The Oil Industry Is Helping to Spread Misinfo About Whale Deaths
“Beyond Dark Money,” published in Energy and Social Science in November, clarified the complicated status of these groups, which aren’t simply astroturf fronts for corporate interests, nor are they purely grassroots efforts. The researchers found that that groups in southern New England opposing offshore wind were supported extensively by what the researchers called “information subsidies” from the fossil fuel industry. That means that the industry and its think tanks provide the groups with false narratives, misleading facts, and fake experts. These relationships have helped broaden the coalition opposing wind energy to include people concerned about the environment, and many other citizens who wouldn’t normally find common ground with the fossil fuel industry.
“Wind power kills whales” is one of the fake stories generated by this network. One of the groups mentioned in the report, Save Right Whales, founded in 2021, warns on its homepage, “They survived whaling, but right whales won’t survive wind energy.” On its homepage, Save Right Whales doesn’t mention any other threat to whales, other than wind energy.
Yet there isn’t even a grain of truth to the alleged wind-whale connection: According to NOAA, the increase in whale deaths has a number of other causes, mainly an increase in collision with boats and entanglement in fishing nets. Ironically, this problem stems from two key players in the anti-wind coalition mapped by this new study: the fishing industry and of course, the fossil fuel industry itself. Some of these problems are related to climate change; some whales are feeding closer to shore as the warming of the ocean has led to changes in their food sources, putting them perilously close to human activities that can harm them.
