Civil Society: Driving Change

WHILE ADDRESSING CLIMATE change will undoubtedly require changes in supply-side business practices by the industry titans trading in petroleum and more consistent scrutiny and visionary leadership from governments national and local, these actors sometimes need to be spurred to action. This is where civil society in all its forms can come in.

Our Oil Climate Index + Gas (OCI+) research group was invited to give a seminar at the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University in April 2019.¹ Oil and gas factor prominently into the lands of western North America, including Texas’s Permian Basin, Alaska’s Arctic resources, Alberta’s oil sands, and Mexico’s vast stores of hydrocarbons. We shared results from modeling California’s heavy oils through the OCI+ and discussed the prospects for reducing their elevated GHG emissions.

After the event concluded, an attendee who works for a nonprofit environmental group approached me. We discussed how increased data transparency could further guide Californian policymakers, both in the short term to clean up their complex oil and gas supplies and in the long term to structure the managed decline that Governor Gavin Newsom had recently announced.² This conversation led to further study and preparation of an internal report. Once armed with new information, the nongovernmental organization’s (NGO’s) workers crafted a policy proposal and approached potential legislative sponsors. In early 2020, a bill was introduced in the California Assembly.

The Know Your Oil bill—AB 3217—would provide long-overdue information disclosure from California’s petroleum producers and refiners about the makeup of the complex oil they produce and process.³ This policy could be adopted nationally and internationally.⁴ This experience is a prime example of how civil society, the third sector (distinct from government and for-profit companies), can influence government actors to adopt policies that direct the petroleum industry to change its business-as-usual practices.

This chapter features the mixed cast that makes up civil society—NGOs, philanthropic foundations, academia, think tanks, the media, and the public at large.⁵ These actors disseminate information, conduct advocacy, provide accountability, and participate in social movements, roles in which private and public actors do not excel.

Civil society has scored historic wins, such as pressuring the auto industry to make more fuel-efficient, cleaner cars and compelling electric utilities to invest in renewable energy sources. But, when it comes to the petroleum industry, these actors put too little energy into altering the oil and gas supply chain. Instead, they have been laser-focused on cutting consumers’ demand for petroleum products. This blind spot is likely the result of too little impactful supply-side research and public outreach, the connective tissue that strengthens the outcomes that civil society drives.⁶

To shrink the climate footprints of petroleum producers, refiners, and shippers—especially those trading in unconventional oil and gas—NGOs must expand their capacity to model oil and gas, weigh GHG trade-offs, and hire staff with private sector experience. The media must focus less on reporting oil price fluctuations and more on reshaping the industry’s future. Academics must collaborate with each other and with government researchers to connect deep knowledge to policymaking. Think tanks must delve more deeply into models like the OCI+ and integrate its findings into their own studies. Philanthropic foundations must take care to fund systems analysis and support partnerships with the public and private sectors. And activists must become more technically versed on oil and gas processes and industry practices. If civil society actors can expand and sharpen the tools available to them, they can play a critical role in successfully transforming the oil and gas sector in a warming world.

Consumers versus Suppliers

Civil society has long focused on urging consumers to cut back on petroleum products while overlooking the substantial climate footprints of the producers of such products. In 1991, four environmental NGOs joined forces to publish a major report, America’s Energy Choices.⁷ I was part of the team that conducted the analysis. We envisioned a “climate stabilization” future that demanded half as much total energy economy-wide, replaced most oil with biomass, and furnished more renewables than natural gas. The report detailed nearly 100 national policies and pointed out federal agencies that could be tasked to implement them. This plan was designed to make the twenty-first-century United States more productive and competitive while cutting expenses and air pollution for all Americans.

Looking back, what we advised was rational at the time. In 1973, the world suddenly appeared to run out of oil when the Arab nations ceased exports to the West. Hence, the environmental NGOs launched in conjunction with Earth Day were convinced that oil and gas supplies would soon peak and run out. The logical next step was to conserve energy and pivot to cleaner alternative sources. But that isn’t at all how things turned out.

No one, myself included, expected oil and gas supplies to resurface in abundance. By 2010, when I began my OCI+ research at the Carnegie Endowment, fracking, oil sands, and other abundant unconventional oil and gas resources were emerging. While this sea change fundamentally altered my thinking on how we must wrestle with petroleum systems themselves, many of my civil society colleagues have struggled to grasp this massive shift. Instead, most have doubled down on demand-side strategies, failing to appreciate that their actions now need to incorporate supply-side oil and gas approaches.

As civil society actors continued to push efforts to cut petroleum use, oil consumption increased 50 percent and natural gas use doubled between 1990 and 2019.⁸ Civil society actors keep riding the third wave of environmentalism, urging citizens to “think globally, and act locally.”⁹ But tactics are changing. The new “environmentalism of everyday life” would have us reconfigure energy systems and material flows.¹⁰ This shift could engage civil society to help rebuild a new zero–greenhouse gas (GHG) oil and gas industry supply chain, but that is only possible if we can move beyond the fixation that primarily consumers can solve the world’s climate-related oil and gas problems.

Consumers under a Microscope

It is a wide-held misconception that consumers are sovereign and can control markets by shifting their demands. While this is certainly true in the aggregate, it will take billions of consumers—from private citizens to commercial entities—acting in concert to meaningfully reduce oil and gas emissions. Table 7.1 details the variety of petroleum consumers and estimates their emissions contributions in terms of their share of total lifecycle GHGs for different oil and gas assets.

Such granularity is essential because the numbers can shift dramatically depending on what assumptions are used about the petroleum product in question and how it is used. For example, motorists buying gasoline may account for as little as 7 percent of the total emissions of a barrel of oil or as much as 42 percent, depending on what kind of oil it is. Likewise, utilities may account for as little as 13 percent or as much as 100 percent of the total emissions in a barrel of oil equivalent (BOE) of gas.¹¹

Those barrels of oil that produce less gasoline in effect transfer the responsibility for the remaining GHGs onto the shoulders of many other disparate consumers. Simply driving less will not necessarily cut all the carbon out of a barrel of oil. Conversely, some barrels of oil produce more high-GHG residual fuels, while other oil and gas assets produce more petrochemical feedstocks. In these cases, reducing the climate footprints of hydrocarbons (especially unconventional ones) implicates not ordinary individual consumers but industrial consumers, especially shippers and the oil and gas industry itself.

