In this week’s podcast episode, reporter Molly Taft digs into multiple new reports on fossil fuel funding of university research, and talks to experts Geoffrey Supran and Craig Callender about the impact this funding is having on climate policy.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Amy Westervelt: Welcome Molly Taft, our senior reporter, editor extraordinaire. You have been looking into fossil fuel funding in universities in lots of different ways, but there's some news recently on this front.

What's happening?

[00:00:15] Molly Taft: Yeah, so there's been a lot of movement on a conversation that I feel like has been going on both officially and unofficially for, for several years. You know, One of the more interesting things that happened this month is a team of researchers released a literature review, which sounds kind of boring, but basically what they did is they said to themselves, okay, you know, in order to move forward in researching fossil fuel funding in universities, we need to figure out what we know first, right? So they basically did what's called an academia literature review, which is you look at all the literature on a topic and you kind of come to some conclusions about it. And what's interesting about this literature review is that you know, even though activists and folks in, in universities, folks concerned about the climate have been talking about fossil fuel funding in academia for a really long time.

The researchers found that there's actually not that many peer reviewed articles about it. There's not that much peer reviewed research about what all of this oil money is doing to academic research. Yeah. Which is kind of crazy. Cause like, Uh, the parallels here that they drew were conflict of interest, uh studies on bias in research are really prevalent when it comes to other industries like tobacco, pharmaceuticals, you can find hundreds of peer reviewed articles on this topic, like what happens when an industry funds research and those discussions have been going on for decades, but there's, there's just not a lot with fossil fuel, Funding and a lot of it is really recent.

They found seven peer reviewed articles in their search and only a few of them were before 2012. So, you know, there's a real dearth of peer reviewed research on this topic. So to complete their literature review, what they did was they use what they call gray literature, which is reports from NGOs, reports from journalists, you know, articles about what fossil fuel funding is doing and moving through universities and, and reports from students too, which are a really valuable part of this conversation.

And they use that to kind of bulk out the literature review, And found that there's a lot of really valuable work going on to understand how this industry is shaping policy at the top levels of university. But there's also like still a lot more that especially folks involved in academia can do. Academia needs to kind of turn the mirror towards itself in a sense, and really take a much closer look at how this industry is, is shaping what's going on inside of it.

[00:02:55] Amy Westervelt: Yes, exactly. I think It just sort of helps to have this report as like a official accounting of where this stuff is at now. As we're looking towards getting more information and figuring out more.

Speaking of which I know there are also student reports coming out.

[00:03:14] Moll: Yeah.

[00:03:14] Amy Westervelt: So yeah, there's a batch of new research that's coming on this stuff.

[00:03:18] Moll: Yeah. So one actually, and that sort of ties into the literature review. So I was talking to one of the researchers, Geoffrey Supran, and, you know, he really emphasized that, again, a lot of their literature review came from students on campus noticing stuff about how their university takes fossil fuel money.

And You know, there's no replaceable way of doing research on a campus that's quite like being on the campus and being in the campus culture and understanding the way a school works, whether you work there, or you're a student there, or you're an alum. Those are really the front lines of understanding this kind of stuff.

And so, there's been a push from a group called the Campus Climate Network. They have gathered students on a couple of different universities across the U S and some international groups as well. And the first batch of their reports on how fossil fuel money Is is working throughout their specific universities were also released in September. And, these students put a lot of really interesting numbers on a problem that doesn't have a lot of numbers right now. I think the last real accounting, was data for progress estimated back in 2023 that five fossil fuel companies had donated, I think, 700 million To a group of us universities over the past decade and they said that was almost certainly an undercount and really turns out it was. So one number that really shocked me was, students at Columbia really buckled down and combed their university's public facing documents, like stuff they could obtain publicly. This isn't any sort of, peek into the inner workings of Columbia.

They just sat down and they did the work. They expanded the reach a little bit to not just five major fossil fuel companies, but a variety of different fossil fuel influences. And by their calculations, Columbia has taken, I think more than 37 million since 2005 in fossil fuel funding which includes an environmental health professorship endowed by, uh, a descendant of, of HES, uh, the guy who started HES.

So there is an environmental health field of study that is being funded by like the HES foundation, which I found particularly ironic. But. Yeah, it really goes to show and I think in the, the data for progress report, the number they put on Columbia was 5 million and you know, it really goes to show like when you are familiar with how your school works and, and where to look for these things, it can be insanely beneficial in, in figuring out where the money is coming from and what it's going towards.

