The Switch Energy Alliance markets its free classroom materials as “objective.” But they are backed by the fossil fuel industry, a HEATED investigation shows.
I feel super lucky to have been following Emily Atkin and HEATED for years, and stories like this are exactly why.
As the father of two young daughters, I want schools helping kids build critical thinking skills, not quietly steering them toward a predetermined conclusion.
The part that bothers me most isn’t that oil and gas are discussed. Any honest look at human progress has to acknowledge the enormous role fossil fuels have played in building the modern world. The problem is when industry-funded materials present themselves as objective while leaving out key context, minimizing tradeoffs, or obscuring who is paying the bills.
That’s not education. That’s influence.
And unfortunately, this isn’t new. Industries have been trying to shape public opinion through classrooms, advertising, and public relations for generations. The tactics evolve, but the playbook is familiar.
What gives me hope is that today’s students are smart. Give them the evidence. Give them competing viewpoints. Teach them how to evaluate sources, incentives, and claims. Let them wrestle with complexity.
The future my daughters inherit will require nuance, systems thinking, and the ability to hold multiple truths at the same time. We don’t need curated narratives. We need transparency.
Thanks for continuing to shine a light on stories that many of us would never otherwise see.
There's plenty more of this sort of "sneak" messaging, not to mention direct and dark money influence peddling and lobbying. Emily's article sent me to Gemini with the query: "What organizations, scholars, researchers, and individuals investigate the money being spent in the U.S. by the fossil fuel industries on educational programs, reports, "grassroot" organizations, and political actors and law makers at every level?" I followed up with another clarifying query. I'm working on checking further and cleaning the results up and send it on to Emily, not that much of it will be news to her (she's listed under "Investigative Journalism Outlets").
This should be on everyone’s radar screen. Big Oil is designing teaching modules for several states, including Louisiana (where I live) whose coasts have been destroyed by the industry. We need a countereffort to help schools strapped for resources, one that delivers sound science to the classroom.
"Coach Juneau, can we get our CO2?" Ava Bourg, 14, asked.
Her group's first try sprung a leak of the representative CO2, which was in reality orange vegetable oil. But Bourg and her classmates were ready to try again after Trenton Nash's careful handiwork using Play-Doh to try to plug it.
In the waning days of the recently ended school year, the Dutchtown Middle School students in Ascension Parish were finishing a four-day lesson about climate change, carbon dioxide, and carbon capture and sequestration. About 1,700 eighth graders in nine Ascension Parish middle schools received these lessons through a curriculum developed by Rice University's Tapia Center.
It was another sign of industry's attempts to improve understanding and acceptance of the new technology, which supporters view as vital to Louisiana's economic future.
Not everyone is convinced. Critics point to ExxonMobil's funding for the school program while arguing that it downplays controversy surrounding carbon capture. They view it as seeking to instill an industry point-of-view. . . "
Land lines were completely embedded in our personal, business and community lives--until they weren't.
Horses were an integral part of every family, business and city infrastructure-until they weren't.
Daily newspapers and network news were an essential part of our country's communication infrastructure, including the business world--until they weren't.
Film photography was an essential part of bringing us photojournalism--until it disappeared.
I could go on and on, but you get the point. Big gas wants us to stick around to preserve their ROI in their gas infrastructure investments and executive salaries in the same way carriage makers, manure pick up services, copper line utility workers, film manufacturers, printers and ink companies defended their professions even though the writing is on the wall, so to speak. All of those professions have disappeared and somehow folks adapted--keeping us hostage to a technology that is strangling the planet is no longer an option. That's the message that kids need to be taught these days!
I really can't stand that Tinker guy! He seems to be everywhere.
One impression I have is that he is filling a vacuum on climate solutions/energy transition education that's been created by an atmosphere of fear in the schools regarding any seeming promotion of wind & solar in particular. Reasonably good education on climate physics and greenhouse effect, a fair bit on ill effects of global heating. Lots and lots of education on endangered species, toxins and pollution, soil/farm loss, resource limits, etc.
A guy here who uses remote-controlled micro EVs to teach STEM, told me, "My students know about every threatened species, but nothing about energy."
Lots of "environmentalists" of all ages have bought into the exaggerated "problems with wind, solar, batteries, EVs, etc." A climate educator mentioned to me that resource consumption of wind & solar "wasn't considered." Wait, what! How 'bout the 100s or 1000s of deep dive studies, whitepapers, looking at every aspect of "life-cycle analysis." Which show renewables keep progressing to reduced materials (esp. toxins) and carbon content. To the point that new wind turbines can pay back embodied carbon against coal electricity in 6 months, solar in a 10 months, less in the desert near me. Sure somewhere sealed up inside are some tiny quantities of something that's "toxic" or was "extracted" with some "abuses" of some people, land, critters... But if that's a major criteria, folks need to be freaking out about their coffee, cocoa, cotton and a whole lot more.
I find it so reprehensible that someone like Tinker would use his credentials as a geologist to advance this gas industry BS. That PBS is helping amplify his message with his own talk show is likewise sickening. Good on "Helen" for smelling a rat.
I feel super lucky to have been following Emily Atkin and HEATED for years, and stories like this are exactly why.
As the father of two young daughters, I want schools helping kids build critical thinking skills, not quietly steering them toward a predetermined conclusion.