Table 7.1 Sample Ranges in Share GHG Emissions by Minimum and Maximum Consumer Responsibilities

Oil and Gas Consumers	Crude Oil		Natural Gas		Sample Oil and Gas Averagesa
	Min.	Max.	Min.	Max.
Motorists (gasoline)	5%	28%	<1%	29%	13%
Air Passengers and Freight (jet fuel)	3%	19%	<1%	12%	8%
Truckers (diesel)	3%	22%	<1%	5%	6%
Industry, Businesses, Homes (fuel oil)	<1%	12%	<1%	2%	2%
Industry, Shipping, Power (residual fuels, LNG, petroleum coke)b	2%	36%	<1%	12%	9%
Petrochemical Industry (NGL feedstocks)b	<1%	28%	<1%	41%	8%
Homes and Businesses (LPG for heat, stoves)	<1%	2%	<1%	<1%	<1%
Power and Industry (natural gas)b	<1%	43%	11%	72%	21%
Everyone (asphalt, solvents, lubricants, sulfur, solvents, and waxes)b	?	?	?	?	?

CO₂, carbon dioxide; EOR, enhanced oil recovery; GHG, greenhouse gas; LPG, liquefied petroleum gas; NGL, natural gas liquid; OCI+, Oil Climate Index + Gas; UAE, United Arab Emirates.

Source: Author’s estimates using OCI+ Preview Web Tool, 2020.

^a Sample set includes 28 oil and gas resources in OCI+ Beta (excluding United Arab Emirates CO₂ Enhanced Oil Recovery estimates) and sum of these average values amount to ~68% (all consumers’ responsibility).

^b Industry consumer, including companies that may also make up the oil and gas sector such as LNG shippers and petrochemical plants.

Notes: Minimum and maximum shares are calculated for different resources and are not additive; assumes 20-year GWPs (100-year GWPs may differ, but generally represent similar min. and max. GHG ranges).

Refocusing on the Supply Chain

Civil society actors have successfully taken on and overhauled supply chains in the past. Activist Ralph Nader forced the auto industry to make safer cars. Instead of telling citizens not to drive, Nader’s NGO (the Center for Auto Safety) detailed how automakers could remake cars with seat belts, collapsible steering columns, padded dashboards, and, eventually, air bags.¹² Likewise, the International Council on Clean Transportation—an NGO focused on cutting vehicle-generated pollution—caught VW and other automakers cheating on their emissions tests and got them to retool their diesel engines and improve diagnostic systems.¹³

Civil society actors have also shown a propensity to focus on supply-side changes on other occasions involving the manufacturing and utility sectors.¹⁴ Consider the example set by an NGO leader named Amory Lovins. Instead of telling chemical plants and data centers to turn off, Lovins’s NGO (Rocky Mountain Institute, now renamed RMI) detailed how they could retrofit pipes, pumps, ducts, fans, and drive systems to be more energy efficient.¹⁵

It is puzzling why the same supply-side expertise is missing in the petroleum sector even though its emissions can account for a major share of GHG levels. Too few civil society actors are working to change oil and gas operations and the sector’s business model. One notable exception is the International Energy Agency (IEA).¹⁶ Instead of assuming that civil society can or should destroy petroleum demand, the IEA recognizes that oil and gas are critical in today’s economy and that these supplies will be necessary in the future. The organization’s position has evolved over time. When the IEA was first established in the wake of the 1974 shocks to the global oil supply, the NGO promoted demand reduction as a primary solution, an idea that was reinforced by high oil prices at the time.

But today, with an ample petroleum supply and low prices, it is curious why civil society actors cling to their old playbook to destroy demand for petroleum products. Three-quarters of Americans surveyed want to see higher emissions standards imposed on industry.¹⁷ Public concerns (paired with mitigation strategies identified by the OCI+) bode well for the eventual tightening of industry standards that can lead to supply-side innovations in the oil and gas sector. There will always be a need for liquid and gaseous energy, and the petroleum industry must develop and commercialize low-GHG ways to supply these resources. Sustainability must be a top priority with the goal of reducing emissions and waste throughout the supply chain. Civil society has many tools at its disposal to help advance that goal, starting with information.

Civil Society Approaches

Civil society actors have essentially four ways to advance their aims, including disseminating information, conducting advocacy, providing accountability, and participating in social movements. Each of these approaches encompasses numerous strategies, which civil society actors are well practiced at using.

Disseminating Information

In the oil and gas sector, industry actors gather an abundance of technical minutiae—data from wells, refineries, and shipping operations worldwide. Systems data become commodities in and of themselves. Often these data are not publicly available and can only be purchased at exorbitant prices. Even then, problems linger as this information can be incomplete, outdated, or not well-suited for cross-comparisons.

The lack of information transparency hinders civil society’s ability to see problems, recognize trends, and analyze solutions in the petroleum industry. This paucity of solid information leads to erroneous assumptions about oil and gas homogeneity that result in a tendency among activists to treat them all the same in terms of their climate impacts, a mentality that can lead to missed opportunities for reducing GHG levels.

Educating the Public

Public education is critical for ensuring that citizens understand complex systems, like oil and gas production, that are dynamic and require ongoing vigilance. The knowledge involved is often highly technical and not readily consumed by the public. Instead, know-how needs to be translated into common terms and reshaped into concrete policy and public calls to action. For example, when oil and gas fracking emerged a decade ago, it stoked widespread public fears about increasing GHG emissions and other environmental impacts. We now know that global climate risks from fracking depend on tightly managing gas leakage (mainly methane) at all stages, whereas the regional risks to water supplies, air quality, induced seismicity, and other local hazards from these novel techniques require ongoing study.

NGOs—working internationally, nationally, and at the grassroots level—assume most of the responsibility for educating the public. They connect academic and think-tank research to policymakers and the public. Even well-funded NGOs with philanthropic support, however, rarely have the expertise and budgets to acquire knowledge gained through government grants and privately funded studies. NGOs often borrow from academic research to craft their public messages and policy strategies.

