Speaker 1: But nope. Shit. Uh well, I'm Robert Evans. This is
Speaker 1: another failed introduction. I don't I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: know why I keep I keep trying new things. It's
Speaker 1: a bad idea to try new things. I should just
Speaker 1: go back to what works, but I am permanently trapped
Speaker 1: in a cycle of new attempts at success that in
Speaker 1: only in failure. Anyway. My guest today Molly Lambert, Nightcall
Speaker 1: podcast host. How are you doing? Molly? Excellent? Molly. I
Speaker 1: like the new and trow thank you, just just the
Speaker 1: word butts. It's better than Hitler. Yeah. Um, this is
Speaker 1: a podcast where we talking about bad people. Molly. You
Speaker 1: know that because you've been a guest on here before.
Speaker 1: I'm ready ready to find out again who the worst
Speaker 1: people of all time are. I am not ready. I
Speaker 1: am strung at as fun because I got back from
Speaker 1: a red eye from d C yesterday and I feel miserable.
Speaker 1: But it's appropriate that I just got off of a
Speaker 1: plane because planes are a major contributor to climate change,
Speaker 1: and today we're talking about the bastards who covered up
Speaker 1: climate change back when we could have done something about
Speaker 1: it more easily. Molly, how do you feel about x
Speaker 1: On Mobile. Are you a fan? Are you a mobis
Speaker 1: stan Um? Aren't we all little little x on xcs xcs.
Speaker 1: Oh that's a good one. That was a band right
Speaker 1: in like the early two thousand's. It's definitely a band. Probably, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember listening to them when I was a depressed teenager. Well, Molly,
Speaker 1: if you had to choose between let's say, x On
Speaker 1: Mobile Chevron, Uh, what's another big one shell shell? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Would would would? Which is? Which? Is going to be? Like?
Speaker 1: You're who are you gonna like root for? I mean,
Speaker 1: we're recording this on Valentine's Day. It's like I feel
Speaker 1: like we're in a love quadrangle? Who can choose among
Speaker 1: so many great suits? I think fine products? Yet I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't really know enough about the difference between the
Speaker 1: oil companies. I just know they're all pretty bad. I
Speaker 1: do remember, I do remember was Exxon responsible for perhaps
Speaker 1: an oil spill? They share work now in their defense.
Speaker 1: How could you higher a captain for a boat filled
Speaker 1: with volatile fluids and make sure he's sober at the
Speaker 1: same time. That's an impossible barrier. I mean, I do
Speaker 1: know that people go out on the oil wells for
Speaker 1: like months at a time. Yes, the documentary Armageddon informed
Speaker 1: me of that. Is that the documentary about how people
Speaker 1: put animal crackers on each other's stomachs as well? Is
Speaker 1: that in Armageddon? Do I need to rewatch Armageddon? That's
Speaker 1: the one with Affleck, right, Yes, oh yeah, that's definitely
Speaker 1: the animal crackers romantic sequence the that's I just I'm
Speaker 1: thinking back on it now and I've realized that in
Speaker 1: my memory the movie Armageddon has been condensed to the
Speaker 1: scene where Bruce Willis points a shotgun at Ben Affleck,
Speaker 1: the scene where they have that machine gun on an
Speaker 1: asteroid for some reason up an asteroid. They have to
Speaker 1: blow up an asteroid, but a machine anyway, there's like
Speaker 1: three minutes from that movie in the Criterion collection. It
Speaker 1: should be so all right, well, let's just well, let's
Speaker 1: let's we should we should get into this thing that
Speaker 1: I wrote about these people that I hate, and then
Speaker 1: I hope you'll hate with me, because that's what the
Speaker 1: show is about, hating together. Yeah. In two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: and internal x and report from the nineteen eighties, which
Speaker 1: discussed the reality of climate change, was leaked out to
Speaker 1: the public via The Guardian. In two thousands seventeen, a
Speaker 1: Dutch news organization released a similar report from Shell. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna guess most of the people listening have heard
Speaker 1: at least a little bit about both of these disclosures.
Speaker 1: You've heard about this, right, Molly, Like, yeah, yeah. The
Speaker 1: story is generally summarized and outrage social media posts. Is
Speaker 1: this exon Shell slash whoever knew about climate change for
Speaker 1: decades and hid their research? And this is more or
Speaker 1: less accurate, Like it's close enough for Twitter. But you'll
Speaker 1: notice if you hop over to Google right now, those
Speaker 1: of you who aren't actively pooping or driving to work
Speaker 1: while you listen to podcasts. If you if you hop
Speaker 1: over to Google and you type in XON covered up
Speaker 1: climate change the first two of the six million results,
Speaker 1: you'll receive our articles from xn's own website with titles
Speaker 1: like x on Mobile, don't be Misled, Understanding the facts
Speaker 1: and understanding the hashtag x on new Controversy by X
Speaker 1: on Mobile. So obviously I'm biased. I mean, who can
Speaker 1: we trust for unbiased reporting on X on Mobile? But
Speaker 1: started out there and the blog sphere. It's like, how
Speaker 1: the very best people to report on whether or not
Speaker 1: police departments are responsibly using force. Are members of those
Speaker 1: police departments, which is why we have such excellent statistics
Speaker 1: on police use of force. What could be better than
Speaker 1: an internal review? Yeah, I mean, at this job, I
Speaker 1: am responsible for making sure I am sober enough to work,
Speaker 1: which is why I have been sober enough to work
Speaker 1: a hundred percent of the days when I've done this podcast,
Speaker 1: even the one where I was actively tripling on asset,
Speaker 1: which one was that it's a secret. It's a secret
Speaker 1: to everybody, which is proof that the self monitoring thing
Speaker 1: is flawless. So I agree, you won't his mom, I
Speaker 1: will not. I will not. It's a secret for only me.
Speaker 1: So today I'm going to tell everybody the story of
Speaker 1: how this sorry state of affairs came to be. It
Speaker 1: didn't start in the nineteen eighties, which is when all
Speaker 1: those now leaked reports were written. It actually starts further
Speaker 1: back nineteen fifty nine, when physicist Edward Teller warn't the
Speaker 1: oil and gas industry about global warming and a keynote
Speaker 1: address at the Energy and Man Symposium UH nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: nine was seen as the hundred year anniversary of the
Speaker 1: oil and gas industry, and so the event was a
Speaker 1: celebration of petroleum and its cousins, but Edward Teller did
Speaker 1: not take to the stage to celebrate. Instead, he gave
Speaker 1: out a grave warning to the executives assembled. He said, quote,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen, I am here to talk to you
Speaker 1: about energy in the future. I will start by telling
Speaker 1: you why I believe that the energy resources of the
Speaker 1: past must be supplemented. First of all, these energy resources
Speaker 1: will run short as we use more and more of
Speaker 1: the fossil fuels. But I would like to mention another
Speaker 1: reason why we probably have to look for additional fuel supplies.
Speaker 1: And this, strangely, is the question of contaminating the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: Whenever you burn conventional fuel, you create carbon dioxide. The
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide is invisible, it is transparent, you can't smell it.
Speaker 1: It is not dangerous to health, so why should one
Speaker 1: worry about it? Carbon dioxide has a strange property who
Speaker 1: transmits visible light but absorbs the infrared radiation which is
Speaker 1: emitted from the Earth. Its presence in the atmosphere causes
Speaker 1: a greenhouse effect. It has been calculated that a temperature
Speaker 1: rise corresponding to a ten increase in carbon dioxide will
Speaker 1: be sufficient to melt the ice cap and submerge New York.
Speaker 1: All coastal cities would be covered. And since a considerable
Speaker 1: percentage of the human race lives in coastal regions, I
Speaker 1: think that this chemical contamination is more serious than most
Speaker 1: people tend to believe. So that's nineteen fifty nine wolf. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's a I mean, yeah, spot on. I mean, we
Speaker 1: might quibble with him saying that, uh, you know, carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide is not dangerous to health, but I think he's
Speaker 1: saying specifically that, like, you're not gonna get sick from
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide poisoning because of gasoline. Um, you won't be
Speaker 1: able to tell it's happening until it's here. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: So they have this warning in nineteen fifty nine, and
Speaker 1: we do not know how Teller's audience reacted in that
Speaker 1: moment because nobody was really taking notes, but we know
Speaker 1: that they did not heed his warning. Eight years later,
Speaker 1: Robert Dunlop, head of the American Patroleum Institute, took to
Speaker 1: the halls of Congress to argue that electric cars were
Speaker 1: not a practical investment, but the time they reached a
Speaker 1: point of utility, he said, science would allow for emission
Speaker 1: free gasoline vehicles. You may notice that this has not happened,
Speaker 1: nor is it closed to happen. Yeah. Yeah, so he
Speaker 1: went up being wrong. Now, this might not have been
Speaker 1: a lie at the time. People believed stupid things about
Speaker 1: the future back then, like the Jetsons was on the
Speaker 1: air flying cars. Yeah, exactly. So maybe he just was
Speaker 1: really sure that we'd we'd hit that point. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people are just sort of like, we'll
Speaker 1: figure it out later, you know, which is the problem
Speaker 1: with everything, but especially with environmental issues. Being like the people,
Speaker 1: this will be the burden of the people of the
Speaker 1: future to figure out, not mine, just do my job
Speaker 1: making all the money by drilling all the oil out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's weird. There's always this like this idea that Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll figure out the technology necessary to like solve our
Speaker 1: environmental problems before they become critical. But then when it
Speaker 1: comes time to actually, you know, use the resources capitalism
Speaker 1: uh has uh in order to devote manpower and brain
Speaker 1: power towards like research, they all wind up making dick
Speaker 1: pills and baldness as opposed to making emissions. Doesn't want
Speaker 1: to do anything that doesn't just make a lot of
Speaker 1: money and is easy. Um there even yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a good documentary about Rachel Carson, who wrote Silent Spring. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you've seen that documentary. It's awesome because she's another person
Speaker 1: who was like, hey, d d T is like gonna
Speaker 1: give people health problems, and it was like actively buried
Speaker 1: by the d d T lobby. But also because everyone
Speaker 1: around her was like, it's a scientific innovation. We cannot
Speaker 1: stand in the way of progress. Each new thing we
Speaker 1: invent to exploit the environment is a or a coal
Speaker 1: on the earth. So I don't know that we've gotten
Speaker 1: out of that mindset really either, judging by like what
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley thinks are the cool new things to invent.
