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
[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.
Um, but, but, but, but that is purely kind of coincidence because, you know, like I've been, I've been writing publicly, but. In a non academic way about this since like 2016, 17, but it's just taken a long while to like get our ducks in a row because academics are like, you know, it's like herding cats. But yeah, I mean, I think it's just taken a moment for, for the sort of the realization that this is a big deal.
Like when I testified in the Senate, like very recently, and I think perhaps the most interesting documents that came out of that joint house Senate investigation were the revelations, these internal oil industry memos showing how strategic and intentional their infiltration of academia and their weaponization of those relationships has been.
And a lot of people were coming up to me afterwards and being like, Oh, this whole like academia thing actually seems kind of important. And I was like, yeah, like, this is what we've been saying for a while. Um, so I dunno, it's just a. I guess it's just the way things happen that sometimes things take a moment for people to to cotton on to them.
[00:29:13] Molly Taft: Yeah, I mean, actually, now that you're saying it, it's like a lot of people I know who were doing activism in 2009, 2010, like, you know, they, they grew up and like furthered in their careers. And it does seem like academia is more rife with people who came from a different perspective on this and who might have actually had experience.
It's on the front lines of activism versus just coming at this from like an academic perspective. You know?
[00:29:37] Geoffrey Supran: Yeah, exactly. I think, and that's kind of the general trend that we observed that essentially activists and advocates and civil society in general has been on the leading edge of, of addressing this and recognizing this problem.
And it still is, frankly, it's still, frankly, the student. at activists, at places like Campus Climate Network, leading the charge. Back in 2012, 2013, like, when we were organizing around fossil fuel divestment at MIT, we were explicitly conscious of the fact that there was also this funding problem, but I guess our naive, Approach was well, let's solve one problem at a time and we thought you know, once MIT is divested Then we'll get on to addressing the the funding issue Unfortunately, they never divested But actually I just the students at MIT just reached out to me the other day and in a couple weeks Their graduate student union has a referendum vote on whether the university should Take fossil fuel funding so There is a new generation, you know, working on this
[00:30:38] Molly Taft: That ties into my next question, which is folks in the climate world love , the tobacco industry analogy, with good reason, right? And now everyone I've interviewed on the university funding aspect brings up the tobacco conversation.
And in the early two thousands, , it seems like a lot of the conversation around tobacco funding policies was coming from academics and public health groups and not the kind of grassroots, students and frontline folks that we're talking about here.
And it does seem like as a result, a lot of universities very explicitly decided to stop taking tobacco funding or really put guardrails on other types of funding. No one has really been able to do that with fossil fuel funding yet. Like, why do you think the response from universities to this movement has been so limited?
Have we just not given them enough time or, Is it the nature of the request is thornier than when, when it comes to, you know, pharmaceuticals or tobacco? What are some of the sticking points that you've noticed in this work and the rest of your work?
[00:31:37] Geoffrey Supran: Yeah, I mean, in a way, the question's above my pay grade, and, ultimately, it's university leaders themselves who have to explain their decision making.
I would, you know, to give them the benefit of the doubt, it has, in some cases, been a relatively recent push, you know, like, On the order of a few years by, by students and faculty trying to get universities to cut these ties. But in other cases, I mentioned the American geophysical union, we ran a year long campaign and we wrote a whole report proving that the Exxon sponsorship of, the AGU conference violated the organization's own bylaws.
And this is an organization of, for, and by. Earth scientists, you know, and the only way the funding relationship ended was because in the end, after like more than a decade or two, Exxon actually cut their ties. And my, my only presumption is that it ended up being on net worse PR than good PR for them, that we were running this campaign.
Um, so there is a, a, a measurable, sort of recalcitrance from universities to act on this. And, you know, our report specifically shines a spotlight on the failure to disclose, like a failure of transparency, to even just provide data on who is funding and how much are they funding, let alone, you know, what are the terms of these, these contractual agreements.
And all the evidence that we have uncovered points to the fact that these relationships are, and these contracts are sometimes really problematic in terms of the control that they hand to the, the fossil fuel funders.
As far as universities are concerned, this is a significant, source of, revenue.
And, um, they obviously, I remember once a board member at MIT telling us, um, It's not so much an issue of, could they take money from A, or should they take money from B. They just want to take money from everywhere, you know, like anywhere they can find it. And, um, I think we're sympathetic as scholars to the fact that funding is tight and federal funding has been falling in part as a result of the politics that the oil industry has been lobbying in favor of for decades.