Public education is one of the most important tools that civil society actors like me and the other OCI+ researchers have at their disposal to address damaging environmental externalities that harm the public and hamper markets. Through ongoing research, publications, events, and outreach facilitated by NGOs and the media, public audiences worldwide have learned lessons about lifecycle GHG emissions in the oil and gas sector.¹⁸ Online learning platforms cite OCI+ studies, and high schools have used our research in AP Environmental Science classes.¹⁹ Our most global public education efforts to date include a presentation at the 2015 United Nations (UN) Conference on Climate Change in Paris,²⁰ two “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) online question-and-answer (Q&A) sessions through Reddit,²¹ and a website devoted to OCI+ lessons learned.²²

Diving in Deep

Researchers at universities worldwide have probed deeply and focused narrowly on various technical and policy particulars that encompass all elements of climate change and energy policy. Think tanks are also diving deeply into these issues. Academics are some of the most valuable sources of new information. Academic journals (the currency used to promote academics) are peer reviewed, funding sources are specified, and conflicts of interests are disclosed. Analysis conducted and models developed by academics tend to be more transparent than the analytical tools used in the private sector and more readily available than those used in the public sector.

At its core, the OCI+ is an academic collaboration between researchers from three universities—Brown, Stanford, and the University of Calgary—who have spent their careers at dozens more academic institutions and collaborated widely with other scholars around the world. Over nearly a decade, the team has engaged undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students and formed various forms of academic collaboration to widely spread knowledge.

Scientific Assessments

Groups of experts, like those affiliated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), provide scientific information so that governments can create sensible climate policies.²³ While the IPCC is an organization of governments, its assessment reports are written by volunteer scientists from academia, think tanks, and NGOs. Rather than conduct their own research, these civil society actors review thousands of scientific papers on climate change that are published each year and report on where experts agree and where further research is needed.

This open and transparent system of collecting and evaluating information informs governments, provides key input into international climate negotiations, and furnishes equally important and trustworthy information for civil society actors. For example, the IPCC’s special report on the impacts of global warming that would ensue from temperature rises of 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels continues to be used by numerous NGOs to further their own outreach and advocacy on climate action.²⁴ In their report, the IPCC highlights the need for a rapid drop in the use of oil and gas, with the stated goals of curbing emissions by 37 and 25 percent, respectively, below 2010 levels by 2030.²⁵

Giving Expert Input

Opportunities for civil society actors to inject their knowledge into the political process can arise in many ways, such as through government testimony, in national academy studies, and on blue-ribbon panels. These formal occasions during which experts are invited to participate carry weight and remain on the record forever, reaching countless readers and listeners at home and abroad. Such fact-gathering efforts are often undertaken before governments tackle new problems, a fact that further heightens their influence.

I have engaged in several of these valuable public education efforts over the years. In 1992, I participated in an automotive fuel economy study that eventually led to tightening vehicle standards decades later.²⁶ In 1998, the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles pressed for research and development (R&D) on advanced automotive technologies.²⁷ Numerous National Academy of Sciences (NAS) efforts have focused on climate change research, but these have never centered on mitigating the climate impacts of the oil and gas industry. Instead, when it comes to studying petroleum systems, the focus has been on reducing accidents.²⁸

More recently, OCI+ research has been featured in congressional testimony. These particular hearings focused on whether to lift the ban on US crude oil exports, an energy policy imposed in the 1970s.²⁹ While there was general agreement in these hearings about the newfound abundance of oil, what was particularly striking was the degree to which the congressional members as well as the other experts that testified alongside me did not know about the growing heterogeneity between different types of global oils. In terms of policymaking, different types of oils have different economic value and different climate impacts, variables that decision makers were not fully aware of. Moreover, when one of the other congressional witnesses testifying alongside me remarked that he was unaware of the impact of oil heterogeneity on climate change, I was reminded that not all experts are knowledgeable about everything. This blind spot has been common in my civil society discussions over the years.

Calling on Citizen Scientists

The US government piloted a grassroots effort in 2014 to engage citizen scientists.³⁰ In 2016, Congress adopted the Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Act to facilitate broad public participation in innovation through open, voluntary collaboration between the public, federal agencies, and national laboratories.³¹ This arrangement, whereby citizen scientists formulate research and solve complex problems, is well suited to help address the climate impacts of the oil and gas sector. Citizens’ expertise is complemented by the recent wave of oil industry retirees who worked in environmental divisions and have first-hand experience mitigating emissions and devising energy transition strategies.

Beyond such engagement, the rapid rise of smartphone ownership has put powerful, miniaturized computers in the public’s hands. Apps have been developed, for example, for citizen scientists to track the onset of seasons and report weather conditions. Drones are flying overhead to collect data. And emerging technologies, such as automated vehicles armed with cameras, lasers, and GPS systems, can be equipped as roving sensors to monitor real-time pollution levels.³² Tomorrow’s pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists may find themselves sleuthing environmental problems while they move about. Ultimately, real-time monitoring data collected by civil society actors could be input into the OCI+ model to update its emissions estimates and track changes in emissions over time.

Conducting Advocacy

Those who possess unique knowledge—or have experience navigating the maze of rules that govern lawmaking—are well positioned to influence decision makers. While most professional lobbyists have previously served in government, a cadre of civil society actors also advocates from time to time. Whether the group involved is an NGO or a coalition of private citizens, the ability to petition governments is a cornerstone of democracy. But the line between interested individuals and parties with (often monetary) special interests can be easily blurred. The more robust and transparent the data used to advocate for decision makers to take certain actions, the better equipped they will be to assess trade-offs.

