How the oil and gas industry is trying to hold US public schools hostage

theguardian.com:

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 aboard.

“What do all of these have in common?” an April 6 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. 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. “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, 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