Amy Westervelt: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. A little bit earlier this season, we ran an episode on a global network of think tanks called the Atlas Network. We did a print piece as well. A version of that piece ran with the New Republic and a couple of other outlets. And in that work, we looked at some of the ideas and tactics that seemed to be spreading across the Atlas network, aimed at laying the groundwork to criminalize certain types of environmental protests.

I had actually reached out to Atlas, wanting to interview someone about the network and specifically wanting to talk to a woman. named Magatte Wade, who runs their Center for African Prosperity. I didn't hear anything back, and to be honest, I kind of assumed that they just didn't want to talk to me because Atlas sort of has that reputation.

So that was me maybe being a little bit lazy. Anyway, after that [00:01:00] story came out, Wade was pretty upset about it, and she took to Twitter and challenged me, our reporter Geoff Dembicki, and New Republic editor Molly Taft to a debate. I let her know that actually I had really wanted to talk to her for the story and I tried, so would love to schedule a time to talk.

And talk we did. It was definitely a little debate y sometimes, but also an interesting window into how certain ideas about the climate movement are being shaped. We're going to get back to our anti protest series soon, but in the meantime, I'm going to be bringing you some bonus episodes featuring what I've been calling…

messy conversations, sometimes with people I don't necessarily agree with, sometimes with people I very much do. First up, Magatte Wade, who heads up the Center for African Prosperity for the Atlas Network.

This week, she's at a convening for a new [00:02:00] group that brings together quite a few different ATLAS member think tank folks. It's called the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship. It's spearheaded by Jordan Peterson, backed by several of the entities that funded the push for Brexit. And includes not only folks like Magatte and Arthur Brooks, the former president of the American Enterprise Institute , and the folks leading the State Financial Officers Foundation, a group that's funded by a whole batch of Atlas Network think tanks like the Heartland Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and more,

But also a whole cast of folks from the climate skeptic slash climate denial crowd. You've got GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who's been sort of the king of the anti ESG or quote unquote woke capital conversations. You've got [00:03:00] Michael Schellenberger, author of Apocalypse Never. You've got Björn Lomborg, who pushes a similar kind of approach as Schellenberger, this idea that sure, climate change is happening, but it's not happening fast enough to warrant extreme changes. You've got Alex Epstein, the guy who authored the quote unquote moral case for fossil fuels.

This group, the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, or ARC, was put on my radar by a tip a few months ago. I shared that with DeSmog who's written some really great and helpful profiles of both the organization and some of the members in it, which I'll link to in the show notes. It's been interesting to see how they've evolved, how they've added different people, and what sorts of things are getting discussed.

What's particularly interesting to me about ARC is that it's doing this thing that happens a lot on the right and not so much on the left, which is bringing together lots of [00:04:00] sort of cause célèbre under one tent. So you've got the anti climate people, you've got the anti feminist people, you've got the anti trans people, they're all meeting together to discuss the supposed end of Western civilization as we know it. They're all meeting together this week in London, so I thought it would be a good time to bring you this conversation.

I hope you enjoy it. And please get in touch with all the things you would have said in this conversation.

Knowing exactly what to say in the moment is not always my strong suit, which you'll see here because I definitely took the liberty

elinda

Amy Westervelt: of cutting in to say some things I wish I had thought of at the time. Anyhow, all feedback and complaints welcome. It might even turn into another messy conversation. Enjoy![00:05:00]

Hello? Hi, Magath. Can you hear me?

Magatte Wade: Yes, I can hear you.

Amy Westervelt: Awesome. I'm going to turn my video on to say hi, but then I might turn it off just because I, uh, live in a place with pretty spotty wifi.

Magatte Wade: No problem.

Amy Westervelt: So you can see I'm a person. Hello. Hi.

Magatte Wade: So yeah, so first of all, for being here, I appreciate that. So Amy, I think first I'm going to start just for the people who are going to be listening to this and might be wondering how we got here. Maybe I'm just going to give everybody a background. So I think it was not Friday of last week, but the Friday of the previous week, I think it was.

I got a note from my team members over at Atlas and they said, Hey, Magatte, there's this article that came out on The New Republic and see, I'm reading here the title, it's, it was called Meet the [00:06:00] Shadowy Global Network Vilifying Climate Protestors, and so the whole thing was pretty much what I call a hit piece.

And on me, you give me a paragraph on there and uh, I'm gonna read it for people. And it says, Magatte Wade, who heads an internal Atlas project called the Center for African Prosperity, frequently cites De Soto as an inspiration for her take on Africa and climate change. In multiple op eds over the past few years and in an interview this year with Canadian professor and right wing figurehead Jordan Peterson, Wade, who was born in Senegal but moved to Germany when she was seven, describes climate activists as the new colonialists, arguing that climate action will keep Africans poor and deprive them of access to energy.

Wade often depicts those who would deny the continent its current fossil fuel boom as out of touch elitist and regularly claims that climate action will kill a billion Africans, all while [00:07:00] refusing to engage with the fact that African climate activists are being arrested at an alarming rate. So that's the piece that was written about me.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah, well, so two things. One, I would clarify that the piece wasn't about you.

As you said, there was, you know, uh, one paragraph in a 4, 000 word piece, which was not meant to give you short shrift. It's just, there's like, you know, nearly 600 Atlas Network think tanks to get to, and the thing that we were looking at was how ideas spread within and throughout the Atlas network, not, you know, any particular think tank's work, but in saying that, also worth noting, actually, the original piece is more like 6, 000 words and includes a lot more on your work and trying to look at different economic studies and things like that, which is on our site at drilled.media. But the New Republic trimmed out quite a bit of the story. So I'm happy to send you a link [00:08:00] to that as well. And yeah, I'm, I have actually a bunch of questions that I would love to ask you about your work. And I submitted a contact request through the Atlas network a couple of times and didn't get anything back, but I was looking through my inbox this morning…

Magatte Wade: and did you ask to speak specifically to me?

Amy Westervelt: To you and also to fact check various things with the sort of Atlas Network headquarters as well. But I just saw in my inbox this morning that I got bounced replies to that.

Magatte Wade: Yeah. Because me, when I'm trying to reach out to someone and they're not getting back to me, I, that's usually the to check. Do I even have the right email? Yeah. But I… It was like

Amy Westervelt: in my, you know, went to my Promotions folder. But I agree. Like I, I would have much preferred to speak to you before the piece came out and also like not just for that piece, but I find this area really interesting looking at the idea of how to address energy poverty and climate [00:09:00] change at the same time, how to do that in an equitable way.

All of those things are big questions that I frankly agree with a lot of your take on the failures of the climate movement to do that. So, I actually think… You might be surprised at how much I agree with some of the stuff you say.

Magatte Wade: I am very happy to hear that you agree with most of my takes, and it will be good to compare notes, and we're going to compare notes.

