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Speaker 1: But nope. Shit. Uh well, I'm Robert Evans. This is

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Speaker 1: another failed introduction. I don't I don't know. I don't

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Speaker 1: know why I keep I keep trying new things. It's

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Speaker 1: a bad idea to try new things. I should just

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Speaker 1: go back to what works, but I am permanently trapped

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Speaker 1: in a cycle of new attempts at success that in

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Speaker 1: only in failure. Anyway. My guest today Molly Lambert, Nightcall

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Speaker 1: podcast host. How are you doing? Molly? Excellent? Molly. I

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Speaker 1: like the new and trow thank you, just just the

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Speaker 1: word butts. It's better than Hitler. Yeah. Um, this is

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Speaker 1: a podcast where we talking about bad people. Molly. You

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Speaker 1: know that because you've been a guest on here before.

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Speaker 1: I'm ready ready to find out again who the worst

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Speaker 1: people of all time are. I am not ready. I

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Speaker 1: am strung at as fun because I got back from

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Speaker 1: a red eye from d C yesterday and I feel miserable.

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Speaker 1: But it's appropriate that I just got off of a

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Speaker 1: plane because planes are a major contributor to climate change,

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Speaker 1: and today we're talking about the bastards who covered up

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Speaker 1: climate change back when we could have done something about

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Speaker 1: it more easily. Molly, how do you feel about x

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Speaker 1: On Mobile. Are you a fan? Are you a mobis

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Speaker 1: stan Um? Aren't we all little little x on xcs xcs.

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Speaker 1: Oh that's a good one. That was a band right

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Speaker 1: in like the early two thousand's. It's definitely a band. Probably, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I remember listening to them when I was a depressed teenager. Well, Molly,

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Speaker 1: if you had to choose between let's say, x On

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Speaker 1: Mobile Chevron, Uh, what's another big one shell shell? Yeah?

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Speaker 1: Would would would? Which is? Which? Is going to be? Like?

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Speaker 1: You're who are you gonna like root for? I mean,

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Speaker 1: we're recording this on Valentine's Day. It's like I feel

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Speaker 1: like we're in a love quadrangle? Who can choose among

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Speaker 1: so many great suits? I think fine products? Yet I don't.

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Speaker 1: I don't really know enough about the difference between the

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Speaker 1: oil companies. I just know they're all pretty bad. I

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Speaker 1: do remember, I do remember was Exxon responsible for perhaps

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Speaker 1: an oil spill? They share work now in their defense.

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Speaker 1: How could you higher a captain for a boat filled

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Speaker 1: with volatile fluids and make sure he's sober at the

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Speaker 1: same time. That's an impossible barrier. I mean, I do

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Speaker 1: know that people go out on the oil wells for

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Speaker 1: like months at a time. Yes, the documentary Armageddon informed

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Speaker 1: me of that. Is that the documentary about how people

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Speaker 1: put animal crackers on each other's stomachs as well? Is

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Speaker 1: that in Armageddon? Do I need to rewatch Armageddon? That's

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Speaker 1: the one with Affleck, right, Yes, oh yeah, that's definitely

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Speaker 1: the animal crackers romantic sequence the that's I just I'm

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Speaker 1: thinking back on it now and I've realized that in

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Speaker 1: my memory the movie Armageddon has been condensed to the

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Speaker 1: scene where Bruce Willis points a shotgun at Ben Affleck,

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Speaker 1: the scene where they have that machine gun on an

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Speaker 1: asteroid for some reason up an asteroid. They have to

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Speaker 1: blow up an asteroid, but a machine anyway, there's like

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Speaker 1: three minutes from that movie in the Criterion collection. It

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Speaker 1: should be so all right, well, let's just well, let's

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Speaker 1: let's we should we should get into this thing that

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Speaker 1: I wrote about these people that I hate, and then

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Speaker 1: I hope you'll hate with me, because that's what the

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Speaker 1: show is about, hating together. Yeah. In two thousand fifteen,

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Speaker 1: and internal x and report from the nineteen eighties, which

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Speaker 1: discussed the reality of climate change, was leaked out to

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Speaker 1: the public via The Guardian. In two thousands seventeen, a

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Speaker 1: Dutch news organization released a similar report from Shell. And

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess most of the people listening have heard

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Speaker 1: at least a little bit about both of these disclosures.

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Speaker 1: You've heard about this, right, Molly, Like, yeah, yeah. The

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Speaker 1: story is generally summarized and outrage social media posts. Is

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Speaker 1: this exon Shell slash whoever knew about climate change for

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Speaker 1: decades and hid their research? And this is more or

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Speaker 1: less accurate, Like it's close enough for Twitter. But you'll

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Speaker 1: notice if you hop over to Google right now, those

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Speaker 1: of you who aren't actively pooping or driving to work

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Speaker 1: while you listen to podcasts. If you if you hop

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Speaker 1: over to Google and you type in XON covered up

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Speaker 1: climate change the first two of the six million results,

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Speaker 1: you'll receive our articles from xn's own website with titles

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Speaker 1: like x on Mobile, don't be Misled, Understanding the facts

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Speaker 1: and understanding the hashtag x on new Controversy by X

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Speaker 1: on Mobile. So obviously I'm biased. I mean, who can

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Speaker 1: we trust for unbiased reporting on X on Mobile? But

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Speaker 1: started out there and the blog sphere. It's like, how

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Speaker 1: the very best people to report on whether or not

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Speaker 1: police departments are responsibly using force. Are members of those

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Speaker 1: police departments, which is why we have such excellent statistics

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Speaker 1: on police use of force. What could be better than

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Speaker 1: an internal review? Yeah, I mean, at this job, I

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Speaker 1: am responsible for making sure I am sober enough to work,

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Speaker 1: which is why I have been sober enough to work

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Speaker 1: a hundred percent of the days when I've done this podcast,

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Speaker 1: even the one where I was actively tripling on asset,

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Speaker 1: which one was that it's a secret. It's a secret

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Speaker 1: to everybody, which is proof that the self monitoring thing

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Speaker 1: is flawless. So I agree, you won't his mom, I

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Speaker 1: will not. I will not. It's a secret for only me.

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Speaker 1: So today I'm going to tell everybody the story of

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Speaker 1: how this sorry state of affairs came to be. It

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Speaker 1: didn't start in the nineteen eighties, which is when all

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Speaker 1: those now leaked reports were written. It actually starts further

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Speaker 1: back nineteen fifty nine, when physicist Edward Teller warn't the

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Speaker 1: oil and gas industry about global warming and a keynote

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Speaker 1: address at the Energy and Man Symposium UH nineteen fifty

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Speaker 1: nine was seen as the hundred year anniversary of the

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Speaker 1: oil and gas industry, and so the event was a

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Speaker 1: celebration of petroleum and its cousins, but Edward Teller did

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Speaker 1: not take to the stage to celebrate. Instead, he gave

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Speaker 1: out a grave warning to the executives assembled. He said, quote,

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Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, I am here to talk to you

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Speaker 1: about energy in the future. I will start by telling

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Speaker 1: you why I believe that the energy resources of the

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Speaker 1: past must be supplemented. First of all, these energy resources

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Speaker 1: will run short as we use more and more of

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Speaker 1: the fossil fuels. But I would like to mention another

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Speaker 1: reason why we probably have to look for additional fuel supplies.

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Speaker 1: And this, strangely, is the question of contaminating the atmosphere.

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Speaker 1: Whenever you burn conventional fuel, you create carbon dioxide. The

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Speaker 1: carbon dioxide is invisible, it is transparent, you can't smell it.

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Speaker 1: It is not dangerous to health, so why should one

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Speaker 1: worry about it? Carbon dioxide has a strange property who

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Speaker 1: transmits visible light but absorbs the infrared radiation which is

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Speaker 1: emitted from the Earth. Its presence in the atmosphere causes

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Speaker 1: a greenhouse effect. It has been calculated that a temperature

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Speaker 1: rise corresponding to a ten increase in carbon dioxide will

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Speaker 1: be sufficient to melt the ice cap and submerge New York.

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Speaker 1: All coastal cities would be covered. And since a considerable

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Speaker 1: percentage of the human race lives in coastal regions, I

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Speaker 1: think that this chemical contamination is more serious than most

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Speaker 1: people tend to believe. So that's nineteen fifty nine wolf. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he's a I mean, yeah, spot on. I mean, we

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Speaker 1: might quibble with him saying that, uh, you know, carbon

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Speaker 1: dioxide is not dangerous to health, but I think he's

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Speaker 1: saying specifically that, like, you're not gonna get sick from

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Speaker 1: carbon dioxide poisoning because of gasoline. Um, you won't be

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Speaker 1: able to tell it's happening until it's here. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um.

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Speaker 1: So they have this warning in nineteen fifty nine, and

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Speaker 1: we do not know how Teller's audience reacted in that

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Speaker 1: moment because nobody was really taking notes, but we know

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Speaker 1: that they did not heed his warning. Eight years later,

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Speaker 1: Robert Dunlop, head of the American Patroleum Institute, took to

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Speaker 1: the halls of Congress to argue that electric cars were

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Speaker 1: not a practical investment, but the time they reached a

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Speaker 1: point of utility, he said, science would allow for emission

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Speaker 1: free gasoline vehicles. You may notice that this has not happened,

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Speaker 1: nor is it closed to happen. Yeah. Yeah, so he

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Speaker 1: went up being wrong. Now, this might not have been

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Speaker 1: a lie at the time. People believed stupid things about

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Speaker 1: the future back then, like the Jetsons was on the

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Speaker 1: air flying cars. Yeah, exactly. So maybe he just was

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Speaker 1: really sure that we'd we'd hit that point. I think

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Speaker 1: a lot of people are just sort of like, we'll

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Speaker 1: figure it out later, you know, which is the problem

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Speaker 1: with everything, but especially with environmental issues. Being like the people,

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Speaker 1: this will be the burden of the people of the

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Speaker 1: future to figure out, not mine, just do my job

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Speaker 1: making all the money by drilling all the oil out. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's it's weird. There's always this like this idea that Okay,

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Speaker 1: we'll figure out the technology necessary to like solve our

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Speaker 1: environmental problems before they become critical. But then when it

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Speaker 1: comes time to actually, you know, use the resources capitalism

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Speaker 1: uh has uh in order to devote manpower and brain

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Speaker 1: power towards like research, they all wind up making dick

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Speaker 1: pills and baldness as opposed to making emissions. Doesn't want

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Speaker 1: to do anything that doesn't just make a lot of

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Speaker 1: money and is easy. Um there even yeah, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's a good documentary about Rachel Carson, who wrote Silent Spring. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: you've seen that documentary. It's awesome because she's another person

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Speaker 1: who was like, hey, d d T is like gonna

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Speaker 1: give people health problems, and it was like actively buried

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Speaker 1: by the d d T lobby. But also because everyone

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Speaker 1: around her was like, it's a scientific innovation. We cannot

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Speaker 1: stand in the way of progress. Each new thing we

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Speaker 1: invent to exploit the environment is a or a coal

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Speaker 1: on the earth. So I don't know that we've gotten

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Speaker 1: out of that mindset really either, judging by like what

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Speaker 1: Silicon Valley thinks are the cool new things to invent.

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Speaker 1: We never will get out of that mindset because we're

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Speaker 1: very dumb. Or maybe we will, and I'm just a

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Speaker 1: pessimist because I spent all these hours researching X on

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Speaker 1: Mobile and Shell and Chevron and tell me more So. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Dunlop like gets up in front of fucking Congress and

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Speaker 1: he's like, electric cars are stupid. We're gonna have emissions

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Speaker 1: free gasoline. That's what we ought to be working on.

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Speaker 1: And you know, the very next year after he does this,

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Speaker 1: he receives a report that the American Petroleum Institute had

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Speaker 1: commissioned from Stanford UH, and this report warned that carbon

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Speaker 1: diaccid emissions would lead directly to global warming and quote

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Speaker 1: serious worldwide environmental changes. So nifty nine Teller gets up

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Speaker 1: on warns people about this. Nineteen sixty seven, Robert Dunlop

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Speaker 1: takes to Congress and says that you know, none of

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Speaker 1: this is going to be a big issue. And then

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Speaker 1: the very next year his own organization gets a report

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Speaker 1: saying like we need to immediately start reducing carbon dioxide

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Speaker 1: emissions or horrible things are going to happen now. Dunlop

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Speaker 1: died in ninet He had a son, Richard G. Dunlop,

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Speaker 1: and a daughter, Barbara, neither of which I've been able

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Speaker 1: to find much out about. One presumes they're quite well off,

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Speaker 1: but since their dad shares the name of a member

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Speaker 1: of an Irish motorcycle dynasty who died tragically, the Google

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Speaker 1: results for them are kind of a mess. UH. And

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Speaker 1: we've got a lot more ground to cover here. So

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Speaker 1: while Dunlop deserves much blame for ignoring the early signs

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Speaker 1: of climate change, it must be noted that there were

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Speaker 1: warnings the broader American populace could have accessed and heated

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Speaker 1: if they had wanted to do so. UH. In nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty five, philosopher Murray book Chin published Crisis in Our Cities,

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Speaker 1: a book about the negative consequences of urbanization UH. In it,

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Speaker 1: he noted, quote man's increased burning of coal and oil

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Speaker 1: is annually adding six million tons of carbon dioxide to

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Speaker 1: the air. This blanket of carbon dioxide tends to raise

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Speaker 1: the Earth's atmosphere by intercepting heat waves going from the

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Speaker 1: Earth into our or space. Book Chain was well ahead

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Speaker 1: of the curve on a number of environmental issues, including

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Speaker 1: the damage modern agriculture was doing the soil structure, but

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Speaker 1: no one listened to him. Part of the problem was that,

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Speaker 1: according to cultural critic Theodore Rozack, nobody cared to believe

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Speaker 1: the problem was so vast. Another reason why Bookchin was

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Speaker 1: ignored had to do with the fact that he was

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Speaker 1: an anarchist, and he suggested a fundamental revolution and human

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Speaker 1: civil organization as this way to combat climate change. So,

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Speaker 1: while it's important to point out and we're going to

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Speaker 1: spend the rest of this episode talking about all the

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Speaker 1: factory that oil and gas companies engaged to cover up

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Speaker 1: this stuff. We should note that there were people very

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Speaker 1: uh accurately predicting the problems in the future as far

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Speaker 1: back as the nineteen sixties. And yeah, it's just it's

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Speaker 1: it's very frustrating when you dig into all this, like

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Speaker 1: the number of warnings that we had, but also, like

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Speaker 1: I do think you have to have a little bit

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Speaker 1: of understanding for like our parents and grandparents and the

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Speaker 1: reason they didn't pay attention to this because in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, like we had all these fucking nuclear weapons

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Speaker 1: at everybody believe we're gonna get fired any day, and

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Speaker 1: like there was this this very real worry that like

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Speaker 1: the world was going to end at any moment, Like

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Speaker 1: my dad did like those those like duck and cover

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Speaker 1: drills where he'd get underneath the table because they were

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Speaker 1: afraid that nukes were going to come. So you can

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Speaker 1: also like, well you have where while like it's frustrating

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Speaker 1: that they had these warnings that they didn't heed, um,

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Speaker 1: there was also a lot of ship going on at

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Speaker 1: the time, Like my dad. My dad also talks about

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Speaker 1: the duck and cover drills, and there's a museum of

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Speaker 1: Nuclear History in Las Vegas. That is like one of

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Speaker 1: the best museum, the Smithsonian Museum of Atomic History. Uh,

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Speaker 1: that's all about that era. That is really terrifying. Um yeah,

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Speaker 1: and just to stand around some of those bombs, you're

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Speaker 1: just like, oh, yeah, there was a lot going on.

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Speaker 1: There was a lot going on. It was an immediate

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Speaker 1: threat and someone saying, hey, in like seventy years, gasoline

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Speaker 1: is going to be an issue. Like you can see

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Speaker 1: how like otherwise, like decent people could have been like, well,

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Speaker 1: fuck it, we'll probably figure that at if we have

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Speaker 1: time to figure They now understand why people always refer

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Speaker 1: to the sixties as tumultuous, you know, because I'm like, oh,

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Speaker 1: that is what it feels like now. It's funny. There's

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Speaker 1: so much to do. There's a lot going on, like

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Speaker 1: some of it good and some of it really really bad. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's something happening here, but what it is ain't exactly clear.

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Speaker 1: You know that songs about the Sunset Strip riots and

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Speaker 1: I read a really good essay about it by Mike

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Speaker 1: Davis about how people make fun of it for being

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Speaker 1: just like a riot of some kids, but it was

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Speaker 1: really about the beginning of like just intense police militarization

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Speaker 1: in Los Angeles of being like we're going to come in.

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Speaker 1: The cops were like beating up teenagers. Um. And so

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Speaker 1: some people, including Gilligan Bob Denver came to support the

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Speaker 1: kids on the Sunset Strip against the fast Wow, Bob,

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Speaker 1: Bob Gilligan is Antifa. Gilligan's antis Antifa. Yeah, So civilization

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Speaker 1: trundled along, no one paying attention to the warnings about

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Speaker 1: climate change, and by the end of the nineteen seventies,

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Speaker 1: the American Patrol leav Institute had established a committee to

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Speaker 1: monitor the evolving field of climate science. That committee of

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Speaker 1: scientists was allowed to work unimpeded, and they came to

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Speaker 1: the inevitable scientific conclusion that quote globally catastrophic effects would

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Speaker 1: be evident by the middle of the twenty first century

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Speaker 1: if fossil fuel production wasn't halted. Now, Chevron did not

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Speaker 1: exist at this point, but the companies that merged to

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Speaker 1: form it were members of the API, and they knew

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Speaker 1: all of this. In nineteen seventy seven, one of xn's

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Speaker 1: senior scientists spoke to a gathering of oil industry executives.

