As Donald Trump takes a wrecking ball to policies designed to advance the energy transition, Democrats struggle to make sense of today’s politics. Two stories in my energy news feed illustrate that confusion. One quotes climate activists lamenting Joe Biden’s failure to declare a climate emergency, through which he could have banned oil and gas exports. They ascribe that failure to his misunderstanding of today’s politics. I will get to the second article below, but that claim is an attribution error. It is more likely that Biden didn’t use a climate emergency to ban oil and gas exports because he didn’t the idea was good policy.
One of the great divides within the climate coalition concerns the place of fossil fuels in — and on the path to — a net zero future. In my book I make the case for combining climate ambition with agnosticism about how to reach the goal of net zero carbon emissions. Agnosticism allows every technology to compete to be a part of a net zero world, making that future that much more affordable, sooner.
Loving/hating a technology or fuel (and those who work with it) is not just silly. It also slows the process of building majorities in favor of stronger climate policy, for all the reasons explained in chapters 4 and 5 of Climate of Contempt. But as attitudes toward fossil fuels have become one more symbol of partisan identity, tech-agnostics are fewer and farther between. And as the internet winds us up emotionally, fewer people are willing to consider non-blameworthy reasons why others might disagree with them.
Some people assume that a net zero future must exclude fossil fuels altogether, and some others simply prefer a future that excludes them. The second group sees oil and gas companies as implacable enemies of the transition, and undeserving of a role in it because of industry trade groups’ history of spreading misinformation about climate science. Rather than leave open a role in a net zero future for oil and gas companies, they would like to see more shaming and shunning of the industry.
I had some online experiences last fall during the election campaign that brought this divide within the climate coalition into sharp relief.
I came across a tweet from my colleague Michael Webber supporting a post on journalist Matthew Yglesias’ substack, entitled “Harris Is Right on the Merits About Fracking.” (Webber is a strong proponent of a green energy transition.) Yglesias’ claim was that a sustainable trajectory to net zero should focus on demand, and that fracking will be part of the environmentally-preferable trajectory to net zero.
[T]he world is using oil and gas in 2024, and will be using oil and gas in 2025, 2026, 2027 and so on. There are very good reasons to try to speed the pace at which the world reduces its consumption of fossil fuels, and there are plenty of reasonable policy measures that can help achieve that. But to the extent that the world continues to use oil and gas, it is the correct policy for the American economy, and for the world’s environment, for the United States to produce a larger share of that oil and gas and for foreign autocracies to produce a lower share.
Yglesias offers several reasons in support of this conclusion, and the piece is worth reading. At the same time, this view is anathema to segments of the climate coalition who believe that the oil and gas industry is deserving of economic and social sanction. And Ygelsias has become something of a lightning rod for progressives online, where disagreement morphs into villainy very quickly.
In the latter half of 2024 Los Angeles Times writer Sammy Roth began campaigning to have his beloved Los Angeles Dodgers reject sponsorship and advertising from oil companies. And in September UCLA’s Emmitt Institute published a study called “Foul Ball: How Oil and Gas Sponsorships Pollute Major League Sports.” The principal substantive objection to this is that sponsorship is a form of “greenwashing” (or “sportswashing,” to quote one of the study authors).
Companies try to burnish their brands by sponsoring things people enjoy, like sporting events. In so doing, they seek to “wash away” the reputational harm associated with their social misdeeds, like pollution — or so the argument goes. The misdeeds of the industry in this case include both that past dissemination of climate disinformation and selling products (fossil fuels) that the industry knows will be burned to generate greenhouse gas emissions.
I have written about my unease with these arguments before (see e.g., here and here). There are people on both sides of this tactical and morality divide who care about getting to net zero as quickly as reasonably possible. But they hold very different views about the morality of producing and selling fossil fuels to buyers who want them. And that divide is at least partly correlated with geographic location, as I discuss in the final chapter of my book. Like many of my fellow left-leaning University of Texas colleagues, I see fossil fuel production as morally ambiguous (at worst). The use (by the industry’s customers) of fossil fuels imposes foreseeable environmental costs on society; it also provides significant benefits to those who make use of fossil fuels and its products. We can fight to minimize those social costs without pretending away the benefits.
For the companies that own sports teams, it may be that anger at oil and gas companies is already making their sponsorship a net negative. In one of my courses we read a 2017 article that ascribes climate change to “millions of decisions made by individuals.” My sense was that few disputed that statement when it was written. But as blame narratives change over time, it sounds more controversial to more and more of my students.
As I note in my book, I live in a progressive city (Austin). Some fans of my favorite team, Austin FC, were upset to read that it had accepted sponsorship money from Chevron. To deter expressions of that displeasure at home matches, Chevron sponsorship takes the form of recognizing the young person who brings the official game ball on to the pitch (usually a 10-14 year old). Booing Chevron at that moment feels like booing a child. So no one boos.
Like other oil majors, Chevron’s history is long and complicated. Its operations date back more than a century and it employs tens of thousands of people across several continents. That history includes incidents of environmental irresponsibility, bullying litigation opponents and foreign governments, and other condemnable behavior. It also includes production of products hat have created massive social benefits, as well as good works both in connection with its business activities and in its charitable giving.
I wonder how many Austin FC fans are aware of just how much of the equipment used to play a soccer match come from a petroleum molecule (the ball, the uniforms, the shoes, the goals, the nets) — and more importantly, why they rely on those materials. One can find those answers in a few minutes of online searching. (Give it a try.)
None of which ought to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm for a rapid energy transition. But it certainly ought to inform it. Which brings me to the second article I wanted to mention from this week’s energy news feed. (Thank you for your patience.)
It is a piece from Bloomberg Green with the headline “U.S. retreats from global policy fight.” Republicans won the presidency and both houses of Congress in a free and fair election. Voters who chose GOP candidates may or may not have wanted the energy and climate policies that choice entails, but those policies are the predictable result of that choice.
The Trump Administration is embracing fossil fuels as a social good. That is of worrying, but not half as worrying as the continuing erosion of the foundational norms of our democracy. Durable policy gains require durable majorities of voters who willing to prioritize climate or other Democratic Party positions in their votes. Allowing for a tech-neutral path to net zero carbon emissions leaves a lot more political room for that to happen. — David Spence
