What I don't think most people realize, and what that PR industry spokesperson would probably prefer they didn't, is that PR is still very much propaganda, except now it also has the sort of distribution mechanism Bernays only dreamed of, compliments of social media. To even hope to combat it, we first have to understand what exactly we're dealing with here. At its most basic, PR is the management of a company or industry's relationship with various "publics." Those publics consist of a company's customers, broader cultural influencers, politicians, journalists, teachers, thought leaders, other industries, competitors, potential hires, employees, investors, shareholders, the list goes on and on. With each of these publics, the company or industry is trying to elicit a particular behavior—they want you to buy their thing, or vote for a particular policy or, if you're a politician, maybe they want you to advocate for or against regulatory changes of some kind.

PR firms help companies do all of that. They set up photo opps for their clients to be seen amongst particular crowds of people, arrange speaking engagements at the right conferences, set up meetings with diplomats and tech leaders, and advise on philanthropic strategies. So when, for example, Charles Koch began investing millions in MIT to fund research that would later underpin policies locking in support for natural gas and then carbon capture in the U.S., it's entirely possible that his foundation's PR firm, Edelman, was advising on that strategy. We've covered before how PR firms carefully crafted the persona of Al Jaber, and helped to successfully position the UAE to win its COP28 hosting bid. This is work that goes way beyond sending out press releases or occasionally meeting with journalists, these are information warfare tactics. And for good reason. The founders of most of today's top PR firms got their training in military intelligence and psychological warfare (for real!) then put that knowledge to work on behalf of corporations looking for an end-run around democracy.

The Many Forms of Fossil Fuel Propaganda
https://drilled.ghost.io/what-the-pr-industry-is-and-is-not/?ref=drilled-newsletter

Newly-discovered Shell documents dating back decades could help strengthen lawsuits aiming to hold the oil major to account for climate damages, climate attorneys say.
Among the files, reported for the first time today by DeSmog and Follow The Money, and published on Climate Files, there is a 1970 industry journal article where Shell appears to accept responsibility for harms caused by its products. A trove of Shell publications from the 1980s and 1990s foresee the “major adverse changes” the “greenhouse effect” is liable to cause to the climate.
And a 1998 report spells out Shell’s reasons for leaving the Global Climate Coalition, a now defunct lobby group that worked to undermine climate science. The document shows that Shell had

acknowledged the need to adopt “prudent precautionary measures” to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis — even as it continued to push for more production of oil and gas.

New Shell Files Could Aid Climate Cases, Attorneys Say  - DeSmog
https://www.desmog.com/2024/01/17/new-shell-files-could-aid-climate-cases-attorneys-say/

Klimatický dezinformátor ve veřejnoprávním médiu.
Kaiser: Hypotéza o oteplování planety není dokázaná. Fiala by se měl Green Dealu aktivně bránit
https://youtube.com/watch?v=6k8qeN3LVI4&si=3APPMsGWyNtTVIhw

Petrostates
For a long time there’s been a call amongst some climate advocates in the U.S. for the government to nationalize oil in order to manage the transition away from fossil fuels. The counter-argument is usually to point at countries like Venezuela, Russia, Saudi Arabia, or the United Arab Emirates, all of which have only doubled down on fossil fuel development since nationalizing their industries. With that in mind, we began in 2023 to dig into this question and get a feel for how petrostates operate, starting with the host of this year’s Conference of the Parties (COP28), the United Arab Emirates.

Our partners on much of this first phase of petrostate reporting are the Centre for Climate Reporting in the U.K.

Investigations - Petrostates | Drilled
https://drilled.media/investigations/petrostates

Dvouhodinovy webinar o Atlas Network a popirani klimaticke vedy

The Atlas Network: Big oil, climate disinformation and constitutional democracy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=tlQOw6qpblY&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fcentralnews.com.au%2F&source_ve_path=MjM4NTE&feature=emb_title

Monbiot o Atlas Network, hlobalni site neoliberalnich think tanku, ktery mj madivne sirej climate denial

Milei is attempting, with a vast “emergency” decree and a monster “reform bill”, what the Conservatives have done in the UK over 45 years. The crash programme bears striking similarities to Liz Truss’s “mini” (maxi) budget, which trashed the prospects of many poor and middle-class people and exacerbated the turmoil that now dominates public life.

Coincidence? Not at all. Milei’s programme was heavily influenced by Argentinian neoliberal thinktanks belonging to something called the Atlas Network, a global coordinating body that promotes broadly the same political and economic package everywhere it operates. It was founded in 1981 by a UK citizen, Antony Fisher. Fisher was also the founder of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), one of the first members of the Atlas Network.

What links Rishi Sunak, Javier Milei and Donald Trump? The shadowy network behind their policies | George Monbiot | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/06/rishi-sunak-javier-milei-donald-trump-atlas-network

Petro-pedagogy: fossil fuel interests and the obstruction of climate justice in public education
The corporate control of energy production and the reach of fossil capital into civil and political society can be understood as a regime of obstruction that is preventing necessary action on climate change and blocking a just energy transition. In addition to overt forms of economic power and influence, hegemonic power is central to the fossil fuel industry’s regime of obstruction. Based on 29 interviews and an analysis of third-party teaching resources, this article shows how teaching practices and resources work to centre, legitimize, and entrench a set of beliefs relating to climate change, energy, and environmentalism that align with the interests of fossil fuel industry actors in Saskatchewan, Canada. We argue that these pedagogical practices promote student subjectivities consistent with neoliberal environmentalism centred on individual actions designed to insulate fossil fuel industries from criticism and dissuade young people from questioning or understanding the role of corporate power in the climate crisis. Furthermore, this petro-pedagogy intends to restrict the imagination of possible climate solutions to individual acts of conservation that fail to challenge the structural growth of fossil fuel consumption. This paper advances these teaching practices and resources as a ‘pedagogical arm’ of the regime of obstruction.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13504622.2019.1650164

PLOS nema zrovna dobrou povest, takze cist s vedomim, ze text je nutne doublechekcnout

Climate obstruction in the Global South: Future research trajectories
Abstract
“Climate Obstruction” broadly refers to campaigns and other policy actions led by well-organized and financed networks of corporate and other actors who have actively sought to prevent global and/or national action on climate change over the past four decades. In turn, these campaigns often shape public debates, which can affect political support and collective mobilization to mitigate climate change. However, to date, most of the research on climate obstruction has focused on countries in the Global North, especially the United States. Given considerable gaps in research and knowledge, this opinion paper presents a future research agenda needs to shine greater light on if and in what form climate obstruction in the Global South appears.

Climate obstruction in the Global South: Future research trajectories | PLOS Climate
https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pclm.0000241

Experiences of modernity in the greenhouse: A cultural analysis of a physicist “trio” supporting the backlash against global warming
Myanna Lahsen

This paper identifies cultural and historical dimensions that structure US climate science politics. It explores why a key subset of scientists—the physicist founders and leaders of the influential George C. Marshall Institute—chose to lend their scientific authority to this movement which continues to powerfully shape US climate policy. The paper suggests that these physicists joined the environmental backlash to stem changing tides in science and society, and to defend their preferred understandings of science, modernity, and of themselves as a physicist elite—understandings challenged by on-going transformations encapsulated by the widespread concern about human-induced climate change.

Experiences of modernity in the greenhouse: A cultural analysis of a physicist “trio” supporting the backlash against global warming - ScienceDirect
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959378007000684