Snow of Tomorrow | Don't get distracted

A recent environmental history study examines in detail how Total has used image campaigns and PR strategies to influence public opinion and policymaking since the company's first internal studies on climate change. (Bonneuil, Christophe, Pierre-Louis Choquet, and Benjamin Franta. "Early warnings and emerging accountability: Total's responses to global warming, 1971-2021." Global Environmental Change (2021): 102386.) This study is not the first of its kind. Similar findings on Exxon, BP and Shell have been known for a long time and the findings on Total are not surprising, but once again impressive in their depth of detail.

The 20 largest oil and gas companies have produced over a third of the greenhouse gas emissions of the last 70 years. Even in the years after 1945, the oil industry was repeatedly confronted with criticism regarding environmental pollution, especially air pollution and oil spills. By the time climate change began to emerge as a policy-relevant issue in the 1960s, many companies had already practiced managing public perception.

Industry advocacy groups such as the American Petroleum Institute (API), the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) and the International Petroleum Industry Environmental Conservation Association (IPIECA) have been known as opinion-making machines for decades. The study by Bonneuil et al., which is based on archival research and interviews with primary sources, focuses primarily on the exchange of information and strategy development in the IPIECA circle, to which the French oil companies Total and Elf belong.

At the recently concluded COP 26 in Scotland, 105 countries agreed to reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030. This is an important step in a good direction. It's also easy to achieve, doesn't cost much and won't hurt anyone. Methane emissions are a by-product of fossil fuel extraction, among other things. If the relevant infrastructure is brought up to scratch, methane leaks can be quickly eliminated without having to extract even a little less oil and gas. The methane agreement is certainly valuable and a significant reduction in methane emissions is effective, especially in the short term, to slow down the rise in temperature. However, there is a risk of creating the impression that reducing methane emissions will somehow offset CO2 emissions. To meet the very optimistic 1.5°C target, it is not enough to extract fossil fuels more cleanly. They have to stay in the ground.

The oil companies Total and Elf spent a lot of money on promoting art and culture until the end of the 1980s. These programs were discontinued. Since 1991, there has been "charitable" money exclusively for marine conservation initiatives, biodiversity projects, tree planting groups and the like. Trees are great, but: fossil fuels must stay in the ground.

With this in mind, let's not be distracted!

On the next page, there is a brief summary of some points from the aforementioned study, which traces how Total's climate strategy has evolved since the 1970s. --->

Summary of the Total timeline

In 1971, Total's company magazine published an article stating that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere had increased and would continue to increase due to the use of fossil fuels. According to the article, this would have a massive impact on the climate. The "catastrophic" consequences were "easy to imagine".

This was by no means new at the time, but reflected the current state of research. The basic connections between CO2 and temperatures had been known since around the turn of the century (18-1900, not 19-2000!), but the state of knowledge became much more differentiated after the Second World War. The problem was therefore well known, including quantitative estimates of future warming. The issue was already having an impact on far-reaching political decisions at the time; in France, for example, it was decided in 1968 to expand nuclear power for climate reasons, among others.

In the debate with environmental organizations about air pollution, oil companies increasingly shifted to the argument that new technologies were good for the environment and people's quality of life. Total and Elf set up internal departments to deal with environmental issues. According to interviews with a former Total employee quoted in the study, the purpose of the departments was to signal to the outside world that the issue was being taken seriously.

Internally, there was a turning point in awareness in 1984. The study quotes the "Environmental Director" of Elf, who remembers an international industry meeting at which Exxon presented its own research on climate change:

"The moment I remember really being alerted to the seriousness of global warming was at an IPIECA meeting in Houston in 1984. There were representatives from most of the big companies in the world there, and the people from Exxon got us up to speed. [...] They had remained very discreet about their own research [on global warming] [...] Then in 1984, perhaps because the stakes seemed to have become too great and a collective response from the profession required, they shared their concerns with the other companies."

A quote from a leading Shell employee shows that they did not want to make the same mistakes as the tobacco industry. At the time, the industry had already stumbled massively over its targeted disinformation campaigns and was facing mass lawsuits for health damage caused by smoking.

The message was now: climate change exists, but it's not that bad. In internal and external reports, climate change and the consequences of climate change were put into perspective and the anthropogenic influence was presented as uncertain.

In the mid-00s, there was another change in strategy. Science was no longer openly attacked, but was supposed to take care of the theory. Business, or in this specific case Total, was to deal with the practical solutions. Total's public image was increasingly brought into line, for example through public financial support for research in the field of sustainable development.

Between 2010 and 2014, Total invested $127 billion in oil and gas exploration and production. The company's own renewable energy division received 3 billion dollars.

In 2015, Total joined other oil companies in calling for international carbon pricing at the UN. Total has pledged to invest more in renewable energies and has been providing annual reports with highly technical, complex information in this regard since 2016. These are difficult for outsiders to understand and interpret, so Total usually goes unchallenged when it presents itself as climate-friendly.