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 โclimate changeโ and โglobal warmingโ: Environmental advocates areย increasingly using phrasesย that emphasize the urgency of our planetary pickle, such as โclimate crisis,โ โclimate emergency,โ and โexistential threat.โ
But do-gooders arenโt 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 โฆ 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 countryโs 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 โfrackingโs buzzwords have changed significantlyโ in the past four years, moving from a vocabulary of growth to one that promises to rein inย spending.
โRamping upโ production is out; delivering on โfree 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 โbuybackโ and โdividendโ are also on the rise in earningsย calls.
Oil companies have also shifted their vocabulary in recent years. Theyโve begun using the phrase โclimate 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 โclimate changeโ peaked in the corporate social responsibility reports, it frequently appeared next to โcombat.โ In more recent years, the few times that โclimateโ did show up, it often showed up near the word โrisksโ (more in the โthreat to businessโ sense than the โthreat to humansโ sense, asย Quartz pointed out).
Perhaps the fossil fuel industryโs greatest linguistic accomplishment? That our lexicon has come to normalize the role these polluting fuels play in our lives. For example, we talk about โhybridโ or โelectricโ cars, while gas-powered cars are just โฆย 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 โdirty, gas-powered cars; polluting, coal-fired electricity; unsustainable, oil-dependentย agriculture.โ
As for โfreedom gasโ? Thatโs definitely aย no-go.
Main image:ย Baton Rouge Refinery of ExxonMobil, a McGuireWoodsโ client.ย Credit:ย WClarke,ย CCย BY–SAย 4.0
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