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Speaker 1: He warned them of a general scientific agreement that the

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Speaker 1: use of fossil fuels was changing the climate. In nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy eight, he updated his warning and stated unequippically that

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Speaker 1: present thinking holds that man has a time window of

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Speaker 1: five to ten years before the need for hard decisions

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Speaker 1: regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical. That's nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy eight. By the nineteen eighties, the early signs of

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Speaker 1: climate change had become very noticeable, and the newly formed

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Speaker 1: oil titans of the day XN and SHELL launched internal

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Speaker 1: assessments to predict the impact of fossil fuels on the

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Speaker 1: global climate. In a nine eight two report, EXN scientists

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Speaker 1: predicted that by twenties sixty, c O two levels would

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Speaker 1: reach five hundred and sixty parts per million, twice the

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Speaker 1: pre industrial level. This, they found, would raise average temperatures

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Speaker 1: around the world by two degrees celsius or more. In

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Speaker 1: Shell came out with a report of their own. It

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Speaker 1: came to the same findings, but also warned that c

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Speaker 1: O two could double well before twenties sixty, possibly as

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Speaker 1: early as twenty thirty. You might expect oil and gas

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Speaker 1: industry scientists who have been deeply compromised by their employer,

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Speaker 1: but other climate scientists who evaluated their works seemed to

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Speaker 1: agree that it was all pretty top notch. They did

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Speaker 1: not hold any punches when reporting to their corporate masters

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Speaker 1: about the danger that these products were going to do

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Speaker 1: to like society. Um so they had like really stark

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Speaker 1: warnings about what was going to happen. Shell predicted a

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Speaker 1: one meter sea level rise at minimum, with a good

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Speaker 1: chance that warming would cause the West Antarctic Sheet to disintegrate,

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Speaker 1: causing a five to six meter worldwide rise in sea levels,

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Speaker 1: resulting in the destruction of multiple nations. Their analysts predicted

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Speaker 1: the disappearance of specific ecosystems or habit stat destruction, leading

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Speaker 1: to an increase in runoff, destructive floods, and inundation of

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Speaker 1: low lying farmland. They pointed out that new sources of

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Speaker 1: fresh water would be necessary in this climate and that

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Speaker 1: changes in temperature would drastically change life for most people.

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Speaker 1: Shell scientists concluded the changes maybe the greatest and recorded history,

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Speaker 1: So that's pretty clear, uh A. Excen scientists were equally direct.

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Speaker 1: They warned about desertification in the American Midwest and other

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Speaker 1: parts of the world and potentially catastrophic sea level rise,

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Speaker 1: although they also noted optimistically that the problem is not

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Speaker 1: a significant to mankind as a nuclear holocauster world family.

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Speaker 1: I mean, it's bad, but it's not as bad as

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Speaker 1: the end of all life on Earth and atomic health fires.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure if you're in the power industry, you must

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Speaker 1: be like, well, we're not as bad as those guys.

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Speaker 1: It's like, it's like coke cads. They're like, I'm not

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Speaker 1: as much of a cocade as that other cocad. That

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Speaker 1: guy's at cocaine. It's had the conundrum, you're all cokeheads.

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Speaker 1: You're all cokeheads. That's the that's the problem. I mean,

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Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe if we'd given these people some

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Speaker 1: ecstasy or something back in the eighties might have increased

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Speaker 1: their empathy. I don't know. Isn't that why people wanted

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Speaker 1: to put LSD in the water streams from having nuclear war?

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Speaker 1: But you know, I've in my research come across a

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Speaker 1: lot of Nazis who trace their development to acid trips

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Speaker 1: they had. So maybe the solution is, yeah, yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: not uncommon, um like neo Nazis or like yeah, neo Nazis. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the original the original Nazis are on speed. They were

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Speaker 1: doing speed. Yeah. Um, I don't think you should be

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Speaker 1: allowed to use psychedelic drugs for evil is my personal feeling,

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Speaker 1: but I would support that too. I have seen also,

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Speaker 1: just like even with the rise of microducing, the way

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Speaker 1: people when people started being like, I'm going to take

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Speaker 1: acid to come up with better ideas for capitalism's yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's not great. I feel like the right thing might

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Speaker 1: be mandatory m d m A trips for all boardrooms

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Speaker 1: and executives at all multinational corporations. Just you cannot sit

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Speaker 1: down to discuss business unless you are rolling so hard

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Speaker 1: you're chewing your goddamn lips off. It will at least

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Speaker 1: be entertaining. Yeah, I can film it. Yeah, I'm sure

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Speaker 1: those people are rolling their faces off when they go

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Speaker 1: to their weird like retreats on private islands. Oh my god.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but they need to be doing it while

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Speaker 1: they're making like financial decisions about where to invest money

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Speaker 1: and stuff. Like I want I want to have like

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Speaker 1: the CEO of fucking Shell like announcing their new products

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Speaker 1: while like chewing on a fucking glow stick. That that

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Speaker 1: would be fun at least, So all these studies noted

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Speaker 1: the fact that the gradual nature of climate change would

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Speaker 1: work to hide its effects from the world. Shell scientists

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Speaker 1: wrote in with the very long time skills involved, it

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Speaker 1: would be thing for society to wait until then before

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Speaker 1: doing anything. The potential implications for the world are, however,

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Speaker 1: so large that policy options need to be considered much earlier,

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Speaker 1: and the energy industry needs to consider how it should

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Speaker 1: play it's part. If the industry did not, they warned,

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Speaker 1: it could be too late to take effective countermeasures to

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Speaker 1: reduce the effects or even stabilize the situation. That's h

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Speaker 1: m hmmm. But despite this sober and accurate assessment of

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Speaker 1: the stakes, Shell's report did not actually suggest the company

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Speaker 1: do anything to fight climate change that would have impacted

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Speaker 1: their profitability. After all, and I'm gonna quote from the

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Speaker 1: Guardian now and Shell study. The firm argued that the

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Speaker 1: main burden of addressing climate change rests not with the

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Speaker 1: energy industry, but with governments and consumers. And that's not untrue.

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Speaker 1: Like legally corporate like corporations that are public like this

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Speaker 1: have a mandate to maximize profits and really nothing else. Um,

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Speaker 1: it is the job of governments to regulate them. In

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Speaker 1: our current system. The problem is that Shell did not

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Speaker 1: just sit back and to be regulated along with the

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Speaker 1: rest of these companies. They actively sought to convince the

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Speaker 1: governments that would regulate them that nothing was wrong when

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Speaker 1: they knew the opposite was the case. And that's really

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Speaker 1: like the core crime that's committed here. It's pretty bad,

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Speaker 1: it's pretty cool, pretty cool and good. For the next

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Speaker 1: ten years, climate change pushed more and more into the mainstream,

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Speaker 1: and an understanding about what was happening started to reach

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Speaker 1: well beyond the cloistered halls of gas company research teams.

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Speaker 1: Activists increasingly called for action, and despite knowing that all

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Speaker 1: these people were essentially right, Excell and Shell took every

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Speaker 1: available effort to stymy them. In February, released a review

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Speaker 1: of the Scientific Uncertainty and the Evolution of Energy Systems.

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Speaker 1: This was a public review, unlikely non public reviews that

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Speaker 1: they had released that had shown that all of this

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Speaker 1: was a serious problem, and in this public review, their

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Speaker 1: findings conveniently indicated that policies to curb greenhouse gases beyond

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Speaker 1: no regrets measures could be premature, divert economic resources from

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Speaker 1: more pressing needs, and further distort markets. So that's cool.

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Speaker 1: But you know what won't distort markets, Molly, the products

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Speaker 1: and services that support this podcast. That is right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: they are fundamentally different from the products and services that

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Speaker 1: caused this climate change problem we're having for reasons that

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Speaker 1: I don't feel the need to get into. We're back

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Speaker 1: and we're talking about climate change. Stop lifting fun times.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty nine, seven years after their own report

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Speaker 1: and one year after Shells Exon, spearheaded the creation of

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Speaker 1: the Global Climate Coalition. This was a group made up

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Speaker 1: of businesses from industries whose profits were tied to fossil fuels.

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Speaker 1: They carried out a massive thirteen year long propaganda campaign

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Speaker 1: with the chief goal of preventing the US from signing

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Speaker 1: onto the Kyoto Protocol. More broadly, they also sought to

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Speaker 1: drum up mass confusion and over whether or not there

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Speaker 1: was a scientific consensus on climate change, even though all

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Speaker 1: of their scientists had breached a consensus on climate change.

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Speaker 1: In the early nineteen nineties, they published a backgrounder for

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Speaker 1: lawmakers and journalists. Framed as an objective review of the

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Speaker 1: scientific literature. It concluded that the role of greenhouse gases

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Speaker 1: and climate change is not well understood and that scientists

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Speaker 1: differ on the question of whether human activity was warming

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Speaker 1: the globe. The New York Times reports quote even as

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Speaker 1: the Coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and

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Speaker 1: technical experts were advising that the science backing the role

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Speaker 1: of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.

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Speaker 1: The scientific basis for the greenhouse effect and the potential

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Speaker 1: impact of human emissions of greenhouse gasses such as CEO

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Speaker 1: two on climate is well established and cannot be denied,

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Speaker 1: the experts wrote in an internal report compiled for the

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Speaker 1: Coalition in nineteen And this is where, like, I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: spend a lot of this episode talking about like corporate

429
00:23:55,400 --> 00:23:59,400
Speaker 1: executives and stuff who were major drivers of this. Part

430
00:23:59,440 --> 00:24:01,119
Speaker 1: of me wonder is, like, to what extent do we

431
00:24:01,200 --> 00:24:03,840
Speaker 1: call these scientists bastards? Because on one hand they're doing

432
00:24:03,920 --> 00:24:07,679
Speaker 1: really good scientific work to show very clearly the danger,

433
00:24:07,960 --> 00:24:10,520
Speaker 1: and on the other hand, they're watching the company that

434
00:24:10,640 --> 00:24:13,920
Speaker 1: is hiring them to do this lie about what they

435
00:24:14,000 --> 00:24:17,480
Speaker 1: know in order to maximize profits, and most of them

436
00:24:17,480 --> 00:24:20,879
Speaker 1: aren't coming out and and saying anything about it. And

437
00:24:21,080 --> 00:24:23,960
Speaker 1: it does you know they're scientists. They didn't get into

438
00:24:24,040 --> 00:24:26,440
Speaker 1: that field to go sit in front of cameras and

439
00:24:26,600 --> 00:24:29,440
Speaker 1: fight the power. But at the same time, like it's

440
00:24:30,000 --> 00:24:33,280
Speaker 1: there's a question of complicity there too. I think that's

441
00:24:33,320 --> 00:24:35,280
Speaker 1: like in the Thara No Stalk they got into that

442
00:24:35,320 --> 00:24:38,280
Speaker 1: a lot. It's like the people that hire scientists and

443
00:24:38,320 --> 00:24:40,600
Speaker 1: then the scientists are like, here's the deal, and they're

444
00:24:40,640 --> 00:24:43,520
Speaker 1: like no, no, no, we didn't want to hear that. Yeah,

445
00:24:43,600 --> 00:24:45,480
Speaker 1: And at what point it does the scientist have a

446
00:24:45,520 --> 00:24:50,520
Speaker 1: responsibility to make waves? Um, I don't know. It's it's

447
00:24:50,560 --> 00:24:53,919
Speaker 1: a difficult question. So the effort to basically spread the

448
00:24:53,920 --> 00:24:56,840
Speaker 1: belief that there was like this massive disagreement over climate

449
00:24:56,920 --> 00:25:00,760
Speaker 1: change among scientists was masterminded by a number of visuals,

450
00:25:00,800 --> 00:25:03,040
Speaker 1: but probably the most prominent among them was a guy

451
00:25:03,119 --> 00:25:06,240
Speaker 1: named Lee Raymond, who was the CEO of Exxonmobile for

452
00:25:06,280 --> 00:25:09,240
Speaker 1: the bulk of this period. For reasons that elude me,

453
00:25:09,320 --> 00:25:11,920
Speaker 1: mainstream journalists in the late nineteen nineties considered him a

454
00:25:11,920 --> 00:25:15,480
Speaker 1: credible source on whether or not scientists agreed about climate change.

455
00:25:15,920 --> 00:25:19,640
Speaker 1: Raymond has been described as notoriously skeptical about climate change

456
00:25:19,640 --> 00:25:23,800
Speaker 1: and fundamentally opposed to government interference on the matter. He changed,

457
00:25:23,840 --> 00:25:29,880
Speaker 1: there you go, the fundamentally opposed to government interference. That's

458
00:25:29,960 --> 00:25:34,600
Speaker 1: why people took him seriously, listened to him. Yeah, that's

459
00:25:34,640 --> 00:25:37,679
Speaker 1: what they wanted to hear. Yeah, and that is what

460
00:25:37,680 --> 00:25:39,800
Speaker 1: happened because I remember Michael Crichton too, was one of

461
00:25:39,800 --> 00:25:43,200
Speaker 1: those guys. Good lord, he was very surprising. But they

462
00:25:43,200 --> 00:25:46,359
Speaker 1: were like, can't have the government meddling in our environment.

463
00:25:47,119 --> 00:25:49,960
Speaker 1: We're not as free if the government stops these companies

464
00:25:50,000 --> 00:25:56,000
Speaker 1: from lying to us until the world. Yeah, it's very dumb. So.

465
00:25:56,440 --> 00:25:59,760
Speaker 1: Raymond was the chair of the American Petroleum Institute's Climate

466
00:25:59,840 --> 00:26:02,320
Speaker 1: Change Committee for two terms. In March of two thousands,

467
00:26:02,320 --> 00:26:05,080
Speaker 1: he signed off on an Exxon mobile ad titled do

468
00:26:05,280 --> 00:26:09,120
Speaker 1: No Harm. This ran in numerous magazines and newspapers, including

469
00:26:09,119 --> 00:26:12,119
Speaker 1: The New York Times. The add acknowledged that while climate

470
00:26:12,200 --> 00:26:15,480
Speaker 1: change was probably real, more needed to be learned about

471
00:26:15,520 --> 00:26:18,480
Speaker 1: it before taking any action. It claimed that the Kyoto

472
00:26:18,560 --> 00:26:21,240
Speaker 1: Protocol's goal for a thirty percent reduction and fossil fuel

473
00:26:21,320 --> 00:26:24,840
Speaker 1: energy would quote require extensive diversion of human and financial

474
00:26:24,840 --> 00:26:28,640
Speaker 1: resources that were critical to the well being of future generations.

475
00:26:29,119 --> 00:26:31,960
Speaker 1: It noted that although it is hard to predict what

476
00:26:32,000 --> 00:26:34,000
Speaker 1: the weather is going to be this weekend, we know

477
00:26:34,040 --> 00:26:37,560
Speaker 1: with certainty that climate change policies, unless properly formulated, will

478
00:26:37,560 --> 00:26:46,240
Speaker 1: restrict life itself. You said, some bit just very cool. Yeah,

479
00:26:46,240 --> 00:26:49,080
Speaker 1: other unknown bastardors whoever the funk wrote the copy for

480
00:26:49,119 --> 00:26:52,639
Speaker 1: that um string them up. The next week, Exon ran

481
00:26:52,680 --> 00:26:56,840
Speaker 1: another ad unsettled science based off of a nineteen temperature

482
00:26:56,880 --> 00:26:59,800
Speaker 1: study in the Sargasso Sea. The basic argument was that

483
00:26:59,800 --> 00:27:02,600
Speaker 1: they showed the world had started warming before people had

484
00:27:02,600 --> 00:27:05,560
Speaker 1: started burning fossil fuels. Therefore, we couldn't really say that

485
00:27:05,640 --> 00:27:08,879
Speaker 1: this was a man made problem. Two months later, Raymond

486
00:27:08,880 --> 00:27:11,600
Speaker 1: presided over a giant oil and gas industry meeting where

487
00:27:11,600 --> 00:27:14,280
Speaker 1: he made the same point to his employees. He did

488
00:27:14,280 --> 00:27:16,359
Speaker 1: this while ignoring the fact that the author of the

489
00:27:16,400 --> 00:27:19,320
Speaker 1: study had said this about his ad two months earlier.

490
00:27:19,760 --> 00:27:22,080
Speaker 1: I believe Exxon Mobile has been misleading in its use

491
00:27:22,080 --> 00:27:24,560
Speaker 1: of the Sargasso Se data. There's really no way these

492
00:27:24,560 --> 00:27:27,040
Speaker 1: results bear on the question of human induced climate warming.