Speaker 1: We never will get out of that mindset because we're
Speaker 1: very dumb. Or maybe we will, and I'm just a
Speaker 1: pessimist because I spent all these hours researching X on
Speaker 1: Mobile and Shell and Chevron and tell me more So. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Dunlop like gets up in front of fucking Congress and
Speaker 1: he's like, electric cars are stupid. We're gonna have emissions
Speaker 1: free gasoline. That's what we ought to be working on.
Speaker 1: And you know, the very next year after he does this,
Speaker 1: he receives a report that the American Petroleum Institute had
Speaker 1: commissioned from Stanford UH, and this report warned that carbon
Speaker 1: diaccid emissions would lead directly to global warming and quote
Speaker 1: serious worldwide environmental changes. So nifty nine Teller gets up
Speaker 1: on warns people about this. Nineteen sixty seven, Robert Dunlop
Speaker 1: takes to Congress and says that you know, none of
Speaker 1: this is going to be a big issue. And then
Speaker 1: the very next year his own organization gets a report
Speaker 1: saying like we need to immediately start reducing carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: emissions or horrible things are going to happen now. Dunlop
Speaker 1: died in ninet He had a son, Richard G. Dunlop,
Speaker 1: and a daughter, Barbara, neither of which I've been able
Speaker 1: to find much out about. One presumes they're quite well off,
Speaker 1: but since their dad shares the name of a member
Speaker 1: of an Irish motorcycle dynasty who died tragically, the Google
Speaker 1: results for them are kind of a mess. UH. And
Speaker 1: we've got a lot more ground to cover here. So
Speaker 1: while Dunlop deserves much blame for ignoring the early signs
Speaker 1: of climate change, it must be noted that there were
Speaker 1: warnings the broader American populace could have accessed and heated
Speaker 1: if they had wanted to do so. UH. In nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty five, philosopher Murray book Chin published Crisis in Our Cities,
Speaker 1: a book about the negative consequences of urbanization UH. In it,
Speaker 1: he noted, quote man's increased burning of coal and oil
Speaker 1: is annually adding six million tons of carbon dioxide to
Speaker 1: the air. This blanket of carbon dioxide tends to raise
Speaker 1: the Earth's atmosphere by intercepting heat waves going from the
Speaker 1: Earth into our or space. Book Chain was well ahead
Speaker 1: of the curve on a number of environmental issues, including
Speaker 1: the damage modern agriculture was doing the soil structure, but
Speaker 1: no one listened to him. Part of the problem was that,
Speaker 1: according to cultural critic Theodore Rozack, nobody cared to believe
Speaker 1: the problem was so vast. Another reason why Bookchin was
Speaker 1: ignored had to do with the fact that he was
Speaker 1: an anarchist, and he suggested a fundamental revolution and human
Speaker 1: civil organization as this way to combat climate change. So,
Speaker 1: while it's important to point out and we're going to
Speaker 1: spend the rest of this episode talking about all the
Speaker 1: factory that oil and gas companies engaged to cover up
Speaker 1: this stuff. We should note that there were people very
Speaker 1: uh accurately predicting the problems in the future as far
Speaker 1: back as the nineteen sixties. And yeah, it's just it's
Speaker 1: it's very frustrating when you dig into all this, like
Speaker 1: the number of warnings that we had, but also, like
Speaker 1: I do think you have to have a little bit
Speaker 1: of understanding for like our parents and grandparents and the
Speaker 1: reason they didn't pay attention to this because in the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, like we had all these fucking nuclear weapons
Speaker 1: at everybody believe we're gonna get fired any day, and
Speaker 1: like there was this this very real worry that like
Speaker 1: the world was going to end at any moment, Like
Speaker 1: my dad did like those those like duck and cover
Speaker 1: drills where he'd get underneath the table because they were
Speaker 1: afraid that nukes were going to come. So you can
Speaker 1: also like, well you have where while like it's frustrating
Speaker 1: that they had these warnings that they didn't heed, um,
Speaker 1: there was also a lot of ship going on at
Speaker 1: the time, Like my dad. My dad also talks about
Speaker 1: the duck and cover drills, and there's a museum of
Speaker 1: Nuclear History in Las Vegas. That is like one of
Speaker 1: the best museum, the Smithsonian Museum of Atomic History. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's all about that era. That is really terrifying. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: and just to stand around some of those bombs, you're
Speaker 1: just like, oh, yeah, there was a lot going on.
Speaker 1: There was a lot going on. It was an immediate
Speaker 1: threat and someone saying, hey, in like seventy years, gasoline
Speaker 1: is going to be an issue. Like you can see
Speaker 1: how like otherwise, like decent people could have been like, well,
Speaker 1: fuck it, we'll probably figure that at if we have
Speaker 1: time to figure They now understand why people always refer
Speaker 1: to the sixties as tumultuous, you know, because I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: that is what it feels like now. It's funny. There's
Speaker 1: so much to do. There's a lot going on, like
Speaker 1: some of it good and some of it really really bad. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's something happening here, but what it is ain't exactly clear.
Speaker 1: You know that songs about the Sunset Strip riots and
Speaker 1: I read a really good essay about it by Mike
Speaker 1: Davis about how people make fun of it for being
Speaker 1: just like a riot of some kids, but it was
Speaker 1: really about the beginning of like just intense police militarization
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles of being like we're going to come in.
Speaker 1: The cops were like beating up teenagers. Um. And so
Speaker 1: some people, including Gilligan Bob Denver came to support the
Speaker 1: kids on the Sunset Strip against the fast Wow, Bob,
Speaker 1: Bob Gilligan is Antifa. Gilligan's antis Antifa. Yeah, So civilization
Speaker 1: trundled along, no one paying attention to the warnings about
Speaker 1: climate change, and by the end of the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: the American Patrol leav Institute had established a committee to
Speaker 1: monitor the evolving field of climate science. That committee of
Speaker 1: scientists was allowed to work unimpeded, and they came to
Speaker 1: the inevitable scientific conclusion that quote globally catastrophic effects would
Speaker 1: be evident by the middle of the twenty first century
Speaker 1: if fossil fuel production wasn't halted. Now, Chevron did not
Speaker 1: exist at this point, but the companies that merged to
Speaker 1: form it were members of the API, and they knew
Speaker 1: all of this. In nineteen seventy seven, one of xn's
Speaker 1: senior scientists spoke to a gathering of oil industry executives.
Speaker 1: He warned them of a general scientific agreement that the
Speaker 1: use of fossil fuels was changing the climate. In nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight, he updated his warning and stated unequippically that
Speaker 1: present thinking holds that man has a time window of
Speaker 1: five to ten years before the need for hard decisions
Speaker 1: regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical. That's nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight. By the nineteen eighties, the early signs of
Speaker 1: climate change had become very noticeable, and the newly formed
Speaker 1: oil titans of the day XN and SHELL launched internal
Speaker 1: assessments to predict the impact of fossil fuels on the
Speaker 1: global climate. In a nine eight two report, EXN scientists
Speaker 1: predicted that by twenties sixty, c O two levels would
Speaker 1: reach five hundred and sixty parts per million, twice the
Speaker 1: pre industrial level. This, they found, would raise average temperatures
Speaker 1: around the world by two degrees celsius or more. In
Speaker 1: Shell came out with a report of their own. It
Speaker 1: came to the same findings, but also warned that c
Speaker 1: O two could double well before twenties sixty, possibly as
Speaker 1: early as twenty thirty. You might expect oil and gas
Speaker 1: industry scientists who have been deeply compromised by their employer,
Speaker 1: but other climate scientists who evaluated their works seemed to
Speaker 1: agree that it was all pretty top notch. They did
Speaker 1: not hold any punches when reporting to their corporate masters
Speaker 1: about the danger that these products were going to do
Speaker 1: to like society. Um so they had like really stark
Speaker 1: warnings about what was going to happen. Shell predicted a
Speaker 1: one meter sea level rise at minimum, with a good
Speaker 1: chance that warming would cause the West Antarctic Sheet to disintegrate,
Speaker 1: causing a five to six meter worldwide rise in sea levels,
Speaker 1: resulting in the destruction of multiple nations. Their analysts predicted
Speaker 1: the disappearance of specific ecosystems or habit stat destruction, leading
Speaker 1: to an increase in runoff, destructive floods, and inundation of
Speaker 1: low lying farmland. They pointed out that new sources of
Speaker 1: fresh water would be necessary in this climate and that
Speaker 1: changes in temperature would drastically change life for most people.
Speaker 1: Shell scientists concluded the changes maybe the greatest and recorded history,
Speaker 1: So that's pretty clear, uh A. Excen scientists were equally direct.
Speaker 1: They warned about desertification in the American Midwest and other
Speaker 1: parts of the world and potentially catastrophic sea level rise,
Speaker 1: although they also noted optimistically that the problem is not
Speaker 1: a significant to mankind as a nuclear holocauster world family.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's bad, but it's not as bad as
Speaker 1: the end of all life on Earth and atomic health fires.
Speaker 1: I'm sure if you're in the power industry, you must
Speaker 1: be like, well, we're not as bad as those guys.
Speaker 1: It's like, it's like coke cads. They're like, I'm not
Speaker 1: as much of a cocade as that other cocad. That
Speaker 1: guy's at cocaine. It's had the conundrum, you're all cokeheads.
Speaker 1: You're all cokeheads. That's the that's the problem. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Maybe if we'd given these people some
Speaker 1: ecstasy or something back in the eighties might have increased
Speaker 1: their empathy. I don't know. Isn't that why people wanted
Speaker 1: to put LSD in the water streams from having nuclear war?
