Another Voice: Fossil fuel executives need to stop their disinformation campaigns

Rahwa Ghirmatzion is senior policy fellow at Just Solutions Collective.

This op-ed was originally published in The Buffalo News.

Buffalo is the “city of good neighbors.” When times get tough, we show up for each other.

In recent years, we’ve been hit hard by climate disasters, including the Blizzard of 2022 in which 47 members of our community died. While many in our community are embracing the opportunities that climate solutions present for health, safety, and jobs, there are also powerful people who are working overtime to hold us back. To me, being a "good neighbor" means protecting my community from their efforts to mislead us about climate action.

That’s why my colleague Marc Weiss and I have partnered with fed-up New Yorkers and Adam McKay’s Yellow Dot Studios to start “Shut the Fossils Up,” a campaign to spotlight fossil fuel executives who are poisoning our public discourse with disinformation campaigns. We use the hashtag #STFU.

To head off the worst impacts of climate pollution we need to replace gas and oil with solar and wind power and, over time, heat our homes, cook our food, and power our cars with electricity. If it’s done right, with help for people who need it, everyone will benefit.

But many gas utilities are sparing no effort to slow down the clean energy transition, including spending a lot of money to stir up fear about climate solutions.

It’s always corrosive when businesses pushing their own self-interest impede progress. But with climate change, where we’re running out of time to reverse what’s happening, it’s putting our lives at risk.

Donna DeCarolis, president of National Fuel Gas (NFG), spent two and a half years on the state’s Climate Action Council doing everything she could to protect hers and other polluters' interests. Thanks to effective grassroots organizing, she came up short.

Did she see the writing on the wall and figure out how to make money with the new opportunities of a green economy, as other utilities in the state are doing? Nope. Instead, last spring she launched a massive disinformation campaign, including robocalls to NFG customers, urging them to contact state legislators and the governor to oppose transitioning from gas to electricity.

It gets worse: recently, the Business Council of New York, chaired by DeCarolis, announced a new million-dollar campaign to “reassess” the climate law.

Is it rude to call out a specific person? Maybe. But DeCarolis and her colleagues are putting all of us in danger. Sometimes being a good neighbor requires a little bit of good trouble. It’s past time we stop being polite and tell them to #STFU.

Rahwa Ghirmatzion is senior policy fellow at Just Solutions Collective.