So there is a, a circularity to all this. Um, so we're not saying it's easy and necessarily the, the, uh, The immediate response has to be just like cut all ties overnight, you know, if people make that response, that's like saying, Oh, you're saying we should end fossil fuel use tomorrow. It's like, it's a it's a very reductive oversimplification of, simply a raising of concerns and the proposal that we as you said do more there are dozens and dozens of safeguards that you can impose between doing nothing and cutting the ties and and I have a another paper coming out where we really Elaborate all those in detail based on the history of tobacco, but also pharmaceuticals and junk food Um, I myself have really taken most insight from those other Disciplines where there has been an awful lot of scholarship proving that these conflicts of interest often lead to bias.
[00:34:40] Molly Taft: That's something I sort of noticed in the spring when, both the documents came out and then concurrently there were all of those campus protests where they were really calling out the campus ties to like Lockheed and Raytheon and, and defense contractors. And I saw a lot of. Not in response to the fossil fuel documents, but a lot of university kind of folks who sided with the university saying, well, there's no way to just cut off all funding altogether, right?
Like, where else are we going to get the money? And, I'm glad you mentioned the safeguards because, one thing that I think is difficult is like, there's just no way to tell a lot of the time, what the money is going to be used for. Like if, if Exxon is building a dance hall versus if it's funding studies on renewable energy.
Right. And, either a group of students or some faculty who, want to, either do research in an academic discipline on this, or, start some sort of, group on campus, what can they do to kind of root a little bit more down into how funding is used at their university. What tools are available to their disposal ?
[00:35:43] Geoffrey Supran: Well, it's actually interesting. You asked that question. Um, if I was a little more prepared, I'd have like a perfect response, but, um, we are actually in the process of trying to, launch, essentially a global survey to, , pull all of these insights from different campuses and, a lot of this information, probably most of it is not on the internet.
Right? Like I can tell you that grad students who go to the careers fair at MIT, at least in my day, Exxon was a recruiter and they would hand out little stress reliever squeezy toys in the shape of an oil barrel with the company logo on.
[00:36:18] Molly Taft: That's crazy. They were in the shape of an oil barrel? That's insane.
[00:36:21] Geoffrey Supran: Yeah. I have a photo of it. There was another --ENI-- the Italian oil company sent us like, a 10, 000 custom made. Horse sized toy in the shape of the company logo and it sat in my office and we would sit up ride it like a horse Like it was like it was there.
It's like so Eccentric so out like anything you can imagine exists, you know, like students at either Cambridge or Oxford I can't remember engineering students being required to Wear hard hats with the BP logo on things like that, you know, like, and so I think one simple answer is that they should get in touch, like people who want to be involved, because actually we are looking for, um, information and.
You as a student or a professor at your specific university have a unique insight into not just the financial ties, but the non financial ties, like these weird things that you see in here. Um, sometimes you will know about the dollar values of contracts because they're spoken about on campus, but they're not on any official database that the university releases.
And, and we're developing the infrastructure to, um, to pool all of these insights and give us some better statistics on these phenomena. Campus Climate Network, which was formerly known as Fossil Free Research, is the foremost youth led organization campaigning to cut these fossil fuel ties at universities.
For transparency sake, I should note that I'm on the advisory board of campus climate network. And they I'm sure would, would love for people to reach out, you know, anything from providing information all the way up to helping launch a new campaign. There's another university they're looking to help, um, coordinate and facilitate that work.
So I think those are a couple of the ways, at the individual level, scholars can inform themselves better about the science of conflicts of interest. And, that runs all the way through to the responsibility of universities as we've discussed, but also journals implementing better protective measures.
Frankly, there are things that politicians can do even at the national level. And as I said, we're, we're almost ready to publish a sort of kind of comprehensive guidebook, if you like, on all those different measures.
[00:38:28] Molly Taft: You're totally right where it's like just being in a place, and being in the culture of a place is like way more important than what anyone can do kind of from the outside.
On the journals thing, , I was talking to, Craig Callender, he's at one of the UCs, and he told me that, pharmaceutical journals have much more regulations on like disclosing conflicts of interest than energy journals.
He said that, like, most climate and energy journals, don't really require the types of disclosures that, pharmaceutical journals do? Is that something you've seen?
[00:39:01] Geoffrey Supran: Yeah, that's, that's broadly correct. You know, the measures in place for public health researchers at all levels from, you know, disclosures they have to make internally within their universities.
