Here is the full transcript of climate justice organizer Anjali Appadurai’s talk titled “The Climate Change Conspiracy… Conspiracy” at TEDxSurreySalon 2024 conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
A Memorable Focus Group
I’ll never forget the time I helped run a focus group. It was for an environmental non-profit I worked for at the time, and we were asking participants about their views on climate change and the economy. I remember feeling moved by one participant in particular.
She was a young mom; she had two kids; she had a regular job at a dentist’s office; she’d never been involved in politics. She had a lot on her plate between paying the bills and parenting. But when we asked her a question about climate change, she spoke of a deep pit of anxiety and guilt that she carried around, because she could see that the winters were getting warmer and there were more wildfires than she’d ever experienced in the summers in her home in southeast British Columbia.
And she knew that the gas car that she drove was contributing to the issue, but she had no choice but to drive herself to work and her kids to school, but she felt guilty for it. The thing I felt most strongly from that young mom was her fear, particularly for her children, those she cares about the most.
The Truth About Fossil Fuel Companies
And I could empathize, of course. I also feel a certain amount of fear for what the future may bring, and I feel uncertainty about the world that my future children will have to grow up in. But I also felt offended on behalf of that young mom that day, because I heard her express guilt about her lifestyle choices that were necessary for her financial means and her circumstances. But I had just spent the last month digging into a paper trail that made her individual actions look like a grain of sand in the desert.
Thanks to some excellent investigative research from Harvard and the Potsdam Institute, we now know the world’s largest petroleum companies, like Exxon, actually employed some of the best climate scientists in the world, long before climate change was a public conversation.
The science of global warming was clear to them as early as the 1950s, and their climate modeling was eerily accurate. They knew that burning oil and gas would eventually lead to uncontrollable changes to the earth, changes like mass species extinction, unpredictable super storms, and rising sea levels that would wipe out coastal areas. And what did these fossil fuel giants do with that top-of-the-line science?
They knew that if the world were to understand the true implications of it, that if the public knew the connection between burning oil and gas and global warming, that there would be a shift away from fossil fuels. And so, anxious to avoid losing profits, they instead poured millions of dollars into carefully planned public disinformation campaigns to sow distrust in climate science, the same science they were producing. They funded prominent climate deniers.
Spreading Disinformation and Doubt
They took out regular advertorials in major newspapers like the New York Times and used them to spread skepticism about climate change. And they made millions in payments to think tanks and organizations that manufactured doubt about global warming. In fact, one study by the Carbon Brief shows that 9 out of 10 of the most prominent authors who were casting doubt on climate change actually had ties to Exxon.
Ironically, it was also at this time that Exxon and other major oil companies had some of the most accurate and up-to-date predictions on climate change at the time. But they used their resources to mislead the public and to block any real action from policymakers.
The fossil fuel industry instead used those 20th century decades, while masking climate change from the public, to embed itself as our primary form of energy, making billions in the process, and becoming one of the most profitable industries in the world. They worked hard to reinforce the message that fossil fuels are the only form of energy that makes sense. That without fossil fuels, the world would be colder, scarier, more uncertain. That fossil fuels are an essential part of our culture and our lives.
Fossil Fuel Messaging Today
Now fast forward to today, and the industry is still invested in the public believing this message. But now here in North America, the message is wrapped in the flag, so to speak. Here in Canada, from the bumper stickers that say “I heart Canadian oil and gas,” to the bus ads that proclaim “the world is asking for Canadian energy,” to the rhetoric of pro-oil politicians who say things like “burn baby burn,” the message we receive everywhere is the idea that the oil and gas industry is deeply Canadian, synonymous with the beating heart of the country itself.
This particular form of patriotic fossil fuel messaging has been carefully built and tended to. We now know that the industry funded and continues to fund a network of organizations and grassroots groups, or rather fake AstroTurf groups, to build a culture of petro-nationalism across the country. It’s a bit like when a brand hires people to leave fake online reviews for their product.
If you have to create your own supporters, if you have to set up their Facebook pages for them, if you have to tell them what to say, if you have to fund your own think tanks to produce supportive content, and if you have to bankroll all of that out of pocket, how popular are you really? The superpower of fossil fuel disinformation is that it thrives on our fear. It makes us think that we live in a world of scarcity, and it leads us to want to protect ourselves and our own, with the broader societal good being an afterthought.
It’s no wonder that many pro-oil groups and demonstrations in recent years have actually shown concerning levels of anti-immigrant sentiment, fear of the other.