Telling a Better Story

In 1990, while working as a transportation analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists, I advocated for vehicle fuel efficiency legislation introduced by Democratic Senator Richard Bryan (Nevada) and Republican Senator Slade Gorton (Washington). Staffers from other environmental NGOs joined me in these congressional visits as we fielded questions about the bill.³³ We knew the vote would be close, and the bill was eventually pulled from consideration because it was a few votes short of the sixty needed to limit debate.³⁴

Civil society advocates are most effective when they are duly informed and tell the whole truth. During one key visit, legislative staff asked how much fuel would be saved if the bill were enacted. Before I could answer, my colleague chimed in citing a grossly inflated figure, as if corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards applied to all vehicles and not just the sliver of new cars and trucks sold each year. I remained silent. But as we exited the Hart Senate Office Building, I spoke up about his wrong answer. I expected him to thank me for pointing out the mistake. Instead, he replied, “I know. But I tell a better story.” I then responded, “I will never advocate for a policy alongside you again.” And, staying true to my word, I never did.

While it is not uncommon to push the boundaries when trying to influence decision makers, doing so can ultimately weaken the appeal of the advocate’s message. This is why professional lobbyists—those paid to promote the private sector—are among some of the least trusted individuals in society.³⁵ Public distrust of many big businesses, like oil industry actors, further underscores the importance of unbiased, transparent assessment tools to fill the knowledge vacuum.³⁶ Such knowledge enables civil society actors to participate in what would otherwise be a one-sided decision-making process.

Updating Your Story

Civil society actors tend to hold onto issues tightly and stick to their story. Since my involvement thirty years ago, environmental NGOs have advocated for CAFE standards on the grounds that they are the biggest step to combat global warming.³⁷ Such resolve can be an asset in a world with manifold concerns yet short public attention spans. But even the most dogged advocates should challenge themselves to update their arguments.

Justification and trade-offs for a particular action can change over time. For example, when CAFE standards were first adopted in 1975 after a major oil supply shock caused long lines at gas pumps, US oil imports were on the rise, and supply security was a growing concern. Figure 7.1 charts the imbalance between 1993 and 2013 when US oil imports exceeded domestic production. As minivans entered the market and light trucks replaced cars, gasoline consumption rose. So at the time, NGOs’ argument for CAFE standards was justified: higher fuel economy could help manage the growth in US oil consumption. CAFE standards were finally tightened in 2007. Oil consumption fell 15 percent by 2013, but oil production was also on the rise due to fracking and other unconventional oil supplies.³⁸

FIGURE 7.1 US Oil Production, Consumption, and Imports (1949–2020)

Sources: Author’s estimates using data from the US Energy Information Administration, including Field Production of Crude Oil, Imports of Crude Oil, and Product Supplied of Finished Petroleum Products, https://www.eia.gov/.

At this point, the story changed from an energy security issue to a climate risk problem. In a world of oil abundance, reducing gasoline consumption is no longer the pat solution it is cracked up to be. Refining a barrel of oil makes a wide array of petroleum products that trade globally. When an American motorist use one less gallon of gasoline than before, this will not remove one gallon of oil from the global economy. Instead, US refiners will either export this gallon of gasoline or process it into a different product, such as diesel or fuel oil for use domestically or abroad.³⁹ In other words, as long as plentiful oil is used to supply wide-ranging demand for various petroleum products worldwide, consuming less gasoline in the United States could shift GHG emissions but not eliminate them.

Convening Industry Retirees

I joined Chevron in 1982, after back-to-back oil crises had spurred development of alternative (and ultimately unconventional) energy sources. The company amassed young, talented engineers who came of age during the environmental movement of the 1970s. Solving pollution problems was our calling. Although I left the company after five years, many of my colleagues remained and eventually began to retire in the 2010s. (This was the case at other oil companies as well.) I had the idea to reach out to industry retirees thinking that those with strong environmental ethics would be concerned about climate change. What started out as a couple of like-minded folks turned into a dozen. Together, we analyzed and promoted low-GHG petroleum strategies.⁴⁰ Having first-hand industry knowledge is a powerful enabler for both information and advocacy.

There are other such groups too, like the Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL), a grassroots advocacy group that educates and trains citizens to advance climate policies and engages industry and other retired energy professionals, including George Shultz (former secretary of state) and Steven Chu (former secretary of energy) who serve on CCL’s advisory board.⁴¹ From fossil fuel subsidies to carbon fees, CCL advocates for policies that could be further refined using results from the OCI+ model.⁴²

Providing Accountability

Civil society serves as a watchdog, calling for accountability in the public and private sectors. The work does not end when problems are studied and laws and regulations are enacted. Various civil society actors stand guard to make sure government obligations are fulfilled and that industry actors comply with regulatory requirements. There are numerous ways that civil society can demand accountability, including by monitoring and reporting progress, advising stakeholders, and coordinating through partnerships. The media (both traditional outlets and social media) also plays an important role in accountability through the stories it tells its audiences.

Reading the Daily News

While readers cannot swear by every word the media prints, journalists play the most visible civil society role in holding other actors accountable for their climate impacts.⁴³ Drawing on the insights of academics, think tanks, NGOs, and their own research, reporters post the vast majority of stories that examine and scrutinize the climate impacts of the oil and gas industry. Major outlets—like the New York Times, NPR, and the Guardian—frequently feature climate reporting. Targeted media organizations also remain hypervigilant on climate change, including Inside Climate News, Climate Nexus, ClimateWire, and GreenBiz, and blogs like DeSmog and Heated.⁴⁴ A slew of other outlets weigh in too.

Unfortunately, journalists can inadvertently minimize the oil and gas industry’s direct role in global warming. These outlets along with academic journals sparingly report on the specific climate problems stemming from oil and gas operations. Climate news tends to focus on consumer action, maybe because it is more relatable than supply-side oil and gas GHG emissions. For example, the media often conflates all consumers (including industrial consumers), citing that overall petroleum consumption accounts for the majority of oil and gas GHG emissions. This chiding suggests that citizens are most responsible for mitigating GHG levels from the petroleum sector. But this is misleading. Differentiating end users’ climate responsibilities, as detailed in Table 7.1, suggests that the world’s more than 1 billion motorists, on average, may account for less than 20 percent of total lifecycle emissions from a barrel of oil (and even less in a BOE of gas). That means the other 80 percent of GHGs are spread out among the oil and gas industry itself (supply-side GHGs), an array of industrial consumers, and the public at large.

