In the past couple years, we’ve grown bored of pointing out that — despite its inexplicably positive reputation for aggregating polls — the Koch-sponsored RealClear media brand, and particularly the RealClearEnergy vertical constantly launders rightwing propaganda and climate disinformation by presenting it as on par with mainstream news.
The RealClearEnergy page’s “Recommended” tab is useful, insomuch as it provides a snapshot of what the fossil fuel industry’s network of sycophants want you to think, with the very occasional piece by some well-meaning academic (at a Koch-funded school at George Mason) who probably doesn’t understand that their centrist energy take full of “innovation” buzzwords will appear next to natural gas-hyping “innovation”-loaded disinformation, and corporate sustainability executives greenwashing their company.
But every once in a while there’s an inadvertent gem, when someone who thinks they’re clever actually reveals the intellectual emptiness of their argument, as is the case with Brussels-based energy-industry lawyer Lucas Bergkamp’s recent tirade against Friends of the Earth.
Last year the Dutch arm of the environmental group, “Milieudefensie,” won a court case requiring Shell to reduce its carbon pollution 45% by 2030 to meet Paris agreement goals. Building on that, the group recently sent letters to heads of 30 companies with offices in the Netherlands, including ExxonMobil, Dow Chemical, and BP, calling on them to publish their corporate plans to meet the Paris goals as well. Milieudefensie policy officer Peer de Rijk told Reuters that “we are very clear that in the end, if needed, we are willing to go to court. But of course we are hoping these companies will be moving by themselves.”
But they know better than to just hope and wait, as De Rijik added that they “are willing to engage in talks, but we are in a hurry as well, so we won’t accept talks for the sake of talks themselves. Climate science is very clear. This is exactly what is needed.”
De Rijik is right, and Bergkamp’s RealClear post accidentally admits as much, in his attempt to paint environmentalists as tyrannical dictators attempting to wrest control from corporations and force them to do something they don’t want (reduce emissions to maintain a habitable climate).
Because all that’s required is that these companies show their plans for meeting the Paris agreement goals, which every country on the planet has agreed to, and given their constant advertising about being climate saviors, this shouldn’t be a problem. Obviously it is though, because the vast majority of oil, gas, and coal reserves will have to stay in the ground to meet Paris targets, and that would mean oil, gas and coal companies would be worthless.
But desperate to distract from the fact that companies could simply produce credible plans for emissions reductions (which oil companies can’t), Bergkamp pounds the table about how “democracy, the rule of law, and the economy are at stake” because holding companies accountable for their pollution would be a “illegitimate power grab” by the courts, a “violation of the separation of powers” and finally it would be a “denial of the disastrous consequences for the citizen, the rule of law, the economy, employment, and societal wealth.”
Interesting that Dutch legal bluster about why Big Oil should get its way in court is so similar to American legal bluster about why Big Oil should get its way in court, both of which just so coincidentally happen to be published by RealClearEnergy on Monday!
One might expect different legal systems handling different cases would have different specific arguments, but apparently not, when big oil is in trouble you just yell about the rule of law and innovation until some industry-funded pseudo-media website publishes it.