Roots of ESG, Anti-"Woke" Capital, and the New Battle in Climate Obstructionism

Hello and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. Again, this season we are making our way through a really great again this season. We are making our way through a huge collection of all the peer reviewed research we have so far on climate obstruction and how it works globally. It's called climate obstruction, a global survey.

It comes to you from the Climate Social Science Network, and in each episode of this season, we're talking to the lead authors of a different chapter, focused on a different area of this research who are walking us through what we know so far about how this stuff works. As one of the editors of this volume, Tim and Roberts said in our first episode of this season, for a really long time, people who wanted climate policy had no idea what they were up against in terms of the [00:01:00] organized and very well funded efforts to block climate policy.

Sometimes inaction on climate or the sort of stalled spot that we're at so far gets chalked up to, you know, bad policy making or bad messaging from the climate movement. And while any or all of those things could very well be true, I. You can't discount the impact that the large, extremely well-funded, very consistent global decades long effort to obstruct climate policy has had on our ability to make progress on this issue.

Last week we talked about what climate obstruction looks like in the global south. Today we look at local obstruction, so in a lot of cases, local governments can be really helpful in climate policy, even when the national or federal or international negotiations are going [00:02:00] badly. Sometimes a mayor or a governor can get climate policy going at the local level.

But the opposite is also true. It's a real double-edged sword. Local governments can also block the implementation of national or international efforts. Joining me today to talk about how that works in both directions are Rebecca Bromley Trujillo from Christopher Newport University and Joshua Basseches from Tulane University.

That conversation is coming up after this quick break.

 Okay. So. I know this sounds really basic, but I feel like people do actually have a lot of questions about. What can non-federal government entities, subnational government entities do about climate?

And I know obviously this changes from country to country and even, region to region, [00:03:00] but if you could offer sort of an overview of the sorts of things that these types of government bodies can do about climate?

 So our chapter focuses on certain regions such as the U.S., Canada, Latin America, and Europe. Certainly there's variation across those and across the globe. But generally speaking, subnational governments have a big role in things like transportation, the energy sector, land use. And so this is sort of a double-edged sword. It means that they can be a source for policy that is mitigating the climate or they can be a source for obstruction. And so we see these subnational units again, such as things like states, provinces, cities, counties. They do things like climate action plans or renewable energy requirements or changes their transportation systems that are more efficient. And so there's a lot of opportunity but certainly all of the sources of obstruction that happen at national levels come to play at the state and local and [00:04:00] provincial levels as well.

 Yeah, and I would just add of course that subnational power relative to the national government varies considerably. So in the United States, subnational states are actually much more powerful because of the 10th Amendment and other things like that. There's much more that they're able to do than subnational governments in other parts of the world.

One thing that varies by country is how much power institutionally and legally the subnational government has relative to the national government. And then just like Becky said, it's a double-edged sword. Tons of opportunities. In the U.S., almost all of the climate policy we've seen has been at the state level, but also there are some added challenges, like less levels of media coverage, right?

So, those who would obstruct can often get away with more at the state level just because there might be weaker mechanisms of accountability.

 That's a good segue into the next thing I wanted to ask you about, which is the public opinion piece, and especially how this plays [00:05:00] out in the US and Canada. Just how public opinion plays into climate obstruction at this level.

 so Both the US and Canada certainly show variation in public opinion on climate change from a range of things as to whether it's human cause or whether the scientific consensus is there and support for public policy to address. Climate change. What I would say is in the US there is a more pronounced polarization between liberals and conservatives or Republicans and Democrats.

And so you really see this, especially in the priority placed on climate policy issues and also in, in, terms of like the broad idea that it's human cause. And so these variations and public opinion on this issue can make it easier or harder for subnational governments to pass policy both in the US and Canada. So if you have a public that doesn't really see climate change as an important issue and doesn't [00:06:00] really show strong support for public policy, then it's easier for those governments to then say, well, we shouldn't do anything. And, and I'd also say we do actually find a lot of support for renewable energy investment and other policies among both Republicans and Democrats or conservatives and liberals. But there is a pretty clear disconnect between some of those public positions versus positions of political elites. And I'm sure we'll talk more about how political elites play into this process, but that connection is important to think about in both the US and Canada. But again, in the U.S., public opinion overall is less supportive than it is in Canada for climate mitigation policy, but we do see some of the same challenges play out in both countries.

 Yeah. Interesting. Okay. I wanna ask you about political party affiliation and how that works, especially this difference you point out between the US and Canada, where it's actually much more like if you're a Republican, you're doing [00:07:00] this in the US than it might be in Canada.

