Why It’s Time For PR Pros To Stop The BS & Step Up On Climate Change

Kate Parker (pictured below) is the founder of Atlas Public Relations and member of Comms Declare. In this guest post, Parker argues the PR industry has often had a dubious history when it comes to climate inaction, however, says now is the time to step up…

Global warming and misinformation have gone hand-in-hand since the connection between coal and the climate was announced in a newspaper way back in 1912. Now, 110 years later, public opinion is still divided on the matter of climate change, with confusing, abstract – and even worse – fake information muddying the waters and stifling the collective action needed to ensure we (and future generations) can live on a habitable planet.

We’ve had over a hundred years to believe the science, yet much like a deadline, we’ve left real action till the last minute. But why? PR, essentially.

Back in 1992, multiple climate change deniers were paid by a PR firm to write op-eds and take media tours, which – as per the client brief – created doubts on the link between man-made greenhouse gases and the changing climate.

Their client? The Global Climate Coalition (GCC) – which represented the oil, coal, auto, utilities, steel, and rail industries whose objective was to alter the story on climate change.

In the early 2000s, the concept of the personal carbon footprint was devised by BP’s highly paid PR team to shift blame away from giant, fossil fuel corporations and onto individuals. Remarkably, twenty years later this term and accompanying dialogue still shapes the narrative.

In 2022 taking individual action is still the overarching message when it comes to the climate crisis; cut your personal emissions by riding a bike to work, avoid flying and adopt a vegan diet. This message is echoed in conversations at dinner parties and on social media.

Collectively these individual decisions help to reduce global emissions. But conveniently, shifting the blame to individuals lets mega-polluting fossil fuel corporations off the hook to continue carrying on business as usual.

Just recently, Melbourne author Jeff Sparrow echoed this, and argued that big corporations have engineered a sense of individual responsibility to distract from their own.

Scientists have made it clear: climate change is the most catastrophic and pressing issue of our time. The clock is ticking every day. And time is nearly up.

With the World Health Organization (WHO) estimating that between 2030 and 2050 climate change is expected to cause 250,000 additional deaths per year from malnutrition, malaria, diarrhoea and heat stress alone. It’s time for PR professionals to put their skills, knowledge and influence to better use than greenwashing the planet-wrecking activities of fossil fuel corporations.

It’s time to start communicating messages that help, not hinder. We know what goes on behind the scenes when it comes to shaping public conversations and the media agenda. We know how to secure media coverage and craft messages that cut through. We have a duty of care to the planet and future generations by ensuring climate change messaging remains truthful.

When it comes to climate communications, it’s unconscionable to prioritise profit over the planet and its people. It’s nonsensical to manipulate the data and set vague business emissions goals with targets past 2035 — climate scientists have told us repeatedly that this will be far too late.

Climate advocacy group Comms Declare likens promoting fossil fuels to repping tobacco in the 1950s. The 2005 film Thank You For Smoking skewered the spin doctors and lobbyists who checked their conscience at the door while promoting harmful products. If this movie was made today, I’m sure fossil fuel promoters would have been included alongside the “merchants of death” who shilled tobacco, firearms, and alcohol.

Comms Declare (represented by the Environmental Defenders Office) have recently lodged a complaint to Ads Standards over Ampol’s recent greenwashing of “carbon-neutral” petrol.

The way I see it, the social licence for public relations professionals to do the dirty work for fossil fuel behemoths is vanishing rapidly. Just as history hasn’t been kind to tobacco industry PR execs, neither will history look fondly upon those who chose to do the dirty work on behalf of oil, gas and coal corporations.

The final hours are upon us – our industry must step up and step back from this damaging work for the sake of our planet and posterity.

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Atlas Public Relations comms declare Kate Parker