[00:05:52] Amy Westervelt: Totally, which is the perfect segue into the other thing that we're going to, we're going to talk about in

[00:05:57] Moll: I love

[00:05:58] Amy Westervelt: which is like, I know, beautiful, smooth transition, but but like the students are amazing because they know where to look for things and they also like catch wiffs of things on campus that they're kind of like, wait a minute, that seems weird.

And the other great place to look for information on this stuff, because again, A lot of these schools do not disclose all of their funding, and with the private schools in particular, you can't get, get at it through public records requests, you have to talk to people and figure it out.

And one of the best sources on that stuff is actually other professors at those schools too, because in a lot of cases. People who are working at these campuses and are working on climate stuff, for example, are not super happy about the fact that other people are taking fossil fuel money. Like actually I had an interesting conversation with Mark Jacobson at Stanford about this and how much some of his colleagues there have been Ponying up to the fossil fuel money trough.

[00:07:06] Mark Jacobson: there's a lot of fossil fuel funding and institutes like at our university, we have these institutes that are funded largely by Fossil fuels. We have even in our new school of sustainability. What's the number one flagship research project that they're promoting?

It's carbon capture

besides Stanford, Princeton and MIT are culprits in pushing carbon capture, direct air capture, blue hydrogen, electro fuel. So therefore, these four technologies are really pushed by the fossil fuel industry, and the fossil fuel industry is funding universities

[00:07:35] Amy Westervelt: And you had an interesting conversation with Craig Callender, who's a professor at UC San Diego. Both about what he's seen there, but also they passed some interesting new policies recently.

[00:07:48] Moll: Craig's doing some really interesting work and under his and other folks on his committee's leadership, they're kind of pioneering the next step forward in, Talking about this kind of stuff. He teaches the philosophy of science.

So this is like, kind of right up his alley. And you know, he got on the academic Senate committee and, and they started wrestling with this question of like, okay, what do we do about fossil fuel , money in our university, in the UC system in general. What are the best policies to kind of start tackling this.

And so. You know, uh, back in the early two thousands, lots of schools joined on this bandwagon to ban tobacco money for specifically medical or health research. And a lot of these schools still have those policies in place. Surprisingly that policy actually failed at UC. But they did put on this other policy where you would need a special review of tobacco money by the chancellor.

And so they said, okay, what if we do that? for fossil fuel money. And, that was basically, he said, they told me that was kind of dead on arrival. There's all sorts of concerns about academic freedom. , I think latent in this conversation sometimes is when you bring this up, it's, you know, I think people who are working at research centers and universities think that you're accusing them of like knowingly conspiring with oil and gas companies, which is absolutely like that's far and away. Not the case, but there is research showing that when you take money from an industrial funder or corporate funder that does, like, set the tone of your research, whether you sort of realize it or not, you know., it doesn't mean that you're emailing BP every day to update them on your progress in destroying the climate, but it does mean that if BP is paying for something, then they want that research done for a specific reason, right?

[00:09:35] Amy Westervelt: Shout out to Doug Almond and his team

[00:09:37] Moll: Yes, I was about

[00:09:39] Amy Westervelt: piece. Yeah,

[00:09:40] Moll: that piece was so good and really highlights you know, and he being at Columbia is also really interesting, especially given this new student report tallying up some of the money involved. But anyway, so Craig and the committee sort of regrouped and they were like, all right, so if we're not going to get a special review from the chancellor, why don't we just like beef up?

Transparency disclosures around this. And I think a lot of people I've talked to and Amy, I'm, I'm sure you had this experience too. Like people you talk to about this are like shocked that that's not required, but like, they're really, there's so few disclosure requirements for this stuff. It is mind blowing.

There's no federal policy, state policies, nothing in the state, you know, most universities. have some sorts of ethics stuff, but like, a lot of them don't require you to talk about where you take money from.

[00:10:31] Amy Westervelt: they don't. And there's this really interesting thing. So like the, the the last time I wrote about this stuff was around the, the data for progress report. And the only school that gave me like a full accounting of their funding from fossil fuel companies was Berkeley. And when I asked them about, what they thought of this push to try to ban fossil fuel funding of research , they were like, well, I don't think we could do that without getting sued.

And I said, but what about, you know, which is the thing people always say is like, well, we did it with the tobacco industry. And they were like, yeah, but that was pre citizens United. So that's super interesting how that stuff dovetails with this idea that like, it's part of academic freedom to allow people to take money from wherever.

