WEBVTT - Climate One Collaboration: Breaking Down Climate Misinformation 0:00:00.360 --> 0:00:03.120 Hi, it's Greg Dalton. I'd like to hear your comments 0:00:03.160 --> 0:00:06.080 on the show, topics we should cover and guess suggestions. 0:00:06.320 --> 0:00:08.920 You can reach me at Greg at climatewe dot org. 0:00:10.760 --> 0:00:14.960 This is Climate One. I'm Greg Dalton. Spreading climate misinformation 0:00:15.160 --> 0:00:17.959 is a favorite tool of fossil fuel companies looking to 0:00:18.000 --> 0:00:19.640 protect their bottom line. 0:00:19.800 --> 0:00:23.560 Whether they're arguing climate change isn't real, therefore we should mact, 0:00:24.000 --> 0:00:27.440 or climate change isn't caused by humans, therefore we should mact. 0:00:27.600 --> 0:00:30.160 Well solutions weren't work, therefore we should mact. 0:00:30.280 --> 0:00:33.840 Companies use advertising and mass media to spread these messages, 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:37.040 and in some cases want to defend their actions as 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:38.559 protected free speech. 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:43.559 This idea that you know, if it's something that connects 0:00:43.640 --> 0:00:47.479 to policy I want to see, then it doesn't have 0:00:47.600 --> 0:00:49.080 to play by the same rules. 0:00:49.479 --> 0:00:52.760 But we can counter these false arguments through critical thinking 0:00:52.880 --> 0:00:53.680 and education. 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:58.600 If we want a public who are resilient against misinformation, 0:00:59.320 --> 0:01:02.880 we need to build up their ability to spot these 0:01:02.920 --> 0:01:03.720 types of fallacies. 0:01:05.400 --> 0:01:09.400 Fossil fuel corporations have spent decades casting doubt and public 0:01:09.440 --> 0:01:13.960 about climate facts that their own scientists validated in company research. 0:01:14.560 --> 0:01:18.280 These tactics have included a concerted effort to recast political 0:01:18.360 --> 0:01:23.280 speech banned and regulated in some contexts as protected free speech, 0:01:23.600 --> 0:01:28.440 giving corporations more leeway and broadcasting their messages. This week's 0:01:28.480 --> 0:01:32.040 episode is a special collaboration with Amy Westervelt, an award 0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:35.920 winning journalist and creator of the podcast Drilled. She brings 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:38.839 us the backstory of the free speech argument fossil fuel 0:01:38.840 --> 0:01:42.400 companies are now using to support their efforts to spread 0:01:42.480 --> 0:01:43.800 climate misinformation. 0:01:54.640 --> 0:01:58.000 Most people think the debate over corporate free speech in 0:01:58.080 --> 0:02:02.680 America started with the Citizens United case in twenty ten. 0:02:05.640 --> 0:02:09.960 Mister Olson, are you taking the position that there is 0:02:10.040 --> 0:02:14.600 no difference in the First Amendment rights of an individual? 0:02:15.639 --> 0:02:20.760 A corporation, after all, is not endowed by its creator 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:28.359 with inalienable rights. So is there any distinction that Congress 0:02:28.400 --> 0:02:35.800 could draw between corporations and natural human beings for purposes 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:37.040 of campaign finance? 0:02:37.280 --> 0:02:40.040 What the Court has said in the First Amendment context 0:02:40.639 --> 0:02:44.799 New York Times versus Sullivan, Gross Chain versus Associated Press, 0:02:45.240 --> 0:02:49.040 and over and over again, is that corporations are persons 0:02:49.520 --> 0:02:51.639 entitled to protection under the First Amendment. 0:02:52.160 --> 0:02:56.200 That was the lead Justice Ruth Peter Ginsberg questioning Attorney 0:02:56.280 --> 0:03:00.280 Ted Olsen with the firm Gibson Dunn who argued and 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:04.680 won that case. Just a quick recap here. The case 0:03:04.720 --> 0:03:07.360 was about a film that had been made criticizing Hillary 0:03:07.400 --> 0:03:10.040 Clinton the first time she tried to run for president. 0:03:10.160 --> 0:03:13.200 It was funded by a cohort of right wing organizations 0:03:13.240 --> 0:03:17.920 and corporations, including coke industries, so the Federal Election Commission 0:03:17.960 --> 0:03:21.840 had said that the movie couldn't screen without identifying itself 0:03:21.880 --> 0:03:26.800 as campaign material and noting its funders. The filmmakers and 0:03:26.840 --> 0:03:30.239 their attorneys argue that this violated their free speech rights, 0:03:30.840 --> 0:03:34.440 and they won, opening the door to unlimited corporate funding 0:03:34.560 --> 0:03:41.120 of political propaganda what's generally referred to as simply dark money. 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:44.600 But Citizens United was not the first battle in the 0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:48.440 war over corporate free speech, nor was it the last. 0:03:49.040 --> 0:03:52.600 The story actually begins back in the late nineteen sixties 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:57.720 with Mobile Oil and its issue advertising program. It was 0:03:57.720 --> 0:04:02.040 a multifaceted strategy that included to finding a personality for Mobile, 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:08.040 aligning the company with cultural institutions and advertising ideas rather 0:04:08.120 --> 0:04:12.040 than just gas. The strategy came from Mobile's VP of 0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:15.920 Public Affairs, Herb Schmertz, as a way to counter widespread 0:04:15.920 --> 0:04:19.080 criticism of oil companies in the press, and it was 0:04:19.200 --> 0:04:25.360 championed by the company's CEO, Rawley Warner. Here's Schmertz later 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:29.520 in life describing Mobil's personality, Well. 0:04:29.279 --> 0:04:33.440 It was multifast. It was a personality where we believe 0:04:33.640 --> 0:04:38.680 very strongly about the importance of public policies. Secondly, we 0:04:38.800 --> 0:04:42.599 believe fervently that as a sort of a custodian of 0:04:42.640 --> 0:04:47.600 a large corporation and the custodians of vast resources and 0:04:47.800 --> 0:04:50.840 employment and everything else, that we were not doing our 0:04:50.960 --> 0:04:54.560 job if we did not participate in the marketplace of ideas. 0:04:54.839 --> 0:04:58.280 Third part of our personality was we believed in that 0:04:58.360 --> 0:05:02.120 a democracy is to host of a group of free institutions. 0:05:02.360 --> 0:05:06.120 We believe in free markets, freedom of speech, freedom of 0:05:06.160 --> 0:05:10.560 the press, academic freedom, freedom to organize and participate in 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:11.720 union activities. 0:05:12.400 --> 0:05:16.680 In addition to sponsoring Masterpiece Theater, starting in nineteen seventy, 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:20.200 Mobile worked with The New York Times to create the advertorial. 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:23.080 Every week, Mobile ran a piece in the Times op 0:05:23.240 --> 0:05:28.159 ed section espousing some idea or another. Here's Schmertz describing 0:05:28.200 --> 0:05:30.080 them on the show Open Mind. 0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:33.119 Heb, thanks for joining me today. 0:05:33.279 --> 0:05:34.560 Great pleasure to be here, Dick. 0:05:35.080 --> 0:05:37.600 I want to turn as quickly as possible to a 0:05:37.640 --> 0:05:42.359 new fairy tale, the mobile ad or op ed piece 0:05:42.440 --> 0:05:44.400 or editorial call, or what you will that. We call 0:05:44.440 --> 0:05:47.560 them pamphlets pamphlets, but they appear in newspapers. 0:05:47.640 --> 0:05:55.280 Yes, pamphlets, but they appear in newspapers. In the early 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:58.720 nineteen seventies, Schmertz and Warner figured they were having such 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:01.919 great luck with the newspap for advertorials and their various 0:06:01.960 --> 0:06:05.040 PBS specials that it was time to get mobile content 0:06:05.160 --> 0:06:09.160 onto commercial TV. They reached out to CBS, ABC and 0:06:09.520 --> 0:06:13.559 NBC to buy time, but got a surprise. This time, 0:06:13.880 --> 0:06:19.160 CBS and ABC gave them an emphatic no. They described 0:06:19.200 --> 0:06:21.200 what mobil was trying to do with their ads as 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:25.239 propaganda and claimed it violated various ethics policies and maybe 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:29.080 even some FCC laws. Schmertz went one by one to 0:06:29.240 --> 0:06:33.800 independence stations to place his TV advertorials instead. Here's a 0:06:33.839 --> 0:06:36.640 taste of one of them from a mobile information center. 0:06:37.640 --> 0:06:39.160 Good evening, I'm Dick Calliman. 0:06:39.800 --> 0:06:43.920 Most Americans have an exaggerated idea about oil company profits. 0:06:44.760 --> 0:06:47.719 Warner and Schmertz went on the offensive in general too. 0:06:47.880 --> 0:06:50.800 They wrote letters to the network heads. They placed multiple 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:54.120 New York Times advertorials about how the big TV networks 0:06:54.120 --> 0:06:57.080 were trying to silence them, and they gave speeches at 0:06:57.120 --> 0:07:00.440 various business groups about how this was a huge threat 0:07:00.480 --> 0:07:04.440 to corporate rights. It was the first time any company 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:08.240 had talked about such a thing as corporate free speech 0:07:08.440 --> 0:07:09.200 the seventies. 0:07:09.279 --> 0:07:14.360 There was a lot of public opinion that they would 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:15.600 have been concerned about. 