The U.S. Anti-Wind Movement, Explained

Petroganda: The Original Narrative—We Keep You Safe

 [00:00:00] Hello and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. This is our 14th-- 14th!-- Season, and we're doing what I like to think of as the opposite of the Ezra Klein approach. We're digging deep and trying to understand the moment that we're in. Because we're at a really bad time on climate right now and you know, democracy and justice and all sorts of other things, and we're only just starting to really understand some of the forces that have worked really hard to bring us to this moment.

So, you know, it's time to do the reading. For me, understanding the lack of political will to act on climate has always begun with talking to social scientists. So for this season, I wanted to talk to some of the best, the folks behind an incredible new book from the Climate Social Science Network at [00:01:00] Brown University that pulls together everything we currently know about climate obstruction, how it's happened all over the world. In the first four episodes of the season, we looked at how obstruction works. So we looked at PR and media and the psychology of this stuff.

In the next few episodes, we'll focus on who's doing it. Which industries are working the hardest to obstruct climate action.

First up, no surprise, the fossil fuel industry, they're not the only ones doing it, of course, but they are certainly one of the biggest obstacles to climate action. Joining me today is a voice that might be familiar to longtime listeners, Kert Davies, the investigator who read to us from so many great documents that he'd found back in season one of the podcast.

Kert is at the Center for Climate Integrity these days. We also have Geoff [00:02:00] Dembicki, global managing editor of D og, and author of the book, the Petroleum Papers, and Christopher Ekberg from the University of London in Sweden. Let's get into it.

 Hi, I'm Kert Davies. I am the Director of Special Investigations at the Center for Climate Integrity in Washington DC.

 Hi. I'm Kristoffer Ekberg. I'm associate Senior lecturer in Human Ecology at Lund University in Sweden.

 Hi, I am Geoff Dembicki I am Global managing editor with the Climate Investigation Site DeSmog.

 I want to start out talking about this thing that, that you guys start with in your chapter, which is the, oil and gas industries, sudden embrace post Paris, of Net zero and all that it [00:03:00] entails. There's this, this line from an email that came out during the government's investigations in the US on climate disinformation. That's from the BP Global Head of Sustainability and Climate Policy. And Kert, I'm gonna ask you to, to do what I always ask you to do, which is read documents. Could you read this line? From this guy, he kind of references embracing net zero and backing the Paris Climate Agreement is the most obvious course of action to take.

 Yeah. I was reading the whole thing again earlier, and so it's an internal discussion within BP about Trump. What Trump is gonna do with Paris in March of 2017. And that's important 'cause the, the, we really didn't know what they would do yet. And there's an article they're referring to where it says Trump administration might stay in Paris, but kill the Obama pledge. [00:04:00] So effectively be in the agreement without agreeing to do anything. And so the discussion within BP is Paul Jeffress writes to Bob Stout and about six other people. Um, he says, interesting. Obviously I don't know what will happen, but this looks like the most obvious course of action to take. All of the benefits and few of the risks. This is really why the Paris Agreement was designed the way it was to enable flexible transition from one political regime to the next. No one is committed to anything other than to stay in the game. And that last line

 really applies to, you know, the oil companies, right?

They don't have to really commit to anything, but they want to stay in the game.

 Right, Okay. so why were oil and gas companies so into the idea of, of net zero commitments ?

 Well, I, I think it was a period when the [00:05:00] global consensus really was in favor of climate action, aggressive climate action perhaps, or just the appearance of it. And the, the oil and gas industry always wants to look like it's on the side of what all global governments and everyone is is going to do for climate and the economy.

And so during this period, the companies are all coming out and saying, yeah, we like, we like net zero too. This is, this is great. Um, we're going to transform our operations with all sorts of new technologies. And it was also a period when. A bunch of internal documents from the industry had been unearthed by journalists at the Los Angeles Times and other outlets, and a bunch of lawsuits were beginning to be filed against the industry that really scrutinized its past history of climate change, denial, and [00:06:00] other obstruction tactics. And so this, this was a period when it, it just really made a lot of sense for a whole bunch of reasons for the industry to try to portray itself as a climate leader.