 Yeah, so I mean, at the subnational level in the US arguably the greatest source of obstruction is happening within these state legislatures and, and by governors and other actors that you know, for the Republican party, generally they're opposed to any kind of climate mitigation policy. And so, if there's a single Republican control, whether it's a lower house or upper house of the state legislature or the governorship, it acts as a veto point for any sort of renewable energy or climate policy at that state level.

And that also occurs at the local level in the us. And in Canada, certainly we see as there are shifts in party leadership from like a liberal to a conservative party leadership in Canada we do see some changes in what they're doing. It's just, it's more based on sort of the extraction interests and the economic interests there [00:08:00] than than the party interest.

 That brings me to the next question, which is, yeah, what role do the extractive industries play in this in the US and Canada? And then I do wanna talk about political elites and what that looks like in the US and Canada

 I just feel like it actually sways things more like the local politicians are, I don't know, slightly. More beholden to actual voters in some, in some situations, or

even like locally headquartered businesses.

 Yeah, I'm not sure I would agree with that, but. Is obviously they're closer. State legislators are closer to the publics that they serve. They have fewer constituents, so maybe that is what you're getting at. And then the other thing is they just have less access to information, fewer inputs into the policymaking process.

So they're more likely to rely on auto legislation from a group [00:09:00] like the American Legislative Change Council or Alec, which is funded largely by fossil fuel companies. So yeah, I agree. I think I agree with what you're saying. I would just say that unfortunately, one of the problems that we face is one of accountability to voters at both the state and the federal level.

There's so many. So much politics can get away with that, you know, when the public isn't paying attention and, and that's even more so at the state level,

 well, to your point earlier, there's just, there's a lack of media coverage and just a lack of outlets that are even there too. So, Yeah.

Anyway. Okay. So how do extractive industries come to play the subnational level?

 Yeah, so I can start with that one. So, I mean, basically there's sort of the more overt ways and then the more subtle ways. So the more overt ways is that you know, these groups, the fossil fuel interests have tremendously skilled lobbyists. They have tremendous resources to actually help with drafting [00:10:00] legislation and to actually intervene directly in the legislative and regulatory process. And the regulatory process is a process that does often gets less attention, right? So like public utility commissions or, you know, in Texas there's this railroad commission that actually, even though it's called the railroad commission, it regulates the oil and gas industries.

And so there's all kinds of ways in which they can just use their resources to directly influence the legislative process. But then there's also all of these sort of, ways that they try to influence the discourse, right? Like the public discourse as well as the education system. So there's this great article that we cite in our chapter looking at at Saskatchewan in Canada, and how oil industry funded groups have produced.

Like educational resources that are used in classrooms to like educate children about the realities with a lens towards what's good for their industry. And then, we can talk about, you know, think tanks and front groups as well, but one of the big [00:11:00] ways that they influence the discourses by funding these non-profit organizations that you know, are not called ExxonMobil or Chevron or all these other companies, they're called things like the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which sounds so innocuous, right? And so neutral. So those are just some of the ways that they, the more insidious and ways that they influence policy as well as the more obvious ones like lobbyists and contributions and things like that.

 Yeah, that reminds me just talking about the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Reminds me of another way that they get involved, which is weird court cases.

 Yes. And of, and, and this is, this is a side note, but you know, the Texas Public Policy Foundation was also heavily involved with Project 2025 as well.

 I'll just dovetail on all of what you're saying. So certainly fossil fuel interests get involved through think tanks and it's really kind of a very [00:12:00] clever way of, producing misinformation. And so that links directly to that public opinion piece. So basically you've got fossil fuel interests funding think tanks and funding these groups like Josh mentioned. And some of these groups even sound like environmental organizations, like Protect our Coast or Save the Whales or, and so they will create these entities as little groups. They will push money them that spreads misinformation. And, and so we see this you know, especially on the East coast in the us there's a lot of misinformation spread about offshore wind and harm to whales. There's no evidence that that's an issue. But ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel interests are funding various entities that spread this idea. The same is true of this idea that wind farms are extremely bad for birds, for instance. So there's a lot of misinformation around those things. And if you follow the money back, it goes all the way back to those [00:13:00] fossil fuel interests.

 You talked about political elites earlier and how they play into the, the public opinion piece too. Could I have you unpack that a little bit and maybe give some specific examples in the US and Canada?

 Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, political elites are also part of this misinformation ecosystem if you will. And so I just mentioned think tanks, fossil fuel interest. Certainly political elites are joining in that effort and trying to influence public opinion downplaying issues making it sound like renewables are a problem. In the chapter, we talk specifically in the US about Texas and how political eites-- the governor, members of the state legislature in Texas-- used a crisis, a statewide power failure back in 2021, to suggest it was actually renewables that caused this. But when we actually look at the evidence, there were widespread failures related to natural gas but they kind of grabbed this issue and spread that misinformation [00:14:00] alongside all of these other powerful interests. And so that's kind of a US example. Josh. I dunno if you have a Canadian example you wanna share?

 Just to flesh out the, the Texas example that, that Becky mentioned, like. In addition to gas plants failing and being literally frozen during that winter storm in 2021, there's also more technical limitations on the Texas grid. For example, the Texas grid is not adequately connected to the eastern and western grids.

So basically there, there supply is very scarce and that's true. Of course electrons are electrons regardless of whether they're generated from wind turbines or gas plants or coal plants. And so those kinds of grid infrastructure issues are also at play. And yet the instinct of political elites in Texas is to immediately blame green energy and wind and solar and say that the wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine and all that.

So in Canada, we see a lot of similar dynamics. One important difference though is [00:15:00] that when it comes to electricity, Canada has much more hydroelectricity and, and nuclear play a much greater role in the country's electricity system. And so.

That being said, there are particular provinces like Saskatchewan and Alberta, for example where the oil and gas industry is extremely effective at shaping elite behavior as well as public opinion. But I, I guess that's one difference that I see between the US and Canada in that in the US there are so many states that have extractive industries-- They're the majority of the 50 states-- whereas in Canada it's actually the minority of the provinces. But then within those provinces we see similar things to what we, in terms of fossil fuel

industries and elites to what we see in the U.S.

 Which is why Alberta wants to secede, right? Weirdly, I have neighbors in Costa Rica who are from Canada from Alberta and worked in the tar sands industry [00:16:00] and like have a giant, we love Texas poster in their house and like.

 It's a vibe. Yeah. Okay. So in, yeah, I wonder if you, if you feel comfortable talking about how this shows up in Latin America too.

 Before we move on to Latin America. I have to talk about utilities.

So utilities are really important because they are often monopolies within their service territories. So even though they're private corporations, they actually provide a government function, which is, you know, supply of gas and electricity.

And so in some states and areas of the country the gas utilities and the electric utilities are separate companies, but in other places they're the same. Like for example, Peco Gas and Electric or National Grid. There are many utilities that provide both gas and electric service, and they have historically been considered part of the fossil fuel industry.

But really [00:17:00] they're actually quite distinct and there's really, their interests have to do with maintaining monopoly control.

And so a lot. Are not necessarily like wind farms and solar farms, but more like rooftop solar or virtual power plants or consumers that wanna produce their own clean energy, right?

Which involves some independence from the grid. And so, you know, in general, the more competitive resources are clean resources, whether it's at the individual household level or utility scale. And so we end up seeing utilities very much being obstructionists. But instead of like where the oil and gas industry, what they're really obstructing to is direct competition in the utility industry. They're obstructing to the idea that anyone other than them might control the grid. And so it's a really interesting dynamic. And of course utilities even though their policy preferences are more nuanced, they're extremely powerful in [00:18:00] state legislatures at public utility commissions, et cetera.

And so they're sort of this pivotal player where. Once you can convince them to go green, they can be really helpful. But until then it, they can be very challenging. And so yeah, so, the other kind of policies that they tend to oppose are policies known as decoupling where the revenue that they get is decoupled from the energy that they sell, which of course is a good type of policy for promoting energy efficiency. But because their business model is so much based on building new infrastructure and having demand be higher, it ends up that they, they oppose those kinds of policies.

 Isn't that kind of what happened with Rooftop Solar in California? It was mostly utilities that were pushing that, right?

 And there's a cost shift. So like the more people that put solar panels on the roof, the more that the other customers that don't have solar end up paying. But of course, that's a result of the rate design, the way that the [00:19:00] public utility commissions allocate costs and that those policies have been largely shaped over the years by the utilities.

So it's like the utilities influence has created this problem and rate design that then conveniently gets blamed on rooftop solar as opposed to all the efforts over decades to have, you know, cost of service regulation where the utilities get rewarded for building more of their own infrastructure as opposed to compensating individuals who choose to put solar on their roofs.

 Yeah. Right. With both utilities and oil and gas. In terms of the organizations that they use at the subnational level to kind of, shape policy, do you see their investments in community organizations and arts centers and all of that stuff as part of that as well?