0:07:15.920 --> 0:07:19.520 This is Robert Kerr, a media law professor and researcher 0:07:19.600 --> 0:07:22.960 at Oklahoma State University. He's written two books about the 0:07:23.000 --> 0:07:26.280 evolution of corporate free speech and mobile's role in it. 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:29.240 He's talking here about the situation that oil companies found 0:07:29.280 --> 0:07:32.960 themselves in during the early seventies. There had been the big, 0:07:33.080 --> 0:07:36.960 high profile oils bill in California in nineteen sixty nine, 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:40.040 and then in nineteen seventy three, the oil embargo hit 0:07:40.520 --> 0:07:43.440 in response to the US support of Israel during the 0:07:43.480 --> 0:07:46.600 Arab Israeli War. Arab members of OPEK put a ban 0:07:46.760 --> 0:07:50.440 on exporting oil to the US. The effect was immediate. 0:07:51.280 --> 0:07:53.080 You know, I lived through that, and I remember it 0:07:53.160 --> 0:07:57.280 was people were scared all of a sudden. You know, 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:01.040 this something that there were used to going to the 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:05.240 pump and gas pump and getting for almost nothing was 0:08:05.280 --> 0:08:08.800 not only going way up in price, but you know, 0:08:10.000 --> 0:08:12.000 you might not even be able to buy again, And 0:08:12.080 --> 0:08:14.720 often you couldn't In the same the gas stations would 0:08:14.800 --> 0:08:18.080 run out of or you'd have a really long line, 0:08:18.080 --> 0:08:20.160 you'd wait for hours or and then then maybe you 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:24.520 still couldn't buy any So, yeah, the public was really alarmed. 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:30.800 And uh, particularly the Carter administration in the late seventies 0:08:34.320 --> 0:08:39.240 seemed to be a lot less favorable toward the old 0:08:39.280 --> 0:08:42.360 companies in general. You know, Jimmy Carter and his administrations 0:08:43.640 --> 0:08:47.400 seemed willing to hold their feet to the fire. 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:52.200 Anger and bewilderment are growing. Is more and more Americans 0:08:52.240 --> 0:09:04.599 cope with gasoline lines and empty pumps. Good evening for 0:09:04.760 --> 0:09:07.520 millions of Americans, this may be the worst weekend they've 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:10.559 ever faced for finding gasoline to give them the autumnabile 0:09:10.559 --> 0:09:14.120 freedom they take as they're due. Gasoline shortages are spreading 0:09:14.160 --> 0:09:18.000 across the country. Odd even service gasoline lines and closed 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:21.640 gas stations are becoming increasingly common, and the news from 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:24.200 overseas tonight gives no promise of quick relief. 0:09:26.040 --> 0:09:28.680 People were scared and angry, and a lot of those 0:09:28.679 --> 0:09:33.800 emotions were being directed at oil companies. For mobile access 0:09:33.840 --> 0:09:36.160 to the press and the ability to get out its 0:09:36.280 --> 0:09:39.480 version of the story was critical to the company's ability 0:09:39.520 --> 0:09:43.280 to weather this storm, and that refusal from the commercial 0:09:43.320 --> 0:09:46.680 stations to run its ads that was a huge potential 0:09:46.760 --> 0:09:50.000 threat to that strategy. Mobile toyed with the idea of 0:09:50.040 --> 0:09:53.640 filing a case themselves that would formally establish the corporate 0:09:53.679 --> 0:09:57.960 right to free speech, but it worried that that could backfire. Instead, 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:03.400 the company started filing a meekis in other cases, and Mobile. 0:10:03.120 --> 0:10:06.040 Was one of the leading corporations to fight for that 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:07.640 legal right. 0:10:07.960 --> 0:10:12.160 This is doctor Robert Brule, an environmental sociologist at Brown University. 0:10:12.720 --> 0:10:17.079 There was a pretty big effort to get a Supreme 0:10:17.080 --> 0:10:20.160 Court ruling that basically supported corporate speech and the right 0:10:20.960 --> 0:10:26.679 of corporations to do advertising of their not just product advertising, 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:29.479 but of their positions. 0:10:30.120 --> 0:10:33.120 That Supreme Court case he's talking about was First National 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:37.040 Bank of Boston versus Ballati. First National, along with two 0:10:37.120 --> 0:10:40.880 other banks and three corporations, had wanted to spend money 0:10:40.920 --> 0:10:44.600 to publicize their opposition to a ballot initiative that would 0:10:44.640 --> 0:10:49.080 permit Massachusetts to implement a graduated income tax. The Attorney 0:10:49.080 --> 0:10:52.439 General of Massachusetts said that violated a state law against 0:10:52.480 --> 0:10:55.720 funding campaigns that would influence the outcome of a vote. 0:10:55.960 --> 0:10:58.080 The bank sued, and the case went to the Supreme 0:10:58.120 --> 0:11:01.120 Court in nineteen seventy seven. The ruling came out in 0:11:01.200 --> 0:11:05.040 nineteen seventy eight. Here's Supreme Court Justice Lewis A. Powell 0:11:05.160 --> 0:11:06.360 giving that ruling. 0:11:07.280 --> 0:11:12.040 The First Amendment's primary concern, and therefore the courts concern 0:11:13.040 --> 0:11:18.760 always has been the preservation of free and uninhibited dissemination 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:25.520 of information and ideas. If the restrictive view of corporate 0:11:25.600 --> 0:11:31.800 speech taken by the Massachusetts Court were accepted, government would 0:11:31.840 --> 0:11:36.040 have the power to deprive society of the views of corporations. 0:11:36.679 --> 0:11:40.160 Paula is also credited with crafting the Powell Memorandum, which 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:43.600 outlined the pro corporate strategy that would guide the Republican 0:11:43.640 --> 0:11:47.560 Party from the early nineteen eighties to today. BLODI is 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:52.120 generally considered the precursor to Citizens United and Mobile was 0:11:52.280 --> 0:11:56.760 hugely influential in securing that ruling. Here's Robert kerr Agan. 0:11:57.080 --> 0:11:59.760 You know, it actually was very close when it first 0:11:59.800 --> 0:12:02.400 got to the Supreme Court. The justices could have gone 0:12:02.400 --> 0:12:06.120 the other way. Justice Pale kind of really finessed it 0:12:06.200 --> 0:12:10.240 and got that first President setting case Blodi into the 0:12:10.240 --> 0:12:13.640 case law, and then later when it got to Citizens United, 0:12:14.120 --> 0:12:17.240 Justice Kennedy kind of ignores the overall body of case 0:12:17.360 --> 0:12:21.520 law and he goes back to Ballotti twenty four times. 0:12:21.600 --> 0:12:26.240 It's really unusual to cite one case twenty four times. 0:12:26.360 --> 0:12:30.600 So why does this matter today? Well, in addition to 0:12:30.760 --> 0:12:34.440 changing public discourse forever, these cases also lead the groundwork 0:12:34.520 --> 0:12:37.640 for the argument that oil companies are using today to 0:12:37.760 --> 0:12:42.800 defend climate disinformation. In some two dozen climate liability cases 0:12:42.960 --> 0:12:46.120 and some additional fraud cases, the oil companies are being 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:50.800 accused with misleading the public on climate The lawyer appointed 0:12:50.840 --> 0:12:53.400 to speak for all of the companies in these cases 0:12:53.480 --> 0:12:56.200 is Ted Boutros, who's not only a well known First 0:12:56.200 --> 0:12:59.360 Amendment attorney, but also a partner at Gibson Dunn, the 0:12:59.400 --> 0:13:02.640 firm that's cured that when in Citizens United back in 0:13:02.679 --> 0:13:06.119 twenty ten. Here's Boutro speaking on the Climate One podcast 0:13:06.240 --> 0:13:07.199 in twenty twenty. 0:13:07.679 --> 0:13:09.720 I do want to take head on the notion that 0:13:09.880 --> 0:13:12.240 the plaintiff's lawyers in a lot of the climate change 0:13:12.280 --> 0:13:16.000 cases have been advocating is that the oil and gas 0:13:16.000 --> 0:13:19.160 companies were they had secret knowledge and they were then 0:13:19.480 --> 0:13:24.720 putting out misinformation, and they tried to analogize it to 0:13:24.720 --> 0:13:27.800 tobacco and other areas. It just it doesn't make any 0:13:27.840 --> 0:13:31.840 sense because it was well known. The federal government knew 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:35.480 the problems of climate change, the potential causes, and knew 0:13:35.480 --> 0:13:36.679 that there was an issue here. 0:13:36.920 --> 0:13:39.440 Other attorneys are making this argument on behalf of the 0:13:39.480 --> 0:13:43.600 oil majors as well. When it exhausted all options to 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:47.679 dismiss the fraud case against it in Massachusetts, Exon Mobile 0:13:47.880 --> 0:13:52.160 filed an anti slapsuit against the Attorney General's office there, 0:13:52.320 --> 0:13:55.319 claiming that the fraud case against it amounted to an 0:13:55.320 --> 0:13:59.839 effort to quash the company's First Amendment rights. SLAP stands 0:13:59.840 --> 0:14:05.520 for strategic litigation against public participation. Anti SLAP statutes like 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:09.080 the one in Massachusetts, we're meant to protect the press 0:14:09.080 --> 0:14:13.760 and civil society groups from corporations that wanted to silence critics. 