Photo: Wildervank Station at the Groningen gas field. Peter Heeling; Skitterphoto, via 

For about 60 years, ExxonMobil and Shell extracted and sold natural gas from the Groningen gas field in northeastern Netherlands. It was the largest natural gas field in Europe and in its early days, it had a monopolistic hold over the continent’s gas market. Both ExxonMobil and Shell made billions in profits. The lion’s share, however, went to the Dutch government, filling the national treasury and underpinning the welfare state.

Meanwhile the residents of Groningen reeled under financial and mental distress when their homes were repeatedly struck by earthquakes related to gas extraction. Some estimates peg the number of earthquakes over the years at about 1,600.

“I fear I must disappoint you in your wish to speak with residents,” said Coert Fossen, a resident of Groningen who has lived through earthquakes. Fossen is also the Chairman of the 

, an association of residents affected by gas extraction from the Groningen gas field. “People here have become tired over the past ten years, and more, of microphones, cameras and politicians coming to ask them to tell their stories.”

Last year, following years of public outcry, the Dutch government closed the Groningen gas field. And just as reparations for public damage were underway, ExxonMobil and Shell filed quasi-legal claims called an “investor-state disputes,” against the Dutch government. The companies challenged everything from bills to pay for home repairs to the closure of the gas field itself.

These claims arise all over the world thanks to arbitration clauses in contracts and bilateral investment treaties that bind governments to the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) process. It is a 

 whereby companies can allege that a move by the government has caused them financial harm, and demand that the government pay damages. The claims are vetted in proceedings that are nearly always held behind closed doors, overseen by three arbitration experts (not judges), one of which is selected by the company, the other by the state, and the third arbitrarily. Because the process itself is expensive, the system is increasingly seen as having a chilling effect on human rights and as a looming obstacle to action on climate change, with oil companies routinely filing claims when governments move to decommission fossil fuel assets, decline or revoke permits for fossil infrastructure, pass environmental regulation, or even, as in the 

 when their courts rule against oil majors.

In total, there are four ISDS claims surrounding Groningen. Details about the claims are hard to come by because the tribunals hold arbitration proceedings privately. And no residents of Groningen who suffered through earthquakes have been called to give testimony.

‘People of Groningen structurally ignored’

Over the years, ExxonMobil and Shell—via a joint venture named ‘Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij’ (NAM) for extraction and distribution of gas from Groningen—earned about 64.7 billion euros while the Dutch state earned 363.7 billion euros. These numbers were a heavily guarded secret until a Dutch 

 in 2023 made them public, alongside other details. The inquiry concluded that the interests of the people of Groningen were “structurally ignored” during gas extraction and also that the problems in Groningen were "consistently underestimated” for decades.

“People were ignored for many, many years because the company [NAM] and the government shared the revenue from the gas extraction,” Fossen said.

Then in 2021, the Dutch parliament began an inquiry to understand linkages between gas extraction and earthquakes and take decisions on damaged homes and compensation.

Natural earthquakes occur at depths of about 10-100 kilometers. In Groningen, the gas extraction-induced earthquakes occur at about 3 kilometers, allowing the energy to reverberate on the surface a lot more. This means that the impacts of an earthquake measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale in Groningen are often worse than in regions where earthquakes occur naturally.

“In the 1980s, a geography teacher in a school [in Groningen] said there would be earthquakes from gas extraction because the sub-soil is rocky. Cracks and tension in the sub-soil because of gas extraction can cause earthquakes. But this was also ignored.” Fossen explained.

Gas extraction also causes soil subsidence, a gradual sinking of the land’s surface. But such subsidence risks were ignored because these are slow processes that take place more evenly.

A report in 2013 by the State Supervision of Mines, a Dutch regulatory body that oversees mineral extraction, had concluded that the number of gas-extraction-related earthquakes have increased over time and called for scaling-down production.

The parliamentary inquiry notes reactions from Shell and ExxonMobil ever since the report by the State Supervision of Mines was released. The companies viewed the possibility of scaling-down production as an “anchorless quagmire”. Once lower production levels are considered safer, where would it end? they asked. The Dutch finance ministry too resisted calls for production cuts, citing budgetary implications.

Noting more than 267,000 reports of damage, of which 85,000 cases concerned more than one incidence of damage, the parliamentary inquiry said “The days when this was only about ‘cups tinkling in the cabinet’ are long past. What is involved is the real concern about whether the baby can be put to bed upstairs safely in a home that used to be considered safe, but has since been declared unsafe. It is the stress and the enormous mental threshold of having to check the house for cracks again after the umpteenth quake – residents know how much effort and energy it costs to get damage repaired.”

The Dutch government then set up a programme for home repairs and reinforcements in Groningen, and also a long-term vision for socio-economic recovery. A part of the bill—running into billions of euros—was supposed to be borne by NAM, the joint venture by Shell and ExxonMobil.

In April 2024, the Dutch government signed into law the permanent closure of the Groningen gas field.

But soon enough, the companies filed multiple ISDS claims against the Dutch government. All of the claims were filed in secretive private tribunals, effectively bypassing state courts and public accountability.

ExxonMobil and Shell use aggressive legal tactics

The damage and compensation claims were challenged by NAM before the Netherlands Arbitration Institute in Rotterdam, based on agreements the company signed with the Dutch government. Shell and ExxonMobil, as separate entities (and not NAM), have also filed a claim each before the Netherlands Arbitration Institute regarding the closure of the Groningen gas field, demanding compensation for lost profits.

Then there’s the international arbitration based on the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) filed by ExxonMobil before the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes. The ECT is an international agreement signed in 1991 that provides a framework to deal with disputes between nation states and energy investors, and primarily fossil fuel investors. Around 50 countries, mostly in Europe, are signatories to the ECT. The treaty has clauses that seek 

“prompt, adequate and effective compensation”

 for investors in cases where nation states take over their assets. The Dutch government now faces not only having to foot the entire bill for Groningen damages itself, but also owing the oil majors compensation for lost profits.

