No. 5: American Petroleum Institute (A.K.A. Energy Citizens)

Meet the 12 loudest members of the chorus claiming that global warming is a joke and that CO2 emissions are actually good for you.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Meet “Bryan from Ohio” and “Judy from Alaska”—just a couple of the hardworking, freedom-loving Americans who’ve signed on to support the pro-oil advocacy group Energy Citizens. This August, the group held a rally a few blocks from Exxon HQ in downtown Houston “to give these energy citizens a voice in the climate bill debate.” Its blog described the 3,500 attendees as “truckers, farmers, homemakers, small business people, veterans, and the unemployed” who expressed their concerns about the Waxman-Markey climate bill.

Or their bosses’ concerns. Energy Citizens is a creation of the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s largest trade group. (In 2009, API has spent some $5.8 million on lobbying, much of it on the climate and energy bills.) A memo from API president Jack Gerard, leaked to Greenpeace, urged his group’s members to ensure “turnouts of several hundred attendees” at supposedly grassroots events like the ones Energy Citizens was sponsoring. He explained, “Our member company local leadership—including your facility manager’s commitment to provide significant attendance—is essential to achieving the participation level that Senators cannot ignore.” Kate Sheppard (then at Grist) obtained a list of the coordinators of 21 events Energy Citizens was planning; 15 out of the 21 were registered lobbyists, mostly for API and its affiliates.

Energy Citizens’ website is filled with first-person video testimonials from people identified only by their first names and home states. Plucky Guardian blogger Leo Hickman sussed out that “Shaka from Tennessee” was likely Shaka L.A. Mitchell, until recently the executive vice president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, which hosts the denialist website Carnival of Climate Change. (Hickman’s hunch was borne out by this Wake Forest University alumni news profile). Mitchell was previously head of outreach for the Institute for Justice, a libertarian Beltway think tank partly bankrolled by right-wing petrobillionaires Charles G. and David Koch, who are among the largest funders of climate skeptics.

Click here for the next member of the dirty dozen.

Click here for the previous member.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate