Speaker 1: Hi, it's Greg Dalton. I'd like to hear your comments
Speaker 1: on the show, topics we should cover and guess suggestions.
Speaker 1: You can reach me at Greg at climatewe dot org.
Speaker 1: This is Climate One. I'm Greg Dalton. Spreading climate misinformation
Speaker 1: is a favorite tool of fossil fuel companies looking to
Speaker 1: protect their bottom line.
Speaker 2: Whether they're arguing climate change isn't real, therefore we should mact,
Speaker 2: or climate change isn't caused by humans, therefore we should mact.
Speaker 2: Well solutions weren't work, therefore we should mact.
Speaker 1: Companies use advertising and mass media to spread these messages,
Speaker 1: and in some cases want to defend their actions as
Speaker 1: protected free speech.
Speaker 3: This idea that you know, if it's something that connects
Speaker 3: to policy I want to see, then it doesn't have
Speaker 3: to play by the same rules.
Speaker 1: But we can counter these false arguments through critical thinking
Speaker 1: and education.
Speaker 2: If we want a public who are resilient against misinformation,
Speaker 2: we need to build up their ability to spot these
Speaker 2: types of fallacies.
Speaker 1: Fossil fuel corporations have spent decades casting doubt and public
Speaker 1: about climate facts that their own scientists validated in company research.
Speaker 1: These tactics have included a concerted effort to recast political
Speaker 1: speech banned and regulated in some contexts as protected free speech,
Speaker 1: giving corporations more leeway and broadcasting their messages. This week's
Speaker 1: episode is a special collaboration with Amy Westervelt, an award
Speaker 1: winning journalist and creator of the podcast Drilled. She brings
Speaker 1: us the backstory of the free speech argument fossil fuel
Speaker 1: companies are now using to support their efforts to spread
Speaker 1: climate misinformation.
Speaker 3: Most people think the debate over corporate free speech in
Speaker 3: America started with the Citizens United case in twenty ten.
Speaker 4: Mister Olson, are you taking the position that there is
Speaker 4: no difference in the First Amendment rights of an individual?
Speaker 4: A corporation, after all, is not endowed by its creator
Speaker 4: with inalienable rights. So is there any distinction that Congress
Speaker 4: could draw between corporations and natural human beings for purposes
Speaker 4: of campaign finance?
Speaker 5: What the Court has said in the First Amendment context
Speaker 5: New York Times versus Sullivan, Gross Chain versus Associated Press,
Speaker 5: and over and over again, is that corporations are persons
Speaker 5: entitled to protection under the First Amendment.
Speaker 3: That was the lead Justice Ruth Peter Ginsberg questioning Attorney
Speaker 3: Ted Olsen with the firm Gibson Dunn who argued and
Speaker 3: won that case. Just a quick recap here. The case
Speaker 3: was about a film that had been made criticizing Hillary
Speaker 3: Clinton the first time she tried to run for president.
Speaker 3: It was funded by a cohort of right wing organizations
Speaker 3: and corporations, including coke industries, so the Federal Election Commission
Speaker 3: had said that the movie couldn't screen without identifying itself
Speaker 3: as campaign material and noting its funders. The filmmakers and
Speaker 3: their attorneys argue that this violated their free speech rights,
Speaker 3: and they won, opening the door to unlimited corporate funding
Speaker 3: of political propaganda what's generally referred to as simply dark money.
Speaker 3: But Citizens United was not the first battle in the
Speaker 3: war over corporate free speech, nor was it the last.
Speaker 3: The story actually begins back in the late nineteen sixties
Speaker 3: with Mobile Oil and its issue advertising program. It was
Speaker 3: a multifaceted strategy that included to finding a personality for Mobile,
Speaker 3: aligning the company with cultural institutions and advertising ideas rather
Speaker 3: than just gas. The strategy came from Mobile's VP of
Speaker 3: Public Affairs, Herb Schmertz, as a way to counter widespread
Speaker 3: criticism of oil companies in the press, and it was
Speaker 3: championed by the company's CEO, Rawley Warner. Here's Schmertz later
Speaker 3: in life describing Mobil's personality, Well.
Speaker 6: It was multifast. It was a personality where we believe
Speaker 6: very strongly about the importance of public policies. Secondly, we
Speaker 6: believe fervently that as a sort of a custodian of
Speaker 6: a large corporation and the custodians of vast resources and
Speaker 6: employment and everything else, that we were not doing our
Speaker 6: job if we did not participate in the marketplace of ideas.
Speaker 6: Third part of our personality was we believed in that
Speaker 6: a democracy is to host of a group of free institutions.
Speaker 6: We believe in free markets, freedom of speech, freedom of
Speaker 6: the press, academic freedom, freedom to organize and participate in
Speaker 6: union activities.
Speaker 3: In addition to sponsoring Masterpiece Theater, starting in nineteen seventy,
Speaker 3: Mobile worked with The New York Times to create the advertorial.
Speaker 3: Every week, Mobile ran a piece in the Times op
Speaker 3: ed section espousing some idea or another. Here's Schmertz describing
Speaker 3: them on the show Open Mind.
Speaker 7: Heb, thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 6: Great pleasure to be here, Dick.
Speaker 7: I want to turn as quickly as possible to a
Speaker 7: new fairy tale, the mobile ad or op ed piece
Speaker 7: or editorial call, or what you will that. We call
Speaker 7: them pamphlets pamphlets, but they appear in newspapers.
Speaker 3: Yes, pamphlets, but they appear in newspapers. In the early
Speaker 3: nineteen seventies, Schmertz and Warner figured they were having such
Speaker 3: great luck with the newspap for advertorials and their various
Speaker 3: PBS specials that it was time to get mobile content
Speaker 3: onto commercial TV. They reached out to CBS, ABC and
Speaker 3: NBC to buy time, but got a surprise. This time,
Speaker 3: CBS and ABC gave them an emphatic no. They described
Speaker 3: what mobil was trying to do with their ads as
Speaker 3: propaganda and claimed it violated various ethics policies and maybe
Speaker 3: even some FCC laws. Schmertz went one by one to
Speaker 3: independence stations to place his TV advertorials instead. Here's a
Speaker 3: taste of one of them from a mobile information center.
Speaker 8: Good evening, I'm Dick Calliman.
Speaker 9: Most Americans have an exaggerated idea about oil company profits.
Speaker 3: Warner and Schmertz went on the offensive in general too.
Speaker 3: They wrote letters to the network heads. They placed multiple
Speaker 3: New York Times advertorials about how the big TV networks
Speaker 3: were trying to silence them, and they gave speeches at
Speaker 3: various business groups about how this was a huge threat
Speaker 3: to corporate rights. It was the first time any company
Speaker 3: had talked about such a thing as corporate free speech
Speaker 3: the seventies.
Speaker 10: There was a lot of public opinion that they would
Speaker 10: have been concerned about.
Speaker 3: This is Robert Kerr, a media law professor and researcher
Speaker 3: at Oklahoma State University. He's written two books about the
Speaker 3: evolution of corporate free speech and mobile's role in it.