493
00:27:27,160 --> 00:27:29,000
Speaker 1: I think the sad thing is that our company, with

494
00:27:29,000 --> 00:27:31,359
Speaker 1: the resources of Exon Mobile, is exploding the data for

495
00:27:31,400 --> 00:27:36,040
Speaker 1: political purposes. Now, Lee Raymond is still alive, eighty one

496
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:39,400
Speaker 1: years young, he's a registered Republican, and he was succeeded

497
00:27:39,440 --> 00:27:41,920
Speaker 1: in his job by Rex Tillerson, who we'll be talking

498
00:27:41,920 --> 00:27:44,679
Speaker 1: about a bit later. H Lee Raymond's net worth has

499
00:27:44,760 --> 00:27:47,600
Speaker 1: estimated to be five hundred and three million dollars. In

500
00:27:47,640 --> 00:27:50,440
Speaker 1: addition to being a climate skeptic, Raymond headed Exon while

501
00:27:50,440 --> 00:27:52,480
Speaker 1: it was one of the very last large corporations to

502
00:27:52,600 --> 00:27:56,720
Speaker 1: explicitly exclude gay employees from its anti discrimination policy. This

503
00:27:56,800 --> 00:27:59,320
Speaker 1: seems to have been very important to Raymond. He was

504
00:27:59,359 --> 00:28:01,760
Speaker 1: in charge during the x On takeover of Mobile when

505
00:28:01,800 --> 00:28:05,960
Speaker 1: Exon rescinded Mobile's anti discrimination policy, which had included gay people.

506
00:28:06,520 --> 00:28:12,600
Speaker 1: So Raymonds sucks. He really feld of sucking like he

507
00:28:12,760 --> 00:28:18,040
Speaker 1: fucking yeah in the land of the people who suck

508
00:28:18,200 --> 00:28:21,399
Speaker 1: very hard. Lee Raymond sucks so hard that other people

509
00:28:21,440 --> 00:28:24,879
Speaker 1: around him seemed to suck less by comparison. Yep, that's

510
00:28:24,960 --> 00:28:30,560
Speaker 1: also sucks. He's not a good person. And his son,

511
00:28:30,680 --> 00:28:32,760
Speaker 1: John T. Raymond is active in the oil and gas

512
00:28:32,800 --> 00:28:36,200
Speaker 1: and he probably sucks to right. He absolutely sucks too,

513
00:28:36,240 --> 00:28:39,719
Speaker 1: and his net worth is an estimated five eight million dollars.

514
00:28:39,920 --> 00:28:44,920
Speaker 1: He had betwixt them. Yeah well, x On and Show

515
00:28:45,000 --> 00:28:48,840
Speaker 1: both spun up increasingly elaborate and expensive disinformation campaigns to

516
00:28:48,920 --> 00:28:51,400
Speaker 1: hide the truth from the public. Their internal reports continued

517
00:28:51,440 --> 00:28:54,400
Speaker 1: to paint a dire picture of the future. Most startling

518
00:28:54,480 --> 00:28:58,160
Speaker 1: is a nineteen planning document titled t I n A

519
00:28:58,520 --> 00:29:04,240
Speaker 1: for there is no Alternative Document Positive Yeah. The document

520
00:29:04,320 --> 00:29:07,920
Speaker 1: positive a series of massive damaging storms on the East

521
00:29:07,960 --> 00:29:11,560
Speaker 1: Coast in two thousand ten, triggered by climate change. The

522
00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:15,800
Speaker 1: company predicted that these storms would force action on climate change. Quote.

523
00:29:16,000 --> 00:29:18,000
Speaker 1: Although it is not clear whether the storms are caused

524
00:29:18,040 --> 00:29:20,720
Speaker 1: by climate change, people are not willing to take further chances,

525
00:29:20,880 --> 00:29:23,200
Speaker 1: after all, to success of I p c C reports

526
00:29:23,200 --> 00:29:27,080
Speaker 1: since have reinforced the human connection to climate change. Following

527
00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:30,040
Speaker 1: the storms, a coalition of environmental NGOs brings a class

528
00:29:30,080 --> 00:29:32,760
Speaker 1: action lawsuit against the U. S. Government and fossil fuel

529
00:29:32,760 --> 00:29:35,960
Speaker 1: companies on the grounds of neglecting what scientists, including their own,

530
00:29:36,000 --> 00:29:38,640
Speaker 1: have been saying for years that something must be done.

531
00:29:39,040 --> 00:29:41,479
Speaker 1: So this is like a fake future that they posit

532
00:29:41,520 --> 00:29:45,240
Speaker 1: where there's horrible storms caused by climate change and there's

533
00:29:45,280 --> 00:29:49,080
Speaker 1: a massive ground swell of rage and lawsuits against these

534
00:29:49,080 --> 00:29:51,800
Speaker 1: companies for doing exactly what they knew they were doing.

535
00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:54,480
Speaker 1: This is like the scientists telling them, we could get

536
00:29:54,520 --> 00:29:56,640
Speaker 1: in trouble for the ship that we've been doing, like

537
00:29:56,720 --> 00:30:03,200
Speaker 1: we should change our ways. Unfortunately, their prediction of horrible

538
00:30:03,400 --> 00:30:08,200
Speaker 1: hurricanes spurring climate action was wildly optimistic a a a

539
00:30:08,640 --> 00:30:11,440
Speaker 1: very inaccurate prediction about the level of fox given by

540
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:13,920
Speaker 1: the people of the United States. The two thousand ten

541
00:30:14,040 --> 00:30:16,720
Speaker 1: hurricane season was, in fact devastating. It would go on

542
00:30:16,760 --> 00:30:20,240
Speaker 1: to tie for third most active hurricane season in Atlantic history,

543
00:30:20,560 --> 00:30:23,720
Speaker 1: tying with both subsequent years two thousand eleven and two

544
00:30:23,760 --> 00:30:27,040
Speaker 1: thousand twelve. Three hundred ninety two people died and seven

545
00:30:27,040 --> 00:30:30,120
Speaker 1: point four billion dollars in damage was done. This would

546
00:30:30,120 --> 00:30:33,240
Speaker 1: be widely eclipsed by the two thousand sixteen hurricane system,

547
00:30:33,400 --> 00:30:35,760
Speaker 1: which killed seven hundred and forty eight people and did

548
00:30:35,800 --> 00:30:38,920
Speaker 1: seventeen point four nine billion dollars in damage. The two

549
00:30:38,920 --> 00:30:42,040
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen season was even worse, claiming three thousand, three

550
00:30:42,120 --> 00:30:44,520
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty four lives and doing nearly three hundred

551
00:30:44,520 --> 00:30:47,720
Speaker 1: billion dollars in damage. Now, two eighteen and two thousand

552
00:30:47,800 --> 00:30:51,160
Speaker 1: nineteen were comparatively mild years, but both still did more

553
00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:55,600
Speaker 1: economic damage than two thousand twelve season. So that's cool,

554
00:30:56,320 --> 00:30:59,760
Speaker 1: pretty cool, horrible, pretty cool. You'll know what didn't happen.

555
00:31:00,120 --> 00:31:03,080
Speaker 1: A bunch of NGOs and activists bringing suit against the

556
00:31:03,080 --> 00:31:07,360
Speaker 1: federal government and oil companies and forcing change on the matter.

557
00:31:08,160 --> 00:31:15,360
Speaker 1: Because because because excen scientists overestimated how decent people are.

558
00:31:15,760 --> 00:31:20,000
Speaker 1: Oh that's fine, surreal bummer, because they we'll figure it

559
00:31:20,000 --> 00:31:22,840
Speaker 1: out in the future. Thing is also like, uh, those

560
00:31:22,880 --> 00:31:25,600
Speaker 1: people in the future can get fucked as long as

561
00:31:25,640 --> 00:31:29,160
Speaker 1: I'm here. I mean, I do hate the people of

562
00:31:29,200 --> 00:31:32,200
Speaker 1: the future with a burning passion. No, I feel bad

563
00:31:32,240 --> 00:31:34,320
Speaker 1: for them. I used to be jealous of them because

564
00:31:34,360 --> 00:31:36,520
Speaker 1: I thought the future would be cooler, but now I'm

565
00:31:36,560 --> 00:31:39,120
Speaker 1: just like, Nope, nobody's going to talk to anybody, and

566
00:31:39,160 --> 00:31:41,360
Speaker 1: then they're going to die. We got we got a

567
00:31:41,360 --> 00:31:44,160
Speaker 1: little taste of the twentieth century, which is honestly probably

568
00:31:44,160 --> 00:31:46,600
Speaker 1: the best thing we could have had. You know, a

569
00:31:46,600 --> 00:31:49,120
Speaker 1: little bit of the prosperity before it all goes to hell.

570
00:31:49,200 --> 00:31:51,479
Speaker 1: But you also get to be here to see it

571
00:31:51,520 --> 00:31:59,920
Speaker 1: go to hell. Yeah, by bolt cutters, millennials roll, It's

572
00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:02,160
Speaker 1: gonna be a fun time. So Shell was also a

573
00:32:02,160 --> 00:32:04,880
Speaker 1: member of the Global Climate Coalition, but to their very

574
00:32:05,000 --> 00:32:07,560
Speaker 1: very very very very very very very very very very

575
00:32:07,640 --> 00:32:11,000
Speaker 1: minimal credit, they left the Global Climate Coalition in nineteen

576
00:32:12,000 --> 00:32:14,560
Speaker 1: because they actually agreed with the emissions targets set by

577
00:32:14,560 --> 00:32:18,760
Speaker 1: the Kyoto Protocol. So that's something if you're if you're

578
00:32:18,800 --> 00:32:21,960
Speaker 1: gonna pick the least shitty gas company, I guess it

579
00:32:22,040 --> 00:32:25,360
Speaker 1: might be Shell, although again they still did a lot

580
00:32:25,400 --> 00:32:27,960
Speaker 1: of this and irresponsible for huge amounts of this. It's

581
00:32:28,000 --> 00:32:30,800
Speaker 1: not a high bar. It's like picking which of your

582
00:32:30,880 --> 00:32:35,760
Speaker 1: Nazis is least responsible for the Holocaust. Uh, there's still

583
00:32:35,760 --> 00:32:40,520
Speaker 1: all Nazis. So um, yeah, before you give Shell too

584
00:32:40,640 --> 00:32:43,560
Speaker 1: much credit, you should know that In nineteen, despite having

585
00:32:43,640 --> 00:32:46,320
Speaker 1: a very clear understanding of the consequences of climate change,

586
00:32:46,440 --> 00:32:50,200
Speaker 1: Shell's annual management brief suggested, quote, although climate change is

587
00:32:50,240 --> 00:32:52,480
Speaker 1: a long term issue, today's responses do not have to

588
00:32:52,520 --> 00:32:56,760
Speaker 1: be long term. Irreversible actions need to be avoided. So like,

589
00:32:56,840 --> 00:33:00,680
Speaker 1: we shouldn't have people fixing this, don't think of just

590
00:33:00,760 --> 00:33:04,640
Speaker 1: keep going deep. As the millennium turned, it became increasingly

591
00:33:04,680 --> 00:33:08,560
Speaker 1: obvious that scientific consensus suggested that irreversible action really did

592
00:33:08,680 --> 00:33:11,720
Speaker 1: need to be taken in order to avoid irreversible consequences.

593
00:33:11,920 --> 00:33:14,720
Speaker 1: Exxon and Shell both began investing fortunes into a series

594
00:33:14,720 --> 00:33:17,040
Speaker 1: of think tanks, including many of the same think tanks

595
00:33:17,040 --> 00:33:19,680
Speaker 1: that it helped the tobacco industry fight against stricter laws

596
00:33:19,720 --> 00:33:24,160
Speaker 1: about cigarette marketing and smoking because you like, really we

597
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:26,320
Speaker 1: talked about like that big court case and the billions

598
00:33:26,320 --> 00:33:28,240
Speaker 1: they paid in fines, but they made so much more

599
00:33:28,280 --> 00:33:31,320
Speaker 1: money from lying to everybody about cigarettes forever. Look the

600
00:33:31,440 --> 00:33:38,280
Speaker 1: can they all be bad? They So there's like, it's

601
00:33:38,320 --> 00:33:40,800
Speaker 1: it's very worrying when you start comparing people to the

602
00:33:40,880 --> 00:33:43,000
Speaker 1: Nazis because in terms of like the personal level of

603
00:33:43,040 --> 00:33:47,280
Speaker 1: responsibility or odiousness of these individuals as human beings, there's

604
00:33:47,320 --> 00:33:50,600
Speaker 1: no comparison. But when you do talk about, like, one

605
00:33:50,640 --> 00:33:52,200
Speaker 1: of the things that really interests me is the Nuremberg

606
00:33:52,280 --> 00:33:56,080
Speaker 1: Trials and the ethical arguments around them. So, like, part

607
00:33:56,160 --> 00:33:57,680
Speaker 1: of one of the big questions that a lot of

608
00:33:57,720 --> 00:34:00,239
Speaker 1: people fairly had about the Nuremberg Trials is we are

609
00:34:00,320 --> 00:34:03,440
Speaker 1: charging people for things that weren't crimes when they committed

610
00:34:03,440 --> 00:34:06,800
Speaker 1: them where they committed them, And that is an unsettling

611
00:34:06,840 --> 00:34:09,600
Speaker 1: precedent because it can be used to justify some really

612
00:34:09,880 --> 00:34:13,399
Speaker 1: messed up ship potentially um And the reason that most

613
00:34:13,400 --> 00:34:15,080
Speaker 1: folks came around on that is they were like, well,

614
00:34:15,080 --> 00:34:17,400
Speaker 1: if we don't try these people and punish them all

615
00:34:17,480 --> 00:34:21,760
Speaker 1: very publicly, this will keep happening and nothing was done. Twist,

616
00:34:23,160 --> 00:34:26,360
Speaker 1: they punished them, and it's still kept happening. Well, not

617
00:34:26,520 --> 00:34:29,200
Speaker 1: the same way, like no, but when you look at

618
00:34:29,200 --> 00:34:31,759
Speaker 1: where we are now in terms of like people doing

619
00:34:31,840 --> 00:34:36,360
Speaker 1: full scale, like technologically aided genocides, yes, And also it

620
00:34:36,360 --> 00:34:38,640
Speaker 1: feels like we're at a really scary point right now

621
00:34:38,800 --> 00:34:43,920
Speaker 1: where Holocaust survivors are almost all gone and like Civil

622
00:34:44,000 --> 00:34:47,359
Speaker 1: rights era people are going to be gone soon. And

623
00:34:47,440 --> 00:34:50,719
Speaker 1: when those people are gone, you know, how do you

624
00:34:50,760 --> 00:34:54,520
Speaker 1: convince people this stuff even happened, let alone that it

625
00:34:54,640 --> 00:34:57,560
Speaker 1: is like relevant and the same thing is happening now.

626
00:34:58,280 --> 00:35:01,440
Speaker 1: I think we got about sixty seventy years of people

627
00:35:01,960 --> 00:35:04,319
Speaker 1: like the worst people in the world being slightly more

628
00:35:04,360 --> 00:35:07,799
Speaker 1: careful as a result of the Nuremberg trials. Um. And

629
00:35:08,120 --> 00:35:11,160
Speaker 1: then they started to push again and they found out

630
00:35:11,440 --> 00:35:13,239
Speaker 1: you know, there were actually a couple of moments where

631
00:35:13,280 --> 00:35:17,680
Speaker 1: there was pushback against them, um. But overall, the neoliberal

632
00:35:17,680 --> 00:35:20,080
Speaker 1: world order failed in reigning in that kind of thing,

633
00:35:20,120 --> 00:35:22,000
Speaker 1: and now it is becoming more common. So it does

634
00:35:22,080 --> 00:35:25,080
Speaker 1: require you can't just punish them once publicly, but you

635
00:35:25,120 --> 00:35:27,839
Speaker 1: do have to punish these people publicly, and you know,

636
00:35:28,080 --> 00:35:31,279
Speaker 1: they punished them too late. Was what The other problem was,

637
00:35:31,520 --> 00:35:34,520
Speaker 1: there was a lot of opportunity for other countries for

638
00:35:34,560 --> 00:35:37,719
Speaker 1: the world to step in and say, hey, this is

639
00:35:37,760 --> 00:35:40,960
Speaker 1: fucked up. I've probably talked about this before, but my

640
00:35:41,000 --> 00:35:44,080
Speaker 1: grandmother was a German jew who was an athlete who

641
00:35:44,080 --> 00:35:46,400
Speaker 1: was supposed to be in the nineteen thirty six Olympics,

642
00:35:46,840 --> 00:35:49,480
Speaker 1: and Hitler kept her on the team for a very

643
00:35:49,800 --> 00:35:51,040
Speaker 1: They kept her on the team for a long time

644
00:35:51,080 --> 00:35:53,719
Speaker 1: because they were like unsure if the world was going

645
00:35:53,760 --> 00:35:57,560
Speaker 1: to boycott the Olympics, if the Germans were just very

646
00:35:57,680 --> 00:36:01,839
Speaker 1: upfront about wanting to do genocides. Um, And ultimately they

647
00:36:01,840 --> 00:36:03,680
Speaker 1: cut her from the team because they didn't wanted you

648
00:36:03,840 --> 00:36:09,439
Speaker 1: to win and embarrass them. But also nobody pulled out. Uh.

