Since coming to office in January, Trump has used social media to amplify lies about wind energy<\/a>, for example, claiming that turbines cause cancer and kill\u00a0whales. He has issued executive orders committed to “unleashing” fossil fuel energy that he calls “affordable and reliable,” while falsely claiming that “ideologically-motivated\u201d renewable energy results in job losses and higher energy costs that “devastate”\u00a0consumers. \u00a0<\/p>\n Such disinformation\u00a0ignores the reality that emissions from burning coal, gas and oil are changing the Earth’s climate and leading to increased drought, flooding, storms, and deadly heat<\/a>. \u00a0<\/p>\n It also directly contradicts the fact that rapidly growing solar and wind energy capacity\u00a0has\u00a0provided\u00a0the world’s cheapest electricity for some time. For every dollar of investment, clean energy\u00a0also provides three times as many jobs as the fossil fuel industry.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Trump EPA aims to revoke climate regulations<\/p>\n To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video<\/a><\/p>\n Trump echoes\u00a0classic\u00a0climate deception\u00a0<\/p>\n “The Trump administration is employing a well-worn disinformation playbook, resurfacing outright denial tactics that were the fossil fuel industry’s favored approach in the 1980s and 1990s,”\u00a0said Kathy Mulvey, accountability campaign director of the Climate & Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a US-based science advocacy nonprofit.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Appropriating tobacco industry deception tactics regarding the health impacts of smoking, oil, gas and coal companies are “manufacturing uncertainty about climate science and blocking climate, clean energy, and clean transportation policies,” she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n UN climate summits have been a major focus of fossil fuel\u00a0companies looking to delay the energy transition. Last year, one analysis said more than 1,770 fossil fuel lobbyists were granted access to COP29<\/a> in Baku, Azerbaijan \u2014 outnumbering all but three country delegations.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2023, researchers revealed that fossil\u00a0energy companies paid Meta \u2014 which owns social media platforms Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp \u2014 up to $5 million (\u20ac4.3 million) for climate disinformation ads in the lead-up to COP28 in the United Arab Emirates.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Four of the world’s largest oil and gas majors \u2014 Shell, ExxonMobil, BP and TotalEnergies \u2014 accounted for 98% of that advertising spending.\u00a0<\/p>\n Is climate change driving the rise of monstrous superstorms?<\/p>\n To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video<\/a><\/p>\n Tackling disinformation through transparency\u00a0<\/p>\n Amid fears that the world has missed the Paris Agreement<\/a>\u00a0target of limiting planetary warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels, a coordinated pushback against attempts to sow doubt and delay climate action<\/a>\u00a0is emerging.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Brazil-led Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change will, for the first time at any UN climate summit, be part of the official COP30 agenda. The scheme aims to fund research, investigative journalism and climate communications campaigns that counter contrarianism and amplify climate science<\/a> \u2013 and\u00a0solutions<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n “We must fight the coordinated disinformation campaigns impeding global progress on climate change<\/a>, ranging from outright denial to greenwashing to harassment of climate scientists,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in November 2024 when the initiative was launched at the G20 summit.<\/p>\n “When governments continue to expand fossil fuel production, even while publicly committing to net-zero goals, it is essential that civil society around the world join forces to ensure the availability of accurate, consistent, reliable, and transparent information to publics and policymakers,” said Ece Elbeyi, consulting scientist at the Scientific Panel on Information Integrity about Climate Science, a Swiss-based global science organization. \u00a0<\/p>\n By bringing together researchers and media professionals, the COP30 information integrity initiative exemplifies “the sort of civic engagement that is needed” to combat disinformation, she told DW.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the Climate Action Against Disinformation coalition (CAAD), a global climate watchdog, is asking media and Big Tech to screen “harmful false content” about the climate for their audiences, and to be transparent about the source of any disinformation to ensure “transparency and accountability,” noted Philip Newell, CAAD’s communications co-chair.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n But climate lies, most lately\u00a0emanating from\u00a0the Trump administration about the\u00a0cost and job creation potential of renewable energy, are being replicated in the\u00a0media globally.<\/p>\n “The return of Trump to power in January triggered a spike in unchallenged climate disinformation\u00a0in French media,” noted\u00a0Eva Morel, secretary general of climate NGO QuotaClimat.\u00a0A\u00a0report on\u00a0climate disinformation\u00a0that was co-authored by QuotaClimat\u00a0showed that instances of climate deception in French media\u00a0tripled in the first eight months of\u00a02025.<\/p>\n An ‘unprecedented opportunity’\u00a0to counter fossil fuel deceit<\/p>\n Transparent and rigorous climate science communication matters at a time when nations are set to produce over double the fossil fuels in 2030 that would be consistent with limiting warming to 1.5C. As reported in the latest Production Gap Report that monitors the “misalignment” between planned national fossil fuel production<\/a> and actual global production levels.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n If COP30 hopes to help bridge this misalignment, it needs to take an “unprecedented opportunity”\u00a0to facilitate “coordinated global action to tackle disinformation,”\u00a0said Mulvey. \u00a0<\/p>\n “Exposure of the fossil fuel industry’s deceit and underhanded tactics is one of the best strategies we have,” she said of using information integrity to embolden the push for a rapid energy transition.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Eliesio Marubo, activist and legal counsel for Union of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil’s Javari Valley, said that climate disinformation needs to be called out for what it is at COP30: “I don’t like the term ‘fake news,'” he said, adding that the term “ends up legitimizing something that isn’t news at all. I prefer to call it what it really is: a lie.” \u00a0<\/p>\n Edited by: Tamsin Walker<\/p>\n Brazil’s Marina Silva on COP30, Amazon oil and climate goals<\/p>\nProtesters have long been warning about the planetary implications of ignoring climate science, yet the fossil fuel lobby continues its information war against clean energy Image: Christian Charisius\/dpa\/picture alliance<\/p>\n