Speaker 1: But you know, I've in my research come across a
Speaker 1: lot of Nazis who trace their development to acid trips
Speaker 1: they had. So maybe the solution is, yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not uncommon, um like neo Nazis or like yeah, neo Nazis. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the original the original Nazis are on speed. They were
Speaker 1: doing speed. Yeah. Um, I don't think you should be
Speaker 1: allowed to use psychedelic drugs for evil is my personal feeling,
Speaker 1: but I would support that too. I have seen also,
Speaker 1: just like even with the rise of microducing, the way
Speaker 1: people when people started being like, I'm going to take
Speaker 1: acid to come up with better ideas for capitalism's yeah,
Speaker 1: that's not great. I feel like the right thing might
Speaker 1: be mandatory m d m A trips for all boardrooms
Speaker 1: and executives at all multinational corporations. Just you cannot sit
Speaker 1: down to discuss business unless you are rolling so hard
Speaker 1: you're chewing your goddamn lips off. It will at least
Speaker 1: be entertaining. Yeah, I can film it. Yeah, I'm sure
Speaker 1: those people are rolling their faces off when they go
Speaker 1: to their weird like retreats on private islands. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but they need to be doing it while
Speaker 1: they're making like financial decisions about where to invest money
Speaker 1: and stuff. Like I want I want to have like
Speaker 1: the CEO of fucking Shell like announcing their new products
Speaker 1: while like chewing on a fucking glow stick. That that
Speaker 1: would be fun at least, So all these studies noted
Speaker 1: the fact that the gradual nature of climate change would
Speaker 1: work to hide its effects from the world. Shell scientists
Speaker 1: wrote in with the very long time skills involved, it
Speaker 1: would be thing for society to wait until then before
Speaker 1: doing anything. The potential implications for the world are, however,
Speaker 1: so large that policy options need to be considered much earlier,
Speaker 1: and the energy industry needs to consider how it should
Speaker 1: play it's part. If the industry did not, they warned,
Speaker 1: it could be too late to take effective countermeasures to
Speaker 1: reduce the effects or even stabilize the situation. That's h
Speaker 1: m hmmm. But despite this sober and accurate assessment of
Speaker 1: the stakes, Shell's report did not actually suggest the company
Speaker 1: do anything to fight climate change that would have impacted
Speaker 1: their profitability. After all, and I'm gonna quote from the
Speaker 1: Guardian now and Shell study. The firm argued that the
Speaker 1: main burden of addressing climate change rests not with the
Speaker 1: energy industry, but with governments and consumers. And that's not untrue.
Speaker 1: Like legally corporate like corporations that are public like this
Speaker 1: have a mandate to maximize profits and really nothing else. Um,
Speaker 1: it is the job of governments to regulate them. In
Speaker 1: our current system. The problem is that Shell did not
Speaker 1: just sit back and to be regulated along with the
Speaker 1: rest of these companies. They actively sought to convince the
Speaker 1: governments that would regulate them that nothing was wrong when
Speaker 1: they knew the opposite was the case. And that's really
Speaker 1: like the core crime that's committed here. It's pretty bad,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool, pretty cool and good. For the next
Speaker 1: ten years, climate change pushed more and more into the mainstream,
Speaker 1: and an understanding about what was happening started to reach
Speaker 1: well beyond the cloistered halls of gas company research teams.
Speaker 1: Activists increasingly called for action, and despite knowing that all
Speaker 1: these people were essentially right, Excell and Shell took every
Speaker 1: available effort to stymy them. In February, released a review
Speaker 1: of the Scientific Uncertainty and the Evolution of Energy Systems.
Speaker 1: This was a public review, unlikely non public reviews that
Speaker 1: they had released that had shown that all of this
Speaker 1: was a serious problem, and in this public review, their
Speaker 1: findings conveniently indicated that policies to curb greenhouse gases beyond
Speaker 1: no regrets measures could be premature, divert economic resources from
Speaker 1: more pressing needs, and further distort markets. So that's cool.
Speaker 1: But you know what won't distort markets, Molly, the products
Speaker 1: and services that support this podcast. That is right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they are fundamentally different from the products and services that
Speaker 1: caused this climate change problem we're having for reasons that
Speaker 1: I don't feel the need to get into. We're back
Speaker 1: and we're talking about climate change. Stop lifting fun times.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty nine, seven years after their own report
Speaker 1: and one year after Shells Exon, spearheaded the creation of
Speaker 1: the Global Climate Coalition. This was a group made up
Speaker 1: of businesses from industries whose profits were tied to fossil fuels.
Speaker 1: They carried out a massive thirteen year long propaganda campaign
Speaker 1: with the chief goal of preventing the US from signing
Speaker 1: onto the Kyoto Protocol. More broadly, they also sought to
Speaker 1: drum up mass confusion and over whether or not there
Speaker 1: was a scientific consensus on climate change, even though all
Speaker 1: of their scientists had breached a consensus on climate change.
Speaker 1: In the early nineteen nineties, they published a backgrounder for
Speaker 1: lawmakers and journalists. Framed as an objective review of the
Speaker 1: scientific literature. It concluded that the role of greenhouse gases
Speaker 1: and climate change is not well understood and that scientists
Speaker 1: differ on the question of whether human activity was warming
Speaker 1: the globe. The New York Times reports quote even as
Speaker 1: the Coalition worked to sway opinion, its own scientific and
Speaker 1: technical experts were advising that the science backing the role
Speaker 1: of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted.
Speaker 1: The scientific basis for the greenhouse effect and the potential
Speaker 1: impact of human emissions of greenhouse gasses such as CEO
Speaker 1: two on climate is well established and cannot be denied,
Speaker 1: the experts wrote in an internal report compiled for the
Speaker 1: Coalition in nineteen And this is where, like, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: spend a lot of this episode talking about like corporate
Speaker 1: executives and stuff who were major drivers of this. Part
Speaker 1: of me wonder is, like, to what extent do we
Speaker 1: call these scientists bastards? Because on one hand they're doing
Speaker 1: really good scientific work to show very clearly the danger,
Speaker 1: and on the other hand, they're watching the company that
Speaker 1: is hiring them to do this lie about what they
Speaker 1: know in order to maximize profits, and most of them
Speaker 1: aren't coming out and and saying anything about it. And
Speaker 1: it does you know they're scientists. They didn't get into
Speaker 1: that field to go sit in front of cameras and
Speaker 1: fight the power. But at the same time, like it's
Speaker 1: there's a question of complicity there too. I think that's
Speaker 1: like in the Thara No Stalk they got into that
Speaker 1: a lot. It's like the people that hire scientists and
Speaker 1: then the scientists are like, here's the deal, and they're
Speaker 1: like no, no, no, we didn't want to hear that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And at what point it does the scientist have a
Speaker 1: responsibility to make waves? Um, I don't know. It's it's
Speaker 1: a difficult question. So the effort to basically spread the
Speaker 1: belief that there was like this massive disagreement over climate
Speaker 1: change among scientists was masterminded by a number of visuals,
Speaker 1: but probably the most prominent among them was a guy
Speaker 1: named Lee Raymond, who was the CEO of Exxonmobile for
Speaker 1: the bulk of this period. For reasons that elude me,
Speaker 1: mainstream journalists in the late nineteen nineties considered him a
Speaker 1: credible source on whether or not scientists agreed about climate change.
Speaker 1: Raymond has been described as notoriously skeptical about climate change
Speaker 1: and fundamentally opposed to government interference on the matter. He changed,
Speaker 1: there you go, the fundamentally opposed to government interference. That's
Speaker 1: why people took him seriously, listened to him. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what they wanted to hear. Yeah, and that is what
Speaker 1: happened because I remember Michael Crichton too, was one of
Speaker 1: those guys. Good lord, he was very surprising. But they
Speaker 1: were like, can't have the government meddling in our environment.
Speaker 1: We're not as free if the government stops these companies
Speaker 1: from lying to us until the world. Yeah, it's very dumb. So.
Speaker 1: Raymond was the chair of the American Petroleum Institute's Climate
Speaker 1: Change Committee for two terms. In March of two thousands,
Speaker 1: he signed off on an Exxon mobile ad titled do
Speaker 1: No Harm. This ran in numerous magazines and newspapers, including
Speaker 1: The New York Times. The add acknowledged that while climate
Speaker 1: change was probably real, more needed to be learned about
Speaker 1: it before taking any action. It claimed that the Kyoto
Speaker 1: Protocol's goal for a thirty percent reduction and fossil fuel
Speaker 1: energy would quote require extensive diversion of human and financial
Speaker 1: resources that were critical to the well being of future generations.
Speaker 1: It noted that although it is hard to predict what
Speaker 1: the weather is going to be this weekend, we know
Speaker 1: with certainty that climate change policies, unless properly formulated, will
Speaker 1: restrict life itself. You said, some bit just very cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: other unknown bastardors whoever the funk wrote the copy for
Speaker 1: that um string them up. The next week, Exon ran
Speaker 1: another ad unsettled science based off of a nineteen temperature
Speaker 1: study in the Sargasso Sea. The basic argument was that
Speaker 1: they showed the world had started warming before people had
Speaker 1: started burning fossil fuels. Therefore, we couldn't really say that
Speaker 1: this was a man made problem. Two months later, Raymond
Speaker 1: presided over a giant oil and gas industry meeting where
Speaker 1: he made the same point to his employees. He did
Speaker 1: this while ignoring the fact that the author of the
Speaker 1: study had said this about his ad two months earlier.
Speaker 1: I believe Exxon Mobile has been misleading in its use
Speaker 1: of the Sargasso Se data. There's really no way these
Speaker 1: results bear on the question of human induced climate warming.
Speaker 1: I think the sad thing is that our company, with
Speaker 1: the resources of Exon Mobile, is exploding the data for
Speaker 1: political purposes. Now, Lee Raymond is still alive, eighty one
Speaker 1: years young, he's a registered Republican, and he was succeeded
Speaker 1: in his job by Rex Tillerson, who we'll be talking
Speaker 1: about a bit later. H Lee Raymond's net worth has
Speaker 1: estimated to be five hundred and three million dollars. In
Speaker 1: addition to being a climate skeptic, Raymond headed Exon while
Speaker 1: it was one of the very last large corporations to
Speaker 1: explicitly exclude gay employees from its anti discrimination policy. This
Speaker 1: seems to have been very important to Raymond. He was
Speaker 1: in charge during the x On takeover of Mobile when
Speaker 1: Exon rescinded Mobile's anti discrimination policy, which had included gay people.