Speaker 3: He's talking here about the situation that oil companies found
Speaker 3: themselves in during the early seventies. There had been the big,
Speaker 3: high profile oils bill in California in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 3: and then in nineteen seventy three, the oil embargo hit
Speaker 3: in response to the US support of Israel during the
Speaker 3: Arab Israeli War. Arab members of OPEK put a ban
Speaker 3: on exporting oil to the US. The effect was immediate.
Speaker 10: You know, I lived through that, and I remember it
Speaker 10: was people were scared all of a sudden. You know,
Speaker 10: this something that there were used to going to the
Speaker 10: pump and gas pump and getting for almost nothing was
Speaker 10: not only going way up in price, but you know,
Speaker 10: you might not even be able to buy again, And
Speaker 10: often you couldn't In the same the gas stations would
Speaker 10: run out of or you'd have a really long line,
Speaker 10: you'd wait for hours or and then then maybe you
Speaker 10: still couldn't buy any So, yeah, the public was really alarmed.
Speaker 10: And uh, particularly the Carter administration in the late seventies
Speaker 10: seemed to be a lot less favorable toward the old
Speaker 10: companies in general. You know, Jimmy Carter and his administrations
Speaker 10: seemed willing to hold their feet to the fire.
Speaker 11: Anger and bewilderment are growing. Is more and more Americans
Speaker 11: cope with gasoline lines and empty pumps. Good evening for
Speaker 11: millions of Americans, this may be the worst weekend they've
Speaker 11: ever faced for finding gasoline to give them the autumnabile
Speaker 11: freedom they take as they're due. Gasoline shortages are spreading
Speaker 11: across the country. Odd even service gasoline lines and closed
Speaker 11: gas stations are becoming increasingly common, and the news from
Speaker 11: overseas tonight gives no promise of quick relief.
Speaker 3: People were scared and angry, and a lot of those
Speaker 3: emotions were being directed at oil companies. For mobile access
Speaker 3: to the press and the ability to get out its
Speaker 3: version of the story was critical to the company's ability
Speaker 3: to weather this storm, and that refusal from the commercial
Speaker 3: stations to run its ads that was a huge potential
Speaker 3: threat to that strategy. Mobile toyed with the idea of
Speaker 3: filing a case themselves that would formally establish the corporate
Speaker 3: right to free speech, but it worried that that could backfire. Instead,
Speaker 3: the company started filing a meekis in other cases, and Mobile.
Speaker 12: Was one of the leading corporations to fight for that
Speaker 12: legal right.
Speaker 3: This is doctor Robert Brule, an environmental sociologist at Brown University.
Speaker 12: There was a pretty big effort to get a Supreme
Speaker 12: Court ruling that basically supported corporate speech and the right
Speaker 12: of corporations to do advertising of their not just product advertising,
Speaker 12: but of their positions.
Speaker 3: That Supreme Court case he's talking about was First National
Speaker 3: Bank of Boston versus Ballati. First National, along with two
Speaker 3: other banks and three corporations, had wanted to spend money
Speaker 3: to publicize their opposition to a ballot initiative that would
Speaker 3: permit Massachusetts to implement a graduated income tax. The Attorney
Speaker 3: General of Massachusetts said that violated a state law against
Speaker 3: funding campaigns that would influence the outcome of a vote.
Speaker 3: The bank sued, and the case went to the Supreme
Speaker 3: Court in nineteen seventy seven. The ruling came out in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy eight. Here's Supreme Court Justice Lewis A. Powell
Speaker 3: giving that ruling.
Speaker 9: The First Amendment's primary concern, and therefore the courts concern
Speaker 9: always has been the preservation of free and uninhibited dissemination
Speaker 9: of information and ideas. If the restrictive view of corporate
Speaker 9: speech taken by the Massachusetts Court were accepted, government would
Speaker 9: have the power to deprive society of the views of corporations.
Speaker 3: Paula is also credited with crafting the Powell Memorandum, which
Speaker 3: outlined the pro corporate strategy that would guide the Republican
Speaker 3: Party from the early nineteen eighties to today. BLODI is
Speaker 3: generally considered the precursor to Citizens United and Mobile was
Speaker 3: hugely influential in securing that ruling. Here's Robert kerr Agan.
Speaker 10: You know, it actually was very close when it first
Speaker 10: got to the Supreme Court. The justices could have gone
Speaker 10: the other way. Justice Pale kind of really finessed it
Speaker 10: and got that first President setting case Blodi into the
Speaker 10: case law, and then later when it got to Citizens United,
Speaker 10: Justice Kennedy kind of ignores the overall body of case
Speaker 10: law and he goes back to Ballotti twenty four times.
Speaker 10: It's really unusual to cite one case twenty four times.
Speaker 3: So why does this matter today? Well, in addition to
Speaker 3: changing public discourse forever, these cases also lead the groundwork
Speaker 3: for the argument that oil companies are using today to
Speaker 3: defend climate disinformation. In some two dozen climate liability cases
Speaker 3: and some additional fraud cases, the oil companies are being
Speaker 3: accused with misleading the public on climate The lawyer appointed
Speaker 3: to speak for all of the companies in these cases
Speaker 3: is Ted Boutros, who's not only a well known First
Speaker 3: Amendment attorney, but also a partner at Gibson Dunn, the
Speaker 3: firm that's cured that when in Citizens United back in
Speaker 3: twenty ten. Here's Boutro speaking on the Climate One podcast
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty.
Speaker 13: I do want to take head on the notion that
Speaker 13: the plaintiff's lawyers in a lot of the climate change
Speaker 13: cases have been advocating is that the oil and gas
Speaker 13: companies were they had secret knowledge and they were then
Speaker 13: putting out misinformation, and they tried to analogize it to
Speaker 13: tobacco and other areas. It just it doesn't make any
Speaker 13: sense because it was well known. The federal government knew
Speaker 13: the problems of climate change, the potential causes, and knew
Speaker 13: that there was an issue here.
Speaker 3: Other attorneys are making this argument on behalf of the
Speaker 3: oil majors as well. When it exhausted all options to
Speaker 3: dismiss the fraud case against it in Massachusetts, Exon Mobile
Speaker 3: filed an anti slapsuit against the Attorney General's office there,
Speaker 3: claiming that the fraud case against it amounted to an
Speaker 3: effort to quash the company's First Amendment rights. SLAP stands
Speaker 3: for strategic litigation against public participation. Anti SLAP statutes like
Speaker 3: the one in Massachusetts, we're meant to protect the press
Speaker 3: and civil society groups from corporations that wanted to silence critics.
Speaker 3: But these days it's become equally common for corporations to
Speaker 3: use these statutes to swat away legal complaints. Here's attorney
Speaker 3: Justin Anderson, a partner with Paul Weiss, that's Exon Mobil's
Speaker 3: law firm, at a March twenty twenty two hearing.
Speaker 14: The alleged misrepresentations are the statements that Exon Mobile has
Speaker 14: made about its views on climate policy on energy policy.
