For sake of clarity and length, we tend to focus here on just one or two pieces of denial content a day. But it seems like every time we check in on RealClear Energy, there are at least three new, spectacularly stupid, obviously advertorial, and fossil-fuel-funded pieces on the website, just begging for ridicule.
This week is no different, with the Koch- and industry-funded website publishing a fossil-fueled take on fossil fuel litigation, a completely imagined look at 2022, and Big Oil’s opinion on California’s moves to end combustion-powered cars and fracking.
Here’s a spoiler: they don’t like it! Any potential readers will certainly be shocked and educated by Frank Macchiarola of the American Petroleum Institute’s opposition to California Governor Newsom’s recent Executive Order on electric vehicles and a phase out of fracking in the state. Although the oil man used a lot of words to defend oil, it can really be best summarized by his quotation of a headline from the rightwing Onion rip-off the Babylon Bee: ”State with No Electricity Orders Everyone to Drive Cars on Electricity.”
If you’re looking for analysis that runs a little deeper, pop on over to see what Craig Richardson has to say about the Supreme Court deciding it would weigh in on the Baltimore lawsuit against BP and Big Oil. Who’s Craig Richardson, you ask? And what expertise might he have to offer on this situation? Well, he’s a lawyer who used to work as a denier for the tobacco industry, and is now employed by the coal-funded Energy and Environment Legal Institute, where he puts his legal chops to use ... harassing climate scientists.
So it’s less independent legal advice he’s offering, and more an example of what the industry’s position is on all this, in short that these cases should only be heard in federal court (where federal law preempts them) and not in local courts (where cases are actually viable) because really this is just liberals trying to extort money from the poor, downtrodden, innocent and beautiful fossil fuel industry.
And if that sounds like an imaginative take, just wait until you see what we have next: “America in 2022 After a Biden-Harris Win” by Daniel Turner, founder of Power the Future. Who’s Daniel, and what’s Power the Future? Well Mr. Turner is a Koch-group alum, and Power the Future is an apparently self-hating 501c4 political lobbying organization.
So, what does a Biden-Harris administration have for us in 2022, according to this person who’s spent his career defending fossil fuels? In a series of paragraphs dated throughout the year, Turner tells us the future by, we assume, asking a bunch of questions to his magic 8 ball.
First, we find out that just six months into the administration, Harris uses the 25th Amendment to oust Biden and become president, and thereby “is able to implement the final components of the Green New Deal.”
So this is really a projection-rich fever dream, but hey, fiction can be fun, right?
For example, in February of 2022, food prices have risen, so “Twitter and Facebook join forces to launch a new program encouraging home-growers, highlighting the benefits of the #everydayfarmer.”
The idea of social media giants jumping aboard a personal-choice campaign over a call of policy action is probably the only thing in Turner’s fever dream of a prognostication that makes any sense, given that we know such calls trigger backlash, something Turner’s comrades in the oil industry PR game played to their advantage.
But that’s about as close as the piece gets to anything resembling reality. Which, coincidentally, is also about as close as RealClear gets to being real media and not barely-concealed propaganda.
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