Speaker 1: When Professor Christian Downey appeared before a Senate inquiry into
Speaker 1: climate and energy misinformation, he warned that Australia is facing
Speaker 1: coordinated campaigns that aim not to debate solutions, but distall them.
Speaker 2: There is a network of organizations that exist to influence
Speaker 2: the public, influence the media, influence political arenas like our Parliament,
Speaker 2: to stop or reverse effective climate action.
Speaker 3: Professor Downey has spent years inside boardrooms and the lobbying
Speaker 3: world studying how these campaigns are built, tracing the billions
Speaker 3: spent on messaging, and outlining what he calls the climate
Speaker 3: Obstruction Playbook, a playbook developed in Washington but now echoed
Speaker 3: here in Australia.
Speaker 2: Short answer is, I think we're scratching the surface as
Speaker 2: much more to research, but there's an overwhelming body of
Speaker 2: empirical evidence now about these actors, about the financial flows.
Speaker 3: I'm Ruby Jones, and you're listening to seven am today.
Speaker 3: Professor at a and u's School of Regular and Global
Speaker 3: Governance and director of the Governing Energy Transition Lab, Christian
Speaker 3: Downey on how the Obstruction Playbook has been so successful
Speaker 3: in stopping action on climate change. It's Thursday, October twenty three,
Speaker 3: so Christian. You've spent a lot of time investigating the
Speaker 3: lobbyists and the tactics that they use behind a lot
Speaker 3: of the misinformation that we see.
Speaker 1: Around climate change. So where did that start for you?
Speaker 2: Well, I guess for more than a decade, I've been
Speaker 2: thinking about the politics of climate change. I've been working
Speaker 2: in think chains and government and universities. I think the
Speaker 2: one thing that stood out as I thought more about
Speaker 2: this issue is, you know, because of the path breaking
Speaker 2: work of climate scientists, we have a good understanding of
Speaker 2: why the world is heating up, what the impacts are.
Speaker 4: Because of the work.
Speaker 2: Of engineers and entrepreneurs, we have all those all the
Speaker 2: technologies we need to cut pollution and stabilize our climate.
Speaker 2: And because of the world of economists and public policy experts,
Speaker 2: we know most of the policy solutions, and yet we
Speaker 2: continue to fail to implement ambitious climate policy.
Speaker 4: So is that kind of puzzling question about why are
Speaker 4: we failing? Why aren't we.
Speaker 2: Reducing emissions like scientists are asking. A major fact that's
Speaker 2: become clearer over the years is because of the efforts
Speaker 2: by groups and individuals in society to obstruct actual and
Speaker 2: climate change, that is, to block and to pose policies
Speaker 2: and our failure to understand that and then of course
Speaker 2: to overcome it.
Speaker 3: Well, let's talk a bit more about those people and
Speaker 3: groups and what you've come to learn about them. I
Speaker 3: know that you went to Washington to meet some of
Speaker 3: these people, So when you were there in the room
Speaker 3: with them, tell me what you've learned about who they are,
Speaker 3: how these campaigns are built, how they come about.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I've spent a number of stints over in the
Speaker 2: US trying to study our climate and energy policy was shaped,
Speaker 2: interviewing senior executives, lobbyists from all the major fossil fuel
Speaker 2: industries countless ours now, you know, waiting in the foyers
Speaker 2: of big office buildings, going through security up into the
Speaker 2: corporate boardrooms, and sitting in the offices of.
Speaker 4: Major coal corporations, executives.
Speaker 2: From oil and gas corporations down in Houston, their lobbyists
Speaker 2: in Washington, d C.
Speaker 4: But I've also spent time with lobbyists in.
Speaker 2: The soul a wind Hydrosector and you know, what you
Speaker 2: really find out is that a lot of these groups
Speaker 2: are engaged.
Speaker 4: So this is part of how policy works in that town.
Speaker 2: There are engaged in sophisticated political campaigns to try and
Speaker 2: shape policy outcomes, to block policy outcomes, often particularly around
Speaker 2: climate change.
Speaker 3: And so being in those rooms and seeing how this
Speaker 3: works behind the scenes, was there anything that you witness
Speaker 3: that really suppose crystallized the playbook that's been created and
Speaker 3: used here?
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: The thing that really I guess crystallized it for me
Speaker 2: was probably over a couple of conversations that when the
Speaker 2: lobbyists I had come to meet described, you know, we
Speaker 2: got a lot of detail how they were plotting strategies.