The media could help other civil society actors understand that, like a game of Jenga, petroleum products cannot be pushed out, one by one, over time to get the world over its reliance on oil. Instead, displacing entire BOEs of oil and gas and replacing them with decarbonized alternatives requires a technically and economically feasible systems approach—featuring both supply-side and demand-side strategies. The media is well positioned to convey this information.

Monitoring and Reporting GHG Emissions

The constant flow of GHGs being pumped into the atmosphere risks serious environmental damage, much like a bathtub that is not draining. Monitoring emissions and their buildup has been improving over time. While industry-reported emissions were once the main source of data, other forms of global monitoring are increasingly the norm. Together, monitoring and reporting offer a powerful pair of tools for ensuring accountability.

Monitoring GHGs often involves civil society groups in partnership with government and industry actors. For example, a new NGO, Carbon Mapper, was established in 2021. This unique multi-stakeholder consortium consists of public (NASA-Jet Propulsion Lab and the California Air Resources Board), private (Planet), nonprofit (RMI), academic (University of Arizona), and philanthropic (High Tide Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies) partners and is on the cutting-edge of monitoring methane and carbon dioxide from oil and gas and other superemitting sources.⁴⁵ And in 2014, the Environmental Defense Fund launched the Methane Detectors Challenge, a multistakeholder partnership to enable oil and gas companies to detect and fix methane leaks in real time.⁴⁶ When civil society groups form coalitions—and invite industry and government partners to participate—there is a greater chance that innovative new practices will be implemented. Advanced technologies are no longer restricted to the deep pockets of industry leaders and governments. Civil society actors have at their disposal an increasing array of smart devices, including satellites, to undertake the next wave of technologically driven environmentalism.⁴⁷

Emissions reporting remains vital to solving the puzzle of climate change, and the validity of the data is important. Civil society depends on GHG emission inventories to benchmark progress and identify mitigation targets. Such oversight is so critical that the United Nations has published a public handbook on the subject.⁴⁸ Reported data, once verified and made public, can enable certification standards for differentiating oil and gas GHG emissions. Like in the cases of fair trade coffee or sustainable palm oil, certification standards set by NGOs—such as low-methane natural gas supplies⁴⁹—can be used in consumer advertising and by markets to monetize social impacts. Valuable emissions certificates for the oil and gas sector could also be traded alongside commodities themselves. Ultimately, this information could be used to identify the emissions intensities of consumer fuels to help consumers differentiate between more and less ecofriendly varieties of commodities like gasoline at the pump.

Tracking Climate Disclosure and Compliance

Assessment tools are important accountability benchmarks for gauging how well prepared corporations are for tackling climate change. Companies are continually updating their climate ambitions and disclosing their GHG emissions, but these findings are rarely presented on an equivalent, readily comparable basis. (The same concern applies to the nationally determined contributions [NDCs] that countries have put forth under the Paris Agreement).⁵⁰ Companies mix and match their GHG accounting methods, sometimes disclosing the emissions over which they have direct operational control and sometimes reporting the share of emissions that they directly profit from (regardless of operational control). Both of these measures are critical in assessing corporate accountability, and all companies in the oil and gas sector should be required to disclose both metrics in the future.⁵¹

One civil society group called the Transition Pathway Initiative (TPI), staffed by researchers at the London School of Economics, is undertaking side-by-side comparisons of corporate climate pledges and assessing whether these commitments are aligned with the Paris Agreement.⁵² As the public’s climate expectations rise, companies add in new elements and think in more long-term ways. For example, corporate disclosures are increasingly featuring Scope 3 emissions and 2050 targets. All companies need to go further. The TPI cannot substantiate current corporate claims of “net zero” emissions or alignment with the Paris Agreement’s targeted ceiling in temperature rises of 1.5 degrees Celsius. More transparent disclosure is required to help investors track companies’ progress.

High-quality management is a lead indicator for corporate climate leadership. The influence of CEOs who prioritize the global climate can help accountability trickle down both within their own companies and among their business partners. The TPI calls out ten steps that companies can take to increase the accountability of the oil and gas industry and help investors assess their climate progress. These steps include (1) adopting a standardized approach, (2) committing to “net zero” emissions, (3) incorporating all Scope 3 emissions, (4) clarifying carbon capture and storage (CCS) and their emissions’ offsets, (5) establishing total GHG as well as GHG per BOE targets, (6) detailing the role renewable sources play, (7) paying executives and employees who meet climate targets, (8) partnering with their industrial customers, (9) detailing Scope 3 targets, and (10) acknowledging climate change as a key management proposition.⁵³

Forming Coalitions

Very few deep-rooted societal problems can be fixed by any single actor alone. This is especially true for managing the powerful GHG methane. Progress on reducing methane emissions has been painfully slow. In the face of barriers, advocacy coalitions were formed. To cite one example, a collaborative organization called the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) is a civil society–led collection of public and private actors aimed at demonstrating and overseeing systematic reductions in methane emissions.⁵⁴ This task involves developing guiding principles across gas value chains, improving the accuracy of methane emissions data, advocating sound policies and regulations on methane emissions, and increasing industry transparency. Given that oil and gas are part of the energy resource mix that will shape the future, it is imperative to improve the accountability and environmental performance of key industry actors.⁵⁵

Likewise, the World Bank has been holding the oil sector accountable for its gas flaring, the 160-year-old wasteful practice of burning off unwanted gases throughout the petroleum supply chain. The World Bank’s Zero Routine Flaring by 2030 initiative, established in 2015, calls for gases to be reinjected, used onsite, or gathered and marketed. In 2019, Saudi Aramco endorsed the initiative, joining over eighty international oil companies (IOCs), national oil companies (NOCs), governments, and NGOs worldwide.⁵⁶ The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) government satellite, which visualizes flaring from space, has been instrumental for tracking progress and holding parties accountable.⁵⁷

Challenging on Legal Grounds

NGOs and other civil society actors frequently file lawsuits when environmental damage takes place or rules are rolled back or unenforced. Often concerns rest on whether the oil and gas industry has too much authority to determine its own project impacts and whether oil and gas firms are doing enough to protect the public. Civil society actors and activists routinely use the courts to hold the industry and regulators accountable and prevent future ecological and atmospheric damage, which is fundamental to environmentalism—litigation is “in their DNA.”⁵⁸ From blocking offshore drilling to challenging the Keystone XL Pipeline (discussed later), NGOs parlay scientific studies into evidence to hold polluters accountable.