So first of all, it's good that we basically settled this incident about you having reached out to me because when someone wants to talk to me, I talk to them, so I'm glad we clarified that, but I never knew from you, but you wanted to speak to me.

So that's number one. And then I'm, I'm very glad to hear that you share some of my views. And when you're talking about relations between climate change and Africa and all of that, the links, I really wish that this article had gotten into it. Yeah. Because I'm going to tell you where I'm coming from.

So when I go back and I read this piece. [00:10:00] Magatte Wade heads an international Atlas project, so that's fine. Frequently cites De Soto as an inspiration. The inspiration I'd cite is always, for the most part, George Aïté, Ghanaian economist, who really has put his finger as to why the reason Africa, despite its riches, and the riches of Africa, are its people, are its land, despite all of that, being rich in all of that, we still, to this day, remain, sadly, in such a wrong way, still the most poor continent in this world.

And I'm supposed to be happy with that as an African, and I'm not. So when you say that I frequently cite –you or the other three people, because by the way, I, I commend you for your courage to come here and speak with me, because I would have liked to have a courtesy from the other three people who have been involved in this piece.

But anyway, so whoever here did their investigation, And say that I frequently cite De Soto, I would like for me to put in my face, when I [00:11:00] cite this, usually George Ayite is who I cite, and the few times I cite De Soto, whom I also have a lot of respect for, has to do for, I have to do with his work related to the main cause as to why my continent is poor, because what Hernando De Soto did, for those who don't know, Hernando De Soto is a Peruvian economist.

And what he has done, him too, like me, has been wondering why are people poor, because his native Peru is a poor nation as well. And he said, I'm going to need to find out what's going on. And him, along people like Hayek, because I saw you citing Hayek, you see, this piece is citing a lot of great people, but really not even understanding why the rest of the world respects these people. I don't respect Hayek because supposedly he claims that all the ills of society are caused by socialism, as you put in the piece.

I really don't like socialism, the philosophy of what socialism is, not what the young people today think what socialism is, and that might be a different conversation for a different time. [00:12:00] But when you think of Hayek, the reason why people like me really appreciate Hayek is because of how Hayek really is one of the few, and I would say probably one of the first economists who ever started looking in the direction of the entrepreneurs as the solution and as the main creators of prosperity. All the other economists are out there doing some math, model calculations, all types of things that are completely removed from the rest of the world. And most importantly, Very important detail, the reason why some of us really, someone like me, enjoys Hayek, and I think he has contributed a lot to the field of economics, is because of the precise insight that he had about the entrepreneur.

And so going back to De Soto , Hayek has seen that the entrepreneurs have a role to play in fighting poverty, not NGOs. And that's another thing. So yeah, what De Soto did is he did an experiment he [00:13:00] established himself in a little bit of an outskirt of Lima, Peru, and he tried to start a little business.

A little business where they were sewing things like really mom and pop. He was thinking, what happens to people like my dad, because I have a small, medium sized enterprise in Africa, what, how does it work for us when we're trying to build a business?

What's going on? What's happening to us? And so he positioned himself as a nobody, and then he went through the process to legally register the business. He found that it took forever. We're talking here almost of two third of the year. The amount of money it cost in fees, it was pretty much close to somebody's salary. So he found that it was impossible for people like that to start a business. Impossible. And so he went on to write this book called The Mystery of Capital. And explaining all of that. And so the times when you would hear someone like me citing De Soto, it has to do with that. Not what you're saying here. And what the piece is saying about De [00:14:00] Soto, it was trying to make De Soto look very bad here.

I'm going to find him. Where is De Soto? When you're saying about De Soto, basically He went and he told the people in the Amazon forest, I'm just, you know, summarizing when you say that he went there and he told the indigenous people, you know, if we give you a piece of the action, it's a way to muzzle them up and I'm just like saying, Amy, have you spent time in, in African nations and which ones if you have?

Amy Westervelt: I have not spent much time in Africa. I've spent a lot of time in Latin America and I live in Latin America. So I'm very familiar with how things work in Desoto's territory. And okay, can I just say speak now? Because I. You know, you've said a lot of things, it'd be good to respond to.

So I don't think there's anything in there that says, you know, this terrible man de Soto. It just says what he's argued for, which is not inaccurate. It is true [00:15:00] that what he has argued for is for property rights and a profit share for Indigenous people.

Magatte Wade: And what's wrong with that? And what's wrong with that? That's fine. I don't see anything wrong with it. It's not fine. I would treat it here, it's not fine.

Amy Westervelt: I would appreciate, yeah, being able to finish my sentence. Thank you. So he says that, you know, he argues that's the fix for Indigenous protests. And in terms of it being a strategy to shut down protest. That's very explicitly laid out on the ILD website. They have a whole site that's called the, I think it's the Avatar Myth Theory or something along those lines. And it very explicitly says, you know, for people that are concerned about the impact that indigenous protest is having on business and development, we believe that this is the solve for that.

And, kind of lays out how to do it. So all we were trying to show in the piece was how this idea kind of starts with DeSoto and spreads to [00:16:00] multiple other Atlas think tanks, which I don't think is inaccurate. You know, it was fairly easy to follow and whether or not that's a good or bad thing is not something that I, or I think any of my colleagues ever say in the piece.

It's like, look, this is happening. It's not very well publicized that it's happening, and it's a strategy.

Magatte Wade: Amy, the title of your piece says it all, the shadowy global network vilifying climate protesters. And, uh, this is the long piece, so I will really recommend to everybody to go back and read it.

But the way this paragraph, anybody who would read this paragraph in the context also of the rest of the piece, and also the way this paragraph was written, you're making a commentary here. And with that, I'm going to move on because there's a reason why I really wanted to have you on here.

So the website, so I will ask people to go and read this piece, and then you let me know [00:17:00] your opinion. But this whole idea that de Soto is an anti climate person, I think that's totally misguided. But I digress. So next, I

Amy Westervelt: Well, that's, actually that's interesting. So how would you kind of frame De Soto's approach on, on climate action?

Magatte Wade: So the bigger talk I want to have is, is bigger and it's bigger and better than De Soto. So if you hear me out, you'll hear exactly where it is that I'm going with all of us.

Amy Westervelt: Go for it. Yeah.

Marker

Amy Westervelt: Okay, so I'm just going to jump in here for a minute to remind folks of why we were touching on de Soto in both the written piece and the podcast episode about Atlas. It's because he really seems to be the person who began advocating pretty early on for a strategy that would later be called redwashing.

And it's a strategy that we see other Atlas think tanks, particularly the American Enterprise Institute in the U. S. and the Macdonald Laurier Institute in Canada, starting to deploy over the years, often using the same rhetoric and [00:18:00] arguments as de Soto. Here's a snippet from our episode on Atlas, just to jog your memory.