Like sponsoring the little league team and all of that? Yeah,

 Sometimes it's little league and sometimes it's like actual sports stadiums . And Wings of

museums like Oklahoma [00:20:00] Gas, I spent some time in Oklahoma for my research and Oklahoma Gas and Electric sponsors a a big, a big wing of the Cowboy Museum in Oklahoma City, which is very cool, but also completely unrelated to their business.

They just are really good at branding. so.

 Yes, here in Virginia, Dominion energy sponsors like various Christmas light displays at gardens and yeah, I mean they're very good at branding. And it's I mean, just kind of adding to what Josh has said about utilities, I know much less than he does. But in Virginia, you know, Dominion is this really powerful investor-owned utility, but they kind of swing a little back and forth.

You know, when there were democrats in control, they started to shift a little more towards. Renewable energy types of plans because they thought, well, this is gonna be the future and so we need to shape what it's gonna look like. And so they got actively involved in the legislative process in shaping, okay, well we're gonna do this, so we wanna make it as favorable to us as possible. [00:21:00] But once Republicans took back control of state government. Dominion shifted the other way along with Republicans and so, so they're playing both just to ensure that their business model performs the.

 Absolutely. Yeah. And I mean that, it's kind of like what I was saying about like blaming you know, rooftop solar in California. So, because they literally run the grid and they know more about the grid than any state policy makers.

They almost have sort of like the privileges of government themselves, but the incentives of private companies and that makes them different than other fossil fuel actors.

And it's kind of like what Becky was saying, is they, you know, they try to get ahead of things.

They don't testify very often public hearings because they've usually already done their influential work at the Public Service commission or at the state legislature. So, yeah, they're really interesting actors,

 Yeah. I just feel like they stay behind the scenes a lot.

People just don't think of them that often.

 Or they'll think of them when they see their name on a [00:22:00] subconscious level, like when they participate in a sporting event or an arts museum, but then they don't connect that all the way back to like their policy influence over the clean energy transition.

They're just like, oh, how nice of them to sponsor this wing of the art museum.

 Okay. So Latin America, I'm curious what you guys saw as not experts actually on Latin America. Like what jumped out to you as key differences between that region and what you've studied in North America?

 I mean, I would say the first is it's so much more complex because certainly there's huge variation across Latin American countries. In terms of their governing systems. So some are federal systems, some are unitary, but even some of their federal systems don't look anything like the US federal systems in terms of the autonomy granted, the state and local or sub-national governments. And so that stood out to me also just kind of more higher levels of political corruption less accountability [00:23:00] remnants of colonialism that. Certain interests, especially extractive industries. And so there's, yes, it's just a much more complex situation going on there. And so how things go on in each individual country within Latin America can really vary.

 And, and just to add to that, like it's pretty clear from, from reading the work that our colleague Marcella put into the chapter that one thing that's different is that a lot of the energy, like the oil and gas companies are state owned companies. So they're actually part of the national government, which makes the obstruction, which sort of changes the whole lens through which you view obstruction because it's like this. State itself is obstructing rather than different actors trying to influence the state's government. And then, like Becky said, they have really weak institutions, like government institutions, like even though our institutions right now in the United States are being [00:24:00] tested, this is all new for us, but in Latin America for decades, they've been dealing with the sort of corruption and weak institutions. So that's another difference.

 Yeah, it's interesting actually. I was talking to someone in Mexico who's like a climate campaigner and he was saying that, the trouble in Mexico is not just all of the things that you deal with in any situation where people are like, but I use gas in my car. So like what about that? And whatever. But also that in Mexico saying something bad about Pemex is like saying something bad about Mexican identity, you know?

 Yes. Right. And IPF, I think is the state owned corporation, argentina, and I'm sure Brazil has something.

 Marcela had described both in the chapter and in in discussions, many examples of these sort of corruption intertwining between government leaders and these various extractive industries. And there's just so much economic interests. The way that, you know, the, the money is doled out in terms ofties and all kinds [00:25:00] that. That also floored me.

 And we talked about how in the US and Canada, like there is clearly a partisan alignment with fossil fuel interests like the Republican party or the Conservative party. But in a lot of these Latin American countries, irrespective of what parties in power, the industry, you know, ha is one in the same with the, you know, the national government and there. So like it doesn't really matter as much which parties are in power. The obstruction is less dependent on which parties are in power than it is here.

 that's really interesting. I was gonna ask you about that, the party affiliation thing and how it comes into play there.