 The only thing I would add to that I think is that the net zero concept actually starts a few years earlier with the IPCC, with the scientists, and they are trying to figure out. Climate change is debating the 1.5 or 2 degrees limit. It's originally a chart that shows if you're gonna get to a safe climate, you have to have net zero emissions by some point in time to get there. And so governments adopt that language and then the corporations say, well, if we're saying the same thing, that'll be cozy. So I, I feel like it was of convenience that they started using the same verbiage. To seem like they were in sync with the [00:07:00] scientist commandment and the government, you know, effort.

 I think it also relates to something that we probably will come back to, but there's focus on, on, emissions specifically that there was a, this was also a way to talk about climate action without having to talk about, well, extraction of fossil fuels basically, or scope three emissions in, in more specific ways.

Uh. So it was a sort of way out of more, difficult discussions for fossil fuel companies.

 Yeah. Okay, so you guys talk, in this chapter about climate obstruction in a few different ways, and specifically about three categories of obstruction tactics, denial, delay, and co-optation. Can I have you [00:08:00] define those terms for us and talk a little bit about the interplay between them?

I thought this was really, important, this point that you make that, it wasn't like first there was denial and then there was delay, and then there was this, it's sort of like all this stuff happening all the time. So would love to have you explain that a bit.

 I think this is actually one of the most important thing that we contribute with is just to focus on this, that the responses from fossil fuel companies aren't really, they're not linear in that sense, but very dependent on context. And we can show that. Yeah. All companies in different regions use these different tactics throughout. Well, basically from the 1970s and onwards, but depending on, on context. So it's not sort of this obvious development from denying scientific facts to delaying, sort of obstructing the environmental policy or climate change policy [00:09:00] discussions. But rather that these strategies change depending on the challenges, specific challenges that oil industry face.

And I think with the three categories, it was one way to divide it. But I mean, there's a lot of different concepts, uh, floating around in these discussions. But I would say that perhaps with denial, we're talking specifically about, well denying the scientific facts of, uh, climate change, global warming. And with delay, our focus is primarily on the sort of economic scare tactics of fossil fuel company and sort of this idea that climate change action or action against climate change, uh, will hurt different people regions in different ways. And with co-optation we trace basically the way that fossil fuel companies have been involved [00:10:00] in, uh, framing the issue and, uh, coming up with suggestions on how to perhaps tackle the question or not tackle the question.

 What I would add to that is there's, there's sort of like two overriding things that are key to understanding these tactics. One is that no matter what tactic the oil and gas industry is using at any given time, the ultimate goal is to allow the industry to keep producing as much oil and gas as possible, and what allows the industry to shift.

and forth between these tactics, depending on whatever the political or economic context is, um, is that the industry is always right on the vanguard of doing all of the research and establishing the expertise it needs to lead any given debate. So, oil and gas companies were able to deny the science because they had studied the science [00:11:00] for so long.

They were able to use convincing sounding economic scare tactics. 'cause they were some of the first organizations to really study the economics of climate change. And they were able to co-op the process because the process of international climate negotiations, because from day one they were involved with it.

Learning all the nuances of it. And so I, I think that's really, um, key to all of this as well.

 Yeah, totally. And I think pointing out that these things are shifting around all the time and constantly being used helps people understand this resurgence of denial. Now

you know that it's not this like, I dunno, um,

 Yeah. That was, I think we worked hard at that in the, in the chapter to sort of break that, as you said, linear. Logic that people have used like it, that it went from a period of denial into a period of [00:12:00] along, feel good, uh, co-optation. And it really is whatever tactic is needed at any given time, they can play it. And, and that's what happens. And here we are now, and you don't see any greenwashing because they don't need to have greenwashing right

anymore. Yeah. Yeah. You do talk about the, the evolution of denial a little bit too, and, not just denial of climate change and the science behind what drives it and all of that, but also of, even more basic concepts like, I don't know, this, this thing of, um. We're, yeah, we're totally committed to this stuff while continuing to increase production volumes and things like that, which, as you point out, has just become so normal that it's, people don't even pay attention to it anymore. So, um, yeah. Would love to have you expand on that a little bit. What are, what are some of the other ways [00:13:00] that they use denial of basic science to their benefit?