The industry has subtly messaged to us that it is the only thing standing between us and dystopian chaos, underpinned by a strong strain of xenophobia. And pro-oil politicians never fail to evoke this fear.
The Culture and Worldview Created by the Fossil Fuel Industry
A prominent leader in Canada recently said to a crowd, “Where would America prefer to get its energy from? Do you want to get it from Iran? Do you want to get it from Venezuela? Or do you want to get it from safe Canada?”
The industry has created so much more than a simple transaction when you fill up your car at the gas pump. It’s created a culture, a worldview. And even though that worldview has a long history that’s rooted in the interests of the most powerful industries and individuals in the world, the industry still makes us think that it’s working in our interests.
So now we know decades of disinformation have hindered the truth on climate change and blocked any real action to stop it. But when you look at the world around us today, the scorchingly hot summers, the worryingly mild winters, it’s hard to deny that climate change is already upon us. 2023 was the hottest year on record, globally, and by the end of the year, scientists told us that we’d lost an extra 20% of glacial ice, more than any predictions had allowed for.
And here in Canada, we didn’t just break our record for wildfires last year, we crushed it. And air quality across the country plummeted from all that smoke.
Choosing Hope Over Fear
So then how do we respond to this crisis that lives in the pit of our stomachs and makes the future uncertain? We could respond by leaning into the fear that the fossil fuel industry has encouraged in us, and we could double down on oil and gas like they want us to, milking the industry for the last few jobs and the stability it can provide. Or instead of that fear, we could choose hope.
Hope is a powerful and healing force, and it’s our best tool to combat the disinformation all around us. Fear says, “I must take care of me and mine, I cannot look further than my own backyard.” While hope says, “What’s best for me is what’s good for everyone.” The way we get to hope is through our imaginations, of course.
And so the first question for our imaginations could look something like this. If oil and gas is really the only way forward that makes sense, then why is the fossil fuel industry pouring all this money and energy into manufacturing loyalty to the industry? What are they trying to hide?
Solutions for a Better Future
And I would argue that what they’re trying to hide is this. The most effective solutions to climate change are the ones that get us off fossil fuels while making us all better off, creating a safer and healthier society with a stronger economy and a higher quality of life for all. And if that seems too good to be true, it’s not. Here are just some of the ways we can create this win-win situation.
Instead of watching our government subsidize the fossil fuel industry to the tune of billions of dollars a year, we could instead invest just over $1 billion a year in a national green jobs guarantee for young people. It’s something we call the Youth Climate Corps, and it would achieve several things at once. It would put tens of thousands of youth to work in good green jobs at a time when they feel disillusioned and powerless to make a difference.
And it would do that while reducing unemployment, generating millions in revenue for the renewable energy sector, and speeding along an energy transition that would place a new generation of workers in good green jobs. And that’s just one of the solutions. We could oppose war and militarism in all its forms, recognizing that the fossil fuel industry thrives off the war machine and uses conflict to boost its profits.
Last year when the war in Ukraine started, the massive global spike in energy prices that followed wasn’t due to circumstances out of their control, as the company said. It was due to their own price gouging. The fossil fuel industry uses the fear and instability of war to enrich itself.
Restoring Indigenous Land Rights and Knowledge
And here in North America, we have had a strong anti-war movement before, and we can have one again. Another solution is to ensure that Indigenous knowledge keepers are restored rights to their ancestral lands, sharing their generations’ deep scientific knowledge of how to steward these lands in ways that are sustainable and that promote resilience to things like fires and droughts. Indigenous land rights also hold the key to healing the land and to restoring balance.
That’s something that we learned from one of the host nations of these lands, where my home is, the Tsleil-Waututh, with their transformative restoration of the polluted Burrard Inlet. They planted eelgrass beds, they restored fish habitat, and they blended Indigenous and Western science to heal the water from its polluted state. We could do all of this and much more if we chose hope over fear, if we refused the story of the fossil fuel industry that there is no alternative.
Imagining and Demanding Alternatives
We must dream our alternatives, we must imagine them, and then we must demand them. Most of the technical solutions are already there. They’re sitting on a shelf waiting for our adoption, but it takes a little bit of imagination and a hefty dose of hope to remember that we have the collective capacity to deploy those solutions at scale.
We must refuse to believe that the same old policy decisions that pandered to the desires of the industry are the best we can have. And we must dare to have hope for the safe, stable, fair, and thriving climate future that we all deserve, and then we must fight for it. After all, the worst that could happen is that we create a more beautiful, equitable world to leave our children on the other side.
And if I could go back to that young mom in that focus group, I bet that she would want us to fight for a world like that. Thank you.