Marker

Amy Westervelt: One of the very first think tanks created by this newly formed Atlas Network was the Institute for Liberty and Democracy in Peru. It was started the same year the Atlas Network started, 1981.

And its founder was a well known economist, Hernando de Soto. De Soto came up with a theory that wound up reverberating throughout the Atlas Network universe. It's a really good example of just how much these think tanks talk to each other and how ideas spread.

Hernando De Soto: la Amazonía. No es avatar.

Amy Westervelt: Here he is giving a TED talk in 2011, [00:19:00] explaining his strategy for dealing with indigenous environmental activism.

Hernando De Soto: Bueno, la consecuencia son, por ejemplo, que no tienen títulos de propiedad. Y se nos dice porque esa es la parte que defiende ciertos organismos internacionales y de ecología, es que usted sabe los indígenas. No les gusta ser propietarios, deambulan por la selva, pero cuando hemos llegado ahí, hemos visto inmensa pobreza.

Amy Westervelt: He says, part of the problem is they don't have titles to property. And if you ask why, certain international organizations and environmental groups will say, well, you know, Indigenous people don't want to be landowners. They wander around the forest. But when he went there with his colleagues, he saw immense poverty.

De Soto started to think about this whole situation a lot more because of a bloody standoff between Indigenous land defenders and police in Peru.[00:20:00]

Democracy Now Archival: Dozens of people are estimated to have been killed in clashes between police and indigenous activists protesting oil and mining projects in the northern Peruvian Amazonian province of Bagua.

Amy Westervelt: Indigenous leaders were protesting the encroachment on their land by various interests, including timber, mining, and oil and gas.

Democracy Now Archival: Eyewitness accounts indicate the police fired live ammunition and tear gas into the crowd.

Alberto Pizango, the leader of the National Indigenous Organization, the Peruvian Jungle Interethnic Development Association, or EDICEP.

Accuse the government of President Alain Garcia of ordering the genocide of the indigenous communities.

Our brothers are cornered responsibility. I want to put the [00:21:00] responsibility on the government. We are going to put the responsibility on Alan Garcia's government.

For ordering this genocide.

Amy Westervelt: De Soto argues that the solution to all of this is just to cut Indigenous groups in on the profits,

Hernando De Soto: Entonces, muy bien, no los traigamos a la globalización. No los traigamos al derecho, pero el resultado, eso es que sus recursos van a ser retirados y quienes semana ser ricos con sus recursos van a ser otros y no ellos mismos.

Amy Westervelt: to give them property rights and a share of resource and mineral rights so that they will stop protesting for control over their land.

This idea shows up again in Canada a couple years later when the Macdonald Laurier Institute, another Atlas Network think tank and a partner of the Fraser Institute. [00:22:00] starts to put out a bunch of papers in the wake of indigenous led protests there .

Go back and listen to the rest of that episode if you haven't heard it yet. We're going to take a quick break here and get back to my conversation with Magatte Wade in a moment, stay with us.

[ ad break]

Magatte Wade:

Yes. So earlier when we started, you said that you don't actually disagree with a lot of things that I say about the climate.

For anybody that knows a little bit of my work on all of this, my whole thing, my full purpose in this world. The hill I will die on is prosperity for Africans, and I want that in my [00:23:00] life. And for prosperity to be built, there is only one way only prosperity can be built. Prosperity is built by entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs need what we call the toolkit of the entrepreneurs. In there, primarily the way you sum up everything that they need is concept of rule of law, clear and transferable property rights. All of it is very important for the entrepreneur to be able to enterprise. Economists also call it economic freedom.

The other best way to call it is just, is an individual, especially if you're a nobody individual, somewhere, can you or not start and run a business easily. And when it comes to that, you have multiple, you know, economic indexes that measure that very simple, you know, situation. And one of them was the doing business of the, the doing business index of the World Bank.

And then you have another one of the economic freedom index of the Fraser Institute. Another guy that you guys [00:24:00] make out to sound like these conspirationists out there, you know, trying to destroy the world with their right wing ideas. So there again, these people that you demonize, this piece seems to demonize people like me actually happen to love. I love the Fraser Institute insofar as the focus on economic freedom and really pointing there too, because when it comes to economic freedom, how easy or hard it's for anyone, anywhere in the world to start and run a business.

It turns out that the index is showing exactly what I as a business entrepreneur doing business, both in Africa and in the U. S. I have seen at first, I thought it was just an anecdote. I first, I thought, Oh, you know, it's normal. We're poor. So it's hard to do business back home and here very rich. It's easy to do business.

And instead I came to realize. We are, poor nations are poor because they make it hard for the wealth creators to create and rich nations are prosperous because they make it easy for wealth creators to create. So, the minute I understood that, my [00:25:00] whole life changed. So many things started to make sense and I started just to follow that path.

And so when you look there, you realize that it is harder for almost anyone in sub Saharan Africa to do business than it is for anyone in Scandinavia. And that fact is very important because if we want to fix the problem, and I would want, so this is actually, this is a question I'm going to have for you.

If we're serious about building prosperity in Africa, then we have to be serious about this issue around the lack of economic freedom. So Fraser institute measures, things like that. For doing business measures, things like that. Atlas Network has been working with people to kind of improve the situation.

So we need economic freedom to build prosperity. Our entrepreneurs need that. And you know what else entrepreneurs need? Access to reliable and affordable energy source. This is actually when I got into the fight. This is what, and when I got into the fight, into the climate action fight, because when you have these anti fossil fuel zealots who are sitting halfway across the world in very comfortable places telling me, [00:26:00] an African, what is it that I get to do or not do in my continent, when we happen to still be the poorest region in the world, and people are still dying, I say, I have a problem.

So Amy, do you believe? But do you support prosperity for Africa, even if it means the use of fossil fuels? This is a very…

Amy Westervelt: I do. So actually, yes, I do. This is…

Magatte Wade: Pause. I just want to share that again. Do you?

Amy Westervelt: I do. Yes.

Magatte Wade: Do you support prosperity for Africa, even if it means the use of fossil fuels?

