PR Industry Has Been a 'Major' But 'Overlooked' Influence in Climate Politics for Decades,Says Study

[BeckyDem]

By Nick Cunningham
Nov 30, 2021 @ 03:00 PST

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America’s Power – Formerly American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) - spread misinformation about "clean coal" with its "mobile classrooms." Credit: America's Power (CC BY 2.0)

From coining “clean coal” to “carbon footprint,” public relations firms have been instrumental in shaping the public discourse around climate and energy policy, and as a new study underlines, their powerful efforts have flown under the radar for too long.

PR firms have played a key role in obstructing action on climate change over the past 30 years, engaging in PR campaigns on behalf of the fossil fuel industry to not only downplay the seriousness of climate change, but also to position industry-favored solutions as the preferred course of action.

A new peer-reviewed study, published in Climatic Change on November 30 by Robert J. Brulle and Carter Werthman of Brown University, analyzes the role that PR firms have played in the climate misinformation ecosystem between 1988 and 2020. The study looked at 214 organizations across five major sectors — coal/steel/rail, oil & gas, utilities, renewable energy, and the environmental movement — and found that electric utilities hired and used PR firms the most out of any other sector analyzed, followed by oil and gas.
https://www.desmog.com/2021/11/30/pr-industry-major-overlooked-influence-climate-politics-brulle/