Speaker 2: Often that involved developing sophisticated public relations campaigns, but they're
Speaker 2: often designed to kill off the next piece of climate legislation.
Speaker 2: Maybe it was attempts to limit emissions from coal. Of course,
Speaker 2: this isn't new, you know. We know fossil fuel companies
Speaker 2: around the world have funded multi billion dollar campaigns since
Speaker 2: at least the nineteen eighties to deny the existence of
Speaker 2: climate change. They find a television campaigns, online campaigns, front groups,
Speaker 2: consultancy reports, and many others, and it's worked. And I think,
Speaker 2: you know, through these conversations, it really became apparent to me,
Speaker 2: and that's what me and many other researchers have been
Speaker 2: working on for some time.
Speaker 3: Now, I'm so curious. Tell me more about these campaigns,
Speaker 3: what the strategy is.
Speaker 2: Well, when you're thinking about, for example, the campaigns run
Speaker 2: by corporations, often they have very long time horizons. They're
Speaker 2: thinking what do they want to achieve over the next
Speaker 2: decade and maybe over a decade, it is simply to
Speaker 2: you know, store climate action as long as possible, because
Speaker 2: they want to keep selling oil or gas or coal.
Speaker 2: They're simply just motivated by commercial interests. How those campaigns
Speaker 2: play out, Well, there's a lot to it. There's lobbying,
Speaker 2: there's public relations. There's often litigation. There's campaigns to cast
Speaker 2: doubt on the role of science and scientists. I'll give
Speaker 2: you one example, perhaps on public relations, which is really
Speaker 2: i think a key part of you know, what you
Speaker 2: might call the climate obstruction playbook. So, public relations and
Speaker 2: advertising firms have long been paid to craft political campaigns
Speaker 2: for oil and gas companies, among others. Now these campaigns,
Speaker 2: they involve more than simply running a few television ads
Speaker 2: for a corporate client. Often affirm will do polling, they'll
Speaker 2: do focus groups, they'll do media and social media campaigns.
Speaker 2: Sometimes they'll even undertake astroturfing, and by astroturfing, what I'm
Speaker 2: referring to is creating fake community groups to give the
Speaker 2: impression of widespread support or widespread opposition for an issue.
Speaker 3: Okay, so pr companies are being paid to come up
Speaker 3: with these campaigns, But how much is being spent on
Speaker 3: this and what does the money trail look like?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think this is one of the fascinating questions, right,
Speaker 2: like if you follow the money of what's actually happening.
Speaker 2: So what we did to try and answer that question
Speaker 2: and follow the money trail was I can't say it
Speaker 2: was the most exciting task all the time, but we
Speaker 2: were looking at their tax records.
Speaker 1: Sounds exciting to me.
Speaker 2: That's a good way to kill a dinner party conversation
Speaker 2: and you start talking about tax records. But what we
Speaker 2: tried to do was look at ninety trade associations. These
Speaker 2: are kind of industry lobby groups, and see go over
Speaker 2: a decade, how much were they spending on politics. So
Speaker 2: the first thing we did was just figure out how
Speaker 2: much money they got. And these are huge sums of money,
Speaker 2: even in the US context. So ninety trade associations working
Speaker 2: on climate issues over a decade had twenty five point
Speaker 2: six billion US just in revenues. Wow, lots of money.
Speaker 2: And then the next question is, you know, are they
Speaker 2: spending all of that on politics?
Speaker 4: How much? Not all of it?
Speaker 2: In fact it's only thirteen percent, but thirteen percent of
Speaker 2: that is three point four billion much of it. In fact,
Speaker 2: two point two billion of that was going to public
Speaker 2: relations advertising campaigns. Another seven hundred and thirty million was
Speaker 2: going to lobbing. Now, this is big in the US,
Speaker 2: but it's not peculiar to the US. Of course, similar
Speaker 2: things happen here too.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So if those are the sorts of sums that
Speaker 3: we know are being spent in the US, do we
Speaker 3: know how that compares to what might be happening here
Speaker 3: in Australia.
Speaker 2: Well, part of the problem is we just don't have
Speaker 2: as good transparency or disclosure practices here in Australia. So
Speaker 2: we know that groups like say the Minerals Council of Australia,
Speaker 2: which has probably done a lot to what climate policy
Speaker 2: or at least advocate against client policy here in Australia,
Speaker 2: does spend significant sums of money on political campaigns. They
Speaker 2: run television and other campaigns. These things cost a lot
Speaker 2: of money, but we aren't able to follow the money
Speaker 2: trailer the same way that we are in the US,
Speaker 2: and that's.
