COP, LOOK, LISTEN ISSUE 4 | 20 NOV 24

Welcome back to COP, Look, Listen. And welcome back to that pivotal phase of COP. Leaders have come and gone, posturing on a finance deal has tilted back and forth, and ministers are trying to reach a final text. Experienced observers will be used to this seesaw.

The forces that seek to undermine progress are taking an environmental slogan, “reduce, reuse, recycle”, and applying it to disinformation. As many disinformation spreaders online have been more preoccupied with the US election result, we have seen a ‘reduction’ in misleading and false content specifically related to the conference this year. But, seemingly unfazed, legacy media continues to reuse, recycle, and amplify the entire toxic landfill of anti-climate talking points identified in past CAAD research around the summit. Despite growing efforts to counter dis- and misinformation, common adversarial narratives continue to spread. This activity degrades trust in the multilateral process and will likely continue to delay ambitious climate action.

Put on your hazmat suit, we’re going in.

FINDINGS OF THE DAY

CAAD Researchers used the advanced features of the Bing search Application Programming Interface and a list of 30-50 top news websites in the UK, US and Australia to compile a list of articles containing keywords related to the COP29 summit and contrarian discourse about climate change and policies, between the 4th and 13th November 2024. Researchers then qualitatively reviewed the dataset, identifying salient topics of conversation.

Critical commentary abounds from the left and centre…

We found that across the political spectrum of legacy media, news stories widely reported on COP29 in the context of Trump’s election victory, highlighting its potential  negative impact on the negotiations. This was the biggest topic discussed by some margin, with over 2,288 articles in our data set mentioning Trump and COP29 or a climate keyword.

There were also many stories on the perceived dwindling faith in COP summits – due to diplomatic tensions, some countries’ decision to boycott the summit, the number of fossil fuel lobbyists present, and concerns that Argentina may withdraw from the Paris Agreement. The event was widely described as “pointless” and “not fit for purpose”.

In this critical commentary, centrist and left-wing media tended to conclude that negotiating processes ought to be strengthened, usually with a view to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. But right-leaning media took a different approach – weaponising the imperfections and difficulties of multilateral decisionmaking against climate action and institutions altogether.

…And the right

Right-wing media with a history of publishing and amplifying climate misinformation:

• Often concluded that the COP conference was not worth it at all, selectively focusing on topics that drive outrage and attention, such as attendees’ use of private jets (again), Azerbaijan President Aliyev’s “gift from God” comments (as seen now also in the British Parliament) or the attendance of the Taliban. Outlets apparently felt no compulsion to propose alternative pathways to achieving Paris goals.
• Framed environmentalist action or participation in COP as elitist, hypocritical and divorced from citizens’ concerns (again).
• In the backdrop of COP, attacked green policies and net zero targets outright (again).
• Discussed climate finance in a highly simplified, negative manner, often indistinguishable from discussion about loss and damage (again)

 Fig 1: A neutral-language piece on the challenges of COP29 links to a more emotive one on Australia’s Daily Telegraph criticising the current government’s (still incomprehensive) Net Zero targets.

The most critical or incendiary written articles or videos are often presented as ‘opinion pieces’, allowing outlets to amplify anti-climate talking points while not presenting such views as theirs. More balanced critiques sometimes link to these pieces, which might use neutral wording taken from a syndicated news outlet such as  Reuters – creating a potential ‘rabbit hole’ effect on climate issues for online news readers.

Trump

In Australia, Sky News used such op-eds to describe the Labor government’s climate policies as misguided and out of touch with voters’ concerns, contrasting the government’s “climate war” with president elect Trump’s “anti-woke agenda”.

Fig 2: Opinion video by Andrew Bolt in Sky News Australia.

In the UK, opinion pieces published by the Daily Telegraph argued that Trump’s election would ‘expose the lie at the heart of net zero’ and predicted that Britain will turn away from its climate commitments.

Fig 3: Daily Telegraph (UK) op-ed.

Criticism of COP

Some outlets gave a platform to allegations of elite hypocrisy, running emotional or sensationalist stories about elites flying to COP in “private jets”. CAAD analysts have spotted similar articles about eating meat at the summit or ordering expensive bottles of wine. As years of CAAD research has documented, anti-climate actors used past summits to weaponize woke-washed stories like these, sometimes sharing false information, to undermine the summit’s credibility.

Fig 4: Daily Mail article highlighting the use of private jets at COP, also stating that ‘world leaders fly in to preach about global warming’.

The presence of the Taliban provided the only novel narrative when compared to the past three COPs One example is a piece in Breitbart on the Taliban’s presence claiming that COP promotes ‘climate alarmism’; Breitbart also published a more factual version of the same story.

Fig 5: Story on Breitbart calls COP a “climate alarmism” summit when drawing attention to attendance of the Taliban.

Attacks on climate policies

An opinion video featuring climate sceptic commentator Ross Clark, appeared in The Daily Mail, condemned Britain’s ‘Net Zero crusade’ and called it ‘lunacy’. Media in the UK also stoked fears of government overreach and restrictions on individual freedoms. This is a long-standing tactic which has become a staple of anti-climate discourse, and also underpins many climate-related conspiracy theories, including those related to 15-minute cities. Articles in GBNews and The Daily Mail for instance published stories about the UK’s decision to phase out gas boilers, calling the decision ‘authoritarian’. Meanwhile, we already covered GB News’s relentless undermining of COP in its opening days.

