FIRST LOOK:

The Sustainable Solutions Lab at UMass Boston will host a panel discussion on the wisdom and beauty of different cultures, cultural organizing, and artistic expression in the face of interconnected crises. Tuesday, May 18, at 4:00 p.m. ET.

Pipeline Co. Shut Down Their Own Pipeline, Paid 75 Bitcoin Ransom For Unhelpful Tool: Colonial Pipeline operators made the proactive choice to shut down the 5,500-mile pipeline, setting off gas shortages, panic, and chaos up and down the East Coast, in order to protect their own profits, CNN reports. The ransomware attack did not actually affect the Koch-owned pipeline's operations but did make the company concerned it wouldn’t be able to figure out how much to bill its customers. The details of the pipeline's failure to prevent the cyberattack remain murky; as of yesterday, the company had still only shared limited data with the cybersecurity arm of the Department of Homeland Security, Politico reported. The revelation that pipeline operators shut off 45% of the East Coast's fuel supply to protect their bottom line came just hours after Bloomberg reported the company did in fact cough up the $5 million ransom payment within hours of the attack, contradicting its earlier denials. The decryption key, which Colonial Pipeline paid hackers 75 Bitcoin for, was so slow, however, that the company was forced to continue using its own backups to restore its systems. (Pipeline shutdown: CNN; Panic and chaos: Washington Post $; DHS: Politico Pro $; Ransom and restart: Bloomberg $, Gizmodo, Axios); Bitcoin: New York Times $)

ExxonMobil Worked To Shift Climate Blame To Individual Consumers, Study Finds: ExxonMobil used tobacco industry messaging strategies to shift responsibility for climate change away from itself and onto consumers, despite its knowledge of the harms caused by its product, a new study from Harvard researchers found. Using computer learning to analyze 40 years of ExxonMobil climate materials, researchers found a "quantitative discrepancy" between the company's internal documents, which reflected the science, and external communications, which shifted blame for climate change onto individual consumers. [For more, see the Denier Roundup below.] (TIME, Vox, InsideClimate News, Axios, E&E $)

Climate Change Expected To Cause Hard 2021 for West: Federal officials expect climate-fueled heat and drought to drive a Western fire season at least as bad as last year, if not worse. "Starting in the Southwest and moving throughout the Western part of the United States, we're seeing a higher level of risk, and an earlier level of risk, than we've seen in the recent past," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told reporters Thursday. Climate change is making droughts more likely to occur, and more severe when they do, and thus makes wildfires more extreme as forests and other fuels sources are turned into proverbial tinder boxes. This year is nearly certain to be one of the 10 hottest years on record, and drought in the west has become so extreme that hatcheries in Northern California are trucking salmon to the ocean instead of releasing them into dangerously-low and -warm rivers. "We must confront the reality that a changing climate is fueling these fire disasters," Interior Secretary Deb Haaland told reporters. (Fire risk: E&E $, AP; Heat: E&E $; Salmon: Reuters, San Francisco Chronicle; All: The Conversation; Climate Signals background: Drought, Wildfires)

OIL: Few signs of recovery for US oil production, OPEC says (Wall Street Journal $)

PROFITS: Energy Transfer made $2.4 billion from Texas winter storm (Bloomberg $)

BANKS: JPMorgan debuts carbon reduction goals for clients (Reuters), US regulators should demand banks to hold more cash for climate risks- think tank (Reuters), Fed privately presses big banks on risks from climate change (Reuters)

TROPICAL PARADISE: It’s raining oil in St. Croix for the second time this year (Earther)

VOTER SUPPRESSION: Leaked video: dark money group brags about writing GOP voter suppression bills across the country (Mother Jones)

COLONIAL PIPELINE: As Colonial Pipeline recovers from cyberattack, leaders point to a ‘wake-up call’ for U.S. energy infrastructure (Washington Post $, E&E $), the East Coast gas frenzy is a warning for the future of driving (Earther), run on gas leaves some drivers with empty tanks (Washington Post $), old systems plague America's energy backbones (E&E $), key takeaways from Biden's first energy crisis (Axios), Biden cybersecurity order tackles software risks in energy, other sectors following Colonial hack (Utility Dive)

EPA: After a Trump-length pause, the EPA is relaunching a major climate change report (Grist), US brings back climate change website detailing ongoing threats (Reuters), EPA watchdog: Less funding, staff fed enforcement decline (Politico Pro $, The Hill), investors tell EPA to enforce strict methane rules (Politico Pro $)

COST/BENEFIT RULE: Biden administration to repeal Trump rule aimed at curbing EPA's power (New York Times $, AP, E&E $, The Hill, Reuters, Politico Pro $)

DOE: Energy Secretary: Clean energy tech boosts economic and national security (Axios)

DOI: Biden backs disputed Trump [water delivery] contract in court (E&E $)

THE HILL: GOP recycles Obama criticism to fight Biden climate effort (E&E $)

HOUSE: Haaland approves Cherokee constitution with Freedmen rights (E&E $), House [Financial Services] Committee approves climate risk disclosure mandates (E&E $), T&I Republicans unveil water infrastructure counteroffer (Politico Pro $)