649
00:36:09,760 --> 00:36:12,160
Speaker 1: I think maybe one country pulled out, but everybody just

650
00:36:12,239 --> 00:36:16,960
Speaker 1: let the Nazi Olympics happen. Uh. And you know, they

651
00:36:17,239 --> 00:36:20,960
Speaker 1: they maybe didn't know what what Germany was doing and

652
00:36:21,080 --> 00:36:25,680
Speaker 1: just didn't care because it because people are bad, yeah,

653
00:36:25,840 --> 00:36:28,200
Speaker 1: you know. And some Americans like Henry Ford were like

654
00:36:28,320 --> 00:36:32,520
Speaker 1: into it also. Yeah, and so I think we also

655
00:36:32,719 --> 00:36:38,600
Speaker 1: countries underestimated that. Yeah. It takes a level of to

656
00:36:38,800 --> 00:36:41,720
Speaker 1: stop all of this kind of behavior. Um, it takes

657
00:36:41,800 --> 00:36:46,920
Speaker 1: a lot of aggressive commitment to fucking people up when

658
00:36:46,960 --> 00:36:49,200
Speaker 1: they do this stuff. And I have to wonder if,

659
00:36:49,520 --> 00:36:52,440
Speaker 1: when it came out that the tobacco industry had suppressed

660
00:36:52,440 --> 00:36:55,960
Speaker 1: the truth about the health dangers of tobacco, if a

661
00:36:56,000 --> 00:36:58,120
Speaker 1: bunch of those guys had gone to prison, If I

662
00:36:58,120 --> 00:37:00,000
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe some of those guys had been fucking

663
00:37:00,320 --> 00:37:04,319
Speaker 1: like literally sentenced to hang for their crimes, for what

664
00:37:04,480 --> 00:37:07,880
Speaker 1: is effectively mass murder. Would the same should have happened

665
00:37:07,880 --> 00:37:09,719
Speaker 1: in the oil and gas industry. Might some of those

666
00:37:09,760 --> 00:37:12,520
Speaker 1: executives been like, oh, ship, instead of hiring the same

667
00:37:12,560 --> 00:37:16,440
Speaker 1: firms that had protected cigarette companies with some of these

668
00:37:16,440 --> 00:37:18,800
Speaker 1: guys been like, we have to be really fucking careful.

669
00:37:18,800 --> 00:37:21,759
Speaker 1: I think rich people are just so protected that even

670
00:37:21,760 --> 00:37:24,080
Speaker 1: when they do get punished, they get punished in such

671
00:37:24,120 --> 00:37:26,560
Speaker 1: a different way than a regular person or a poor

672
00:37:26,640 --> 00:37:29,880
Speaker 1: person that it doesn't have the same effectiveness. They get

673
00:37:30,280 --> 00:37:34,400
Speaker 1: golden handcuffs, you know, to stay in their mansion or whatever.

674
00:37:35,080 --> 00:37:38,279
Speaker 1: That doesn't have the same effect on people as if

675
00:37:38,360 --> 00:37:40,960
Speaker 1: you know they were going to go to solitary confinement

676
00:37:41,280 --> 00:37:44,280
Speaker 1: or as you say, be hung in the public square.

677
00:37:44,640 --> 00:37:49,640
Speaker 1: I personally feel like maybe that kind of public execution

678
00:37:49,680 --> 00:37:52,720
Speaker 1: will come back at some point because things have gotten

679
00:37:52,800 --> 00:37:58,680
Speaker 1: so medieval. Why not why wouldn't that come Uh, But

680
00:37:58,719 --> 00:38:00,520
Speaker 1: I'm also worried it'll be of like the people that

681
00:38:00,560 --> 00:38:03,040
Speaker 1: we like are gonna no, no, no, that that's part

682
00:38:03,080 --> 00:38:06,600
Speaker 1: of the problem. Yeah, but I I do, I think that.

683
00:38:06,880 --> 00:38:09,880
Speaker 1: Um yeah, well we'll talk about that a little bit later.

684
00:38:10,200 --> 00:38:12,640
Speaker 1: So yeah, these guys hire a bunch of tobacco industry

685
00:38:12,719 --> 00:38:14,920
Speaker 1: like former tobacco industry think tanks to like do the

686
00:38:14,960 --> 00:38:17,600
Speaker 1: same thing um that they done to argue against more

687
00:38:17,680 --> 00:38:20,719
Speaker 1: laws about cigarette marketing and smoking. Um. And I'm gonna

688
00:38:20,719 --> 00:38:23,520
Speaker 1: read a quote from The Guardian on this why to

689
00:38:23,600 --> 00:38:26,120
Speaker 1: hide their fingerprints. X In, which quickly proved to have

690
00:38:26,160 --> 00:38:28,560
Speaker 1: the deepest pockets, at least until the Koke Brothers surpassed

691
00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:30,920
Speaker 1: it in two thousand five, kicked off at spending spree

692
00:38:30,960 --> 00:38:33,440
Speaker 1: on these think tanks and other nonprofit advocacy groups in

693
00:38:33,520 --> 00:38:36,120
Speaker 1: nineteen nine, a year before it merged with Mobile, and

694
00:38:36,200 --> 00:38:39,600
Speaker 1: Kenneth Cohen became the company's VP from Public and Governmental affairs.

695
00:38:39,920 --> 00:38:42,440
Speaker 1: In January two thousand seven, u c S issued a

696
00:38:42,480 --> 00:38:45,200
Speaker 1: report that revealed that between nineteen and two thousand and five,

697
00:38:45,520 --> 00:38:47,760
Speaker 1: X on Mobile had spent at least sixteen million dollars

698
00:38:47,800 --> 00:38:50,160
Speaker 1: on a network of more than forty anti regulation think

699
00:38:50,160 --> 00:38:52,719
Speaker 1: tanks and advocacy groups to launder its message. A few

700
00:38:52,800 --> 00:38:54,600
Speaker 1: years later, when asked about the report by a Green

701
00:38:54,680 --> 00:38:57,480
Speaker 1: Wire reporter, Cohen said that x on Mobile had stopped

702
00:38:57,480 --> 00:39:00,480
Speaker 1: funding them. That claim is as preposterous today was eight

703
00:39:00,560 --> 00:39:02,719
Speaker 1: years ago. Just last year, the company spent one point

704
00:39:02,840 --> 00:39:05,640
Speaker 1: nine million on fifteen climate science denier groups, including the

705
00:39:05,680 --> 00:39:10,560
Speaker 1: American Enterprise Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council, Manhattan Institute,

706
00:39:10,560 --> 00:39:12,759
Speaker 1: in US Chamber of Commerce, and ten of last year's

707
00:39:12,760 --> 00:39:15,200
Speaker 1: grantees were among those sided, and ucs is two thousand

708
00:39:15,280 --> 00:39:18,279
Speaker 1: seven report all told Green Pieces documented that x on

709
00:39:18,360 --> 00:39:21,200
Speaker 1: Mobile has spent thirty one million dollars since nineteen nine

710
00:39:21,480 --> 00:39:23,920
Speaker 1: on denier groups. But there is good reason to suspect

711
00:39:23,920 --> 00:39:25,960
Speaker 1: that that's not even half of it. And in fact,

712
00:39:26,120 --> 00:39:28,160
Speaker 1: the numbers on this are really hard, but it could

713
00:39:28,160 --> 00:39:30,919
Speaker 1: be like five ten times that much. Um, we'll never

714
00:39:31,000 --> 00:39:36,279
Speaker 1: know really now. Like any good, unfathomably evil company, XN

715
00:39:36,320 --> 00:39:38,719
Speaker 1: and its comrades hid much and perhaps most of what

716
00:39:38,800 --> 00:39:42,000
Speaker 1: they spent on disinformation In two thousand, fifteen and anonymous

717
00:39:42,040 --> 00:39:44,520
Speaker 1: former executive with the Conscience revealed to the Union of

718
00:39:44,560 --> 00:39:47,360
Speaker 1: Concerned Scientists that x On Mobile had paid ten million

719
00:39:47,360 --> 00:39:50,360
Speaker 1: dollars per year from nineteen to two thou five on

720
00:39:50,440 --> 00:39:54,840
Speaker 1: what he called black ops. And we have no idea

721
00:39:55,160 --> 00:39:57,719
Speaker 1: what form all of this black ops took, but I'd

722
00:39:57,719 --> 00:39:59,600
Speaker 1: be fucking shocked if some of it didn't wind up

723
00:39:59,600 --> 00:40:02,640
Speaker 1: into the ckets of guys like Ben Shapiro. Um, you know,

724
00:40:02,680 --> 00:40:05,600
Speaker 1: they just they they The goal here, as always is

725
00:40:05,640 --> 00:40:07,760
Speaker 1: to make it seem like there is a lively debate

726
00:40:07,800 --> 00:40:10,200
Speaker 1: about whether climate change is dangerous and action needs to

727
00:40:10,239 --> 00:40:13,279
Speaker 1: be taken um, which they know is not true. But

728
00:40:13,360 --> 00:40:16,839
Speaker 1: like my dad still believes that that there's not scientific consensus,

729
00:40:16,920 --> 00:40:20,160
Speaker 1: and it's because these companies succeeded very very well in brain.

730
00:40:20,320 --> 00:40:23,399
Speaker 1: I think there's also just contrarians, just people that will

731
00:40:23,760 --> 00:40:26,239
Speaker 1: just think the opposite of whatever is true, you know,

732
00:40:26,280 --> 00:40:31,400
Speaker 1: will just be like yes. But those contrarians only are

733
00:40:31,520 --> 00:40:34,480
Speaker 1: able to have an impact on the public discourse when

734
00:40:34,480 --> 00:40:38,040
Speaker 1: they receive funding, funding that allows them to buy Facebook ads,

735
00:40:38,080 --> 00:40:40,840
Speaker 1: funding that allows them to influence these algorithms to pay

736
00:40:40,880 --> 00:40:44,080
Speaker 1: for the reach that they need. Um, if it's just

737
00:40:44,440 --> 00:40:47,920
Speaker 1: this guy who has no credentials, thinks climate change is bullshit.

738
00:40:48,080 --> 00:40:50,400
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean anything. But if it's the chairman of

739
00:40:50,440 --> 00:40:54,399
Speaker 1: the Climate Research Committee, Uh, this company with enough money

740
00:40:54,480 --> 00:40:56,480
Speaker 1: to put out ads in the New York Times, This

741
00:40:56,560 --> 00:40:59,880
Speaker 1: guy says that the New York Times fault also for

742
00:41:00,160 --> 00:41:03,360
Speaker 1: taking those ads. Oh, absolutely, they bear some complicity for

743
00:41:03,840 --> 00:41:08,640
Speaker 1: running any of these things, as though there's absolutely hud.

744
00:41:09,280 --> 00:41:12,480
Speaker 1: The New York Times is partly culpable in this for sure,

745
00:41:13,239 --> 00:41:17,600
Speaker 1: just stating facts. It's frustrating because like, I don't know

746
00:41:17,640 --> 00:41:20,640
Speaker 1: who exactly. I there's so much additional research to be

747
00:41:20,680 --> 00:41:22,920
Speaker 1: done this. I don't know who because it's someone's, some

748
00:41:23,239 --> 00:41:25,200
Speaker 1: individual person, A group of people at the New York

749
00:41:25,200 --> 00:41:27,239
Speaker 1: Times made the choice to take that money, and, in

750
00:41:27,320 --> 00:41:29,560
Speaker 1: fairness to the Times as an organization, a lot of

751
00:41:29,560 --> 00:41:32,759
Speaker 1: the evidence for this article came from incredible reporting done

752
00:41:32,760 --> 00:41:35,920
Speaker 1: by Times reporters who clearly are furious about all this. Yeah. Well,

753
00:41:35,960 --> 00:41:38,759
Speaker 1: I think a lot of these big organizations. One thing

754
00:41:38,800 --> 00:41:42,200
Speaker 1: that's key to understanding them is that they're actually totally disorganized.

755
00:41:42,440 --> 00:41:44,759
Speaker 1: You know, Yes, you think that a place where the

756
00:41:44,800 --> 00:41:48,279
Speaker 1: big name is gonna be the most well organized ship

757
00:41:48,320 --> 00:41:50,319
Speaker 1: because they will have been doing it for so long,

758
00:41:50,400 --> 00:41:54,400
Speaker 1: but even from section to section there's total just you know,

759
00:41:55,239 --> 00:41:58,080
Speaker 1: people don't know what anyone's doing in another cylicle over.

760
00:41:58,320 --> 00:42:01,239
Speaker 1: So I think decisions like that, some of the really

761
00:42:01,239 --> 00:42:04,680
Speaker 1: bad decisions made by newspapers, especially this year, I think

762
00:42:04,719 --> 00:42:07,240
Speaker 1: they're just coming from somebody at the top who's just like,

763
00:42:07,320 --> 00:42:10,360
Speaker 1: you know what, I like Bloomberg, Let's give him an

764
00:42:10,480 --> 00:42:13,759
Speaker 1: editorial or something, you know, like he's my friend, which

765
00:42:13,800 --> 00:42:16,320
Speaker 1: again comes that back to the rich people all protecting

766
00:42:16,360 --> 00:42:20,400
Speaker 1: each other. And uh, that's why things don't change. Scott

767
00:42:20,440 --> 00:42:25,080
Speaker 1: really angry. But you know what doesn't need to change

768
00:42:25,200 --> 00:42:29,680
Speaker 1: because it's perfect. Molly, what's that the products and services

769
00:42:29,680 --> 00:42:39,640
Speaker 1: that support this podcast. Amen, we're back. We're talking about

770
00:42:39,719 --> 00:42:42,719
Speaker 1: how the system that we live under, both economically and

771
00:42:42,719 --> 00:42:44,759
Speaker 1: in terms of the way our media organs work, is

772
00:42:45,160 --> 00:42:48,760
Speaker 1: fundamentally fine and doesn't need to have anything but minor

773
00:42:48,880 --> 00:42:53,000
Speaker 1: changes made, and you certainly should not be, for example,

774
00:42:53,360 --> 00:42:57,719
Speaker 1: purchasing machete's, boat cutters, other forms of munitions, armor, None

775
00:42:57,719 --> 00:43:02,480
Speaker 1: of that's necessary. Things are good. Tiny changes will solve everything.

776
00:43:03,520 --> 00:43:06,840
Speaker 1: Not using plastic bottles so much, that's gonna If we

777
00:43:06,880 --> 00:43:10,200
Speaker 1: get rid of straws, we're gonna fix this ship. Glass

778
00:43:10,200 --> 00:43:14,319
Speaker 1: straws are lovely, glass straws. Everything made of glass. Make

779
00:43:14,360 --> 00:43:17,200
Speaker 1: cars out of glass, glass cars to go to Mars,

780
00:43:17,360 --> 00:43:20,560
Speaker 1: glass cars, glass hearts, like that Abba song. ABBA's great,

781
00:43:20,680 --> 00:43:23,839
Speaker 1: perfect solve the problem. You know what, we can get

782
00:43:23,840 --> 00:43:28,000
Speaker 1: to this episode early. So let's let's play us out. Yeah, everybody,

783
00:43:28,080 --> 00:43:30,160
Speaker 1: just listen to Abba. We'll be fine if you change

784
00:43:30,200 --> 00:43:40,240
Speaker 1: your mind to take a chance. They have so many hits.

785
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:43,399
Speaker 1: But they have so many hits. It's weird that one

786
00:43:43,400 --> 00:43:47,120
Speaker 1: of the most popular songs in the history of human

787
00:43:47,239 --> 00:43:52,400
Speaker 1: music is a song by like a Scandinavian band about

788
00:43:52,480 --> 00:43:57,279
Speaker 1: a bunch of Mexican revolutionaries. It's such a weird and

789
00:43:57,360 --> 00:44:00,239
Speaker 1: it's based off of another completely different like a weird

790
00:44:00,320 --> 00:44:04,800
Speaker 1: like a like a Spanish love song or something. Yeah,

791
00:44:04,880 --> 00:44:08,400
Speaker 1: it's great. X On Mobile is close lipped about their

792
00:44:08,400 --> 00:44:10,319
Speaker 1: black ops budget, and I guess it wouldn't really be

793
00:44:10,360 --> 00:44:12,839
Speaker 1: a black ops budget if they weren't um. But they've

794
00:44:12,880 --> 00:44:15,239
Speaker 1: actually admitted to a surprising amount of what they've done.

795
00:44:15,560 --> 00:44:19,359
Speaker 1: In a two thousand fifteen PBS News Hour interview, Kenneth Cohen,

796
00:44:19,480 --> 00:44:22,400
Speaker 1: ex On Mobile's vice president of Public and Governmental Affairs,

797
00:44:22,640 --> 00:44:25,400
Speaker 1: was asked by host Judy Woodruff about an allegation New

798
00:44:25,480 --> 00:44:29,160
Speaker 1: York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman made during a taped segment

799
00:44:29,239 --> 00:44:32,720
Speaker 1: aired before Cohen's interview. Schneiderman had announced a week earlier

800
00:44:32,719 --> 00:44:35,799
Speaker 1: that he was investigating x ON Mobile for misleading shareholders

801
00:44:35,800 --> 00:44:38,400
Speaker 1: and citizens about climate change, and he had accused the

802
00:44:38,400 --> 00:44:42,680
Speaker 1: company of funding climate denial. Wouldruff asked, Kenneth Cohen, has

803
00:44:42,760 --> 00:44:46,880
Speaker 1: Exon been funding these organizations? And Cohen replied, well, the

804
00:44:46,920 --> 00:44:49,680
Speaker 1: answer is yes, and I will let those organizations respond

805
00:44:49,680 --> 00:44:53,640
Speaker 1: for themselves. So that's cool. Now, I'm going to quote

806
00:44:53,640 --> 00:44:56,000
Speaker 1: from a Huffington Post article on the matter now, discussing

807
00:44:56,040 --> 00:44:58,720
Speaker 1: the fallout to that nineteen eighty two climate change report

808
00:44:58,800 --> 00:45:01,560
Speaker 1: leaking out back in two thousand five, Team Quote Cohen

809
00:45:01,600 --> 00:45:04,520
Speaker 1: and other ex On Mobile officials, including CEO Rex Tillerson

810
00:45:04,600 --> 00:45:07,080
Speaker 1: and the aforementioned Richard Keel, hit back with a flurry

811
00:45:07,080 --> 00:45:10,360
Speaker 1: of press releases, newspaper columns, TV and radio interviews, and tweets.