Speaker 14: The anti slap Statute provides a mechanism to have a
Speaker 14: case that is brought against someone for petitioning activity dismissed
Speaker 14: at the outset, before burdensome discovery is imposed on the party,
Speaker 14: before we have our executives come in to give testimony
Speaker 14: and depositions, before we're dragged into a courtroom where we
Speaker 14: have to defend ourselves.
Speaker 3: That phrase petitioning activity is really key here because what
Speaker 3: it means in Plean English is political speech. And the
Speaker 3: argument ex On Mobile is making here and that Boutros
Speaker 3: has been making as well, is that because the oil
Speaker 3: company's campaigns on climate are political speech, not commercial speech,
Speaker 3: they are protected by the First Amendment. It's the sort
Speaker 3: of argument Herbschmertz would have been proud of. Here. He
Speaker 3: is defending corporate pr In the eighties.
Speaker 8: Government intrusion into the marketplace of ideas would limit our
Speaker 8: freedom of speech and distort the selection of our leaders.
Speaker 8: People feel frustrated when the press doesn't deliver a complete
Speaker 8: story or an accurate story, so they bring in people
Speaker 8: who have the ability to add to the spectrum of facts, opinions, views,
Speaker 8: philosophies so that the public can get a more balanced
Speaker 8: view today.
Speaker 3: The groundwork that Schmirtz and Warner laid with Bloody, various
Speaker 3: other cases, with issue advertising, and with their general advocacy
Speaker 3: for corporate free speech over the decades is the foundation
Speaker 3: for Big Oil's argument about climate denial. It couldn't be fraud.
Speaker 3: It was political speech protected by the free speech rights
Speaker 3: they've spent the past fifty years securing.
Speaker 1: You're listening to a Climate one conversation about tactics for
Speaker 1: spreading climate misinformation coming up. One way to break down
Speaker 1: misleading reasoning.
Speaker 2: You can just take a flawed argument and transplant that
Speaker 2: logic into a parallel situation, usually the most absurd and
Speaker 2: extreme situation you can think of, and then use the
Speaker 2: same logic, and that makes it very clear and engaging
Speaker 2: in concrete when you're trying to explain the flawed logic
Speaker 2: to people.
Speaker 1: That's up next, when Climate one continues. This is Climate one.
Speaker 1: I'm Greg Dalton, and today we're talking about climate misinformation
Speaker 1: and how to challenge it. John Cook is a postdoctoral
Speaker 1: research fellow at the Climate Change Communication Research Hub at
Speaker 1: Nash University in Australia. He focuses on using critical thinking
Speaker 1: to build resilience against misinformation. He says the most common
Speaker 1: climate misinformation in the US centers on climate policy being harmful, expensive,
Speaker 1: or ineffective.
Speaker 2: Ultimately, its goal is to delay climate action and maintain
Speaker 2: the status quo. And you will find that no matter
Speaker 2: what the argument is, the conclusion is always the same,
Speaker 2: whether they're arguing climate change isn't real, therefore we shouldn act,
Speaker 2: or climate change isn't caused by humans, therefore we should act,
Speaker 2: or solutions won't work, therefore we should act. It's always
Speaker 2: that end thing. And so it's about delaying action by
Speaker 2: reducing public support for climate action, and there are various
Speaker 2: pathways to do that. Wine is confusing people about the science.
Speaker 2: A famous two thousand and two memo written by a
Speaker 2: political strategist, Frank Lumps, where he basically argued for politicians
Speaker 2: who were trying to win the public debate about climate policy.
Speaker 2: He said, if you want to win the debate about
Speaker 2: climate policy and basically stop climate action, cast out on
Speaker 2: the scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming. If
Speaker 2: the public get confused about the consensus, the attitudes about
Speaker 2: the policy change accordingly, right.
Speaker 1: Which hearkens that confusion and doubt. Good course goes back
Speaker 1: to the tobacco company saying doubt is our product. There's
Speaker 1: been a decade's long effort by old companies and others
Speaker 1: to cast doubt on climate science to allow them to
Speaker 1: continue to profit. The strategy has taken many forms and
Speaker 1: evolved over time. Can you walk us through that evolution
Speaker 1: from deny, dismiss, delay, deflect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there has been a gradual shift. We've done analysis
Speaker 2: over the last twenty years of climate misinformation, and the
Speaker 2: biggest shift we're seeing is a gradual transition from science
Speaker 2: misinformation to solutions misinformation. As the scientific evidence has gotten
Speaker 2: stronger and stronger and harder to deny, it becomes untenable
Speaker 2: to keep using these same zombie arguments that we've been
Speaker 2: reading on blogs and on social media for many years.
Speaker 2: And so now they're arguing against climate solutions, arguing that
Speaker 2: climate policy might be harmful, arguing that renewables won't work,
Speaker 2: and just more subtle arguments than the usual. Climate change
Speaker 2: is a hoax type misinformation.
Speaker 1: Right, that's no longer tenable in a world where there's
Speaker 1: floods and fires that are rampant.
Speaker 2: I think what's most potent right now is cultural war
Speaker 2: type misinformation arguments that other people who care about climate change,
Speaker 2: who are trying to get climate action, painting them as
Speaker 2: different to us, and they're trying to take away our
Speaker 2: lifestyle or impinge on our freedom, and generally just trying
Speaker 2: to make the climate issue more tribal. The more tribal
Speaker 2: and polarizer becomes, the harder it is to get progress.
Speaker 1: And some of the techniques employed by misinformation you cite
Speaker 1: are magnified minority, cherry picking, false dichotomy. How are those employed?
Speaker 1: And give some examples of each one.
Speaker 2: If you could so. Attacking the scientific consensus on climate
Speaker 2: change has been a common strategy over the last few decades,
Speaker 2: and one way to do that is the use of
Speaker 2: magnified minority. In other words, take a small group and
Speaker 2: make them look much bigger than they actually are and
Speaker 2: much more significant than they really are. And the most
Speaker 2: popular version of this technique is the Global Warming Petition Project.
Speaker 2: This is a website that features thirty one thousand science
Speaker 2: graduates in the US who've signed a statement saying that
Speaker 2: humans aren't disrupting climate and the point of this website
Speaker 2: is to say, hey, look, thirty one thousand people dissent
Speaker 2: against the consensus. That proves that there isn't a scientific consensus.
Speaker 2: But when you look at the total number of science
Speaker 2: graduates in the US, it's millions and millions, and thirty
Speaker 2: one thousand, while seeming like a big number, is actually
Speaker 2: a tiny fraction of a percent. It's magnifying a minority
Speaker 2: to make them look bigger than they really are.
Speaker 1: So policy is harmful? What's that attack?