Speaker 1: So Raymonds sucks. He really feld of sucking like he
Speaker 1: fucking yeah in the land of the people who suck
Speaker 1: very hard. Lee Raymond sucks so hard that other people
Speaker 1: around him seemed to suck less by comparison. Yep, that's
Speaker 1: also sucks. He's not a good person. And his son,
Speaker 1: John T. Raymond is active in the oil and gas
Speaker 1: and he probably sucks to right. He absolutely sucks too,
Speaker 1: and his net worth is an estimated five eight million dollars.
Speaker 1: He had betwixt them. Yeah well, x On and Show
Speaker 1: both spun up increasingly elaborate and expensive disinformation campaigns to
Speaker 1: hide the truth from the public. Their internal reports continued
Speaker 1: to paint a dire picture of the future. Most startling
Speaker 1: is a nineteen planning document titled t I n A
Speaker 1: for there is no Alternative Document Positive Yeah. The document
Speaker 1: positive a series of massive damaging storms on the East
Speaker 1: Coast in two thousand ten, triggered by climate change. The
Speaker 1: company predicted that these storms would force action on climate change. Quote.
Speaker 1: Although it is not clear whether the storms are caused
Speaker 1: by climate change, people are not willing to take further chances,
Speaker 1: after all, to success of I p c C reports
Speaker 1: since have reinforced the human connection to climate change. Following
Speaker 1: the storms, a coalition of environmental NGOs brings a class
Speaker 1: action lawsuit against the U. S. Government and fossil fuel
Speaker 1: companies on the grounds of neglecting what scientists, including their own,
Speaker 1: have been saying for years that something must be done.
Speaker 1: So this is like a fake future that they posit
Speaker 1: where there's horrible storms caused by climate change and there's
Speaker 1: a massive ground swell of rage and lawsuits against these
Speaker 1: companies for doing exactly what they knew they were doing.
Speaker 1: This is like the scientists telling them, we could get
Speaker 1: in trouble for the ship that we've been doing, like
Speaker 1: we should change our ways. Unfortunately, their prediction of horrible
Speaker 1: hurricanes spurring climate action was wildly optimistic a a a
Speaker 1: very inaccurate prediction about the level of fox given by
Speaker 1: the people of the United States. The two thousand ten
Speaker 1: hurricane season was, in fact devastating. It would go on
Speaker 1: to tie for third most active hurricane season in Atlantic history,
Speaker 1: tying with both subsequent years two thousand eleven and two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve. Three hundred ninety two people died and seven
Speaker 1: point four billion dollars in damage was done. This would
Speaker 1: be widely eclipsed by the two thousand sixteen hurricane system,
Speaker 1: which killed seven hundred and forty eight people and did
Speaker 1: seventeen point four nine billion dollars in damage. The two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen season was even worse, claiming three thousand, three
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty four lives and doing nearly three hundred
Speaker 1: billion dollars in damage. Now, two eighteen and two thousand
Speaker 1: nineteen were comparatively mild years, but both still did more
Speaker 1: economic damage than two thousand twelve season. So that's cool,
Speaker 1: pretty cool, horrible, pretty cool. You'll know what didn't happen.
Speaker 1: A bunch of NGOs and activists bringing suit against the
Speaker 1: federal government and oil companies and forcing change on the matter.
Speaker 1: Because because because excen scientists overestimated how decent people are.
Speaker 1: Oh that's fine, surreal bummer, because they we'll figure it
Speaker 1: out in the future. Thing is also like, uh, those
Speaker 1: people in the future can get fucked as long as
Speaker 1: I'm here. I mean, I do hate the people of
Speaker 1: the future with a burning passion. No, I feel bad
Speaker 1: for them. I used to be jealous of them because
Speaker 1: I thought the future would be cooler, but now I'm
Speaker 1: just like, Nope, nobody's going to talk to anybody, and
Speaker 1: then they're going to die. We got we got a
Speaker 1: little taste of the twentieth century, which is honestly probably
Speaker 1: the best thing we could have had. You know, a
Speaker 1: little bit of the prosperity before it all goes to hell.
Speaker 1: But you also get to be here to see it
Speaker 1: go to hell. Yeah, by bolt cutters, millennials roll, It's
Speaker 1: gonna be a fun time. So Shell was also a
Speaker 1: member of the Global Climate Coalition, but to their very
Speaker 1: very very very very very very very very very very
Speaker 1: minimal credit, they left the Global Climate Coalition in nineteen
Speaker 1: because they actually agreed with the emissions targets set by
Speaker 1: the Kyoto Protocol. So that's something if you're if you're
Speaker 1: gonna pick the least shitty gas company, I guess it
Speaker 1: might be Shell, although again they still did a lot
Speaker 1: of this and irresponsible for huge amounts of this. It's
Speaker 1: not a high bar. It's like picking which of your
Speaker 1: Nazis is least responsible for the Holocaust. Uh, there's still
Speaker 1: all Nazis. So um, yeah, before you give Shell too
Speaker 1: much credit, you should know that In nineteen, despite having
Speaker 1: a very clear understanding of the consequences of climate change,
Speaker 1: Shell's annual management brief suggested, quote, although climate change is
Speaker 1: a long term issue, today's responses do not have to
Speaker 1: be long term. Irreversible actions need to be avoided. So like,
Speaker 1: we shouldn't have people fixing this, don't think of just
Speaker 1: keep going deep. As the millennium turned, it became increasingly
Speaker 1: obvious that scientific consensus suggested that irreversible action really did
Speaker 1: need to be taken in order to avoid irreversible consequences.
Speaker 1: Exxon and Shell both began investing fortunes into a series
Speaker 1: of think tanks, including many of the same think tanks
Speaker 1: that it helped the tobacco industry fight against stricter laws
Speaker 1: about cigarette marketing and smoking because you like, really we
Speaker 1: talked about like that big court case and the billions
Speaker 1: they paid in fines, but they made so much more
Speaker 1: money from lying to everybody about cigarettes forever. Look the
Speaker 1: can they all be bad? They So there's like, it's
Speaker 1: it's very worrying when you start comparing people to the
Speaker 1: Nazis because in terms of like the personal level of
Speaker 1: responsibility or odiousness of these individuals as human beings, there's
Speaker 1: no comparison. But when you do talk about, like, one
Speaker 1: of the things that really interests me is the Nuremberg
Speaker 1: Trials and the ethical arguments around them. So, like, part
Speaker 1: of one of the big questions that a lot of
Speaker 1: people fairly had about the Nuremberg Trials is we are
Speaker 1: charging people for things that weren't crimes when they committed
Speaker 1: them where they committed them, And that is an unsettling
Speaker 1: precedent because it can be used to justify some really
Speaker 1: messed up ship potentially um And the reason that most
Speaker 1: folks came around on that is they were like, well,
Speaker 1: if we don't try these people and punish them all
Speaker 1: very publicly, this will keep happening and nothing was done. Twist,
Speaker 1: they punished them, and it's still kept happening. Well, not
Speaker 1: the same way, like no, but when you look at
Speaker 1: where we are now in terms of like people doing
Speaker 1: full scale, like technologically aided genocides, yes, And also it
Speaker 1: feels like we're at a really scary point right now
Speaker 1: where Holocaust survivors are almost all gone and like Civil
Speaker 1: rights era people are going to be gone soon. And
Speaker 1: when those people are gone, you know, how do you
Speaker 1: convince people this stuff even happened, let alone that it
Speaker 1: is like relevant and the same thing is happening now.
Speaker 1: I think we got about sixty seventy years of people
Speaker 1: like the worst people in the world being slightly more
Speaker 1: careful as a result of the Nuremberg trials. Um. And
Speaker 1: then they started to push again and they found out
Speaker 1: you know, there were actually a couple of moments where
Speaker 1: there was pushback against them, um. But overall, the neoliberal
Speaker 1: world order failed in reigning in that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and now it is becoming more common. So it does
Speaker 1: require you can't just punish them once publicly, but you
Speaker 1: do have to punish these people publicly, and you know,
Speaker 1: they punished them too late. Was what The other problem was,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of opportunity for other countries for
Speaker 1: the world to step in and say, hey, this is
Speaker 1: fucked up. I've probably talked about this before, but my
Speaker 1: grandmother was a German jew who was an athlete who
Speaker 1: was supposed to be in the nineteen thirty six Olympics,
Speaker 1: and Hitler kept her on the team for a very
Speaker 1: They kept her on the team for a long time
Speaker 1: because they were like unsure if the world was going
Speaker 1: to boycott the Olympics, if the Germans were just very
Speaker 1: upfront about wanting to do genocides. Um, And ultimately they
Speaker 1: cut her from the team because they didn't wanted you
Speaker 1: to win and embarrass them. But also nobody pulled out. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think maybe one country pulled out, but everybody just
Speaker 1: let the Nazi Olympics happen. Uh. And you know, they
Speaker 1: they maybe didn't know what what Germany was doing and
Speaker 1: just didn't care because it because people are bad, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. And some Americans like Henry Ford were like
Speaker 1: into it also. Yeah, and so I think we also
Speaker 1: countries underestimated that. Yeah. It takes a level of to
Speaker 1: stop all of this kind of behavior. Um, it takes
Speaker 1: a lot of aggressive commitment to fucking people up when
Speaker 1: they do this stuff. And I have to wonder if,
Speaker 1: when it came out that the tobacco industry had suppressed
Speaker 1: the truth about the health dangers of tobacco, if a
Speaker 1: bunch of those guys had gone to prison, If I
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe some of those guys had been fucking
Speaker 1: like literally sentenced to hang for their crimes, for what
Speaker 1: is effectively mass murder. Would the same should have happened
Speaker 1: in the oil and gas industry. Might some of those
Speaker 1: executives been like, oh, ship, instead of hiring the same
Speaker 1: firms that had protected cigarette companies with some of these
Speaker 1: guys been like, we have to be really fucking careful.
Speaker 1: I think rich people are just so protected that even
Speaker 1: when they do get punished, they get punished in such
Speaker 1: a different way than a regular person or a poor
Speaker 1: person that it doesn't have the same effectiveness. They get
Speaker 1: golden handcuffs, you know, to stay in their mansion or whatever.
Speaker 1: That doesn't have the same effect on people as if
Speaker 1: you know they were going to go to solitary confinement
Speaker 1: or as you say, be hung in the public square.
