A PETROLEUM ASSOCIATION VISITS CHICAGO in NOVEMBER; CHICAGOANS PLAN TO GIVE IT A RECEPTION AS WARM AS THE CLIMATE IT IS CAUSING.
From November 13 to the 17th, the American Petroleum Institute is holding a conference at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place. According to Wiki, it represents nearly 600 companies involved in the production of petroleum.
It is a climate denial organization, and one that works to block climate legislation because, you know, profits must be made no matter if the planet is going down the tubes.
The recent 2023 Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change urges policy makers to reduce energy reliance upon coal, gas and petroleum, because “continued greenhouse gas emissions will lead to increasing global warming, with the best estimate of reaching 1.5°C in the near term in considered scenarios and modeled pathways. Every increment of global warming will intensify multiple and concurrent hazards (high confidence).”
The American Petroleum Institute exists to promote the interests of the gas and oil industry. According to its website, it works to ““influence public policy in support of a strong, viable U.S. oil and natural gas industry.”
According to the DeSmog.com website which “was founded in January 2006 to clear the PR pollution that is clouding the science and solutions to climate change… quickly becoming the world’s number one source for accurate, fact-based information regarding global warming misinformation campaigns,” (which in plain English means it tries to oppose the findings of the consensus among scientists on climate change), “API has funded organizations that oppose regulations aimed at combating global warming including the Cato Institute and Citizens for a Sound Economy.” Don’t ask what they tell their children what they do for a living.
In short, API is much like the tobacco industry lying about all it knew about the cancer epidemic it was causing for decades, however you just replace tobacco with climate change – well, the forests are really smoking these days. The Cato Institute, incidentally, is one of the close to 500 think tanks of the Atlas Network (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Network) which is likely behind every misinformation campaign opposing climate change activists, environmental activists, indigenous activists, and not just opposing them, but also trying to get such activists criminalized. For more on such anti-democratic campaigns, and more on the Atlas Network, read this:
How criminalization is being used to silence climate activists across the world
Climate change activists, environmentalists, and citizens in general, are going to need to prepare themselves by familiarizing themselves with these dangerous movements attempting to violate democratic rights to organization and free speech when fighting for the living world, getting to know their topsy-turvy language, their thinking, and their enormous influence on the media and political arena. Many may not even believe what they write; they are paid professionals working to make the oil industry as attractively dressed up as possible; even when they try to hide its smell, we can’t help but smell the dollars which this is all ultimately about.
They will stop at nothing to oppose the democratic rights of people to stand up for the integrity of living systems, calling them Nazis (these people obviously have great respect for our grandparents or parents who sacrificed themselves to protect the world from fascism), and people opposed to freedom. Of course, they do stand for freedom, the freedom to make profits at the expense of people and nature, even when such exploitation leads to increasingly violent storms, droughts, forest fires, pollution from fires that threaten respiratory functioning, flooding, mass species extinctions, deforestation. So remember the freedoms they will be arguing for, and claiming you are opposing, these are so-called freedoms to have their way with impunity with the planet so that a few may live out their lives on luxury yachts. So do we believe their clap-trap about freedom? Uh….
So this is what we must remind ourselves of when the American Petroleum Institute gathers November 13-17 in our fair city. We hope you will all be there in large numbers to give them the welcome they deserve.
Read more about the protest here and don’t forget to sign the petition!
Read more on Opposing The API Conference and Sign The Petition