The fossil fuel industry’s effort to “start winning hearts and minds” arrived at a Baptist church in North Carolina recently in the form of three $1,500 scholarships for local high school students and a talk by Hubbel Relat, a Fueling US Forward representative, at a summit hosted by the Roanoke Valley Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
The $1,500 scholarships, which local news reports said were aimed to help the students pursue careers in the energy industry, were a part of a broader effort by Fueling US Forward to tout the “positives” of fossil fuels and to bring that message specifically to black communities.
That effort has gotten off to a rocky start. Last month, a front page New York Times feature profiled Fueling US Forward’s efforts to promote fossil fuels by getting an article published in The Atlantic (while failing to acknowledge the author’s job as a spokesperson for the group, causing the magazine’s editors to pen a public apology and add it to the top of the piece), running TV ads, and organizing feel-good events in black communities where attendees could win up to $250 off their utility bills.
“Eddie Bautista, executive director of the NYC Environmental Justice Alliance, a nonprofit that works with low-income and minority neighborhoods on environmental issues, called the [Fueling US Forward] campaign ‘an exploitative, sad and borderline racist strategy,'” The Times reported. “He pointed to the falling costs associated with renewable energy, which he said made shifting away from reliance on fossil fuels a winning proposition for everyone.”
The Koch Approach to Education: Offer Small Scholarships, Slash Federal Support
The campaign’s missteps seem to have continued in North Carolina. Fueling US Forward is funded by Koch Industries, and Hubbel Relat, the Fueling US Forward representative who presented the $4,500 worth of scholarships, is the former associate director of another Koch-backed nonprofit, The Center for Prosperity and Freedom Foundation.
That…