Civil society actors in the United States and elsewhere are increasingly litigating petroleum companies’ contributions to global warming. Children,⁵⁹ fishermen and farmers,⁶⁰ philanthropists,⁶¹ and others have notably joined forces with states and cities to demand climate accountability through various courts.⁶² For example, in 2015, various civil society actors released reports claiming ExxonMobil knowingly misinformed the public about climate science.⁶³ In such instances, plaintiffs argue that companies should pay to repair infrastructure that suffers climate damages and incur renovation costs to bolster future climate protection out of the profits they reaped from taxpayers over the decades. And in 2019, seven environmental NGOs filed a lawsuit on behalf of 17,000 Dutch citizens against Shell on the grounds that the company is “threatening human rights” by aiding and abetting climate disasters. In 2021, the court ordered Shell to drastically reduce its GHG emissions.⁶⁴ These cases pitch the industry’s financial motives against civil society’s wellbeing and moral resolve.

Participating in Social Movements

When civil society actors strongly object to the actions of the public or private sector, they can assemble in protest.⁶⁵ At times, governments can undermine these efforts by force and other means.⁶⁶ For example, in 2020, at least three US states passed laws criminalizing protests against “critical” fossil fuel infrastructure.⁶⁷

Protesting the climate impact of the oil and gas industry is a global phenomenon. Petroleum infrastructure (pipelines and platforms) is a common flashpoint. So too is drilling, especially when newer techniques (like fracking) or fragile ecosystems (like the Arctic) are involved. Industry accidents precipitate outrage, as does the very existence of big oil companies, like ExxonMobil in the United States and Shell in Europe (the Netherlands).⁶⁸ Revealingly, a Google search of “oil and gas protest” returns some 50 million results.⁶⁹

Such activism, however, does not always involve gathering in person, blocking roads, hanging from bridges, or shrouding equipment with banners.⁷⁰ Recent campaigns are underway to empty the deep corporate pockets that otherwise invest in fossil fuels. These civil society–led efforts involve the divestment of various endowments and other funds that profit directly or indirectly off revenues generated by oil and other fossil fuels.

Blocking Infrastructure

Markets struggle to make a sound case for new oil and gas infrastructure because demand fluctuates, suppliers are wont to overbuild, and government oversight is often politicized. Projects are costly and involve multiple permits, making infrastructure an ideal target for civil society activists whose protests can delay, derail, or significantly alter industry plans.⁷¹ Success rests on tactics that reconcile with short- and long-term consumption patterns. As long as petroleum demand persists, all infrastructure cannot be endlessly blocked.

Take the case of the Keystone XL pipeline.⁷² By the late 2000s, US demand for oil sands was up and projected to triple or quadruple between 2009 and 2030.⁷³ But landlocked Alberta did not have enough pipeline capacity to get more of these unconventional hydrocarbons to market.⁷⁴ As industry actors sought permits to expand the pipeline, questions arose about what Alberta-based suppliers planned to put in the pipeline. Details about the unconventional oil that would flow through nearly a dozen US states along the pipeline’s route were sparse. Citing environmental concerns, the Obama administration blocked the pipeline as it signed the Paris Agreement because oil sands had higher GHG emissions and allowing them to flow into the United States would shift a share of Canada’s carbon burden to its southern neighbor.⁷⁵

Protests can delay the actions of industry players, but they can also have unintended (and sometimes harmful) consequences. In the case of Keystone XL, because pipeline capacity was lacking, diluted bitumen was exported by rail instead—a less safe and higher-emitting option.⁷⁶ In 2020, the Trump administration approved the Keystone XL pipeline just as demand for oil sands sank amid reduced mobility and shuttered economies during the lockdowns in response to the global coronavirus pandemic. The Trump administration’s regulatory greenlight was not a definitive all clear to move ahead.⁷⁷ In fact, President Biden changed course and cancelled Keystone XL, a reversal that many states are legally challenging.⁷⁸ Low oil prices do not foster increased oil sands production, which means that, even if it is eventually permitted, customers could be slow to fill the expansion in pipeline capacity—a temporary victory for Keystone XL protesters.⁷⁹ But infrastructure plans can be put on hold only for building to resume down the line, which makes it hard for protesters to claim certain victory.

Investment Movements

Because it is so apparent that money talks, civil society actors are increasingly using the power of their purses to exert influence over the oil and gas industry. Investment movements target financial actors such as banks, endowments, companies, and their shareholders. The bottom line is to apply normative and societal pressure to convince oil and gas firms and their investors to incorporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors into their investment decisions. Divestment campaigns that remove investment capital from oil and gas companies are a popular tactical climate investment strategy. Other options include impact investing to provide capital to ESG firms or stranding assets by devaluing them and converting them to worthless liabilities.⁸⁰

ESG-designated funds have been amassed with the idea of generating returns that are good for people and the planet. Since the Paris Agreement, various investors have made commitments to divest some $11 trillion in assets out of fossil fuels.⁸¹ Philanthropic organizations and universities are in various stages of divesting their endowments, but not all of these actors agree that oil and gas divestment is a workable strategy.⁸² Harvard University, for one, has been holding out and announced plans to decarbonize its investment portfolio.⁸³

It is worth noting that investors need transparency to get the results they desire. For example, when activist investors pressed Marathon Petroleum to reduce its GHG emissions, the refiner moved to spin off and sell its Speedway gas stations to international firms—a move that shifts responsibility to other actors but does not ultimately put fewer emissions into the atmosphere.⁸⁴ NGOs and philanthropic foundations leading the divestment charge can get caught up in the drawn-out process that takes years to completely overhaul an institution’s oil and gas investment holdings.⁸⁵ Although private actors—such as Bloomberg, Dow Jones, and others—have developed tools to track divestment efforts, detailed analyses are not publicly available or readily updated in a way that would provide constantly up-to-date scorecards economywide on the performance of the oil and gas sector.⁸⁶ This highlights the need for civil society actors to have access to open-source analytic tools like the OCI+ to assess different oil and gas assets’ GHG emissions in order to fine-tune their divestment and investment strategies.