Speaker 2: Usually arguing that climate policy is harmful takes a form
Speaker 2: of arguing that it's either going to ruin the economy
Speaker 2: or raise prices for people, and it really depends on
Speaker 2: the specific policy. But tiply what this does is cherry
Speaker 2: pigs or oversimplifies the policy. For example, this is a
Speaker 2: very Australian centric one, but it's the one that immediately
Speaker 2: comes to mind. We brought in a carbon price in
Speaker 2: order to send a signal to the market to transition
Speaker 2: from fossil fuels to renewables, and this carbon price generated
Speaker 2: revenue for the government. But all that money was then
Speaker 2: given back and it was mainly given back to lower
Speaker 2: income families, and so it was a revenue neutral carbon price,
Speaker 2: the public shouldn't have any change in their household budget.
Speaker 2: But what the misinformation targeting the policy did was say
Speaker 2: this is putting a price on carbon that's going to
Speaker 2: raise prices for families, while ignoring that money was going
Speaker 2: back to families. So usually at tax on climate policy
Speaker 2: will focus on one part of it, but ignore the
Speaker 2: the entire policy and the aspects of it that make
Speaker 2: it work better.
Speaker 1: And what are some other non policy attacks on solutions?
Speaker 2: The most basic arguments attacking renewables are the sun doesn't
Speaker 2: shine at night or the wind doesn't always blow, and
Speaker 2: therefore renewables aren't a reliable source of energy, which ignores
Speaker 2: again its cherry picking the information because it ignores the
Speaker 2: fact that we have battery storage. And also when you
Speaker 2: have combinations of wind and solar, particularly across a region,
Speaker 2: wind might not be blowing in one place, but it
Speaker 2: is at a different place, and when you have a
Speaker 2: network of renewables, then you get a more reliable source
Speaker 2: of energy.
Speaker 1: And then false dichotomy.
Speaker 2: What's an example of that false dichotomy is when you're
Speaker 2: given two choices and you have to choose one of
Speaker 2: them when both might be true, or maybe there's a
Speaker 2: third choice. And the most common example of this in
Speaker 2: climate change. And this is a little bit technical and complicated,
Speaker 2: but it's looking at the ice core record. When we
Speaker 2: look at ice cores going back hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 2: years in Antarctic ice cores, we see that when temperature
Speaker 2: goes up, CO two goes up afterwards by several hundred
Speaker 2: years roughly. And what that tells us is temperature went
Speaker 2: up before the CO two and climate denies look at
Speaker 2: this and say, wow, either temperature drives CO two or
Speaker 2: CO two drives temperature. You have to choose one or
Speaker 2: the other. But that's actually a false dichotomy because it's
Speaker 2: not a choice between one or the other. Both are
Speaker 2: actually true. Temperature does drive CO two. When it gets warmer,
Speaker 2: the ocean gives up CO two in the atmosphere, and
Speaker 2: then when you have more CO two in the atmosphere,
Speaker 2: that causes warming because it's a greenhouse gas. Put those
Speaker 2: two together and you get a reinforcing feedback. And it's
Speaker 2: actually that reinforcing feedback that pulled the Earth out of
Speaker 2: ice ages in our past over the last eight hundred
Speaker 2: thousand years.
Speaker 1: John, you've also written about how people often substitute judgment
Speaker 1: about complex topics such as climate science, with more simple judgments,
Speaker 1: for example, the character or tribal identity of a person
Speaker 1: talking about climate science. How does that reliance on shortcuts
Speaker 1: fuel climate and misinformation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's important to recognize that all of us are
Speaker 2: hardwired to make decisions based on snap mental shortcuts or heuristics,
Speaker 2: and generally it serves us well, that's how we're able
Speaker 2: to escape a saber toothed tiger jumping out of the
Speaker 2: bushes or just immediate threats. The problem is, in this
Speaker 2: modern world, sometimes those mental shortcuts can lead us astray,
Speaker 2: and it can also make us vulnerable to that arguments
Speaker 2: or misinformation. And it's an unfortunate reality that the solution
Speaker 2: to this problem is critical thinking. We need to be
Speaker 2: able to get better at spotting misinformation and the spotting
Speaker 2: attempts to mislead us. What are those different fallacies? Is
Speaker 2: this argument a false dichotomy or does it use magnified
Speaker 2: minority or cherry picking or other misleading techniques. If we
Speaker 2: want a public who are resilient against misinformation, we need
Speaker 2: to build up their ability to spot these types of fallacies.
Speaker 1: Right and sort of complexity can Yeah, we want things,
Speaker 1: especially these days, we want things that are fast, simple, understandable,
Speaker 1: and social media often distorts and doing that and distilling things.
Speaker 1: And I was watching some of your videos online of
Speaker 1: you kind of dissecting the premise and does the conclusion
Speaker 1: logically follow the premise, and it all seems very reasonable.
Speaker 1: I thought, Yeah, but this is like bringing a knife
Speaker 1: to a gunfight with and so I'm just curious about
Speaker 1: your sort of very reasoned approach logic based in an
Speaker 1: information age where things are viral and fake and spreading
Speaker 1: so quickly regardless of their veracity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really hard. I've struggled with those thoughts and
Speaker 2: for many years. When we develop this critical thinking approach
Speaker 2: where you deconstruct arguments into premises and conclusion. I did
Speaker 2: that work with two critical thinking philosophers. They introduced me
Speaker 2: to the idea of parallel argumentation. You can explain logical
Speaker 2: flaws by not You don't have to go into the
Speaker 2: whole premise, premise, conclusion, logical like is it logically about?
Speaker 2: All that kind of analysis. You can just take a
Speaker 2: flawed argument and transplant that logic into a parallel situation.
Speaker 2: Usually the most absurd and extreme situation you can think
Speaker 2: of and then use the same logic, and that makes
Speaker 2: it very clear and engaging in concrete when you're trying
Speaker 2: to explain the flawed logic to people. And when they
Speaker 2: introduced this technique to me, I realized that this was
Speaker 2: what late night comedians used every night. They'll say this
Speaker 2: person said this statement, and well, that's just like being
Speaker 2: in this situation and then using the same logic. Everyone laughs.
Speaker 2: They can immediately see that it's wrong and they're entertained.
Speaker 2: But most importantly, like is the comedian has actually introduced
Speaker 2: a bit of critical thinking because it's shown a logical
Speaker 2: fallacy in a very concrete, engaging way. The beauty of
Speaker 2: this approach is you can use non polarizing examples to
Speaker 2: explain how misinformation is misleading or to explain a fallacy.
Speaker 1: So let's practice this. If I see the climate's change before,
Speaker 1: it's changing now it's always been changing. Yeah, climate changes,
Speaker 1: that's what it does. How would you respond.
Speaker 2: That argument is the same logic as saying, well, people
Speaker 2: have died of natural causes before cigarettes were invented, therefore
Speaker 2: cigarettes can't cause harmful effects, or people have died of
Speaker 2: cancer long before cigarettes were invented. Therefore, smoking doesn't cause cancer.
Speaker 2: It's the same logic, and it commits single cause fallacy,
Speaker 2: in other words, saying that whatever's whatever caused something in
Speaker 2: the past must also be causing it now when you
Speaker 2: can have multiple causes.
