Big Oil’s Three-Decade Plot to Kill America’s Clean Energy Revolution
Of course, no historical counterfactual can be absolutely definitive. There are obviously many differences between the United States in the 1990s and China in the 2010s, beyond the presence or absence of fossil fuel-funded climate deception campaigns. But none of these differences strongly oppose the analysis of causality. For example, one could argue that China, with its system of state control, could direct its resources toward clean energy in a way that the United States never could. But the United States can clearly mobilize vast resources for its priorities (think of the interstate highway system, the Apollo program, or the development of AI data centers) and had far more resources to mobilize; In 2010, when China began developing its renewable energy, its gross domestic product was just over a third of that of the United States.
One could also argue that it is simply not possible to compare what might have happened in the democratic United States to what happened in China’s one-party autocracy. But the facts do not indicate that a more democratic China, protected from the propaganda of big oil companies, would have been less favorable to the development of clean energies. Indeed, data from a peer-reviewed national survey of public demand for climate action reveals that while the United States ranks at the bottom of the international list, China – the country over which major Western oil companies have had the least influence – comes at the very top, with 97% supporting demands for greater climate policy action.
I don’t know if this argument will ever be used in court. But every time you hear good news about the explosive growth of clean energy, it’s worth remembering that the benchmark in question probably could have been achieved in 2005, rather than 2025, without the climate deception of Big Oil. Every time you hear bad news about another catastrophic wildfire, drought, heat wave or storm, or the nightmarish arrival of another cataclysmic climate tipping point, remember that we could have had 20 more years to resolve this crisis if Big Oil hadn’t stopped the West from acting sooner.