And something Craig said to me, and I'm sure repeated to you as well, is that like, even when they talk about transparency and disclosure, people will argue that it could impact or have like a chilling effect on academic freedom. If. People have to disclose where their funding is coming from. And I'm kind of like, I, I kind of feel okay with that chill.

Like if, you know what I mean? It's like, if someone is like, Ooh, I like this money is going to make me look bad or it's like, you know, they're worried that they will be criticized for taking money from somewhere. I don't know. To me, I'm kind of like, I don't know. It just seems like where there's smoke, there's fire on that one.

[00:11:58] Moll: totally. But it's also, you know, and, and yeah, he, we talked about, you know, he was like, a lot of the standards that you think of this stuff come from conversations around pharmaceutical products and like ethics around disclosure in the pharmaceutical industry. And those conversations were like really heated a couple of decades ago.

And people were defending, writing an op ed in favor of a drug while being paid for the company that manufactures that drug and saying that's academic freedom. So our conversations around, yeah, it's not great. Yeah. Like, no, that was, that was a hot button issue back in, I think he said the eighties.

So I think that one thing I took away from him is that our definition of academic freedom, both culturally and in universities is subject to debate. I think most people now would say that it's, it's important to disclose if you're getting paid by a drug company to promote a drug.

But there's also this issue, not, it's not just Citizens United, but like increasingly universities and research have been just so privatized over the past couple of decades.

[00:13:03] Amy Westervelt: That's a really important point. Like I, I know I looked at this a while ago and it's probably, I think it's probably only gotten worse, but the proportion of research funding that comes from the private sector has just been growing exponentially

[00:13:18] Moll: Mm hmm. Mm

[00:13:20] Amy Westervelt: couple decades. So you have corporate donors, then you have high net worth individuals donating and they have specific agendas oftentimes to and then, you know, donor advised funds have become a major donor. To universities as well, which is where you get a lot of like the Koch money, but also lots of other hidden industry interests as well. So it's definitely,

[00:13:45] Moll: Yeah. There's a lot going on, so What Craig and his, uh, fellow faculty members on the Senate committees formed is this policy that says, look, you can take money from fossil fuel industries. That's fine. You just have to disclose it. Like, you have to be really clear about what, where it's from and what it's going towards.

[00:14:01] Amy Westervelt: which seems so reasonable and it

[00:14:03] Moll: I know

[00:14:04] Amy Westervelt: high margin,

[00:14:05] Moll: passed by 91 percent in May 91 percent of the vote. So, clearly, you know, I think these conversations are, are perhaps for folks on campuses, , difficult to have with your peers who might, be taking money from a corporation and doing what probably is, like, valuable research. But, you know, having the conversations around, just how low of a bar disclosure is and how much good actually just being forthcoming about where the money is coming from can help address some of the issues and, and honestly, also just open up a dialogue about, like, what's the purpose of taking this money?

So that measure is with the chancellor right now. So like, we still don't know if it's going to pass in the meantime, UCSD all of their students are being required to take, like, climate change courses. It's a new as of this semester, a new uh, curriculum requirement for everyone there, which is really cool.

But , I think just having people on campuses who are starting these conversations, , is going to be some of the most important steps forward in even just like learning more about this stuff and figuring out where we're at with regards to, to fossil fuel money in universities.

[00:15:15] Amy Westervelt: Yeah, yeah. And, where feels comfortable to draw the lines because I feel like you and I were talking about this before that like, there's a certain amount of this stuff that does seem kind of innocuous, you know, it's sort of like, oh, they funded a scholarship here or they funded, uh, you know, whatever, but then I also am like, Oh, yeah. Well, maybe I've just had that stuff normalized so much that it seems fine, but there's influence there too. And I get, you know, like just really like talking, like just figuring out as a society, okay, how, cause honestly, I mean, oil companies were amongst the first to actually be major private donors to universities and they did cotton on really quickly.

Like there was, I found a speech that, uh, standard oil New Jersey guy gave in the fifties. Which is like, there was a huge influx of private money into universities because they changed the tax code in the U S and they made it a write off, right. Which it wasn't before. So like, uh, the companies were starting to do more donations because it was like, Oh, great.

It's a tax write off. But this guy who was at Standard Oil, I was like, no, you guys are missing the much bigger value, which is that like, this is going to help us shape how people view the economy and public policy and it's going to be the thing that's going to help us push back against statism.

[00:16:33] Moll: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:16:34] Amy Westervelt: So like they were really, really early and I feel like I don't know that there's been enough of a larger cultural conversation about how much it's grown and how we

[00:16:45] Moll: Mm hmm.