Speaker 4: One of the issues I think here is just the
Speaker 4: lack of transparency.
Speaker 3: Coming up. How Australia could fix its transparency problem.
Speaker 2: Look, as a social scientist, it's notoriously difficult to try
Speaker 2: and reach very robust conclusions on the effectiveness of one
Speaker 2: particular strategy.
Speaker 4: But I think we can.
Speaker 2: Safely assume that one of the main reasons that we're
Speaker 2: failing to implement perhaps climate policies that are consistent with
Speaker 2: what climate science has been calling for is because of
Speaker 2: the activities of some of these organizations' is not beyond.
Speaker 3: Because you just recently gave evidence to a Senate inquiry
Speaker 3: into climate and energy misinformation. Can you tell me about
Speaker 3: that inquiry and why you decided to speak now?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So in the last couple of months there's a
Speaker 2: cross party inquiries set up. It's called the Senate Select
Speaker 2: Committee on Information, Integrity and Climate Change Energy. But basically
Speaker 2: what they're interested in is looking at how is misinformation
Speaker 2: around climate change effecting Australian politics, affecting public debate.
Speaker 5: So it's a tried and true playbook which has been
Speaker 5: tested overseas, particularly in the US. And is there any
Speaker 5: reason to believe that this isn't now being tested here
Speaker 5: in Australia or do you think that the learnings have
Speaker 5: already come across.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: I believe those types of campaigns are being run here currently.
Speaker 2: It did have senators from across all parties concerned about
Speaker 2: this issue. You're wanting to know more about it and
Speaker 2: really gathering information about the extent of these campaigns.
Speaker 4: How they're playing out in Australia.
Speaker 2: So we'll expect the committee to report in February and
Speaker 2: hopefully they produce some strong recommendations that the Government decides
Speaker 2: to act on.
Speaker 3: And when we talk about misinformation in climate change and
Speaker 3: the climate wars, and you know the media's role in this,
Speaker 3: this has been going on for a long time.
Speaker 1: So has something changed recently? Is what we're seeing different now?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't think anything significantly change. It kind of
Speaker 2: happens with peaks and troughs. Often if there's a big
Speaker 2: climate policy put forward, such as say a carbon price,
Speaker 2: we saw a lot of lobbying in that period. But
Speaker 2: one thing that we have had in the last few
Speaker 2: months is a debate around what Australia's greenhouse gas target is.
Speaker 2: You know, how much should Australia reduce its emissions by.
Speaker 2: So for the last few months we've seen a lot
Speaker 2: of political media attacks on renewable energy and climate action
Speaker 2: here and I think these are straight out of the
Speaker 2: climate obstruction playable. There is a passway for Australia to
Speaker 2: be really ambitious in terms of the target that it sets,
Speaker 2: but it is expensive and it's difficult, and we need
Speaker 2: to make sure that we're very clear eyed in terms
Speaker 2: of the approach that we take. So we saw the
Speaker 2: Business Council Australia, one of the biggest business groups in
Speaker 2: the country, released modeling We want Australia to be ambitious,
Speaker 2: but we need to make sure that we're inherently practical.
Speaker 2: Along the way, it was the Business Council a chief
Speaker 2: executive Brand Black, who also says in action on climate
Speaker 2: change is no longer you know warning the government that
Speaker 2: you know, if you take a particular target, this might
Speaker 2: cost a lot of money. Analysts say if the climate
Speaker 2: target is to reduce emissions by more than sixty percent,
Speaker 2: it will require more than four hundred billion dollars in
Speaker 2: new capital investment. We saw Australian scientists who'd actually prepared
Speaker 2: the nation's first national climate risk assessment showing the devastating
Speaker 2: consequences that we're going to see from climate change and
Speaker 2: are already seeing if you, you.
Speaker 4: Know, have experienced the bushfires or the flooding of recent years.
Speaker 6: The report wardens natural disasters will cost the economy forty
Speaker 6: billion dollars annually by twenty fifty.
Speaker 2: We saw them being you know, a lot of scare
Speaker 2: mongering about them on the front pages of Australian newspapers.
