youtube
Honest Government Ad | Canada 🇨🇦
0 notes
Text
Capitalism won’t deliver the energy transition fast enough . . .
There’s too much to do, and given the urgency and the need to get the solution right, this isn’t a task for your favourite ESG-focused portfolio manager or the tech bros. The sheer scale of the physical infrastructure that must be revamped, demolished or replaced is almost beyond comprehension. Governments, not BlackRock, will have to lead this new Marshall Plan. And keep doing it. The western nations that did so much of the damage will have to finance the transition in the developing world — it is astonishing that this idea is still debated. Massive deficit spending will be necessary, not a new ETF. For all the cleantech advances and renewable deployment in recent decades, fossil fuels’ share of total global energy use was 86 per cent in 2000 and 82 per cent last year.
[...]
Either we ignore the consensus of the world’s best scientists and accept an ever-deteriorating climate, or we upend a multitrillion-dollar fossil fuel-based energy system created over decades. For obvious reasons it would be better to decarbonise and clean the energy system, avoiding the trauma of a ever-heating world, while trying to manage the political fallout. But powerful petrostates such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE — in charge of this year’s COP climate conference — won’t go quietly. The transition could put weak petrostates like Iraq in peril. Big Oil lobbyists will fight tooth and nail to stop change and influence elections. Saying the geopolitics of the energy transition will be volatile seems like an understatement.
353 notes
·
View notes
Note
People said "if you support Ukrainians defending themselves but not Palestinians you're just racist!" but there's actually a compelling argument for why Hamas is more like Russia than Ukraine. Not for any moral reason mind you (though they are bad). But I see Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Hamas' pogrom (and China's impending invasion of Taiwan) as the same thing:
The last gasp of a once relevant regime trying to cause maximum harm and chaos before everyone stops thinking about them. If Russia couldn't assert its control over the Black Sea and prevent Nato/the Eu from expanding right up to its backyard it would no longer be a credible world power. If China doesn't hurry up and invade Taiwan shifting demographics and Xi Jinping's age might doom any future attempt. If Hamas didn't do something big and flashy, and provoke an overwhelming response so they could play the victim, more and more Arab states would normalize with Israel and the question of Gaza would be hashed out with trade deals instead of bombs, meaning Hamas' reason for holding onto power would become weaker.
That is an excellent analysis! Russia is a politically and demographically senescent petrostate, Hamas still trying to cloak itself in revolutionary language that has only brought failure for a century. Each of them are re-attempting old strategies from the mid-1900s and neither of them have the manpower to actually make it work.
Plus I never saw Ukrainians shoot thousands of missiles into Russia, hijack Russian airplanes, kidnap and murder Russian children, castrate Russian Olympic athletes, send suicide bombers into Russian old age homes on major holidays to wipe out 3 generations of families, send axe murderers into Russian churches to kill old men praying, etc. See, there's actually not a single damned thing in common except BANG BANG KABOOM, which admittedly can be very confusing for children
143 notes
·
View notes
Text
Let’s make something quite clear.
COP29 is going to be nothing but a ghastly self-congratulatory circlejerk of genocidally minded fossil fuel worshippers and greenwashing nihilists furiously yanking eachother off amidst a backdrop of caviar and champagne.
Hosted by a genocidally minded petrodollar fascist dictatorship no less.
(To say nothing of Ukraine’s cynical support for such a putrid government! Talk about double standards!)
You know this.
I know this.
Everyone and their dog knows this.
Hosting the previous conference in Dubai was bad enough but this is genuinely obscene!
It’s beyond insulting.
Boycott the shite out of it.
Or at least call it out.
Perhaps both! Idk.
Feel free to reblog.
Leaving a few more news articles and other relevant links here too for clarity.
Some of them are a few months out of date (mostly from very late last year) admittedly but it took me a while to find them.
Reblog the shit out of this.
#dougie rambles#personal stuff#environmentalism#greenwashing#cop29#azerbaijan#Baku#fuck Azerbaijan#war crimes#terrorism#azerbaijan is a terrorist state#caucasus#europe#Azerbaijan is a rogue state#turkey#fuck Erdogan#fossil fuels#oil#gas#lies#bullshit#boycott#boycott Azerbaijan#political crap#vent post#reblog this#reblog the shit out of this#feel free to reblog#ecology#climate change
23 notes
·
View notes
Text
I just find it slightly insane how the USSR went from being a society at the forefront of technology in the 60s providing housing, healthcare, and work to its population to being a bunch of warring fascist petrostates run by gangsters while the social infrastructure of the country collapses. It sucks
63 notes
·
View notes
Text
[SPGlobal is US-Based Finance Industry Media]
Five months after seizing power in a coup, Gabon's new government is tapping up trading houses to help it finance a $1.3 billion deal for Carlyle's oil company Assala, thwarting a bid accepted last year from France's Maurel & Prom (M&P).