812
00:45:10,560 --> 00:45:12,480
Speaker 1: Right out of the box. They attacked the credibility of

813
00:45:12,520 --> 00:45:15,440
Speaker 1: Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times, calling them

814
00:45:15,520 --> 00:45:20,200
Speaker 1: activists and mischaracterizing their reporting. Activists deliberately cherry picked statements

815
00:45:20,239 --> 00:45:24,160
Speaker 1: attributed to various company employees to wrongly suggest definitive conclusions

816
00:45:24,160 --> 00:45:27,279
Speaker 1: were reached decades ago by company researchers, Cohen said in

817
00:45:27,320 --> 00:45:31,080
Speaker 1: an October twenty one press release. For example, these activists

818
00:45:31,120 --> 00:45:33,760
Speaker 1: took those statements out of context and ignored other readily

819
00:45:33,800 --> 00:45:37,399
Speaker 1: available statements demonstrating that our researchers recognized the developing nature

820
00:45:37,440 --> 00:45:39,800
Speaker 1: of climate change at the time, which in fact mirrored

821
00:45:39,800 --> 00:45:43,640
Speaker 1: global understanding. So let's talk about Kenneth Cohen for a

822
00:45:43,680 --> 00:45:46,440
Speaker 1: little bit, since we've just established the role that he

823
00:45:46,520 --> 00:45:49,240
Speaker 1: had in all of this. Cohen is a lifetime Exon

824
00:45:49,320 --> 00:45:51,560
Speaker 1: employee and a lawyer. He joined the company back in

825
00:45:51,640 --> 00:45:54,279
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven and was present on its spin team

826
00:45:54,320 --> 00:45:57,480
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty nine. During the nightmarish Exxon Valdis crash,

827
00:45:57,680 --> 00:46:01,080
Speaker 1: which deserves its own separate episode, and all the inconvenient

828
00:46:01,120 --> 00:46:04,240
Speaker 1: information about ex On blatantly spreading this information about climate

829
00:46:04,320 --> 00:46:07,040
Speaker 1: change came out, Kenneth wound up on the front lines

830
00:46:07,080 --> 00:46:09,800
Speaker 1: of the company spend team again. I found a largely

831
00:46:09,840 --> 00:46:13,240
Speaker 1: positive interview with kenn on the corporate shill website Provoke Media.

832
00:46:13,440 --> 00:46:16,120
Speaker 1: It's framed as a Q and A to Kenneth. Their

833
00:46:16,200 --> 00:46:20,320
Speaker 1: question what's the best advice you ever received. Kenneth responds,

834
00:46:20,360 --> 00:46:23,200
Speaker 1: never stop trying to learn. There's always more to know.

835
00:46:24,320 --> 00:46:27,160
Speaker 1: What do you enjoy most about working in pr to

836
00:46:27,200 --> 00:46:30,640
Speaker 1: which Kenneth responds, the daily challenge of explaining what we do,

837
00:46:30,960 --> 00:46:34,560
Speaker 1: why we do it, and the benefits we bring to society.

838
00:46:34,680 --> 00:46:40,319
Speaker 1: And lastly, who inspires you? My daughter Devon. That's Nice

839
00:46:40,480 --> 00:46:44,919
Speaker 1: Dallas's daughter. We all of our daughters, right. My dad

840
00:46:45,000 --> 00:46:46,560
Speaker 1: left me a voice fill in the middle of this

841
00:46:46,640 --> 00:46:50,600
Speaker 1: recording saying, Hey, it's dad, have a Valentine's Day call

842
00:46:50,719 --> 00:46:55,279
Speaker 1: me back. There you go. Moment, I bet Kenneth since

843
00:46:55,320 --> 00:46:58,080
Speaker 1: his daughter Devin messages like that, And when I think

844
00:46:58,120 --> 00:47:00,400
Speaker 1: of Kenneth's daughter Devon, I can't help it. Recall a

845
00:47:00,440 --> 00:47:05,200
Speaker 1: passage from Shells nine report on climate change. Quote the

846
00:47:05,320 --> 00:47:08,239
Speaker 1: changes in climate being considered here are at an unaccustomed

847
00:47:08,239 --> 00:47:11,360
Speaker 1: distance in time for future planning, even beyond the lifetime

848
00:47:11,400 --> 00:47:14,880
Speaker 1: of most of the present decision makers, but not beyond

849
00:47:15,200 --> 00:47:20,759
Speaker 1: intimate family connection. So they're saying, the people making decisions

850
00:47:20,840 --> 00:47:23,640
Speaker 1: at our companies about what to do about climate change

851
00:47:23,840 --> 00:47:26,840
Speaker 1: will not live to see the effects of climate change,

852
00:47:26,920 --> 00:47:31,319
Speaker 1: but their children. As a fun fact, Kenneth's daughter Devon

853
00:47:31,400 --> 00:47:33,880
Speaker 1: has never lived through a year that was cooler on

854
00:47:34,000 --> 00:47:36,960
Speaker 1: average than the year before it, and her dad has

855
00:47:37,040 --> 00:47:41,520
Speaker 1: dedicated much of his life to obscuring this fact. That's neat,

856
00:47:41,800 --> 00:47:46,960
Speaker 1: isn't it? The take back my awe now. The fact

857
00:47:47,000 --> 00:47:49,840
Speaker 1: that climate changes impacts are undeniable now, even to the

858
00:47:49,840 --> 00:47:52,880
Speaker 1: binnest of Shapiro's, means that the pr flax for Exxon

859
00:47:52,960 --> 00:47:55,279
Speaker 1: and Shell and their fellow oil and gas giants have

860
00:47:55,320 --> 00:47:57,880
Speaker 1: had to work overtime to counter an increasing stream of

861
00:47:57,920 --> 00:48:00,839
Speaker 1: negative publicity. One of x ON mobile tactics has been

862
00:48:00,880 --> 00:48:03,239
Speaker 1: to point out, over the last thirty years that the

863
00:48:03,239 --> 00:48:06,320
Speaker 1: company's scientists have published a huge amount of peer reviewed

864
00:48:06,360 --> 00:48:10,840
Speaker 1: climate research quote. Our scientists have contributed climate research and

865
00:48:10,880 --> 00:48:13,319
Speaker 1: related policy analysis to more than fifty papers, have peer

866
00:48:13,320 --> 00:48:16,239
Speaker 1: reviewed publications, all out in the open. They participated in

867
00:48:16,239 --> 00:48:19,040
Speaker 1: the United Nations inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change since

868
00:48:19,040 --> 00:48:21,640
Speaker 1: its inception in nineteen eight and were involved in the

869
00:48:21,719 --> 00:48:25,200
Speaker 1: National Academy of Sciences review of the third U S

870
00:48:25,320 --> 00:48:28,640
Speaker 1: National Climate Assessment Report. And all this is technically correct,

871
00:48:28,760 --> 00:48:31,839
Speaker 1: the best kind of correct. X On scientists did, in fact,

872
00:48:31,880 --> 00:48:35,000
Speaker 1: publish fifty three climate papers between eighteen eighty three and

873
00:48:35,040 --> 00:48:38,400
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen. And you may remember earlier when I

874
00:48:38,400 --> 00:48:40,720
Speaker 1: said that the climate research done for these companies internally

875
00:48:40,760 --> 00:48:43,480
Speaker 1: was top notch. That is true. I found a review

876
00:48:43,560 --> 00:48:46,200
Speaker 1: of these fifty three studies by Dana Noosatelli for the

877
00:48:46,200 --> 00:48:49,560
Speaker 1: Guardian quote. I reviewed all fifty three of the papers

878
00:48:49,560 --> 00:48:52,080
Speaker 1: referenced by x ON spokesman, and they indeed consist of

879
00:48:52,120 --> 00:48:55,480
Speaker 1: high quality climate research. Most of them implicitly or explicitly

880
00:48:55,600 --> 00:48:59,480
Speaker 1: endorsed the expert consensus on human calused global warming. None

881
00:48:59,520 --> 00:49:02,080
Speaker 1: minimized or rejected it. This means that there is a

882
00:49:02,120 --> 00:49:05,040
Speaker 1: hundred percent consensus on human caused global warming among ex

883
00:49:05,080 --> 00:49:08,280
Speaker 1: sons peer reviewed climate research, even higher than the nineties

884
00:49:08,320 --> 00:49:11,160
Speaker 1: seven percent consensus and the rest of the peer reviewed literature.

885
00:49:12,360 --> 00:49:15,480
Speaker 1: So EXN cites this, and they do not do so inaccurately.

886
00:49:15,840 --> 00:49:18,440
Speaker 1: But it is not as exculpatory as the company seems

887
00:49:18,480 --> 00:49:20,960
Speaker 1: to think it is. A recent study in the Proceedings

888
00:49:20,960 --> 00:49:23,840
Speaker 1: of the National Academies of Science found that, after promising

889
00:49:23,840 --> 00:49:26,440
Speaker 1: to stop funding climate denial groups in two thousand seven,

890
00:49:26,719 --> 00:49:29,400
Speaker 1: Xon gave two point three million dollars to the American

891
00:49:29,480 --> 00:49:33,200
Speaker 1: Legislative Exchange Council and several Congress members who denied climate

892
00:49:33,200 --> 00:49:36,560
Speaker 1: consensus and fought against climate policies. They also continued to

893
00:49:36,600 --> 00:49:39,920
Speaker 1: fund scientists who published work disputing the global warming consensus,

894
00:49:40,040 --> 00:49:43,080
Speaker 1: even though their own paid scientists were completely in agreement

895
00:49:43,120 --> 00:49:47,200
Speaker 1: about the reality. Exon gave contrarian scientists Willy Soon over

896
00:49:47,280 --> 00:49:49,680
Speaker 1: a million dollars, and that's just what they spent on

897
00:49:49,680 --> 00:49:53,799
Speaker 1: one guy. Exxon and Shell and their fellow corporations spent

898
00:49:53,880 --> 00:49:57,360
Speaker 1: tens of millions of dollars hiring contrarian scientists and skeptical

899
00:49:57,480 --> 00:50:00,440
Speaker 1: journalists to confuse the issue of climate change, and the

900
00:50:00,520 --> 00:50:04,080
Speaker 1: research shows that this campaign was startlingly effective. I found

901
00:50:04,080 --> 00:50:06,720
Speaker 1: a two thousand fifteen study published in the National Academy

902
00:50:06,760 --> 00:50:09,920
Speaker 1: of Sciences by researchers from Harvard and Cambridge. They note

903
00:50:10,320 --> 00:50:14,200
Speaker 1: the comprehensive data include all individual and organizational actors in

904
00:50:14,239 --> 00:50:17,319
Speaker 1: the climate change counter movement a hundred and sixty four organizations,

905
00:50:17,520 --> 00:50:19,799
Speaker 1: as well as all written and verbal texts produced by

906
00:50:19,800 --> 00:50:23,520
Speaker 1: this network between nineteen and two thousand, thirteen forty thousand,

907
00:50:23,600 --> 00:50:26,720
Speaker 1: seven eighty five texts and more than thirty nine million words.

908
00:50:27,040 --> 00:50:30,440
Speaker 1: Two main findings emerge. First, that organizations with corporate funding

909
00:50:30,480 --> 00:50:32,799
Speaker 1: were more likely to have written and disseminated texts meant

910
00:50:32,800 --> 00:50:36,120
Speaker 1: to polarize the climate change issue. Second, and more importantly,

911
00:50:36,280 --> 00:50:39,799
Speaker 1: that corporate funding influences the actual thematic content of these

912
00:50:39,800 --> 00:50:43,720
Speaker 1: polarization efforts and the discursive prevalence of that thematic content

913
00:50:43,920 --> 00:50:47,680
Speaker 1: over time. A more recent two thousand seventeen report by

914
00:50:47,719 --> 00:50:51,279
Speaker 1: Geoffrey Soupran and Naomi Areskies from Harvard expanded on these

915
00:50:51,320 --> 00:50:55,280
Speaker 1: findings by analyzing hundreds of exxonmobiles internal reports and research

916
00:50:55,320 --> 00:50:59,400
Speaker 1: papers and comparing them to its paid advertorials, most of

917
00:50:59,400 --> 00:51:01,600
Speaker 1: which were play in the New York Times op ed

918
00:51:01,680 --> 00:51:05,160
Speaker 1: section from nineteen seventy two to two one. They found

919
00:51:05,200 --> 00:51:09,680
Speaker 1: the company consistently spread information that directly contradicted the findings

920
00:51:09,719 --> 00:51:12,320
Speaker 1: of its own scientists. And it must be said, the

921
00:51:12,400 --> 00:51:14,800
Speaker 1: New York Times let them do this without any meaningful

922
00:51:14,800 --> 00:51:18,839
Speaker 1: fact checking. So that's cool, Pretty cool. You're happy about

923
00:51:18,840 --> 00:51:23,800
Speaker 1: all this? So happy, we're just like frowning at each other. Yeah,

924
00:51:24,160 --> 00:51:27,439
Speaker 1: it's good stuff. I don't have many jokes about this,

925
00:51:27,560 --> 00:51:30,120
Speaker 1: but I do want to emphasize that I am not

926
00:51:30,200 --> 00:51:33,680
Speaker 1: joking about the bolt cutters. Um. I did enjoy your

927
00:51:33,840 --> 00:51:39,640
Speaker 1: bennest of Shapiro's line, I'm thank you. I just want

928
00:51:39,640 --> 00:51:42,480
Speaker 1: to commend you on that. Thank you. I take a

929
00:51:42,480 --> 00:51:45,640
Speaker 1: lot of pride in that. Uh. Sometimes dunking on old

930
00:51:45,680 --> 00:51:48,680
Speaker 1: binny shaps is the the only good part of my day,

931
00:51:48,760 --> 00:51:51,880
Speaker 1: so I try to do it regularly. Word so muchhould

932
00:51:51,920 --> 00:51:55,320
Speaker 1: dunk him in a trash can? Someone should, and he would.

933
00:51:55,360 --> 00:51:57,560
Speaker 1: You would have ample room left in the trash can.

934
00:51:58,400 --> 00:52:00,360
Speaker 1: I've seen one of those mini trash can ends, like

935
00:52:00,360 --> 00:52:06,040
Speaker 1: for a dorm, little paper paper one. Yeah, like, yeah,

936
00:52:06,080 --> 00:52:09,839
Speaker 1: one of those would fit. Now you know what wouldn't fit.

937
00:52:10,760 --> 00:52:12,719
Speaker 1: I don't have an ad transition, but I am going

938
00:52:12,760 --> 00:52:14,759
Speaker 1: to put some Tamali's in the microwave because I have

939
00:52:14,800 --> 00:52:16,560
Speaker 1: to go to the gym after this, so I'm gonna

940
00:52:16,600 --> 00:52:25,400
Speaker 1: ask for like thirty seconds. Here. We're back. We're back,

941
00:52:25,600 --> 00:52:28,319
Speaker 1: And we were talking about how though I talk about

942
00:52:28,360 --> 00:52:32,680
Speaker 1: bolt cutters because they are both symbolically powerful and have utility.

943
00:52:32,920 --> 00:52:35,760
Speaker 1: If you really want to get through locks and even fences,

944
00:52:36,000 --> 00:52:39,520
Speaker 1: most effectively, an angle grinder is going to be a

945
00:52:39,600 --> 00:52:42,759
Speaker 1: lot more practical for a sizeable amount of the population,

946
00:52:42,800 --> 00:52:44,719
Speaker 1: and part because of the arm strength and upper body

947
00:52:44,760 --> 00:52:46,680
Speaker 1: strength that bolt cutter is required to really get through

948
00:52:46,680 --> 00:52:49,120
Speaker 1: a thick lock. An angle grinder is gonna cut through

949
00:52:49,120 --> 00:52:51,720
Speaker 1: a lot of those much easier. These are just pieces

950
00:52:51,760 --> 00:52:56,479
Speaker 1: of information that I hand out for no reason. Angle grinder. Yeah,

951
00:52:57,040 --> 00:52:59,160
Speaker 1: and you're gonna want like like a solar battery or

952
00:52:59,200 --> 00:53:00,960
Speaker 1: something that can at least run it for you know,

953
00:53:01,239 --> 00:53:03,560
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes at a time, um, so that

954
00:53:03,600 --> 00:53:05,840
Speaker 1: you can get through stuff and potentially charge if the

955
00:53:05,880 --> 00:53:07,920
Speaker 1: grid's down. There's a lot of things to consider here.

956
00:53:08,440 --> 00:53:10,960
Speaker 1: Good to know, good to know, always good to know

957
00:53:11,160 --> 00:53:17,400
Speaker 1: about angle grinders for no specific purpose. So yeah, big companies,

958
00:53:17,560 --> 00:53:19,879
Speaker 1: like the companies we've talked about today, are very good

959
00:53:19,880 --> 00:53:24,000
Speaker 1: at obscuring the precise individuals responsible for their most shady activities.

