Steve Kretzmann
Executive Director
Oil Change International
Sunday Afternoon - September 16, 2007
* Presentation for the “Impacting U. S. Policy” Panel Discussion with Claire Greensfelder, Ross Gelbspan,
Michael Northrop, Betsy Taylor, Steve Kretzmann, Jared Duval, Arjun Makhijani, Randy Hayes,
Tom Goldtooth, and John Passacantando.
Times have changed dramatically and permanently. As Simon Retallack warned us
on Friday night, the best science now tells us that we have less than ten years left
to peak global emissions if we’re going to stay below 2 degrees C.
Ten years.
In order to turn things around, we need to accept the fact that climate change is, as
Sir Nicholas Stern said in recent report, the “greatest and widest-ranging market
failure ever seen.” For decades we have allowed the market to guide our energy
choices, but the market has been sending all the wrong signals – either because the
costs of our fossil fuel habit are not considered in standard economics, or because
of government intervention.
These signals need to be shifted, and quickly. That's why every serious strategy to
deal with climate change is trying in one way or another to level the energy playing
field between fossil fuels and renewable energy.
Carbon Tax
Cap and Trade, Cap and Auction, or Cap and Recycle
Low-Carbon Fuel Standards
To these I would add one vital component to any effort focused on fighting climate
change and getting energy prices right. The Stern report on the Economics of
Climate Change identified the $150-$250 billion in annual global subsidies to the
fossil fuel industry as the most obvious source of distortion in energy markets. In
the United States, domestic federal subsidies to the oil & gas industry alone are
worth at least $6.3 billion per year – not counting billions in international oil
financing, or of course the Pentagon. Eliminating these subsidies should be among
our top priorities.
If we don’t address these subsidies, we won’t be truly leveling the playing field for
energy. How we do this, how we gain the political strength needed to challenge
the vested interests – Big Oil & Coal – in order to get energy pricing right and fight
climate change - is what I want to talk about here today.
We have reached a tipping point on concern over climate. This dynamic is almost
certain to increase in its intensity to the point where it may eclipse almost
everything else as public concern moves down the hierarchy of needs to a focus on
sheer survival - witness Katrina. Despite this new found concern, its important to
note that the most recent polls show that action on climate is still a significantly
lower priority for the electorate than energy independence.
For several years now, groups have been considering how best to communicate the
message to the public through sophisticated studies. Many of the assumptions that
have become commonplace are now in question. For example, it was widely
believed that best results come when we avoid apocalyptic scenarios, avoid
messaging around weather events and focus on positive solutions that individuals
can undertake: “ten simple things you can do to cool the Earth.”
How many people have seen an Inconvenient Truth – or Live Earth? What does Al
Gore tell us to do at the end? Change a lightbulb?
Gore is still winning the debates and losing the campaign (although in fairness I
hear he’s working on a book focusing on solutions).
If we are indeed in the early stages of a serious crisis, and if people are indeed
beginning to understand this, then pedaling positivity – talking only about
individual actions without stressing the need for political change - may well
become transparently patronizing.
We are going to have to recognize the disconnect between the public’s growing
understanding of the nature of the problem and the solutions advocated through our
campaign prioritization and on our websites, fact sheets etc. In addition to
continuing to talk about individual action, we are going to have to find ways to
advocate and campaign for systemic change.
As we shift to recognition that global warming is fundamentally a collective action
scenario, we will consequently want to shift emphasis towards political - and
corporate - campaigns. After all, government exists precisely to deal with systems,
threats, and problems requiring collective action, and it is often, unfortunately,
corporate needs that government is most responsive to.
Its important that we switch to focusing anger to leverage change instead of getting
stuck at generating shame. If we have to focus on light bulbs, the point should be
that incandescent light bulbs be banned, (as is now being worked on on Capitol
Hill) not convincing Americans one at a time to buy compact fluorescents. Its not
that this is a bad effort – only that with ten years left its vitally important that we
think strategically about how best to leverage rapid change.
