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May 1, 2022 11:34 am

Documentary Explores How Big Oil Stalled Climate Action for Decades

Slashdot reader XXongo brings word of a new three-part documentary — streaming free now — that tries to understand America's early inaction on climate change. Looking back over the last few decades, The Power of Big Oil explores how the fuel industry "successfully set up a campaign to discredit climate science and targetting individual politicians to vote against measures to curb climate change." The Guardian notes that the series includes an interview with a U.S. senator who they say "blames the oil industry for malignly claiming the science of climate change was not proved when companies such as Exxon and Shell already knew otherwise from their own research." As far back as 25 years ago, the senator says, "they had evidence in their own institutions that countered what they were saying publicly. I mean — they lied." The documentary's makers have dug out a parade of former oil company scientists, lobbyists and public relations strategists who lay bare how the US's biggest petroleum firm, Exxon, and then the broader petroleum industry, moved from attempting to understand the causes of a global heating to a concerted campaign to hide the making of an environmental catastrophe. Over three episodes — called Denial, Doubt, Delay — the series charts corporate manipulation of science, public opinion and politicians that mirrors conduct by other industries, from big tobacco to the pharmaceutical companies responsible for America's opioid epidemic. Some of those interviewed shamefacedly admit their part in the decades-long campaign to hide the evidence of climate change, discredit scientists and delay action that threatened big oil's profits. Others almost boast about how easy it was to dupe the American public and politicians, with consequences not just for the US but every country on the planet. In one video clip an aide to a climate-conscious senator remembers that "You had reams of material coming out of the government. They were at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, at NASA — this expanding network of people, working on this day in and day out, saying that this was a legitimate issue, and that we needed to do something about it. And on the other hand, you had two or three guys who went around to conferences and said, 'Oh, I'm not sure. Oh, maybe there's clouds....' It quickly became apparent that these were private interests who had a stake in the status quo." He refers to it as "emerging industry of nay-sayers." There's also a discouraged assessment from climate activist looking back over a lack of progress in the early decades. "You want to make an assumption that it's a meritocracy — a good argument will prevail, and it will displace a bad argument. But, what the geniuses at the PR firms who work for these big fossil-fuel companies know is that truth has nothing to do with who wins the argument. If you say something enough times, people will begin to believe it."

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