This week the New York trial against ExxonMobil begins, today’s there’s a hearing in the House about the industry’s efforts to “suppress the truth,” and yesterday, the Supreme Court denied the group of big oil companies’ request for a stay in the Baltimore case--meaning it can move forward to the discovery stage.
Suffice to say, Big Oil is probably not feeling particularly happy at the moment. Fortunately for them, a new study published, covered by E&E, shows that they’re not alone.
Dr. Bob Brulle, author of the Brown University study, looks at the coalitions that created the climate change countermovement, breaking down the membership organizations of the groups of companies that pushed denial from 1989-2015.
Brulle found that 2,020 organizations belonged to one of the dozen major coalitions, with the Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth as the biggest with 1,416 members, and the Information Council on the Environment the most sparse, with only four members.
These coalitions “drew their membership from a broad cross section of the U.S. business community,” but Brulle found that “there is a clear preponderance of organizations from the Coal/Rail/Steel, Electric Utilities, and Oil & Gas Sectors.”
The coal, rail and steel cohort was the surprise stand-out, nearly matching the prevalence of the oil and gas industry’s involvement, despite Big Oil’s much larger footprint in terms of public perception.
Brulle then looked at the composition of the groups at the core of the efforts, those that are involved in more than one coalition. Here again, coal/rail/steel industries stood out as a keystone player, representing 28% of those 179 core organizations, a larger share than any other group, including the oil and gas industry, which only made up 5%.
There is also a breakdown of membership over time. Brulle tracked how these coalitions grew in the 90’s in the leadup to the Kyoto protocol, and then again between 2001 and 2004, before waning until a rapid shrinking when Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 2010. At that point, “the threat of legislation had passed,” so “the countermovement mobilization levels declined.”
Finally, Brulle analyzed “the relative influence and power of specific organizations within these coalitions,” and found again that coal/rail/steel organizations were “highly influential,” specifically the National Mining Association, the Association of American Railroads, and coal and rail corporations like Norfolk Southern and Peabody Energy. Somewhat surprisingly, the American Petroleum Institute was the only oil and gas organization to emerge as central, outshined by other utility groups like the Edison Electric Institute and coalitions like the Chamber of Commerce, American Farm Bureau and National Association of Manufacturers.
With all this in mind, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the National Association of Manufacturers had its Manufacturer’s Accountability Project try to defend ExxonMobil from legal accountability by supporting it's request for a stay in the Baltimore case.
After all, if Exxon’s guilty, so are they. And so are many others.