0:14:14.080 --> 0:14:17.240 But these days it's become equally common for corporations to 0:14:17.360 --> 0:14:21.120 use these statutes to swat away legal complaints. Here's attorney 0:14:21.280 --> 0:14:24.720 Justin Anderson, a partner with Paul Weiss, that's Exon Mobil's 0:14:24.760 --> 0:14:27.920 law firm, at a March twenty twenty two hearing. 0:14:28.400 --> 0:14:32.120 The alleged misrepresentations are the statements that Exon Mobile has 0:14:32.120 --> 0:14:36.400 made about its views on climate policy on energy policy. 0:14:36.760 --> 0:14:40.400 The anti slap Statute provides a mechanism to have a 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:44.240 case that is brought against someone for petitioning activity dismissed 0:14:44.280 --> 0:14:48.480 at the outset, before burdensome discovery is imposed on the party, 0:14:49.000 --> 0:14:52.040 before we have our executives come in to give testimony 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:54.920 and depositions, before we're dragged into a courtroom where we 0:14:54.960 --> 0:14:55.960 have to defend ourselves. 0:14:56.080 --> 0:15:00.280 That phrase petitioning activity is really key here because what 0:15:00.320 --> 0:15:03.800 it means in Plean English is political speech. And the 0:15:03.880 --> 0:15:06.560 argument ex On Mobile is making here and that Boutros 0:15:06.560 --> 0:15:09.480 has been making as well, is that because the oil 0:15:09.520 --> 0:15:14.920 company's campaigns on climate are political speech, not commercial speech, 0:15:15.400 --> 0:15:18.040 they are protected by the First Amendment. It's the sort 0:15:18.040 --> 0:15:20.960 of argument Herbschmertz would have been proud of. Here. He 0:15:21.080 --> 0:15:24.280 is defending corporate pr In the eighties. 0:15:24.120 --> 0:15:28.360 Government intrusion into the marketplace of ideas would limit our 0:15:28.400 --> 0:15:31.400 freedom of speech and distort the selection of our leaders. 0:15:31.760 --> 0:15:36.280 People feel frustrated when the press doesn't deliver a complete 0:15:36.280 --> 0:15:39.320 story or an accurate story, so they bring in people 0:15:39.320 --> 0:15:44.600 who have the ability to add to the spectrum of facts, opinions, views, 0:15:44.600 --> 0:15:48.840 philosophies so that the public can get a more balanced 0:15:48.960 --> 0:15:50.760 view today. 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:55.040 The groundwork that Schmirtz and Warner laid with Bloody, various 0:15:55.040 --> 0:15:58.800 other cases, with issue advertising, and with their general advocacy 0:15:58.840 --> 0:16:02.520 for corporate free speech over the decades is the foundation 0:16:02.840 --> 0:16:07.000 for Big Oil's argument about climate denial. It couldn't be fraud. 0:16:07.280 --> 0:16:10.880 It was political speech protected by the free speech rights 0:16:11.000 --> 0:16:13.840 they've spent the past fifty years securing. 0:16:16.480 --> 0:16:19.400 You're listening to a Climate one conversation about tactics for 0:16:19.480 --> 0:16:24.160 spreading climate misinformation coming up. One way to break down 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:25.520 misleading reasoning. 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:30.440 You can just take a flawed argument and transplant that 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:34.480 logic into a parallel situation, usually the most absurd and 0:16:34.680 --> 0:16:37.680 extreme situation you can think of, and then use the 0:16:37.680 --> 0:16:41.960 same logic, and that makes it very clear and engaging 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:45.160 in concrete when you're trying to explain the flawed logic 0:16:45.240 --> 0:16:45.680 to people. 0:16:46.080 --> 0:16:54.240 That's up next, when Climate one continues. This is Climate one. 0:16:54.480 --> 0:16:57.960 I'm Greg Dalton, and today we're talking about climate misinformation 0:16:58.480 --> 0:17:02.360 and how to challenge it. John Cook is a postdoctoral 0:17:02.400 --> 0:17:05.720 research fellow at the Climate Change Communication Research Hub at 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:10.320 Nash University in Australia. He focuses on using critical thinking 0:17:10.400 --> 0:17:14.879 to build resilience against misinformation. He says the most common 0:17:14.960 --> 0:17:20.640 climate misinformation in the US centers on climate policy being harmful, expensive, 0:17:20.960 --> 0:17:21.879 or ineffective. 0:17:22.560 --> 0:17:26.920 Ultimately, its goal is to delay climate action and maintain 0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:29.640 the status quo. And you will find that no matter 0:17:29.720 --> 0:17:32.720 what the argument is, the conclusion is always the same, 0:17:33.119 --> 0:17:37.280 whether they're arguing climate change isn't real, therefore we shouldn act, 0:17:37.560 --> 0:17:40.959 or climate change isn't caused by humans, therefore we should act, 0:17:41.200 --> 0:17:44.640 or solutions won't work, therefore we should act. It's always 0:17:44.320 --> 0:17:49.160 that end thing. And so it's about delaying action by 0:17:49.280 --> 0:17:55.200 reducing public support for climate action, and there are various 0:17:55.200 --> 0:17:59.360 pathways to do that. Wine is confusing people about the science. 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:03.800 A famous two thousand and two memo written by a 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:09.840 political strategist, Frank Lumps, where he basically argued for politicians 0:18:10.320 --> 0:18:13.720 who were trying to win the public debate about climate policy. 0:18:14.000 --> 0:18:16.600 He said, if you want to win the debate about 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:21.520 climate policy and basically stop climate action, cast out on 0:18:21.600 --> 0:18:25.080 the scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming. If 0:18:25.119 --> 0:18:29.400 the public get confused about the consensus, the attitudes about 0:18:29.400 --> 0:18:31.520 the policy change accordingly, right. 0:18:31.359 --> 0:18:35.040 Which hearkens that confusion and doubt. Good course goes back 0:18:35.080 --> 0:18:39.160 to the tobacco company saying doubt is our product. There's 0:18:39.200 --> 0:18:42.480 been a decade's long effort by old companies and others 0:18:42.480 --> 0:18:45.239 to cast doubt on climate science to allow them to 0:18:45.280 --> 0:18:48.240 continue to profit. The strategy has taken many forms and 0:18:48.320 --> 0:18:51.760 evolved over time. Can you walk us through that evolution 0:18:51.960 --> 0:18:55.080 from deny, dismiss, delay, deflect. 0:18:55.840 --> 0:19:00.440 Yeah, there has been a gradual shift. We've done analysis 0:19:00.520 --> 0:19:04.919 over the last twenty years of climate misinformation, and the 0:19:04.960 --> 0:19:10.320 biggest shift we're seeing is a gradual transition from science 0:19:10.359 --> 0:19:15.520 misinformation to solutions misinformation. As the scientific evidence has gotten 0:19:15.560 --> 0:19:20.399 stronger and stronger and harder to deny, it becomes untenable 0:19:20.480 --> 0:19:24.120 to keep using these same zombie arguments that we've been 0:19:24.640 --> 0:19:27.959 reading on blogs and on social media for many years. 0:19:28.800 --> 0:19:33.959 And so now they're arguing against climate solutions, arguing that 0:19:33.960 --> 0:19:39.200 climate policy might be harmful, arguing that renewables won't work, 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:44.560 and just more subtle arguments than the usual. Climate change 0:19:44.640 --> 0:19:46.400 is a hoax type misinformation. 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:49.480 Right, that's no longer tenable in a world where there's 0:19:49.520 --> 0:19:51.600 floods and fires that are rampant. 0:19:52.080 --> 0:19:56.359 I think what's most potent right now is cultural war 0:19:56.600 --> 0:20:03.119 type misinformation arguments that other people who care about climate change, 0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:06.600 who are trying to get climate action, painting them as 0:20:07.359 --> 0:20:10.840 different to us, and they're trying to take away our 0:20:10.880 --> 0:20:16.200 lifestyle or impinge on our freedom, and generally just trying 0:20:16.240 --> 0:20:20.160 to make the climate issue more tribal. The more tribal 0:20:20.200 --> 0:20:23.440 and polarizer becomes, the harder it is to get progress. 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:27.720 And some of the techniques employed by misinformation you cite 0:20:27.840 --> 0:20:33.120 are magnified minority, cherry picking, false dichotomy. How are those employed? 0:20:33.119 --> 0:20:34.600 And give some examples of each one. 0:20:34.520 --> 0:20:38.919 If you could so. Attacking the scientific consensus on climate 0:20:39.000 --> 0:20:43.320 change has been a common strategy over the last few decades, 0:20:44.000 --> 0:20:46.520 and one way to do that is the use of 0:20:46.720 --> 0:20:50.479 magnified minority. In other words, take a small group and 0:20:50.600 --> 0:20:53.240 make them look much bigger than they actually are and 0:20:53.320 --> 0:20:57.480 much more significant than they really are. And the most 0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:02.280 popular version of this technique is the Global Warming Petition Project. 0:21:02.600 --> 0:21:08.240 This is a website that features thirty one thousand science 0:21:08.320 --> 0:21:11.800 graduates in the US who've signed a statement saying that 0:21:11.880 --> 0:21:15.440 humans aren't disrupting climate and the point of this website 0:21:15.480 --> 0:21:18.520 is to say, hey, look, thirty one thousand people dissent 0:21:18.600 --> 0:21:22.840 against the consensus. That proves that there isn't a scientific consensus. 0:21:23.440 --> 0:21:25.760 But when you look at the total number of science 0:21:25.800 --> 0:21:29.040 graduates in the US, it's millions and millions, and thirty 0:21:29.080 --> 0:21:32.280 one thousand, while seeming like a big number, is actually 0:21:32.880 --> 0:21:38.240 a tiny fraction of a percent. It's magnifying a minority 0:21:38.280 --> 0:21:40.359 to make them look bigger than they really are. 