While some investors say the first oil sector intervention since August's coup is doomed financially, politically driven and injurious to the OPEC member's investment climate, others say it reflects a restructuring of the industry amid an exodus of IOCs, with African governments demanding more control over their resources.
"You are looking around and saying, who do I trust? Who will really unlock that value? And if I don't have that trust, I'm going to try to do it myself," a Western oil executive familiar with the industry in Gabon told S&P Global Commodity Insights, summing up a mindset increasingly taking hold on the continent.[...]
At the end of November, however, state-owned Gabon Oil Company (GOC) announced it would use its pre-emption rights to acquire Assala itself, giving it 80 days to come up with the funds. In a New Year address, President Brice Oligui Nguema said the action would "demonstrate [Gabon's] sovereignty in the oil sector, which is at the heart of the economy."[...]
Oil provides most of the Gabonese government's revenue, but output has slipped from 365,000 b/d in 1996 to 210,000 b/d last year, according to the Platts OPEC Survey from S&P Global, due largely to underinvestment. Gabon's medium-sweet Rabi Light and Rabi Blend crude grades are popular in Europe, Israel and Asia.
Analysts say Nguema -- who ousted Ali Bongo to end the Bongo family's six-decade rule -- is hoping to boost his popularity ahead of elections in 2025 or 2026. And energy sovereignty is a potential vote-winner.[...]
[S]ome West Africa oil players said the episode reflected new realities of operating in the region's petrostates, amid growing demands for energy security. Chad last year nationalized ExxonMobil's oil assets, while Equatorial Guinea is preparing to operate the US supermajor's Zafiro field from 2025.
29 Jan 24
16 notes
·
View notes
Text
How Russia is using the fossil fuel propaganda playbook to win the war
Climate war and Russia
Climate change is one of the biggest threats to humanity and life on Earth, but the fossil fuel industry has managed to block or delay the much-needed political action for decades. Michael Mann, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, has done a lot to untangle and categorize the various propaganda tactics used by the fossil fuel lobby. He refers to this joint propaganda effort as “climate war.”
Russia – a petrostate and the main beneficiary of carbon-based economy – is one of the main fossil fuel propaganda architects. Unsurprisingly, Russia now uses the same propaganda template to weaken global support for Ukraine and win the war.
And no, I’m not talking about all the wild state TV talk shows where people actively call for genocide against Ukraine, cheer for nuclear war, and portray Putin as their supreme leader. I’m talking about much subtler and smarter tactics and channels aimed at the rest of the world with one goal in mind: to help Russia win the war in Ukraine.
So let’s look closer at this similarity and learn how to spot Russia’s propaganda machine using the concepts from Michael Mann’s The New Climate War book.
Inactivism
Fossil fuel lobbyists realize they don’t need to convince people they are right. No, they just need to do enough to prevent people from fighting for green reforms. That’s why the main goal of fossil fuel propaganda now is to spread “inactivism” – the lack of meaningful action about climate change.
Russia’s propaganda regarding Ukraine also boils down to one goal: to stop or delay international support for Ukraine, especially military support. Russia doesn’t need to “win” the informational war – it doesn’t need to convince everybody that the invasion of Ukraine is a righteous thing. All it needs is just some “inactivism” from the rest of the world.
If other countries stop or just slow down their support of Ukraine, Russia will eventually win the war by brute force and larger ammunition stockpiles.
Denialism
Climate change denialism is the idea that climate crisis isn’t happening or that the change isn’t caused by human activity. Denialism isn’t used as widely now, but it had been the main fossil fuel propaganda tactic prior to the 2010s.
Today, Russia keeps denying everything. It denied it was planning to invade Ukraine, it denied it was waging a war while it was invading Ukraine. Russia also denies it has committed war crimes and atrocities in Bucha, Izium, Mariupol, and elsewhere in Ukraine.
Denialism is dull and easily refutable, but it works well for already sympathizing audiences and conspiracy theorists. That’s why there are people who think the Buch massacre was staged by Ukraine.
Whataboutism
Don Draper of the Mad Men TV series once said, “If you don’t like what’s being said, change the conversation.” And that’s exactly what the fossil fuel lobby (Russia included) has been doing.
When scientists and activists called for a massive reduction of global carbon output, the fossil fuel industry invented the “personal carbon footprint” nonsense that blamed the consumer choices of ordinary people for the climate crisis. This tactic isn’t aimed at winning an argument – it is designed to create enough noise and confusion to block any meaningful public discussion and thus political action.
