This article details the tactics used by the fossil fuel industry to indoctrinate school children into supporting their work. Although this isn't surprising, I think this article does a great job at showing how the fossil fuel industry has worked for decades at creating a culture that depends on them.
"In 1972, General Motors published a booklet to counteract what its pollsters said were children’s “negative” attitudes toward auto companies. The booklet featured cartoon characters “Charlie Carbon Monoxide” and “Harry Hydrocarbon” (a “harmless demon”) who helped dispel fears that air pollution could lead to serious health hazards."
"Industry education programs in Kansas, Ohio, Illinois, and Oklahoma are actually supported and sanctioned by those states’ governments. The most sophisticated is the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board, a “privatized state agency” voluntarily funded by oil and gas companies. The OERB has produced a series of videos by “Professor Leo,” a goofy Bill Nye knockoff who educates students about the state’s oil and gas resources. Teachers can ask for “Petro Pros” to come speak to their classes, or tap into a library of glossy lesson plans ready-made for any age or subject.For the K–2 crowd, the agency sends copies of children’s books featuring characters like “Freddie Fuelless,” “Oliver Oilpatch,” and “Petro Pete” to elementary schools across the state. In one, Petro Pete’s Big Bad Dream, the titular character drifts off to sleep wondering what the world might be like without petroleum products. He awakes to find his school clothes, toothbrush, and bike tires missing. He blames his dog and heads to school in his pajamas. At lunch, ice cream spills out of the soft-serve machine as liquid and there’s not a soccer ball to be found. Finally, his teacher figures out what has happened: “It sounds like you are missing all of your petroleum by-products today!” she says. “Having no petroleum is like a nightmare!” Petro Pete declares, before waking up and realizing it was all just a dream."
"In years past, some energy education efforts blatantly rejected climate science. In 2002, the American Petroleum Institute launched the domain www.classroom-energy.org. That site is now defunct, but much of it is still available on Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. In addition to industry promotions—lesson plans like “Discover the Wonders of Natural Gas” and “There’s a Lot of Life in a Barrel of Oil”—the site devoted a page to climate: “It is estimated that all human activity, including all combustion—for transportation, building heat, power generation, industrial manufacturing—generates less than five percent of total atmospheric carbon dioxide,” it states incorrectly. (When the site was launched, humans were responsible for about 19 percent of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; twenty years later, we lay claim to about 28 percent of it.)"
"In more recent materials, when climate change is discussed, it tends to be ignored or mentioned in passing. For instance, the U.S. Department of Energy’s site for teachers, “Energy Literacy: Essential Principles for Energy Education,” mentions the subject to say that issues like climate change “highlight the need for energy education.” But after using the issue to contextualize its own relevance, the curriculum does not define or discuss it. "
Katie Worth, "How the Oil and Gas Industry Has Broken Climate Education", contributed by Morgan Sarao, The Energy Rights Project, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 15 December 2021, accessed 16 April 2024. https://energyrights.info/content/how-oil-and-gas-industry-has-broken-climate-education
Critical Commentary
This article details the tactics used by the fossil fuel industry to indoctrinate school children into supporting their work. Although this isn't surprising, I think this article does a great job at showing how the fossil fuel industry has worked for decades at creating a culture that depends on them.
"In 1972, General Motors published a booklet to counteract what its pollsters said were children’s “negative” attitudes toward auto companies. The booklet featured cartoon characters “Charlie Carbon Monoxide” and “Harry Hydrocarbon” (a “harmless demon”) who helped dispel fears that air pollution could lead to serious health hazards."
"Industry education programs in Kansas, Ohio, Illinois, and Oklahoma are actually supported and sanctioned by those states’ governments. The most sophisticated is the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board, a “privatized state agency” voluntarily funded by oil and gas companies. The OERB has produced a series of videos by “Professor Leo,” a goofy Bill Nye knockoff who educates students about the state’s oil and gas resources. Teachers can ask for “Petro Pros” to come speak to their classes, or tap into a library of glossy lesson plans ready-made for any age or subject.For the K–2 crowd, the agency sends copies of children’s books featuring characters like “Freddie Fuelless,” “Oliver Oilpatch,” and “Petro Pete” to elementary schools across the state. In one, Petro Pete’s Big Bad Dream, the titular character drifts off to sleep wondering what the world might be like without petroleum products. He awakes to find his school clothes, toothbrush, and bike tires missing. He blames his dog and heads to school in his pajamas. At lunch, ice cream spills out of the soft-serve machine as liquid and there’s not a soccer ball to be found. Finally, his teacher figures out what has happened: “It sounds like you are missing all of your petroleum by-products today!” she says. “Having no petroleum is like a nightmare!” Petro Pete declares, before waking up and realizing it was all just a dream."
"In years past, some energy education efforts blatantly rejected climate science. In 2002, the American Petroleum Institute launched the domain www.classroom-energy.org. That site is now defunct, but much of it is still available on Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. In addition to industry promotions—lesson plans like “Discover the Wonders of Natural Gas” and “There’s a Lot of Life in a Barrel of Oil”—the site devoted a page to climate: “It is estimated that all human activity, including all combustion—for transportation, building heat, power generation, industrial manufacturing—generates less than five percent of total atmospheric carbon dioxide,” it states incorrectly. (When the site was launched, humans were responsible for about 19 percent of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; twenty years later, we lay claim to about 28 percent of it.)"
"In more recent materials, when climate change is discussed, it tends to be ignored or mentioned in passing. For instance, the U.S. Department of Energy’s site for teachers, “Energy Literacy: Essential Principles for Energy Education,” mentions the subject to say that issues like climate change “highlight the need for energy education.” But after using the issue to contextualize its own relevance, the curriculum does not define or discuss it. "