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Leanna First-Arai: How the oil and gas industry is trying to hold US public schools hostage

The oil and gas industry wants to play a word-and-picture association game with you. Think of

four images: a brightly colored backpack stuffed with pencils, a smiling teacher with a tablet

tucked under her arm, a pair of glasses resting on a stack of pastel notebooks, and a gleaming

school bus welcoming a young student onboard.

5 “What do all of these have in common?” a 6 April Facebook post by the New Mexico Oil and

Gas Association (NMOGA), asked. “They are powered by oil and natural gas!”

Here in New Mexico – the fastest-warming and most water-stressed state in the continental

US, where wildfires have recently devoured over 120,000 acres and remain uncontained – the

oil and gas industry is coming out in force to deepen the region’s dependence on fossil fuels.

10 Their latest tactic: to position oil and gas as a patron saint of education. Powerful interest

groups have deployed a months-long campaign to depict schools and children’s wellbeing as

under threat if government officials infringe upon fossil fuel production.

In a video spot exemplary of this strategy, Ashley Niman, a fourth-grade teacher at Enchanted

Hills elementary school tells viewers that the industry is what enables her to do her job.

15 “Without oil and gas, we would not have the resources to provide an exemplary education for

our students,” she says. “The partnership we have with the oil and gas industry makes me a

better teacher.”

The video, from September last year, is part of a PR campaign by NMOGA called “Safer and

Stronger”. It’s one of many similar strategies The Guardian tracked across social media,

20 television and audio formats that employs a rhetorical strategy social scientists refer to as the

“fossil fuel savior frame”.

“What NMOGA and the oil and gas industry are saying is that we hold New Mexico’s public

education system hostage to our profit-motivated interests,” said Erik Schlenker-Goodrich,

executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center. “There’s an implied threat there.”

25 Last year, New Mexico brought in $1.1bn from mineral leasing on federal lands – more than

any other US state. But the tides may be turning for the fossil fuel industry as officials grapple

with the need to halve greenhouse gas emissions this decade. Before mid-April, the Biden

administration 1 had paused all new oil and gas leasing and the number of drilling permits on

public lands plummeted.

30 In response, pro-industry groups are pushing out what some experts have called “sky is falling”

messaging that generates the impression that without oil and gas revenue, the state’s

education system is on a chopping block. NMOGA did not respond for comment.

Since February, NMOGA has flooded its social media pages with school-related motifs like

buses and books, but also with images of empty, abandoned classrooms accompanied by

35 reminders about how the state’s schools “rely on oil and gas production on federal land for

more than $700m in funding”. Elected officials have parroted this framing. “This is a matter of

critical importance to all, but especially to New Mexico’s schoolchildren, who have suffered

greatly during the pandemic,” state representative Yvette Herrell co-wrote in the Santa Fe New

Mexican, in February.

40 But tax, budget and public education funding experts say linking the federal leasing pause to

a grave, immediate risk to public education is deceptive.

“Any slight reductions stemming from pauses or other so-called ‘adverse’ actions would have

zero immediate effect on school funding overall, much less whether students get the services

they need to recover from the ill effects on their learning from the pandemic,” said Charles

45 Goodmacher, former government and media relations director at the National Education

Association […].

[New Mexico’s Attorney General] Balderas, who has accepted $49,900 in campaign

contributions from oil and gas over seven election cycles, said that a sudden disruption in new

oil and gas leasing such as the blanket moratorium the Biden administration originally

50 proposed in January last year, would have an outsized impact on New Mexico’s most

vulnerable.

“You would cut out nearly a third of the revenue that we rely on to fund our schools and our

roads and our law enforcement community,” he said. “I don’t think environmental activists really

think about that perspective: how progressives have cleaner air but then thrust original

55 Americans like Native American pueblos into further economic poverty.”

Some on the receiving end of oil and gas revenue stress that not all educators and students

embrace fossil fuel industry money in public schools. Mary Bissell is an algebra teacher at

Cleveland high school in Rio Rancho, who co-signed a letter in November, along with more

than 200 educators, asking NMOGA to “stop using New Mexico’s teachers and kids as excuses

60 for more oil and gas development”.

Bissell says in spite of how cash-strapped schools may be, many of her colleagues don’t want

oil and gas money. “I’m not going to teach my kids how to find slope based on fracking 2,” she

said of her math courses. Bissell characterized NMOGA’s attempt to portray educators as a

unified force beholden to oil and gas funding as “disgusting.”

65 In some states, including Rhode Island and Massachusetts, state attorneys general have taken

it upon themselves, as the leading law enforcement and consumer protection officials, to sue

oil and gas companies for deceiving consumers and investors about climate change through

their marketing. Balderas’s office said it was not actively pursuing that strategy.

Seneca Johnson, 20, a student leader […], remembers being told as a child that the schools

70 she attended ranked second worst in the nation. If New Mexico’s education system is indeed

that bad, she said, how can officials continue to think that accepting a funding structure that

delivers such a consistently poor result is a good idea?

“At the end of the day the system that we have now that is being paid for by oil and gas doesn’t

work, and we know it doesn’t work,” Johnson said. […] “I don’t want to have to rely on this

75 outside entity. I don’t want to have to rely on this broken system.”

998 words

First-Arai, L. (2022). How the oil and gas industry is trying to hold US public schools hostage. The Guardian. 4 May, 2022.

1 Biden administration – executive leadership under Democratic President Joe Biden (2021-2025), prioritized e.g. healthcare reform, climate change, and economic recovery

2 to find slope based on fracking – to solve math problems in the context of fracking

2 Analyze how the author conveys her attitude towards the U.S. oil and gas industry. Focus on communicative strategies and use of language. (30 %)