Russia is doing the same thing with Ukraine. When it gets blamed for illegally invading Ukraine in the first place, Russia and its trolls bring up all the wars waged by the US or spin the “Ukraine is Nazi” nonsense. They don’t need people to think Russia is right – they just need them to think everybody else is not right either.
By drowning the discussion in endless “but what about” arguments, Russia tries to prevent the public from focusing on important things. That is, Russia illegally invaded a sovereign state for the sake of territorial conquest, and it needs to get out of Ukraine for the war to stop.
Doomism
In climate change advocacy, “doomism” is the idea that humanity can no longer hope to solve the issue of climate change, so it needs to adapt to the new reality. While “doomism” is rooted in a very real sentiment – the feeling that humanity is failing to decarbonize its economy at the needed pace – it benefits the fossil fuel interests in the end.
Why? Well, if it’s too late to save ourselves, why bother demanding change? Why put in all your energy to try to fix the unfixable? The fossil fuel industry has long realized that fatalism leads to passivity and disengagement. Hence, they can keep doing business as usual.
The most dangerous thing about doomism is that it poisons well-meaning people by turning them into “inactivists.” Just like when American writer Jonathan Franzen wrote an opinion piece claiming that “The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it.” This article was later dubbed “the most brilliantly unintentional fossil fuel industry propaganda” because, while being a cry of a concerned person, it actually harmed the cause of climate activism.
So who are the doomists of the Russo-Ukrainian war? The people who, prior to February 24, said there was no point in arming Ukraine because if Russia decided to invade, Ukraine wouldn’t stand any chance anyway. These “experts” then said: “Okay, Ukraine defended well, but there’s no way it can actually retake the occupied lands from Russia.” Now, these voices are saying Ukraine won’t win the war against Russia no matter how many weapons it receives from its allies.
Most of these arguments lead to one conclusion: it’s impossible for Ukraine to win, so we shouldn’t waste our time and money supporting it – let’s just strike some kind of deal with Russia. Of course, none of these voices address the fact that such a deal would reward Russia’s invasion and wouldn’t bring lasting peace to Eastern Europe.
Needless to say, this mindset directly benefits Russia as it promotes inaction in the face of an obviously criminal invasion of a sovereign country. Buckle up, the voices of doomism will get louder as the war grinds on.
Division
Sowing division among your opponents is an old-school political move, but it still works.
Instead of jointly demanding systemic change (the fastest possible decarbonization of our economy), people are dragged into endless culture wars, like shaming people for traveling by plane. The fossil fuel industry is pouring a lot of resources to spread conflicting narratives and make people fight among each other instead of uniting against their common enemy.
Russia also uses this tactic against Ukraine by promoting multiple narratives at once. Depending on the audience, Russia brands itself as the ultimate global fighter against Western colonialism, as the bastion of traditional family and Christianity, and as the enemy of global elites. That way, it is trying to disrupt the unity of Ukraine’s allies and prevent joint global action.
As Timothy Snyder said: “If you don't like gay people, they tell you the Ukrainians are all gay. If you don't like Nazis, they tell you they're all Nazis. If you do like Nazis, they tell you that they're all Jews.”
The non-solution solution
Finally, one of the newer propaganda tactics is the promotion of “non-solution solutions.”
According to Michael Mann, “The inactivists have sought to hijack actual climate progress by promoting “solutions” (natural gas, carbon capture, geoengineering) that aren’t solutions at all.”
There is a clear scientific consensus on what should be done to solve the climate crisis: abandon fossil fuels and turn to renewables ASAP. Instead, the fossil fuel lobby pushes numerous questionable alternative ideas for solving the crisis, thus slowing down the implementation of real solutions and meaningful political action.
Russia, too, is trying to hijack meaningful international anti-war effort by promoting scenarios that won’t actually solve anything. Right now, the only real way to actually save innocent lives in Ukraine and end the war is to arm Ukraine sufficiently so it can push the Russians out of its internationally recognized territory. Everything else is just a distraction at this point.
Negotiations are pointless when Russia is still aiming to exterminate the Ukrainian nation and destroy its statehood. Limiting military help to Ukraine “to not escalate the conflict” will only increase the chances of Russia’s military success. Focusing on humanitarian help will not help save human lives and liberate Ukrainians trapped under Russian occupation.
Russia will try to use different channels and “useful idiots” to promote various non-solution solutions, as all of them ultimately benefit Russia.
Let’s focus on meaningful action: for the world and for Ukraine
Fossil fuel propaganda is so similar to Russian propaganda for a reason: Russia is one of the main architects of fossil fuel disinformation. Right now, both interest groups are using these various methods to cement the status quo and prevent our fight for justice. Let’s make sure they fail.
People around the world deserve a future. Life on Earth deserves to be protected. Ukrainians deserve to live in peace. Ukraine deserves justice.
source: Ukraine Explainers on Patreon
122 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