Fig 6: GB News coverage of UK gas boiler phase out.

What next?

The past few years have been difficult for the COP brand, as the COP summit has been held in states with economies highly dependent on fossil fuel exports and with poor human rights records. This creates an environment of valid criticism from all angles of the media; but we know that misinformation flourishes best when there is a kernel of truth behind it. A recent report from Transparency International and the Anti Corruption Data Collective, “COP Co-Opted”, sets out recommendations to reduce undue corporate (especially fossil fuel) influence in multilateral processes.

While CAAD researchers concentrated only on critical media in our analysis, every COP reinforces we find popular media outlets criticising the multilateral process  in bad faith, or weaponiszing it as a hook with which to undermine broader climate targets or policies. The more that good-faith journalists are ready for these interpretations, well armed with prebunking, debunking, and disinformation-tackling tools the better. See Covering Climate Now’s COP29 resource and our 2022 Journalist Field Guide for more.

GOOD TO KNOW

Carbon capture lobbyists flood COP29. The influence of fossil fuel interests looms large at COP29, with nearly 500 carbon capture and storage (CCS) lobbyists granted access. There are more CCS lobbyists than there are core delegates from some nations including the United States (405) and Canada (307) . Despite shrinking overall attendance, their numbers have grown, with almost half embedded in national delegations, including 55 given VIP treatment by Azerbaijan, the host nation. Critics, including the Center for International Environmental Law, condemn this as blatant greenwashing, promoting CCS as a “false solution” to delay the fossil fuel phase-out.

Corporate interests dominate. COP is also under fire this year thanks in part to the large presence of lobbyists from the fossil fuel, agribusiness, and carbon capture industries, sparking (more) concerns about undue corporate influence on climate policy and negotations. But even worse, over 130 oil and gas executives, including leaders from Aramco and BP, were granted special “guest of the presidency” badges by host nation Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, 204 agribusiness representatives from firms like JBS and PepsiCo also gained access.

Some of the most engaged online posts about COP29… are about COP28? The same post from the COP28 UAE account was subject to a highly suspicious view count in the millions on X, Facebook, Instagram and Youtube. We suspect the answer to the mystery is a lot of advertising budget. We verified advertising for Meta’s platforms. Unfortunately Google’s library is too opaque, and X’s ad repository proved useless in our search, simply returning error messages for our query. The advert is an official handover from the UAE to Azerbaijan. Using a British-English voiceover and cuts of various UAE speeches, it frames the “UAE consensus” as an “impossible dream”, an “historic package”, a “global solution to a global problem” and ushering in a “new era of climate action”. How a “dream” became a “global solution” in just one year is beyond us, and we have not forgotten the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC)’s push for $100 billion of oil deals during last year’s COP.

Figure 7. COP28 UAE video on X (formerly Twitter).

GREENWASHING TRACKER

Welcome back to our regular feature, the greenwashing tracker! The abundance of deceptive promotions by the fossil fuel industry, especially during COP, is a lot to get your head around. We’ve got you covered.

Found something particularly interesting? Send it our way at [email protected]

More UAE Adverts

As of yesterday, the UAE had 14 active adverts on Facebook and Instagram, all around its hosting of COP28. Particularly galling is this advert taking credit for keeping 1.5C within reach given their latest plans are still insufficient for said target. Don’t hold your breath for a fact check from Meta, who have even failed to mark it as a political ad.

Figure 8. Ad running on Meta’s ad library, November 19th 2024

TotalEnergies draws equivalence between fossil gas and wind energy

Promoted in India on LinkedIn, “natural gas” gets to enjoy all of the benefits of renewable energy, apparently. Total are also running adverts promoting just wind and solar on the platform.

Figure 9. Ad running on LinkedIn, November 15th, 2024.

Aramco

Aramco, the Saudi state-owned oil and gas company is running a lot of adverts on LinkedIn centering the company’s oil and gas operations as reliable, profitable and for the benefit of the community, with a good dose of nature-rinsing thrown in. Interesting to see that at the same time, Saudi Arabia is promoting its Green Initiative Forum from a different brand, taking place right after COP29. For reference, Aramco is the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitter.

Figure 10. Ads from Aramco and Saudi Green Initiative running on LinkedIn, November 18th 2024.

Shell promoting carbon credits as Article 6 passes

We’ve spotted a few carbon credit adverts since last year’s COP28 on Google and LinkedIn. We’re predicting even more now that Article 6 has passed. While carbon credits can be used to abate “unavoidable” emissions (as Shell states), there is a high risk that an under-regulated market will allow continued extraction of fossil fuels as a result.

Figure 11. Ad running on Google’s Ad Transparency Center, November 18th 2024.

If you have any investigative leads CAAD should explore, or want to find out more about our research and intel during COP, please email [email protected]. We also have team members on the ground in Azerbaijan who are available for interviews and side-events.

Join the climate disinformation conversation – CAAD is on X, LinkedIn and now on Bluesky