Last week we talked about the utility front group ad spend tracker, mentioning that Natural Allies For A Clean Energy Future was one of the many big national front groups paying Facebook to be a disinformation billboard.
But ads are just the start. The real stuff coming from front groups like Natural Allies For A Clean Energy Future are the things that don't look like ads, but definitely are.
And we have to look no further than the ol' reliable outlet for sophisticated consumers of climate disinfo, the Wall Street Journal. They recently ran one of the more obvious and shameless attempts to scare people into loving fossil fuels, with the oh-so-subtly-headlined "You can't eat without natural gas."
Signed by former Democratic senator from North Dakota Heidi Heitkamp, now "a leadership council co-chairman for Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future" according to the byline, the piece warns that "now isn’t the time for short-sighted political thinking about energy."
But that's exactly what Heitkamp provides, arguing that the "U.S. can again serve as the beacon of light for a suffering world by putting aside political games and investing in natural-gas infrastructure to strengthen global security and help solve world hunger."
Because the cost of fertilizer is basically just the cost of gas, Heitkamp and her front group want readers to know that Europe's high natural (methane) gas prices have taken 3/4ths of the continent's fertilizer capacity offline. Instead of shipping them fertilizer, though, apparently the answer to this short-term problem precipitated by Putin's invasion of Ukraine is "more natural-gas exports" because "the only thing that holds us back is the lack of domestic infrastructure to get that energy where it’s needed."
So in order to address a short-term price swing, the methane gas industry wants to lock in decades of emissions with new fossil fuel infrastructure. "Natural gas can aid in the fight against climate change" Heitkamp's op-ed claims, "by providing a low-carbon alternative to nations that currently rely on coal." It doesn't stop there though, throwing in some greenwashing for good measure to really make it clear that they're engaging in the "fossil fuel saviorism" disinformation narrative: "The U.S. has driven its carbon emissions to 30-year lows using natural gas." Which is only true if you don't count all the leaked methane emissions, and of course is like replacing your daily 2-liter of Coca-Cola with two 2-liters of Diet Coke instead.
And more importantly, the science is clear that we can't build new fossil fuel infrastructure and have any hope of preventing catastrophic climate change.
That said, there is certainly a way to reduce the price of methane gas, so that Europeans can afford to make fertilizer and grow food. Because if we stop burning methane for electricity, all our existing capacity could be used to make fertilizer, bringing down prices significantly.
So if we were to replace gas-fired power plants with wind, solar and batteries, we wouldn't need any climate-killing new fossil fuel infrastructure, and it would bring down fertilizer and food prices. And since solar is 33% cheaper than gas, it'd save money, too!
But instead of suggesting maybe a reduction in demand would lower prices quicker than a long term increase in supply that would doom the climate, the WSJ gives its pages to an industry spokesperson to offer up the very "short-sighted political thinking about energy" it criticizes.
