In the weeks surrounding the passage of the historic Inflation Reduction Act, Fox News repeatedly attacked the bill using a variety of disingenuous narratives – most notably by falsely suggesting the bill was actually the same as the Green New Deal.
As a key cog in the fossil fuel industry’s disinformation network, Fox pushes these overwrought claims about pragmatic, but very imperfect, climate initiatives like the Inflation Reduction Act to undermine public support for more ambitious climate action at scale.
The Green New Deal remains the most ambitious climate proposal ever introduced into Congress. Because it would remake and restructure wide swaths of the American economy, including nearly eliminating fossil fuel use, Fox News and right-wing media were genuinely freaked out by it. By dominating coverage of the Green New Deal since its introduction in 2019, Fox was able to shape its viewers’ perceptions of the bill by labeling it as a “totalitarian” “takeover” of the American government that would preclude Americans from air travel and cheeseburgers.
Because the bill had no chance of passing Congress, Fox News used all of the bad will it had engendered against the proposal to label and attack any and all climate action as some variation of the Green New Deal. This included a failed Senate coronavirus relief vote in March of 2020, the modest climate plan President Joe Biden announced in August 2020, and the American Jobs Plan introduced in April 2021. Fox host Tucker Carlson is even tethering complex global conflicts to the Green New Deal.
Fox networks’ obsession with the Green New Deal knows no bounds; from February 24-August 3 this year, in the 160 days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Fox News and Fox Business mentioned the Green New Deal 564 times – often attempting to blame climate action for the war. Now, network personalities are falsely suggesting the Inflation Reduction Act is really the Green New Deal in disguise.