Fossil Fuel Companies Roll out a New Era of Spin

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Byย Kate Yoder, Grist. This story originally appearedย inย Grist.ย It is republished here as part ofย DeSmog’s partnership withย Covering Climate Now,ย a global collaboration of more thanย 250ย news outlets to strengthen coverage of theย climateย story.

Forget โ€œclimate changeโ€ and โ€œglobal warmingโ€: Environmental advocates areย increasingly using phrasesย that emphasize the urgency of our planetary pickle, such as โ€œclimate crisis,โ€ โ€œclimate emergency,โ€ and โ€œexistential threat.โ€

But do-gooders arenโ€™t the only ones with savvy messaging techniques. Over the years, fossil fuel companies have poured millions intoย sowing doubt about climate scienceย andย burnishing their public image. Now, fossil fuel companies are reckoning with a different communications challenge: convincing their investors that the future of oil and gas companies is bright โ€ฆ or at least brightย enough.

It may seem like a tough sell. After all, keeping warming limited to 2 degrees Celsius meansย phasing outย the very commodity Big Oil is known for. Aย surveyย of European fund managers earlier this year found that 86 percent want oil companies to adopt policies in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement, and 24 percent think these companies should wind down their business and return money toย shareholders.

More pressing threats are looming over the U.S. shale industry, which uses horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (aka fracking) to extract oil from rocks. Some 26 oil and gas producers in the United States haveย filed for bankruptcyย so far this year, and shale stocks are hovering near rock bottom. Even as the countryโ€™s oil production booms, shale companies have been dealing with big issues, both fiscal and technical, and investors are gettingย disenchanted.

In the face of these challenges, oil and gas companies are changing the way they talk to investors and the public. Based onย an analysisย of transcripts from the earnings calls of 40 public shale companies in the U.S., the Wall Street Journal and financial research firm Sentieo Inc. concluded that โ€œfrackingโ€™s buzzwords have changed significantlyโ€ in the past four years, moving from a vocabulary of growth to one that promises to rein inย spending.

โ€œRamping upโ€ production is out; delivering on โ€œfree cash flowโ€ is in. Translation: Companies are trying to reassure investors by bringing in more money than they spend, with the possibility of using the profit for stock buybacks or paying dividends. Not coincidentally, terms like โ€œbuybackโ€ and โ€œdividendโ€ are also on the rise in earningsย calls.

Oil companies have also shifted their vocabulary in recent years. Theyโ€™ve begun using the phrase โ€œclimate changeโ€ less often in their corporate social responsibility reports, according toย a paperย published last year by Sylvia Jaworska, an associate professor of linguistics at the University of Reading, who analyzed nearly 300 corporate responsibility reports from BP, Exxon, and others from 2000 toย 2013.

And when they did mention our overheating planet, oil companies used increasingly passive language. Back in 2007, when the use of โ€œclimate changeโ€ peaked in the corporate social responsibility reports, it frequently appeared next to โ€œcombat.โ€ In more recent years, the few times that โ€œclimateโ€ did show up, it often showed up near the word โ€œrisksโ€ (more in the โ€œthreat to businessโ€ sense than the โ€œthreat to humansโ€ sense, asย Quartz pointed out).

Perhaps the fossil fuel industryโ€™s greatest linguistic accomplishment? That our lexicon has come to normalize the role these polluting fuels play in our lives. For example, we talk about โ€œhybridโ€ or โ€œelectricโ€ cars, while gas-powered cars are just โ€ฆย cars.

If we want to build momentum for a low-carbon world, we need to make the harmful aspects of fossil fuels explicit in the language we use, argued Matthew Hoffman, a political science professor at the University of Toronto, in an article inย The Conversationย earlier this summer. That means saying things like โ€œdirty, gas-powered cars; polluting, coal-fired electricity; unsustainable, oil-dependentย agriculture.โ€

As for โ€œfreedom gasโ€? Thatโ€™s definitely aย no-go.

Main image:ย Baton Rouge Refinery of ExxonMobil, a McGuireWoodsโ€™ client.ย Credit:ย WClarke,ย CCย BYSAย 4.0

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