Learning From Our Mistakes: Corporate Front Groups and the Limits of Revelation in Climate Politics

Abstract

Fossil fuel companies have made major investments in mobilizing citizen support in recent decades, funding advocacy groups to stoke climate denial, doubt, and delay. Scholars and activists have tended to condemn these “front groups” as corporate mouthpieces, calling for new laws mandating disclosure of the financial relationship between companies and their political scions. Critiques like these tap into vital political impulses; however, they have failed to fully keep pace with evolving corporate strategies. Today many industry-backed groups openly identify their corporate sponsors, framing companies’ largesse as a means to amplify the voices of unionized pipefitters, local business leaders, and others who want to commend the positive impacts of fossil fuel production. Many so-called “front groups” are not hiding, which renders critical exposé moot. In response, this essay argues for the usefulness of investigating the social bonds and affective experiences of participants in pro-fossil fuel campaigns. The feelings of community, precarity, and risk that help these campaigns cohere can act as important sites of intervention for climate action. I suggest that scholars must consider the limitations of exposé and develop strategies to intercede in the more open ties between fossil fuel companies and their publics.

Decades into what we now call the climate crisis, amid rising emissions and political negligence, it is easy to forget that the early years were rife with hope. In the late 1980s, many scientists and activists expected that a clear articulation of the facts surrounding climate change would spur speedy and effective political intervention. When climatologist James Hansen drew attention to the earth’s warming through his landmark testimony to a U.S. Senate committee in 1988, he believed his warnings would be swiftly heeded. Years later, he retrospectively lamented, “We just assumed that humanity would take sensible actions to avoid undesirable consequences” (Kenner, 2014). Famed author and activist Bill McKibben has echoed these sentiments, recalling that environmentalists in the late 1980s presumed that if they got “facts out in front of everybody, they’re so powerful—overwhelming—that people will do what needs to be done” (Kolbert, 2009). As global warming became a household phrase, those sounding the alarm framed public ignorance as the pivotal problem to be overcome. If knowledge could spread, surely action would follow.

Such expectations would turn out to be unduly rosy. A menagerie of fossil fuel companies, neoliberal think tanks, and right-wing media quickly kindled a coordinated counter-movement to oppose nascent action on climate change (Antonio & Brulle, 2011; Dunlap & McCright, 2015). After 35 years of watching robust scientific consensus lose in the policy arena to denial, doubt, and delay, few today would seriously propose that publicizing the latest research on climatic systems is enough to impel widespread legislative change. Hindsight has eroded environmentalists’ once firm faith in the raw political force of facticity.

This is for the best. It has motivated those promoting climate action to more directly confront the interests, capital flows, and ideologies that uphold our carbon status quo. It has also led to a deeper understanding of how emotions, not just facts, shape the reception of climate information and disinformation (O’Neill & Nicholson-Cole 2009; Taddicken & Wolff, 2020). Even as those concerned about global warming have adopted a bolder purview, however, old habits linger. Scholars and activists continue to act as though unveiling facts—about advocacy organizations this time, rather than climatic systems—will oblige better political outcomes. We are haunted by the climate movement’s original confidence in revelation and are remaking their mistakes.

Nowhere is this more evident than in battles pitched at the grassroots level. The thousands of environmentalist groups that populate our public sphere are mirrored by advocacy organizations backed by fossil fuel companies, who aim to provide a human face to carbon-intensive industries. With names like Texans for Natural Gas or Canada’s Energy Citizens, these organizations self-consciously present themselves as civic-minded collections of ordinary people. They are, however, sponsored and run by fossil fuel interests. ¹

The dominant critical response has been to frame these corporate scions as duplicitous. An entire lexicon has developed—“front groups” and “astroturf organizations”—to underscore that the citizens who join these campaigns are either wholly made up or an edifice behind which pernicious corporate interests lurk. A host of excellent studies have argued for legislation compelling greater financial transparency for corporate spending on third-party political organizations, suggesting that such revelation would render front groups less influential (Luneburg & Susman, 2006; Miller & Dinan, 2007; Zellner, 2010). Inside and outside the academy, we hear a familiar call: Show the public the facts, and better political outcomes will follow. One listening closely can make out echoes of the 1980s-era confidence environmentalists invested in the potency of revelation.

