How corporate greed is ‘greenwashing’ climate-saving efforts

Please allow me to provide some additional context to readers who were not present at the Lansing Capitol NO KINGS rally June 14. I am the Indigenous climate activist pictured and quoted in your article making the connection between Big Oil and anti-trans propaganda.

It is no secret that money in politics undergirds a harmful status quo for which everyday people shoulder the burdens of polluted air and water, decaying infrastructure, and the rising cost of living in the midst of obscene wealth inequality. Corporate money is also instrumental in the greenwashing of so-called Climate legislation. In Michigan, a whole host of industry-friendly proposals enjoying bipartisan VIP treatment get ushered to the head of committee agendas and floor votes. Meanwhile, legislation promoting polluter pay accountability, a statewide septic code, water affordability, and PFAS protections gather dust. Predictably, little to no attention is paid to the biodiversity crisis, the precipitous loss of topsoil, or the exponential increase of harmful algal blooms.

From the deregulation of anaerobic digesters, to nominally sustainable aviation fuel tax breaks, to unproven carbon capture technologies, these approaches lure big industry with an array of tax incentives, minimal regulation, and the substantial perk of green-lighting Bill language. The results are repeatedly pitched as “win-wins” that are good for business and the environment. In reality, what much of this legislation shares in common is unified opposition from environmental groups, yet glowing support, featured testimony, and presentations from entities adjacent to fossil fuel interests. Make no mistake, Big Oil is in the business of maximizing their profits and will do whatever it takes to capture the messaging — whether that be the outright suppression of their own research warning about the catastrophic effects of global warming caused by combustible emissions, or the use of the Climate Crisis to situate themselves as saviors whose solutions just so happen to require and excuse the continued use of combustible sources of energy.

Big Oil also benefits mightily when the spotlight is off their complicity and bankrolling of habitat destruction and the sacrifice of community health. Which brings us to the recent analysis that 80% of 45 anti-trans groups in the U.S. have received funding from fossil fuel companies or billionaires. Scapegoating is a shameful American tradition we would all do better to cast aside.

(Nichole Keway Biber is a tribal citizen of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians (Waganakising Odawa) and is part of the Turtle Clan (Mishiike Dodem).