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:44.240 So policy is harmful? What's that attack? 0:21:45.040 --> 0:21:49.680 Usually arguing that climate policy is harmful takes a form 0:21:49.720 --> 0:21:52.720 of arguing that it's either going to ruin the economy 0:21:52.840 --> 0:21:57.840 or raise prices for people, and it really depends on 0:21:57.920 --> 0:22:03.119 the specific policy. But tiply what this does is cherry 0:22:03.119 --> 0:22:07.080 pigs or oversimplifies the policy. For example, this is a 0:22:07.160 --> 0:22:09.840 very Australian centric one, but it's the one that immediately 0:22:09.840 --> 0:22:13.280 comes to mind. We brought in a carbon price in 0:22:13.400 --> 0:22:17.080 order to send a signal to the market to transition 0:22:17.240 --> 0:22:22.240 from fossil fuels to renewables, and this carbon price generated 0:22:22.960 --> 0:22:26.000 revenue for the government. But all that money was then 0:22:26.080 --> 0:22:28.960 given back and it was mainly given back to lower 0:22:28.960 --> 0:22:34.879 income families, and so it was a revenue neutral carbon price, 0:22:35.680 --> 0:22:39.040 the public shouldn't have any change in their household budget. 0:22:39.160 --> 0:22:43.359 But what the misinformation targeting the policy did was say 0:22:43.960 --> 0:22:46.040 this is putting a price on carbon that's going to 0:22:46.160 --> 0:22:52.600 raise prices for families, while ignoring that money was going 0:22:52.640 --> 0:22:56.200 back to families. So usually at tax on climate policy 0:22:56.560 --> 0:23:00.040 will focus on one part of it, but ignore the 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:03.199 the entire policy and the aspects of it that make 0:23:03.240 --> 0:23:03.880 it work better. 0:23:04.560 --> 0:23:07.640 And what are some other non policy attacks on solutions? 0:23:08.160 --> 0:23:11.840 The most basic arguments attacking renewables are the sun doesn't 0:23:11.840 --> 0:23:16.399 shine at night or the wind doesn't always blow, and 0:23:16.480 --> 0:23:21.000 therefore renewables aren't a reliable source of energy, which ignores 0:23:21.040 --> 0:23:24.679 again its cherry picking the information because it ignores the 0:23:24.720 --> 0:23:29.000 fact that we have battery storage. And also when you 0:23:29.160 --> 0:23:34.080 have combinations of wind and solar, particularly across a region, 0:23:35.320 --> 0:23:37.199 wind might not be blowing in one place, but it 0:23:37.240 --> 0:23:40.480 is at a different place, and when you have a 0:23:40.640 --> 0:23:44.040 network of renewables, then you get a more reliable source 0:23:44.080 --> 0:23:45.440 of energy. 0:23:45.400 --> 0:23:46.639 And then false dichotomy. 0:23:46.680 --> 0:23:50.080 What's an example of that false dichotomy is when you're 0:23:50.080 --> 0:23:53.000 given two choices and you have to choose one of 0:23:53.040 --> 0:23:57.280 them when both might be true, or maybe there's a 0:23:57.280 --> 0:24:00.119 third choice. And the most common example of this in 0:24:00.160 --> 0:24:03.840 climate change. And this is a little bit technical and complicated, 0:24:03.880 --> 0:24:07.080 but it's looking at the ice core record. When we 0:24:07.200 --> 0:24:11.159 look at ice cores going back hundreds of thousands of 0:24:11.240 --> 0:24:16.560 years in Antarctic ice cores, we see that when temperature 0:24:16.600 --> 0:24:20.800 goes up, CO two goes up afterwards by several hundred 0:24:20.880 --> 0:24:25.800 years roughly. And what that tells us is temperature went 0:24:25.880 --> 0:24:30.880 up before the CO two and climate denies look at 0:24:30.920 --> 0:24:35.600 this and say, wow, either temperature drives CO two or 0:24:35.880 --> 0:24:39.159 CO two drives temperature. You have to choose one or 0:24:39.200 --> 0:24:42.640 the other. But that's actually a false dichotomy because it's 0:24:42.640 --> 0:24:45.879 not a choice between one or the other. Both are 0:24:45.920 --> 0:24:50.560 actually true. Temperature does drive CO two. When it gets warmer, 0:24:50.920 --> 0:24:54.080 the ocean gives up CO two in the atmosphere, and 0:24:54.119 --> 0:24:56.200 then when you have more CO two in the atmosphere, 0:24:56.680 --> 0:25:00.640 that causes warming because it's a greenhouse gas. Put those 0:25:00.640 --> 0:25:05.040 two together and you get a reinforcing feedback. And it's 0:25:05.040 --> 0:25:08.399 actually that reinforcing feedback that pulled the Earth out of 0:25:08.440 --> 0:25:12.080 ice ages in our past over the last eight hundred 0:25:12.119 --> 0:25:12.879 thousand years. 0:25:13.440 --> 0:25:16.960 John, you've also written about how people often substitute judgment 0:25:17.040 --> 0:25:20.920 about complex topics such as climate science, with more simple judgments, 0:25:20.960 --> 0:25:23.840 for example, the character or tribal identity of a person 0:25:24.240 --> 0:25:27.800 talking about climate science. How does that reliance on shortcuts 0:25:27.840 --> 0:25:29.760 fuel climate and misinformation. 0:25:30.600 --> 0:25:33.440 Yeah, it's important to recognize that all of us are 0:25:33.520 --> 0:25:39.080 hardwired to make decisions based on snap mental shortcuts or heuristics, 0:25:39.359 --> 0:25:42.240 and generally it serves us well, that's how we're able 0:25:42.280 --> 0:25:45.800 to escape a saber toothed tiger jumping out of the 0:25:45.800 --> 0:25:51.280 bushes or just immediate threats. The problem is, in this 0:25:51.400 --> 0:25:55.840 modern world, sometimes those mental shortcuts can lead us astray, 0:25:56.240 --> 0:26:01.000 and it can also make us vulnerable to that arguments 0:26:01.119 --> 0:26:07.360 or misinformation. And it's an unfortunate reality that the solution 0:26:07.560 --> 0:26:11.600 to this problem is critical thinking. We need to be 0:26:11.680 --> 0:26:16.560 able to get better at spotting misinformation and the spotting 0:26:16.600 --> 0:26:20.520 attempts to mislead us. What are those different fallacies? Is 0:26:20.600 --> 0:26:25.639 this argument a false dichotomy or does it use magnified 0:26:25.640 --> 0:26:30.000 minority or cherry picking or other misleading techniques. If we 0:26:30.200 --> 0:26:35.720 want a public who are resilient against misinformation, we need 0:26:36.040 --> 0:26:40.440 to build up their ability to spot these types of fallacies. 0:26:40.800 --> 0:26:43.400 Right and sort of complexity can Yeah, we want things, 0:26:43.520 --> 0:26:46.640 especially these days, we want things that are fast, simple, understandable, 0:26:46.680 --> 0:26:50.640 and social media often distorts and doing that and distilling things. 0:26:50.680 --> 0:26:53.280 And I was watching some of your videos online of 0:26:53.480 --> 0:26:56.520 you kind of dissecting the premise and does the conclusion 0:26:57.040 --> 0:27:00.640 logically follow the premise, and it all seems very reasonable. 0:27:00.760 --> 0:27:03.399 I thought, Yeah, but this is like bringing a knife 0:27:03.440 --> 0:27:07.520 to a gunfight with and so I'm just curious about 0:27:07.560 --> 0:27:11.720 your sort of very reasoned approach logic based in an 0:27:11.760 --> 0:27:15.680 information age where things are viral and fake and spreading 0:27:15.720 --> 0:27:17.840 so quickly regardless of their veracity. 0:27:18.680 --> 0:27:23.239 Yeah, it's really hard. I've struggled with those thoughts and 0:27:23.320 --> 0:27:26.920 for many years. When we develop this critical thinking approach 0:27:26.960 --> 0:27:31.320 where you deconstruct arguments into premises and conclusion. I did 0:27:31.359 --> 0:27:35.720 that work with two critical thinking philosophers. They introduced me 0:27:35.800 --> 0:27:41.080 to the idea of parallel argumentation. You can explain logical 0:27:41.119 --> 0:27:42.879 flaws by not You don't have to go into the 0:27:42.920 --> 0:27:47.960 whole premise, premise, conclusion, logical like is it logically about? 0:27:48.000 --> 0:27:50.760 All that kind of analysis. You can just take a 0:27:50.800 --> 0:27:56.000 flawed argument and transplant that logic into a parallel situation. 0:27:56.600 --> 0:27:59.680 Usually the most absurd and extreme situation you can think 0:27:59.720 --> 0:28:03.040 of and then use the same logic, and that makes 0:28:03.040 --> 0:28:07.400 it very clear and engaging in concrete when you're trying 0:28:07.400 --> 0:28:10.240 to explain the flawed logic to people. And when they 0:28:10.280 --> 0:28:13.399 introduced this technique to me, I realized that this was 0:28:13.440 --> 0:28:18.000 what late night comedians used every night. They'll say this 0:28:18.280 --> 0:28:21.600 person said this statement, and well, that's just like being 0:28:21.640 --> 0:28:25.240 in this situation and then using the same logic. Everyone laughs. 0:28:25.280 --> 0:28:29.200 They can immediately see that it's wrong and they're entertained. 0:28:29.840 --> 0:28:35.800 But most importantly, like is the comedian has actually introduced 0:28:35.840 --> 0:28:39.200 a bit of critical thinking because it's shown a logical 0:28:39.240 --> 0:28:42.560 fallacy in a very concrete, engaging way. The beauty of 0:28:42.600 --> 0:28:48.040 this approach is you can use non polarizing examples to 0:28:48.240 --> 0:28:52.240 explain how misinformation is misleading or to explain a fallacy. 0:28:53.080 --> 0:28:56.720 So let's practice this. If I see the climate's change before, 0:28:56.760 --> 0:28:59.480 it's changing now it's always been changing. Yeah, climate changes, 0:28:59.480 --> 0:29:02.840 that's what it does. How would you respond. 0:29:02.560 --> 0:29:06.160 That argument is the same logic as saying, well, people 0:29:06.240 --> 0:29:11.920 have died of natural causes before cigarettes were invented, therefore 0:29:12.000 --> 0:29:16.000 cigarettes can't cause harmful effects, or people have died of 0:29:16.040 --> 0:29:20.800 cancer long before cigarettes were invented. Therefore, smoking doesn't cause cancer. 