The fossil fuel industry stands in the way of climate action and they are not going away without a fight. We know what must be done but due to manipulation and obfuscation, we do not have sufficient public awareness or bipartisan political will. Ending fossil fuels starts with reigning in the trillions of dollars of subsidies governments provide to the dirty energy industry.
We are moving in the right direction as the transition away from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy is already underway. The fossil fuel industry is dying and renewables already provide more jobs than the old energy industry. Although we urgently need to expedite the transition to cleaner forms of energy, the fossil fuel industry is engaged in resistance on a number of fronts. They have a decades-long track record of obfuscation. The industry has known they are the leading cause of climate change since the 1960s. Rather than own this fact they embarked on sophisticated disinformation campaigns to hide the truth.
The fossil fuel industry has used its tremendous wealth to control academia and our kid’s education. The hypocrisy of the dirty energy industry knows no bounds. Rather than allow the facts to inform government policy, they bought both politicians and political outcomes. With the help of Republicans and other conservative political parties, they muddy the waters and cast aspersions on the vast body of climate evidence. Now they have embarked on a new form of climate denial that tries to shift the responsibility to individuals or say it’s too late to do anything.
It is not too late but we are in the 11th hour. We cannot afford to allow the fossil fuel industry to stall climate action any further. We can expect the dirty energy industry to keep using all of their considerable resources to protect their revenues even if that means the end of civilization as we know it.