SENATE: [New Mexico] senator floats bill to aid states hit by federal oil leasing pause (Reuters, E&E $), GOP senators emerge from White House infrastructure meeting 'encouraged' (Politico Pro $), committee OKs innovation bill despite turf concerns (E&E $), Wyoming senators back industry push to curb mine cleanup fees (E&E $)

AMERICAN JOBS PLAN: Biden holds ‘good faith’ infrastructure talks with Senate Republicans, but they’re still far apart on the hardest questions (Washington Post $), Biden pleads for patience, pitches infrastructure deal (E&E $), House Democrats vow infrastructure vote before July 4 (E&E $)

POLITICS: Republicans balk on EVs as infrastructure talks intensify (E&E $), 600 groups blast nuclear and gas, call for 100% renewables (E&E $, Politico)

FARM(ER)S: Advocates look to sell farm-state Republicans on 30x30 plan (E&E $), are Biden’s carbon markets as good as they look? No, say smaller farms (The Guardian)

NOMINEES & CONFIRMATIONS: Senators question nominees on water, chemical rules (E&E $), Senate panel overwhelmingly backs Beaudreau for Interior deputy (Politico Pro $, The Hill, E&E $), [Asst. Interior Sec.] nominee pledges to broaden access to parks, refuges (E&E $), Panel advances DOJ environmental nominee [Todd Kim] (Politico Pro $)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: Kerry: US weighs sanctions on China solar over forced labor (AP), Russian climate envoy calls race to tighten emissions targets "unreasonable" (Reuters), the political fight over solar tariffs wages on (Canary Media)

CITIES AND STATES: New Jersey solar, gas power plans spotlight justice concerns (AP), Florida man tries to hold back the sea (Earther), New York’s public power bill could be a model for the rest of the country (Earther), climate is a star in New York's mayoral race (E&E $)

CALIFORNIA: California sees risk of summer blackouts (E&E $), California's plan to offset emissions using forests may have a major flaw (WBUR), Newsom's looming threat: Summer blackouts (Politico Pro $)

IMPACTS: As the climate warms, could the U.S. face another dust bowl? (Yale Environment 360), Asia is home to 99 of world’s 100 most vulnerable cities (The Guardian), EPA: Heat waves are a growing danger to cities (E&E $), hundreds of coastal airports at risk from flooding, sea-level rise, study finds (Yale Climate Connections), a significant cyclone may form in Indian Ocean and affect Mumbai (Washington Post $)

DROUGHT: The Gila River Indian Community innovates for a drought-ridden future (High Country News), southern Madagascar at risk of famine amid worst drought in 40 years (Climate Home), two-thirds of California’s counties are in a drought emergency. Get used to it. (Grist)

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Should you replace your gas furnace with a heat pump? (Wall Street Journal $)

RENEWABLES: Diversifying the next generation of US clean energy workers (Energy Monitor), solar pushback: how US power firms try to make people pay for going green (The Guardian), how wind and solar power got the best of the pandemic (Bloomberg $), California clean fuel standard sparks renewable gas boom in Midwest (Energy News Network), PosiGen spurs solar ownership and environmental justice for low-income homeowners (Canary Media), renewables evolution or revolution? Pace of tech investments will decide (Reuters), Vineyard Wind approval injects fresh optimism into offshore wind industry (Energy News Network)

OIL & GAS: 3 things to watch with Biden's oil plans (E&E $), Louisiana gov urges feds to resume offshore leases in months (AP)

PIPELINES: What’s next for pipelines after Colonial hack (AP Explainer)

COAL: Another bad year for coal (Canary Media)

UTILITIES: America is facing unprecedented utility debt. Here’s what might help. (Grist), How should utility companies spend your money? A debate rages (LA Times $)

WATER: Louisiana boil water notices paint a picture of the state’s failing drinking water infrastructure (WWNO), wastewater is 'polluting rivers with microplastic' (BBC)

GRID: Court: Construction can proceed on hydropower corridor (AP)

EVs: Democrats urge more EVs for Postal Service (E&E $), The electrification of New York City vehicles (New York Times $), report charts path to 100% EVs by 2035 (E&E $), solar minibuses for Africa? Data seen as key to green transport switch (Thomson Reuters Foundation)

CEMENT: BP, Cemex to partner on decarbonizing cement industry (Houston Chronicle)

GEOENGINEERING: The hot debate over solar geoengineering and its impact on climate (Wall Street Journal $)

BITCOIN: How big is Bitcoin's carbon footprint? (Reuters Factbox), Musk decries bitcoin’s ‘insane’ energy use after Tesla payment U-turn (Reuters, Washington Post $), US small towns take on energy-guzzling bitcoin miners (Thomson Reuters Foundation)

INTERNATIONAL: Brazil's lower house passes bill to ease environmental permits (Reuters), Spain at last adopts promised law on becoming carbon neutral (AP, Politico Pro $), UK calls on countries to ‘consign coal to history’ at COP26 (Climate Home)