Speaker 1: Let's try another one. If I say that models are unreliable, oh,
Speaker 1: climate models, no, they're not accurate.
Speaker 2: So actually we're doing an experiment on that now. And
Speaker 2: so our approach has been to say models are a
Speaker 2: simplification of reality. They don't capture all of reality, and
Speaker 2: we use models to get astronauts to the moon. They're
Speaker 2: simplified versions are reality. Mutant's laws of motion and Newton's
Speaker 2: laws of gravity simplifications. Models don't need to be perfect
Speaker 2: in order to give us useful results, and climate models
Speaker 2: they're not perfect. They don't capture absolutely everything, but they
Speaker 2: capture enough to tell us that humans are causing climate
Speaker 2: change and that climate change has serious impacts.
Speaker 1: Many fossil fuel companies now are engaging in what some
Speaker 1: call greenwashing or climate washing, where they're making net zero
Speaker 1: commitments and stating that they're working toward climate solutions you
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier. They are attacking solutions there's other approach, which
Speaker 1: is there kind of co opting solutions, saying we share
Speaker 1: the solutions, we're part of the solution.
Speaker 2: Yes. Greenwashing is another form of climate misinformation, particularly from industry,
Speaker 2: and it's a hard one. Often you need a lot
Speaker 2: of background information in order to fact check whether what
Speaker 2: they're doing is actually helping the environment or whether it's
Speaker 2: just token behavior in order to portray themselves as being
Speaker 2: environmental when actually they're actually being quite distractive. But they're
Speaker 2: generally speaking. The strategy to counter green washing is the
Speaker 2: same as the strategy to count other forms of climate misinformation.
Speaker 2: Learn the techniques and become familiar with them so that
Speaker 2: when you see them in some corporate advertising, that's a
Speaker 2: red flag. The techniques of green washing, just a few
Speaker 2: of them that come immediately to mind is vague terms
Speaker 2: or kind of meaningless terms, so they would say it's
Speaker 2: environmentally friendly, or they'll they'll just use either colors or
Speaker 2: imagery or environmental sounding words, but it's all very loosey goosey.
Speaker 2: The other red flag is when they're a company that
Speaker 2: their main bread and of their business is environmentally destructive,
Speaker 2: and then they talk about something that they're doing that's
Speaker 2: environmentally positive. Usually in those cases, what they're spending on
Speaker 2: this environmental activity is a tiny, tiny fraction of their
Speaker 2: overall budget.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the magnified minority. We're spending millions on renewables,
Speaker 1: but they're spending tens of billions on fossil fuels. Amy
Speaker 1: Westervelt reported elsewhere in the show that freedom of speech
Speaker 1: is often viewed as sakra sanct We all know that,
Speaker 1: and has been used by fossil fuel companies as cover
Speaker 1: further misinformation campaigns. What are the bigger implications of that
Speaker 1: in terms of free speech.
Speaker 2: It really depends on the specific situation. But generally speaking,
Speaker 2: my policy or my approach is the antidote to bad
Speaker 2: speech is more speech or good speech, and that is
Speaker 2: kind of the principle that informs building public resilience misinformation,
Speaker 2: so helping people to see through these false arguments from
Speaker 2: fussil fuel companies or other sources of misinformation.
Speaker 1: Right, and we've seen lots of attacks on science, and
Speaker 1: there seems to be you know, it's related to the
Speaker 1: distrust of institutions, and that's certainly been rampant during COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen pandemic and has led to real harm and even
Speaker 1: the death of some vocal anti vaxxers. If you did
Speaker 1: research on whether personal experience does that affect people's receptivity
Speaker 1: to these myths if they know someone who's been affected
Speaker 1: by climate or know someone who's been affected by COVID.
Speaker 2: There's some interesting research done by my colleagues at George
Speaker 2: Mason University threes of myas at MAYBAC. They looked at
Speaker 2: how personal experience can influence people's perceptions about climate change
Speaker 2: and the way to think about these imagine there's three
Speaker 2: segments of society. Is the alarmed and concern people who
Speaker 2: are who are on board about climate change. There's the
Speaker 2: dismissives at the other end, and then there's the mushy middle.
Speaker 2: There's the undecideds in the middle. What they found was
Speaker 2: personal experience about climate change doesn't affect the two groups
Speaker 2: at the ends. The people who are alarmed stay alarmed.
Speaker 2: The people who are dismissive stay dismissive. It's the people
Speaker 2: who are undercided in the middle. When they have personal
Speaker 2: experience with climate related events like increasing extreme weather, those
Speaker 2: are the ones whose perceptions about climate change shift.
Speaker 1: You work with Facebook to help them combat misinformation, what
Speaker 1: does that work look like, particularly in the climate realm.
Speaker 2: So Facebook launched the Climate Science Center, and initially the
Speaker 2: Climate Science Center was just about providing authoritative, reliable, accurate
Speaker 2: facts about climate change, and this was done in response
Speaker 2: to a lot of criticism they received about letting this
Speaker 2: information spread on their platform, and a lot of people
Speaker 2: were critical that this was not enough, including myself. I
Speaker 2: didn't have any association with them at the time, so
Speaker 2: I was quite blunt in saying producing facts while letting
Speaker 2: misinformation spread was like poisoning someone and then giving them
Speaker 2: a pamphlet about vegetables. But to their credit, they always
Speaker 2: recognized that just producing the Climate Science Center was a
Speaker 2: first step, and their intent was to gradually ratchet up
Speaker 2: their ambition and proactiveness in taking on climate misinformation. So
Speaker 2: their next step was to work with myself and two
Speaker 2: other climate communication researchers, Tony Lyisowitz and Sander Vandalinden, and
Speaker 2: we went through the process of looking at the most
Speaker 2: common myths about climate change, and then we advise them
Speaker 2: on how to write debunkings about them. It's important when
Speaker 2: you're debunking misinformation not just to explain the facts. Although
Speaker 2: that's crucially important, but also to explain the technique used
Speaker 2: to distort the facts, so fact myth fallacy. Fact is
Speaker 2: a general structure that we recommend for debunking misinformation, and
Speaker 2: they use that. So we produced those with them debunking
Speaker 2: the most common myths about climate change. Since then, it's
Speaker 2: been an ongoing collaboration and they're still looking at other
Speaker 2: ways to use their platform to count of misinformation. It's
Speaker 2: been slow, slower than I would have liked, but there
Speaker 2: has been incremental progress. Misinformation is a really complicated problem.
Speaker 2: It involves psychology, culture, technology, science, a whole range of
Speaker 2: different factors, and we need to be throwing a lot
Speaker 2: of different tools out it.
Speaker 1: John Kirk, thanks for sharing your insights on how to
Speaker 1: identify misinformation and how to respond to the misinformation.
Speaker 2: Thanks Greg, it was great to talk to.
Speaker 1: You coming up the implications of podcasts not being regulated
Speaker 1: the same way as other types of media.