Shareholder Activism

Each spring, publicly traded oil and gas companies hold annual meetings for their shareholders.⁸⁷ In the United States, investors owning shares worth at least $2,000 can offer a company resolution, as long as it follows guidelines issued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.⁸⁸ (The bar for such resolutions is lower in Europe, where regulators cannot prohibit the placement of shareholder resolutions.) As an alternative to divestment, some investors are pursuing resolutions to press companies to lower their climate risks.⁸⁹

Over the past couple of decades, shareholder resolutions have increasingly focused on climate accountability and risks. Coalitions of institutional investors are forming. For example, Climate Action 100+ (a bloc whose more than 450 investors collectively manage over $40 trillion in assets) is driving climate action through direct engagement with corporations.⁹⁰ And Ceres, a US NGO that participates in Climate Action 100+, tracks shareholder resolutions filed by members of their investor network in a comprehensive database.⁹¹ Some hedge funds are getting involved too. In 2019, TCI vowed to vote in opposition to corporate climate resolutions when companies do not reveal their emissions levels.⁹² And in 2021, an activist investor voted its shares to successfully insert grassroots activists onto ExxonMobil’s board.⁹³

European oil and gas majors have been more responsive to shareholder pressure than their American counterparts.⁹⁴ In 2018, Shell’s shareholders persuaded the company to pledge emissions reductions from the products it sells. Likewise, BP’s shareholders voted to require the company to align its policies with the Paris Agreement. One of the best uses of shareholder resolutions is to broadly require corporate data transparency from companies that are notoriously opaque about their current practices and future plans. Disclosing details about oil and gas assets under development relates directly to projected GHG emissions and helps assess whether a company may (or may not) be profitable under future climate policymaking scenarios.

Mentoring Youth Activists

Intergenerational issues with existential risks, like climate change, are lightning rods for young activists who are concerned about the condition of the world they will inherit.⁹⁵ Many young people are fed up with the status quo. In a recent US national poll, two out of three teenagers surveyed said that the oil and gas industry causes problems rather than solves them.⁹⁶ They want action. The prominent Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, for example, famously initiated a “school strike for climate” and sailed from Stockholm to New York to address a 2019 UN Climate Conference.⁹⁷ Thunberg wants governments and businesses around the world to move faster to cut carbon emissions.

Such bold goals require serious educated thought, as showcased at Oxford University in February 2020. Students occupied the bursar’s office and demanded that the college immediately divest its shares in oil and gas companies. In response, the bursar made the students a counteroffer saying that, while he could not arrange any divestment at short notice, he could immediately arrange to shut off the college’s gas-powered central heating. The counteroffer concluded with the line “please let me know if you support this proposal.”⁹⁸ Certainly, the bursar was being provocative. But he was also instructing the students to think clearly when he explained, “It is all too easy to request others to do things that carry no personal cost to yourself.”⁹⁹ This experience was hopefully a wake-up call that may encourage such students to become highly educated about the complexities of oil and gas, especially supply-side dynamics, and labor judiciously to change the course of this mighty sector.

Likewise, Harvard College has engaged with students and faculty over a workable path to achieve net-zero GHG emissions. When some students and faculty members demanded that Harvard divest its $40 billion endowment from fossil fuel holdings,¹⁰⁰ university management countered with its preference to deploy the university’s unique strengths—teaching, research, and operations—to “prepare for and accelerate the necessary transition to a fossil fuel-free economy.”¹⁰¹ In 2020, Harvard embarked on a five-year transition to enhance its investment portfolio’s transparency and produce comprehensive data and methodologies to assess its own lifecycle carbon footprint. This effort is not unlike a country’s preparation of an NDC under the Paris Agreement. Harvard’s success in developing a credible climate plan, one that openly and durably supports net-zero emissions, will help guide other civil society actors as well as countries around the world. A deep understanding of oil and gas markets—and why altering the supply side is more crucial in the short term than cutting demand—will be crucial as young people assume future leadership responsibilities in private companies, government posts, and civil society organizations.

Coordinating Civil Society

The varying skill sets of different civil society actors are well suited to different approaches. Some require more knowledge and others require more action to reach their ends. Connecting these various levers offers a multipronged approach, as shown in Figure 7.2. Using the OCI+ as an example, academics and think tanks deeply study the oil and gas industry’s GHG emissions to develop new models and solutions. These data in turn make their way into news stories as journalists report on a given model’s findings, creating the need for greater accountability. NGOs then read these reports, write their own reports, and advocate public and private decision makers to increase the industry’s transparency, alter its behavior, and make new rules. And protesters assemble, as the yellow vests have in Paris, to weigh in and apply pressure for systematic change.

FIGURE 7.2 Civil Society Coordination by Levers, Actors, and Capacities

Note: The central civil society actors that tend to lead in each capacity are bolded. NGOs, nongovernmental organizations. Source: Author’s assessment.

Strengthening Civil Society

The forte of civil society is its massive size, underpinned by billions of citizens worldwide who are free to unite. Unlike industry, these actors are not bound by trade secrets and antitrust measures. Unlike governments, they are not wedded to certain leaders and bound by procedural red tape. When NGO activists, professors, media mavens, and philanthropists band together, civil society can be formidable. This hive approach injects a mighty force that can overpower the private sector and government interests that ordinarily dominate decision making in the oil and gas industry.

Still, there are limits to civil society’s capabilities that must be addressed for civic actors to be highly effective. Attending to their weaknesses can make civil society actors stronger, especially as they look to be engaged on climate issues over the long haul. More intellectual honesty is needed about the massive size of the task ahead. If fossil fuel substitutions were as simple as many civil society actors profess, then the world would have been off petroleum decades ago. And if companies could transition as readily as civil society actors claim, these enterprises would have moved beyond petroleum already. Civic actors should continue to hold governments and companies to high standards, but they must also readily acknowledge that the task is a long-term one that offers few quick or easy fixes.

