The first 100 days of the Trump administration saw chaos sown across the financial system, courts, and academia, just to name a few pillars of our society under attack. But as a new report drawing on a wealth of documentary evidence shows, one institution is conducting business as usual: The fossil fuel industry.
Today, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released a report titled Decades of Deceit: The Case Against Major Fossil Fuel Companies for Climate Fraud and Damages that traces industry knowledge about its role in climate change back to the 1950s. The report utilizes internal industry documents and other investigative findings to show the industry’s active role in denying and deceiving the public about this knowledge in the ensuing decades.
The report also provides several case studies showing how the industry used trade associations and public relations firms to carry out this agenda. Now, documents disclosing oil and gas trade associations’ lobbying activity during the first 100 days of the new Presidential administration reveal that the tactics outlined in the report are still in play today, and that the Trump administration is giving them a hand.
Pay to Play
According to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan nonprofit that tracks money in politics, the fossil fuel industry spent more than $150 million to lobby the federal government in 2024. That’s the second-largest annual expenditure for the industry after 2009, the year of the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill, which the fossil fuel industry ferociously opposed. The 1995 Lobbying Disclosure Act requires companies to file forms each quarter disclosing the amount of money they spent lobbying the federal government as well as which part of government they lobbied and the regulations, bills, and issues they discussed.
In a 2021 interview, a now-former ExxonMobil government affairs executive named Keith McCoy acknowledged that trade associations provide much of the fossil fuel industry’s political muscle. “Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes,” said McCoy during the interview, which was secretly recorded by investigative journalists. “Did we join some of these shadow groups to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that’s true,” he said.
McCoy also explained how trade associations promote industry messages while providing cover for companies that don’t want to interact with lawmakers and the public. “(The strategy) is getting our associations to…answer those tough questions and be, for lack of a better term, a whipping boy for some of those members of Congress,” he said.
This dynamic can be seen in the differences between lobbying disclosures of oil and gas companies and industry associations. Major companies like Chevron and ExxonMobil generally don’t mention specific bills or rules, sticking to vague language like “issues related to” oil and gas, while associations lobby on particular legislation and regulations. Though filers aren’t required to state their position on such policies, it’s clear from their public communications that trade associations are fighting pro-climate policies, while corporations present an image of high-level engagement.
API’s lobbyists find a willing ear
The largest and most influential association representing the U.S. oil and gas industry is the American Petroleum Institute (API). It is also one of the oldest, and its knowledge of climate change goes back decades. Our report recounts how API convened an event in 1959 featuring renowned nuclear physicist and Manhattan Project scientist Edward Teller, who warned industry executives that burning fossil fuels was behind the rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂). A “temperature rise corresponding to a 10 [percent] increase in carbon dioxide will be sufficient to melt the icecap and submerge . . . all the coastal cities,” Teller said.
API also commissioned a report from Stanford Research Institute scientists in 1968 that identified rising CO₂ levels as a driver of climate change, stating “there seems to be no doubt that the potential damage to our environment could be severe.” Perhaps most infamously, API is responsible for the 1998 “Roadmap” memo that states “Victory will be achieved when . . . average citizens ‘understand’ (recognize) uncertainties in climate science.”
According to public filings, API spent $1.9 million on lobbying in the first three months of 2025, more than $100,000 above the amount it reported spending during the same period in 2024. Issues API lobbied on range from offshore carbon sequestration, to permitting on federal lands, to European environmental regulations. API also spent $250,000 to hire other lobby firms for work on specific issues such as tax policy.
One notable issue API lobbied on is “Efforts related to addressing retroactive liability legislation at the state level.” API is currently a defendant in several of the lawsuits filed by states, counties, cities, and tribes across the United States seeking to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its role in climate change. API, along with the oil companies named as co-defendants in the suits, are reportedly pressing Congress to pass a legislative liability shield to get them off the hook.
