US oil & gas lobby pushes massive ad campaign promoting fossil fuels

The United States has surpassed Qatar and Australia to become the world’s top natural gas exporter in 2023. Now, the biggest oil and gas lobby of the country — the American Petroleum Institute (API) — has launched an eight-figure ad campaign to promote the need for fossil fuels among voters. 

The website of the “Lights on Energy” campaign, opens to language pushing the message that dependence on oil and natural gas is a matter of survival for Americans and the rest of the world. Take, for example, a sentence that says, “Without access to reliable American energy provided by natural gas and oil, our nation’s security can be weakened, and its future put at risk”. 

This is straight out of the playbook of the industry’s language to justify fossil fuel use. Words like “reliable”, “secure”, “affordable”, for instance are meant to be a dig at renewable energy.

Elsewhere, the website says that products made from oil and natural gas make everyday living more comfortable. The per capita emissions of the US, like other developed countries, are among the highest in the world largely because of lifestyle or luxury emissions, the exact kind the website seems to promote. 

This is a stark contrast to countries like India where per capita emissions are markedly lower and are attributed to survival or subsistence emissions. Despite this, at the global stage, the US will join the Global North in repeatedly pointing out India’s recent emissions rise, while ignoring their own historical emissions and lack of action.

The website, in fact, praises the country stating, “No nation on earth has reduced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions more than the US over the past two decades.”

The claim, however, lacks the nuance of the US’s emissions consistently being much higher than other Global North countries. As seen in the table below, while the US achieved the most absolute emissions reduction since 2000, this was because its overall starting emissions were much higher than the United Kingdom and the European Union. 

In fact, a recent study by the University of Leeds found that the sustained rate of CO2 emissions reduction for the US was at -1.1 per cent per year since 2005. However, when it comes to all greenhouse gas emissions, it was only -0.5 per year over the same period. 

There arises another question on the campaign — who is accounting for the methane that the oil and natural gas will inevitably emit? While the US managed to cut its CO2 by dropping the use of coal, it must not forget that methane is 84 times more potent in global warming.

The argument that coal is the ‘biggest threat’ to climate goals has often been touted by the US with Global North allies. Even API President Mike Sommers said in an interview following the campaign launch that US natural gas exports help in displacing coal use worldwide. 

The historic Global Stocktake text, part of the UAE Consensus from the 28th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, called on country Parties to “transition away” from fossil fuels. However, the text also recognised the role of “transitional fuels”, a caveat to allow the continued use of natural gas, as experts pointed out. The campaign starts the new year off by making the most of this loophole.