0:29:21.280 --> 0:29:24.960 It's the same logic, and it commits single cause fallacy, 0:29:25.280 --> 0:29:29.680 in other words, saying that whatever's whatever caused something in 0:29:29.720 --> 0:29:32.600 the past must also be causing it now when you 0:29:32.640 --> 0:29:34.160 can have multiple causes. 0:29:34.680 --> 0:29:39.000 Let's try another one. If I say that models are unreliable, oh, 0:29:39.160 --> 0:29:41.560 climate models, no, they're not accurate. 0:29:42.040 --> 0:29:45.320 So actually we're doing an experiment on that now. And 0:29:45.360 --> 0:29:49.400 so our approach has been to say models are a 0:29:49.400 --> 0:29:53.720 simplification of reality. They don't capture all of reality, and 0:29:54.280 --> 0:29:58.960 we use models to get astronauts to the moon. They're 0:29:59.080 --> 0:30:04.960 simplified versions are reality. Mutant's laws of motion and Newton's 0:30:05.040 --> 0:30:09.960 laws of gravity simplifications. Models don't need to be perfect 0:30:10.640 --> 0:30:14.560 in order to give us useful results, and climate models 0:30:14.880 --> 0:30:18.560 they're not perfect. They don't capture absolutely everything, but they 0:30:18.640 --> 0:30:22.800 capture enough to tell us that humans are causing climate 0:30:22.880 --> 0:30:26.480 change and that climate change has serious impacts. 0:30:27.000 --> 0:30:30.040 Many fossil fuel companies now are engaging in what some 0:30:30.120 --> 0:30:33.320 call greenwashing or climate washing, where they're making net zero 0:30:33.320 --> 0:30:37.080 commitments and stating that they're working toward climate solutions you 0:30:37.160 --> 0:30:40.160 mentioned earlier. They are attacking solutions there's other approach, which 0:30:40.160 --> 0:30:42.400 is there kind of co opting solutions, saying we share 0:30:42.440 --> 0:30:43.959 the solutions, we're part of the solution. 0:30:44.440 --> 0:30:49.880 Yes. Greenwashing is another form of climate misinformation, particularly from industry, 0:30:50.520 --> 0:30:55.160 and it's a hard one. Often you need a lot 0:30:55.200 --> 0:30:58.800 of background information in order to fact check whether what 0:30:58.840 --> 0:31:03.080 they're doing is actually helping the environment or whether it's 0:31:03.160 --> 0:31:07.360 just token behavior in order to portray themselves as being 0:31:07.560 --> 0:31:12.560 environmental when actually they're actually being quite distractive. But they're 0:31:12.760 --> 0:31:17.600 generally speaking. The strategy to counter green washing is the 0:31:17.640 --> 0:31:21.120 same as the strategy to count other forms of climate misinformation. 0:31:22.160 --> 0:31:25.520 Learn the techniques and become familiar with them so that 0:31:25.520 --> 0:31:29.280 when you see them in some corporate advertising, that's a 0:31:29.320 --> 0:31:32.880 red flag. The techniques of green washing, just a few 0:31:32.920 --> 0:31:37.040 of them that come immediately to mind is vague terms 0:31:37.680 --> 0:31:41.200 or kind of meaningless terms, so they would say it's 0:31:41.280 --> 0:31:46.600 environmentally friendly, or they'll they'll just use either colors or 0:31:46.640 --> 0:31:53.360 imagery or environmental sounding words, but it's all very loosey goosey. 0:31:53.880 --> 0:31:57.160 The other red flag is when they're a company that 0:31:58.000 --> 0:32:03.080 their main bread and of their business is environmentally destructive, 0:32:03.600 --> 0:32:05.960 and then they talk about something that they're doing that's 0:32:06.120 --> 0:32:12.160 environmentally positive. Usually in those cases, what they're spending on 0:32:12.280 --> 0:32:16.440 this environmental activity is a tiny, tiny fraction of their 0:32:16.480 --> 0:32:17.240 overall budget. 0:32:17.520 --> 0:32:21.000 Yeah, that's the magnified minority. We're spending millions on renewables, 0:32:21.000 --> 0:32:25.960 but they're spending tens of billions on fossil fuels. Amy 0:32:26.000 --> 0:32:29.200 Westervelt reported elsewhere in the show that freedom of speech 0:32:29.280 --> 0:32:31.640 is often viewed as sakra sanct We all know that, 0:32:31.680 --> 0:32:34.840 and has been used by fossil fuel companies as cover 0:32:35.000 --> 0:32:38.480 further misinformation campaigns. What are the bigger implications of that 0:32:38.560 --> 0:32:40.160 in terms of free speech. 0:32:40.960 --> 0:32:45.680 It really depends on the specific situation. But generally speaking, 0:32:45.800 --> 0:32:49.640 my policy or my approach is the antidote to bad 0:32:49.680 --> 0:32:55.680 speech is more speech or good speech, and that is 0:32:55.800 --> 0:33:00.960 kind of the principle that informs building public resilience misinformation, 0:33:01.480 --> 0:33:05.800 so helping people to see through these false arguments from 0:33:06.640 --> 0:33:09.240 fussil fuel companies or other sources of misinformation. 0:33:10.040 --> 0:33:12.640 Right, and we've seen lots of attacks on science, and 0:33:12.680 --> 0:33:14.840 there seems to be you know, it's related to the 0:33:14.880 --> 0:33:19.640 distrust of institutions, and that's certainly been rampant during COVID 0:33:19.760 --> 0:33:22.680 nineteen pandemic and has led to real harm and even 0:33:22.720 --> 0:33:26.840 the death of some vocal anti vaxxers. If you did 0:33:26.880 --> 0:33:32.480 research on whether personal experience does that affect people's receptivity 0:33:32.560 --> 0:33:35.640 to these myths if they know someone who's been affected 0:33:35.640 --> 0:33:39.959 by climate or know someone who's been affected by COVID. 0:33:40.440 --> 0:33:43.080 There's some interesting research done by my colleagues at George 0:33:43.080 --> 0:33:48.800 Mason University threes of myas at MAYBAC. They looked at 0:33:49.040 --> 0:33:53.720 how personal experience can influence people's perceptions about climate change 0:33:54.360 --> 0:33:57.880 and the way to think about these imagine there's three 0:33:57.920 --> 0:34:02.240 segments of society. Is the alarmed and concern people who 0:34:02.240 --> 0:34:05.440 are who are on board about climate change. There's the 0:34:05.520 --> 0:34:09.880 dismissives at the other end, and then there's the mushy middle. 0:34:09.960 --> 0:34:13.160 There's the undecideds in the middle. What they found was 0:34:13.640 --> 0:34:17.000 personal experience about climate change doesn't affect the two groups 0:34:17.000 --> 0:34:20.080 at the ends. The people who are alarmed stay alarmed. 0:34:20.320 --> 0:34:23.479 The people who are dismissive stay dismissive. It's the people 0:34:23.520 --> 0:34:26.440 who are undercided in the middle. When they have personal 0:34:26.480 --> 0:34:31.719 experience with climate related events like increasing extreme weather, those 0:34:31.719 --> 0:34:34.440 are the ones whose perceptions about climate change shift. 0:34:35.719 --> 0:34:39.640 You work with Facebook to help them combat misinformation, what 0:34:39.680 --> 0:34:42.160 does that work look like, particularly in the climate realm. 0:34:43.400 --> 0:34:48.560 So Facebook launched the Climate Science Center, and initially the 0:34:48.600 --> 0:34:53.240 Climate Science Center was just about providing authoritative, reliable, accurate 0:34:53.280 --> 0:34:56.120 facts about climate change, and this was done in response 0:34:56.200 --> 0:34:59.560 to a lot of criticism they received about letting this 0:34:59.680 --> 0:35:03.440 information spread on their platform, and a lot of people 0:35:03.480 --> 0:35:07.200 were critical that this was not enough, including myself. I 0:35:07.239 --> 0:35:09.440 didn't have any association with them at the time, so 0:35:09.480 --> 0:35:13.120 I was quite blunt in saying producing facts while letting 0:35:13.120 --> 0:35:17.239 misinformation spread was like poisoning someone and then giving them 0:35:17.239 --> 0:35:24.120 a pamphlet about vegetables. But to their credit, they always 0:35:24.160 --> 0:35:27.480 recognized that just producing the Climate Science Center was a 0:35:27.520 --> 0:35:31.759 first step, and their intent was to gradually ratchet up 0:35:32.440 --> 0:35:36.319 their ambition and proactiveness in taking on climate misinformation. So 0:35:36.360 --> 0:35:41.160 their next step was to work with myself and two 0:35:41.200 --> 0:35:47.719 other climate communication researchers, Tony Lyisowitz and Sander Vandalinden, and 0:35:48.239 --> 0:35:51.839 we went through the process of looking at the most 0:35:51.840 --> 0:35:55.640 common myths about climate change, and then we advise them 0:35:55.680 --> 0:35:59.759 on how to write debunkings about them. It's important when 0:35:59.760 --> 0:36:03.800 you're debunking misinformation not just to explain the facts. Although 0:36:03.840 --> 0:36:08.160 that's crucially important, but also to explain the technique used 0:36:08.280 --> 0:36:13.440 to distort the facts, so fact myth fallacy. Fact is 0:36:13.440 --> 0:36:18.160 a general structure that we recommend for debunking misinformation, and 0:36:18.200 --> 0:36:22.080 they use that. So we produced those with them debunking 0:36:22.120 --> 0:36:25.560 the most common myths about climate change. Since then, it's 0:36:25.600 --> 0:36:28.919 been an ongoing collaboration and they're still looking at other 0:36:28.960 --> 0:36:33.440 ways to use their platform to count of misinformation. It's 0:36:33.480 --> 0:36:36.520 been slow, slower than I would have liked, but there 0:36:36.520 --> 0:36:42.239 has been incremental progress. Misinformation is a really complicated problem. 0:36:42.480 --> 0:36:49.480 It involves psychology, culture, technology, science, a whole range of 0:36:49.520 --> 0:36:51.640 different factors, and we need to be throwing a lot 0:36:51.719 --> 0:36:53.360 of different tools out it. 0:36:53.840 --> 0:36:56.040 John Kirk, thanks for sharing your insights on how to 0:36:56.120 --> 0:36:59.560 identify misinformation and how to respond to the misinformation. 0:37:00.000 --> 0:37:01.319 Thanks Greg, it was great to talk to. 0:37:01.280 --> 0:37:05.600 You coming up the implications of podcasts not being regulated 0:37:05.600 --> 0:37:07.880 the same way as other types of media. 