Yeah. Through to disclosures they have to make with the journals, are much tighter when it comes to research that in any way touches on, areas that tobacco or pharmaceuticals or others might get involved in and, in comparison, climate energy research right now is the wild west. I think it's certainly something that there is already a blueprint in place with, safeguards against tobacco and pharmaceutical funding to mitigate most of this. And so we don't have to reinvent a lot of wheels. In many cases we can just implement these things. So it's all about simply compelling those in positions of power and decision making to do so.
And that's kind of the point of this paper is to, basically ask the question of what do we know already? Because often, the first step to solving a problem is recognizing there is one. And so bringing all of our current knowledge together allowed us to realize that although yes, there are many, many details that need to be further scrutinized.
Broadly speaking, a lot of this thinking has been done when it comes to other industries. And so, I think that, you know, we see this as essentially putting university leaders on notice that, the existing research is clear that this has been a massive elephant in the climate and energy policy research, you know, realm, and and they need to start taking it seriously, starting with just acknowledging The science of conflicts of interest.
Because right now they basically do the opposite. And they actively solicit and encourage this kind of oil industry funding.
[00:40:45] Molly Taft: The actual opposite?
[00:40:46] Geoffrey Supran: Yeah, the actual opposite
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[00:40:49] Molly Taft: So let's get started with the basics. how did you get involved in this specific issue given that your academic background isn't exactly climate change?
[00:41:06] Craig Callender: Oh, yeah, so I got into this because yeah, I thought I, I've taught environmental ethics for about 20 or 30 years. But also I'm a philosopher of science. And so philosophers of science, one sort of thing we look at is, methodology and, and then of course bias. And so, you know, those two interests sort of collided at one point a long time ago where I co taught a course with Naomi Oreskes, who's the author of Merchants of Doubt and the movie Merchants of Doubt.
And so this had been on my radar for a long time. Then You know, I got, uh, recruited to the campus climate change committee, which is the only standing academic Senate committee in the UC system devoted to campus climate change,
[00:41:59] Molly Taft: and the whole system.
[00:42:00] Craig Callender: yeah. And the whole system. And, uh, actually when we think about solutions, that's one of the biggest ones I think is actually having a academic Senate committee lends a lot Climate change question.
And so then, this team, we were approaching all sorts of different issues like offsets and, climate teaching and all sorts of things. And one of the topics was then also, of course, all the fossil fuel money, coming in. And so we decided to, , have an initiative on research. And so then I was put in as one of the, one of the main people thinking about that. so, you know, first thing I did was then look at what UC did with tobacco back in the early 2000s, and, they tried to ban, which would be like what the group Fossil Free Research is calling for, you know, ban on taking money from fossil fuel industry, for climate research. Many schools did ban, or many units in particular banned taking tobacco money for medical or health research. So, surprisingly, that failed at UC. So the University of California voted down a tobacco ban. by a large margin due to worries about academic freedom. But they did put in this other policy that we still have that mandates a special review of any tobacco money that's accepted.
And so the chancellor has to form an ad hoc committee reviewing it and then write a public letter if it's accepted on why it's justified. And so I thought, well, that's not as good as a ban, but you know, that's, if that worked with tobacco and the fossil fuel issue and climate change are even worse, uh, so why not just run with this?
So we basically just took that policy and, crossed off the word tobacco and replaced it with fossil fuel and then, uh, tried to run with that. But we were more or less told that that was dead on arrival.
[00:44:01] Molly Taft: And just for a timeline, like when, when did you first get involved with the committee itself? And like, when
[00:44:07] Craig Callender: four years ago,
[00:44:08] Molly Taft: four
[00:44:09] Craig Callender: a little more than four years ago. Yeah, so then we switched to a transparency measure, because we thought, well, transparency seems to us, uh, it just seems to many people, you know, all over the place. If I just take my dog for a walk and talk to somebody, you know, they're all about transparency.
So we switched then from this kind of special review, not anything band like or any kind of friction on it. So you can still take as much money as you want from anyone you want, but it would have to disclose it. And so we pushed this policy for about three years.
And then in May it was finally voted on in the academic Senate at UCSD and it passed with, uh, 91 percent of the vote, which was great. No,
[00:44:58] Molly Taft: it does feel like, I think a lot of people are just really surprised to hear that that's not like a set policy, especially at a public school.
[00:45:07] Craig Callender: Yeah, so if this policy, which we've got voted on, but it's not been implemented yet, if it gets implemented, , it will be by far the most progressive transparency policy in the country, I think. None of the schools, disclose anything apart from what they have to, more or less. So that if you take federal money, then the federal government insists you disclose.
