Climate Science and Daddy Oil
During the decades of denial, I have heard from people who didn’t believe that humans could have so much impact on the natural world. In their eyes, it had to be “sun spots” or long term climate changes that are part of the cycle, or maybe just bad data. It is easier to believe that something else is happening than to accept the reality that we’re doing it to ourselves.
Daddy Oil is my shorthand for the fossil fuel industry that has not only attempted to confuse, belittle and promote counter-narratives, borrowing playbooks from the Big Tobacco Industry, but also to cynically hold onto those narratives for the short term benefit of a few.
There’s a long history of how the oil industry mislead the public, and I wonder what it is like for executives to know that they’re destroying the lives of future generations. As impacts pile up those impacts are going to be felt by their kids.