Oil and Gas Industry Rebukes Fracking Ban Talk as UN Shows Just How Much Fossil Fuel Plans Are Screwing Climate Limits

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The American Petroleum Institute, the nationโ€™s largest oil and gas trade association, is promoting a new video touting domestic natural gas production as essential to energy security. The video, titled โ€œAmericaโ€™s Energy Security: A Generation of Progress At Risk?โ€ comes at a time when calls for halting new fossil fuel production and infrastructure are getting louder and coincided with the release of a United Nations report highlighting the misalignment between global climate goals and countriesโ€™ plans to develop fossil fuels.ย ย 

APIโ€™s video is part of a broader strategic campaign by the oil and gas industry to quash public support for a national ban on hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and to promote itself as the โ€œnatural gas and oil industry.โ€ The lobbying group released its video last week to coincide with the fifth Democratic presidential debate, saying, โ€œsome Democratic presidential candidates are now proposing restrictive energy policies that would erase a generation of Americanย progress.โ€

Several leading Democratic presidential contenders have said they would include a ban on fracking as part of their climateย plan.

Elizabeth Warren has pledged to immediately end oil and gas leasing offshore and on public lands, and also to โ€œban fracking โ€” everywhere.โ€ Bernie Sanders includes a ban on fracking in his comprehensive climate plan, and he repeatedly references via Twitter his commitment to ban fracking. Kamala Harris said during a televised โ€œClimate Town Hallโ€ in September that she would seek to ban fracking asย well.

Tying Domestic Oil and Gas to Patriotismย 

The fact that presidential candidates are even talking about a fracking ban undoubtedly has the petroleum industry concerned, as the new API video implies. The video features former presidents from both political parties, from Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush and Barack Obama, declaring the importance of ending reliance on foreign oil and speaking to progress in advancing domestic petroleumย production.

The video, which also features patriotic images like the Statute of Liberty and American flags, concludes with the message: โ€œSupport Americaโ€™s Energy Security. Oppose a Frackingย Ban.โ€

Patriotic imagery is central to the branding and messaging of another organization pushing gas industry talking points. That group, The Empowerment Alliance (TEA), is a new dark money organization devoted to โ€œsecuring Americaโ€™s energy independenceโ€ by singularly promoting natural gas. TEA launched at the end of September and, like API, is gearing up to push back against proposed climate policies and frameworks like the Green New Deal and a frackingย ban.

The oil and gas industry pushback comes at a time when momentum is building in the U.S. and abroad towards serious climate action that includes a just transition away from fossil fuels. In September on the eve of the massive global climate strikes, over 400 activists sent a letter to UN Secretary General Antรณnioย Guterres calling for a worldwide ban onย fracking.

The United Kingdom announced a temporary fracking ban in early November, and on November 14 the European Investment Bank announced that it would end financing for fossil fuel projects by 2021. In the U.S., California Governor Gavin Newsom recently took a step towards banning fracking in the state by announcing a moratorium on steam-injected drilling along with stricter review and regulations on oil and gas extraction. And last week, the greater Boston community of Brookline, Massachusetts, passed a ban on oil and gas systems in new buildings and renovations, following the lead of California communities that have passed similarย measures.

The Gap Between Climate Ambitions and Fossil Fuelย Plans

Also last week, on the same day API released its โ€œenergy securityโ€ video, the United Nations Environment Program and other research organizations published a new report that for the first time analyzes the planned production of fossil fuels in the context of the Paris Agreement goal to limit warming to 2.7ยบ F (1.5ยฐC) and well below 3.6ยฐF (2ยฐC) above preindustrial levels. That report found a large โ€œproduction gapโ€ between countriesโ€™ commitment to limit warming and their plans for expanding coal, oil, and gasย production.

โ€œMoving away from fossil fuel productionโ€ฆis possible and increasingly necessary to avoid dangerous climate change,โ€ the report says. In other words, significant fossil fuelโ€“producing nations like the U.S. must start curbing production to get in line with global climate commitments, though earlier this month President Trump made official his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement. The UN is now saying that banning fracking or imposing other fossil fuel supply-side policies is necessary to confront the climateย crisis.ย 

The oil and gas industry, meanwhile, seems intent on convincing the American public and politicians that banning fracking is a terrible idea, climate crisis aside. On November 14 API posted a commentary claiming that a fracking ban would โ€œdevastate U.S. energy and the world economy,โ€ citing another recent article by a Manhattan Institute senior fellow warning of a global recession should the U.S. banย fracking.