“The Netherlands, once a global champion of ISDS, now faces the consequences of the system it helped build… Private arbitration gives wealthy multinationals like Shell and ExxonMobil privileged legal avenues unavailable to citizens, civil society, or affected communities—deepening inequality before the law. Delegating disputes about corporate responsibility and government policy to arbitration sets a dangerous precedent, encouraging other companies to evade regulation and accountability through legal manoeuvring,” notes 

 by the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations, abbreviated as ‘SOMO’ (‘

Stichting Onderzoek Multinationale Ondernemingen’ 

Titled ‘Aftershock in Groningen’, the report describes how the legal tactics of Shell and ExxonMobil “cast a long shadow over Groningen’s recovery and government efforts to rebuild trust in the region” and “reassign the costs of their exit to the public.”

The report was prepared using details that came out as a result of parliamentary debates and letters, the parliamentary inquiry in 2023 about gas production operations of NAM and associated impacts, negotiations between NAM, Shell and ExxonMobil and the Dutch state, and the ISDS claims.

“When you put together all the cases, it becomes apparent that the companies are using quite an aggressive legal strategy,” Bart-Jaap Verbeek, a senior researcher and author of the SOMO report said. “The arbitration clauses in the contracts the government signed with them allowed them to do this.”

Effectively, Verbeek added, the Dutch government gave the companies a very powerful tool that undermines public interest.

The SOMO report calls for termination of bilateral investment treaties that include ISDS provisions and the non-inclusion of such provisions in future trade and investment agreements. However, these treaties often include statutes of limitations that enable companies to file ISDS claims for several years after a country has pulled out of a treaty.

All four ISDS claims in Groningen have overlapping elements like challenges to compensation claims for home reinforcements. And in February this year, an interim ruling in the claim brought on by Shell and ExxonMobil before the Netherlands Arbitration Institute already granted the companies access to government records on compensation claims.

“When NAM gets more details about the compensation claims, they will go on disputing it. They will argue over every Euro that is spent on every home. Profit maximization and cost reduction is their prime objective,” Fossen said. “The companies consider the gas [from Groningen] as their property. They want compensation for closing the gas field regardless of the impacts on people,” he added.

 emailed NAM, Shell and ExxonMobil seeking details of investor-state claims filed and the relief measures and compensation sought in each of them.

A representative from Shell responded saying the arbitrations are confidential but added that the company “intends to reach a final, all-encompassing settlement with the Dutch government about the wind-down of natural gas production in Groningen.” The representative did not respond to further questions about seeking compensation for loss of profits from taxpayers, including those in Groningen who have suffered for decades from earthquake-related physical, financial and mental stress.

Many legal experts are hopeful that the recent advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on climate change 

 nation states’ arguments for climate action against claims filed by fossil fuel investors. In fact, 

 made by a judge presiding over the ICJ case noted that states’ climate obligations must inform interpretations of international investment law.

Researchers at the International Institute for Sustainable Development 

 “The ICJ’s opinion reinforces that states have a legal duty—not mere policy discretion—to adopt and maintain ambitious climate measures. This should rule out claims from investors alleging that such climate action violates investment law because they are supposedly arbitrary or unfair.”

Interestingly, Jorge E Vinuales, one of the counsels for Vanuatu in the ICJ case on climate change, was appointed as an arbitrator by the Dutch government in the investor-state dispute brought on by ExxonMobil under ECT. Vinuales did not respond to 

The ISDS claims in Groningen are up for discussion in the European parliament this September.

Exxon and Shell Sue The Netherlands in Secret Tribunals for Closing Europe’s Biggest Gas Field

 [00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to Drilled. I am Amy Westervelt. In this season, we are going chapter by chapter of a great new book that pulls together all of the social science that we have so far-- peer reviewed social science -- on climate obstruction globally. It's called Climate Obstruction, a Global Assessment.

It's been pulled together by the Climate Social Science Network at Brown, which includes hundreds of social scientists working all over the world on trying to understand this issue. Today we are digging into a subject that is near and dear to my heart, the role of PR and media in climate obstruction.

And to do that, I'm joined by two people who have been guests on this show before. Melissa Aronczyk at Rutgers University and Max Boykoff from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

We had a great conversation about the role that media plays, both in helping to shape the public's understanding of climate and therefore the role it can play in obstruction, especially if it is targeted by bad faith actors, which it often is.

It was a super interesting conversation. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. That's coming up right after this quick break.

 My name is Max Boykoff. I'm a professor here in Environmental Studies and a fellow in the Cooperative Institute for Research and Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder in the us.

 I am Melissa Aronczyk. I'm a professor in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University in New jersey.

 So, I've probably talked to both of you about this separately before, but, it does seem to me that the media often avoids responsibility for climate obstruction or for playing any kind of a role in it.

I think you show really clearly here how it's kind of been used as a tool. So I wanna kind of start by having you explain how particularly the weaponization of this journalistic norm of balanced reporting has contributed to the disparity between scientific consensus and the public's understanding of [00:03:00] climate change.

 Yeah, I'm happy to start us off if you'll allow me to back out just a little bit to answer that question. I think if we look back through time, we, can track and our group. The Media and Climate Change Observatory has done this where we've tracked media coverage of climate change over time, and it really came into public consciousness and into the news starting in the late 1980s.

And, um, when that was happening, it was a new story to tell and there were a lot of different, uh, journalists and actors trying to make sense of what was going on and how to tell these stories. And as time went on though, there was, you know, in the late 1980s was the establishment of the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

There was increasing understanding within the scientific community that humans contribute to climate change. And so from that period of time journalism as we've tracked it through various studies, had tried to make sense of that.

And [00:04:00] as they did that and as they started to draw on expert voices and others to give them a sense of where, science was on human contributions to climate change, journalists leaned back into their journalistic norms, including the journalistic norm of balanced reporting, which is to get one perspective, to get another and help the reader, the viewer, the listener, make sense of what's going on.

And so some early research that I had done with my brother Jules Boycott, who's at Pacific University in Political Science, we had just taken a look at how had US Media been covering it from that time in the late 1980s through, at that 200 two, when we finished up the study. And while there had been that convergent agreement in the scientific community.