The part that bothers me most isn’t that oil and gas are discussed. Any honest look at human progress has to acknowledge the enormous role fossil fuels have played in building the modern world. The problem is when industry-funded materials present themselves as objective while leaving out key context, minimizing tradeoffs, or obscuring who is paying the bills.
That’s not education. That’s influence.
And unfortunately, this isn’t new. Industries have been trying to shape public opinion through classrooms, advertising, and public relations for generations. The tactics evolve, but the playbook is familiar.
What gives me hope is that today’s students are smart. Give them the evidence. Give them competing viewpoints. Teach them how to evaluate sources, incentives, and claims. Let them wrestle with complexity.
The future my daughters inherit will require nuance, systems thinking, and the ability to hold multiple truths at the same time. We don’t need curated narratives. We need transparency.
Thanks for continuing to shine a light on stories that many of us would never otherwise see.
Appreciate you Adam!
There's plenty more of this sort of "sneak" messaging, not to mention direct and dark money influence peddling and lobbying. Emily's article sent me to Gemini with the query: "What organizations, scholars, researchers, and individuals investigate the money being spent in the U.S. by the fossil fuel industries on educational programs, reports, "grassroot" organizations, and political actors and law makers at every level?" I followed up with another clarifying query. I'm working on checking further and cleaning the results up and send it on to Emily, not that much of it will be news to her (she's listed under "Investigative Journalism Outlets").
This should be on everyone’s radar screen. Big Oil is designing teaching modules for several states, including Louisiana (where I live) whose coasts have been destroyed by the industry. We need a countereffort to help schools strapped for resources, one that delivers sound science to the classroom.
Interesting, can you point me to those?
There was a recent piece in the New Orleans Times Pic. It’s behind a paywall, but here’s the intro text: "A group of eighth graders in Heath Juneau's science class were on their second attempt at an unusual experiment: injecting liquid https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/business/louisiana-carbon-capture-environment-emissions/article_70ff6b96-b481-4830-9362-89849abc860b.html — or at least a classroom model of that process.
"Coach Juneau, can we get our CO2?" Ava Bourg, 14, asked.
Her group's first try sprung a leak of the representative CO2, which was in reality orange vegetable oil. But Bourg and her classmates were ready to try again after Trenton Nash's careful handiwork using Play-Doh to try to plug it.
In the waning days of the recently ended school year, the Dutchtown Middle School students in Ascension Parish were finishing a four-day lesson about climate change, carbon dioxide, and carbon capture and sequestration. About 1,700 eighth graders in nine Ascension Parish middle schools received these lessons through a curriculum developed by Rice University's Tapia Center.
It was another sign of industry's attempts to improve understanding and acceptance of the new technology, which supporters view as vital to Louisiana's economic future.
Not everyone is convinced. Critics point to ExxonMobil's funding for the school program while arguing that it downplays controversy surrounding carbon capture. They view it as seeking to instill an industry point-of-view. . . "
Thank you!
No pay wall version: https://www.govtech.com/education/k-12/exxonmobil-program-teaches-middle-schoolers-about-carbon-capture
Here’s the link https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/business/louisiana-carbon-capture-exxon-education-climate-ascension-parish/article_8d1b1765-a02c-40c7-a1ae-289517ef45ed.html
Land lines were completely embedded in our personal, business and community lives--until they weren't.
Horses were an integral part of every family, business and city infrastructure-until they weren't.
Daily newspapers and network news were an essential part of our country's communication infrastructure, including the business world--until they weren't.
Film photography was an essential part of bringing us photojournalism--until it disappeared.
I could go on and on, but you get the point. Big gas wants us to stick around to preserve their ROI in their gas infrastructure investments and executive salaries in the same way carriage makers, manure pick up services, copper line utility workers, film manufacturers, printers and ink companies defended their professions even though the writing is on the wall, so to speak. All of those professions have disappeared and somehow folks adapted--keeping us hostage to a technology that is strangling the planet is no longer an option. That's the message that kids need to be taught these days!
I really can't stand that Tinker guy! He seems to be everywhere.
One impression I have is that he is filling a vacuum on climate solutions/energy transition education that's been created by an atmosphere of fear in the schools regarding any seeming promotion of wind & solar in particular. Reasonably good education on climate physics and greenhouse effect, a fair bit on ill effects of global heating. Lots and lots of education on endangered species, toxins and pollution, soil/farm loss, resource limits, etc.
A guy here who uses remote-controlled micro EVs to teach STEM, told me, "My students know about every threatened species, but nothing about energy."
Lots of "environmentalists" of all ages have bought into the exaggerated "problems with wind, solar, batteries, EVs, etc." A climate educator mentioned to me that resource consumption of wind & solar "wasn't considered." Wait, what! How 'bout the 100s or 1000s of deep dive studies, whitepapers, looking at every aspect of "life-cycle analysis." Which show renewables keep progressing to reduced materials (esp. toxins) and carbon content. To the point that new wind turbines can pay back embodied carbon against coal electricity in 6 months, solar in a 10 months, less in the desert near me. Sure somewhere sealed up inside are some tiny quantities of something that's "toxic" or was "extracted" with some "abuses" of some people, land, critters... But if that's a major criteria, folks need to be freaking out about their coffee, cocoa, cotton and a whole lot more.
I find it so reprehensible that someone like Tinker would use his credentials as a geologist to advance this gas industry BS. That PBS is helping amplify his message with his own talk show is likewise sickening. Good on "Helen" for smelling a rat.