960
00:53:24,280 --> 00:53:27,319
Speaker 1: For example, that a rescue Supron paper that I I

961
00:53:27,320 --> 00:53:30,520
Speaker 1: I cited a little earlier does not mention Rex Tillerson

962
00:53:30,640 --> 00:53:33,200
Speaker 1: directly or in neither does the n A. S paper

963
00:53:33,239 --> 00:53:35,360
Speaker 1: that came before it. And you might conclude from that

964
00:53:35,440 --> 00:53:38,520
Speaker 1: that Tillerson, you know, big company, maybe it inevitating to

965
00:53:38,560 --> 00:53:41,840
Speaker 1: do with the cover up of climate change. But Rex

966
00:53:41,880 --> 00:53:44,439
Speaker 1: Tillerson was the production general manager of ex On Mobile

967
00:53:44,440 --> 00:53:47,439
Speaker 1: starting He was a director starting in two thousand four,

968
00:53:47,560 --> 00:53:49,800
Speaker 1: and the chairman and CEO. Starting in two thousand six,

969
00:53:50,080 --> 00:53:52,160
Speaker 1: and thanks to a super fun lawsuit launched by the

970
00:53:52,160 --> 00:53:54,360
Speaker 1: State of New York, we do know a quite a

971
00:53:54,400 --> 00:53:56,640
Speaker 1: lot about how he obscured his role in all this

972
00:53:56,800 --> 00:53:58,880
Speaker 1: and why there's not a lot of direct information on

973
00:53:58,920 --> 00:54:02,160
Speaker 1: what he may have done on to further obscure the

974
00:54:02,160 --> 00:54:06,080
Speaker 1: reality of climate change. So, starting in two fifteen, New

975
00:54:06,120 --> 00:54:09,080
Speaker 1: York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, my very favorite cop,

976
00:54:09,280 --> 00:54:12,239
Speaker 1: launched an investigation into XN Mobile's history of lying to

977
00:54:12,280 --> 00:54:14,879
Speaker 1: the entire world about climate change, which is, in an

978
00:54:14,920 --> 00:54:17,680
Speaker 1: ideal world what police would spend most of their time

979
00:54:17,719 --> 00:54:21,880
Speaker 1: doing is looking into guys like this, like this is

980
00:54:21,920 --> 00:54:24,560
Speaker 1: what I want that brain power going towards, not I

981
00:54:24,560 --> 00:54:28,240
Speaker 1: don't know, stopping fair jumpers. So the actual case wound

982
00:54:28,280 --> 00:54:30,800
Speaker 1: up being mostly about whether or not Exon had misled

983
00:54:30,840 --> 00:54:33,239
Speaker 1: shareholders by hiding the real cost of climate change and

984
00:54:33,280 --> 00:54:37,000
Speaker 1: thus overvaluing their stock. And it is profoundly dumb uh

985
00:54:37,000 --> 00:54:39,279
Speaker 1: and a powerful symbol of how fun their civilization is

986
00:54:39,520 --> 00:54:42,080
Speaker 1: that EXN Mobile did the moral equivalent of drunk drive

987
00:54:42,160 --> 00:54:43,880
Speaker 1: the planet into a brick wall, and the only thing

988
00:54:43,880 --> 00:54:46,880
Speaker 1: they got tried for was maybe lying to shareholders. But

989
00:54:46,960 --> 00:54:49,000
Speaker 1: that's not on Schneiderman. If you read about the case

990
00:54:49,040 --> 00:54:50,920
Speaker 1: and what he did, his goal was very clearly to

991
00:54:50,960 --> 00:54:53,080
Speaker 1: take as big a swing at EXN Mobile as he

992
00:54:53,120 --> 00:54:55,279
Speaker 1: possibly could, because it would lead to a bunch of

993
00:54:55,320 --> 00:54:58,239
Speaker 1: documents getting released upon discovery and put as many of

994
00:54:58,239 --> 00:55:00,960
Speaker 1: the assholes as possible on the and to answer for

995
00:55:01,120 --> 00:55:04,200
Speaker 1: their actions. In other words, Schneiderman was creating a record

996
00:55:04,280 --> 00:55:07,160
Speaker 1: of their perfidy um, even if he wasn't actually able

997
00:55:07,200 --> 00:55:09,680
Speaker 1: to punish them for much um. And in this he

998
00:55:09,760 --> 00:55:12,359
Speaker 1: was successful. One of the billiest bastards he got on

999
00:55:12,400 --> 00:55:16,520
Speaker 1: the stand was Rex Tillerson. Under oath, Tillerson denied that

1000
00:55:16,560 --> 00:55:19,120
Speaker 1: EXON had misled investors about the risks it faced from

1001
00:55:19,120 --> 00:55:22,840
Speaker 1: future climate change regulations. He described a detailed system he

1002
00:55:22,880 --> 00:55:25,640
Speaker 1: had ordered created in order to manage those risks. But

1003
00:55:25,719 --> 00:55:28,319
Speaker 1: you'll notice there was no system developed to manage the

1004
00:55:28,320 --> 00:55:31,759
Speaker 1: actual risks of climate change. That was not Rex's job.

1005
00:55:32,040 --> 00:55:35,080
Speaker 1: And even then Rex claimed repeatedly to have forgotten important

1006
00:55:35,080 --> 00:55:37,520
Speaker 1: details that were critical to the case. And I'm gonna

1007
00:55:37,600 --> 00:55:40,920
Speaker 1: quote now from a write up on Inside Climate News. Quote.

1008
00:55:41,040 --> 00:55:43,040
Speaker 1: Much of the case revolves around Excen's use of two

1009
00:55:43,040 --> 00:55:46,200
Speaker 1: different estimates for the financial impacts of future regulations, a

1010
00:55:46,320 --> 00:55:49,200
Speaker 1: higher estimate, which it disclosed publicly, and a lower one

1011
00:55:49,239 --> 00:55:52,000
Speaker 1: which it used internally and did not disclose. In two

1012
00:55:52,000 --> 00:55:55,080
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen, top executives decided to align the two estimates,

1013
00:55:55,200 --> 00:55:57,360
Speaker 1: and the reasoning for doing so may prove pivotal to

1014
00:55:57,400 --> 00:56:00,279
Speaker 1: the case. The Attorney General's Office obtained notes can acted

1015
00:56:00,280 --> 00:56:02,960
Speaker 1: with an internal presentation given to XNS management in May

1016
00:56:02,960 --> 00:56:05,160
Speaker 1: two thousand and four team that listed reasons for making

1017
00:56:05,239 --> 00:56:08,360
Speaker 1: the change, including that recent reports to investors had implied

1018
00:56:08,440 --> 00:56:11,400
Speaker 1: that XN was using the higher estimate when evaluating investments,

1019
00:56:11,520 --> 00:56:15,360
Speaker 1: when in fact it used the lower one. So Tillerson

1020
00:56:15,480 --> 00:56:18,360
Speaker 1: was asked, do you recall anyone recommending that corporate management

1021
00:56:18,400 --> 00:56:21,680
Speaker 1: aligned the costs for this reason? Uh, And he responded,

1022
00:56:21,719 --> 00:56:24,719
Speaker 1: I don't recall any discussion of that nature. He was asked,

1023
00:56:24,760 --> 00:56:27,640
Speaker 1: do you recall any discussion about aligning the two estimates?

1024
00:56:27,680 --> 00:56:30,320
Speaker 1: He said, I don't. He was asked, do you recall

1025
00:56:30,360 --> 00:56:33,000
Speaker 1: why they were aligned? He said I don't, and you

1026
00:56:33,040 --> 00:56:36,120
Speaker 1: get the picture. He just basically denied as often was possible,

1027
00:56:36,160 --> 00:56:38,279
Speaker 1: and said he didn't recall any of the things that

1028
00:56:38,280 --> 00:56:40,640
Speaker 1: were done by x and that were potentially criminal. This

1029
00:56:40,719 --> 00:56:44,480
Speaker 1: pattern repeated itself over and over with Rex's answers, and

1030
00:56:44,560 --> 00:56:47,560
Speaker 1: during the trial, New York's attorneys stumbled across something even

1031
00:56:47,600 --> 00:56:51,000
Speaker 1: more damning. That explains why there's just not much documentation

1032
00:56:51,040 --> 00:56:54,960
Speaker 1: as to what Rex Tillerson may have illegally ordered. During discovery,

1033
00:56:55,040 --> 00:56:57,719
Speaker 1: XN was obligated to hand over a huge tranche of

1034
00:56:57,760 --> 00:57:01,120
Speaker 1: emails from Tillerson. The CEO of a publicly traded company

1035
00:57:01,160 --> 00:57:03,759
Speaker 1: like this, you cannot delete their emails because like it's

1036
00:57:03,800 --> 00:57:06,600
Speaker 1: it's potentially actionable in a wide variety of lawsuits and

1037
00:57:06,600 --> 00:57:08,920
Speaker 1: stuff like you have to you have to maintain that stuff.

1038
00:57:09,160 --> 00:57:12,200
Speaker 1: It's like it's like a legal requirement. But when Exon

1039
00:57:12,280 --> 00:57:15,480
Speaker 1: handed over Rex's emails, Schneiderman and his lawyers were shocked

1040
00:57:15,480 --> 00:57:17,560
Speaker 1: to find that there weren't very many of them and

1041
00:57:17,600 --> 00:57:19,200
Speaker 1: that they didn't like a lot of stuff that you

1042
00:57:19,200 --> 00:57:21,440
Speaker 1: would have expected a CEO to weigh in on. We

1043
00:57:21,480 --> 00:57:25,120
Speaker 1: have no record of Rex Tillerson saying anything about This

1044
00:57:25,200 --> 00:57:27,880
Speaker 1: is not because he was a hands off boss. This

1045
00:57:27,920 --> 00:57:30,800
Speaker 1: is because for seven years the CEO of EXN Mobile

1046
00:57:31,000 --> 00:57:34,840
Speaker 1: used a fake email address to do his business, using

1047
00:57:34,920 --> 00:57:37,960
Speaker 1: the alias Wayne tracker Uh. He handled all of his

1048
00:57:38,000 --> 00:57:42,280
Speaker 1: official communications with this email address. He had Tracker as

1049
00:57:42,360 --> 00:57:44,680
Speaker 1: his last name for his Wayne Tracker. He was the

1050
00:57:44,760 --> 00:57:48,360
Speaker 1: name of another employee, but he had Tracker for an email.

1051
00:57:48,400 --> 00:57:52,200
Speaker 1: He didn't want to be tracked. Yes, I I understand

1052
00:57:52,240 --> 00:57:57,920
Speaker 1: the irony here, but it wasn't. Wow. Yeah. So Tillerson's

1053
00:57:57,960 --> 00:58:00,800
Speaker 1: justification for why this was not clearly criminal is that

1054
00:58:00,880 --> 00:58:04,080
Speaker 1: his official CEO email just got too many messages and

1055
00:58:04,120 --> 00:58:06,040
Speaker 1: he needed a fake account so he could get some

1056
00:58:06,080 --> 00:58:12,520
Speaker 1: work done. Now, Molly just made a face like that's

1057
00:58:12,520 --> 00:58:15,840
Speaker 1: pretty frustrating. And what's more frustrating is that when they

1058
00:58:15,840 --> 00:58:18,320
Speaker 1: found out about this, the State of New York demanded

1059
00:58:18,360 --> 00:58:21,560
Speaker 1: access to the Wayne Tracker emails and she shucks, wouldn't

1060
00:58:21,560 --> 00:58:25,320
Speaker 1: you know it. Exon realized then that they accidentally deleted

1061
00:58:25,360 --> 00:58:31,120
Speaker 1: all of them. Oh, what a what a goof? What

1062
00:58:31,120 --> 00:58:34,200
Speaker 1: what a goof? Of course, this is not at all shady.

1063
00:58:34,440 --> 00:58:37,160
Speaker 1: Since the CEO was communicating under a fake email, Exon

1064
00:58:37,280 --> 00:58:40,280
Speaker 1: just forgot to preserve his emails because he wasn't using

1065
00:58:40,320 --> 00:58:46,800
Speaker 1: his official CEO email account. Anyone could have made this mistaken.

1066
00:58:47,640 --> 00:58:52,640
Speaker 1: It's fine, it's fine, nothing's wrong. He wasn't committing blatant

1067
00:58:52,680 --> 00:58:55,800
Speaker 1: crimes and then coming up with an incredibly obvious justification

1068
00:58:55,920 --> 00:58:58,480
Speaker 1: for why he hid the evidence of those crimes. That

1069
00:58:58,520 --> 00:59:04,800
Speaker 1: can't be what happened. Mm hm, cool, cool stuff. On

1070
00:59:04,920 --> 00:59:08,240
Speaker 1: February four, two thousand and twenty, Rex Tillerson spoke at

1071
00:59:08,240 --> 00:59:11,080
Speaker 1: an oil and gas industry conference in Houston. During his speech,

1072
00:59:11,080 --> 00:59:13,760
Speaker 1: he revealed that he has grave doubts as to whether

1073
00:59:13,840 --> 00:59:16,800
Speaker 1: or not human beings can do anything to fight climate change.

1074
00:59:17,120 --> 00:59:20,120
Speaker 1: Quote with respect to our ability to influence it, I

1075
00:59:20,160 --> 00:59:22,440
Speaker 1: think that's still an open question. Our belief in the

1076
00:59:22,480 --> 00:59:24,640
Speaker 1: ability to influence it is based upon some very very

1077
00:59:24,640 --> 00:59:28,640
Speaker 1: complicated climate models that have very wide outcomes. I want

1078
00:59:28,640 --> 00:59:31,280
Speaker 1: to note here that Rex Tillerson is worth an estimated

1079
00:59:31,320 --> 00:59:38,360
Speaker 1: three million dollars yep, state, just just three. Most of

1080
00:59:38,400 --> 00:59:41,320
Speaker 1: these guys aren't really super super super rich. They're just

1081
00:59:41,360 --> 00:59:46,640
Speaker 1: super super rich. Yeah. The state of New York eventually

1082
00:59:46,720 --> 00:59:50,200
Speaker 1: lost its case against ex On Mobile. According to Forbes, quote,

1083
00:59:50,240 --> 00:59:52,400
Speaker 1: the lawsuit failed because the notion that the company was

1084
00:59:52,440 --> 00:59:55,560
Speaker 1: attempting to obfuscate the impact of future governmental actions to

1085
00:59:55,600 --> 00:59:59,400
Speaker 1: address climate change and cheated shareholders was simply untenable. Now

1086
00:59:59,480 --> 01:00:01,400
Speaker 1: this is a you're bummer, But the good news is

1087
01:00:01,440 --> 01:00:04,960
Speaker 1: that numerous lawsuits are still underway across the country. Rhode Island,

1088
01:00:05,000 --> 01:00:08,120
Speaker 1: the Pacific Coast Federation of Fisherman's Associations, and a number

1089
01:00:08,120 --> 01:00:10,760
Speaker 1: of other groups and governments have started tossing lawsuits at

1090
01:00:10,760 --> 01:00:15,000
Speaker 1: the oil and gas companies responsible for covering up the crisis. Chevron,

1091
01:00:15,200 --> 01:00:17,600
Speaker 1: we have not talked enough about today, is a defendant

1092
01:00:17,600 --> 01:00:20,280
Speaker 1: and at least eight of these lawsuits they are guilty

1093
01:00:20,320 --> 01:00:22,960
Speaker 1: of essentially the same basic ship as Exon and Shell.

1094
01:00:23,400 --> 01:00:26,320
Speaker 1: Their CEO, Michael Worth, is new to the field, and

1095
01:00:26,360 --> 01:00:29,240
Speaker 1: he's made vague statements about wanting to move into renewables

1096
01:00:29,240 --> 01:00:31,640
Speaker 1: and fight climate change while increasing the rate at which

1097
01:00:31,720 --> 01:00:34,720
Speaker 1: Chevron sucks out gas and ships out poison into the atmosphere.

1098
01:00:35,120 --> 01:00:38,560
Speaker 1: His network is probably around fifty million dollars minimum, but

1099
01:00:38,760 --> 01:00:43,800
Speaker 1: is off like there's a good chances much higher um now.

1100
01:00:43,840 --> 01:00:47,200
Speaker 1: A few CEOs back for Chevron, Kenneth T. Derr was

1101
01:00:47,240 --> 01:00:49,360
Speaker 1: the guy in charge. Here's something he said in n

1102
01:00:50,720 --> 01:00:52,880
Speaker 1: I believe we have an obligation to use our technology

1103
01:00:52,920 --> 01:00:55,920
Speaker 1: to minimize the environmental impact of our operations and products.