And that had been communicated clearly through the intergovernmental panel on climate change assessments that we had found that the journalistic community had continued to tell this quote unquote balanced story. And, and in so [00:05:00] doing had perpetrated an informational bias and actually skewed the conversations, uh, in the public arena.

And, you know, part of the reason that we make those claims and then others have also been looking at this over time, is that, you know, quite frankly, people don't pick up peer reviewed literature. The IPCC assessment reports, they rely on news coverage to help make sense of what's going on around them.

And so news become this important bridge and this powerful driver of public conversation.

There has been a learning going on, a maturation or just sort of an integration of new understanding within the journalistic community. So we had put out that study, it actually gained traction. Um, it ended up in Al Gore's and Inconvenient Truth just briefly mentioned.

So it got a lot more attention and journalists, some were very eager to think carefully and recalibrate how they're telling these stories through, um, their own [00:06:00] reporting. Others, you know, weren't quite as, receptive to that messaging and critique. But nonetheless, you know, we did some follow-up work years later and found that that coverage had improved it, you know, when we looked it's with, another collection of.

Researchers here led by Lucy McAllister. When we looked at it again in 2021, we found that there had been tremendous improvements in US press, along with uk, Australian, Canadian, and New Zealand, um, newspapers. But there it still isn't a hundred percent. And so, you know, the way in which we went about it to look at the unit of analysis being each newspaper article, we can still see there's room for improvement.

But if somebody's picking up the paper and reading a very influential piece that, that isn't accurate, that is still, falling, whether unwittingly or wittingly to, this sort of quote unquote balanced reporting that they themselves then start to get a skewed view still to this very day.

 Yeah, I don't know if [00:07:00] I've, um, ever told either or maybe both of you this story, but I had, I had this experience directly with, um, I was a stringer at the Washington Post for a while and like, because of where I lived, that meant covering a lot of wildfires. And, um, I went, I covered a fire once and the Cal Fire Chief told me, give me this like, very simple explanation for why fires were burning for so much longer now than they had. And this was, I mean, this wasn't that long ago. This was probably like 2015 ish. And um, and he said, you know, you know, are you from California? I said, yes. And he said, well, you probably remember when you were growing up that you would like go to bed at night and a fire would be 20% contained and you'd wake up in the morning and it would be like 60% contained or, or at least 50.

And I said, yeah, that was, that was the norm, you know? And he said, yeah, that's how it used to work. Because it would get cool and humidity would increase at night. And now that doesn't happen anymore. So these fires are burning. The same [00:08:00] intensity 24 7. And that's why they're getting so big and that's climate change.

And I was like, wow, what a great, like, simple way to understand that. And I put it in the story and my editor, who at the time was the national editor of the Washington Post, um, suggested taking out the part where he said, that's climate change because, and his comment was, this is a wildfire story, not a politics story.

 I said, I it like I'd been a climate reporter for a long time. So I like, knew enough to kind of push back on that and say, well, you know, that's an industry talking point. There's nothing political about what he's saying, you know, and he let, he like, you know, listened to me and let me keep it in. But the average person that's just like getting sent off to, you know, cover a flood a fire is not necessarily gonna feel confident, you know, saying.

You're wrong. It's not political, but like, you know, I don't think that that guy was being hounded by Exxon every day. It was just like so ingrained in [00:09:00] him that like, I don't know. I think of it every time I think about this 'cause its such, it was such a simple way that that stuff like creeps in.

 yeah. Yeah. Anyway, um, okay. So obviously the media is not coming up with this stuff on their own, what entities are working to serve up misleading climate narratives to the media or ensure that, people who are like spokespeople for the industry or who carry water for them in their ideas are given a voice in the media.

 Well, are you asking Amy about public relations firms, ad agencies

 like the, the like broad ecosystem of like people that are approaching the media with these narratives or talking points I would think of PR firms, maybe like internal PR folks at companies. Think tanks I think are doing a fair bit, you know, [00:10:00] that whole ecosystem.

 well, one thing we need to think about is the network of influence that's really something that has taken us a while to really get our thinking around. And, I think, you know, we're still finding connections that we didn't really know existed, which is kind of amazing. At least since the 1970s, we have started to see connections among not just media platforms and, people who set the agenda in the media, but think tanks, research centers, private donors, lobbyists and lawyers, PR firms. We are starting to get better and better evidence of this network, and both journalists and researchers are uncovering just how far back these relationships of denial go. But I do think it's also important to [00:11:00] remember that we're, you know, all of those groups I just mentioned operate in society and that society in general.

And really, you know, if we just, again, zoom out from fossil fuels per se and just look at our entire consumer society, uh, the way our lifestyles are set up right now, , the status quo is, is one in which fossil fuels play a very big role. And it's very hard for people to imagine alternatives, uh, especially when we don't see a lot of presentation of those alternatives in public communication. So it's, it's a very vast and really has been for a long time, very intractable problem that we've been trying to, to work through.

 Yes, definitely. I mean, we can draw links directly from, through the structures of, from who owns a lot of the corporate media.

 Um, but then also as you're mentioning Melissa, just the, the pr the [00:12:00] way that these firms are so influential, the way they play roles in the network, developing strategy. We really get immersed if you're watching commercial television just with all kinds of, uh, marketing and imagery and, and assertions that can at times be seen as, as greenwashing.

But then on, on top of that, you know, at, at the very core. We don't, you know, we're primed to fall into this because we've got a lot of other things that we wanna, um, focus in on. We don't wanna have to worry about it. And so when this sort of apparatus, when it flows through courses, through the veins of our lives, we take it, we're ready for it.

We just say, all right, let's, let's, um, focus in on other things. And so, uh, this apparatus gives us that opportunity to not have to face it.

 it. Yeah. You mentioned four key contrarian viewpoints that are amplified by the media, and I wonder if I could have you name those and talk [00:13:00] about how you, or the research that you were looking at, honed in on those four.

 Yeah, one, one really influential source for thinking about these four viewpoints, these kind of arguments for climate delay comes from the scholar, William Lamb and collaborators. It's in the academic journal, global sustainability, and it's, it's really become a go-to source for a lot of us. I, they have this fantastic chart, which summarizes the arguments, so it's, it's very useful.