They might encourage you to disclose, but you don't have to. And they jealously guard the information. So it's not common practice at all. It does surprise most people when you talk to them. Especially a big public research university doesn't disclose a lot of this stuff. UC does disclose more than most, I think, but you, you cannot find, , if they're like gifts to centers and, things like that, you cannot find that information apart from a FOIA request.
So for instance, the Institute, um, I co direct the Institute for Practical Ethics. I would challenge you to find out where we get funding. That there's no way you could find out. But when this policy goes in, you can find out if you like read our website.
[00:46:19] Molly Taft: So I could be talking to you right now and you could be like cashing, or your institute could be cashing a check from like Chevron and I just wouldn't have any idea unless you chose to disclose. Is that
[00:46:33] Craig Callender: That's right. Yeah, so the university might disclose some aspects of some grants, but not gifts. And you think about this, I mean, if we're going to be, you know, fair and think about it from the anti transparency side, you know, from their point of view, what's happened is, public funding is basically plummeted in the universities, they have to make up the gap.
So a lot of that gap is going to be filled by money from industry. And then, but you have other schools, we're not the only school who , is, funding deprived from public funds. They all are. And so then it's like a battle against them. And so these donors, you know, so they're then it's like a high stakes game of poker.
And so the idea of disclosing your gift funding is like, you know, showing your hand in a game of poker from their point of view. course, if everybody showed their hand, uh, you know, then, uh, it would be
[00:47:37] Molly Taft: We wouldn't be playing poker, basically.
[00:47:39] Craig Callender: poker. Yeah, which would be nice.
[00:47:42] Molly Taft: One of the takeaways that Geoffrey Supran and I were talking about was that there's this robust body of research around conflict of interest with regards to money from other industries, like there's a lot around tobacco, there's been conversations about fast food funding, but until very, very recently, the conversation around oil and gas was like, people noticed it was happening, but it didn't really start becoming an issue until like very recently. Does that track with your experience in in thinking about this and working on this? And why do you think it's taken so long for folks to kind of start this conversation?
[00:48:19] Craig Callender: yeah, that does track with my, my, uh, understanding . You know, so much of the Movement and energy was all based around health and big pharma, right? So you had all of these conflict of interest policies and things which were challenged and fought, step it, you know, tooth and nail from the early seventies.
National Academy of science had reports about conflicts of interest with big pharma. And so these things, it took decades really for a lot of this to all get. So the way it is now, even things that you think of is like completely consensus, you know, so for instance, that there would be an internal review board that would review , the ethics of whether the subjects of an experiment have consent.
Even that stuff was fought. People are stunned when they hear this, but.
[00:49:10] Molly Taft: That's crazy.
[00:49:11] Craig Callender: If you just look back a little while, you would see that people fought based on academic freedom, because it's like a restraint on academic freedom. You can't do the experiment the way you want it, you have to change the design.
Maybe you can't even do it because it's unethical. And so people fought this. People fought all the conflict of interest rules and all the journals. They fought everything. It was, I was reading a paper where one of the main medical journals had instituted a thing where you couldn't write a op ed or editorial if you were about a particular drug, if you were being paid for by the company that made that drug.
And then the reaction was that this was called the new McCarthyism. And so people were really heated against that sort of thing.
[00:49:59] Molly Taft: that's crazy.
[00:49:59] Craig Callender: But anyway, so much of the energy was all there at Big Pharma,
[00:50:02] Molly Taft: Yeah. And
[00:50:03] Craig Callender: even on like core things like just, you know, ethical, consent forms and things like that.
This is, uh, 70s, 80s, 90s, you know, going all the way up to, eventually you have Obama's, , Sunshine Act, which most people don't know about, but, you can go online and then, Go to a registry and then see if your physician is taking money from particular companies.
And then when the physician recommends a particular drug, you can see whether they're getting money from that person, that company. So that was actually what the UCSD thing was modeled after, is to have a kind of public registry, like in the Obama Sunshine Act. But that was maybe, what, 2010? Somewhere between 2000, maybe, maybe two, I'm going to guess 2011, but it's around then.
[00:50:52] Molly Taft: I feel like that's right. Yeah.
[00:50:54] Craig Callender: I think why it happened there was because, you know, everyone cares about medicine and health. And there was just so much interference, but then as those transparency policies started to appear. Then you start to see more conflicts of interest.
