The new Dollarmites: how fossil fuel giants are targeting kids
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What is the Dollarmites program and its history?
The Dolomites have arrived from outer space.
For decades, the Dolomites program turned schoolchildren into customers.
The controversial scheme, now Axed, gave Australia's biggest bank access to kids, classrooms and their cash under the guise of teaching financial literacy. Now it's happening again. A new report has found the country's biggest fossil fuel companies are using the same strategy, with multi-million dollar programs and sponsorships targeting millions of Australian children. I'm Ruby Jones, and you're listening to 7am. Today, comms declare founder Belinda Noble on how the tentacles of big coal, oil and gas are reaching into Australian classrooms and manipulating students. It's Tuesday, June 30. So, Belinda, I thought we could start in the classroom of one particular primary school because the report describes children using bread and Vegemite and sprinkles to model offshore drilling as part of this woodside-linked classroom activity.
So tell me what was happening there exactly.
Yeah, imagine you're in a classroom and you're so excited. You get your Vegemite sandwiches and your sprinkles. Oh, this is so excellent. And then you find out, oh, they're actually teaching us how to drill for oil. That's the situation in Perth classrooms with a Woodside-sponsored program that was delivered during Science Week to primary schools. So kids were taught to drill for oil. And they put the straws down and they have to suck up the Vegemite. And then they're told, be your own exploration company and find the best places to drill for oil. And it's teaching them, we would argue, that exploring for gas and drilling for gas is a fun, positive activity. You can rest assured that no part of that activity included talking about how drilling for gas is the main cause behind global warming.
It's part of an all-around, all-encompassing marketing movement that aimed at children from the coal, oil and gas companies. But, you know, you've got to give them credit. They're reaching kids in the way that is most engaging. I do know of another very similar program produced by another organisation that includes drilling for oil using choccy milk and Tim Tams.
And so what is the scale of this, Belinda? How many programs are operating around the country and who are the companies behind them?
How are fossil fuel companies targeting children in Australia?
Our investigation found at least 260 programs where coal, oil and gas companies are marketing in children's institutions. Those institutions can include schools, museums, sports teams, mentoring programs, scholarship programs, photography competitions, an extraordinarily wide range of activities that fossil fuel companies are sponsoring. The ones involved, well, Santos was the most involved that we could find. Woodside, Chevron and BHP were also in the top five. So, you see, these are companies that are actively extracting fossil fuels. And obviously, we would argue these programs are a way of maintaining their social licence. influencing the next generation and normalising what is an incredibly dangerous polluting activity.
And it's not just the companies who are showing up in the classrooms or museums themselves, is it? A big part of this seems to be about providing resources to teachers, so lesson plans and professional development and classroom materials. How does that work?
Yeah, this is something that we're more surprised by. So we have fossil fuel companies sponsoring teacher education programs. One even has two Woodside members on its board, and they produce education materials for teachers that teachers then take into the classroom. And again, as you can imagine, they're fairly favourable to extraction. They're fairly favourable in showing that coal, oil and gas companies are future focused and, you know, greening their operations. But there's less information about the damage that they're doing and the fact that we need to phase those products out in order to have a safe climate.
OK, and so how is climate change presented in any of this education material?
In the materials that we found, fossil fuel extraction is presented as inevitable.
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