So, um, the first, argument for climate delay is to suggest that someone else should take actions first, so in other words, redirecting responsibility for the problem away from themselves, which in this case would often be a fossil fuel company onto somebody else. So the classic one is suggesting that consumers themselves, individuals themselves. Should take actions to address climate change, you know, recycle, for instance. The second argument has to do with [00:14:00] saying that we can't mitigate climate change. It's simply not possible. You have to just kind of give in to the fact that it's never gonna happen. You've seen a lot of arguments like that, especially by, climate deniers saying, you know, change is, is just impossible.

We can't change our current way of life. Um, we can't do that. Or saying it's basically a catastrophe and, you know, doom and bloom apocalypse there, there's nothing to be done. There's a third argument, which is actually a little more insidious where, fossil fuel companies will push non transformative solutions.

That's how, lamb and his collaborators put it. And you know, this one's insidious because it seems like solutions are just around the corner. But in fact, these solutions are very problematic and often, really backwards. One would be to say, future technologies are gonna solve the problem. So, you know, we don't have to worry now because in the future we'll have AI solving climate change.

You know, these kind of very vague, very always future [00:15:00] focused ideas for how the problem will be solved. Another one is to say you can't restrict or regulate companies because then they won't be able to come up with solutions for climate change. So you have to kind of give them time to figure it out. Yet again, this future facing solutionism. Again, these are problematic because they seem like, back to what Max was saying a moment ago. They, they seem to make us feel better and they make us feel like we don't have to do anything that, you know, companies have it.

It's kind of the opposite from the redirect responsibility frame. Anyway and then the last one is about, emphasizing all of the problems with the solutions that are being proposed that are viable. So for instance, you've got a solution in mind, which involves. Social justice. But you know, that means that vulnerable members of our society might have to bear the brunt of, the solutions. So we can't do that. We need solutions [00:16:00] that, that work for everyone, otherwise we shouldn't have solutions at all. So these discourse types, so to be fancy, shows this tendency among, um, actors of disinformation to actually move away from overt denial.

Like moving away from saying climate change isn't happening, it's not real. And having more subtle tactics to just undo or, um, delegitimate climate solutions just by saying that they're not gonna work for a variety of reasons.

 It could be a good opportunity to, just to point out that Melissa and I were leading on this, this chapter where we were essentially pulling together a lot of the current research to help us understand how this discourse is being steered through news, social media, advertising, public relations, and we led on this chapter, but Trav, Trav Cone, may Lawson, Hannah Morris, and Chris Russell also contributed to this.

So as a great opportunity for [00:17:00] us to pull together this kind of research from William Lamb and colleagues and others to help provide a bit more of a cogent picture.

 Yeah. Yeah. I love that study, the graphic that they made. It's so simple, but like, it's so helpful. Okay. So, uh, you mentioned social media there. Obviously the media itself has gone through, quite a few pretty big transitions over the last couple decades. How have those transitions contributed to the ability of corporations and PR firms and these other entities that you've mentioned, , to really kind of hijack the narrative even more, or, push even legacy media to kind of amplify these sorts of talking points.

 Well, it will be no surprise to anyone if I say that in the Western Hemisphere, at least in the global North, our media are in crisis, especially news media [00:18:00] and even more in trouble are legacy news media such as, uh, radio and newspapers, which are dealing with economic and political crises, as well as extreme political polarization, which has shattered the sense among a lot of the public that our news outlets provide fact-based and reliable information. That's kind of the current picture, but it has been quite a while now that oil and gas producers and their collaborators have actively worked with both legacy news and social media platforms as well as PR firms and advertising agencies to promote disinformation, that obstructs climate policy. Um, max talked about the news balance, but we've also seen how oil and gas companies do source building with journalists to promote, uh, their industry point of view [00:19:00] and news coverage. Um, but then of course we also have social media where there's less of an intermediary or gatekeeping function. So oil and gas companies can pretty much post whatever they want. Um, not to mention, you know, blogs, instant messaging. And because our mainstream media is. Under corporate control. And because their business model needs advertising revenue to stay afloat, it has also become harder and harder for news to remain separate from promotional content. Um, I don't, you know, there's even more we could say, we talk about this in the chapter for the book.

We have these newer kinds of threats with emerging digital technologies and social media, because now disinformation campaigns can operate at a massive scale and scope. They can target, certain groups much more precisely. You have technology companies and their platforms that let [00:20:00] powerful actors shape information in ways that lack accountability. On top of everything else, we have the explosion of artificial intelligence, which is changing by the day and is incredibly difficult to detect and predict, not to mention the environmental costs of ai, use the, the energy consumption generated by ai, the waste generated by AI systems, uh, especially data centers, which contribute to greenhouse gas emissions and environmental pollution.

So we've got like a, I was gonna say a triple threat, but I think this is like a octoPal threat.

 Yeah, there are definitely several dynamics that play in there pointing in discouraging directions. I mean, as you've pointed out, Melissa, that there's been increasing consolidation. Some of the media mergers and acquisitions and everything that are going on, just kind of feel beyond us as everyday people.

Skydance is merging with Paramount and what does that mean for Colbert and what does that mean for the news? I get it's getting [00:21:00] just, uh, bigger and bigger all the time. As we look around, we can see that our local independent news are strained. Just some of the recent decisions from the Trump administration, um, have put even further strain on these news sources.

And so we've, across this country, across the world, we've got many news deserts. So people are increasingly reliant on these corporate media sources to make sense of what's going on in the world. And that's through legacy media. As Melissa's pointed out. Once you get into social media, it gets even more confusing with algorithms and, and the blending.

Even some of your work, Amy has, has found its way into our chapter where you've pointed out this confusion that can take place between straight news reporting and some advertising that's going on, from these carbon based industry, uh, players. And so while there are definitely a lot of dynamics at play, it's discouraging and challenging.

 Yeah, I wonder if you've looked at or if there's any [00:22:00] research yet, or if it's maybe too early on this around the way that influencers are sort of replacing reporters.

Like I see this all the time, even I have an intern right now who, who's like, do you know this guy? Blah, blah, blah. I get all my news from him and I looked him up and he's like, one of these people who sort of reads headlines, in videos, which is all well and good, except that like if those people end up getting all the funding and all the audience, then there won't be any reporters.