 Yeah, I think the, the point here was that it's not just

flat denial, it's not happening greening earth, you know, which we still see, we see again, even in the Trump report that just came out, but it that we can ha denial can be. Just denying the urgency, denying what scientists are saying needs to be cut to save us.

And the slowing down is a form of denial. And uh, you know, ultimately, you know, as we were saying that the, you know, denying helps them avoid the real discussion of. The need for a fossil fuel phase out the need to cut production of their products, and that's what they really don't want. So they look for every other pathway that allows their business to continue. And that includes, you know, carbon capture [00:14:00] mythologies and trading with natural carbon credits and all these other schemes that are in fact denying what the scientists say is urgently needed.

 I was just, thinking about bringing it back to this Stanley Cohen, who's sort of been very influential in the discussion of denial and the, his idea of obligatory denial. That is very much. What we see, basically, people not acting. Others have talked about Yeah. Refusal or other words. Just to describe what we also show in the chapter that even though we have these promises of, climate action, we see that, yeah production just goes up and there's like in their own annual reports, there's no sign of cutting production. So.

 Yeah. And, and what I would say is like with, with the implicit denial, it's, it's basically like the same obstruction mechanism, like in, in the hardcore denial days in like the [00:15:00] nineties, industry would be like, climate change isn't happening. And then they would, keep producing more and more oil and gas at the same time.

So obviously they got a, a lot of flack for that. They looked kind of, um, crazy to the public eventually. So the company's just like deleted that, like really, um, in your face Denial, but just kept doing basically the exact same things. So now they say, oh yeah, we, we acknowledge climate change is real and urgent.

And then their production keeps going up and up and up. So despite a lot of rhetorical change over the years, the, the sort of material circumstances of what they're doing remain almost exactly the same.

 and it might be also important to say that this sort of more, uh, obvious science denial hasn't disappeared. I mean, it might have disappeared from the fossil fuel company, um, strategies or rhetoric, but [00:16:00] it has appeared in other places, like in far rights environments. And I mean, with Trump and others like we see. See those kind of claims still there, but perhaps not as much from fossil fuel companies as before.

 Well if, if you consider that the current energy secretary, Chris Wright, used to be a fracking executive until very recently and now he

 sponsoring a report saying that the human contribution to climate change is uncertain. I think we're we're like back, um.

 and, and adding to that, I would, I would credit. Exxon's money and Koch Industries money with keeping denial alive. You know, Exxon paid a fortune to keep these voices active in the late nineties and into the two early two thousands. Koch industries paid a lot of money to these same organizations. So the whole reason that Chris Wright is, has learned those things is because of [00:17:00] megaphones that the oil companies bought.

 Yeah. Yeah. Well, Chris writes, been broing down with the Cokes for a long time

too. Um, okay, so I, I realize that this question could take like the whole hour to answer, so, feel free to just give me the headlines, but I do wanna talk a little bit about the role that industry- led and industry- funded research has played into all of this as well, like the extent to which they have tried to use credible seeming science or cred, credibly adjacent science, to, earn themselves a seat at the table. And then use that seat to mess things up along the way.

 I think it's actually different for each company. We don't, we don't know a lot about what the individual companies were studying except for Shell and Exxon especially. We have evidence that the American Petroleum Institute [00:18:00] as a body was monitoring the science very, very broadly.

And through the GCC, they were sending people to the. Intergovernmental panel and climate change meetings, who were reporting back to all of them, what was going on in the science. But as far as their own research, we know, you know, Exxon was doing its own modeling. It knew what was going on. We know Shell looked at all the science in the early eighties and determined that by the time the science was unequivocal. It would be too late in their words, which is kind of grim. And they actually proposed a more precautionary approach internally, but never said that out loud to the world. She, um, but this is kind of crucial that they were playing along. And part of what they started to lead research on was things like carbon capture, which is the ultimate. Holy grail now for the oil industry is that [00:19:00] we can keep burning fossil fuels as long as we capture some of the carbon and tuck it back in the ground, and which they've never done effectively, but that's that on the horizon. Um, dream has allowed them to keep producing and selling oil because they're working on it, because they're researching it.