Speaker 1: I personally feel like maybe that kind of public execution
Speaker 1: will come back at some point because things have gotten
Speaker 1: so medieval. Why not why wouldn't that come Uh, But
Speaker 1: I'm also worried it'll be of like the people that
Speaker 1: we like are gonna no, no, no, that that's part
Speaker 1: of the problem. Yeah, but I I do, I think that.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, well we'll talk about that a little bit later.
Speaker 1: So yeah, these guys hire a bunch of tobacco industry
Speaker 1: like former tobacco industry think tanks to like do the
Speaker 1: same thing um that they done to argue against more
Speaker 1: laws about cigarette marketing and smoking. Um. And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: read a quote from The Guardian on this why to
Speaker 1: hide their fingerprints. X In, which quickly proved to have
Speaker 1: the deepest pockets, at least until the Koke Brothers surpassed
Speaker 1: it in two thousand five, kicked off at spending spree
Speaker 1: on these think tanks and other nonprofit advocacy groups in
Speaker 1: nineteen nine, a year before it merged with Mobile, and
Speaker 1: Kenneth Cohen became the company's VP from Public and Governmental affairs.
Speaker 1: In January two thousand seven, u c S issued a
Speaker 1: report that revealed that between nineteen and two thousand and five,
Speaker 1: X on Mobile had spent at least sixteen million dollars
Speaker 1: on a network of more than forty anti regulation think
Speaker 1: tanks and advocacy groups to launder its message. A few
Speaker 1: years later, when asked about the report by a Green
Speaker 1: Wire reporter, Cohen said that x on Mobile had stopped
Speaker 1: funding them. That claim is as preposterous today was eight
Speaker 1: years ago. Just last year, the company spent one point
Speaker 1: nine million on fifteen climate science denier groups, including the
Speaker 1: American Enterprise Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council, Manhattan Institute,
Speaker 1: in US Chamber of Commerce, and ten of last year's
Speaker 1: grantees were among those sided, and ucs is two thousand
Speaker 1: seven report all told Green Pieces documented that x on
Speaker 1: Mobile has spent thirty one million dollars since nineteen nine
Speaker 1: on denier groups. But there is good reason to suspect
Speaker 1: that that's not even half of it. And in fact,
Speaker 1: the numbers on this are really hard, but it could
Speaker 1: be like five ten times that much. Um, we'll never
Speaker 1: know really now. Like any good, unfathomably evil company, XN
Speaker 1: and its comrades hid much and perhaps most of what
Speaker 1: they spent on disinformation In two thousand, fifteen and anonymous
Speaker 1: former executive with the Conscience revealed to the Union of
Speaker 1: Concerned Scientists that x On Mobile had paid ten million
Speaker 1: dollars per year from nineteen to two thou five on
Speaker 1: what he called black ops. And we have no idea
Speaker 1: what form all of this black ops took, but I'd
Speaker 1: be fucking shocked if some of it didn't wind up
Speaker 1: into the ckets of guys like Ben Shapiro. Um, you know,
Speaker 1: they just they they The goal here, as always is
Speaker 1: to make it seem like there is a lively debate
Speaker 1: about whether climate change is dangerous and action needs to
Speaker 1: be taken um, which they know is not true. But
Speaker 1: like my dad still believes that that there's not scientific consensus,
Speaker 1: and it's because these companies succeeded very very well in brain.
Speaker 1: I think there's also just contrarians, just people that will
Speaker 1: just think the opposite of whatever is true, you know,
Speaker 1: will just be like yes. But those contrarians only are
Speaker 1: able to have an impact on the public discourse when
Speaker 1: they receive funding, funding that allows them to buy Facebook ads,
Speaker 1: funding that allows them to influence these algorithms to pay
Speaker 1: for the reach that they need. Um, if it's just
Speaker 1: this guy who has no credentials, thinks climate change is bullshit.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean anything. But if it's the chairman of
Speaker 1: the Climate Research Committee, Uh, this company with enough money
Speaker 1: to put out ads in the New York Times, This
Speaker 1: guy says that the New York Times fault also for
Speaker 1: taking those ads. Oh, absolutely, they bear some complicity for
Speaker 1: running any of these things, as though there's absolutely hud.
Speaker 1: The New York Times is partly culpable in this for sure,
Speaker 1: just stating facts. It's frustrating because like, I don't know
Speaker 1: who exactly. I there's so much additional research to be
Speaker 1: done this. I don't know who because it's someone's, some
Speaker 1: individual person, A group of people at the New York
Speaker 1: Times made the choice to take that money, and, in
Speaker 1: fairness to the Times as an organization, a lot of
Speaker 1: the evidence for this article came from incredible reporting done
Speaker 1: by Times reporters who clearly are furious about all this. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of these big organizations. One thing
Speaker 1: that's key to understanding them is that they're actually totally disorganized.
Speaker 1: You know, Yes, you think that a place where the
Speaker 1: big name is gonna be the most well organized ship
Speaker 1: because they will have been doing it for so long,
Speaker 1: but even from section to section there's total just you know,
Speaker 1: people don't know what anyone's doing in another cylicle over.
Speaker 1: So I think decisions like that, some of the really
Speaker 1: bad decisions made by newspapers, especially this year, I think
Speaker 1: they're just coming from somebody at the top who's just like,
Speaker 1: you know what, I like Bloomberg, Let's give him an
Speaker 1: editorial or something, you know, like he's my friend, which
Speaker 1: again comes that back to the rich people all protecting
Speaker 1: each other. And uh, that's why things don't change. Scott
Speaker 1: really angry. But you know what doesn't need to change
Speaker 1: because it's perfect. Molly, what's that the products and services
Speaker 1: that support this podcast. Amen, we're back. We're talking about
Speaker 1: how the system that we live under, both economically and
Speaker 1: in terms of the way our media organs work, is
Speaker 1: fundamentally fine and doesn't need to have anything but minor
Speaker 1: changes made, and you certainly should not be, for example,
Speaker 1: purchasing machete's, boat cutters, other forms of munitions, armor, None
Speaker 1: of that's necessary. Things are good. Tiny changes will solve everything.
Speaker 1: Not using plastic bottles so much, that's gonna If we
Speaker 1: get rid of straws, we're gonna fix this ship. Glass
Speaker 1: straws are lovely, glass straws. Everything made of glass. Make
Speaker 1: cars out of glass, glass cars to go to Mars,
Speaker 1: glass cars, glass hearts, like that Abba song. ABBA's great,
Speaker 1: perfect solve the problem. You know what, we can get
Speaker 1: to this episode early. So let's let's play us out. Yeah, everybody,
Speaker 1: just listen to Abba. We'll be fine if you change
Speaker 1: your mind to take a chance. They have so many hits.
Speaker 1: But they have so many hits. It's weird that one
Speaker 1: of the most popular songs in the history of human
Speaker 1: music is a song by like a Scandinavian band about
Speaker 1: a bunch of Mexican revolutionaries. It's such a weird and
Speaker 1: it's based off of another completely different like a weird
Speaker 1: like a like a Spanish love song or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's great. X On Mobile is close lipped about their
Speaker 1: black ops budget, and I guess it wouldn't really be
Speaker 1: a black ops budget if they weren't um. But they've
Speaker 1: actually admitted to a surprising amount of what they've done.
Speaker 1: In a two thousand fifteen PBS News Hour interview, Kenneth Cohen,
Speaker 1: ex On Mobile's vice president of Public and Governmental Affairs,
Speaker 1: was asked by host Judy Woodruff about an allegation New
Speaker 1: York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman made during a taped segment
Speaker 1: aired before Cohen's interview. Schneiderman had announced a week earlier
Speaker 1: that he was investigating x ON Mobile for misleading shareholders
Speaker 1: and citizens about climate change, and he had accused the
Speaker 1: company of funding climate denial. Wouldruff asked, Kenneth Cohen, has
Speaker 1: Exon been funding these organizations? And Cohen replied, well, the
Speaker 1: answer is yes, and I will let those organizations respond
Speaker 1: for themselves. So that's cool. Now, I'm going to quote
Speaker 1: from a Huffington Post article on the matter now, discussing
Speaker 1: the fallout to that nineteen eighty two climate change report
Speaker 1: leaking out back in two thousand five, Team Quote Cohen
Speaker 1: and other ex On Mobile officials, including CEO Rex Tillerson
Speaker 1: and the aforementioned Richard Keel, hit back with a flurry
Speaker 1: of press releases, newspaper columns, TV and radio interviews, and tweets.
Speaker 1: Right out of the box. They attacked the credibility of
Speaker 1: Inside Climate News and the Los Angeles Times, calling them
Speaker 1: activists and mischaracterizing their reporting. Activists deliberately cherry picked statements
Speaker 1: attributed to various company employees to wrongly suggest definitive conclusions
Speaker 1: were reached decades ago by company researchers, Cohen said in
Speaker 1: an October twenty one press release. For example, these activists
Speaker 1: took those statements out of context and ignored other readily
Speaker 1: available statements demonstrating that our researchers recognized the developing nature
Speaker 1: of climate change at the time, which in fact mirrored
Speaker 1: global understanding. So let's talk about Kenneth Cohen for a
Speaker 1: little bit, since we've just established the role that he
Speaker 1: had in all of this. Cohen is a lifetime Exon
Speaker 1: employee and a lawyer. He joined the company back in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven and was present on its spin team
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty nine. During the nightmarish Exxon Valdis crash,
Speaker 1: which deserves its own separate episode, and all the inconvenient
Speaker 1: information about ex On blatantly spreading this information about climate
Speaker 1: change came out, Kenneth wound up on the front lines
Speaker 1: of the company spend team again. I found a largely
Speaker 1: positive interview with kenn on the corporate shill website Provoke Media.
Speaker 1: It's framed as a Q and A to Kenneth. Their
Speaker 1: question what's the best advice you ever received. Kenneth responds,
Speaker 1: never stop trying to learn. There's always more to know.
Speaker 1: What do you enjoy most about working in pr to
Speaker 1: which Kenneth responds, the daily challenge of explaining what we do,
Speaker 1: why we do it, and the benefits we bring to society.