Amy Westervelt: Yes, I do. So this is why I was happy to talk to you, because I was like, I feel like this whole thing is getting…

It's getting really polarized in a way that's just not helpful. I was just in a room full of people this past week global north people saying, look, the solution is to turn off fossil fuels, that's it. And then, someone from India and another person from Africa saying, well, you guys don't understand that we're still dealing with X, Y, Z, and how do we deal with that? [00:27:00] Without fossil fuels. Right. To be honest, I think that the solution is that the global North transitions quickly off of fossil fuels while the global South, continues to develop . But when I hear people say, we need to solve energy poverty first. I'm like, well, yeah, I agree. I think we should solve energy poverty. I don't think it's an either or, I think they can happen at the same time. And I think that rich countries in the global north have a much bigger obligation to do what they can to reduce emissions and decarbonize as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, that's not happening, and neither are the Global North companies that are developing oil and gas resources in Africa doing anything at all about energy poverty. So that's the piece where I'm like, okay, yes, I agree, but the oil and gas that's being developed in Africa right now, more than half of it is exported to Europe and Asia.[00:28:00]

If the African countries that have those resources have terrible contracts that lock them into not getting anywhere near what they should be getting for those resources, none of those contracts require distribution locally. So like the, the best example is, is Nigeria. That's the oldest and largest fossil fuel industry on the continent of Africa, right?

Last in the world on energy access. So when I see people say, oh, fossil fuel development equals a solve to energy poverty. Where's the proof of that? It hasn't happened on the continent of Africa. It hasn't even happened in the United States, which is like the birthplace of the industry.

So that's where I'm like, okay, if we're going to talk about energy poverty, let's talk about, actually solving it. And also the fact that doing so and solving for climate, which will also impact people in Africa and Latin America, first and worst, why can't we do both together in a way that actually, like, solves both [00:29:00] problems?

Magatte Wade: So can I respond now because I'm trying to…

Amy Westervelt: Please! Yeah, yeah, please. What?

Magatte Wade: So, so this is great. This is great. And I really wish that pieces like this, so when you say, I'm so, I find it so sad and so bad that the things have become so polarized. I'm sorry, but the piece like this does not help with the polarization.

It just doesn't. I, this piece would have been so much more interesting, Amy, if first of all, I'd put in a lot of these caveats that you're sharing with me right now, it would have made for such a much more interesting piece. But what you said about America and needing to do this, needing to do that, I will leave it to Americans to talk about those things.

When I wear my American hat, I can also talk about that. But today, the reason why I'm talking to you is the African Magatte, because that's my roots and I'm African first and foremost. So when you go back and start. Well, you know, if the oil industry and if also fuels were so important to Africa, we could have known by now [00:30:00] because clearly, but Africa is not where it should be right now.

So it tells me that we don't necessarily, you know,

Amy Westervelt: That's not what I said. What I said was if developing oil and gas resources in Africa was going to solve energy poverty, we would have seen that happen in Nigeria. I think there's a huge problem with the companies that are doing the work in those countries not being required to actually address energy poverty, especially because a lot of those companies are now saying that, like, that's the entire reason that they're in Africa.

So I would say, okay, make them do that then. Like, there's enough resources on the continent to address this issue. And, you know, I, you know, I, I feel like there's a huge amount of work that needs to be done to look at how fossil fuel contracts are made, how developing financing works, all of that stuff, how the whole investor state dispute system is set up that robs countries of their sovereignty, all of that stuff.

So like in order for this entrepreneurship to [00:31:00] work that you're talking about and for businesses to succeed, you also can't have a giant industry. Yes. Kind of corrupting that process.

Magatte Wade: Well, let me jump in there.

Amy Westervelt: Yeah, please.

Magatte Wade: So, first of all, thanks for clarifying for people who are hearing you, and I still have a problem with what you just said.

My country, Senegal, just discovered oil, when I say just a few years ago, discovered oil, discovered gas, huge reserves of oil and gas. And it is estimated that we probably will only get to keep 10 percent of the proceed of that, right?

Amy Westervelt: And that would be high. That would be high.

Magatte Wade: Yeah. Yeah. And meanwhile, well. Clean ass Germany is over there saying, so no more fossil fuels and the green party of of Germany now when reality really hit them hard this past winter, like, let's reopen the coal, uh, mines. Yeah, because, and because by the way, this whole thing that you were trying to sell us, that renewable was ready.

It's not ready. If it was ready, you would've gotten there. And meanwhile, same Germany coming to my country [00:32:00] to try and negotiate some deals. So the reason why I say that it's, it's just like me when I thought we were poor, we were, it's hard to do business in Africa because we're poor. And I discovered it was the other way around.

I will tell you here today, the same exact thing that I say to some of my friends who might be saying the same thing you're saying. So the reason why we're being literally this exploited, and it's not just oil, it's not just oil, I have a bigger problem with the NGOs, the aid industry, as we know, the reason why it's so easy for everybody to come to our nations and be the kings and queens on our own land is because we are poor, And I will say it again. Why are we poor? I am not poor because the the oil and gas company people are taking my fossil fuels away. It's not a good thing. That's definitely not a good thing. And we intend to do better. But the only time we're going to be able to do better with them, not benefiting more from us is going to be when our people are not so longer poor, where we don't have time to really look at what our leaders are doing.

And even when we see it, there's [00:33:00] nothing we can do in my country. Some reports came up, but there was some corruption that happened there. Basically our oil was sold out on the cheap. And there's absolutely, most of our people didn't even have time to complain about it . After a few months, little noise, everybody went back to trying and find food because when the majority of you are poor, most people don't have time to go and see, look at what the president is doing and what the type of nasty deals that are doing. We don't have a strong society. We don't have organizations that are looking into all of this, bringing them to the forefront and all of that good stuff, as you may not know.

So my point is, this is not us going and trying to force these people to do this and to do that. At the end of the day, as long as we remain poor, we will be the carpet on which everyone else and their mothers walks on, and it is just the way it is. And so for me, my plan is not tell them, the oil company to one, one oil company or that oil company do this, do that, as long as the situation is the way it is, we will remain where we are.

Now, if we [00:34:00] manage to free our entrepreneurs, build the type of prosperity, and they will also have access to the type of oil, because if our entrepreneurs are enterprising, and they have the money to pay for the fossil fuels to be handled, you know, direct on the ground, this is the force that's going to make oil companies to say, you know, to be like, Oh, maybe we should leave more in here, because guess what, at that point, it's not about somebody Telling them, you want to do the right thing, you need to give this people what's worth, you know, their fossil fuels worth in money.

No, what happens is, oh gee, there's a market here, there is a market here, these people can pay for it, these companies can pay for it. But my point is, you see that the force, I kill myself trying to tell people economic freedom is what we need in order to unleash all the other dominoes, but instead everybody is busy, I think, almost operating in a worldview in which Us Africans are going to remain poor for the rest of our lives.

When you're poor, you have no voice. [00:35:00] When you're poor, you're not a market. When you're not a market, nobody caters to you.

But I go back to my piece being that when I see a piece like this and you're here, this piece is all about defending Last Generation. It's all about defending the rights of these climate activist people. to basically do whatever it is that they're doing.

That's what this piece was all about. I would have loved, so when I see a piece like this, defending the rights of rich kids, excuse me for calling them this way, because seriously, when I look around, that's what I see. Rich kids. Who are looking for a way for an existential for a way maybe to exist in this world and I tell them, if you want to exist in this world.

