Climate disinformation, broadcast to millions

In November 2024, the creator behind the blockbuster Yellowstone and its many prequels and spinoffs premiered a new television drama called Landman. The show flew under my radar until almost a month after its release, when a clip from the show went viral online. In that clip the main character – an oilman played by Billy Bob Thornton – goes on a three-minute screed claiming that wind turbines are an essentially useless energy source and false climate solution. According to Thornton’s oilman, this is because building and maintaining them burns so much fossil fuels, that no matter how long they operate they can never make up for it by producing emissions-free energy. 

The clip was shocking. Partially because almost every word of it was disinformation, but also because the disinformation was only slightly reworked from a decade-old climate denying meme, one that Climate Legacy specifically covered in a disinformation-focused newsletter back in November 2023. 

Seeing those same lies, dressed up in 4K resolution and shared by a household name like Billy Bob Thornton, was like seeing a ghost. Even worse – while the original meme rarely strayed beyond the climate-denying corners of the internet, Landman premiered to 14.6 million viewers, and that short, disinformation-laden clip has been viewed roughly 21.6 million times through one viral Tweet alone. It’s the sort of exposure that most fossil fuel propaganda can only dream off. 

I don’t want to waste too much virtual ink debunking the clip (obviously, if windmills really caused more emissions than they prevented, we wouldn’t build them) but it’s worth mentioning that Landman’s numbers are way off. Although creating, maintaining, and eventually dismantling wind turbines does require a lot of energy and materials, research shows that a windmill built in a sufficiently windy area makes up for the fossil-fuel impact of its construction (sometimes called “greenhouse gas payback time”) in an average of about 5.3 months. The maximum is typically two years. For the remaining 15-20 years of a windmill’s lifespan, they continue to harness clean, renewable energy and keep oil and gas in the ground. 

Those are the facts, but for the more than 30 million people (many of them voters, and members of the ever-elusive movable middle) who watched that Landman clip on their phones or televisions without any additional context, they may well go on believing and telling their friends that windmills do more harm than good. We can mark this as a win for fossil fuel companies, who you might not be surprised to learn used the American Petroleum Institute to purchase ad times during Landman episodes at a seven-figure cost. 

I was reminded of all this in January, when I visited Ottawa and was surprised to see buses still plastered with fossil fuel slogans, even after the recent Canadian legislation meant to block misleading fossil fuel advertising was passed. The buses read “As Long as the World Needs Oil & Gas, It Should Be Canadian.” This message is especially rich after recent reporting from the Guardian showed that the pollution costs of shipping Canadian gas around the world is actually worse for the environment than if importers just used their own coal. 

Putting up fossil fuel ads in Ottawa might not be as expensive as advertising on primetime TV, but it shows just how desperate fossil fuel companies are to get their misleading message out there. Why the desperation? Because renewable energy is eclipsing fossil fuels, making it now more affordable and often more reliable than oil and gas. 

Disinformation and Buying Politicians – Fossil Fuel Companies’ Last Stand

Starting in the 1980s when global awareness of climate change was growing, fossil fuel companies argued that wind, solar, and other renewable energy sources were too expensive and inefficient to replace oil and gas for power and heating. That may have been true while the technologies were still in their nascency, but 40 years later green energy has caught up to and lapped oil and gas. Today, the installation costs for solar panels are roughly 1/1000th of what they were in the 60s, and those same costs fell by nearly half in 2023 alone.

As Bill Mckibben said in a recent newsletter: “Yes, everything is going wrong except for one big thing, which is that the price of clean energy keeps falling and falling, and hence it gets easier and easier to put up more and more of it. So our job is to make sure that everyone knows that.”

Many countries see this clearly and are investing in green energy accordingly. Sweden was getting 50% of its energy from renewals way back in 2012 – eight years ahead of what their own targets outlined. Costa Rica has gotten 98% of its energy from renewables for almost a decade, and the world’s leading polluter, China, is fast becoming a leader in renewables. At one point last year, China had nearly twice as many wind and solar projects under construction as the rest of the world combined. 

As other countries move on, in Canada and the United States, powerful oil lobbies are trying to convince us to double down on oil and gas. This is partially through a flood of disinformation, and increasingly through the politicians they’ve bought. 

In the last U.S. election, several oil companies united to spend $445 million getting Trump elected. Their investment immediately paid off – Trump has since halted the expansion of wind power, eliminated paper straws, and has even challenged the EU’s renewable energy progress by threatening to sanction countries that don’t buy more U.S. oil and gas. In Canada, Alberta was ahead of the curve on this strategy when Alberta Premier Danielle Smith banned new wind projects in 2024 to protect the province’s fossil fuel producers and their profits. Then just last month, we learned that the Federal Government had approved a new $20 billion loan to the Trans Mountain Pipeline, a boondoggle that has now cost Canadians more than $50 billion overall. 

In short, it doesn’t matter how cost-effective renewables become if our governments are held in thrall by fossil fuel companies, and voters are being drowned in disinformation splashed across our popular media and city infrastructure. 

So What Can We Do? 

Here at Climate Legacy (and I’m guessing anyone reading this is in the same boat) we don’t have the sort of seven-figure budget required to put our ads on primetime TV. However, earlier this month one group in the U.S. called Science Moms did just that – airing the first ever nonprofit-led climate ad during the Superbowl. With enough organizations working together, achieving similar ads at smaller, homegrown sporting events may be an effective way to reach the movable middle. 

Earlier this week, Climate Legacy was honoured to sign a powerful statement co-authored by Environmental Defence, Ontario Clean Air Alliance, and ClimateFast calling on Ontario to step away from gas and nuclear to instead focus on the cheapest energy now available to us – solar. Again, by collaborating we can dedicate far more voices and resources to fighting false narratives and raising awareness of just how effective green energy has become.

If we don’t have the resources of these oil companies or the lobbying groups they sponsor, we have to work with what we do have – which is the truth, and our networks. One organization that’s been dedicating itself to countering misinformation and making the truth more accessible is CAFES. Last year, they launched their Climate Misinformation Toolkit, which has collected a number of climate deniers’ most persistent lies, gathered them in one place, and outlined easy counter-arguments. 

By familiarizing ourselves with tools like CAFES’ toolkit and sharing it with other groups, we can be better prepared the next time a multimillion dollar piece of oil and gas propaganda crosses our screens.

Take care,

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