And then there's more worries. Now, you know, fast forward to the fossil fuel case. You don't have those transparency policies in a lot of those journals. It's more theoretical and not something the American public cared about as much. And so you didn't get as much transparency. The transparency alone, of course, doesn't solve the problem at all.
Right. It still says you can take the money and be influenced. But, you know, it's like a necessary condition for finding the breadcrumbs that would lead you to serious conflicts of interest. And so you need those transparency policies.
And we've known really for a long time, but now we know without beyond a shadow of a doubt that There is this kind of influence and that's not just like advertising and oh, maybe they had believed the wrong thing or something.
It's about a deliberate strategy. And that strategy is contrary to the mission of the university, which is to produce the unbiased knowledge for, you know, a democratic republic. So you have a lot of people say, Hey, that money doesn't influence our outcomes and things like that. But the scientists should be scientific about this. Now we've got a couple of decades of evidence, right? It's happening. And so if they apply their same scientific, you know, acumen to, to this problem, then you can just see it's a problem. And then once you know, now you've got the responsibility of, of this knowledge.
And then if you're being used as a weapon and now you know you're being used as a weapon, your infrastructures allow it. You need to be weaponized. Well, now you have a duty to not be a weapon.
[00:52:51] Molly Taft: I think everyone kind of thinks they're going to be the exception, like, Oh, if you know, I wouldn't be swayed in my work. And. I don't know what you think about this, but like, it's hard to sort of articulate where it's like, well, it's kind of not even about you.
It's just about the fact that this money was delivered to the institution you're working at not out of the goodness of this company's heart, you know, it's, it's like a tool doesn't know it's a tool necessarily. It's not a comment on the quality of the work even all the time.
[00:53:23] Craig Callender: Well, yeah, sort of two thoughts about this. One is, a lot of the work in this area has shown that even if you are just the most pure researcher in the world, you know, the most innocent, pure research on the world, still, this money can make it such that you're part of a network such that it distorts the evidential base. So if you think of, when Robert Proctor showed how he called it distraction science, where tobacco, would fund work on asbestos causing lung cancer and genetics causing lung cancer, all of that work maybe is perfectly good and all those people are, you know, as far as I know, there was tobacco funded, but, Probably weren't doing anything bad science. On the other hand, it skews the evidential landscape and, you know, in a big way. Same thing is probably happening now when you think of how much money is going into carbon capture and storage, uh, versus other things. And so you as the individual research could rightly say, yeah, it hasn't affected my outcomes, but you're part of this social network.
And when you think about that, so mostly we know also that that's not true. It does bias outcomes. But I'm saying even if it didn't bias outcomes, it would still be the case that you could be part of this kind of weaponization of the academic structure. And then the other thing is, you know, it always reminds me of, , when people say, , guns don't kill people, people do. And, you might go to a store later and buy a weapon to, protect your dogs and cats and have only love and peace in your heart. But we still know what having like automatic weapons does in a society. It changes your incentives, it changes your choices, it changes, all, all around you, the network. Um, and so it will end up leading to more deaths. And so again, it's sort of failing to appreciate the way the individual and the social connect to each other.
[00:55:29] Molly Taft: Yeah. You know, in our society, I think people think of professors and researchers as sort of, the third leg of knowledge, like an informed source. In journalism, we're always taught to reach out to academics and, to confirm studies or to talk to about scientific issues.
But, , the university system in the country is so privatized and getting even more and more privatized each day. And I'm wondering, what people should know about the funding systems for some of these research that they might not know already.
[00:56:06] Craig Callender: Yeah, I think people are, are shocked really when they see how dependent most research is on, getting grants in general. You know, most of the grants are from the federal government, but still, industry plays a huge role in many, many different disciplines. I think people are shocked that they don't really appreciate that fact.
It's a big question, I think about whether Once people hear this, whether, they'll continue to trust science. Now, I, that's why I think the disclosure is so important, because who, who do you, who do you believe, you know, somebody who says, well, okay, I have this interest, uh, or somebody who says, no, I'm hiding something.
[00:56:45] Molly Taft: So the resolution passed in May. With 91 percent support. What are the next steps on campus right now?
[00:56:53] Craig Callender: Yeah. Good. So I think, you know, when we're thinking about solutions, the first thing is, I think. Having an academic senate committee devoted to campus climate change was huge, and so the activists on campus who pushed for that, were really geniuses.
