Top Podcast Propagandists Attack Renewables With Fossil Fueled Talking Points  

Whether it’s during the game, down at the bar or while walking through nature, we all should try to be that one friend that brings up politics in unexpected venues, because just because you ignore politics, doesn’t mean politics will ignore you. 

The opposition to climate action has been doing this for years, having spent millions on developing and promoting podcasts and online shows. According to a Media Matters analysis, in the U.S., the seemingly apolitical world of podcasting has become a hotbed of propaganda and disinformation.

Right-wing podcasts now dominate the space, boasting five times as many subscribers as left-leaning ones, not necessarily because they are more popular, but because they are heavily promoted. Billionaires and polluters have poured millions  into developing the digital infrastructure needed to push narratives that protect their profits, as CAAD’s Communications co-chair Phil Newell explained during a recent Yale Climate Connections panel. (Let us know if you’d like to see the full 50-minute CAAD training for info integrity practitioners!) 

Speaking of Yale Climate Connections, last month they confirmed climate misinformation on eight of the ten of the podcasts, and Media Matters' own follow-up found even more extreme weather disinfo coming from the same group. Recognizing this as  a rich vein of disinformation, CAAD extended its investigation into Youtube channels, searching out renewable energy falsehoods.  The results were striking, as the climate disinfo machine has been running in overdrive.

WHAT WE FOUND

Seven of the top 10 right-wing podcasts broadcast clean energy disinformation since the start of 2024, with five directly attacking renewables. 

Below are examples with the most views on YouTube from each podcast. We include the episode title and timestamp on Youtube. In order to not encourage further views of disinformation, we are not sharing the direct URL.

In The Joe Rogan Experience, episode 2,229, at 70 minutes and 35 seconds, Rogan taps into the conspiracy theory alleging that renewables are just a way for the rich to get richer (despite the fact that fossil fuel magnates have used disinformation subsidies to spread the idea that renewables are a scam for the rich) by saying: 🤡 What it really is, is money. They’re not ever doing anything for you, ever.🤡

Even though renewable energy is cheaper than fossil fuels, even without factoring in the massive cost of carbon pollution, and even without subsidies further lowering costs, in Ben Shapiro, episode 1,965, at 20 minutes and 38 seconds, Shapiro lies about electric vehicles being more expensive to recharge now than a gas vehicle: 🤡 Thanks to the government’s force-fed renewable transition, which is raising electricity prices🤡

In Jordan Peterson’s 537th episode, at 42 minutes and 2 seconds, Peterson refers to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s 🤡 promised new magical utopia of renewable jobs 🤡 and goes on to associate that with Germany’s green energy program, where they actually can’t find enough skilled workers to fill all the green energy jobs, which have doubled in number since 2019, to 373,500. 

Peterson appears in Charlie Kirk’s episode “My Life Story: With Dr. Jordan Peterson” where Kirk neither corrects nor questions Peterson’s very similar claims about Germany’s energy policy at 28 minutes 29 seconds. This is the kind of disinfo narrative even Germany’s Federal Foreign Office has publicly corrected. 

At 9 minutes 48 seconds of alleged rapist Russell Brand’s video “What they’re not telling you about the blackouts”, Brand lends credibility to the false claim that the Iberian blackout was caused by an excess of renewables. He also promotes UFO-believer Michael Shellenberger’s same day newsletter, which was one of the main spreaders of the disinformation on renewables surrounding the blackout. (please note we use clown emoji's to remind the reader that what they are reading is climate disinformation)

Candace Owens, at 15 minutes and 2 seconds of episode 136, right after joking about Trump’s Executive Order attacking trans rights, calls people 🤡dumb🤡 for 🤡believing🤡 that 🤡 giving taxes and money to the government is going to change the temperature 🤡.

Fun fact: 28 Nobel Laureate Economists are among many economic experts who have endorsed putting a price on carbon. How many Nobels does Owens have? We haven’t read the book on her, but we’re pretty sure it’s zero… 

Finally, Tucker Carlson, having departed from FoxNews amid allegations of sexism and harassment, is now hosting a podcast. At 34 minutes and 30 seconds of the episode “Luke Gromen: Why the CIA Doesn’t Want You Owning Gold, & Is Fort Knox Lying About Our Gold Reserve?” Carlson calls renewable technology 🤡 pretty shockingly lame really… absurd…not moving crazy fast at all 🤡  despite the fact that 92.5% of the new energy installed last year was renewable, with the growth breaking a record in 2024 that it also broke in 2023, when we got on track to build enough renewable energy worldwide by 2028 to cover the entire electricity demand of the US and Canada. 