How does this change our work?
Story and narrative are absolutely key to effective campaigns and political change
but I just want to point out that in the area of corporate power and corporate
campaigning, this is one place where I think our story is very strong. This is the
legacy of the anti-corporate globalization / global justice movement that IFG and
many of the speakers this weekend played a vital part in. That corporations have
too much power in our society is not a fact that is seriously in question on any part
of the public political spectrum.
So, for example, the vast majority of people globally, and at different times
depending on how you ask the question, even the majority of people in the United
States, believe that oil, and access by US oil companies, is the underlying reason
for the Iraq war. The importance that the Bush Administration has placed on
passing a new oil law in Iraq that opens that countries oil reserves to US and other
oil companies has been an important contributing factor to this belief. But its
deeper than that – we just know it to be true.
On the role of oil in motivating the war, its worth asking what you would think if
McDonald’s, which is the world’s largest consumer of potatoes were to invade and
occupy Idaho? You’d think that McDonalds was lying, and thats exactly how
people hear US denials about oil’s role on motivating war.
This morning’s Times of London contains an excerpt from Alan Greenspan’s
memoirs, due to be published tomorrow, in which he asserts that “everyone
knows” the Iraq war was for oil. Greenspan!
So, how powerful is the story of corporate control, or how powerful do people
perceive it as? A poll that was published last October in the US revealed that an
amazing 42% of Americans believe that gas prices in the US were “deliberately
manipulated” to the benefit of the Republicans in advance of the election.
Although there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence to support that theory, there isn’t
anything close to a smoking gun which proves it, and yet 42% of Americans
apparently believed it – why?
Because of the strength of the pre-existing story on corporate control specifically
by the oil industry in this country.
We need to design campaigns that work with what people already know to be true.
That reinforce stories about how power works in our society, and how we can
challenge it.
One glance at polls tells us that Americans are fed up with the oil addiction and
hungry for alternatives. Its now clear that sweeping change on the energy front is
very likely over the next five – ten years – it is significantly less clear that the
answer will not be increased domestic drilling, further militarization of the
MidEast and other producing areas, nuclear power and liquefied coal.
What does this suggest, what then must we do?
Successful advocacy campaigns are not about intellectual elegance or clever
policy. Successful campaigners must focus and package their issues to eliminate
many priorities and strike a resonant chord. It is our job to distill the complexities
down to that essence which is both most resonant and most effective. Doing too
many things, having too many priorities, communicating multiple messages all
leave campaigns with no “pointy end” and thus little ability to drive forward.
Furthermore, a primary purpose of strategy is to correctly anticipate where the
issues are going and get out in front to a leadership position where we have the
opportunity to set the agenda for action.
We run a campaign called Separation of Oil & State.
Franklin D. Roosevelt is believed to have said: “The trouble with this country is
that you can’t win an election without the oil bloc, and you can’t govern with it”.
Politicians of both parties in the US are taking steps to prove their independence
from Big Oil. But there’s a long distance from proposing legislation that is unlikely
to pass to actually ending oil addiction. For example, although Democratic
leadership in the House and Senate has now fully embraced anti-oil rhetoric, they
remain relatively timid in their policy prescriptions. There has been some progress
on legislation, but not nearly enough…
Therefore the Separation of Oil & State campaign is focused not on policy
prescriptions but on breaking the patronage relationship between the oil industry
and Congress. It’s a relatively easy thing to promise possible legislation in the
indeterminate future – its harder, but much more measurable and specific, to
forsake oil industry campaign contributions and thus turn away from the industry.
These tactics are bearing fruit. In the last election:
• ALL of the incumbents who took no oil money won. Each and every one of
the Congressional incumbents of either party that refrained from accepting
campaign contributions from Big Oil in 2006 was successfully re-elected to
office.
• Big Oil’s biggest friends lost. Four of the top five Congressional recipients
of campaign contributions from Big Oil during the 2006 election cycle lost
to cleaner candidates in close Senate races.
• The 110th Congress is the least beholden to the oil industry in a generation.