Speaker 1: And lastly, who inspires you? My daughter Devon. That's Nice
Speaker 1: Dallas's daughter. We all of our daughters, right. My dad
Speaker 1: left me a voice fill in the middle of this
Speaker 1: recording saying, Hey, it's dad, have a Valentine's Day call
Speaker 1: me back. There you go. Moment, I bet Kenneth since
Speaker 1: his daughter Devin messages like that, And when I think
Speaker 1: of Kenneth's daughter Devon, I can't help it. Recall a
Speaker 1: passage from Shells nine report on climate change. Quote the
Speaker 1: changes in climate being considered here are at an unaccustomed
Speaker 1: distance in time for future planning, even beyond the lifetime
Speaker 1: of most of the present decision makers, but not beyond
Speaker 1: intimate family connection. So they're saying, the people making decisions
Speaker 1: at our companies about what to do about climate change
Speaker 1: will not live to see the effects of climate change,
Speaker 1: but their children. As a fun fact, Kenneth's daughter Devon
Speaker 1: has never lived through a year that was cooler on
Speaker 1: average than the year before it, and her dad has
Speaker 1: dedicated much of his life to obscuring this fact. That's neat,
Speaker 1: isn't it? The take back my awe now. The fact
Speaker 1: that climate changes impacts are undeniable now, even to the
Speaker 1: binnest of Shapiro's, means that the pr flax for Exxon
Speaker 1: and Shell and their fellow oil and gas giants have
Speaker 1: had to work overtime to counter an increasing stream of
Speaker 1: negative publicity. One of x ON mobile tactics has been
Speaker 1: to point out, over the last thirty years that the
Speaker 1: company's scientists have published a huge amount of peer reviewed
Speaker 1: climate research quote. Our scientists have contributed climate research and
Speaker 1: related policy analysis to more than fifty papers, have peer
Speaker 1: reviewed publications, all out in the open. They participated in
Speaker 1: the United Nations inter Governmental Panel on Climate Change since
Speaker 1: its inception in nineteen eight and were involved in the
Speaker 1: National Academy of Sciences review of the third U S
Speaker 1: National Climate Assessment Report. And all this is technically correct,
Speaker 1: the best kind of correct. X On scientists did, in fact,
Speaker 1: publish fifty three climate papers between eighteen eighty three and
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen. And you may remember earlier when I
Speaker 1: said that the climate research done for these companies internally
Speaker 1: was top notch. That is true. I found a review
Speaker 1: of these fifty three studies by Dana Noosatelli for the
Speaker 1: Guardian quote. I reviewed all fifty three of the papers
Speaker 1: referenced by x ON spokesman, and they indeed consist of
Speaker 1: high quality climate research. Most of them implicitly or explicitly
Speaker 1: endorsed the expert consensus on human calused global warming. None
Speaker 1: minimized or rejected it. This means that there is a
Speaker 1: hundred percent consensus on human caused global warming among ex
Speaker 1: sons peer reviewed climate research, even higher than the nineties
Speaker 1: seven percent consensus and the rest of the peer reviewed literature.
Speaker 1: So EXN cites this, and they do not do so inaccurately.
Speaker 1: But it is not as exculpatory as the company seems
Speaker 1: to think it is. A recent study in the Proceedings
Speaker 1: of the National Academies of Science found that, after promising
Speaker 1: to stop funding climate denial groups in two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: Xon gave two point three million dollars to the American
Speaker 1: Legislative Exchange Council and several Congress members who denied climate
Speaker 1: consensus and fought against climate policies. They also continued to
Speaker 1: fund scientists who published work disputing the global warming consensus,
Speaker 1: even though their own paid scientists were completely in agreement
Speaker 1: about the reality. Exon gave contrarian scientists Willy Soon over
Speaker 1: a million dollars, and that's just what they spent on
Speaker 1: one guy. Exxon and Shell and their fellow corporations spent
Speaker 1: tens of millions of dollars hiring contrarian scientists and skeptical
Speaker 1: journalists to confuse the issue of climate change, and the
Speaker 1: research shows that this campaign was startlingly effective. I found
Speaker 1: a two thousand fifteen study published in the National Academy
Speaker 1: of Sciences by researchers from Harvard and Cambridge. They note
Speaker 1: the comprehensive data include all individual and organizational actors in
Speaker 1: the climate change counter movement a hundred and sixty four organizations,
Speaker 1: as well as all written and verbal texts produced by
Speaker 1: this network between nineteen and two thousand, thirteen forty thousand,
Speaker 1: seven eighty five texts and more than thirty nine million words.
Speaker 1: Two main findings emerge. First, that organizations with corporate funding
Speaker 1: were more likely to have written and disseminated texts meant
Speaker 1: to polarize the climate change issue. Second, and more importantly,
Speaker 1: that corporate funding influences the actual thematic content of these
Speaker 1: polarization efforts and the discursive prevalence of that thematic content
Speaker 1: over time. A more recent two thousand seventeen report by
Speaker 1: Geoffrey Soupran and Naomi Areskies from Harvard expanded on these
Speaker 1: findings by analyzing hundreds of exxonmobiles internal reports and research
Speaker 1: papers and comparing them to its paid advertorials, most of
Speaker 1: which were play in the New York Times op ed
Speaker 1: section from nineteen seventy two to two one. They found
Speaker 1: the company consistently spread information that directly contradicted the findings
Speaker 1: of its own scientists. And it must be said, the
Speaker 1: New York Times let them do this without any meaningful
Speaker 1: fact checking. So that's cool, Pretty cool. You're happy about
Speaker 1: all this? So happy, we're just like frowning at each other. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's good stuff. I don't have many jokes about this,
Speaker 1: but I do want to emphasize that I am not
Speaker 1: joking about the bolt cutters. Um. I did enjoy your
Speaker 1: bennest of Shapiro's line, I'm thank you. I just want
Speaker 1: to commend you on that. Thank you. I take a
Speaker 1: lot of pride in that. Uh. Sometimes dunking on old
Speaker 1: binny shaps is the the only good part of my day,
Speaker 1: so I try to do it regularly. Word so muchhould
Speaker 1: dunk him in a trash can? Someone should, and he would.
Speaker 1: You would have ample room left in the trash can.
Speaker 1: I've seen one of those mini trash can ends, like
Speaker 1: for a dorm, little paper paper one. Yeah, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: one of those would fit. Now you know what wouldn't fit.
Speaker 1: I don't have an ad transition, but I am going
Speaker 1: to put some Tamali's in the microwave because I have
Speaker 1: to go to the gym after this, so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: ask for like thirty seconds. Here. We're back. We're back,
Speaker 1: And we were talking about how though I talk about
Speaker 1: bolt cutters because they are both symbolically powerful and have utility.
Speaker 1: If you really want to get through locks and even fences,
Speaker 1: most effectively, an angle grinder is going to be a
Speaker 1: lot more practical for a sizeable amount of the population,
Speaker 1: and part because of the arm strength and upper body
Speaker 1: strength that bolt cutter is required to really get through
Speaker 1: a thick lock. An angle grinder is gonna cut through
Speaker 1: a lot of those much easier. These are just pieces
Speaker 1: of information that I hand out for no reason. Angle grinder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you're gonna want like like a solar battery or
Speaker 1: something that can at least run it for you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of minutes at a time, um, so that
Speaker 1: you can get through stuff and potentially charge if the
Speaker 1: grid's down. There's a lot of things to consider here.
Speaker 1: Good to know, good to know, always good to know
Speaker 1: about angle grinders for no specific purpose. So yeah, big companies,
Speaker 1: like the companies we've talked about today, are very good
Speaker 1: at obscuring the precise individuals responsible for their most shady activities.
Speaker 1: For example, that a rescue Supron paper that I I
Speaker 1: I cited a little earlier does not mention Rex Tillerson
Speaker 1: directly or in neither does the n A. S paper
Speaker 1: that came before it. And you might conclude from that
Speaker 1: that Tillerson, you know, big company, maybe it inevitating to
Speaker 1: do with the cover up of climate change. But Rex
Speaker 1: Tillerson was the production general manager of ex On Mobile
Speaker 1: starting He was a director starting in two thousand four,
Speaker 1: and the chairman and CEO. Starting in two thousand six,
Speaker 1: and thanks to a super fun lawsuit launched by the
Speaker 1: State of New York, we do know a quite a
Speaker 1: lot about how he obscured his role in all this
Speaker 1: and why there's not a lot of direct information on
Speaker 1: what he may have done on to further obscure the
Speaker 1: reality of climate change. So, starting in two fifteen, New
Speaker 1: York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, my very favorite cop,
Speaker 1: launched an investigation into XN Mobile's history of lying to
Speaker 1: the entire world about climate change, which is, in an
Speaker 1: ideal world what police would spend most of their time
Speaker 1: doing is looking into guys like this, like this is
Speaker 1: what I want that brain power going towards, not I
Speaker 1: don't know, stopping fair jumpers. So the actual case wound
Speaker 1: up being mostly about whether or not Exon had misled
Speaker 1: shareholders by hiding the real cost of climate change and
Speaker 1: thus overvaluing their stock. And it is profoundly dumb uh
Speaker 1: and a powerful symbol of how fun their civilization is
Speaker 1: that EXN Mobile did the moral equivalent of drunk drive
Speaker 1: the planet into a brick wall, and the only thing
Speaker 1: they got tried for was maybe lying to shareholders. But
Speaker 1: that's not on Schneiderman. If you read about the case
Speaker 1: and what he did, his goal was very clearly to
Speaker 1: take as big a swing at EXN Mobile as he
Speaker 1: possibly could, because it would lead to a bunch of
Speaker 1: documents getting released upon discovery and put as many of
Speaker 1: the assholes as possible on the and to answer for
Speaker 1: their actions. In other words, Schneiderman was creating a record
Speaker 1: of their perfidy um, even if he wasn't actually able
Speaker 1: to punish them for much um. And in this he
Speaker 1: was successful. One of the billiest bastards he got on
Speaker 1: the stand was Rex Tillerson. Under oath, Tillerson denied that
Speaker 1: EXON had misled investors about the risks it faced from
Speaker 1: future climate change regulations. He described a detailed system he
Speaker 1: had ordered created in order to manage those risks. But
Speaker 1: you'll notice there was no system developed to manage the
Speaker 1: actual risks of climate change. That was not Rex's job.
Speaker 1: And even then Rex claimed repeatedly to have forgotten important
Speaker 1: details that were critical to the case. And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: quote now from a write up on Inside Climate News. Quote.