1104
01:00:56,160 --> 01:00:58,600
Speaker 1: What disturbs me is not the ever president perfectly valid

1105
01:00:58,600 --> 01:01:01,439
Speaker 1: public requirements for health and say in the use of energy. Rather,

1106
01:01:01,480 --> 01:01:04,080
Speaker 1: I'm distressed by growing conviction the oil does not and

1107
01:01:04,120 --> 01:01:09,440
Speaker 1: cannot meet those requirements. That's distressing. Here's something else he

1108
01:01:09,560 --> 01:01:14,520
Speaker 1: said a pal that of Americans think the greenhouse effect

1109
01:01:14,600 --> 01:01:17,960
Speaker 1: is a problem and believe it's a serious problem, and

1110
01:01:18,040 --> 01:01:20,120
Speaker 1: some people in our industry tend to simply waive the

1111
01:01:20,120 --> 01:01:22,720
Speaker 1: issue away by saying that the threat is unproven. That's true,

1112
01:01:22,920 --> 01:01:26,680
Speaker 1: but it's not an appropriate response. It's true that the

1113
01:01:27,920 --> 01:01:31,760
Speaker 1: threat is unproven. Um, I hate this guy. On an

1114
01:01:31,840 --> 01:01:35,040
Speaker 1: unrelated note, here's something else Kenneth T. Durr said publicly

1115
01:01:35,040 --> 01:01:38,200
Speaker 1: prior to the Iraq war quote, Iraq possesses huge reserves

1116
01:01:38,200 --> 01:01:40,640
Speaker 1: of oil and gas. I'd love Chevron to have access

1117
01:01:40,680 --> 01:01:46,000
Speaker 1: to them. Pieces of ship. Now, the folks that I've

1118
01:01:46,120 --> 01:01:48,280
Speaker 1: named today are just the very tip of the iceberg,

1119
01:01:48,320 --> 01:01:49,960
Speaker 1: and some of the most culpable people out of the

1120
01:01:50,040 --> 01:01:52,640
Speaker 1: hundreds and maybe thousands of villains. It's clear that Eric

1121
01:01:52,640 --> 01:01:55,240
Speaker 1: Schneiderman's strategy well better than nothing, is not going to

1122
01:01:55,360 --> 01:01:57,840
Speaker 1: bring any of these people to justice. But there are

1123
01:01:57,920 --> 01:02:01,240
Speaker 1: some promising leads into how we can. Richard Heed, a

1124
01:02:01,320 --> 01:02:03,800
Speaker 1: Norwegian academic, has spent more than ten years trying to

1125
01:02:03,840 --> 01:02:06,120
Speaker 1: figure out the start to the answer of the question,

1126
01:02:06,360 --> 01:02:09,440
Speaker 1: how do we make these people pay? He actually helped

1127
01:02:09,440 --> 01:02:13,520
Speaker 1: to create a new branch of scientific research called attribution science,

1128
01:02:13,720 --> 01:02:16,160
Speaker 1: and the goal of attribution science is to take the

1129
01:02:16,200 --> 01:02:18,840
Speaker 1: blame for things like climate change off of the individual

1130
01:02:19,040 --> 01:02:22,080
Speaker 1: consumer and figure out who was actually responsible for the

1131
01:02:22,120 --> 01:02:26,040
Speaker 1: bulk of the consumption. According to Politico quote, over time,

1132
01:02:26,080 --> 01:02:28,520
Speaker 1: he recognized there was a flaw in that approach. Individual

1133
01:02:28,520 --> 01:02:31,320
Speaker 1: consumers can make choices only among what's already on the market,

1134
01:02:31,480 --> 01:02:34,040
Speaker 1: but who determined what was on the market. Other larger

1135
01:02:34,080 --> 01:02:36,760
Speaker 1: forces had shaped an economy dependent on fossil fuels. He

1136
01:02:36,800 --> 01:02:39,520
Speaker 1: realized companies who developed the markets for fossil fuels and

1137
01:02:39,560 --> 01:02:42,680
Speaker 1: influenced decisions to build the infrastructure that supported them. He

1138
01:02:42,720 --> 01:02:45,880
Speaker 1: asked himself, shouldn't the companies who profited from those decisions

1139
01:02:45,920 --> 01:02:48,840
Speaker 1: play a role in mitigating them? Without world governments making

1140
01:02:48,880 --> 01:02:52,480
Speaker 1: a little progress towards reducing making little progress towards reducing emissions,

1141
01:02:52,560 --> 01:02:55,200
Speaker 1: perhaps pressuring companies whose products were causing the harm might

1142
01:02:55,240 --> 01:02:59,600
Speaker 1: have more effect. In two thousand thirteen, Head's research revealed

1143
01:02:59,640 --> 01:03:02,320
Speaker 1: that nine d companies had contributed two thirds of the

1144
01:03:02,360 --> 01:03:05,960
Speaker 1: world's industrial emissions. He could pinpoint directly the share of

1145
01:03:06,000 --> 01:03:09,720
Speaker 1: emissions for which modern industrial companies are responsible. Chevron is

1146
01:03:09,800 --> 01:03:13,240
Speaker 1: number two on that list of ninety XN is number four,

1147
01:03:13,720 --> 01:03:17,880
Speaker 1: Shell is number seven. The data about what precisely these

1148
01:03:17,920 --> 01:03:21,120
Speaker 1: individual companies are responsible is out there. We know how

1149
01:03:21,160 --> 01:03:23,400
Speaker 1: much of the coming catastrophe we can blame on each

1150
01:03:23,440 --> 01:03:26,400
Speaker 1: of them. The only question left is what are we

1151
01:03:26,480 --> 01:03:29,840
Speaker 1: going to do about it? The oil and gas industry

1152
01:03:29,840 --> 01:03:32,600
Speaker 1: has answered that question for itself. Since the Paris Agreement

1153
01:03:32,600 --> 01:03:35,040
Speaker 1: in two thousand fifteen, the world's five largest oil and

1154
01:03:35,040 --> 01:03:38,440
Speaker 1: gas companies has spent a combined one billion dollars at

1155
01:03:38,560 --> 01:03:43,720
Speaker 1: minimum lobbying to stop climate change regulations. One million dollars

1156
01:03:43,760 --> 01:03:46,200
Speaker 1: a year has been spent by these companies on branding

1157
01:03:46,240 --> 01:03:49,360
Speaker 1: campaigns to suggest that they support an ambitious climate agenda.

1158
01:03:49,640 --> 01:03:52,400
Speaker 1: So while they are funding efforts to stop any regulations

1159
01:03:52,400 --> 01:03:55,200
Speaker 1: from them polluting the environment, they also have a massive

1160
01:03:55,240 --> 01:03:58,440
Speaker 1: branding campaign like aimed at making people think that they're

1161
01:03:58,480 --> 01:04:02,640
Speaker 1: hard at work researching alternative methods of fuel. And you've

1162
01:04:02,680 --> 01:04:05,080
Speaker 1: probably seen the results of this in billboards and bus

1163
01:04:05,120 --> 01:04:08,600
Speaker 1: stop ads that brag about, for example, exon mobiles, Algae

1164
01:04:08,600 --> 01:04:12,800
Speaker 1: biofuels research. Yeah, you've seen some of that. I've seen

1165
01:04:12,840 --> 01:04:14,320
Speaker 1: a lot of that, even especially in the city of

1166
01:04:14,360 --> 01:04:18,600
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. UM. They claim that algae biofuels offer some

1167
01:04:18,720 --> 01:04:23,520
Speaker 1: of the greatest promise for next generation biofuels. They're tiny organism.

1168
01:04:23,560 --> 01:04:27,680
Speaker 1: Ad campaign features colorful central illustrations of bright green, healthy

1169
01:04:27,720 --> 01:04:31,440
Speaker 1: looking algae under microscopes and in specimen jars. They bragg

1170
01:04:31,520 --> 01:04:33,960
Speaker 1: that their goal of ten thousand barrels of biofuel a

1171
01:04:34,040 --> 01:04:36,880
Speaker 1: day represents the future of clean energy, and that sounds

1172
01:04:36,920 --> 01:04:38,600
Speaker 1: like a lot right there. Like, look, we're gonna we're

1173
01:04:38,600 --> 01:04:41,480
Speaker 1: gonna be making ten thousand barrels a day of biofuel.

1174
01:04:41,640 --> 01:04:46,000
Speaker 1: That's a lot, right. That's so much fuel, isn't it. Yeah.

1175
01:04:46,160 --> 01:04:47,840
Speaker 1: What they don't like to bring up is that this

1176
01:04:47,840 --> 01:04:50,880
Speaker 1: would equal point to percent of their current refinery capacity.

1177
01:04:51,320 --> 01:04:58,600
Speaker 1: It's just nothing. It doesn't matter point to percent. The

1178
01:04:58,640 --> 01:05:01,680
Speaker 1: American Petroleum Institutes still exists and currently spends its time

1179
01:05:01,720 --> 01:05:04,600
Speaker 1: lobbying against things like subsidies for electric cars. They spent

1180
01:05:04,640 --> 01:05:07,640
Speaker 1: an estimated five hundred and thirty nine million dollars during

1181
01:05:07,680 --> 01:05:11,360
Speaker 1: the two thousand eighteen election cycle, according to Influence Map quote.

1182
01:05:11,520 --> 01:05:13,440
Speaker 1: During this time, x on Mobile was by far the

1183
01:05:13,440 --> 01:05:16,320
Speaker 1: most prolific spender, racking up over four hundred thousand dollars

1184
01:05:16,320 --> 01:05:18,640
Speaker 1: in four weeks on over three hundred and sixty individual

1185
01:05:18,640 --> 01:05:22,040
Speaker 1: political ads. The ads urge rejecting specific ballot initiatives while

1186
01:05:22,080 --> 01:05:25,360
Speaker 1: promoting the benefits of increased fossil fuel production. Facebooks data

1187
01:05:25,400 --> 01:05:27,800
Speaker 1: indicates that x on mobiles ads made over ten million

1188
01:05:27,840 --> 01:05:32,560
Speaker 1: impressions in this time with users in Colorado, Texas, and Louisiana.

1189
01:05:32,720 --> 01:05:35,200
Speaker 1: And they put together a really fun map showing that

1190
01:05:35,280 --> 01:05:40,400
Speaker 1: for example, BP, Chevron UH and the Western States Petroleum

1191
01:05:40,440 --> 01:05:43,320
Speaker 1: Association spent one point five million dollars in the state

1192
01:05:43,360 --> 01:05:46,480
Speaker 1: of Washington to convince people to vote no on ballot

1193
01:05:46,480 --> 01:05:49,320
Speaker 1: Initiative one six three one, which would have placed an

1194
01:05:49,320 --> 01:05:52,480
Speaker 1: annual rising fee on c O two, and this ballot

1195
01:05:52,480 --> 01:05:55,040
Speaker 1: initiative was in fact defeated in the state of Washington.

1196
01:05:55,360 --> 01:05:57,960
Speaker 1: They spent two hundred thousand dollars in Alaska on the

1197
01:05:58,000 --> 01:06:01,080
Speaker 1: stand for Alaska Vote No. One one campaign. That money

1198
01:06:01,160 --> 01:06:04,880
Speaker 1: was contributed by Exxon Mobile and BP. The ballot initiative

1199
01:06:04,880 --> 01:06:07,840
Speaker 1: in that campaign would have increased environmental protections and impacted

1200
01:06:07,880 --> 01:06:10,240
Speaker 1: resource development, would have reduced the amount of places they

1201
01:06:10,280 --> 01:06:13,080
Speaker 1: could suck wail out of and that ballot initiative was defeated.

1202
01:06:13,440 --> 01:06:17,400
Speaker 1: They spent another two thousand dollars In Colorado. The corporates

1203
01:06:17,440 --> 01:06:19,960
Speaker 1: there were the Exxon Mobile in the American Petroleum Institute.

1204
01:06:20,160 --> 01:06:22,080
Speaker 1: This was to defeat a ballot initiative that would have

1205
01:06:22,120 --> 01:06:25,160
Speaker 1: limited areas available for oil and gas development, and they

1206
01:06:25,160 --> 01:06:29,120
Speaker 1: succeeded in defeating this ballot initiative. In Texas, Exxon Mobile

1207
01:06:29,240 --> 01:06:34,040
Speaker 1: UH and some other petroleum innistry UH companies spent about

1208
01:06:34,040 --> 01:06:36,640
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand dollars supporting the campaign of Ted Cruz

1209
01:06:36,680 --> 01:06:39,680
Speaker 1: to defeat betto o Ork in the mid term elections. UH.

1210
01:06:39,720 --> 01:06:43,480
Speaker 1: In Louisiana, Xon alone spent a hundred thousand dollars trying

1211
01:06:43,520 --> 01:06:48,200
Speaker 1: to like prevent um UH federal like like predact event

1212
01:06:48,200 --> 01:06:51,080
Speaker 1: more regulations on like drilling off shores. Like this is

1213
01:06:51,120 --> 01:06:53,360
Speaker 1: like an example like the kind of where all this

1214
01:06:53,600 --> 01:06:57,680
Speaker 1: money goes, Like it's not just trying to obscure the

1215
01:06:57,720 --> 01:07:00,360
Speaker 1: debate over climate change by making a look there is

1216
01:07:00,360 --> 01:07:04,440
Speaker 1: a debate. It's like very targeted and stopping specific ballot initiatives.

1217
01:07:04,480 --> 01:07:07,120
Speaker 1: Like there's this, and I don't think there's much understanding

1218
01:07:07,120 --> 01:07:09,240
Speaker 1: of like what is actually going on at the local

1219
01:07:09,320 --> 01:07:12,120
Speaker 1: level to increase the factory. These companies are able to

1220
01:07:12,160 --> 01:07:16,000
Speaker 1: go after um, but it's extensive, like and it they

1221
01:07:16,000 --> 01:07:17,640
Speaker 1: get a lot of bang for their buck. A hundred

1222
01:07:17,680 --> 01:07:19,800
Speaker 1: thousand dollars is not a lot of money in the

1223
01:07:19,800 --> 01:07:23,160
Speaker 1: context of like national politics, but it's enough that Exxon

1224
01:07:23,240 --> 01:07:25,960
Speaker 1: can stop a little law in Louisiana aimed at reducing

1225
01:07:25,960 --> 01:07:28,520
Speaker 1: the amount of places they can drill. It's not a lot,

1226
01:07:28,880 --> 01:07:31,480
Speaker 1: you know, but it's enough to help Senator Ted Cruz

1227
01:07:31,520 --> 01:07:34,880
Speaker 1: defeat Beto O'Rourke and continue to give them like an

1228
01:07:34,880 --> 01:07:36,640
Speaker 1: open hand on whatever the funk they want to do

1229
01:07:36,680 --> 01:07:39,480
Speaker 1: in Texas. So the question we're left with at the

1230
01:07:39,520 --> 01:07:41,680
Speaker 1: end of this is what do we do about these people?

1231
01:07:41,960 --> 01:07:44,160
Speaker 1: How do we actually fight back? Are we doomed to

1232
01:07:44,240 --> 01:07:47,200
Speaker 1: just lob a series of mostly hopeless lawsuits at them

1233
01:07:47,240 --> 01:07:50,640
Speaker 1: and the the the vain belief that one of them

1234
01:07:50,720 --> 01:07:53,640
Speaker 1: might net a couple of million dollars in fines. Even

1235
01:07:53,680 --> 01:07:56,360
Speaker 1: if they were find a billion dollars ten billion dollars,

1236
01:07:56,440 --> 01:07:58,840
Speaker 1: that wouldn't be enough to punish any of these companies

1237
01:07:58,960 --> 01:08:01,720
Speaker 1: or the people behind them. The only answer I can

1238
01:08:01,760 --> 01:08:04,320
Speaker 1: see is something our current legal system does not make

1239
01:08:04,400 --> 01:08:08,880
Speaker 1: room for something unprecedented. Attribution science offers us a chance

1240
01:08:08,880 --> 01:08:11,240
Speaker 1: to actually determine the relative levels of guilt for each

1241
01:08:11,240 --> 01:08:14,400
Speaker 1: of these companies and the individuals inside them. What we

1242
01:08:14,480 --> 01:08:17,040
Speaker 1: need is a modern equivalent of the Nuremberg Trial for

1243
01:08:17,080 --> 01:08:20,479
Speaker 1: these people, a comprehensive, sweeping attempt to actually do justice

1244
01:08:20,520 --> 01:08:24,559
Speaker 1: by charging the individual human beings responsible for the crimes

1245
01:08:24,560 --> 01:08:29,439
Speaker 1: they've committed and levying criminal penalties against individuals like Rex Tillerson,

1246
01:08:29,840 --> 01:08:32,360
Speaker 1: rather than just finding their companies a pittance of the

1247
01:08:32,400 --> 01:08:35,880
Speaker 1: amount of money they made committing crimes. Now, as with

1248
01:08:35,920 --> 01:08:38,719
Speaker 1: the Nuremberg trials, this will require a number of things

1249
01:08:38,720 --> 01:08:41,880
Speaker 1: that are not considered legally ideal. Many of the things

1250
01:08:41,880 --> 01:08:44,120
Speaker 1: these people did were not crimes in the law code

1251
01:08:44,120 --> 01:08:46,479
Speaker 1: when they committed them. The same was true of the

1252
01:08:46,520 --> 01:08:50,000
Speaker 1: crimes of men like Julius Striker, General Alfred Yodel and

1253
01:08:50,120 --> 01:08:53,000
Speaker 1: Hans Frank, But the world decided that the crimes those

1254
01:08:53,000 --> 01:08:55,200
Speaker 1: been committed were too grave and the cost too dear

1255
01:08:55,360 --> 01:08:57,400
Speaker 1: to risk letting them get off without punishment. And I

1256
01:08:57,400 --> 01:08:59,840
Speaker 1: think you can make the same argument in this situation.

1257
01:09:00,280 --> 01:09:04,120
Speaker 1: So that's my fucking rant. I don't know, I agree.

1258
01:09:04,200 --> 01:09:10,880
Speaker 1: I totally agree. Maybe maybe hanging isn't a bad idea.

1259
01:09:10,960 --> 01:09:15,559
Speaker 1: Sometimes I would go with something more appropriate for these people,

1260
01:09:16,240 --> 01:09:20,240
Speaker 1: like some kind of eco death, you know, put them

1261
01:09:20,240 --> 01:09:24,040
Speaker 1: in a mushroom suit. If I'm honestly, yeah, I like,

1262
01:09:24,320 --> 01:09:30,960
Speaker 1: I get frustrated and uh seek more objectively barbaric. Yeah,

1263
01:09:30,960 --> 01:09:34,519
Speaker 1: hanging has too much baggage culturally and too much culture.