Writing the stuff for them to read anymore, you know? I just see this huge shift in I guess like the credibility that people are ascribing to influencers for what appears to be no rhyme or reason. It's not like these people are like, Hey, listen to me.

I'm very credible for these reasons. It's just like some random guy. Anyway, yeah, I don't know if, if you [00:23:00] guys have looked at that, but it's freaking me out.

 I, you know, that problem first became really clear to me when I was teaching an undergraduate class on media and politics a few years ago, and we had this assignment that I gave them where I said. The student had to identify the source of the media they were looking at, and their answers were things like Facebook

or, well, probably not Facebook, because no, nobody under the age of 25 looks at Facebook, but you know, social media we're, we're listed as the source for these students. And I said, no, no, I don't mean where you saw it. I mean the original source. And they really didn't know what I was talking about. And that's when it hit me that the way our media platforms are organized, the way we access information online is really not the way we, people of my generation used to access or understand it. So the source is not [00:24:00] nearly as relevant to younger people, uh, as the content itself and the way it's presented so that, you know, if we're talking about a space where influencers come to have a lot more. Credibility that really does have to do with what's getting put in front of people. And that in itself has to do with how algorithms work, um, and how prior usage patterns work and how, the location of the individual works.

We, we know about all of these data points that inform what kind of information is, is put in front of people. And so an influencer who might have gotten your attention at some other time for some other completely different topic, suddenly seems like somebody much more reliable and trustworthy than a source you don't know. And that proximity in time and

is Really problematic when it comes to information about complex scientific.

and highly polarized [00:25:00] issues like climate change.

 Yeah, I'm finding that too with students. I work with my kids as they're getting older. You know, they'll say, oh, news sources is, uh, news sources, is YouTube news sources is TikTok.

 And, um, so my, my experiences have been similar and that's a demographic shift that, that we ought to be talking more about. Um, but on top of that, I'd say relevant to, you know, what, what we're talking about here as well is that there's been documentation that now oil companies have been hiring these TikTok influencers, court young people. They are the pathways forward. And, and so the savvy PR firms, advertising firms, carbon based industry actors themselves are getting into this. So what you're, what we're sensing together is definitely something that's deliberate and that is going on.

 Yeah. You had some really, really interesting references to new research around this, kind of [00:26:00] persistent intersection between a certain type of conservative identity and climate contrarianism. I know the first paper I ever read on that, that I still love, 'cause I think it's the funniest title ever, is the Cool Dude's Paper from mc Wright and Dunlap.

 But you have some really new stuff that's really interesting. I would love to have you guys just unpack that, and why this is such a persistent connection between this particular identity and climate Contrarianism,

 We do get into some of the contours of what's been developing more recently, newer research that, um, work. There's, there's a whole group of work by Riley Dunlap and Aaron Mccr that's been really influential and really pathbreaking, um, in the early days of getting a handle on who are these climate contrarians, what are their motives, how are they effectively obstructing climate action, climate [00:27:00] policy, action, greater engagement.

And when you refer to that, Amy, or the cool dudes piece just refers to maybe colloquially older white guys who are very influential in these spaces. And some of them, you know, are, um, micro blogging on Twitter, X, even blue sky and others Mastodon for a little bit there. They're, you know, sometimes maybe just sitting in their basements, in their comfortable suburban homes.

And, these folks demographically may not be at the forefront of climate impacts like many others. And so there's been research that's followed on theirs. I've done some myself where I've gone to the Heartland Institute meetings about a decade apart and sought to make sense of who they are, what are their motivations.

So that finds its way into our chapter. Another kind of layer of this is that we've, we've documented in this chapter a lot of good research that's been done, that's been tracking how it is much more evident and influential within certain countries with ties to fossil [00:28:00] fuel industry. Um, and. Reliance on fossil fuels.

Matthew Hornsey and colleagues have done some really good work that compares and contrasts these discourses across countries. So there's places like the United States where the belly of the beast in a certain way. Um, the UK, Australia, certain elements of Brazil around food consumption and fossil fuels, they have much more vocal and, um, I guess legible, audible, uh, climate contrarian groups, collections, which can be, you know, caca at times.

But the overall goals of distracting, delaying, denying the facts and the evidence around this. Uh, there are through lines there.

 Yeah, totally. I didn't realize there was actual research on this that amongst the developed countries or more developed countries, that the UK and the US really stand out as being places where media really continues to give a platform [00:29:00] to climate skepticism.

So again, I'd love to have you kind of talk about the research on that and share your thoughts on why that might be.

 I do think a big part. Of that, just, you know, again, I think we have to understand the background or the, the structural or systemic issue here. So I, I do think a big part of that has to do with the ownership structure of so many news outlets in the UK and the US and who's, so the question of who owns the media becomes really salient here. But another issue that affects the way we think about how the UK and the US stand out, uh, as giving a, a, a platform for skepticism is simply that there's a lot more research out there about the UK and the US than about other parts of the world. So it's not just that American and British media platforms enable skepticism, which they do, but that we know much more about it there than we do about what's going on in other places.

And I, I really wanna underline [00:30:00] that as a, a very big challenge when you are writing, uh, as we did for, as sorry, a contribution to this book, a global assessment of climate obstruction. It just, I think one takeaway that we had from working on this chapter was that we really need better and more sustained research all over the world to recognize how some of the climate skeptic frames and platforms and styles are being exported to other parts of the world, or how we are getting imported from other parts of the world, various kinds of climate skepticism, but we just don't know as much as we need to in, in some of parts of the world.

 Yeah, we've been working more and more with reporters in Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique, and especially in Uganda and Tanzania. I was really surprised at how much it had been like, really drilled into them. The, like very old school false equivalents thing, you know, of like if you quote a [00:31:00] scientist about climate change, then you have to talk to, I don't know, the government person in charge of petroleum contracts or something too, you know?