Herding Cats

Managing civil society actors and channeling their energy in productive ways is notoriously challenging.¹⁰² This unenviable task can be likened to herding cats. However, successfully mitigating the oil and gas sector’s climate impacts requires civil society actors to be highly disciplined, organized, and coordinated. Instead, many of these actors struggle to gauge success, shed staff, and fundamentally reshape themselves when necessary. Studies find that successful civil society engagement on climate change and corporate social responsibility depends on constantly improving institutional design and capacity.¹⁰³ The better civil society balances clear goals with institutional diversity, innovation, and evolution, the more likely these civic actors are to ultimately succeed.¹⁰⁴

Avoiding Fads

As vital as the work of activists and nonprofits is, the world has a limited attention span and limited funds for underwriting the large number of civil society actors that are active worldwide. The good news is that civil society invites participation, much of it voluntary (though reliance on volunteers can contribute to the coordination challenges of herding proverbial cats as discussed earlier).

On any day of the week, a new protest is waged, a new NGO coalition forms, a new academic study is released, or a new media story is published. This eagerness to act sets up a fierce competition for bandwidth and money. One civic organization’s relentless push to grab attention and pull purse strings, whether those of philanthropic foundations, government agencies, private companies, or ordinary citizens, can sideline others’ efforts. The desire to chase bright and shiny objects or new, momentarily trendy fads can subvert real solutions. The climate-forcing capacities of the oil and gas supplies that simultaneously underpin the world economy require nuts-and-bolts systematic approaches to craft enduring change.

Capturing Co-benefits

Whether the societal problem activists are combating is deadly air pollution, abject poverty, police brutality and discrimination against racial minorities, or other forms of social injustice, many climate activists resist embracing other real-world issues.¹⁰⁵ Nevertheless, there is (or can be) intersectionality between climate change and other societal concerns, and looking for solutions with multiple benefits can reduce barriers to change. According to the IPCC, such climate mitigation “co-benefits” can involve “the mitigation of air-pollution impacts, energy-supply security (by increased [clean] energy diversity), technological innovation, reduced fuel cost, employment and reducing urban migration.”¹⁰⁶ This is especially true in the case of methane, which is both a potent GHG as well as an air pollutant that sickens people and shortens lives. The United Nations highlighted these co-benefits for reducing methane in a hallmark 2021 report.¹⁰⁷

Climate advocates should not focus too narrowly on the energy policy of climate change, because their success is deeply tied to addressing other societal inequities.¹⁰⁸ For instance, the world will have a hard time addressing climate change until climate-minded activists acknowledge that the burden of curbing GHG emissions cannot fall disproportionately on already poor and marginalized populations who may have less latitude to shoulder the costs of greener energy solutions. Civil society actors cannot afford to be focused too narrowly on climate advocacy as if no other social ills matter. This is especially critical in the Global South where elevated risks of premature deaths from air pollution and energy insecurity compound other forms of destruction from climate change. With tailored regional inputs, the OCI+ can be adapted to model co-benefits like air and water pollution.

The Trappings of Membership Groups

Earth Day commemorations in 1970 rallied tens of millions of citizens and boosted membership in environmental groups worldwide. Civil society groups surged in size by nearly 40 percent between 1969 and 1972, many of them operating via memberships.¹⁰⁹ When individuals participate in these ways, they pay dues and provide opinions. While membership-based NGOs offer democratic governance, this organizing model can come with less advantageous trappings, especially as their agendas increase in complexity and require greater strategic thinking. Studies show that, when civil society organizations reach a certain size, the ability of their members to shape the NGO diminishes as they invest in professional expertise to carry out their work.¹¹⁰ The more technical the issue (such as modeling lifecycle GHG emissions in the oil and gas sector), the more general memberships in civil society groups can be a hindrance rather than a conduit to knowledge. For civil society to carve out climate positions and set goals for the oil and gas sector, such groups must complement nonexpert, action-oriented individuals with technically trained staff.¹¹¹

New Knowledge for Civil Society Actors

It is an uncontested fact that burning fossil fuels injects GHGs into the atmosphere, emissions that build up, blanket the earth, and increase its temperatures. Scientists have known this for centuries, and policymakers have wrestled with a response for decades. Industry actors continue to manufacture and market climate-forcing oil and gas commodities. Civil society actors are trying to stop them, while also pressuring governments to act.

Yet the planet itself will be the final arbiter of how much ecological damage is too much. Since this is hard for the public to adjudicate, it means that civil society’s job is never done. The bad news is that civil society actors have no sure way to strand oil and gas and permanently keep the carbon such resources generate in the ground despite the harm they cause.¹¹² They also cannot make laws or change industry operations of their own accord. Nor can they credibly generate an actual red line—a demand that industry actors may not cross: the point of no return is up to Mother Nature herself.

The good news is that civil society actors have sheer numbers and dogged resolve in their corner. Moral suasion is on their side. And, if they so choose, the full complement of these actors, forming broad alliances, can embolden civic activism.¹¹³

However, civil society actors must be extremely careful not to impose more harm than good when using their full arsenal. For example, those promoting low-carbon biofuels can inadvertently cause destruction of forests that exacerbates climate change and create food insecurity. And past efforts to shift to more fuel-efficient diesel cars led to an increase in air pollution that indirectly results in more climate forcing. Such trade-offs are not uncommon.

As such, one thing civil society needs more of is information. Their effectiveness ultimately rests on knowledge about facts that are constantly changing. This is certainly the case regarding the dynamic global structures and natural and manmade systems that both climate change and oil and gas markets operate within.

Open-source, user-based tools like the OCI+ are at civil society’s full disposal. Eliciting more oil and gas data transparency, NGOs and others can help facilitate model updates and expansions. Such progress can provide civil society actors with more forward-looking information in a virtuous cycle.

In the meantime, what we are doing now is not working. The oil and gas industry, with its large and variable climate footprints, still dominates global energy supplies. The oil and gas industry experiments on the atmosphere with each pound of carbon dioxide, methane, and other GHGs that it emits. Civil society actors counter by experimenting with oil and gas markets each time they propose changes to the petroleum sector. Ultimately, it will fall to governments to judge how to balance private interests with public goods. With these challenges in mind, we must construct a plan. This task is covered in the book’s next, and final, chapter.