If you want to feel like you're doing something really useful. Why don't you come with me on the battle of making sure that Africans have access to To economic freedom, as well as that we do not stop pipelines that are being built, by the way, trying to be built in places like Tanzania and places like Uganda.

Why is [00:36:00] it that you are right now protesting those type of developments? So you are not, here you are, you say that you're fighting for the climate and nature. Are we people not part of climate and nature? You are, but in the name of climate and nature, we can just die. Thank you very much. And I think you have trying to say that here.

So I am just,

Amy Westervelt: I'm not trying to say that here at all. That's a total mischaracterization.

Magatte Wade: I'm saying, yeah, actually, I did say that. But my point is, Amy, with all the things to fight for in the world, With all critical problems to fight for in the world, that you said it was a 4, 000, you know, word piece, 4, 000 word piece.

I see complaints about pretty much everybody and their mothers, as long as we're related to Atlas Network. But I see, and I see, and all of that in defense of rich kids deciding to glue themselves to the asphalt or to some [00:37:00] paintings and then crying out loud. Why is it that they're being arrested? World I live in, if you're messing up with somebody's property, that's a problem.

Marker

Amy Westervelt: Okay, so cutting it again here, because this thing that Magat keeps saying, at this point in our conversation, she kind of keeps repeating it, these climate activists that these climate activists are rich kids. And the tone is kind of like they're annoying rich kids who are destroying property for no reason.

This is actually like a pretty key message that we saw Atlas Network folks hammering on again and again in the media all over the world. In fact, we talked about it a lot in our episode. It's a big part of the strategy to demonize and minimize what climate activists are fighting for. Which, which is not at all to say that activists don't sometimes get it wrong.

We've talked about that before in our last episode. In fact, we got into the details about why applying class and race filters [00:38:00] are so extremely critical to successful activism, but it's not, but it's just not true that all climate activists are rich white kids. The activists fighting the pipeline Magat mentions in Tanzania and Uganda, for example, those are mostly young people who are from those countries.

In fact, we've got an episode on that fight coming soon where you'll hear from some of those folks. There are definitely activists in other countries who are supporting them. Usually,

Usually, those folks are protesting the banks in their countries that are financing the pipeline. But the resistance,

but the resistance is homegrown. Which brings me to another thing I think is important to note here. Africans are not a monolith. [00:39:00] People in the Global South are not a monolith. There are people who are for and against fossil fuels in every country. Long time listeners of this podcast, long time listeners of this show might remember Guyanese attorney Melinda Jenke's absolute disdain for the idea that global North countries should transition away from fossil fuels quickly, while the global South continues to use fossil fuels for a while longer.

Melinda Janki: Developing countries should have until 2050 to come away from oil. Why would you say that when in every single former colony, people are saying, Stop the oil. We don't want it. In places like Uganda and Mozambique and, you know, they're putting their lives on the line to stop oil. And you sit in your comfortable university room.

And say, oh, well, I've decided that [00:40:00] in the interests of justice, these people shouldn't have to get rid of fossil fuels until 2050. And in order to make this really fair, the first world should now immediately convert to renewable energy. In other words, all the white people go straight for renewable energy.

Align their economies. and move on to a prosperous, carbon free future. Dump the stuff on the third world. But I'm doing this under the guise of a just transition.

Amy Westervelt: That season also included a great interview with Yale economist Narasimha Rao, who talked about the role that global development funding plays in all of this, and the real structural blockers to energy transition for a lot of Global South countries.

Narasimha Rao: So the need for international cooperation, for technology transfer, and some sort of consideration of fair efforts is essential for deeper transformations in these poor economies. Having said that, there is [00:41:00] some potential for them to scale up. renewables beyond what they're currently doing potentially, but still there's an upfront capital requirement.

So let me speak about finance for a second. If you look at private finance today, the cost of capitals are exactly inversely related to the average income of countries. That is the poorest countries in sub Saharan Africa have the highest costs of capital. Seen by private finance because they see high risk in investing in these economies.

But this is a problem also of how risk is assessed and measured. So for example, you know, we think about credit risk, people need to have debt to get new debt and that's circular and maybe inappropriate for people who've never been part of the formal economy, but they may yet have a record, a perfect record of paying bills to the extent they receive existing services.

So the existing market for [00:42:00] finance on its own is going to be even more challenging because of the fact that the poorest countries have the highest. demanding cost of capital. So there's going to have to be some kind of government intervention to underwrite private finance, if at all, or some sort of broader scheme for government cooperation.

And so that's with regards to the transformation. Now, are developing countries thinking only short term, not thinking long term? For the most part, we have to understand that poor countries have development priorities that are longstanding. And over the last few decades, Generally, countries started out by saying that the climate is a northern problem.

It's a problem created by the West and has to be dealt with by them. But over time, for various reasons, it's been understood that all countries have to be part of the energy transition and also that there are several opportunities for Efficiently growing in ways that will be beneficial to even low [00:43:00] income countries, for example, by reducing air pollution, uh, and other health benefits of transitioning to clean energy.

So there has been a push towards trying to. integrate and mainstream climate conditions and climate priorities into development priorities. But it's really important to understand that we have to embed climate considerations within the existing set of priorities developing countries have rather than to think about it as let's see how we can introduce climate policy and think about other benefits for development.

So that mainstreaming of climate into development Policy I think is happening increasingly. And so yes, poor countries are mostly thinking about near term priorities, but there has been significant progress in at least formally thinking about climate, including them in plans for the future, but very often conditional on support from the [00:44:00] international community.

Amy Westervelt: I'll stick links to those episodes in the show notes as well in case you missed them.

Time for another quick break.

[ad break]

Okay, back to my conversation with Magat Wade, who runs the Center for African Prosperity. It's part of the Atlas Network of think tanks.

So, you know, Amy, I saw this piece. At first, I was… And then I was so sad. Do you know why I was sad? Because I told myself, I said, of course I was angry. Of course, because I'm like, Oh my God, do they even get it?

And then I was very sad because I said, and there again, my life as a black person, and how all issues [00:45:00] I talk about for, you know, poor people, that real pain. You know, today, listen, Amy, I'm, I'm going to share this with you because I have to today here. Um, here you go on this thing, this is, you see, this is a website that I go to and I'll share with you here. I'll show it to you. You see this photo, you see a boat, right?

Boat with people in it. Yeah. This is the news of the day. Every day, Amy, I have this news. Every day. And it's in Spain. La police intercept 30 migrants, 5 convoyeurs de ferry. The police intercepted a boat with 30 migrants in it, and they arrested 5 of the people who were helping them cross. Today it was only 30.