0:37:08.600 --> 0:37:12.279 Every person who's putting out a podcast, it's up to 0:37:12.360 --> 0:37:17.640 them entirely what their process is for fact checking or 0:37:18.000 --> 0:37:24.080 any kind of backstop there on truthfulness, and we've really 0:37:24.120 --> 0:37:27.360 seen in the last few years what that can lead to. 0:37:27.960 --> 0:37:37.840 That's up next when climate One continues, we're talking about 0:37:37.880 --> 0:37:42.040 climate misinformation. This week's show is a special collaboration with 0:37:42.080 --> 0:37:46.200 Amy Westervelt, an award winning print and audio journalist. She's 0:37:46.280 --> 0:37:49.960 founder of the Critical Frequency podcast network, which includes her 0:37:50.000 --> 0:37:54.520 own show Drilled, a true crime style podcast about climate change. 0:37:54.960 --> 0:37:56.759 I asked her to join me to reflect on what 0:37:56.760 --> 0:37:59.480 we've heard so far in this show about ways fossil 0:37:59.480 --> 0:38:04.040 fuel comey spread misinformation. Amy, Welcome to Climate One. I'm 0:38:04.080 --> 0:38:05.319 excited to be talking with you. 0:38:05.880 --> 0:38:08.160 I'm super excited to be here. Thanks for having me. 0:38:08.480 --> 0:38:08.680 Well. 0:38:08.719 --> 0:38:12.239 Reflecting on your piece that opened this episode, it was 0:38:12.280 --> 0:38:15.040 real interesting, and I've been thinking about the distinction between 0:38:15.040 --> 0:38:20.640 commercial speech and political speech. Fossil fuels have amazing energy 0:38:20.680 --> 0:38:23.479 density and they enable us to live our lives every day, 0:38:23.640 --> 0:38:26.719 and fossil fuels are killing the natural systems that we 0:38:26.800 --> 0:38:30.480 rely on every day. Both are true. Where do you 0:38:30.560 --> 0:38:33.840 see the line between commercial speech and political speech that 0:38:33.880 --> 0:38:35.480 you talked about in that opening segment. 0:38:36.080 --> 0:38:39.200 Yeah, I mean I find that really interesting too. Just 0:38:39.280 --> 0:38:43.640 from a legal strategy standpoint, this idea that you know, 0:38:44.400 --> 0:38:48.360 if it's something that connects to policy, I want to 0:38:48.400 --> 0:38:52.240 see then it doesn't have to play by the same 0:38:52.360 --> 0:38:55.279 rules as you know something that's about a product that 0:38:55.360 --> 0:38:58.880 I'm selling. So to me, I actually it reminds me 0:38:58.920 --> 0:39:02.360 of the conversation that sprung up when The Guardian stopped 0:39:02.400 --> 0:39:05.319 taking fossil fuel ads a couple of years ago. So 0:39:06.200 --> 0:39:08.319 a lot of people kind of questioned that and said, well, 0:39:08.480 --> 0:39:11.200 where do you draw the line, What about airplanes and 0:39:11.239 --> 0:39:14.480 air travel and cars and if it has to do 0:39:14.600 --> 0:39:20.040 with climate change and or a product's impact on the 0:39:20.160 --> 0:39:23.560 environment or the world at large, you could theoretically just 0:39:23.680 --> 0:39:26.680 get rid of of any kind of advertiser. And they 0:39:26.800 --> 0:39:29.600 had this very succinct response to that, which was, well, 0:39:30.280 --> 0:39:33.040 all of those other categories are selling a product, and 0:39:33.080 --> 0:39:36.440 the fossil fuel industry is very much selling ideas and 0:39:36.520 --> 0:39:41.680 policy positions. They don't advertise gas anymore. Nobody really chooses 0:39:41.719 --> 0:39:46.400 their gasoline based on brand, right, It's a commodity. So 0:39:46.520 --> 0:39:50.359 to me, there's a very very clear difference between the 0:39:50.400 --> 0:39:53.240 way that the fossil fuel industry advertises for the last 0:39:53.280 --> 0:39:58.319 ten fifteen years and the way most other industries advertise. 0:39:58.800 --> 0:40:01.600 That is a pretty good illustration of the difference between 0:40:01.600 --> 0:40:03.359 commercial and political speech. 0:40:03.560 --> 0:40:06.799 Right, and then that advertising often gets into its branding 0:40:06.880 --> 0:40:09.440 and you know, another part of your segment that was 0:40:09.480 --> 0:40:14.280 real interesting is Mobile VP of Public Affairs formerly Herb Schmertz, 0:40:14.320 --> 0:40:17.759 remarking on the company's personality and its participation in the 0:40:17.800 --> 0:40:21.960 marketplace of ideas. Of course, these days, corporations are often 0:40:22.000 --> 0:40:26.640 invited into public discourse bipartisans and advocates. Disney just called 0:40:26.640 --> 0:40:31.439 for rescinding Floridas Don't Say Gay law, which I said, yay, Yeah, 0:40:31.480 --> 0:40:34.000 So oil companies are not the only ones shaping their 0:40:34.000 --> 0:40:37.480 image and in the public policy sphere. So you know, 0:40:37.560 --> 0:40:39.680 why is it bad for oil companies to do what 0:40:39.760 --> 0:40:41.640 Disney is and others are doing. 0:40:42.239 --> 0:40:45.520 I personally believe it's not great for any of them 0:40:45.560 --> 0:40:48.560 to do it. Actually, whether we agree with them or 0:40:48.640 --> 0:40:53.120 not is sort of irrelevant. I think the invitation to 0:40:53.400 --> 0:40:59.919 corporations into the public square has been a real problem 0:41:00.000 --> 0:41:04.279 America since the seventies. And I think that you see 0:41:04.320 --> 0:41:08.319 this right in this history of Mobile kind of involving 0:41:08.360 --> 0:41:11.799 itself with this that it was very much like we 0:41:11.880 --> 0:41:16.320 need to maintain this position in society to be able 0:41:16.400 --> 0:41:23.480 to effectively lobby both the public and politicians for these 0:41:24.600 --> 0:41:27.640 kinds of policies that we want to control. The narrative 0:41:27.680 --> 0:41:31.680 about what's happening, you know, with our industry. It's actually 0:41:31.680 --> 0:41:34.080 a really interesting time to be talking about this because 0:41:34.760 --> 0:41:37.520 very similar things were happening then that are happening now, 0:41:37.840 --> 0:41:41.640 where you know, the gas phrases were high, and the 0:41:41.680 --> 0:41:44.080 oil companies were saying, it's not our fault, it's the 0:41:44.120 --> 0:41:47.120 government's fault, and there was this kind of you know, 0:41:47.280 --> 0:41:49.960 jockeying for control of the story. 0:41:50.520 --> 0:41:52.960 When I heard that piece that you did, I thought of, 0:41:53.000 --> 0:41:57.600 you know, the status of corporations as individuals, as legal individuals, 0:41:57.640 --> 0:41:59.960 which is kind of another extension of what you pointed out. 0:42:00.280 --> 0:42:03.000 They have First Amendment rights and they are an individual 0:42:03.040 --> 0:42:07.120 which made me think immediately of Stephen Colbert's line a 0:42:07.160 --> 0:42:10.520 while back where he said, I'll believe that corporations are 0:42:10.560 --> 0:42:14.640 individuals when Texas executes one. 0:42:15.880 --> 0:42:19.480 Yes, yeah, exactly, And I mean Herb Schwartz whole personality 0:42:19.520 --> 0:42:22.919 thing really played into that too, This idea of like, oh, 0:42:22.960 --> 0:42:28.880 if we imbue corporations with a personality and an opinion 0:42:29.200 --> 0:42:33.200 and a soul, like a morality too, right, then that 0:42:33.480 --> 0:42:35.919 makes it easier for us to convince the public that, 0:42:36.280 --> 0:42:38.920 you know, we're good faith actors, we care about more 0:42:38.920 --> 0:42:41.680 than just our bottom line. But the reality is that 0:42:42.040 --> 0:42:43.600 they don't have to play by the same rules as 0:42:43.640 --> 0:42:46.359 any other member of the community. You know, nobody else 0:42:46.400 --> 0:42:51.040 gets as many benefits as corporations do in the realm 0:42:51.239 --> 0:42:52.520 where they're not humans. 0:42:53.160 --> 0:42:55.399 And I'm curious, you know. You also, we had John 0:42:55.480 --> 0:42:59.440 Cook talking about deconstructing climate myths, how to identify and 0:42:59.480 --> 0:43:02.720 respond misinformation. What struck you about his piece? 0:43:03.239 --> 0:43:06.200 I find him so interesting every time I read anything 0:43:06.239 --> 0:43:08.840 of his or listen to him talk about this stuff. 0:43:09.080 --> 0:43:12.240 So the thing that struck me this time was this notion. 0:43:12.360 --> 0:43:14.600 And I don't it wasn't necessarily new to me, but 0:43:14.719 --> 0:43:17.000 just the way he phrased it. As you know, we 0:43:17.040 --> 0:43:20.240 had like twenty years of science denial and then twenty 0:43:20.320 --> 0:43:25.160 years of solutions denial. It's a very straightforward way to 0:43:25.239 --> 0:43:28.359 understand it. And you really have seen that over over 0:43:28.400 --> 0:43:31.400 the years of you know, Okay, now we believe the science, Like, 0:43:31.480 --> 0:43:34.480 let's focus on these other things that will help us 0:43:34.480 --> 0:43:39.400 delay policy and regulation and you know, allow us to 0:43:39.480 --> 0:43:41.759 kind of get as much out of these assets as 0:43:41.760 --> 0:43:44.279 we can before we have to retire the you know, 0:43:45.040 --> 0:43:47.160 which is the name of the game. And like to 0:43:47.200 --> 0:43:51.640 be honest, I don't necessarily blame oil companies for doing that. 0:43:51.680 --> 0:43:57.000 They're doing what corporations are encouraged and incentivized and enabled 0:43:57.000 --> 0:44:00.160 to do. Right, So I am kind of a the 0:44:00.200 --> 0:44:02.160 opinion of, well, if we wanted to change, then we 0:44:02.280 --> 0:44:06.320 have to change the rules so that you know, they 0:44:06.400 --> 0:44:10.319 can't do these things that are beneficial to them and 0:44:10.760 --> 0:44:13.799 kind of impose a lot of liabilities and risks on 0:44:13.840 --> 0:44:14.640 the rest of us. 0:44:15.360 --> 0:44:18.239 The idea of kind of solutions that also for me 0:44:18.560 --> 0:44:21.799 was really clarifying and crystallizing when John said, we've moved 0:44:21.800 --> 0:44:25.759 from climate misinformation to solutions misinformation. And maybe think of 0:44:26.239 --> 0:44:29.880 how many times I've heard people question what happens to 0:44:29.960 --> 0:44:33.400 EV batteries after the useful life of the car? And 0:44:33.440 --> 0:44:35.680 I've heard that so many times that I'm suspicious of 0:44:35.719 --> 0:44:38.719 where that's being seated and how that's being seated, Like 0:44:38.880 --> 0:44:41.719 did those people all come up with that organically, or 0:44:41.840 --> 0:44:44.760 you know, is there some you know, Facebook posts somewhere 0:44:44.800 --> 0:44:47.960 that campaign to like so doubt about EV batteries at 0:44:48.000 --> 0:44:50.200 the end of life and we know that that is 0:44:50.239 --> 0:44:52.960 a solvable problem. And now there's a new company that's 0:44:53.000 --> 0:44:55.160 going to harve by a founder of Tesla that's going 0:44:55.200 --> 0:44:57.279 to try to harvest those batteries, et cetera. 