The fossil fuel industry is mobilizing every possible delay tactic in the disinformation playbook to obstruct offshore wind. First, industry allies pretended to care about endangered species and began spreading disinformation about right whale deaths. Now, they’re relying on fishing disinfluencers and national security arguments in their attempt to block renewable energy projects.
Even smaller, state-level organizations are using complex disinformation techniques to obstruct offshore wind development. A recent study by Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab found that Green Oceans, a Rhode Island-based anti-offshore wind group, uses the same disinformation strategies as national campaigns.
For example, Green Oceans routinely utilizes the delay tactic of “policy perfectionism,” which “portrays a climate policy or technology as an imperfect solution, thereby encouraging disproportionate caution and discouraging necessary action.” The group emphasizes the supposed downsides of offshore wind, like the debunked claim that offshore wind harms right whales, and asserts that offshore wind turbines will lead to indirect carbon emissions by providing a habitat for phytoplankton-eating, CO2-emitting filter feeders.
Green Oceans also uses a tactic known as “blowfishing” to “overemphasize the scale and impact of filter feeder emissions” and distract from the fact that these indirect CO2 emissions are tiny compared to those created by methane gas-fueled electricity generation.
Green Oceans also tries to appeal to social justice by claiming that offshore wind will contaminate the ocean and devastate fishing communities, but it relies on cherry-picked data and misrepresentations of the state of current research on the effects of offshore wind development on fishing.
Another tactic used by the group, called “whataboutism,” will seem familiar to anybody who has been tracking the right-wing’s ongoing finger-pointing at China’s emissions. According to a 2020 article, whataboutism is a “widely deployed discourse [that] argues that other countries or states produce more greenhouse gas emissions and thus bear a greater responsibility for taking action.” Green Oceans makes “the implicit suggestion that Rhode Island does not need to transition to renewable energy because it produces less greenhouse gas emissions,” despite the fact that “Rhode Island is complicit in the climate crisis and its size comparable to other U.S. states is not an excuse for inaction.”
The study also takes care to note that Green Oceans is situated within a much larger disinformation campaign against offshore wind energy. “While direct efforts may be funded by its own members, Green Oceans’ advocacy is informed by groups with aligned missions, such as other anti-wind groups in the Northeast and fossil fuel and dark money-funded think tanks in Texas, Delaware and Illinois,” the report explains. “That is, Green Oceans is receiving an ‘in- formation subsidy’ from these groups.”
The organized opposition to offshore wind power isn’t showing signs of stopping any time soon, so renewable energy advocates should stay alert for further attacks. The “good” news is that these attacks will inevitably rely on the same predictable set of disinformation tactics that the fossil fuel industry just won’t quit using.