Speaker 6: By the twenty sixties, climate change will allegedly rob us
Speaker 6: of two point seven million work days a year. But
Speaker 6: here's the thing. Governments can't even project next year's budget deficit.
Speaker 2: They so a lot of these kind of examples are
Speaker 2: very much consistent with the empirical evidence that we've gathered
Speaker 2: from around the world about how these groups obstruct climate action.
Speaker 3: And when you read those sorts of reports and the
Speaker 3: media reporting on them, you hear these lines, like the
Speaker 3: one from the Business Council of Australia that we support
Speaker 3: ambitious but quote achievable targets. So what should we be
Speaker 3: taking from that kind of messaging?
Speaker 4: I think The.
Speaker 2: First thing is people should always be wary of information
Speaker 2: that's spread by organizations such as an industry group that
Speaker 2: have a commercial interesting issue. So you know, if you've
Speaker 2: got a gas company out there saying, oh, renewable energy
Speaker 2: is more expensive than gas, well you've got to remember
Speaker 2: that the gas company is going to make more money
Speaker 2: if people believe that. So it's the same for industry
Speaker 2: groups like the Business Council. I think the next time
Speaker 2: you see an industry groups such as them or the
Speaker 2: Minerals Council out there complaining about government regulation or claiming
Speaker 2: we need achievable and issues targets, we've just got to
Speaker 2: remember it's not us they represent, it's the interests of
Speaker 2: their members. Associations have a legitimate role to advocate on
Speaker 2: behalf of corporations, but we should never confuse this with
Speaker 2: what's in the interest of the public.
Speaker 3: And you mentioned this issue around transparency in Australia, Tommy,
Speaker 3: I suppose how you think that issue can be looked
Speaker 3: at and changed.
Speaker 2: Well, research suggests that I guess if you're going to
Speaker 2: combat climate change information, there's a whole range of things
Speaker 2: you could do. In its estimated before the Senate we
Speaker 2: suggested a few things, not an exhaustive list by any means,
Speaker 2: but one is just to enhance individual immunity. Often people
Speaker 2: talk about public inoculation much like a vaccine, right. The
Speaker 2: idea is that you can weaken the impact of misinformation
Speaker 2: if you just make people aware about it, draw their
Speaker 2: attention to who's doing it, what's their financial support. Another thing,
Speaker 2: of course you can do, which we've spoken about, is
Speaker 2: making sure that the government thinks about putting in place
Speaker 2: regulations that forces some of these actors like a trade
Speaker 2: association to disclose, you know, where they're getting their money from,
Speaker 2: what are they spending it on, so we can shine
Speaker 2: a light on some.
Speaker 4: Of these political practices.
Speaker 2: We're also going to, of course, need more systemic changes
Speaker 2: and that often it might involve regulators like the Atriable
Speaker 2: CE or a SIK or others holding organizations to account
Speaker 2: that engage in green washing. So there's a whole range
Speaker 2: of things we can do, and of course at the
Speaker 2: individual level we also we all need busy lives, but
Speaker 2: to the extent we can checking verifying source of something,
Speaker 2: particularly before we go and share it on social media.
Speaker 3: Well, Christian, thank you so much for talking with me.
Speaker 4: A pleasure, thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: Also in the news, the Prime Minister has confirmed the
Speaker 3: government's overhaul of Australia's environment laws will not include a
Speaker 3: climate trigger that could block coal and gas projects. The
Speaker 3: government says the laws will instead force major projects to
Speaker 3: report their carbon emissions, as well as provide plans for
Speaker 3: how they intend to reduce emissions to net zero by
Speaker 3: twenty fifty. The country's biggest polluters are already required to
Speaker 3: report and cut emissions under the safeguard mechanism.
Speaker 1: The new laws would expand that to.
Speaker 3: Include projects expected to emit more than one hundred thousand
Speaker 3: tons annually. And refugee advocates have intensified calls for support
Speaker 3: for Australian visa holders trapped in Gaza due to closed borders,
Speaker 3: and estimated six hundred to seven hundred people in Gaza
Speaker 3: hold Australian visas, according to the Home Affairs Minister, although
Speaker 3: the Home Affairs Department says it's unsure.
Speaker 1: How many of those people are still alive.
Speaker 3: Defat says the Australian government is doing all it can
Speaker 3: to support Australian's permanent residents and their immediate family members
Speaker 3: still in Gaza, who wish to depart, but says exiting
Speaker 3: Gaza remains difficult, and Ruby Jones this is seven AM.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.