Fossil fuel firms among biggest spenders on Google ads that look like search results

The Guardian

One in five ads served on search results for 78 climate-related terms placed by firms with interests in fossil fuels, research finds.

Fossil fuel companies and firms that work closely with them are among the biggest spenders on ads designed to look like Google search results, in what campaigners say is an example of “endemic greenwashing”. (...)

Advertisers pay for their ads to appear on the search engine when a user queries certain terms. The ads are appealing to businesses because they are very similar in appearance to search results: more than half of users in a 2020 survey reported they could not tell the difference between a paid-for listing and a normal Google result. (...)

However, Shell’s net-zero strategy relies heavily on carbon capture and offsetting, according to a Carbon Brief analysis, which says: “Despite its ‘highly ambitious’ framing … Shell’s vision of a continued role for oil, gas and coal until the end of the century remains essentially the same.” (...)

“Since at least the 1980s in the US, there has been a very concerted effort by public relations agents to help polluting companies develop strategies to ‘go green’ while maintaining business as usual.

“Many of the initiatives companies are taking are very piecemeal and will not amount to any kind of long-term or systemic change.” (...)

The analysis also looked at “snippets”, which are not paid-for but are chosen by Google’s algorithm as the most relevant result. The Guardian found the snippet chosen for “fracking” linked to the website of an oil and gas lobby group, the Independent Petroleum Association of America. (...)

A years-long piece of research by the US Environmental Protection Agency concluded in 2016 that in some cases fracking had harmed drinking water supplies.

Unlike Facebook, Google does not have a publicly accessible ad library, meaning it is difficult to analyse advertising on the platform. (...)

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> See also: The forgotten oil ads that told us climate change was nothing (The Guardian)

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The forgotten oil ads that told us climate change was nothing

The Guardian

Since the 1980s, fossil fuel firms have run ads touting climate denial messages – many of which they’d now like us to forget. Here’s our visual guide.

Why is meaningful action to avert the climate crisis proving so difficult? It is, at least in part, because of ads.

The fossil fuel industry has perpetrated a multi-decade, multibillion dollar disinformation, propaganda and lobbying campaign to delay climate action by confusing the public and policymakers about the climate crisis and its solutions. This has involved a remarkable array of advertisements – with headlines ranging from “Lies they tell our children” to “Oil pumps life” – seeking to convince the public that the climate crisis is not real, not human-made, not serious and not solvable. The campaign continues to this day. (...)

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Tags: #capitalism #environment #pollution #waste #climate #climate_change #climate_crisis #cop26 #global_warming #aur_pollution #neoliberalism #market_fundamentalism #inequality #cerrado #desert #rivers #amazon #co2 #nox #fossil_fuel #deforestation #brazil #brasil #flooding #heat_dome #extreme_weather #forest_fires #media #carbon_footprint #oil_industry #lobby #desinformation #economic_growth #consumerism #citizen #protest #Fridays_for_Future #Green_New_Deal_Rising #Extinction_Rebellion

How the BBC let climate deniers walk all over it

George Monbiot (The Guardian)

The fossil-fuel multinationals fund ‘thinktanks’ and ‘research institutes’. But it’s gullible public service broadcasters that give them credibility. (...)

In 1979, an internal study by Exxon concluded that burning carbon fuels “will cause dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050”. In 1982, as the Guardian’s Climate Crimes series recalls, an Exxon memo concluded that the science of climate change was “unanimous”. Then it poured millions of dollars into lobby groups casting doubt on it.

They didn’t call themselves lobby groups, but “thinktanks” or “research institutes”. Across the world, the media took them at their word. (...)

When we criticised the media for its determined naivety, we were frozen out. Before long, the thinktanks and trade associations had a clear run. They were the serious, sensible people, to whom the media turned to explain the world. And still turns.

If the oil companies are to be held to account, so should the media that amplified their voices. (...)

The BBC’s role was more insidious. Its collaboration arose from a disastrous combination of gullibility, appeasement and scientific ignorance. It let the fossil fuel industry walk all over it. (...)

Only in 2018, a mere 36 years after Exxon came to the same conclusion, did the BBC decide that climate science is solid, and there is no justification for both-sidesing it. But the nonsense continues. (...)

The frontier of denial has now shifted to the biggest of all environmental issues: farming. Here, the BBC still gives lobby groups and trade associations sowing doubt about environmental damage (especially by livestock farming) more airtime than the scientists and campaigners seeking to explain the problems. (...)

The lesson, to my mind, is obvious: if we fail to hold organisations to account for their mistakes and obfuscations, they’ll keep repeating them. Climate crimes have perpetrators. They also have facilitators.

Full article

Belchatow coal-fired power station, Poland. Photograph: Kacper Pempel/Reuters.

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