So there was a an academic senate task force devoted to climate change in the late 2000 teens, maybe 2017 or 19, somewhere around there. And then they came up with all these recommendations and one was the formation of this committee, and then it was formed. And then having it be a committee, meant that it gives a legitimacy to the voices on campus who care about climate change, because now you're, have a seat at the table, and can comment on various things that are going on, but you could also put forward resolutions and then see what the faculty, will they vote on this or not. So that was really just a stroke of genius and really very unique. And, right away, you know, so we had this memorial go through the whole system.
It took about, I thought a year, but it was. Basically to replace this kind of carbon neutral by whatever date with actual emission reduction targets and implicitly it was all, it was against carbon offsets. You could see, we were getting closer and closer to carbon neutral, but our emissions were going up, up and up and up.
So how could, how could be getting closer to carbon neutral was by buying all these offsets. And so we went, we had this memorial go through the whole 10 campuses, and it won resoundingly. I think it got about 85 percent approval. And then we have the climate education requirement, and that's starting in two weeks or three weeks. So already a whole list of courses have been approved. So every student will have to take this, ongoing. And then if it spreads to other campuses, this could be something that eventually affects hundreds of thousands of students,
So now I'm off the committee as of just a couple of weeks ago. I've served four years on it.
I will be very curious to see, hopefully the disclosure thing will be, adopted. At UC, like at many schools, you have what's called shared governance. And so it's shared between the admin and faculty. , the admin were, I think it's fair to say we're not fans of the disclosure Policy and so it's been sent to them asking them to make a team and to have make it happen. so UC has like the president of the whole system and then each, each campus has a chancellor. And so the chancellor would have to form a team to make this happen. But so far as I know, I haven't heard of anything happening yet.
[00:59:43] Molly Taft: So it could sort of sit in limbo a
[00:59:46] Craig Callender: could just on our desk.
I think
[00:59:48] Molly Taft: Yeah.
[00:59:48] Craig Callender: I mean there would be a grave offense to Shared governance because if 91 percent of the faculty voted in favor of it and it doesn't happen and it's about the faculty's own work and money
[01:00:02] Molly Taft: okay. Okay. So it's, it requires like a little bit more implementation, but it's, it's kind of with the chancellor's office now.
[01:00:11] Craig Callender: Yeah.
[01:00:12] Molly Taft: Okay, cool.
[01:00:13] Craig Callender: And then we'll see what happens. Hopefully it happens, but. Like I said, they, they weren't fans, so, uh, I'm not, I'm not counting my, my chickens yet.
[01:00:25] Molly Taft: Yeah. When I talk about this with people, the transparency thing opens the doors. Because, if you want to like give an industrial center money to find oil and gas, I'm curious if you agree or not, that doesn't seem to have the same ethical layers as BP funding, a public policy school. Or Chevron funding, you know, I was just looking at numbers for this center. I'm sure you've seen the Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy, where their experts are constantly in front of Congress. They are doing policy work and I think that people get really defensive, like you said, when you mentioned funding, because they're like, well, we can't, you know, not take money, but it's like, why don't we just start having a conversation about, you Where this money is going as a starting point, which we're not doing right now, you know
[01:01:16] Craig Callender: I couldn't agree more with what you just said that yeah the money that goes into shaping climate policy and that's not disclosed that's what really bothers me the most. So of course, some petroleum engineer gets money from a fossil fuel industry. I mean, that's the whole business model.
And they typically, they disclose it all, you know, and that, but when you're trying to influence policy, then if even our politicians are supposed to have revealed their donors, and everyone's wanting now the Supreme Court to have to disclose, who's giving them money and gifts.
And we want our doctors to disclose money and gifts. Why does everybody have to disclose who are trying to influence industry policy, except for, , these scientists, at these climate centers? that study by Doug Almond at Columbia, where he looks at the favorability ratings coming out of climate centers, comparing, natural gas and methane, , versus renewables.
I mean, it's shocking really. People are under the illusion that it doesn't really do anything, but holy moly, this money does a lot. Those centers produce all these white papers. Those white papers get used at local level to open up an area for fracking or national level congressional, evidence dockets, uh, just all over the place.
And so it really does shape national policy, and local policy. And so, it's not the factor, I think, of why we're in the state we're in, but it's definitely a, a causal factor.
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[01:02:56] Amy Westervelt: That's it for this time. We'll be back soon with another episode in this series. Don't forget to check out the print stories that are going along with this series as well on our website at drilled. media and with various co publishing partners, including Rolling Stone and Vox.
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