To protect our health, tell the truth about the fossil fuel industry

OPINION – Climate change and fossil fuel pollution are two sides of the same health emergency. Air pollution from burning fossil fuels caused about 8 million deaths in 2018, nearly 1 in 5 deaths worldwide. And fossil fuel pollution is a primary driver of climate change, which threatens health in numerous ways – from chronic and infectious disease to deaths from extreme heat.

The fossil fuel industry wants you to forget all that.

In 2010, Koch Industries and big oil refiners spent many millions in an effort to suspend California’s landmark climate change law, AB 32.  Now they are at it again.

Just three days after Governor Newsom signed a law to create a safety buffer zone between new oil and gas wells and places that people live, work and play, oil companies filed a ballot measure to prevent implementation of those protections and have spent over $17 million to get the measure onto the 2024 ballot.

Meanwhile, industry is fueling a culture war to sow doubt about the evidence that gas stoves emit harmful pollutants that cause asthma and other diseases. A few years ago, SoCal Gas even funded a front group to oppose local ordinances favoring electric appliances in new buildings.

These efforts are just the latest in a long history of Big Oil’s efforts to undermine climate science, suppress public health evidence, sow unwarranted fears about climate solutions, and engage in direct lobbying to hinder climate action.

Just three days after Governor Newsom signed a law to create a safety buffer zone between new oil and gas wells and places that people live, work and play, oil companies filed a ballot measure to prevent implementation of those protections and have spent over $17 million to get the measure onto the 2024 ballot.

Here in California, organizations representing oil and gas companies spent over $77 million lobbying in Sacramento between 2018-2022, successfully blocking or weakening legislation to control climate air pollution.

With new reports of record oil industry profits, Governor Newsom has called on the Legislature to “hold Big Oil accountable” by passing a price-gouging penalty to prevent extreme gas price spikes. That’s a good start. But we also need to hold Big Oil accountable for its impacts on our health.

An example of how we might do that comes from the California Department of Public Health Tobacco Control Program (TCP), which prevented about a million deaths in its first few decades. In 1988 TCP launched a media and advocacy campaign to broadly communicate the health dangers of tobacco use. The campaign exposed the tobacco industry’s deception and countered its predatory marketing ploys, while referring smokers to cessation programs. The strategy worked. It delegitimized the industry, removed its social license to peddle dangerous products, and created a social and legal environment in which tobacco use became less desirable and less accessible while providing supports for smokers.

The fossil fuel industry is using the same deceptive tactics that Big Tobacco did, although the parallels between tobacco and fossil fuels go only so far. Smoking is hardly a necessity, but most Californians currently depend on oil and gas to light and heat their homes, cook their food, and fuel their cars. From 2008 – 2017, U.S. fossil fuel trade associations spent a massive $1.4 billion on advertising and public relations to persuade the public that without fossil fuels we will lose those amenities. That is simply a lie. We now have the ability to rapidly reduce our reliance on fossil fuels while creating jobs, building our economy, and protecting our children’s health.

But that won’t happen if we keep letting the fossil fuel industry use its excessive profits on advertising to fool the public and political spending to shape our public policy.

To counter industry propaganda and build support for the urgent action required, California must launch a creative, coordinated, aggressive, well-funded media advocacy campaign that connects the dots between the fossil fuel industry and its catastrophic impacts on our health and our climate.

Dr. Rudolph is a policy consultant to the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health. She previously served as Deputy Director for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion in the California Department of Public Health, Director of the Center for Climate Change and Health at the Public Health Institute, and Health Officer for the City of Berkeley.