0:44:57.440 --> 0:45:01.320 Yeah, it's it's it's I don't know. It's so tough 0:45:01.360 --> 0:45:06.880 because I think there are important and nuanced conversations to 0:45:06.960 --> 0:45:11.359 be had about, you know, some of the the unintended 0:45:11.360 --> 0:45:15.759 consequences of the solutions to climate change too, right, Like, 0:45:15.840 --> 0:45:18.560 I know there's a whole a lot going on around 0:45:18.640 --> 0:45:22.279 lithium mining right now and huge. Yeah, you know, those 0:45:22.280 --> 0:45:25.680 are our very important conversations to be having. We don't 0:45:25.719 --> 0:45:29.360 want to go into you know, the next energy generation 0:45:29.600 --> 0:45:33.040 with the same exact mindset except for like the source 0:45:33.080 --> 0:45:35.600 of energy or else we're going to repeat, you know, 0:45:35.719 --> 0:45:37.720 the same mistakes and end up with a new problem. 0:45:37.800 --> 0:45:42.759 Right and unfortunately, it's like you almost can't have those 0:45:42.800 --> 0:45:48.920 conversations without it being weaponized by you know, people who 0:45:49.400 --> 0:45:52.080 who don't want to see climate policy or who don't 0:45:52.120 --> 0:45:56.319 want to see energy transition to say, oh, let's see there. 0:45:56.520 --> 0:45:58.880 You know, there's problems with this too. There's problems with 0:45:58.920 --> 0:46:01.560 all of it. The other thing I thought was interesting 0:46:01.640 --> 0:46:04.560 in your interview with John where he talks about how 0:46:05.160 --> 0:46:09.080 there's a real focus on kind of weaponizing the human 0:46:09.160 --> 0:46:14.040 tendency towards tribal identity and sticking with our group and 0:46:14.080 --> 0:46:16.440 digging into our opinions and those kinds of things, because 0:46:16.520 --> 0:46:20.640 you really see that in the fracturing of the climate 0:46:20.680 --> 0:46:24.680 movement too, not just like climate people versus people who 0:46:24.719 --> 0:46:27.360 don't think we should act on climate, or centrist versus 0:46:27.400 --> 0:46:30.720 progressives or whatever, like even in these things like should 0:46:30.760 --> 0:46:35.120 we or should we not mind lithium for electrification, it's 0:46:35.160 --> 0:46:40.120 like people can't even have, you know, a remotely nuanced 0:46:40.160 --> 0:46:41.239 conversation about it. 0:46:41.600 --> 0:46:43.480 And you know a lot of this is playing out 0:46:43.560 --> 0:46:47.120 in the pod casting place. And there was a big 0:46:47.480 --> 0:46:50.080 dust up recently with you know, Joe Rogan. He's been 0:46:50.520 --> 0:46:53.959 peddling in both climate and COVID misinformation for a long time, 0:46:54.000 --> 0:46:57.200 but it's COVID that got him in trouble. And then 0:46:57.600 --> 0:47:00.719 you tweeted recently that he interviewed Michael Shellenberger, who I've 0:47:00.760 --> 0:47:04.920 interviewed numerous times, who's running for the governor of California. 0:47:05.000 --> 0:47:08.960 So how does he embody kind of the evolution from 0:47:09.520 --> 0:47:13.640 science misinformation to solution information? And what did you think 0:47:13.640 --> 0:47:16.800 about when you saw Rogan and Schellenberger together that photo? 0:47:17.120 --> 0:47:19.000 It was so interesting because I had just I was 0:47:19.200 --> 0:47:22.640 just listening to your conversation with John and then I 0:47:22.680 --> 0:47:25.719 saw that that you know, interview had happened, and I 0:47:25.760 --> 0:47:27.640 was like, oh, this is like a perfect example of 0:47:27.680 --> 0:47:31.120 this of this evolution, because Joe Rogan has you know, 0:47:31.239 --> 0:47:35.640 interviewed lots of kind of garden variety climate deniers, you know, 0:47:36.480 --> 0:47:39.360 will say, actually Car two is good for us in 0:47:39.360 --> 0:47:42.799 the atmosphere and things of that nature. And now he's 0:47:42.880 --> 0:47:50.399 graduated to Schellenberger, who you know is a like likes 0:47:50.440 --> 0:47:54.279 to kind of burnish his environmental credentials and say I 0:47:54.320 --> 0:47:58.719 was an environmental activist and and now I'm apologizing to 0:47:58.800 --> 0:48:02.800 the world for all the alarmism that we created about 0:48:02.840 --> 0:48:06.160 climate change. And yes it's a problem, but we don't 0:48:06.160 --> 0:48:10.120 need to actually make any drastic changes. And very very 0:48:10.239 --> 0:48:13.520 much a big user of one of the strategies that 0:48:13.600 --> 0:48:18.040 John Cook talked about, which is cherry picking datas. I 0:48:18.080 --> 0:48:21.480 went through his book when it came out and found 0:48:21.680 --> 0:48:27.799 I think three thousand examples of cherry picked data that 0:48:28.000 --> 0:48:31.080 was like making a very flawed argument. 0:48:31.719 --> 0:48:33.279 So how much of this is you know, you and 0:48:33.320 --> 0:48:36.600 I both came out of you know, traditional news backgrounds. 0:48:36.680 --> 0:48:38.680 You know, when I worked at the AP, there was 0:48:38.719 --> 0:48:40.839 a saying that if you think your mother loves you, 0:48:40.840 --> 0:48:43.560 you better call and confirm that it's still true, you know. 0:48:43.760 --> 0:48:49.280 And so the But in Podland and the realm of podcasts, 0:48:49.320 --> 0:48:53.120 which are you know, those traditional rules rules don't apply. 0:48:53.239 --> 0:48:56.919 They're regulated differently. So how you know, talk about you know, 0:48:57.080 --> 0:49:01.399 how much of this is a real function of, you know, 0:49:02.080 --> 0:49:07.440 the surge of podcasting and how can podland avoid becoming 0:49:07.480 --> 0:49:09.520 the cesspool that is social media. 0:49:10.320 --> 0:49:15.160 Yeah, I'm actually very concerned about this because it is 0:49:15.200 --> 0:49:18.040 governed by the exact same rules as Twitter and Facebook. 0:49:18.840 --> 0:49:21.759 Podcasts are. But I think the public thinks of podcasts 0:49:21.800 --> 0:49:27.560 as being media right and therefore governed by media rules 0:49:27.600 --> 0:49:31.560 like websites or newspapers or whatever, and it's not. Actually 0:49:32.239 --> 0:49:36.200 so every person who's putting out a podcast is it's 0:49:36.280 --> 0:49:41.560 up to them entirely what their process is for fact checking. 0:49:41.560 --> 0:49:42.440 Or you know. 0:49:42.600 --> 0:49:45.640 I mean, there are some basic consumer protection laws, but 0:49:46.040 --> 0:49:53.000 in terms of any kind of backstop there on truthfulness, no, 0:49:53.200 --> 0:49:57.120 it's kind of up to each organization. And we've really 0:49:57.160 --> 0:50:00.400 seen in the last few years what that can lead to. 0:50:00.880 --> 0:50:04.520 Joe Rogan is a perfect example of you know, he 0:50:04.640 --> 0:50:07.399 kind of takes this approach that well, I'm just I'm 0:50:07.440 --> 0:50:11.040 just sharing my opinion. And the problem there is that 0:50:11.239 --> 0:50:16.640 when you're sharing your opinion and it sounds like expertise, 0:50:17.360 --> 0:50:19.920 then it can be very misleading to people. 0:50:20.080 --> 0:50:24.600 You know, So maybe I learned from maybe he took 0:50:24.600 --> 0:50:25.239 a page from me. 0:50:26.080 --> 0:50:31.040 Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I think that, you know, I'm 0:50:31.040 --> 0:50:35.400 not a fan of censorship, and I think also like 0:50:35.440 --> 0:50:37.040 the horse is kind of out of the barn, like 0:50:37.080 --> 0:50:40.319 you're not gonna, you know, go back in time and 0:50:40.600 --> 0:50:44.000 set up rules that the podcast industry can you know, 0:50:44.719 --> 0:50:49.399 can live by necessarily. But I do think that there's 0:50:49.400 --> 0:50:53.400 an argument to be made to bring podcasts under FCC 0:50:53.960 --> 0:50:58.520 regulations instead of the Federal Trade Commission FTC, which it's 0:50:58.600 --> 0:51:02.520 under now. Not that the SEC is perfect, obviously, we 0:51:02.600 --> 0:51:06.880 see tons of misinformation on cable news for example, as well, 0:51:07.320 --> 0:51:12.400 but there's at least some amount of more proactive action 0:51:12.640 --> 0:51:16.239 to try to curb that there. And the other thing is, 0:51:16.520 --> 0:51:19.439 I do think that you're seeing the industry itself start 0:51:19.560 --> 0:51:23.040 to sort of take some somewhat of a turn. You're 0:51:23.040 --> 0:51:25.200 always going to have these kind of rogue actors, but 0:51:25.760 --> 0:51:29.080 the podcast platforms are thinking about, you know, what can 0:51:29.120 --> 0:51:34.200 we do to sort of let the more high quality 0:51:34.320 --> 0:51:38.640 reported stuff rise to the top and highlight that stuff 0:51:38.760 --> 0:51:43.359 versus some guy in his mom's garage, you know, And 0:51:43.920 --> 0:51:47.440 companies are starting to hire fact checkers more and more too. 0:51:47.480 --> 0:51:49.839 This has like become just in the last couple of years. 0:51:49.880 --> 0:51:52.520 I've seen a major major shift where I had to 0:51:52.600 --> 0:51:56.319 really convince people before that that was worth spending money on. 0:51:56.640 --> 0:51:59.040 But because of the FTC thing. The other problem with 0:51:59.080 --> 0:52:02.160 podcasts is that the ads don't go by the same rules. 