ABSTRACT
Public affairs and lobby firms working in Europe include among their clients some of the largest climate polluters and emitters of global warming emissions. The PR companies’ job is to make corporations whose business model is pushing the planet towards runaway climate change appear to be part of the solution, while lobbying against the very policies that would keep us below the catastrophic tipping point for global warming. Paid by big polluters – from aviation to automobiles, fossil fuels to food producers – to create a smokescreen, European PR firms’ tasks include creating a false green image or promoting positive initiatives while the majority of the corporation’s polluting business model remains intact. This often includes lobbying for climate “solutions” that in fact allow the client to avoid changing its business as usual. And most disturbing of all, it involves pushing back against and delaying real action that might help avert the worst climate impacts, at a time when we have at most a decade to enact a transition to clean energy. This chapter unveils which top public relations firms are helping to spread climate change denial and describes what communication strategies and messages they use in their lobbying activities.