 Something that one of our co-authors, Mayana Lawson has been really focusing on that relates to this question, which is about how, um, emerging analyses of climate coverage in, places like Brazil might make few references to climate skepticism, but that could be because they're not focusing on fossil fuel emissions, but they are focusing on things like carbon pollution from agriculture or other land use practices. So I think that's just something else to keep in mind when we are talking about climate skepticism. It might, sometimes it, certain stories might fall outside of the purview of research on climate skepticism, but it, it is climate skepticism. It just might look different in the news piece.

 Yeah, Melissa, you make great points. And just [00:32:00] from referencing Mayana, that's, she's an example of, you know, she has been really influential in helping tell these stories out of Brazil. And, uh, we need many more researchers like Mayana and others to come together, um, so that we can tell these stories more comprehensively. So this book itself, you know, our chapter contribution to it, the larger project is trying to take a step forward in more systematically understanding how these dynamics play out in various, um, times and spaces and that, but it is stunning, you know, given the amount of funding and, capacity that there is within these PR agencies, within advertising, within news reporting, that that shapes the stories that we get on a daily basis, um, that we don't have a, a larger, more coordinated effort to understand all these dynamics from a social sciences perspective, from humanities and how that relates to the natural physical sciences.

 The most recent [00:33:00] IPCC report was the first to include social scientists and the first to really note this stuff as a huge blocker to policy action.

And Max, I know I've talked to you about this before, um, so I won't have you repeat like an hour's worth of stuff, but, I just am curious like why do you think it took so long for, the IPCC to start looking at this as part of the problem?

 Yeah, I think it is a good question. As we've grown to understand more about climate change, it's not a single issue. We're increasingly recognizing that it's a set of intersecting challenges that that flow through every aspect of our lives, meeting our livelihood needs and everything else. Um, and in so doing, we need to understand it from not just.

Physical, biological perspectives, but also human behavior perspectives. And there have been social scientists that have come on board and been a part of some of the [00:34:00] previous IPCC reports, but this really was a big step forward with some of us that were invited along. So I was a contributing, uh, author to that most recent IPCC report.

And so when you ask that question, I mean, I think the kind of simple answer is, um, because there were folks like me and me included to bring the very thoroughly researched work that. We're talking about this chapter in this larger book into the pages of the IPCC. Um, but I think a bigger part of that is just that more, uh, folks from different disciplines seeing this as an integrative interdisciplinary set of challenges are being invited in to help provide those insights through the thoroughly researched work that's going on out there.

And so it is a step forward. You know, they're, they're selecting authors for the next one. We could possibly debate for a full hour about the wisdom of another big assessment report years off, while we need to do a lot in the interim. But having said that, they're selecting [00:35:00] authors for the next one. I hope that continues to flow into these, um, pages and, and the work that, that we talk about in the chapter that we capture.

That's in the. Larger reports themselves actually didn't make it into the, the, um, summary for policymakers. And that too, we could talk about for quite a while. But there's still a lot of work to do to make this much more legible and to make this a larger conversation through the IPCC.

 Okay. Melissa, I feel like this gonna be your big question, which is about the, the PR firms, I love this description of them as sort of the, the glue joining carbon based industries, media organizations, and economic sectors using coalitions, campaigns and other coordinated processes to question the efficacy of science, news and political institutions engaging climate related issues.

Again, this is one I know you could. Spend, many hours talking about. But, can I have you give a little bit of an overview of the role that PR firms play here? And if you wanna [00:36:00] talk about advertising firms too, that's fine. Maybe the difference between them. 'cause I feel like they get conflated a lot.

Maybe there's not that much difference between them anymore. I dunno. Anyway, over to you.

 yeah. So the most important thing I learned when I started researching the role of ad agencies and PR firms in climate disinformation is that these firms are not just mouthpieces for their fossil fuel clients. They are coming up with the strategies. They are creating messages. They are developing the relationships with news media and other organizations who are friendly to their cause. For a long time, climate researchers only focused on the fossil fuel companies themselves, and that was relevant and necessary. So we now have a lot more information about what Exxon does or what Shell does, or what BP does. But lately journalists and researchers have started paying [00:37:00] a lot more attention to the consultants and strategists who come up with the positioning for these fossil fuel companies and who play key roles in managing these companies, media image and their marketing and strategic plan. I do wanna mention that there, there is a very important pioneer of this kind of research whose, uh, name is John Alber of the Center for Media and Democracy in Wisconsin. Um, he founded that center back in 1993 and in 1995. He wrote this book, which I think has the, the best name, uh, that any book like this could have, which is called Toxic Sludge is Good for You, which was an expose of the PR firms involved in environmental disinformation. And I I mentioned that 'cause that really was a, a very important guide that came out at a time when most of us were looking the other way. Um, it really has helped later researchers and journalists think about this topic. So a second [00:38:00] major finding that we have about the role of PR firms and ad agencies in climate disinformation is that these firms are embedded in a very wide ecosystem of influence.

We mentioned this a little earlier in our conversation, but just important to remember, PR firms and ad agencies are doing work for not only fossil fuel companies, but also their trade associations, industry councils, and science advisory council. For think tanks and research institutes, NGOs, foundations, chambers of commerce, organizational boards, I mean the list, the list goes on. And the important thing that really came to me is that these firms play several roles in keeping this network together. This is the glue part. Uh, one of the things that these PR firms and other consultants do is, uh, intelligence gathering across different industries as well as inside the [00:39:00] environmental community. So you'll have PR firms hiring people who used to work at government agencies working on environmental issues, or from other organizations that influence public policy on environment, uh, or climate and energy issues. Another thing these PR firms will do is conduct industry friendly research that help clients promote their viewpoints in the media. So there's a massive production of scientific material, legal material, and technical material to circulate in the media. So, like you said, Amy, I could really go on for several more hours about this, but I just really want to communicate that these, these firms are not just about spin. There's so much more going on and they, they deserve all of the attention that we've been trying to give to them over the last few years.

Transcription

Obstruction would never have been as effective as it has been without the help of the PR industry and the willful ignorance of the media. Today, Melissa Aronczyk, of Rutgers University, and Max Boykoff, of the University of Colorado, join us to walk through why getting a handle on the media's role in climate obstruction is critical to solving the problem.

, is available from Oxford University Press 

, and will be available for free download beginning October 14th.