 Yeah, and I, I would give the example of Exxon and carbon pricing. So in part of the, the period that we're looking at in the chapter following the 2015 Paris talks. Exxon, was part of organizations that were calling for a price on carbon and said, you know, that this is the type of policy we could potentially support.

And then of course the Exxon lobbyist, Keith McCoy, was secretly recorded by, um, Greenpeace researchers saying that the company only supports a carbon price. 'cause it gives it a nice talking point and it actually knows that this is probably never gonna happen. [00:20:00] In the US and that was just such a, a fascinating admission 'cause it, it sort of confirmed what a lot of people.

Thought, but it also came as Exxon was going to war with basically every major substantial climate policy that was proposed in the U.S. and then as a, as a defense, it could say, well, we support this carbon pricing thing. And so of course Af after that interview came out, Exxon kind of dropped any pretense of that.

But I, I think, I think that shows what this co-opting dynamic is all about.

 I was thinking about also another example with, uh, that Leah Aronofsky has looked at the Shell sponsored research by James Lovelock, for example, which is I think that adds another bit to it. That is not always, and this is historical research, so it's not always that the industry led research have been like, instrumental or specifically targeting [00:21:00] climate change or climate science. But, but sometimes it's sort of a broader perspective where they can sort of pick and choose, later on, specific things that they bring to the fore. So in this case, the adapt, adaptability of natural systems or the fact that some organisms emit, CO2, that later on could be used as a part of science denial. So I think it's also important to, like, not everything is very instrumental. They have a lot of resources, so can actually fund quite, broadly in a sense.

 Yeah, to just sort of shape basic understandings of things too. Actually, relatedly, can I have you guys speak to, how important it was for these companies to get academics, especially academics connected with elite universities to carry water for some of their ideas or, or even just to, to do research along with their scientists.

 I [00:22:00] think starting with the GCC, we see that they were participating in scientific processes, industry, especially Exxon scientists were co-authors and part of the IPCC process, it was important for them. They felt to, to, be in that room, to know what, where the science was. They heavily focused on the modeling. They still do, um, because they know that the forecasting is really what drives the urgency and they. They start to form partnerships with, with academic institutions. BP at Princeton, Exxon, at at Stanford. Exxon at MIT, to bring those, those, logos next to theirs. But then they also have third party surrogates like Richard Linson at MIT or Pat Michaels, who was at UVA, who will say the things that they don't want to say, but they have. An incredible [00:23:00] academic, label. And they were more useful than just the pundits at the think tanks because it made it look like serious people disagreed with the urgency of climate change or the Jim Hansen. Uh, it was a counter to the Jim Hanson mode of, of speaking about the issue or Steve Schneider.

So it was a, I think a very deliberate effort to. Again, just cast doubt. All their whole objective is to have some shred of doubt around the issue, which gives somebody in the policy arena some politician, the ability to say, let's wait and study this. Let's, let's look at this a little bit more.

It's not that urgent. Look, this guy at MIT just said it's not that bad. That's ongoing and has been going heavily for 30 years now.

 Yeah, I would argue it's maybe even increasing now that public funding is getting cut too. Ugh. Anyone else wanna [00:24:00] add to that?

 Yeah, I'd say, having these prestigious academic institutions attached to denial really helps influence policy makers. But from the, the very, um. Earliest days of public denial. A lot of these spokespeople were encouraging Americans and whoever else to, to spread these ideas in their own, social or family networks.

So some of the earliest, denial ads on the radio, people would say change begins at like the dinner table. You should, you should share these ideas with, people close to you because it's such an important discussion to have. So I, I think the, the only way that you can really convince a ton of people to accept something as crazy as what the companies were pushing with denial is if it comes from, someone you trust.

And so I think that's, that's what this, this whole process is all about. And then of course, when this whole discussion [00:25:00] shifted online, um, onto big digital media platforms, I think that really allowed all of this to, to supercharge. It wasn't necessarily some big evil oil company telling you to, distrust scientists.