These podcasts are registered as comedy, culture, society, and philosophy, with the exception of Tucker Carlson (with no category, and listed as News on Apple).

We did not find such misinformation on renewables in any of the videos we reviewed of comedian Theo Von (a comedian who has had Niel DeGrasse Tyson on to talk about climate change), the Trump-friendly Full Send Podcast, or Dr. Phil (of Oprah fame). 

FUNDED BY FOSSIL FUELS

Some of these shows that feature climate disinformation are funded by far-right billionaires who made their fortunes on fossil fuels: 

• Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson are both beneficiaries of millions of dollars from the Wilks brothers, a pair of Texas frackers who gave $10 million to PragerU and the DailyWire, which employs Shapiro and Peterson. 

• Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens have both been boosted by Big Oil via the Turning Points USA group Kirk founded, before becoming known for diaper stunts, racism, and Owens’ public suggestion that it would’ve been “fine” had Adolf Hitler simply “wanted to make Germany great” and not invaded other countries as part of The Holocaust.

WHAT NOW?

Uptake on renewables must triple by the end of 2030, but persistent misrepresentation makes this goal challenging. We need to confront the “energy privilege” of anti-renewable NIMBYs and expose the threat that the industrial spread of disinformation poses to keeping us safe from climate change. Swift action is essential to clean up the information environment. 

But clean tech companies do have their role too. The most effective way to short-circuit a disinfo-driven opposition is with community benefits agreements where companies deliver tangible improvements to local areas. Or we could go one step further, with public power. Cut out the corporate profits all together, and build power for the people, by the people,  as seen in Austria’s pioneering energy communities law under the Renewable Energy Expansion Act (EAG),  which has already enabled over 1,600 communities to collectively generate and share clean energy.

In the meantime, Big Tech is going to continue broadcasting bogus claims. For example, a new report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate found that the bankrupt-due-to-his-lies conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s baseless claims on X that the LA wildfires were a globalist (aka Jewish) plot, was distributed to 408 million users, more than the combined reach of posts about the fires from ten news outlets, and ten emergency organizations like FEMA. 

“While families mourned and first responders combed through wreckage after climate disasters in Texas and California, social media companies shamelessly exploited these catastrophes for profit. The rapid spread of climate conspiracies online isn’t accidental, it’s baked into a business model that profits from outrage and division. When distraught people can’t distinguish real help from online deception, platforms become complicit in the suffering of innocent people.” Imran Ahmed, CEO of CCDH, told DeSmog. 

ROAD TO BELEM 

• A false claim about “5,000 stalled projects” helped push through Brazil’s most sweeping environmental rollback in 40 years. Backed by disinformation and passed on Forest Protection Day, the so-called “Devastation Bill” weakens licensing and oversight. Read how this narrative took hold and what it means for climate integrity in Brazil in the latest issue of the Oii newsletter. 

IN OTHER NEWS

Info Integrity is on the COP agenda for the first time! The Brazilian COP30 Presidency held a session on climate disinformation at the last UNFCCC meeting in Bonn, once again reaffirming information integrity as a core COP30 issue, and laying the groundwork for four countries to join Brazil in a joint agreement to counter disinformation.

Amy Westervelt’s 5 fossil fables made the rounds this month, showing how uncreative you can be when you have infinite money to promote your lies. That said, the disinfo world has been growing in recent years, as Westervelt’s latest podcast catalogs: check out Carbon Bros, launched July 25th! 

Canadian wildfire disinformation showed once again that the US is still exporting climate disinformation, this time to its northern neighbor, where conspiracy theories spread like the wildfires they were lying about for clout. Read more about CAAD’s analysis, including quotes from CAAD’s Michael Khoo in Canada’s National Observer.

UN Rapp’r called for criminalizing climate disinfo as part of the work required to defossilize knowledge, and then defossilize economies. UN special rapporteur on human rights and climate change Elisa Morgera’s latest report lays out why we need to do more than just fact check the professional liars blocking climate action, and you can read more about it in the Guardian and Common Dreams. 

Only got a couple minutes? No worries, that’s all you need, to listen to a pair of radio-syndicated stories from Yale’s Project on Climate Change Communications, featuring CAAD’s communications co-chair talking about how to make a “truth sandwich” to fight climate disinfo, and then explaining how simply talking about climate policy often, like it’s popular, which it is, is a climate disinfo solution.

If you have any investigative leads CAAD should explore, want to find out more about our research and intel, or interview one of our members, please email contact@caad.info.

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