[00:16:46] Amy Westervelt: I don't, like when I was at school, I remember there was a huge push around public private partnerships and commercializing the research that was coming out of universities.

And like, it was kind of all upside, right? It's like, Oh, well, like researchers, You know, don't just want their stuff sitting in a lab somewhere. Companies are looking for new ideas. It's a win win, you know? And there just hasn't necessarily been enough about like, okay, but what are the downsides, you know?

[00:17:13] Moll: Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's gonna get even murkier, you know, as Oil companies shift from you know, they're not doing explicit to not, no one's doing explicit denial anymore. Like no one is denying that this problem is here, but. They are adopting different tactics to make sure that they stay in business, which is a different conversation.

Right. And so what, where is the, I find this topic really endlessly fascinating because I think that a lot of, uh, disinformation reporting has a hard ethical line, right? Which is like this company is spreading disinformation, but like now it's like, okay, so BP wants to stay in business. And one of the things they're doing is like funding Research at universities that will help them stay in business and what do we do about that? , it's an interesting ethical question. Or, you know, I think, uh, Doug Almond in that paper, that 2022 paper, there's a bunch of recommendations that he has, which include, like, when someone from a research center that is funded by oil and gas money testifies in front of lawmakers, they should disclose the funding to their research center.

Which seems really simple, but I can imagine a lot of people would be extremely upset to have to do that. And so, you know, like, where, where are these ethical lines? Like, what are we going to start accepting when it comes to money in research and, and what, what is going to be onerous to

[00:18:39] Amy Westervelt: Totally. Totally. I've had so many conversations with people who either run or work at centers that are heavily fossil fuel funded or even exclusively fossil fuel funded at universities and their, Line of thinking. And I think this, this is pretty common across a lot of these campuses is this idea that, but we're taking it to research solutions, so it's fine.

We're not taking it to fund a petroleum engineering department. Like that would be bad, but what we're doing is actually taking their money to look into solutions. But you know, I, I had a conversation with a guy at one place who, you know, it was kind of like, what's like, what's the problem with that? If it's for not.

fossil fuel development or whatever. And I was like, well, I mean, what are you researching at your center? And he's like, Oh, like mostly, mostly hydrogen, but like good hydrogen, green hydrogen and carbon capture. And I was like, okay, well like, would, would those be the research focuses of your center absent the fossil fuel funding? And he was like, I don't know. And I'm like, that's, that is where the big question lies.

[00:19:52] Moll: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a great, that's a great question. And like, yeah, I think, I think that's something that, you know, I'm glad that like people on campuses are starting to, talk about this. And honestly, it's

[00:20:08] Amy Westervelt: And just talk about it. Cause yeah, honestly, I'm like, I don't know, maybe they would be, maybe we do need more money in those things. And , the other thing too, is that like the, the, the thing I always think about is like, Cause people will be like, well, where else is the money going to come from?

Right. It's not like there's some big pot of, you know, no strings attached money just waiting to fund research. And when I've asked students about that, they're kind of like, well, a, I'm okay with less research if it means less bias in the research. And I'm like, okay, good. You know, interesting to think about.

Yes. But also and I, I mean, I think about this with, you know, with respect to the fossil fuel industry all the time in general, why do they have to be in charge of how that money gets spent? That's the piece where I'm like, okay, well, what if they can donate, but they can't have any Influence, which for the most part is not a thing that they are interested in doing almost every like thing I've ever seen or talked to someone about or whatever there are strings attached.

It's like, well, we only want to fund research on X, Y, Z, or we want to have a say in the research projects that are chosen, or we want to have a person who works at that center. Or, you know, it's like, there's, there are a lot of ways that, that they end up having influence if they spend the money and like, you know, they don't really make big donations without that.

[00:21:34] Moll: Yeah. Without the strings attached. Yeah. Craig, Craig compared, compared this to like, you know, everyone's doing it, but no one wants to show their hand in poker. Like, no one wants to be the guy who goes first. And I do think like, You know, if, if that is a condition for accepting money, then like, defend it, you know, like, make sure, like, make sure you have the guardrails in place so that it's like, we are taking money for this specific project.

And we think this is actually a good thing. And we're gonna like, put your say it with your whole chest is kind of where I'm at with this, you know,

[00:22:08] Amy Westervelt: Right.

[00:22:08] Moll: yeah, like, if you think it's, if you think having An oil executive sit on the board of a center that is doing this kind of research is a good thing, then why don't you publicize the guardrails you're, you're putting in place to make sure that the research is you know, not biased?