But every single day, Amy, I get this news. And you know that people will not make it. So when I see suffering, when I see the suffering of people who are so poor in their [00:46:00] nations, the jobs don't exist because the business, because the entrepreneurs cannot create businesses and it becomes so dire, but these kids.

For so many of them, they're half my age and they're saying, you know what, we are leaving. We have to go make a living. And you tell them, you know how many nights I spent sometimes on the phone trying to talk to a woman who is about to take off with her baby on these boats. I spent all night trying to talk her out of it because I know she has more chances of dying than not.

And then I see a piece like this, that's where, what these people are promoting is part of a problem. For me, they're not solving my problem, they're making it worse. And then I see a piece like this, where you give them 4, 000 words, 4, 000 words, and there's none for me. None. I don't exist. And that made me so sad.

First I was mad, then I was sad, because I was like, and there we go, we don't even matter. But some kid wanting to just go and [00:47:00] do whatever it is that they're doing is more important to defend than trying to work so that these people, Don't go. These people. Don't go.

Marker

Amy Westervelt: Me again. Sorry. You know, the beauty of a podcast is that when you're listening to a conversation later and you realize that you should have said something, you can just go ahead and say it. Feels important here to point out that a lot of poor migrants are being pushed out of their homes by extreme weather events as well, famine caused by drought.

And again, not all climate activists are rich white people. What we're talking about protecting is the basic right to protest, not some spoiled brat's right to do whatever they want. Okay, back to Magatte

Marker

Amy Westervelt: [00:48:00] Okay, so this, Amy, it's just, I'm just like, you see, this is why when I was talking to Jordan Peterson, and even there you criticize me, but All I was talking to him about, and I will say this to anyone that's willing to hear me out. I don't care who you are, because I think this is important. And I refuse to be like, oh, you on this side, you on this side. I talk to you, I don't talk to you. No, at least he was willing to hear me out. And when I say my people are dying, this is important. The policies that this guy right here, this face he took, what he's defending goes straight against my people.

And I will never, ever sit and watch that happen. And so when you say Black Lives Matter. Maybe we have to be clear about which Black lives matter. Maybe it's only American Black lives that matter. And maybe us African Black lives, and by the way, we're 90 percent of a representative of a Black race, maybe our ass doesn't matter.

And that's what I was trying to explain to Jordan Peterson. And a piece like this, 4, 000 words, given to defend this guy right here, who is promoting, stop what's gonna kill my people, or stand in our [00:49:00] way, I just don't know anymore. Because when I said, I don't know. I don't know, Amy. I'm so glad you're here because maybe I can hear from you.

Do I matter? Does Africa matter?

You definitely matter. Africa definitely matters. I'm really, genuinely sorry that this piece made you feel this way. It was definitely not the intention. Let me just kind of explain a little bit about what it was that we were looking at here, which was not defending any one climate activist group, necessarily.

I would say, like, The guy that you're pointing to, he's with Last Generation, their asks are pretty, pretty small. It's like institute a hundred kilometer an hour speed limit on the autobahn and give everyone access to free public transit. So they're not advocating for anything that would negatively impact people in Africa.

One of the things that we were looking at was not the protection of climate protests necessarily, but really the crackdown on [00:50:00] free speech in general. So, which is something that, like, from what I've read and seen, most Atlas Network think tanks are very supportive of free speech. So it's surprising to see, you know, intense amount of support for some kinds of free speech, but this sort of extreme approach. And not from you, by the way, I should, I feel like that should be made clear here. I have not ever seen you vilify climate protesters in any way, you have a difference of opinion with some of them, but I don't think that you have said or done anything that would contribute to what's happening right now, which is the criminalization of protest.

So really, it's the criminalization of protest piece, which will affect all people everywhere, that is a big problem for me, just as someone who thinks that, you know, hey, if you believe in free speech. That has to include speech you don't like to, you know, like, it can't just be the speech that you agree with.

So that was the focus of that piece. On the subject [00:51:00] of, climate politics and how it does or doesn't support prosperity in Africa. I think, again, like I said before, I feel like the climate movement has absolutely failed Africa. I see people all the time that just do not want to engage with anything around the need for cheap, reliable energy.

And to your point before about Germany going back to coal, yeah, I think it's ridiculous to push the idea of everyone transitioning to renewables before that's technologically feasible, which it is not at the moment technologically feasible to have the sort of scale of renewables that you would need to power all of Africa.

And also by the way, if that technology was available, it's going the usual route of heading to Europe first and then the rest of the world. So like ignoring that and that history is disingenuous and not helpful. That said, I also think [00:52:00] if we're going to say, okay, look, we need more entrepreneurship in Africa.

We need support for entrepreneurs and business. And a part of that support is access to cheap, free energy. Totally agree. I think that should be, you know, energy source agnostic. So like, if there's a situation where nuclear or hydro or renewables is the cheaper, more available option, then that should be allowed to happen.

Right now what's happening is kind of the reverse where there's a real push. And again, I'm going to mention the fossil fuel industry because they're not just like any old mom and pop set up, you know, they've got quite a lot of power. All over the world, there is quite a big push right now to lock in these contracts that require countries to be on fossil fuels for 30 plus years.

So that to me is again, actually like really not a free market approach, that is one industry saying you're going to sign this contract with us and you're going to be not allowed to change [00:53:00] for 30 years. That's not an improvement, you know.

Magatte Wade: Yeah, and I'm gonna, so there, there are two things.

So, so you're saying some, there's two things. And first of all, I am appreciative of the fact that you at least support prosperity for Africa and you all don't seem to be an anti fossil fuel– I call them the anti fossil fuel zealots. So it doesn't seem to me like you're that because you're saying, look, yeah, I'm hearing that, you know, reality is reality.

You kind of have a realist. Yeah. Yeah. It's a realist. That's, I'm very happy to hear that. So going back to two other things that you said, because I think, I think it might help for me to clarify that for you a little bit, because I happen to be within the Atlas Network. So, and I know what they're doing and how they're doing things.

So this is where I wish that some of the groups that you talked about here, actually not some, almost each single one of them would have been great that, you know, you had a call with them, maybe like you're having with me right now.

I think there's a misunderstanding on why the stand, but some of these [00:54:00] groups are taking and because for you when you're seeing the activist, you know, doing what they're doing, you're saying yeah, they're voicing their disagreement with whatever it is that the voice of a disagreement. They're voicing themselves.

They're very active. They're doing free speech. So you're saying they're doing free speech. And where people like, the folks, most of the folks in the Atlas network, you know, network would say is we are, we have never been against people, you know, doing free speech. As a matter of fact, free speech is definitely one of the pillars of, one of the pillars that we defend.

In this case, I think the discrepancy in understanding is in your free speech being squelched. And they would say to you, we hear them complaining about something, but. We also are property rights type of people. You don't get to go and throw tomato soup at a painting, which is a property somewhere that's not okay.

