As the result of a six-decade history of deliberate obstruction of climate action by the fossil fuel industry, our economies continue to be based on fossil fuels even if it has been harming humanity and the planet for generations. Exploring for new oil, expanding fossil fuel production, fracking, and subsidizing fossil fuels must stop, according to a new report from the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Climate Change, Elisa Morgera.
Additionally, we must be fully informed of how fossil fuels are harming our human rights, and how the fossil fuel industry has kept such vital information away from us. The report thus calls for defossilizing knowledge: governments must ban fossil fuel advertisements, limit the industry’s lobbying, and create and enforce policies against greenwashing and disinformation. Those recommendations will pave the way for ultimately defossilizing the economy – phasing out fossil fuels not only in our energy systems, but also in our food systems because of reliance on plastics and petro-chemicals that are also produced from fossil fuels. The phase-out of fossil fuels is not only a climate goal but a legal obligation under international human rights law to protect everyone’s rights to life, health, food, water, and a healthy environment.
The report, titled “The Imperative of Defossilizing Our Economies,” describes the harms of fossil fuels as well as the industry’s “playbook” of deception, used to counterfeit climate science and manufacture public doubt to delay effective climate action since at least the 1960s. Such deception continues to the present day, as the industry fights the scientific imperative to cease operations by 2030 and obligations to pay for the clean-up, after benefitting for decades from exorbitant profits, substantial subsidies and tax avoidance, while States struggle to find enough public finance to prevent and respond to the most damaging impacts of climate change.
The report concludes that a human rights-based transition away from fossil fuels is the single most impactful contribution to protecting the life and health of present and future generations.
“The fossil fuel industry has knowingly been the main cause of climate change and its widespread and increasingly severe impacts on all human rights. On top of that, its “playbook” has undermined the efforts of public authorities and civil society in protecting human rights from climate change, for at least six decades” said report author Elisa Morgera.
Fossil fuel disinformation experts agreed. “This report provides clear evidence for the urgency and necessity of protecting the public from fossil fuel pollution, propaganda and greenwashing, and governments should respond by taking up recommendations to stop the industry from using its profits to corrupt politics” said Timmons Roberts of Brown University and the Climate Social Science Network.
“This looks to be the first time we’ve seen such a high level call for the obvious climate solution of not just banning fossil fuel advertisements like tobacco, but also holding industries accountable for disinformation, and media and advertising companies responsible for their role in the harmful spread of false content to sabotage climate action,” said Climate Action Against Disinformation coalition communications co-chair Philip Newell.
About the Special Rapporteur: The mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change was established by the Human Rights Council in 2021. Elisa Morgera was appointed in 2024 to study and identify how the adverse effects of climate change affect the full and effective enjoyment of human rights and make recommendations on how to address them.
The report link: https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/g25/070/22/pdf/g2507022.pdf