S14, Ep4 | The Media As a Tool of Climate Obstruction

Climate Obstruction

Carbon Bros

SLAPP’d

Information Pollution

Photo:  President Donald Trump delivers delivers remarks to troops at Al Udeid Air Base, 
Thursday, May 15, 2025, in Doha, Qatar. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

Thinking about getting into the influence-peddling game in Washington? It’s hard to imagine a better time than right now. We’re nine months into the second Trump regime, and already, as the journalist and author Casey Michel 

, “America has never seen corruption like this.”

Michel’s argument rings true no matter what kind of unsavory influence you’re interested in. Bribing foreign officials on behalf of American corporations? One of Trump’s first actions was an executive order 

Former politician or White House official looking to leverage your connections on behalf of foreign regimes — particularly the authoritarian ones as committed to oil extraction as they are disinterested in human rights and political freedoms? Recognizing, alas, that that characterization increasingly applies to the United States as well, the volume of fossil fuel money seeking an investment home is seemingly limitless.

Or, perhaps you’d rather shape U.S. domestic policy. In that case, you might follow the lead of the oil and gas industry, which, by one measure, 

poured some $450 million into the 2024 election cycle

 to support Trump and Republican politicians. The payoff came quickly: Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” 

gives the industry $80 billion in subsidies

Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World

, was published during the innocent days (joking!) of the Biden administration. The book explored the web of lobbyists, PR gurus, and former politicians who are paid to influence the U.S. government on behalf of foreign regimes. It’s a slimy world — but also a prestigious, a lucrative, and an enthusiastically bipartisan one. (For a deeper dive into 

 and foreign lobbying’s lengthy legacy, you can read or listen to 

In mid-July I spoke with Michel about the unsettling proportion of authoritarian influence peddling that is funded by oil, how petrostates are seeking to buy influence among the White House and its tech oligarch backers, and whether the sheer shamelessness and clumsiness of Trump-era corruption might prove to be a silver lining in spurring future reforms.

The conversation below has been condensed and edited significantly for clarity and accuracy.

Want to listen to the whole thing? Adam’s extended interview with Casey Michel is available on the Drilled podcast here (or wherever you get your podcasts). 

, “America Has Never Seen Corruption Like This,” pretty much sums it up. Let’s start with some of the arguments you make.

The article was trying to survey the field of the last six months or so — how historic the scope and the scale of the corruption emanating from and running through the White House and the world of Trump affiliates and the Trump family and, of course, the Trump Organization, truly is.

Donald Trump is by no means the first president or administration embroiled in corruption scandals. Go back to the days of Ulysses S. Grant and his family members and inner circles. Warren Harding and Teapot Dome. Richard Nixon and Watergate. Even though [Watergate] is predominantly remembered as a political story, which it absolutely was, it was also a story of rank corruption, especially corporate corruption, regarding linkages with the White House. Those are all scandals unto themselves.

But what we have seen over the last six months blows all of that out of the water. There really is no historic comparison for the scope, the scale, and the speed with which all of this has happened. You can talk about the Qatari jet, the $400 million luxury liner gifted from a foreign dictatorship directly to a sitting president. You can talk about the crypto and the meme coins. You could talk about the Trump Organization itself. That’s all beyond anything we’ve ever seen before.

You could also talk about the policy developments and how the administration has taken an absolute sledgehammer to whatever kind of anti-corruption bonafides the U.S. once had. Almost all of those have been completely decimated, either unenforced, completely dissolved, [or had resources slashed] for investigations themselves.

, focuses on governments, authoritarian regimes around the world, hiring [former] U.S. officials, politicians, influencers of various kinds who have access to the U.S. government and can shape American policy. What is the state of the corrupt union when it comes to foreign influence on the United States?

The state of affairs right now is, I don’t know, terrible? Terrifying? Unsettling?

I guess it depends if you’re making money or not.

Well, sure. It depends on what kind of line of work you’re in, I suppose. What kind of scruples [you have] about working with some of the most heinous regimes around the world.

Just as a bit of context, in the United States of America it’s perfectly legal for you or I or any other American to go lobby on behalf of not only any cause that we want, but any regime that we want. You and I can, right now, go talk to our legislators about how wonderful the regime in Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates or Gabon or Venezuela might be.

That’s predominantly because in the First Amendment we have the right to petition the government for redress of grievances, which is just an old-timey way of saying 

. If [people are] being paid to do that by these foreign governments, they just have to register with the Department of Justice and declare what they’re doing and disclose how much they’re making.

And you and I can go online to the Department of Justice website and look through that database of all of these American lobbyists who are selling themselves to regime after regime around the world. It’s not just traditional lobbyists in DC. It’s PR specialists, consultants, many former members of Congress or previous administrations. A whole constellation of American industries are now congealing within the one broader umbrella industry of foreign lobbying.

This is now a multi-billion-dollar industry. These are extremely effective networks at implementing policies that these foreign regimes want to see implemented. It’s things like arms sales, things like the lifting or prevention of sanctions. It’s even things like fast-tracking energy policies that benefit hydrocarbon producers. Pushing off or gutting green or clean tech reforms that places like China or Azerbaijan or Saudi Arabia — major oil producers — do not want to see pursued.

It’s not just that they’re lobbying officials. These lobbyists [are] really enmeshing themselves in the highest levels of American policymaking. In many ways, crafting American foreign policy that should have been crafted by American legislators or those in the White House.

It very much seems like we’re in a golden age of these foreign lobbying networks being able to operate in the shadows without the rest of us having any idea what they’re doing.

I wanted to ask you about the state of the influence industry in Washington right now. On one hand, there’s tons of money to be made from foreign governments seeking access to the Trump administration. On the other hand, [there] is the fact that the administration is so shameless — or the fact that Trump himself makes decisions based on who talks to him most recently, who flatters him the most, whatever. Does that make it harder for some of the traditional levers of influence in Washington to sell themselves as having access that the average person doesn’t have?

Far be it from me to feel bad about any of these figures, but yes. Through Trump’s first term and certainly well into the Biden era, there was a playbook that they had followed for decades. It was an outgrowth of what traditional lobbying for domestic causes looked like: back-room conversations, one-on-one meetings, in some cases donating directly to election or reelection campaigns. There was no secret sauce. It was about who you knew and who you could access and what kind of doors you could open.