It was like, your uncle who you meet with once a week posting something on Facebook.

 Right, right. Okay. We mentioned economics before and how the industry was amongst the earliest, if not the earliest, to study the economic implications of climate policy. So would love to talk about that a little bit more, what they did and how important that was to obstruction efforts.

 Well, I, I always point to this, study that Exxon's Canadian subsidiary Imperial Oil, created in the early 1990s. And so Imperial and Exxon were like so far ahead of the curve in understanding climate change that they were. Hiring consultants and [00:26:00] actively studying solutions to climate change. In the early nineties, and this was only a few years after James Hansen had given his testimony to Congress and turned climate change into sort of like a big mainstream issue.

And so in one of these reports that Exxon and Imperial commissioned, they determined that a price on carbon emissions in Canada could potentially stabilize greenhouse gas emissions in the country without a hugely negative impact on the economy because governments would have so much additional revenue from taxing carbon.

The company and its, consultants determined however, that carbon pricing would be specifically bad for Imperial's bottom line. And therefore, they came up with a strategy to portray carbon pricing and any other climate solution in the worst possible light to media. Policy makers. And so this was, this approach [00:27:00] was, was tried out, um, in kind of an experimental sense in places like Canada and other regions, and then it really started to go mainstream throughout the nineties to the point where any discussion about climate change always contained this reflexive response from industry saying that any solution will destroy the economy.

 I know it's like the consistent talking point, even from a lot of people who say that they think we should act on climate.

they wanted to feather this in because it allowed. Even people who cared to hedge by saying, but we shouldn't hurt the economy. And that's also the basis of really the bird hagel stuff. And the stuff that the American Petroleum Institute pushed after Kyoto was, yes, but we shouldn't hurt the American economy.

Um, and. That's really a powerful [00:28:00] message and of course resonates more with average people than, than environmental benefit if you're gonna hurt the economy. And it, it even came down to, very deliberate scare tactics when they started doing these so-called economics reports where Alec, the American Legislative Exchange Council did a report that showed, all the bad things that would happen state by state. I think it was Alec, you know, that. You, if you do Kyoto, it's gonna raise the price of energy by $1,212 in Iowa and total made up numbers, but very effective local headlines they could create with these economic. So-called studies. And one of the people who did those studies admitted in a documentary recently that they failed to include the economic downside of climate change, the damages in their equations. So not very good math [00:29:00] in the end.

 as coming from, uh, from history always. I have a PhD in history, so that's why. I, the, it might be weird that I said I'm in human ecology, but I'm a historian by training, and I think this is sort of a anti-environmental, talking point already from the 1970s, I guess, with, already with the oil crisis that, if something hurts, basically energy industry. Largely then that will affect your possibility for transportation, for heating, for electricity. So it's a very close by topic or, I don't know how to say it correctly in English, but yes, you can sort of feel it right away. So I think that's the way it has been very effective. And it's been used, I mean, now we talked about the us but as we show in, in the paper, as we talk about the, basically, basically oil industries attacks on, the [00:30:00] suggestion to have a joint carbon tax in. The European in early 1990s where, yeah, basically the same talking points were used. So it's a effective, around the world tactic, I guess.

 Making it look like sacrifice instead of progress is really

 And I think another important part of that was dismantling this conservative consensus that protecting the environment is also good for the economy, which took a lot of deliberate work on the part of oil and gas, because even up into the, the nineties, um, you know, some of the most consequential environmental initiatives came from conservative politicians, Republican. Administrations and so the oil and gas industry, by using these scare tactics, it wasn't just rhetorical, they could reorient [00:31:00] an entire side of the political spectrum to get the kind of anti-regulatory policies that they wanted.

 Yeah. I mean, I feel like we could almost point to the current abundance discourse as the ultimate success story here.

I just came back from a conference and we talked about this, like, should we understand climate change denial as, primarily an environmental issue or something developed in relation to environmental issue or if we should see it as a energy issue. I think that really makes a difference in how we see that. We can see that. Well, basically some parts of the conservatives could actually agree on en environmental stuff, but when it came to questions on energy and basically economic growth and those kind of issues, then yeah, uh, there's a much stronger pushback.