Speaker 3: Every person who's putting out a podcast, it's up to
Speaker 3: them entirely what their process is for fact checking or
Speaker 3: any kind of backstop there on truthfulness, and we've really
Speaker 3: seen in the last few years what that can lead to.
Speaker 1: That's up next when climate One continues, we're talking about
Speaker 1: climate misinformation. This week's show is a special collaboration with
Speaker 1: Amy Westervelt, an award winning print and audio journalist. She's
Speaker 1: founder of the Critical Frequency podcast network, which includes her
Speaker 1: own show Drilled, a true crime style podcast about climate change.
Speaker 1: I asked her to join me to reflect on what
Speaker 1: we've heard so far in this show about ways fossil
Speaker 1: fuel comey spread misinformation. Amy, Welcome to Climate One. I'm
Speaker 1: excited to be talking with you.
Speaker 3: I'm super excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 1: Reflecting on your piece that opened this episode, it was
Speaker 1: real interesting, and I've been thinking about the distinction between
Speaker 1: commercial speech and political speech. Fossil fuels have amazing energy
Speaker 1: density and they enable us to live our lives every day,
Speaker 1: and fossil fuels are killing the natural systems that we
Speaker 1: rely on every day. Both are true. Where do you
Speaker 1: see the line between commercial speech and political speech that
Speaker 1: you talked about in that opening segment.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I find that really interesting too. Just
Speaker 3: from a legal strategy standpoint, this idea that you know,
Speaker 3: if it's something that connects to policy, I want to
Speaker 3: see then it doesn't have to play by the same
Speaker 3: rules as you know something that's about a product that
Speaker 3: I'm selling. So to me, I actually it reminds me
Speaker 3: of the conversation that sprung up when The Guardian stopped
Speaker 3: taking fossil fuel ads a couple of years ago. So
Speaker 3: a lot of people kind of questioned that and said, well,
Speaker 3: where do you draw the line, What about airplanes and
Speaker 3: air travel and cars and if it has to do
Speaker 3: with climate change and or a product's impact on the
Speaker 3: environment or the world at large, you could theoretically just
Speaker 3: get rid of of any kind of advertiser. And they
Speaker 3: had this very succinct response to that, which was, well,
Speaker 3: all of those other categories are selling a product, and
Speaker 3: the fossil fuel industry is very much selling ideas and
Speaker 3: policy positions. They don't advertise gas anymore. Nobody really chooses
Speaker 3: their gasoline based on brand, right, It's a commodity. So
Speaker 3: to me, there's a very very clear difference between the
Speaker 3: way that the fossil fuel industry advertises for the last
Speaker 3: ten fifteen years and the way most other industries advertise.
Speaker 3: That is a pretty good illustration of the difference between
Speaker 3: commercial and political speech.
Speaker 1: Right, and then that advertising often gets into its branding
Speaker 1: and you know, another part of your segment that was
Speaker 1: real interesting is Mobile VP of Public Affairs formerly Herb Schmertz,
Speaker 1: remarking on the company's personality and its participation in the
Speaker 1: marketplace of ideas. Of course, these days, corporations are often
Speaker 1: invited into public discourse bipartisans and advocates. Disney just called
Speaker 1: for rescinding Floridas Don't Say Gay law, which I said, yay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So oil companies are not the only ones shaping their
Speaker 1: image and in the public policy sphere. So you know,
Speaker 1: why is it bad for oil companies to do what
Speaker 1: Disney is and others are doing.
Speaker 3: I personally believe it's not great for any of them
Speaker 3: to do it. Actually, whether we agree with them or
Speaker 3: not is sort of irrelevant. I think the invitation to
Speaker 3: corporations into the public square has been a real problem
Speaker 3: America since the seventies. And I think that you see
Speaker 3: this right in this history of Mobile kind of involving
Speaker 3: itself with this that it was very much like we
Speaker 3: need to maintain this position in society to be able
Speaker 3: to effectively lobby both the public and politicians for these
Speaker 3: kinds of policies that we want to control. The narrative
Speaker 3: about what's happening, you know, with our industry. It's actually
Speaker 3: a really interesting time to be talking about this because
Speaker 3: very similar things were happening then that are happening now,
Speaker 3: where you know, the gas phrases were high, and the
Speaker 3: oil companies were saying, it's not our fault, it's the
Speaker 3: government's fault, and there was this kind of you know,
Speaker 3: jockeying for control of the story.
Speaker 1: When I heard that piece that you did, I thought of,
Speaker 1: you know, the status of corporations as individuals, as legal individuals,
Speaker 1: which is kind of another extension of what you pointed out.
Speaker 1: They have First Amendment rights and they are an individual
Speaker 1: which made me think immediately of Stephen Colbert's line a
Speaker 1: while back where he said, I'll believe that corporations are
Speaker 1: individuals when Texas executes one.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, exactly, And I mean Herb Schwartz whole personality
Speaker 3: thing really played into that too, This idea of like, oh,
Speaker 3: if we imbue corporations with a personality and an opinion
Speaker 3: and a soul, like a morality too, right, then that
Speaker 3: makes it easier for us to convince the public that,
Speaker 3: you know, we're good faith actors, we care about more
Speaker 3: than just our bottom line. But the reality is that
Speaker 3: they don't have to play by the same rules as
Speaker 3: any other member of the community. You know, nobody else
Speaker 3: gets as many benefits as corporations do in the realm
Speaker 3: where they're not humans.
Speaker 1: And I'm curious, you know. You also, we had John
Speaker 1: Cook talking about deconstructing climate myths, how to identify and
Speaker 1: respond misinformation. What struck you about his piece?
Speaker 3: I find him so interesting every time I read anything
Speaker 3: of his or listen to him talk about this stuff.
Speaker 3: So the thing that struck me this time was this notion.
Speaker 3: And I don't it wasn't necessarily new to me, but
Speaker 3: just the way he phrased it. As you know, we
Speaker 3: had like twenty years of science denial and then twenty
Speaker 3: years of solutions denial. It's a very straightforward way to
Speaker 3: understand it. And you really have seen that over over
Speaker 3: the years of you know, Okay, now we believe the science, Like,
Speaker 3: let's focus on these other things that will help us
Speaker 3: delay policy and regulation and you know, allow us to
Speaker 3: kind of get as much out of these assets as
Speaker 3: we can before we have to retire the you know,
Speaker 3: which is the name of the game. And like to
Speaker 3: be honest, I don't necessarily blame oil companies for doing that.
Speaker 3: They're doing what corporations are encouraged and incentivized and enabled
Speaker 3: to do. Right, So I am kind of a the
Speaker 3: opinion of, well, if we wanted to change, then we
Speaker 3: have to change the rules so that you know, they
Speaker 3: can't do these things that are beneficial to them and
Speaker 3: kind of impose a lot of liabilities and risks on
Speaker 3: the rest of us.
