On this edition Your Call’s One Planet Series, we discuss a major report from the Center for Climate Integrity revealing how big oil and gas promoted natural gas as a climate solution even though the industry knew that methane is a harmful climate pollutant.
According to the investigation, “The Fraud of ‘Clean’ Natural Gas: How Big Oil and Gas Created the Myth that Natural Gas is a Climate Solution,” the oil and gas industry knew about the climate harms of methane decades earlier than previously reported, manufactured and promoted the falsehood that natural gas is "clean" in the 1970s, and has purposefully deceived the public about the safety and risks ever since.
Gas companies crafted the first strategic campaign in the 1970s to sell natural gas as a clean fuel, sponsoring and promoting their own research and advertising programs that would support this claim through the American Gas Association (AGA) and its public relations and advertising firms. Over time, the campaign grew in ambition and scope. Major oil and gas producers joined forces with AGA, becoming members of its flagship research organization and funding.
Guests:
Rebecca John, investigative climate journalist and research Fellow at the Climate Investigations Center
Rebecca Leber, senior investigative researcher at the Center for Climate Integrity
Resources:
Center for Climate Integrity: The Fraud of "Clean" Natural Gas
DeSmog: How Big Oil Spent Decades Selling the Myth of ‘Clean’ Natural Gas
The New York Times: Oil Firms Knew for Decades of Methane’s Danger to Planet, Documents Suggest