 Yeah, I mean basically just less correlated, so, so certainly changes in party leadership can produce changes in climate policy in Latin America, but there's just a less direct link between sort of right parties, left parties, center parties, and climate policy.

 yeah in Brazil, I think the assumption from outside Brazil's like, oh, Lula's in charge, so he's gonna [00:26:00] like do all this great environmental stuff.

But you know, he just passed this massive rollback of environmental laws there and he's as cozy with the industrial ag guys as any other Brazilian president. So, yeah.

 Something else Marcella pointed out about land use. So they're these transnational companies that are coming in and getting licenses to explore lands, and she mentions in particular indigenous lands and they say they're there to explore them for one reason, but then they may go in and do something very different.

 Yeah. Okay. Awesome. Let's talk about Europe.

 Well, what's interesting about Europe it's so, it has this supernational the EU that dictates a lot of policy on down and so certainly there's obstruction in Europe, but it's happening at higher levels. And so it's not that there isn't [00:27:00] any pushback at the sub-national level in Europe, but it looks very different.

And in terms of the kind of ability to make a change it, it seems less impactful. So. For instance, even when we see major protests you know, around renewable energy and, and concerns about renewable energy and economic concerns those haven't necessarily moved those subnational governments in terms of rejecting renewable energy policy as much as it has in the U.S.

So I think sort of the summary of the European section in terms of subnational is that there is some pushback. Much of it aligns similarly to other nations in the North America and other parts of the globe around fossil fuel interests and, and those sorts of things. But it hasn't been as effective at the subnational level as it has been in those places.

 And, and just to add to that, like even the, the defining the subnational level is a bit more complicated because of what you're, saying about the eu, like in some [00:28:00] ways the EU acts maybe somehow, like more like what we would see as a national government in other parts of the world and the actual European countries or states act like states.

So because there's this supernational level in addition to the national and sub-national you know, like if Germany does have subnational governments that are like relatively strong, but in general, it's the country. The two most consequential levels of government are the EU and then the national country level.

And then the other thing I would just point out about Europe is that it is, you know, even though it's not accurate to say that obstruction doesn't exist in Europe compared to what we're dealing with now in our country, we really do need to give the Europeans credit. But a big part of it is that. A lot of the renewable energy industries were actually born in Europe.

So like a lot of the big wind companies like Vestus or you know, Avan Grid or Iberdrola, a lot of these companies that are primarily clean energy were, were [00:29:00] started in Europe. They're your and so, as a proportion of the interest groups or political land political, you know, groups. The fossil fuel industry is weaker in Europe than it is in North America or Latin America, or pretty much anywhere else in the world.

But instead, what you do have in Europe is economic populism, which like the, I'm thinking about like the yellow vest protests in, in France, and so it, while obstruction may happen there, it's not as likely to be coming from the fossil fuel industry. It's more likely to be coming from, you know, still from misinformation, but also from, you know, real economic inequality.

And how that get, and how the clean energy transition or carbon taxation might get blamed for that.

 Okay. Coming back to the US actually for a moment, since we are in this current moment where I think people are desperate to believe that this, the subnational governments can do something. obviously this is a, again, as you mentioned, a double-edged sword.

It can go both [00:30:00] ways, right? But. Yeah. What are you seeing the subnational governments doing to try to sort of like, go against the national government on some of its energy policies?

 Yeah, so this is obviously, it's a difficult time for people that are trying to advance renewable energy or advance climate mitigation policy because of the national government. We have a president, president Trump, in office who's very supportive of fossil fuels and not at all supportive of renewables.

And so what do states and localities kind of do to counterbalance that? I mean, for one, the states that have been active in this space for, at this point, you know, around 20 plus years, continue to advance their policies. So we see states passing more stringent and renewable energy mandates, percent clean energy mandate that sort of.

Transcription

Local governments are double-edged swords on climate, capable of either doing far more or far less than national governments and acting as either an agent of change or an agent of obstruction in and of themselves. Rebecca Bromley-Trujillo, of Christopher Newport University, and Joshua A. Basseches

 of Tulane University, join us to walk us through what the research on subnational government obstruction tells us so far about who’s doing what and what sorts of tactics they’re using. 

Climate Obstruction

S14, Ep10 | The Corruption of COP

S14, Ep9 | Climate Obstruction at the Subnational (Local) Level

A true-crime podcast about climate change, hosted by investigative journalist Amy Westervelt. Listen here, or 

A true-crime podcast about climate change.

S14, Ep9 | Climate Obstruction at the Subnational (Local) Level

About This Episode

Transcript

Next Up

S14, Ep10 | The Corruption of COP

Related Articles

Roots of ESG, Anti-"Woke" Capital, and the New Battle in Climate Obstructionism