And it's not because maybe at some [00:55:00] time it was okay, maybe for culture or whatever. Us, we have always been the people who say, regardless of what culture. Things is is acceptable. Property rights means property rights. So being complain all you want, walk in the streets with big signs everywhere you want, scream as loud as you want, do whatever you want, but do not touch or deface or destroy property.

So that's and this is in line, a very clear line. Of our principles, property rights is important and anyone who is serious about entrepreneurship also will tell you that property rights is important. When I told you earlier that part of the entrepreneur's toolkit is clear and transferable property rights.

So the concept of property rights is key to us. And you can have free speech. So if all of these people were doing what they're doing without touching somebody's property, you would never hear us have an issue with that. But the moment we accept doing something to somebody's [00:56:00] property, because we don't like what they stand for, or we don't like what, what they do.

Then you can imagine the can of worms that gets open. And I think many people don't think about that really, about the can of worm we're allowing. If you have a right to mess with somebody's property, whether public or private, just because you don't happen to like, you know, what this place or the people behind it stand for, then it's open door.

It's open door and you're not going to be able to close this thing. So for us, and I think if you had talked to this organization, probably you guys would have talked and you would have understood that we are still Very much. Very much. It's one of our pillars. Defenders of free speech. And I think we have defended free speech even when it was not the cool thing to do.

And, but we separate free speech from property. So please go ahead and complain all you want. Go ahead and protest all you want. But please, property rights exist and we need to defend it at all costs. It's not because you don't like what Amy stands for, but you have a right to go and tag Amy's home. Or you have a right to The throw something at [00:57:00] Amy's window, or, you know, throw tomato soup at her child's stroller, or something like that.

If we start to accept that, because supposedly what they're defending seems to be what I agree with, and I think it's the right moral thing to do, then, who then gets to decide what's moral, what's not moral, right? So everything, it's just right to go and destroy everything everywhere. So I think if you spend a little bit of time with us.

That's kind of what you would find. So that's on the free speech and that's on these protesters and the reason why we're having an issue and we're telling the world we're saying to people what we're saying, Oh, today, maybe because they're defending what you think is cool to defend. You then close your eyes on all the things they're doing that is technically not okay.

So, but we're saying there, and we're basically the vigilance saying, be careful you guys. If we're going to accept this in the name of all the ideas they defend is something we agree with, then watch out for when they come, when people come to defend things that you don't really agree with. So anyway, so we're to kind of keep an eye on things like that and remind everybody, I don't care if you [00:58:00] like what we're doing or not like what

we're doing because tomorrow it could be against you. And I'm very proud that people like Atlas and the people in our network are out there watching and not being dragged into these political battles or into these cultural battles that actually fluctuate and go all over the place. So we have principles to stand no matter what.

So that's what they would probably say to you. And I'm sure that given what I've heard from you, Amy, and how the conversation we're able to have, even though I really, you know, I have a feeling that you guys eventually understand each other. And when you talk about, you know, these oil companies, the deals that they're making, it's not free market.

Look, that's another thing. If you know anything about Atlas, you will learn that one of our big enemies is what we call crony capitalism, crony business. And so, but cronyism is, happens when, really, when you have monopolies, or you, many, almost everyone else has been kept [00:59:00] out, or the people that you're negotiating with really don't have the same, you know, what do you call it, the same weight.

And then you can just give to them whatever you want. That's, so some of it is due to crony capitalism. And again, it is. Part of our principles, we are anti crony, we will fight monopolies anytime we see them. We don't agree with things like that. Now I go back to see, you know, someone like me, I mean, I used to be this way too.

I used to be like, if only we forced people that they have to do the contract this way or do it that way, otherwise they can't be there. You know what would happen? If a business does not see. If, if something doesn't work for business somewhere, it's simply just not going to do it. And it's not because we're going to force an oil company or, a great company or anybody to do the right thing. If, the situation allows them to get away with it as much as they might get away with, you know, people are greedy.

And this is not, when I say this, it's not a problem of capitalism because people are going to be like, yeah, capitalism is a greedy system. [01:00:00] No, humans are greedy. And as with everything, you will have people who are honest, people who are dishonest, you're going to have people who are fair, people who are fair, people who are just like, I'm going to take as much as I can and I don't care what people say, if I can do it, I will do it.

And our brothers are going to be like, even if no one is watching, I don't want to take more than what I have. And I believe in fairness, no matter what. And with business people, you have the same thing going on, same thing. So here, my, my argument goes back until. And unless African nations are no longer poor, he will have these type of deals because, you know, I'm like you too, I will say deals happening right there.

And there's absolutely nothing I can do with it. So am I going to go and start picketing and saying, yeah, force the oil companies and to do that? That's not where I'm going to spend my time. That's not going to change anything. But what I think is going to change something is if we unleash our entrepreneurs and they build a [01:01:00] prosperity with that prosperity.

People are going to start to notice us, respect us, and we're going to have, we're going to start to have a say in how our stuff is, is sold, sold, whom it's sold to, all of a sudden, it's going to start to happen. So for me, I made a calculation a long time ago, and that's where I fell. So when you say… Oh, Atlas is being hypocritical or the network is being hypocritical because they're supporting, you know, companies that are doing everything but the free market.

Every time you say something like that to yourself about Atlas, go in and dig in because you'll find exactly that we have not renounced our principles. Free markets is key to us. And again, like I said, we stand for free markets when it is popular and we stand for free markets when it is not popular.

This is. And another thing about us, Atlas Network, and the reason why I'm involved with them. Is it? I mean, I think that you would say it's a good thing to work on putting women's property rights in the constitution of Burundi when it was not before, [01:02:00] meaning women did not have a right. Property or to even property that was in their family before our partners at best partner.

When you said almost 600 partners, one of those 600 partners, that's what they have been working on. And they managed to get that to happen. I would say it's a good thing, right? Another thing, one of those all 600 Atlas partners, but usually it's more than one, it's multiple people working on different things, where in South Sudan, yet the right to property rights, the access to property rights, the right to property rights of women is in the constitution, yet it was not being upheld in real life.

What our partners came to us for, what the funding went to them for, was to actually work with all the stakeholders in this part of South Sudan. We're talking about the judges. We're talking about the police people. We're talking about the husbands. We're talking about all the stakeholders, women themselves, telling them, ladies, these are your rights.

So [01:03:00] all of a sudden now you have this right that was in the law, but the culture did not follow the law. It was not on par. It's the culture law. And so here, make sure that both of them matched and now women know their rights and they also are having their rights upheld in the court of law and also in their communities.

That's a good thing. That's where we spend the money. Also in, what do you call it, in Sri Lanka. Our partners there, what they have been working on is some of the many things that they work on. One of them had to do with access to a personal hygiene product for women. We're talking about things like that.