0:52:02.480 --> 0:52:05.600 So we've we've struggled with that. How you've like fact 0:52:05.680 --> 0:52:07.960 checked the ads that come on your platform. That Daily 0:52:08.000 --> 0:52:11.360 got called out for some things on natural gas. I 0:52:11.400 --> 0:52:15.400 think it was that that was not quite meet the 0:52:15.440 --> 0:52:16.800 standards of the New York Times. 0:52:16.840 --> 0:52:18.080 Yeah, right, exactly. 0:52:18.200 --> 0:52:18.759 Yeah. 0:52:18.880 --> 0:52:22.960 The fact that you saw this explosion in oil companies 0:52:23.000 --> 0:52:26.919 in particular advertising and podcasts a few years ago, it's 0:52:27.000 --> 0:52:29.600 for a reason. You know, they don't they don't spend 0:52:29.640 --> 0:52:32.799 money on stuff just to try things out. They're they're 0:52:32.920 --> 0:52:35.719 very smart and very strategic. So if you know, if 0:52:35.760 --> 0:52:39.760 they're investing a lot there and then social media ads, 0:52:39.800 --> 0:52:43.000 it's because they have more control over the story there. 0:52:43.360 --> 0:52:45.799 Right, which all gets to the need for the educated, 0:52:46.000 --> 0:52:49.520 discerning public to sort of, you know, check ourselves and 0:52:49.680 --> 0:52:53.680 what's the difference between the editorial, the podcast, the advertisement. 0:52:54.080 --> 0:52:55.960 One of the themes running through this is the narrative 0:52:55.960 --> 0:52:59.520 of personal responsibility, both for climate action and for I guess, 0:52:59.560 --> 0:53:03.960 for the information we take in versus corporate responsibility, for 0:53:04.440 --> 0:53:09.360 corporate responsibility for climate, corporate responsibility or producer responsibility for 0:53:09.480 --> 0:53:14.880 media and for energy. You know, BP popularized the idea 0:53:14.880 --> 0:53:18.480 of the personal carbon footprint twenty years ago, and I 0:53:18.600 --> 0:53:21.279 respect your work a lot, and you have really gone 0:53:21.280 --> 0:53:25.680 after you know, the villains, energy companies, energy suppliers as 0:53:25.840 --> 0:53:31.319 villains in the climate story. And I've also pursued the 0:53:31.400 --> 0:53:35.080 limitations and the truth of the personal responsibility. And I 0:53:35.160 --> 0:53:38.480 want to play a clip from brit Ray, who's a 0:53:38.520 --> 0:53:42.080 researcher at Stanford University who's had this to say. 0:53:42.640 --> 0:53:44.960 It's a huge part of a lot of activist rhetoric 0:53:45.000 --> 0:53:49.480 that we shouldn't be focusing on our individual minuscule impact 0:53:49.760 --> 0:53:53.280 in relation to who's out there really spreading the damage, 0:53:53.320 --> 0:53:55.840 you know, the fossil fuel companies, the corrupt politicians, the 0:53:55.840 --> 0:53:59.360 lobbyist et cetera, that are fueling the damage as we 0:53:59.400 --> 0:54:04.040 speak and have and for decades. And I really think that. 0:54:03.440 --> 0:54:06.600 That is, of course true on an intellectual level in 0:54:06.640 --> 0:54:09.680 many ways, but there's also perhaps a propulsion to turn 0:54:09.719 --> 0:54:13.319 away from looking within because it brings up shame, it 0:54:13.320 --> 0:54:17.160 brings up guilt, it brings up intolerable emotions that produce 0:54:17.200 --> 0:54:18.640 a bunch of defensive reactions. 0:54:19.040 --> 0:54:23.160 That's Britt Ray, who has a PhD and climate science communication. 0:54:23.280 --> 0:54:26.080 So I'm going to ask you if someone can villainization 0:54:26.280 --> 0:54:30.400 sometimes be easy or than looking at ourselves and our 0:54:30.440 --> 0:54:31.239 own complicity. 0:54:31.880 --> 0:54:35.200 I definitely thin get can be and I also agree 0:54:35.200 --> 0:54:40.400 with Britt And I also think that there's again going 0:54:40.440 --> 0:54:42.840 to sound like a broken record here, like a real 0:54:42.920 --> 0:54:46.760 need for nuance in the conversation around personal responsibility because 0:54:47.000 --> 0:54:51.800 the reality is that the top ten percent of consumers globally, 0:54:51.840 --> 0:54:56.279 which most Americans fall into, are responsible for a much 0:54:56.360 --> 0:55:00.919 larger proportion of global CO two emissions than everyone else 0:55:00.960 --> 0:55:03.640 in the world. Right, So I absolutely think that we 0:55:03.680 --> 0:55:07.759 should look at that and take responsibility for, you know, 0:55:07.800 --> 0:55:11.279 the ways that we're you know, contributing to that. I 0:55:11.320 --> 0:55:14.480 also think, just as a human, it feels better to 0:55:14.640 --> 0:55:18.840 live according to your values than not, you know, on 0:55:18.960 --> 0:55:22.120 a on a real basic level. And I think also 0:55:22.200 --> 0:55:27.280 that there's something to be said for individual action beyond consumerism. 0:55:27.400 --> 0:55:30.000 This is something that really bugs me that the personal 0:55:30.000 --> 0:55:32.920 responsibility stuff always gets well down to what we buy 0:55:33.120 --> 0:55:36.320 right or how we travel. 0:55:36.320 --> 0:55:36.640 You know. 0:55:37.160 --> 0:55:41.520 But like individual action can also be civic action. It 0:55:41.520 --> 0:55:45.719 can be political organizing, It can be finding ways to 0:55:46.960 --> 0:55:50.560 make your community more resilient. It can be mutual aid. 0:55:51.080 --> 0:55:52.719 There are lots and lots and lots of things that 0:55:52.760 --> 0:55:56.279 have nothing to do with buying different stuff that are 0:55:56.320 --> 0:55:59.080 individual actions that are very important and that are a 0:55:59.120 --> 0:56:01.960 critical part of of how we not only address this 0:56:01.960 --> 0:56:03.959 problem but actually survive it, you know. 0:56:04.520 --> 0:56:07.879 Right, And yes, Bill mckibbon said years ago the most 0:56:07.880 --> 0:56:10.920 important thing an individual can do is not act as 0:56:10.960 --> 0:56:14.080 an individual. And I'm recently thinking about the best thing 0:56:14.120 --> 0:56:16.239 you can do is have relationships and make this part 0:56:16.239 --> 0:56:19.759 of your life and your relationships whoever those relationships are with, 0:56:20.400 --> 0:56:21.880 to make climate part of it. 0:56:22.360 --> 0:56:25.120 Yeah, And I know Catherine Hahoe talks a lot about 0:56:25.680 --> 0:56:28.839 the power of talking to other people about this, not 0:56:29.000 --> 0:56:32.040 just in the vein of you know, persuading people to 0:56:32.120 --> 0:56:34.160 see your point of view or things like that, but 0:56:34.320 --> 0:56:39.799 just to create community to like actually to help with 0:56:39.920 --> 0:56:43.400 processing those feelings of shame and fear and anxiety and 0:56:43.480 --> 0:56:45.359 grief and all of those things that come up with 0:56:45.400 --> 0:56:47.600 this too. Like you can't do that alone. You need 0:56:48.040 --> 0:56:50.480 to talk to people, you know, but you speaking to 0:56:50.480 --> 0:56:54.240 someone else about it can absolutely help them to feel 0:56:54.560 --> 0:56:57.000 more like they're able to kind of work through that 0:56:57.040 --> 0:57:00.680 stuff and get to a place where they can. To me, 0:57:00.760 --> 0:57:03.840 it's actually not about finding villains at all. It's about 0:57:04.320 --> 0:57:07.239 figuring out what the what drove a problem like the 0:57:07.680 --> 0:57:09.759 climate crisis in the first place, Like, how do you 0:57:09.800 --> 0:57:13.120 have a society that allows a small group of people 0:57:13.520 --> 0:57:16.080 to make decisions that impact the whole world? 0:57:17.840 --> 0:57:18.080 You know? 0:57:19.200 --> 0:57:21.720 Like how does that happen? How does it get to 0:57:21.760 --> 0:57:26.600 this point where we're facing this catastrophe and everyone feels 0:57:26.640 --> 0:57:30.040 really powerless to do anything about it, you know, So 0:57:30.120 --> 0:57:32.800 that is interesting to me. I'm like, you know, how 0:57:32.800 --> 0:57:35.160 did this system get built? And who built it? And 0:57:35.560 --> 0:57:37.280 why did they have the power to build it? And 0:57:37.320 --> 0:57:39.880 how do we Because for me, I don't think you 0:57:40.000 --> 0:57:43.440 get to effective solutions if you don't understand that. How 0:57:43.480 --> 0:57:45.560 do you solve a problem when you don't even know 0:57:45.840 --> 0:57:48.800 the roots of it or where it came from. We 0:57:48.920 --> 0:57:51.160 have to deal with the power structure, not just the 0:57:51.200 --> 0:57:51.880 power source. 0:57:52.440 --> 0:57:55.640 Oh yeah right, it is ultimately about power. Yeah. Well, 0:57:55.640 --> 0:57:58.080 Amy Westerville, thank you so much for coming on climate 0:57:58.120 --> 0:57:59.520 and it's been a real pleasure. 0:57:59.520 --> 0:58:02.360 And yeah, thanks for having me. Thank you so much. 0:58:03.120 --> 0:58:07.040 On this Climate one, we've been breaking down climate misinformation, tactics, 0:58:07.080 --> 0:58:10.720 and ways to respond. Special thanks to Amy Westervelt for 0:58:10.760 --> 0:58:16.040 this collaboration. Check out her excellent podcast Drilled. Climate one's 0:58:16.040 --> 0:58:20.320 empowering conversations connect all aspects of the climate emergency. To 0:58:20.400 --> 0:58:23.320 hear more, subscribe to our podcast on Apple or wherever 0:58:23.360 --> 0:58:28.720 you get your pods. Talking about climate can be hard, difficult, depressing, awkward, 0:58:28.920 --> 0:58:32.600 and it's critical to addressing the climate emergency. Please help 0:58:32.680 --> 0:58:35.040 us get people talking more about climate by giving us 0:58:35.040 --> 0:58:38.040 a rating or review or tell a friend. It really 0:58:38.080 --> 0:58:42.120 does help advance the climate conversation. Brad Marshland is our 0:58:42.160 --> 0:58:45.880 senior producer. Our producers and audio editors are Aaron Abrocious 0:58:45.920 --> 0:58:50.600 and Austin Cologne. Our team also includes Arnov Gupta, Steve Fox, 0:58:50.640 --> 0:58:53.960 and Tyler Reid. Our theme music was composed by George 0:58:54.000 --> 0:58:57.960 Young and arranged by Matt Wilcox. Gloria Duffy is CEO 0:58:58.080 --> 0:59:01.000 of the Commonwealth Club of California, the non profit and 0:59:01.080 --> 0:59:05.200 non partisan forum or our program originates. I'm Greg Dalton.