Speaker 1: The idea of kind of solutions that also for me
Speaker 1: was really clarifying and crystallizing when John said, we've moved
Speaker 1: from climate misinformation to solutions misinformation. And maybe think of
Speaker 1: how many times I've heard people question what happens to
Speaker 1: EV batteries after the useful life of the car? And
Speaker 1: I've heard that so many times that I'm suspicious of
Speaker 1: where that's being seated and how that's being seated, Like
Speaker 1: did those people all come up with that organically, or
Speaker 1: you know, is there some you know, Facebook posts somewhere
Speaker 1: that campaign to like so doubt about EV batteries at
Speaker 1: the end of life and we know that that is
Speaker 1: a solvable problem. And now there's a new company that's
Speaker 1: going to harve by a founder of Tesla that's going
Speaker 1: to try to harvest those batteries, et cetera.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's it's I don't know. It's so tough
Speaker 3: because I think there are important and nuanced conversations to
Speaker 3: be had about, you know, some of the the unintended
Speaker 3: consequences of the solutions to climate change too, right, Like,
Speaker 3: I know there's a whole a lot going on around
Speaker 3: lithium mining right now and huge. Yeah, you know, those
Speaker 3: are our very important conversations to be having. We don't
Speaker 3: want to go into you know, the next energy generation
Speaker 3: with the same exact mindset except for like the source
Speaker 3: of energy or else we're going to repeat, you know,
Speaker 3: the same mistakes and end up with a new problem.
Speaker 3: Right and unfortunately, it's like you almost can't have those
Speaker 3: conversations without it being weaponized by you know, people who
Speaker 3: who don't want to see climate policy or who don't
Speaker 3: want to see energy transition to say, oh, let's see there.
Speaker 3: You know, there's problems with this too. There's problems with
Speaker 3: all of it. The other thing I thought was interesting
Speaker 3: in your interview with John where he talks about how
Speaker 3: there's a real focus on kind of weaponizing the human
Speaker 3: tendency towards tribal identity and sticking with our group and
Speaker 3: digging into our opinions and those kinds of things, because
Speaker 3: you really see that in the fracturing of the climate
Speaker 3: movement too, not just like climate people versus people who
Speaker 3: don't think we should act on climate, or centrist versus
Speaker 3: progressives or whatever, like even in these things like should
Speaker 3: we or should we not mind lithium for electrification, it's
Speaker 3: like people can't even have, you know, a remotely nuanced
Speaker 3: conversation about it.
Speaker 1: And you know a lot of this is playing out
Speaker 1: in the pod casting place. And there was a big
Speaker 1: dust up recently with you know, Joe Rogan. He's been
Speaker 1: peddling in both climate and COVID misinformation for a long time,
Speaker 1: but it's COVID that got him in trouble. And then
Speaker 1: you tweeted recently that he interviewed Michael Shellenberger, who I've
Speaker 1: interviewed numerous times, who's running for the governor of California.
Speaker 1: So how does he embody kind of the evolution from
Speaker 1: science misinformation to solution information? And what did you think
Speaker 1: about when you saw Rogan and Schellenberger together that photo?
Speaker 3: It was so interesting because I had just I was
Speaker 3: just listening to your conversation with John and then I
Speaker 3: saw that that you know, interview had happened, and I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, this is like a perfect example of
Speaker 3: this of this evolution, because Joe Rogan has you know,
Speaker 3: interviewed lots of kind of garden variety climate deniers, you know,
Speaker 3: will say, actually Car two is good for us in
Speaker 3: the atmosphere and things of that nature. And now he's
Speaker 3: graduated to Schellenberger, who you know is a like likes
Speaker 3: to kind of burnish his environmental credentials and say I
Speaker 3: was an environmental activist and and now I'm apologizing to
Speaker 3: the world for all the alarmism that we created about
Speaker 3: climate change. And yes it's a problem, but we don't
Speaker 3: need to actually make any drastic changes. And very very
Speaker 3: much a big user of one of the strategies that
Speaker 3: John Cook talked about, which is cherry picking datas. I
Speaker 3: went through his book when it came out and found
Speaker 3: I think three thousand examples of cherry picked data that
Speaker 3: was like making a very flawed argument.
Speaker 1: So how much of this is you know, you and
Speaker 1: I both came out of you know, traditional news backgrounds.
Speaker 1: You know, when I worked at the AP, there was
Speaker 1: a saying that if you think your mother loves you,
Speaker 1: you better call and confirm that it's still true, you know.
Speaker 1: And so the But in Podland and the realm of podcasts,
Speaker 1: which are you know, those traditional rules rules don't apply.
Speaker 1: They're regulated differently. So how you know, talk about you know,
Speaker 1: how much of this is a real function of, you know,
Speaker 1: the surge of podcasting and how can podland avoid becoming
Speaker 1: the cesspool that is social media.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm actually very concerned about this because it is
Speaker 3: governed by the exact same rules as Twitter and Facebook.
Speaker 3: Podcasts are. But I think the public thinks of podcasts
Speaker 3: as being media right and therefore governed by media rules
Speaker 3: like websites or newspapers or whatever, and it's not. Actually
Speaker 3: so every person who's putting out a podcast is it's
Speaker 3: up to them entirely what their process is for fact checking.
Speaker 2: Or you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, there are some basic consumer protection laws, but
Speaker 3: in terms of any kind of backstop there on truthfulness, no,
Speaker 3: it's kind of up to each organization. And we've really
Speaker 3: seen in the last few years what that can lead to.
Speaker 3: Joe Rogan is a perfect example of you know, he
Speaker 3: kind of takes this approach that well, I'm just I'm
Speaker 3: just sharing my opinion. And the problem there is that
Speaker 3: when you're sharing your opinion and it sounds like expertise,
Speaker 3: then it can be very misleading to people.
Speaker 1: You know, So maybe I learned from maybe he took
Speaker 1: a page from me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I think that, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: not a fan of censorship, and I think also like
Speaker 3: the horse is kind of out of the barn, like
Speaker 3: you're not gonna, you know, go back in time and
Speaker 3: set up rules that the podcast industry can you know,
Speaker 3: can live by necessarily. But I do think that there's
Speaker 3: an argument to be made to bring podcasts under FCC
Speaker 3: regulations instead of the Federal Trade Commission FTC, which it's
Speaker 3: under now. Not that the SEC is perfect, obviously, we
Speaker 3: see tons of misinformation on cable news for example, as well,
Speaker 3: but there's at least some amount of more proactive action
Speaker 3: to try to curb that there. And the other thing is,
Speaker 3: I do think that you're seeing the industry itself start
Speaker 3: to sort of take some somewhat of a turn. You're
Speaker 3: always going to have these kind of rogue actors, but
Speaker 3: the podcast platforms are thinking about, you know, what can
Speaker 3: we do to sort of let the more high quality
Speaker 3: reported stuff rise to the top and highlight that stuff
Speaker 3: versus some guy in his mom's garage, you know, And
Speaker 3: companies are starting to hire fact checkers more and more too.
Speaker 3: This has like become just in the last couple of years.
Speaker 3: I've seen a major major shift where I had to
Speaker 3: really convince people before that that was worth spending money on.