Now what we see with Trump’s second term is that that playbook certainly still exists. And of course much of it does come down to, at the end of the day, who these figures know and what doors they can open. But the range of tactics and tools now available has just been blown out of the water.

I never thought I would see a world in which a sitting president has direct access to not only the so-called meme coins, but is more than happy to host effective pay-to-play dinners for those who have given or invested the most amount of money in a specific crypto venture. I should have had an idea with Trump’s first term, but I never thought I would actually see the day where a sitting president has his real estate company gallivanting around the world and signing up deals in dictatorship after dictatorship, foreign country after foreign country.

I don’t know how traditional lobbying firms are adapting, but I think it is indicative that one of the key figures that has opened up Trump to the world of crypto and crypto-related investments is someone who emerged from that traditional lobbying world, 

, who was jailed on foreign lobbying charges, then pardoned by Trump, and in the last year or two has emerged as this key player in the crypto space. Manafort is many things, but there is a certain skill set that he brings to bear in terms of opening up avenues of influence.

What are the currencies of influence these days? You mentioned crypto. There’s been reporting about the Saudi government, among others, 

and data centers to woo the administration and its tech oligarch backers. But what are they trafficking in these days?

The barest explanation is money, right? It’s whatever means of financing directly into the American president’s pocket, his family’s pockets, his businesses’ pockets, his allies’ pockets. It’s whatever the vehicle of value is. If that’s opening up a new Trump resort in Vietnam, so be it. If that is investing $300 million on a Trump meme coin so you can have dinner with the president, so be it. If that is an investment fund in the United Arab Emirates agreeing that it will participate in exchanges using that Trump meme coin or whatever the other crypto venture is, so be it.

You mentioned AI. This is a space I don’t think has gotten nearly enough attention. It’s a very clear direction that especially the Saudis and the Emiratis have gone in. The most recent agreement between President Trump and Gulf partners is hundreds of millions of dollars in Gulf investment in artificial intelligence, opening up of data centers, and, of course, providing leverage from these regimes over American AI companies themselves or American AI policy writ large.

You do have to comment on the relative savvy, I suppose, of figures like MBS [Mohammed bin Salman] in Saudi Arabia or MBZ [Mohammed bin Zayed] in the United Arab Emirates realizing which way the wind is blowing: that there are all manner of tech oligarchs surrounding Donald Trump and his presidency, and more than willing to back him come hell or high water, and then opening up these new streams of investment from these dictatorships elsewhere. It’s one investment vehicle after another.

It is remarkable how much money these regimes have access to and how desperate they seem to be to find anywhere to invest it. And most of it comes from oil. Some are maintaining the facade of participating in global climate negotiations, transitioning their economies away from oil. But this money is related to the extraction and production of fossil fuels. And it finally has somewhere to go.

It seems like any reason for which a Western investor or fund manager might have had for not accepting that money, any compunction, no longer exists. Is that a fair way to put it, [that] there’s really no shame associated with taking that money anymore?

There’s no shame. There’s no compunction. There’s no reason and no structural incentive to say no. Not only because you should have extremely minimal concern about any kind of investigation or prosecution so long as you remain in the current administration’s good graces. But also because if you do say no [to this type of foreign investment], then your competitor down the street will say yes.

This is a dynamic we have seen elsewhere. It’s a dynamic that does predate the current president. It’s something that we saw in the lobbying industry writ large [and] in the consulting industry, in particular, 

. You can look at oil-producing regime after oil-producing regime around the world — Russia, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan. It is breathtaking to see the scope and breadth of opportunities that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has opened up for the regime. Almost all of that money, if not all of it, [comes] from the production of oil and the broader climate destruction therein.

If you go back to 2018, 2019, after the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi Arabia and MBS weren’t exactly 

, but they were having lobbying clients, consulting clients, even investors in Silicon Valley and elsewhere turn them away and turn them down, and say, 

We will not be seen doing any business with this regime.

 That was only six, seven years ago. I can’t even fathom getting to that point again. I have no idea what the Saudi regime would have to do to get to that point where American lobbying shops, American investors are turning down Saudi money.

You can cast around the American economy, whether it’s in Hollywood [or] the sports industry, especially things like golf or tennis or boxing. I’m sure at some point down the line the NBA and the NFL will be opening themselves up to Saudi money. I hope it’s not my beloved Portland Trailblazers, who are currently for sale. I live in dread that the Saudis will be the one to purchase them. Or, again, all of the image management shops or even things like Twitter or X. It’s a bottomless list of industries that have opened themselves up to investments from the regime, or opened themselves up to the private equity, hedge fund, and venture capital firms that have opened themselves to Saudi financing.

Exxon and Shell Sue The Netherlands in Secret Tribunals for Closing Europe’s Biggest Gas Field

The Golden Age of Oil-Funded Influence

Trump Is Trying to Kill Renewables Everywhere

Uganda’s Crude Oil Pipeline Faces Fresh Hurdles from Campaigners

“There Was So Much Death.” A Toxic Algal Bloom Is Ravaging Australia’s Southern Coast—Warming Waters Are to Blame.

Climate Obstruction

Carbon Bros

SLAPP’d

Information Pollution

S14, Ep4 | The Media As a Tool of Climate Obstruction

We are a global team investigating the obstacles to action on climate change, all over the world

Exxon and Shell Sue The Netherlands in Secret Tribunals for Closing Europe’s Biggest Gas Field

The Golden Age of Oil-Funded Influence

Trump Is Trying to Kill Renewables Everywhere

Uganda’s Crude Oil Pipeline Faces Fresh Hurdles from Campaigners

“There Was So Much Death.” A Toxic Algal Bloom Is Ravaging Australia’s Southern Coast—Warming Waters Are to Blame.

Climate Obstruction

Carbon Bros

SLAPP’d

Information Pollution

Support our reporting,subscribe today!

S14, Ep4 | The Media As a Tool of Climate Obstruction

We are a global team investigating the obstacles to action on climate change, all over the world

Support our reporting,
subscribe today!