• From a pediatrician: The fuel you cook with may be harming your kids’ health (Scary Mommy, Dr. Lisa Patel op-ed)
• Green mortgages: Homes need to catch up to climate change (The Hill, Adam Tooze op-ed)
• Democrats must not chip away at Biden’s tax plans (Washington Post, Editorial Board $)
• Ignoring climate change hasn’t made it go away (Washington Post, Eugene Robinson column $)
• Marjorie Taylor Greene’s verbal assault on AOC reflects deranged anti-leftism (Washington Post, Greg Sargent column $)
• The disinformation battlefield – narrative over facts (Morning Consult, Joe Bonfiglio and Jessica Reis)
• The radiation exposure compensation act could help the Navajo Nation (Teen Vogue, Julia Cooper op-ed)
• Outages and outrages: The fossil fuel industry exploits blackout fears (The Hill, Lewis Milford and Abbe Ramanan op-ed)
• Decolonize the lithium boom (New Republic, Nick Martin media analysis)
• Elon Musk wants a greener Bitcoin. Has he got a plan or a pipedream? (Reuters, Tom Wilson and Anna Irrera analysis)
• Democrats could win rural votes thanks to President Biden’s pro-rural agenda. But there’s more work to be done. (Daily Yonder, Joe Maxwell, Margarida Jorge, and Matt Hildreth op-ed)

'Climate Shame': How ExxonMobil’s Climate Denial Mimics Tobacco Industry’s Victim-Blaming Propaganda

A new study published yesterday by Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes of Harvard found ExxonMobil used a frame of climate “risk” to make it sound uncertain, and emphasized “demand” to deflect blame for their pollution off themselves and onto the public. Just like how Big Oil would come to hire and embrace Big Tobacco’s “scientists” and organizations, ExxonMobil, the study says, appears to “mimic the tobacco industry's documented strategy of shifting responsibility away from corporations — which knowingly sold a deadly product while denying its harms — and onto consumers.” 

Supran and Oreskes examined 40 years worth of ExxonMobil’s climate materials, putting them through a machine learning program which surfaced recurring words in the body of 180 different examples of the company's climate communications. Using a quantitative approach, they were able to show, for example, that the sophisticated internal documents and peer-reviewed studies stuck to the science, with words and phrases like “models” and “global temperature increase” showing up often, whereas their public-facing documents were all about “consumers” and, most frequently, “risk.” So climate change is just a maybe thing we’re risking happening, and the industry is helpless in its inability to refrain from meeting consumer demand for its dangerous product — It’s not our fault! The people simply demand fossil fuels! 

The fact that the research is “actually demonstrating a quantifiable discrepancy is powerful,” Supran told InsideClimate News, “because the company often accuses its critics of cherry-picking arguments, cherry-picking data. And our approach with all of this work is to look at the whole cherry tree. And when you do, the trends you observe are profound and systematic.”

They found, Supran told the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in a lengthy interview chronicling the young academic’s dual-wielding of science and advocacy, that ExxonMobil’s language has undergone a “gradual shift … from explicit climate denial to disinformation to subtler forms of propaganda, such as false advertising and greenwashing and trying to co-opt things like Earth Day. There’s been this necessary evolution of their tactics and rhetoric to account for the fact that at this point in time, they just sound too ludicrous when they blatantly deny basic science.” 

So while the framing of climate as merely a “risk” is a way Exxon has made uncertainty central to their engagement with climate issues, they've also downplayed the reality that they’re responsible for their pollution by talking about consumer demand, instead. By making their product seem like it’s something we all chose to use, instead of a feature of a system that needs to change, ExxonMobil has “encouraged this dangerous acceleration in individualization of responsibility,” Supran told TIME, which “grooms us to see ourselves as consumers first and citizens second.” 

Rebecca Leber at Vox explained that this sort of “climate shame” is problematic, because it “can be a distraction that lets key perpetrators of climate change off the hook.” The climate challenge is so immense because it requires our energy system to change — we can’t do it individually. So this sort of shaming that appears to embrace climate concerns represents “cutting-edge propaganda coming from an industry with 100 years of experience” in shaping public opinion. And they’re not acting alone. 

It’s the same approach BP took when it popularized the “carbon footprint” concept that individualizes a problem only a handful of companies are causing, something Supran mentioned to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and isn’t exactly new. Because there’s “a track record for this kind of approach” with tobacco, beverage and similar companies being “behind the coining of terms like ‘litterbug,’” because the PR and ad industry served as a central hub for these various industry campaigns. 

Specifically, the tobacco industry’s efforts to reframe the issue of their knowingly selling a cancerous product that kills its customers into one of the consumer’s choice, Supran explained “and the exact language that ExxonMobil has been using—concepts of risk, of demand, of consumer responsibility—these are all terms co-opted from the tobacco industry discourse.” 

The initial wave of coverage critically linking the famously-sued tobacco industry’s propaganda with their own appears to have caught the company off-guard, as ExxonMobil didn’t provide a comment yet, at least that we’ve seen. No doubt they’re just trying to figure out a way to write a press release that blames customers for ever reading ExxonMobil’s advertorials in the first place.

Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up to receive Hot News every morning!

Send updates or feedback to nkauffman@climatenexus.org
Submit events and other items for consideration for a First Look using this form
Some articles require logins or subscriptions ($)