Speaker 3: But because of the FTC thing. The other problem with
Speaker 3: podcasts is that the ads don't go by the same rules.
Speaker 1: So we've we've struggled with that. How you've like fact
Speaker 1: checked the ads that come on your platform. That Daily
Speaker 1: got called out for some things on natural gas. I
Speaker 1: think it was that that was not quite meet the
Speaker 1: standards of the New York Times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The fact that you saw this explosion in oil companies
Speaker 3: in particular advertising and podcasts a few years ago, it's
Speaker 3: for a reason. You know, they don't they don't spend
Speaker 3: money on stuff just to try things out. They're they're
Speaker 3: very smart and very strategic. So if you know, if
Speaker 3: they're investing a lot there and then social media ads,
Speaker 3: it's because they have more control over the story there.
Speaker 1: Right, which all gets to the need for the educated,
Speaker 1: discerning public to sort of, you know, check ourselves and
Speaker 1: what's the difference between the editorial, the podcast, the advertisement.
Speaker 1: One of the themes running through this is the narrative
Speaker 1: of personal responsibility, both for climate action and for I guess,
Speaker 1: for the information we take in versus corporate responsibility, for
Speaker 1: corporate responsibility for climate, corporate responsibility or producer responsibility for
Speaker 1: media and for energy. You know, BP popularized the idea
Speaker 1: of the personal carbon footprint twenty years ago, and I
Speaker 1: respect your work a lot, and you have really gone
Speaker 1: after you know, the villains, energy companies, energy suppliers as
Speaker 1: villains in the climate story. And I've also pursued the
Speaker 1: limitations and the truth of the personal responsibility. And I
Speaker 1: want to play a clip from brit Ray, who's a
Speaker 1: researcher at Stanford University who's had this to say.
Speaker 15: It's a huge part of a lot of activist rhetoric
Speaker 15: that we shouldn't be focusing on our individual minuscule impact
Speaker 15: in relation to who's out there really spreading the damage,
Speaker 15: you know, the fossil fuel companies, the corrupt politicians, the
Speaker 15: lobbyist et cetera, that are fueling the damage as we
Speaker 15: speak and have and for decades. And I really think that.
Speaker 16: That is, of course true on an intellectual level in
Speaker 16: many ways, but there's also perhaps a propulsion to turn
Speaker 16: away from looking within because it brings up shame, it
Speaker 16: brings up guilt, it brings up intolerable emotions that produce
Speaker 16: a bunch of defensive reactions.
Speaker 1: That's Britt Ray, who has a PhD and climate science communication.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to ask you if someone can villainization
Speaker 1: sometimes be easy or than looking at ourselves and our
Speaker 1: own complicity.
Speaker 3: I definitely thin get can be and I also agree
Speaker 3: with Britt And I also think that there's again going
Speaker 3: to sound like a broken record here, like a real
Speaker 3: need for nuance in the conversation around personal responsibility because
Speaker 3: the reality is that the top ten percent of consumers globally,
Speaker 3: which most Americans fall into, are responsible for a much
Speaker 3: larger proportion of global CO two emissions than everyone else
Speaker 3: in the world. Right, So I absolutely think that we
Speaker 3: should look at that and take responsibility for, you know,
Speaker 3: the ways that we're you know, contributing to that. I
Speaker 3: also think, just as a human, it feels better to
Speaker 3: live according to your values than not, you know, on
Speaker 3: a on a real basic level. And I think also
Speaker 3: that there's something to be said for individual action beyond consumerism.
Speaker 3: This is something that really bugs me that the personal
Speaker 3: responsibility stuff always gets well down to what we buy
Speaker 3: right or how we travel.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: But like individual action can also be civic action. It
Speaker 3: can be political organizing, It can be finding ways to
Speaker 3: make your community more resilient. It can be mutual aid.
Speaker 3: There are lots and lots and lots of things that
Speaker 3: have nothing to do with buying different stuff that are
Speaker 3: individual actions that are very important and that are a
Speaker 3: critical part of of how we not only address this
Speaker 3: problem but actually survive it, you know.
Speaker 1: Right, And yes, Bill mckibbon said years ago the most
Speaker 1: important thing an individual can do is not act as
Speaker 1: an individual. And I'm recently thinking about the best thing
Speaker 1: you can do is have relationships and make this part
Speaker 1: of your life and your relationships whoever those relationships are with,
Speaker 1: to make climate part of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I know Catherine Hahoe talks a lot about
Speaker 3: the power of talking to other people about this, not
Speaker 3: just in the vein of you know, persuading people to
Speaker 3: see your point of view or things like that, but
Speaker 3: just to create community to like actually to help with
Speaker 3: processing those feelings of shame and fear and anxiety and
Speaker 3: grief and all of those things that come up with
Speaker 3: this too. Like you can't do that alone. You need
Speaker 3: to talk to people, you know, but you speaking to
Speaker 3: someone else about it can absolutely help them to feel
Speaker 3: more like they're able to kind of work through that
Speaker 3: stuff and get to a place where they can. To me,
Speaker 3: it's actually not about finding villains at all. It's about
Speaker 3: figuring out what the what drove a problem like the
Speaker 3: climate crisis in the first place, Like, how do you
Speaker 3: have a society that allows a small group of people
Speaker 3: to make decisions that impact the whole world?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 3: Like how does that happen? How does it get to
Speaker 3: this point where we're facing this catastrophe and everyone feels
Speaker 3: really powerless to do anything about it, you know, So
Speaker 3: that is interesting to me. I'm like, you know, how
Speaker 3: did this system get built? And who built it? And
Speaker 3: why did they have the power to build it? And
Speaker 3: how do we Because for me, I don't think you
Speaker 3: get to effective solutions if you don't understand that. How
Speaker 3: do you solve a problem when you don't even know
Speaker 3: the roots of it or where it came from. We
Speaker 3: have to deal with the power structure, not just the
Speaker 3: power source.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah right, it is ultimately about power. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: Amy Westerville, thank you so much for coming on climate
Speaker 1: and it's been a real pleasure.
Speaker 3: And yeah, thanks for having me. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: On this Climate one, we've been breaking down climate misinformation, tactics,
Speaker 1: and ways to respond. Special thanks to Amy Westervelt for
Speaker 1: this collaboration. Check out her excellent podcast Drilled. Climate one's
Speaker 1: empowering conversations connect all aspects of the climate emergency. To
Speaker 1: hear more, subscribe to our podcast on Apple or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your pods. Talking about climate can be hard, difficult, depressing, awkward,
Speaker 1: and it's critical to addressing the climate emergency. Please help
Speaker 1: us get people talking more about climate by giving us
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Speaker 1: senior producer. Our producers and audio editors are Aaron Abrocious
Speaker 1: and Austin Cologne. Our team also includes Arnov Gupta, Steve Fox,
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Speaker 1: Young and arranged by Matt Wilcox. Gloria Duffy is CEO
Speaker 1: of the Commonwealth Club of California, the non profit and
Speaker 1: non partisan forum or our program originates. I'm Greg Dalton.