Big Oil’s Three-Decade Plot to Kill America’s Clean Energy Revolution

Of course, no historical counterfactual can be absolutely definitive. There are obviously many differences between the U.S. in the 1990s and China in the 2010s beyond the presence or absence of fossil fuel–funded campaigns of climate deception. But none of these differences strongly cut against the causation analysis. For example, you could argue that China, with its system of state control, could direct resources toward clean energy in a way the U.S. never could have. But the U.S. can clearly marshal vast resources for its priorities (think of the interstate highway system, the Apollo program, or the development of AI data centers) and had far more resources to marshal; in 2010, when China began its renewables buildout, its gross domestic product was just over one third that of the U.S.

You could also argue that it’s just not possible to compare what might have happened in the democratic U.S. to what did occur in the single-party autocracy of China. But the evidence does not indicate that a more democratic China, kept free of Big Oil’s propaganda, would have been less supportive of a clean energy buildout. Indeed, peer-reviewed national survey data on public demand for climate action finds that while the U.S. ranks at the bottom of the international list, China—the country that Western Big Oil companies have had the least ability to influence—is right up at the top, with 97 percent supporting demands for greater political action on climate.

I don’t know whether this argument will ever be used in a court of law. But every time you hear a piece of good news about the explosive growth of clean energy, it’s worth remembering that the benchmark in question likely could have been met in 2005, rather than 2025, if not for Big Oil’s climate deception. Every time you hear bad news about another catastrophic wildfire, drought, heat wave, or storm, or the nightmarish arrival of another cataclysmic climate tipping point, remember that we could have had 20 more years to address this crisis had Big Oil not stopped the West from taking earlier action.