1264
01:09:34,600 --> 01:09:37,679
Speaker 1: I think, um, like digging a hole in the earth

1265
01:09:38,280 --> 01:09:40,920
Speaker 1: and letting these be these people be consumed by the

1266
01:09:41,000 --> 01:09:46,080
Speaker 1: earth that they destroyed, would be nice. I I actually

1267
01:09:46,120 --> 01:09:48,400
Speaker 1: think if you really wanted to penalize them in the

1268
01:09:48,479 --> 01:09:51,640
Speaker 1: maximum way, you take away all of their money and

1269
01:09:51,720 --> 01:09:54,040
Speaker 1: you make them spend the rest of their lives living

1270
01:09:54,520 --> 01:10:01,519
Speaker 1: in like random towns in America working jobs. I definitely

1271
01:10:01,520 --> 01:10:04,960
Speaker 1: think the solution to everything is to undercover boss all

1272
01:10:05,040 --> 01:10:08,920
Speaker 1: the work well yeah, and just have like every time

1273
01:10:08,920 --> 01:10:11,479
Speaker 1: there's a hot day, you know, as Rex Tillerson goes

1274
01:10:11,520 --> 01:10:14,000
Speaker 1: into his shift at the waffle house, his his his

1275
01:10:14,080 --> 01:10:17,880
Speaker 1: fellow coworkers are like thanks, motherfucker. Like, or whenever they're

1276
01:10:17,920 --> 01:10:21,000
Speaker 1: a hurricane hits and it damages people's houses, they're like, yeah,

1277
01:10:21,040 --> 01:10:23,200
Speaker 1: thanks for that, fucking Rex, like and he has to

1278
01:10:23,240 --> 01:10:26,479
Speaker 1: just deal with that every day um goes home smelling

1279
01:10:26,520 --> 01:10:29,280
Speaker 1: a fucking hash browns and stuff as he works like

1280
01:10:29,320 --> 01:10:35,200
Speaker 1: a normal person and is never violently attacked for his crimes,

1281
01:10:35,240 --> 01:10:39,160
Speaker 1: but lives every day with everyone around him knowing what

1282
01:10:39,200 --> 01:10:41,400
Speaker 1: a piece of ship he is and how he contributed

1283
01:10:41,439 --> 01:10:45,320
Speaker 1: to their shared misery. That that I think would be

1284
01:10:45,360 --> 01:10:52,000
Speaker 1: a really fair penalty. I agree, Molly, how are you

1285
01:10:52,000 --> 01:10:57,000
Speaker 1: feeling feeling feeling a little depressed? Not gonna lie. Yeah,

1286
01:10:57,080 --> 01:11:00,559
Speaker 1: it's not great. It's not great. Uh. It just makes

1287
01:11:00,600 --> 01:11:03,960
Speaker 1: you wanna go, like eat a cheeseburger and use a

1288
01:11:03,960 --> 01:11:08,080
Speaker 1: plastic single use plastic bottle and just fuck it man.

1289
01:11:09,880 --> 01:11:13,439
Speaker 1: Or invest in angle grinders the only grinder solution for

1290
01:11:13,479 --> 01:11:18,719
Speaker 1: grinding angles. Yeah, that's very useful information, actually, very very useful,

1291
01:11:18,720 --> 01:11:20,200
Speaker 1: And I mean I do want to know more like

1292
01:11:20,320 --> 01:11:26,400
Speaker 1: leftist prepper facts from Robert, but avoid harbor freight. You know,

1293
01:11:26,479 --> 01:11:29,519
Speaker 1: they're more affordable, but they tend to be pretty low quality.

1294
01:11:29,720 --> 01:11:32,280
Speaker 1: Like if you if you just roll into roll in

1295
01:11:32,439 --> 01:11:34,719
Speaker 1: and like like an off hour into a home depot,

1296
01:11:34,760 --> 01:11:38,559
Speaker 1: you can usually find some like old dude, uh, kind

1297
01:11:38,560 --> 01:11:40,840
Speaker 1: of crusty looking with a beard, who can tell you

1298
01:11:40,920 --> 01:11:44,599
Speaker 1: everything you need to know about angle grinders. Um yeah,

1299
01:11:45,840 --> 01:11:47,840
Speaker 1: especially if you live in Los Angeles. Great town to

1300
01:11:47,880 --> 01:11:49,920
Speaker 1: buy an angle grind. L A has the best fucking

1301
01:11:50,000 --> 01:11:53,080
Speaker 1: home depots in the world. Love those home depots don't

1302
01:11:54,880 --> 01:11:59,240
Speaker 1: open places, really tall shelves. I love Home Depot. I

1303
01:11:59,240 --> 01:12:02,160
Speaker 1: find it so so thing. I don't like Costco. I

1304
01:12:02,160 --> 01:12:04,760
Speaker 1: don't like Home Deeper. I don't like those what about

1305
01:12:04,800 --> 01:12:08,760
Speaker 1: Target But their shelves aren't like super duper duper duper high.

1306
01:12:08,800 --> 01:12:10,640
Speaker 1: But don't you ever feel like to feel like a

1307
01:12:10,680 --> 01:12:14,360
Speaker 1: tiny speck of dust and a home deepoverse? No? No,

1308
01:12:14,680 --> 01:12:16,720
Speaker 1: I do like their plant department. Yeah. I like to

1309
01:12:16,760 --> 01:12:18,960
Speaker 1: get lost in the plants. The plant departments. I take

1310
01:12:18,960 --> 01:12:21,640
Speaker 1: it back Home Deeper your sorry. The plant zone is

1311
01:12:22,479 --> 01:12:25,280
Speaker 1: especially during Christmas tree season. Just wander around those trees.

1312
01:12:25,320 --> 01:12:27,360
Speaker 1: They got the best cheap trees. That's cheap trees in

1313
01:12:27,479 --> 01:12:29,760
Speaker 1: l A. For sure. This is turned into a home

1314
01:12:29,800 --> 01:12:35,800
Speaker 1: deepo ad Yeah, home depot that will sell you the

1315
01:12:35,840 --> 01:12:41,640
Speaker 1: tools you need to rebel against constituted authority. Um yeah,

1316
01:12:42,080 --> 01:12:47,519
Speaker 1: cool stuff, cool stuff. Well, Molly, you want to plug

1317
01:12:47,520 --> 01:12:51,640
Speaker 1: your plug doubles? Please? Everybody listen to Night Call podcasts

1318
01:12:51,680 --> 01:12:55,080
Speaker 1: also on the I Heart Radio podcast network and also

1319
01:12:55,160 --> 01:12:58,280
Speaker 1: check out no Olympics at no Olympics l a dot com.

1320
01:12:58,600 --> 01:13:01,599
Speaker 1: Um I would love to see the International Olympic Committee

1321
01:13:01,680 --> 01:13:06,760
Speaker 1: roasted on bastards sometime because truly a cabal of supervillains,

1322
01:13:07,400 --> 01:13:10,800
Speaker 1: the true monsters in humans and and honestly like part

1323
01:13:10,840 --> 01:13:15,679
Speaker 1: of sucking up the environment. Real bad they are now.

1324
01:13:15,920 --> 01:13:19,519
Speaker 1: Can you believe that they're holding events at Fukushima for

1325
01:13:19,600 --> 01:13:24,960
Speaker 1: the Games and they have not You're finished irradiating the soil,

1326
01:13:25,160 --> 01:13:28,599
Speaker 1: So it's almost like they just plow ahead with their

1327
01:13:28,600 --> 01:13:31,439
Speaker 1: plans even as climate change makes it harder and harder

1328
01:13:31,439 --> 01:13:35,360
Speaker 1: to hold outdoor sports events because of the temperature going

1329
01:13:35,439 --> 01:13:38,479
Speaker 1: up so much in the summer. Molly, I feel like

1330
01:13:38,520 --> 01:13:41,440
Speaker 1: what you're trying to tell me, which is fundamentally ridiculous,

1331
01:13:41,880 --> 01:13:45,559
Speaker 1: is that the city of Los Angeles, a city that

1332
01:13:45,680 --> 01:13:48,160
Speaker 1: bakes in the summer much of the year, that has

1333
01:13:48,240 --> 01:13:53,440
Speaker 1: severe drought problems, that is surrounded regularly by horrific wildfires,

1334
01:13:53,640 --> 01:13:56,479
Speaker 1: and that has the worst traffic of anywhere in the nation.

1335
01:13:56,680 --> 01:13:58,760
Speaker 1: You're telling me this is a bad place to hold

1336
01:13:58,800 --> 01:14:00,960
Speaker 1: the Olympics in the future. Would you believe that a

1337
01:14:01,000 --> 01:14:04,519
Speaker 1: city that can't deal with its own housing crisis and

1338
01:14:04,800 --> 01:14:09,040
Speaker 1: has perpetually failed the most vulnerable people in the city

1339
01:14:09,240 --> 01:14:13,280
Speaker 1: and failed to give them proper housing and shelter. Would

1340
01:14:13,320 --> 01:14:15,840
Speaker 1: think they should be doing anything else but working on

1341
01:14:16,000 --> 01:14:19,679
Speaker 1: fixing that by building housing. For that to be relevant,

1342
01:14:19,720 --> 01:14:21,080
Speaker 1: you would have to be able to cite to me

1343
01:14:21,160 --> 01:14:23,760
Speaker 1: evidence from I don't know, let's say more than eight

1344
01:14:23,800 --> 01:14:27,240
Speaker 1: cities that the Olympics increases the cost of housing in

1345
01:14:27,240 --> 01:14:30,559
Speaker 1: a city that holds and I doubt you can honestly

1346
01:14:30,640 --> 01:14:35,240
Speaker 1: name more than Why don't you check out no Olympics.

1347
01:14:35,720 --> 01:14:39,040
Speaker 1: I've got at least thirty to forty How long has

1348
01:14:39,080 --> 01:14:41,400
Speaker 1: the game's been going on? That's how long they've been

1349
01:14:41,439 --> 01:14:46,160
Speaker 1: fucking shut up, funck the Olympics, the Olympics. The Nazis

1350
01:14:46,200 --> 01:14:54,880
Speaker 1: invented the torch rel a Uh, Nazis like torches, naziszy stuff.

1351
01:14:55,320 --> 01:15:00,400
Speaker 1: Nazis like weird Freemasonic fascist assemblies of body. He's all

1352
01:15:00,479 --> 01:15:05,519
Speaker 1: moving in in synchronicity. I mean, nothing you're saying is

1353
01:15:05,560 --> 01:15:07,920
Speaker 1: familiar to me as someone who researches all of this

1354
01:15:08,120 --> 01:15:10,720
Speaker 1: term like professionally. Please do I think I don't know

1355
01:15:10,720 --> 01:15:13,360
Speaker 1: if you've done Lenny reefinstall yet either, And but please, oh,

1356
01:15:13,400 --> 01:15:15,240
Speaker 1: we're gonna we have a that's gonna be a fund.

1357
01:15:15,400 --> 01:15:18,120
Speaker 1: The problem is that like hate her. It's kind of

1358
01:15:18,160 --> 01:15:20,120
Speaker 1: hard to Yeah, yeah, it'll be well, well, we'll get

1359
01:15:20,120 --> 01:15:22,880
Speaker 1: to her. She's a bad directors, bad director. And then

1360
01:15:22,920 --> 01:15:28,840
Speaker 1: she was wrongly brought back as like a feminist hero filmmaker,

1361
01:15:28,960 --> 01:15:32,960
Speaker 1: but feminist icon that Nazi lady. Yeah, the Nazi lady

1362
01:15:33,040 --> 01:15:38,439
Speaker 1: who's not even good at at making movies. Um strong

1363
01:15:38,520 --> 01:15:42,080
Speaker 1: takes strong, Strong takes. You know, you're gonna catch some

1364
01:15:42,160 --> 01:15:44,320
Speaker 1: hell on Twitter for that, because we have a lot

1365
01:15:44,400 --> 01:15:46,519
Speaker 1: of Lenny Reef install fans. You know what, there's more

1366
01:15:46,520 --> 01:15:48,439
Speaker 1: than you think, because I do say this all the

1367
01:15:48,439 --> 01:15:51,160
Speaker 1: time and people are always like, but the shots in

1368
01:15:51,360 --> 01:15:53,280
Speaker 1: a Priumph of the Will, and I'm like, yeah, they're

1369
01:15:53,280 --> 01:15:58,840
Speaker 1: fucking shitty and it's a boring movie anyone who's watched

1370
01:15:58,840 --> 01:16:01,320
Speaker 1: that whole thing ever, But if you look at how

1371
01:16:01,360 --> 01:16:04,360
Speaker 1: the Olympics are shown on television, it's just like Triumph

1372
01:16:04,400 --> 01:16:08,240
Speaker 1: of the Will. They just uncritically sort of, you know,

1373
01:16:08,520 --> 01:16:12,200
Speaker 1: praise the idealized human form, and I don't talk about

1374
01:16:12,240 --> 01:16:14,640
Speaker 1: all the fun they're doing in the cities or they

1375
01:16:14,640 --> 01:16:17,719
Speaker 1: hold them. So thanks for letting me do m spiel.

1376
01:16:18,560 --> 01:16:23,679
Speaker 1: Thanks for letting thanks for that spiel, and I just

1377
01:16:24,080 --> 01:16:28,479
Speaker 1: I feel like you are unreasonably slandering an event that

1378
01:16:29,960 --> 01:16:32,719
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't have a joke. Let's let's

1379
01:16:32,720 --> 01:16:38,160
Speaker 1: replace the Olympics with people failing to ski and harming themselves.

1380
01:16:38,360 --> 01:16:41,200
Speaker 1: Make it a real amateurs conventioned only if you want

1381
01:16:41,200 --> 01:16:43,519
Speaker 1: to have a skiing competition, only people who have never

1382
01:16:43,600 --> 01:16:54,080
Speaker 1: put on Let's replace the Olympics a worker owned jackass. Yeah,

1383
01:16:54,400 --> 01:16:58,000
Speaker 1: and I think we should really gear it towards Instagram

1384
01:16:58,040 --> 01:17:02,559
Speaker 1: influencers with the goal of ding out their numbers. I

1385
01:17:02,600 --> 01:17:08,799
Speaker 1: think they're doing that themselves. Wow, we have really gone

1386
01:17:08,800 --> 01:17:11,760
Speaker 1: on the war path today. Well, I want to say,

1387
01:17:11,840 --> 01:17:14,120
Speaker 1: last time I did this podcast, I believe the other

1388
01:17:14,240 --> 01:17:17,920
Speaker 1: Robert Evans was still alive. And now you're the only

1389
01:17:18,000 --> 01:17:22,599
Speaker 1: Robert Evans. So congratulations on being the soul Robert Evans.

1390
01:17:23,000 --> 01:17:26,679
Speaker 1: I am the last bearer of the name. You could

1391
01:17:26,880 --> 01:17:33,800
Speaker 1: start wearing a cravat and just I am regularly inhaling

1392
01:17:33,840 --> 01:17:39,200
Speaker 1: my body weight and cocaine to honor his memory. R

1393
01:17:39,280 --> 01:17:43,200
Speaker 1: I p to the other Robert Evans and long may

1394
01:17:43,240 --> 01:17:47,000
Speaker 1: you live real Robert Evans. Not with all this cocaine

1395
01:17:47,000 --> 01:17:48,559
Speaker 1: I'm doing I'm gonna tell you that much right now.

1396
01:17:48,760 --> 01:17:52,040
Speaker 1: Are you sure it's not a ski jump? No. Never.

1397
01:17:52,439 --> 01:17:55,000
Speaker 1: I will watch ski fails, but I will never go skiing.

1398
01:17:55,160 --> 01:17:57,040
Speaker 1: Everybody has to do a lot of cocaine and then

1399
01:17:57,080 --> 01:18:01,240
Speaker 1: do skiing. Those are the future games, the new Olympics rules,

1400
01:18:01,320 --> 01:18:04,639
Speaker 1: and we only the only place it's legal to hold

1401
01:18:04,760 --> 01:18:08,040
Speaker 1: they Again, we might just be describing the Nazi Olympics again,

1402
01:18:08,320 --> 01:18:11,639
Speaker 1: just doing a lot of speed and skiing. Yeah, but

1403
01:18:12,000 --> 01:18:15,679
Speaker 1: the goal is to watch people agree to do something

1404
01:18:15,800 --> 01:18:19,200
Speaker 1: dangerous and get hurt. And that's fine, that's noble. That's

1405
01:18:19,200 --> 01:18:20,800
Speaker 1: going to be when we get to the Hunger Games,

1406
01:18:20,800 --> 01:18:25,320
Speaker 1: which will be any moment now probably. Yeah. Yeah. That.

1407
01:18:26,400 --> 01:18:33,040
Speaker 1: On that note, I'm Robert Evans and Molly Lambert. He

1408
01:18:33,120 --> 01:18:35,760
Speaker 1: wants to say you can follow him on Twitter at

1409
01:18:35,760 --> 01:18:40,320
Speaker 1: irit Okay, you can follow us at Bastard's Thought on

1410
01:18:40,360 --> 01:18:43,360
Speaker 1: the twin Instagram and we have a t public store

1411
01:18:43,760 --> 01:18:46,280
Speaker 1: and he's doing a live show with Billy Wayne Davis

1412
01:18:46,560 --> 01:18:50,960
Speaker 1: in l A on March at Dynasty Typewriter. I do

1413
01:18:51,000 --> 01:18:54,240
Speaker 1: it all, Robert, I don't know. I have forgotten my

1414
01:18:54,360 --> 01:18:58,799
Speaker 1: name in the face of my father. Great, the episode

1415
01:18:58,880 --> 01:19:03,719
Speaker 1: is over. Great,