The Manhattan Institute is a recipient of fossil fuel funding and regularly attacks clean energy and climate policies, attacks which include making false claims about electric cars and calling the Democratic presidential candidatesโ€™ climate plans โ€œpure fantasy.โ€ Running the U.S. economy entirely on clean, renewable energy, the Manhattan Institute claims, is โ€œsimply not possible given todayโ€™s technology and basicย physics.โ€

Contrast that with the assertion that it is entirely technologically possible, as outlined by Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson. Furthermore, the claim that a fracking ban would cause a global recession completely ignores warnings that the climate crisis (which fracking worsens) literally threatens the global economy, according to sources such as the World Economicย Forum.

Echoes From Industryย Promoters

Nevertheless, fossil fuel producers and their promoters continue claiming that restraining oil and gas production is the real economic threat. The Detroit News ran a recent op-ed under the headline โ€œBanning fracking would disrupt global economy.โ€ The author of that op-ed, Hillsdale College economics professor Gary Wolfram, has been affiliated with notorious climate scienceโ€“denying organization the Heartland Institute, which has received funding from Koch Industries and ExxonMobil. The Empowerment Alliance linked to Wolframโ€™s piece in the โ€œNewsโ€ section of itsย website.

Republicans in Congress, recipients themselves of oil and gas cash, are supporting the industryโ€™s opposition to banning fracking. Several Republicans have introduced resolutions prohibiting a unilateral moratorium on fracking by a president. Democrats in the House already blocked one of those resolutions, sponsored by Rep. Rob Bishop ofย Utah.

Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania introduced a similar resolution in the Senate. โ€œNatural gas has been a game changer for our country and our commonwealth,โ€ Toomey said. โ€œIt is essential we push back on these ideas that threaten the prosperity and security of Pennsylvanians andย Americans.โ€

As Sen. Toomey put it, โ€œthese ideasโ€ like banning fracking may threaten the oil and gas industry, but citizens are increasingly viewing reining in the industry as essential to protecting their health and environment. The coalition โ€œPennsylvanians Against Frackingโ€ is advocating for a fracking moratorium in Toomeyโ€™s home state, and last week the state, following visits from families of rare cancer patients, announced nearly $4 million in funding for studies on the health impacts ofย fracking.

In other states, including Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, a recent poll commissioned by Greenpeace found that two in three voters in these early primary states, regardless of political affiliation, support ending the production of fossilย fuels.

API plans to target โ€œkey 2020 statesโ€ with a digital campaign promoting its new energy security video, relaying the misleading message that American oil and gas production is the only path to energy security, ignoring the fact that 100 percent renewable energy, which over 100 U.S. cities have already committed to, also creates energy security andย independence.

โ€˜A Wind-down of Gasย Productionโ€™

But as the UNโ€™s new โ€œProduction Gapโ€ report reiterates, unrestrained oil and gas production is inconsistent with the worldโ€™s climate targets. Current production plans result in 43 percent more oil and 47 percent more gas in 2040 than would be consistent with a 2ยฐC pathway, according to the analysis.

And while the oil and gas industry likes to point to the role of natural gas in reducing carbon emissions (while ignoring increases in globe-warming methane emissions), the Production Gap report warns that โ€œthe rapid rise in oil and gas production will push total U.S. extraction-based CO2 emissions 40 percent above 2005 levels byย 2025.โ€ย ย 

โ€œThe time to begin planning for a wind-down of gas production is, as with other fossil fuels, already upon us,โ€ the report states.

Main image:ย From the Clean Energy March in Philadelphia on July 24, 2016.ย Credit:ย Mark Dixon,ย CC BYย 2.0

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Dana is an environmental journalist focusing on climate change and climate accountability reporting. She writes regularly for DeSmog covering topics such as fossil fuel industry opposition to climate action, climate change lawsuits, greenwashing and false climate solutions, and clean transportation.

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