 It harder than solving the ozone layer or toxic waste or other things that [00:32:00] other environmental challenges.

 Right. So not at all unrelatedly. Can I have you walk through a quick history of the Waxman Marquee Act and how, I don't know, sort of a combination of these obstruction tactics work to kill it?

 Yeah, I can take this. I mean, the, the evolution of Waxman Markey, of course it's, it's in 2009, so Obama has just been elected. There's been a, a bit of a sea change in the US in the second bush term where more climate action is inevitable. Um, so. Obama gets elected and both the House and the Senate are in democratic hands.

So we're gonna, I heard someone say we're gonna run the table on climate, and the first play was, uh, of course they went after healthcare first, and that was a mistake. So it, it, uh, got the enemy riled up, including the Koch brothers. But Waxton, [00:33:00] Markey was constructed in the, the, same form as. All other climate policy at the time, a sort of cap and trade mentality of, you know, putting a cap on carbon and then figuring out a way to, to, get to those goals. Um, the mistake was that many, the people who ran the game thought that the coal, uh, fired utilities and coal interests were gonna be, be the biggest obstruction and therefore needed the biggest handout to get them to not. Try to kill the bill. So there were a lot of handouts for, uh, coal-fired power plants if they could get to carbon capture, and I'm calling them handouts, but the smart people who wrote it probably thought they were really clever devices to get some action out of those industries and there was nothing in it for, for big oil.

Um, so. After the bill passed the house in the early summer, then the oil industry got [00:34:00] really mobilized and, and, uh, went after it. And, um, we see the, the birth of the energy citizens, uh, campaign by American Petroleum Institute with Edelman prs help. They went after it hard and they basically knew they could kill it in the Senate and that's where it died.

It, it never evolved. The importance of 2009 can't be underestimated because we were headed towards the Copenhagen meeting of the UNF Triple C, and that was gonna be what Paris eventually was, was a. Rebirthed after Kyoto fizzled. Um, and it was supposed to be then, and then because the Obama administration had nothing to bring because Waxman Markey didn't evolve into law, um, then that meeting fizzled also climate gate.

But it was, um, it was really a failure of the US to lead. And, then we're, [00:35:00] you know, of course into a whole mess the next year with the deep water horizon. But the Westman, Markey, you know, the concept was good and it was the first major attempt at an economy wide, you know, law in the us And it didn't, didn't, get there.

 And, and another important piece of that. And that's, that's a great summary, Kurt. Um. Is that this, this really came during a moment when a, a lot of conservatives were sort of cautiously embracing climate action publicly, including even Rupert Murdoch who said he wanted to use his media empire to push out pro climate messages at one point, which just seems insane now.

Um, but you had the heads of oil companies coming out saying climate change is real. Um, Lindsey Graham was, was backing the, the cap and trade effort. And so the, the smart oil and gas people realized they needed [00:36:00] to, to break that emerging consensus on the right. And so when all of these tea party protests started erupting around healthcare, that's when, um, Koch Industries and other oil and gas money kind of got involved in trying to steer that grassroots right wing movement against climate action.

And they were very successful in doing that. And as the tea party progressed, one of its major policy goals was to re repeal Waxman Markey. And in, in the process of all of these, like angry revolts and far right people screaming at their representatives, um, Lindsey Graham got spooked. He pulled his support for the bill.

Fox News, um, went fully in bed with the Tea Party and was pulled even further to the right. A lot of these, um, sort of conservative thought leader people, um, backed off and started embracing climate denial again, [00:37:00] and, and within a a few years, this, this consensus that we needed to do something about climate change, even among conservatives, was sort of like lying in tatters on the ground.

Transcription

 something the fossil fuel industry does, but they’ve certainly spearheaded and masterminded a lot of efforts. In this ep, an academic (Kristoffer Ekberg, University of Lund), a nonprofit researcher (Kert Davies, Center for Climate Integrity), and a journalist (Geoff Dembicki, DeSmog) walk us through what we know so far about those efforts.

Climate Obstruction

S14, Ep6 | How the Coal, Transportation, and Utilities Industries Obstruct Climate Policy