Roughly one quarter of Congress is completely free of oil industry campaign
donations, and the majority takes less than $5,000 in each election cycle.
We can win this.
The 109th Congress – from 2004 to 2006 - was the most beholden Congress to the
oil industry, ever. The oil and gas industry spent more on the 2004 election than
ever before – $11 million in Congressional campaign contributions alone, eighty
percent of which went to Republicans. Although that sounds like a lot of money,
given that the value of ongoing and new subsidies to the oil and gas industry can
be conservatively estimated at $32 billion over the next 5 years, it’s actually quite a
bargain. More to the point, for the Oil and Gas industry, it’s a return on
investment of nearly 60:1.
The beginnings of a cleaner Congress which began last November is no
coincidence. Citizens generated at least hundreds of thousands emails, letters, and
calls to their elected representatives in Congress to demand a Separation of Oil and
State. Over 5 million people were urged to Separate Oil & State by us and our
coalition partners including MoveOn and the League of Conservation Voters
An important aspect of this campaign has been and will increasingly be non-
violent civil disobedience and protest. The connection between protest and power
is worth highlighting. In a recent academic study of the subject, Jon Agnone of the
University of Washington confirms what activists at the grassroots have learned by
experience. Namely that:
• The level of protest is the most significant factor that can be statistically
linked to passage of environmental legislation.
• Public opinion on environmental issues alone is not a predictor of the passage
of laws favorable to the environment. Shifts in the level of public opinion do
influence passage of legislation, but only when accompanied by protest.
• Protest is more important to securing policy gains than is institutional
movement activity, and this effect is stable even when public opinion or
which party is in power is taken into account.
The lesson is clear. To avoid changing the Earth’s climate, we need to change the
political climate inside the Beltway. In the absence of protest, and the organizing
that makes it possible, there will be no policy fix to the problem of global
warming.
In less than two weeks, on September 27th, roughly 5 blocks from here, the Bush
Administration is convening a conference of the 15 largest global warmers on the
planet. Their intent is to circumvent Kyoto and create the perception of action on
climate, while avoiding any binding legal commitments to reduce carbon. My
organization, Oil Change International is working with the Chesapeake Climate
Action Network and Greenpeace to assemble a “people’s delegation” that will
demand admittance to this State Department meeting.
Many of us in that delegation feel personally so strongly about this issue that we
are willing to risk arrest to stop the Bush Administration from taking us down the
wrong path on climate change. To get involved, send an email to
protest@priceofoil.org.
Next month, on October 22nd, many organizations and individuals are planning to
confront Congress with more nonviolent direct action under the banner of No War
No Warming. Organizing is really kicking into high gear for this historic event,
and I sincerely hope that many of you will choose to get involved. Again, email
protest@priceofoil.org.
Although much more change is needed, the political environment on the Hill
brought about by increased protest is already creating new opportunities. We are
making huge strides. In March, a bill was introduced in the House of
Representatives that will end all US based financing to the oil & gas industry by
international financial institutions and export credit agencies. This effort is part of
a growing international coalition of environment and development groups under
the umbrella of End Oil Aid.
Much of this work can and should happen under the large umbrella of the 1 Sky
campaign that is currently being pulled together. 1 Sky is the most exciting and
promising development in climate campaigning to date. Conceived as a very broad
tent focused on passing climate legislation in 2009, the truly exciting piece to me is
that the groups involved are for the first time talking about a World War 2 level
national effort. This is the kind of rhetoric – and the kind of commitment - thats
needed.
Ultimately, the stories that we tell through our campaigns and how we choose to
conduct them are as important as the targets we pick – indeed, if we’ve told the
story well, in an inclusive way, our audience can feel empowered to pick their own
targets over which they have the most leverage. With less than ten years left to
peak global emissions, we have to design campaigns that are capable of going
viral, and over which we ultimately will have less control - but which I would
argue have a better chance to inspire and empower people to take the solutions into
their own hands, and ultimately to win.