Soon after API filed its lobbying disclosure, the U.S. Department of Justice preemptively sued Hawai’i and Michigan in an effort to stop them from filing climate accountability lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry. (Hawai’i wasn’t intimidated. Read more in this blog by my colleague Delta Merner). Legal experts called the moves “unprecedented,” but API thanked the Justice Department for its “bold action.” The Justice Department also filed lawsuits against New York and Vermont to stop climate “superfund” laws, which impose strict liability on major fossil fuel companies for the costs of climate damages and recover funds to support adaptation and resilience projects. The DOJ says the laws and suits conflict with President Trump’s energy agenda.
Policy puppetry
Fossil fuel executives like to blame government and the public for their failure to adequately reduce global warming emissions Yet they never acknowledge that their companies work behind the scenes—often via trade associations—to defeat those very policies. McCoy, for example, said ExxonMobil championed carbon pricing precisely because company leaders knew the policy wouldn’t get past Congress.
One association practiced in the art of providing such a service for its members is the Independent Petroleum Association of America. IPAA launched a website called Energy in Depth in 2009 to attack climate accountability experts while promoting false claims about oil, fossil gas, and environmental and economic issues. FTI Consulting, a public relations agency hired to help run Energy in Depth, stated in a conference presentation that the value of such programs and platforms lies in their “ability to say, do and write things that individual company employees cannot and should not.”
IPAA spent $170,000 lobbying the federal government in the first quarter of 2025 on policies and regulations including an Environmental Protection Agency rule known as the “Waste Emissions Charge.” The rule—a target of several other associations—imposes a Congressionally approved fee on every metric ton of methane that high-emitting oil and gas facilities produce above specific levels. Methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases, and the oil and gas industry is responsible for 40 percent of human-caused methane emissions. API filed a lawsuit to stop the fee and targeted the rule in a wish list sent to the Trump administration after last November’s election, despite the fact that the organization’s biggest members, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, and BP, all have significant methane emission reduction goals.
Another frequent policy target named in fossil fuel association disclosures is the Promoting Domestic Energy Production Act, a bill sponsored by lawmakers from oil states that would allow energy companies to deduct costs associated with oil and gas exploration—including labor—from their taxes. The Act was a lobbying priority for the American Production and Exploration Council (AXPC), which spent $660,000 in the first quarter of 2025, including $190,000 on external lobbying firms.
Founded in 2000 primarily to represent the fracking industry, AXPC counts virtually all major US oil and gas corporations as members. Last November, an investigative journalism group released several AXPC internal documents showing the group’s strategy to target climate policies such as methane fees and a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission corporate climate disclosure rule. The rule finalized in 2024 would compel publicly traded companies to assess and report on how climate change will affect their bottom lines. Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, the SEC asked the court to pause litigation over the regulation, and in March 2025 the commission voted to withdraw its defense of the rule. (ExxonMobil announced its withdrawal from AXPC soon after the document was leaked to the press).
Time to clean up the dirty work
The fossil fuel industry’s practice of supporting climate policy in public while working to undermine it in private is one of several forms of deception outlined in Decades of Deceit. That’s why the report calls on companies to stop obstructing science-informed public policy and its implementation; pay an equitable share of the costs of climate damages; and disclose risks and impacts to the climate, communities, and the economy, among other demands.
This requires companies to change their relationships with trade associations. Misalignment between public and private positions is particularly harmful to investors because it damages a company’s reputation and increases the risk of liability. Investors have pushed companies to evaluate and report on how closely their positions on climate change align with the actions of their membership associations. Several companies have left trade associations as a result, for example ExxonMobil’s departure from IPAA in 2023, but they continue to employ a broad strategy of letting trade associations do their dirty work .
The movement for climate accountability has many fronts—the courtroom, the boardroom, and the offices of lawmakers. As our report shows, fossil fuel trade associations have been active participants in the campaigns of deception that allowed climate change to reach its current state of crisis. They deserve to be held accountable alongside the worst offenders in their membership.