Human rights activists are looking for groups that work with the people to produce green oil

Duncan Meisel used to help climate change advocates tell their stories, as a consultant liaising with environmentalists trying to convince people that the oil and gas industry needed to change to avoid climate change. He is now forcing consultants to create corporate communications.

Saints Creatives, the team that Meisel helped to find, is at the forefront of a new approach to environmental sustainability: targeting consultants who, as human rights activists say, are helping more oil companies continue to pollute and reduce government action by disrupting climate change.

Last September, Clean Creatives published “F-List”Of advertising and affiliated groups accused of spreading“ fake lies ”on behalf of their clients.

On Friday, one of the groups responded: Edelman, whose work with big oil companies like ExxonMobil helped to become the largest PR group in the world, adopted new ideas for working with “high-pressure” customers.

A review of his work found “anonymous examples of us,” Richard Edelman, chief executive of the company, told the Financial Times: “Our findings were inconclusive.”

If Edelman could not “understand” what customers promise at the moment, we would “leave the company”, he said. However, so far there were no customers.

Edelman has partnered with international advertising groups such as WPP and Dentsu on a series produced by Clean Creatives, which has attracted 220 small organizations to swear off combustion oil projects. The Australian campaign, Comms Declare, also encourages communication professionals to “choose your clients based on the weather”.

After highlighting the FTI Consulting campaign for oil companies surprised some customers by 2020, some affiliated companies are openly acknowledging the threat it poses. August is over, WPP said one of the “upcoming risks” facing was “a growing number of risk profiles related to short-term client-operational shortcomings and / or misrepresentation of environmental claims”.

Some corporate consultants are facing similar pressure from outside campaigns, from their employees and from generations of potential employers.

Last year, a letter from more than 1,100 employees of McKinsey said the “inaction of (or possibly supportive)” customer releases poses a risk to its reputation and potential for hiring.

A group of law students at the Ivy League, meanwhile, is calling on law firms to stop standing Client oil companies, and launched a campaign to boycott Gibson Dunn based in Los Angeles over his electrical career.

These approaches are similar to those of environmentalists who target economists and banks in the hope that the people who produce the most money are starving. Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online.

The growing interest of clients in the consolidation of increased financial advisors in recent years, has also exposed them to being accused of fraud.

“If you have a stable team working on one thing and another working to improve oil that seems suspicious,” said Katharine Wilkinson, a meteorologist and former author of the Boston Consulting Group.

Advisers such as Capgemini criticize the difference, however, arguing that they could be more effective in promoting greenhouse gas emissions for companies that currently produce greenhouse gases.

“Like it or not, there is no way to provide a reduction in emissions without working with the industry to change quickly,” said Bob Sternfels, McKinsey’s global monitoring partner, in an advertisement published after his staff letter was released.

“We need to be in the operating room. Those companies will be one of those that need a lot of support,” Edelman said.

Wilkinson called this an “understatement” because both companies have been involved. . . and this did not go well ”.

Two soon papers Author Robert Brulle, a visiting professor at Brown University, described PR companies as “the best in the organization.[s] in climate change “and affirmed that the advertising of oil companies” is a great way to change the issues of the environment “.

Just as human rights activists were criticizing the role of such counselors, Brulle told FT, so were law enforcement officials and supervisors.

The U.S. House Committee on September last year asked ExxonMobil and other oil companies to find out more about their connections with advertisers and PR-related companies as part of a review of what they called their long-running campaign to “disseminate disinformation about the fuel sector in global warming”.

The UK Competition and Markets Authority has, in the meantime, launched a “greenwashing” investigation, challenging the baseless claims.

Advisors like Edelman did not work for the tobacco industry for many years, but a new study of their oil industry did not lead them to reject these companies. Facilitators like Wilkinson believe that pressure from their staff can change this.

Participants have long overlooked the role of mentors, he said, but now understand them as “a great source of talent, expertise and skill that helps keep the oil business afloat….” well. ”

America’s biggest losers and its major PR companies and advertisers have “grown together”, said Melissa Aronczyk, co-author of the new book. book which describes how PR consultants since the 1960s helped corrupt companies convince people that they had “legitimate words in [environmental] negotiation ”.

Aronczyk, who has worked in the advertising industry, recalled that his generation ignored the opposition in representing such customers “because we were very happy with the creative work we were doing”. The next generation is now at work, he said, with a keen interest in the environment.

These new writers are also essential for consultants to know exactly what their clients want, says Meisel of Clean Creatives: “I’m not sure any corporate company would know how to make TikTok without them. Gen Z employees.”

Additional reports of Alistair Gray in London

Climate Capital

Where climate change meets business, markets and politics. See FT articles here.

Want to know what FT promises for environmental stewardship? Learn more about our science-based goals here