Why don't you, like, I hate to be like a investigative reporter stereotype, but like sunlight is the best disinfectant. Just put it out there, make sure everything is really public, which is the opposite of what's happening right now. Yeah.

[00:22:40] Amy Westervelt: yeah. Totally. Awesome. Alright, coming up Molly talks to Jeffrey Supran and Craig Callender, and we get into a lot more details on this stuff.

That's all coming up after this quick break. I'm Amy Westervelt, and this is Drilled.

Music up and ad break

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[00:22:57] Molly Taft: Let's start at the beginning. So the first piece of research you guys have is 2003, right? It's, the new economics foundation report.

And like, I gotta tell you, like, I looked it up and I was pretty. Not surprised, but it sounded like something that could have been written yesterday, right? And like a lot of the tenants of what, you know, um, people who study this stuff, they were right there and you do the math and there are like kids in college now who were born after that report came out.

Right. So yeah. Can you talk me through you know, this stuff has been out there for a while, but how has the research around it grown and changed and, is it the nature of academia to sort of sit on topics for a while until someone kind of lights a fire under someone's ass or is it the circular nature of this kind of discussion or like what kind of prevented this from catching on quicker in the literature, do you think?

[00:24:03] Geoffrey Supran: I mean, so, so I think the, this, our findings are a bit of a, uh, an interesting needle to thread in terms of communicating them. Because on the one hand, what we found is that, um, uh, civil society, right? Like non academic researchers have been warning about this for quite some time, right? Since, as you said, the early two thousands.

So part of the story is that there has been quite a significant delay, like on the order of a decade or more in terms of an uptake on this topic by academics who are doing more scholarly peer reviewed research. Um, so on the one hand, this is a story about sort of an intransigence and the, and the delayed.

[00:24:45] Geoffrey Supran: Serious, you know, attention being paid on it. But, but on the other hand, I think what we find is that there has already been enough research, both the gray literature and the peer-reviewed literature Mm-Hmm. to substantiate that there already is an emerging consensus around the idea that this is a, a big, uh, threatening problem that that should be taken more seriously.

But yeah, I guess like specifically on this question of how it's evolved and why it hasn't evolved quicker academically, I think you could ask almost the same question about why supply side climate research very broadly, uh, has only taken off in the last few years, and, and, for anyone listening who isn't very familiar, supply side academic literature basically refers to putting fossil fuel production and supply front and center, rather than just You can look at about 20 minutes.

Uh, the, the other question is, you mentioned that, uh, this is a really interesting topic I wouldn't be surprised if this answer may not be the first answer, but is it something consumer demand and the associated greenhouse gas emission. So it's about looking at the, the, the, the top end of the pipeline rather than the bottom end, um, to use like an oil industry metaphor.

[00:25:50] Molly Taft: Um, I mean, your carbon footprint versus the people who are actually like selling the shoes kind of.

[00:25:55] Geoffrey Supran: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and, and, and it's really, um, by some kind of fortune, I suppose over almost exactly the span of, of my academic. Career on this topic that that transition has happened and I've actually I think written a few articles about and Definitely some Twitter threads like about why this has happened and I think it's a confluence of multiple factors perhaps foremostly activism that has really, you know, especially I'm thinking of the fossil fuel divestment movement, uh, the blockadier campaigns, things that really put front and center fossil fuels and fossil fuel producers and their political, complicity as much as anything through lobbying and disinformation and so on.

And I think going along with that has been things like the economics, the warnings of carbon bubbles and stranded fossil fuel assets. Um, uh, increasing public health research about the direct public health harms of fossil fuels. Um, And frankly, the economics of renewables that has increasingly made fossil fuels economically, more expensive, and so I think it's a number of those factors that have all come together.

I would say also, it's about courage. Um, like I wrote a piece back in like, I don't know, 2016, 17 or so in Huffington Post saying like higher education needs to be braver when it comes to addressing the climate crisis. And part of that was about, um, a campaign we were running to try to get the American Geophysical Union, which is the world's largest earth science organization to reject funding from ExxonMobil.

And, at the same time we were campaigning for fossil fuel divestment at MIT and students were doing this around the world. And we were very conscious that the very universities we were asking to take climate action were also taking hundreds of millions of dollars from David Koch and other fossil fuel interests.

And so I think that there's just been this, um, I don't know, just so many things, like a generational shift too, in terms of like, no longer feeling like. We have time to waste in terms of, you know, I'm going to get tenure and be really safe before I start to address this topic, although actually coincidentally, that is what has happened to me.