To be clear, critiques like these are indispensable. They articulate a right to public discourse free from corporate disinformation, a claim we ought to stake with ardor. They also address a problem that sprawls far beyond climate discourse. Since the earliest years of the public relations industry, practitioners have secretively founded and funded third-party advocacy groups for their clients. ² Today, corporate grassroots campaigns, both hidden and openly sponsored, have become a routinized subfield of public relations practice (Walker, 2014). With companies now more invested in grassroots politics than ever before, we have every reason to consider policies that might prevent corporations from instrumentalizing public discourse.

Fossil fuel companies’ citizen mobilization efforts have rapidly evolved, however, and our critical lexicon has not kept pace. Terms like “front group” are simply not precise enough to capture what is happening on the ground. In the early 1990s, secretly funded front groups were the dominant mode of advocacy by companies in carbon-intensive industries (Beder, 1997; Oreskes & Conway, 2011). Similar groups exist today but are joined by a newly ascendant model of corporate/citizen advocacy that is less opaque. Our decades-old focus on revelation leaves us ill-equipped to understand, let alone contest, this sea of change.

This is a lesson I have learned stumblingly. When I began research on corporate politicking, I was fully committed to laying bare the political economy of front groups. I sought to unveil a form of corporate power that I presumed was trying to conceal itself. In some instances, a degree of backstage revelation has proven necessary for my work. More often, however, I have been forced to rethink my presumptions about the secretive nature of the oil industry’s grassroots campaigns.

This first dawned on me during a visit to the headquarters of the American Petroleum Institute (API), the largest U.S.-based oil and gas trade organization. I arrived at their Washington, D.C. office in the fall of 2016 with the intention of finding out more about their work spearheading Energy Citizens, the nation’s most prominent pro-oil citizen advocacy group. I prepared to interview staff with the notion I would be prying secrets from their keepers. Instead, I was immediately shown to a conference room, where I would sit through a well-rehearsed presentation of 45 slides laying out, in great detail, the API’s external mobilization efforts. There was no attempt to downplay the API’s role in organizing citizens. Quite oppositely, I was told regional targets, explicit tactical approaches, and the names of staff involved. I was apprised of the inner workings of Energy Citizens and several other API-led grassroots campaigns.

I did not need to visit Washington, D.C. to confirm that the API sponsors Energy Citizens. Despite being called out with regularity as a front group, ³ Energy Citizens’ ownership is no secret. The advocacy group’s website is stamped with the words, “Paid for by the American Petroleum Institute.” Energy Citizens is not an outlier in this regard. Similar corporate-backed efforts to mobilize citizens such as Fed Up at the Pump, Coloradans for Responsible Energy Development, Washington Consumers for Sound Fuel Policy, the Consumer Energy Alliance, and Canada’s Energy Citizens have disclosed fossil fuel sector backing on their websites. Many so-called “front groups” are not hiding.

I certainly did not receive a complete view of the API’s grassroots programs when I visited their offices. API employees offered me a strategically selective account of the institute’s work. That is precisely the point, however: Even when given full control of what to show and what to conceal, the API chose to reveal its funding of many citizen mobilization campaigns. I started my research committed to unveiling a hidden political economy of oil and advocacy, but here was the “hidden” story in full view. What was I to do now?

Even as fossil fuel companies have become more open about funding citizen advocacy, exposé has remained the approach de rigueur for scholars and activists. If we remain committed to revelation as our go-to critical maneuver and policy solution, we court futility. Calling out the corporate sponsorship of front groups lacks political punch when the organizations under fire proudly name their funders on their websites.