As it turned out, there was an outrageously high tax put on those products. So much that the final cost was almost out of reach for everyday Sri Lankan women. And so they've worked on those reforms to take down those, you know, those taxes so that the end product would become affordable for everybody. So here, my NGO friends would say, Oh, they don't have tampons.

Let's ship them free tampons. [01:04:00] And someone like me was saying, we don't want to have to rely on your free stuff for the rest of our lives. So what are we going to do? What's the sustainable way here? Yeah. The sustainable way is find out what the problem is and something about it. And that's what our partners did.

This is Atlas. This is the organization and the members and the partners I love so much. Everybody that I have talked to there, I haven't talked to all the 600 partners. But I know there, and I've been working with such amazing, decent people who truly put themselves in the line.

in the most honorable way. Putting themselves in the line for these people is not about going and destroying somebody's property or throwing tomato at some painting and stuff like that. They're not doing that. They're doing the real hard work .

So when I see a piece like this, I'm like, how did you guys talk to us? And Amy, I will end this by saying, please, if you would want to come and be my guest, we have our annual gala every November. It's happening in mid November. It's in New York City. And you will get to see these people, talk to [01:05:00] them.

You will hear, because that year, during that time, we celebrate our best freedom fighters. We are supporting the people who are fighting for the freedom, for their freedoms, for the freedom to speak, for the freedom to build the business.

Amy Westervelt: Can I just say one more thing? I know we're getting really close to time, but I just want to, just say a couple of things.

One, you know, look, criticizing something a couple of or three or six or whatever entities within a large network are doing is not by any stretch saying that it's all bad and they're not doing any good . I know that there are good things being done as well. And on the systemic change thing, I mean, I would love to see something like the Atlas Network getting involved in looking at, you know, the way that bilateral trade agreements, for example, lock countries into bad contracts, that's like a big systemic thing.

You are? That's amazing. Yes, we are. We have people who are doing, working on all of that stuff. We are, [01:06:00] again, wherever you see cronyism, we're out there fighting it.

Marker

Amy Westervelt: Popping in here again to say that I did look for examples of Atlas getting involved in reforming the investor state dispute system. This is the mechanism that most bilateral trade agreements and bilateral investment agreements provide for companies to effectively sue governments for any changes that impact their business.

It's been used a lot to push back on human rights and environmental legislation. I couldn't find any examples of Atlas folks working on this issue, so I asked Magat to send me stuff or recommend someone that's working on it. I haven't heard back yet, but she's super busy, so I'm still hoping to hear.

Very much hoping that it's true, that they are working to reform this.

Marker

Magatte Wade: So that's my [01:07:00] point. You know, a big Oil Company could come and say, Oh, we're giving you money to do, we're giving you money because we're at a spike.

But we're going to do the work, the work we do is the work we do. And it's all the people I told you about. That's where the money goes to. We're supporting these initiatives. So for me, it's just, we are addressing all of that. If there's something that you're interested in, I can find some of my friends working on this.

And also even on the climate, you know, right now, we have this coalition of people who are trying to think about, you know, the, some of the best ways to address, you know, because yeah, people are going to say, look, uh, is it always a better idea to, to be a climate friendly? Absolutely. And I think you will see people like that among us who say that it's, if we can do better, let's do better, which we always have a responsibility to do better.

So, um, is there a better way for the environment? Is there better ways for human rights? Is there a better way for this, for that? Yes, there is. Let's find, let's find out. So that's our commitment. But Amy, [01:08:00] it seems to me like, you know, the fact that A, you're the only one who decided to speak with me when they asked the other three, you're the only one. And then you come here and I'm not seeing you trying to score a point or anything like that. I really appreciate that.

It tells me that, you know, you also could agree with me that if you haven't back and rewrite this piece. Amy, you can't, with a straight face, tell me that this was not a hit piece, meaning that this was not about you not just focusing on one or saying, it's nothing but focusing. If it was stuff I was reading in here, me, who is inside the organization, I could see that.

I would be just like you too. I would say, Amy, look, not everybody's perfect. Yeah. We trade offs, blah, blah, blah. I would have trust. I would have. And the day I see something too, but the point is. This piece right here, I think is not representative of the reality. I think it was written in a very one sided way.

But, Based on the conversations we've had, it seems to me like you would be the type of [01:09:00] person who says, You know what, my God, I heard it and fine, but I've heard you.

So, that's all I'm, and by the way,

Amy Westervelt: No, no, I appreciate, actually like, totally, I super appreciate you taking the time to talk to me. Well, actually, I do, one thing that, you know, makes people use the words like shadowy, is I'm sorry, is the lack of transparency around funding. So, you know, I would like encourage think tanks in general.

And I say that about the left leaning think tanks as well. I don't understand why these entities exist. The whole point is to shape public conversation and ultimately shape public policy, international negotiations, all that kind of stuff. It, I think it's good for people to know, who's behind those things.

And like I said, across the political spectrum, I don't have any love for the lefty NGOs either.

Magatte Wade: I appreciate that. I appreciate that. I appreciate what you just said. I appreciate it. [01:10:00] And I would tell you that us, anybody who is willing to get the record, we will put them on the record, you know, donors, but you know how sometimes in your side, and I think the reason why that is, is because people are sick and tired of being attacked, quite frankly, I'm sure they're getting tired of being attacked. So maybe if we had more of a commitment to focus on the type of work that's being done. You know, rather than, oh, who gave what, maybe donors would be a little bit more, you know, feeling free to put something out there. And also, some people just, even without even being worried about, you know, being attacked or whatever, some people are just, discreet. So, but I think some people are discreet, but I think many people who are not putting their names out there might have to do with this polarization where you're doomed if you do and you're doomed if you don't.

I sense in you somebody who wants to see a better world. And I want to see a better world. I think if we can agree on that and work from there, it might mean something different. So I would love to keep these conversations going.

And if you [01:11:00] want to talk to anybody on our side and find out more, all of that, you please let me know.

Amy Westervelt: I would love to keep talking. I have a lot, I have like a lot more questions and it's great that you're open to.

Magatte Wade: I'm very open. I'm very open.

Anyway, I thank you.

Amy Westervelt: Thank you. Have a good rest of your day.

Magatte Wade: You too. Bye bye.

Amy Westervelt: That's it for this time. Again kind of a messy conversation. Uh, very curious to hear your thoughts. Next week, I'm going to bring you another one of these, this time with someone who has a very different viewpoint on things. Rihanna Gunn Wright. She's a policy analyst with the Roosevelt Institute. She was one of the original creators of the Green New Deal way back when. And she's been thinking a lot about how permitting reform and energy transition in the U. S. is leaving out people of color. Come back for that conversation.

Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next [01:12:00] time.