Speaker 1: Much of the case revolves around Excen's use of two
Speaker 1: different estimates for the financial impacts of future regulations, a
Speaker 1: higher estimate, which it disclosed publicly, and a lower one
Speaker 1: which it used internally and did not disclose. In two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen, top executives decided to align the two estimates,
Speaker 1: and the reasoning for doing so may prove pivotal to
Speaker 1: the case. The Attorney General's Office obtained notes can acted
Speaker 1: with an internal presentation given to XNS management in May
Speaker 1: two thousand and four team that listed reasons for making
Speaker 1: the change, including that recent reports to investors had implied
Speaker 1: that XN was using the higher estimate when evaluating investments,
Speaker 1: when in fact it used the lower one. So Tillerson
Speaker 1: was asked, do you recall anyone recommending that corporate management
Speaker 1: aligned the costs for this reason? Uh, And he responded,
Speaker 1: I don't recall any discussion of that nature. He was asked,
Speaker 1: do you recall any discussion about aligning the two estimates?
Speaker 1: He said, I don't. He was asked, do you recall
Speaker 1: why they were aligned? He said I don't, and you
Speaker 1: get the picture. He just basically denied as often was possible,
Speaker 1: and said he didn't recall any of the things that
Speaker 1: were done by x and that were potentially criminal. This
Speaker 1: pattern repeated itself over and over with Rex's answers, and
Speaker 1: during the trial, New York's attorneys stumbled across something even
Speaker 1: more damning. That explains why there's just not much documentation
Speaker 1: as to what Rex Tillerson may have illegally ordered. During discovery,
Speaker 1: XN was obligated to hand over a huge tranche of
Speaker 1: emails from Tillerson. The CEO of a publicly traded company
Speaker 1: like this, you cannot delete their emails because like it's
Speaker 1: it's potentially actionable in a wide variety of lawsuits and
Speaker 1: stuff like you have to you have to maintain that stuff.
Speaker 1: It's like it's like a legal requirement. But when Exon
Speaker 1: handed over Rex's emails, Schneiderman and his lawyers were shocked
Speaker 1: to find that there weren't very many of them and
Speaker 1: that they didn't like a lot of stuff that you
Speaker 1: would have expected a CEO to weigh in on. We
Speaker 1: have no record of Rex Tillerson saying anything about This
Speaker 1: is not because he was a hands off boss. This
Speaker 1: is because for seven years the CEO of EXN Mobile
Speaker 1: used a fake email address to do his business, using
Speaker 1: the alias Wayne tracker Uh. He handled all of his
Speaker 1: official communications with this email address. He had Tracker as
Speaker 1: his last name for his Wayne Tracker. He was the
Speaker 1: name of another employee, but he had Tracker for an email.
Speaker 1: He didn't want to be tracked. Yes, I I understand
Speaker 1: the irony here, but it wasn't. Wow. Yeah. So Tillerson's
Speaker 1: justification for why this was not clearly criminal is that
Speaker 1: his official CEO email just got too many messages and
Speaker 1: he needed a fake account so he could get some
Speaker 1: work done. Now, Molly just made a face like that's
Speaker 1: pretty frustrating. And what's more frustrating is that when they
Speaker 1: found out about this, the State of New York demanded
Speaker 1: access to the Wayne Tracker emails and she shucks, wouldn't
Speaker 1: you know it. Exon realized then that they accidentally deleted
Speaker 1: all of them. Oh, what a what a goof? What
Speaker 1: what a goof? Of course, this is not at all shady.
Speaker 1: Since the CEO was communicating under a fake email, Exon
Speaker 1: just forgot to preserve his emails because he wasn't using
Speaker 1: his official CEO email account. Anyone could have made this mistaken.
Speaker 1: It's fine, it's fine, nothing's wrong. He wasn't committing blatant
Speaker 1: crimes and then coming up with an incredibly obvious justification
Speaker 1: for why he hid the evidence of those crimes. That
Speaker 1: can't be what happened. Mm hm, cool, cool stuff. On
Speaker 1: February four, two thousand and twenty, Rex Tillerson spoke at
Speaker 1: an oil and gas industry conference in Houston. During his speech,
Speaker 1: he revealed that he has grave doubts as to whether
Speaker 1: or not human beings can do anything to fight climate change.
Speaker 1: Quote with respect to our ability to influence it, I
Speaker 1: think that's still an open question. Our belief in the
Speaker 1: ability to influence it is based upon some very very
Speaker 1: complicated climate models that have very wide outcomes. I want
Speaker 1: to note here that Rex Tillerson is worth an estimated
Speaker 1: three million dollars yep, state, just just three. Most of
Speaker 1: these guys aren't really super super super rich. They're just
Speaker 1: super super rich. Yeah. The state of New York eventually
Speaker 1: lost its case against ex On Mobile. According to Forbes, quote,
Speaker 1: the lawsuit failed because the notion that the company was
Speaker 1: attempting to obfuscate the impact of future governmental actions to
Speaker 1: address climate change and cheated shareholders was simply untenable. Now
Speaker 1: this is a you're bummer, But the good news is
Speaker 1: that numerous lawsuits are still underway across the country. Rhode Island,
Speaker 1: the Pacific Coast Federation of Fisherman's Associations, and a number
Speaker 1: of other groups and governments have started tossing lawsuits at
Speaker 1: the oil and gas companies responsible for covering up the crisis. Chevron,
Speaker 1: we have not talked enough about today, is a defendant
Speaker 1: and at least eight of these lawsuits they are guilty
Speaker 1: of essentially the same basic ship as Exon and Shell.
Speaker 1: Their CEO, Michael Worth, is new to the field, and
Speaker 1: he's made vague statements about wanting to move into renewables
Speaker 1: and fight climate change while increasing the rate at which
Speaker 1: Chevron sucks out gas and ships out poison into the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: His network is probably around fifty million dollars minimum, but
Speaker 1: is off like there's a good chances much higher um now.
Speaker 1: A few CEOs back for Chevron, Kenneth T. Derr was
Speaker 1: the guy in charge. Here's something he said in n
Speaker 1: I believe we have an obligation to use our technology
Speaker 1: to minimize the environmental impact of our operations and products.
Speaker 1: What disturbs me is not the ever president perfectly valid
Speaker 1: public requirements for health and say in the use of energy. Rather,
Speaker 1: I'm distressed by growing conviction the oil does not and
Speaker 1: cannot meet those requirements. That's distressing. Here's something else he
Speaker 1: said a pal that of Americans think the greenhouse effect
Speaker 1: is a problem and believe it's a serious problem, and
Speaker 1: some people in our industry tend to simply waive the
Speaker 1: issue away by saying that the threat is unproven. That's true,
Speaker 1: but it's not an appropriate response. It's true that the
Speaker 1: threat is unproven. Um, I hate this guy. On an
Speaker 1: unrelated note, here's something else Kenneth T. Durr said publicly
Speaker 1: prior to the Iraq war quote, Iraq possesses huge reserves
Speaker 1: of oil and gas. I'd love Chevron to have access
Speaker 1: to them. Pieces of ship. Now, the folks that I've
Speaker 1: named today are just the very tip of the iceberg,
Speaker 1: and some of the most culpable people out of the
Speaker 1: hundreds and maybe thousands of villains. It's clear that Eric
Speaker 1: Schneiderman's strategy well better than nothing, is not going to
Speaker 1: bring any of these people to justice. But there are
Speaker 1: some promising leads into how we can. Richard Heed, a
Speaker 1: Norwegian academic, has spent more than ten years trying to
Speaker 1: figure out the start to the answer of the question,
Speaker 1: how do we make these people pay? He actually helped
Speaker 1: to create a new branch of scientific research called attribution science,
Speaker 1: and the goal of attribution science is to take the
Speaker 1: blame for things like climate change off of the individual
Speaker 1: consumer and figure out who was actually responsible for the
Speaker 1: bulk of the consumption. According to Politico quote, over time,
Speaker 1: he recognized there was a flaw in that approach. Individual
Speaker 1: consumers can make choices only among what's already on the market,
Speaker 1: but who determined what was on the market. Other larger
Speaker 1: forces had shaped an economy dependent on fossil fuels. He
Speaker 1: realized companies who developed the markets for fossil fuels and
Speaker 1: influenced decisions to build the infrastructure that supported them. He
Speaker 1: asked himself, shouldn't the companies who profited from those decisions
Speaker 1: play a role in mitigating them? Without world governments making
Speaker 1: a little progress towards reducing making little progress towards reducing emissions,
Speaker 1: perhaps pressuring companies whose products were causing the harm might
Speaker 1: have more effect. In two thousand thirteen, Head's research revealed
Speaker 1: that nine d companies had contributed two thirds of the
Speaker 1: world's industrial emissions. He could pinpoint directly the share of
Speaker 1: emissions for which modern industrial companies are responsible. Chevron is
Speaker 1: number two on that list of ninety XN is number four,
Speaker 1: Shell is number seven. The data about what precisely these
Speaker 1: individual companies are responsible is out there. We know how
Speaker 1: much of the coming catastrophe we can blame on each
Speaker 1: of them. The only question left is what are we
Speaker 1: going to do about it? The oil and gas industry
Speaker 1: has answered that question for itself. Since the Paris Agreement
Speaker 1: in two thousand fifteen, the world's five largest oil and
Speaker 1: gas companies has spent a combined one billion dollars at
Speaker 1: minimum lobbying to stop climate change regulations. One million dollars
Speaker 1: a year has been spent by these companies on branding
Speaker 1: campaigns to suggest that they support an ambitious climate agenda.
Speaker 1: So while they are funding efforts to stop any regulations
Speaker 1: from them polluting the environment, they also have a massive
Speaker 1: branding campaign like aimed at making people think that they're
Speaker 1: hard at work researching alternative methods of fuel. And you've
Speaker 1: probably seen the results of this in billboards and bus
Speaker 1: stop ads that brag about, for example, exon mobiles, Algae
Speaker 1: biofuels research. Yeah, you've seen some of that. I've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of that, even especially in the city of
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. UM. They claim that algae biofuels offer some
Speaker 1: of the greatest promise for next generation biofuels. They're tiny organism.