When scholars focus too intently on exposing the hidden, we are also apt to miss what is right in front of our eyes. In the case of fossil fuel advocacy, dismissing corporate-backed organizations as front groups has often meant overlooking the very real people who join industry campaigns. I have interviewed dozens of such folks. By speaking with them, I have learned they often differ from the portraits both oil companies and environmentalists paint of them. Those who join pro-fossil fuel organizations tend not to be ideologues. Before joining campaigns, most have never attended a political rally or written to an elected official. The reason these advocates sign up to vouch for the fossil fuel sector is not political zeal, but rather something more familiar in the literature on social movements: They get involved through their social networks. Especially in the earliest stages of organization building, pro-fossil fuel campaigns begin by recruiting the friends and acquaintances of staff, using existing social ties to build membership.

Joiners are brought into the fold by their peers but choose to keep acting as industry advocates because of feelings of precarity. They are often industry employees or see their own livelihood as intimately connected to the largesse of fossil fuel companies. They believe that the flourishing of both their pocketbooks and their larger communities is dependent on extractive industries. Despite the far-flung production and expansive distribution of fossil fuels, they view the health of these industries as a matter very “close to home” (Eliasoph, 1997). It is the threat of losing their way of life—or more exactly, the perception that their way of life is under attack from environmentalists and legislators—that keeps pro-fossil fuel campaigners mobilized.

While joiners think of corporate-backed campaigns as a means to protect their community, they often remain wary of becoming the face of fossil fuels. They worry that if they misspeak publicly, they may suffer humiliation; they are anxious that crusading for oil companies will make them unemployable in other sectors or pariahs among their friends. Furthermore, new members frequently grow frustrated by their lack of input into campaigns, which are wholly directed by paid public relations professionals. Social ties draw joiners into pro-fossil fuel groups, but advocates find themselves acting as mouthpieces rather than strategists, with hierarchical decision-making preventing the sort of peer-to-peer engagement that enticed participants in the first place. Corporate sponsors have been largely unable to remedy these significant limitations to the effectiveness of today’s pro-fossil fuel organizing.

There are, I think, two lessons we can learn from the contemporary mobilization strategies of fossil fuel companies, the first for climate campaigners, and the second for scholars more broadly. First, the climate movement needs to once again do away with the presumption that bringing information to light will inherently lead to better political outcomes. This belief failed climate scientists in the late 1980s, and it is failing us all now. Exposing front groups is a necessary but grossly insufficient condition for opposing corporate influence over grassroots politics. As fossil fuel companies become more open about their sponsorship of citizen advocacy, the climate movement needs to explore what makes these partnerships cohere. Feelings of economic precarity and social reciprocity are the glue that keeps pro-fossil fuel advocacy organizations together; experiences of risk and the limitations of top-down organizing threaten to disrupt these bonds. Knowing this can help the climate movement oppose the proliferation of business-backed advocacy groups with more tactical savvy.

For researchers, a glance at the recent history of pro-fossil fuel campaigning should challenge our collective fetishization of exposé and spur us to confront more open exercises of power. Yes, we need revelation. Knowing which oil companies fund which advocacy groups is undeniably useful information. However, we live in an era when firms often find strategic benefits in openness. Just as when companies tout their charitable giving or social responsibility initiatives, fossil fuel corporations want their sponsorship of advocates to be known because they perceive it as a boon for the industry’s image. Rather than treating expenditures on political mobilization as a tawdry secret, oil sector actors now often portray themselves as champions of citizen speech, paying out of pocket to amplify the ideas of unionized pipefitters, local business leaders, and others who want to commend the oil industry’s positive impacts. While critics of front groups clamor for greater financial transparency from companies, firms themselves have grown inclined to see such transparency as a promotional tool.

When confronting organizations openly sponsored by oil companies, revelation is redundant. Worse still, it may be counterproductive. It causes environmentalists and scholars to reiterate the same message companies themselves are looking to publicize: Fossil fuel businesses fund citizen speech. Following Sedgwick (2003), we need to re-evaluate our unwarranted “faith in demystifying exposure,” ensuring that our drive to unveil the politicking of corporations does not distract us from the political uses of the very transparency we call for (p. 144). When we place too much confidence in revelation, we remake the mistakes of the earliest climate scientists and activists. Let us call out front groups when they hide but also prepare ourselves to contend with more open ties between fossil fuel companies and their publics.