Speaker 1: Ad campaign features colorful central illustrations of bright green, healthy
Speaker 1: looking algae under microscopes and in specimen jars. They bragg
Speaker 1: that their goal of ten thousand barrels of biofuel a
Speaker 1: day represents the future of clean energy, and that sounds
Speaker 1: like a lot right there. Like, look, we're gonna we're
Speaker 1: gonna be making ten thousand barrels a day of biofuel.
Speaker 1: That's a lot, right. That's so much fuel, isn't it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What they don't like to bring up is that this
Speaker 1: would equal point to percent of their current refinery capacity.
Speaker 1: It's just nothing. It doesn't matter point to percent. The
Speaker 1: American Petroleum Institutes still exists and currently spends its time
Speaker 1: lobbying against things like subsidies for electric cars. They spent
Speaker 1: an estimated five hundred and thirty nine million dollars during
Speaker 1: the two thousand eighteen election cycle, according to Influence Map quote.
Speaker 1: During this time, x on Mobile was by far the
Speaker 1: most prolific spender, racking up over four hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in four weeks on over three hundred and sixty individual
Speaker 1: political ads. The ads urge rejecting specific ballot initiatives while
Speaker 1: promoting the benefits of increased fossil fuel production. Facebooks data
Speaker 1: indicates that x on mobiles ads made over ten million
Speaker 1: impressions in this time with users in Colorado, Texas, and Louisiana.
Speaker 1: And they put together a really fun map showing that
Speaker 1: for example, BP, Chevron UH and the Western States Petroleum
Speaker 1: Association spent one point five million dollars in the state
Speaker 1: of Washington to convince people to vote no on ballot
Speaker 1: Initiative one six three one, which would have placed an
Speaker 1: annual rising fee on c O two, and this ballot
Speaker 1: initiative was in fact defeated in the state of Washington.
Speaker 1: They spent two hundred thousand dollars in Alaska on the
Speaker 1: stand for Alaska Vote No. One one campaign. That money
Speaker 1: was contributed by Exxon Mobile and BP. The ballot initiative
Speaker 1: in that campaign would have increased environmental protections and impacted
Speaker 1: resource development, would have reduced the amount of places they
Speaker 1: could suck wail out of and that ballot initiative was defeated.
Speaker 1: They spent another two thousand dollars In Colorado. The corporates
Speaker 1: there were the Exxon Mobile in the American Petroleum Institute.
Speaker 1: This was to defeat a ballot initiative that would have
Speaker 1: limited areas available for oil and gas development, and they
Speaker 1: succeeded in defeating this ballot initiative. In Texas, Exxon Mobile
Speaker 1: UH and some other petroleum innistry UH companies spent about
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand dollars supporting the campaign of Ted Cruz
Speaker 1: to defeat betto o Ork in the mid term elections. UH.
Speaker 1: In Louisiana, Xon alone spent a hundred thousand dollars trying
Speaker 1: to like prevent um UH federal like like predact event
Speaker 1: more regulations on like drilling off shores. Like this is
Speaker 1: like an example like the kind of where all this
Speaker 1: money goes, Like it's not just trying to obscure the
Speaker 1: debate over climate change by making a look there is
Speaker 1: a debate. It's like very targeted and stopping specific ballot initiatives.
Speaker 1: Like there's this, and I don't think there's much understanding
Speaker 1: of like what is actually going on at the local
Speaker 1: level to increase the factory. These companies are able to
Speaker 1: go after um, but it's extensive, like and it they
Speaker 1: get a lot of bang for their buck. A hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars is not a lot of money in the
Speaker 1: context of like national politics, but it's enough that Exxon
Speaker 1: can stop a little law in Louisiana aimed at reducing
Speaker 1: the amount of places they can drill. It's not a lot,
Speaker 1: you know, but it's enough to help Senator Ted Cruz
Speaker 1: defeat Beto O'Rourke and continue to give them like an
Speaker 1: open hand on whatever the funk they want to do
Speaker 1: in Texas. So the question we're left with at the
Speaker 1: end of this is what do we do about these people?
Speaker 1: How do we actually fight back? Are we doomed to
Speaker 1: just lob a series of mostly hopeless lawsuits at them
Speaker 1: and the the the vain belief that one of them
Speaker 1: might net a couple of million dollars in fines. Even
Speaker 1: if they were find a billion dollars ten billion dollars,
Speaker 1: that wouldn't be enough to punish any of these companies
Speaker 1: or the people behind them. The only answer I can
Speaker 1: see is something our current legal system does not make
Speaker 1: room for something unprecedented. Attribution science offers us a chance
Speaker 1: to actually determine the relative levels of guilt for each
Speaker 1: of these companies and the individuals inside them. What we
Speaker 1: need is a modern equivalent of the Nuremberg Trial for
Speaker 1: these people, a comprehensive, sweeping attempt to actually do justice
Speaker 1: by charging the individual human beings responsible for the crimes
Speaker 1: they've committed and levying criminal penalties against individuals like Rex Tillerson,
Speaker 1: rather than just finding their companies a pittance of the
Speaker 1: amount of money they made committing crimes. Now, as with
Speaker 1: the Nuremberg trials, this will require a number of things
Speaker 1: that are not considered legally ideal. Many of the things
Speaker 1: these people did were not crimes in the law code
Speaker 1: when they committed them. The same was true of the
Speaker 1: crimes of men like Julius Striker, General Alfred Yodel and
Speaker 1: Hans Frank, But the world decided that the crimes those
Speaker 1: been committed were too grave and the cost too dear
Speaker 1: to risk letting them get off without punishment. And I
Speaker 1: think you can make the same argument in this situation.
Speaker 1: So that's my fucking rant. I don't know, I agree.
Speaker 1: I totally agree. Maybe maybe hanging isn't a bad idea.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I would go with something more appropriate for these people,
Speaker 1: like some kind of eco death, you know, put them
Speaker 1: in a mushroom suit. If I'm honestly, yeah, I like,
Speaker 1: I get frustrated and uh seek more objectively barbaric. Yeah,
Speaker 1: hanging has too much baggage culturally and too much culture.
Speaker 1: I think, um, like digging a hole in the earth
Speaker 1: and letting these be these people be consumed by the
Speaker 1: earth that they destroyed, would be nice. I I actually
Speaker 1: think if you really wanted to penalize them in the
Speaker 1: maximum way, you take away all of their money and
Speaker 1: you make them spend the rest of their lives living
Speaker 1: in like random towns in America working jobs. I definitely
Speaker 1: think the solution to everything is to undercover boss all
Speaker 1: the work well yeah, and just have like every time
Speaker 1: there's a hot day, you know, as Rex Tillerson goes
Speaker 1: into his shift at the waffle house, his his his
Speaker 1: fellow coworkers are like thanks, motherfucker. Like, or whenever they're
Speaker 1: a hurricane hits and it damages people's houses, they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for that, fucking Rex, like and he has to
Speaker 1: just deal with that every day um goes home smelling
Speaker 1: a fucking hash browns and stuff as he works like
Speaker 1: a normal person and is never violently attacked for his crimes,
Speaker 1: but lives every day with everyone around him knowing what
Speaker 1: a piece of ship he is and how he contributed
Speaker 1: to their shared misery. That that I think would be
Speaker 1: a really fair penalty. I agree, Molly, how are you
Speaker 1: feeling feeling feeling a little depressed? Not gonna lie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not great. It's not great. Uh. It just makes
Speaker 1: you wanna go, like eat a cheeseburger and use a
Speaker 1: plastic single use plastic bottle and just fuck it man.
Speaker 1: Or invest in angle grinders the only grinder solution for
Speaker 1: grinding angles. Yeah, that's very useful information, actually, very very useful,
Speaker 1: And I mean I do want to know more like
Speaker 1: leftist prepper facts from Robert, but avoid harbor freight. You know,
Speaker 1: they're more affordable, but they tend to be pretty low quality.
Speaker 1: Like if you if you just roll into roll in
Speaker 1: and like like an off hour into a home depot,
Speaker 1: you can usually find some like old dude, uh, kind
Speaker 1: of crusty looking with a beard, who can tell you
Speaker 1: everything you need to know about angle grinders. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: especially if you live in Los Angeles. Great town to
Speaker 1: buy an angle grind. L A has the best fucking
Speaker 1: home depots in the world. Love those home depots don't
Speaker 1: open places, really tall shelves. I love Home Depot. I
Speaker 1: find it so so thing. I don't like Costco. I
Speaker 1: don't like Home Deeper. I don't like those what about
Speaker 1: Target But their shelves aren't like super duper duper duper high.
Speaker 1: But don't you ever feel like to feel like a
Speaker 1: tiny speck of dust and a home deepoverse? No? No,
Speaker 1: I do like their plant department. Yeah. I like to
Speaker 1: get lost in the plants. The plant departments. I take
Speaker 1: it back Home Deeper your sorry. The plant zone is
Speaker 1: especially during Christmas tree season. Just wander around those trees.
Speaker 1: They got the best cheap trees. That's cheap trees in
Speaker 1: l A. For sure. This is turned into a home
Speaker 1: deepo ad Yeah, home depot that will sell you the
Speaker 1: tools you need to rebel against constituted authority. Um yeah,
Speaker 1: cool stuff, cool stuff. Well, Molly, you want to plug
Speaker 1: your plug doubles? Please? Everybody listen to Night Call podcasts
Speaker 1: also on the I Heart Radio podcast network and also
Speaker 1: check out no Olympics at no Olympics l a dot com.
Speaker 1: Um I would love to see the International Olympic Committee
Speaker 1: roasted on bastards sometime because truly a cabal of supervillains,
Speaker 1: the true monsters in humans and and honestly like part
Speaker 1: of sucking up the environment. Real bad they are now.
Speaker 1: Can you believe that they're holding events at Fukushima for
Speaker 1: the Games and they have not You're finished irradiating the soil,
Speaker 1: So it's almost like they just plow ahead with their
Speaker 1: plans even as climate change makes it harder and harder
Speaker 1: to hold outdoor sports events because of the temperature going
Speaker 1: up so much in the summer. Molly, I feel like
Speaker 1: what you're trying to tell me, which is fundamentally ridiculous,
Speaker 1: is that the city of Los Angeles, a city that
Speaker 1: bakes in the summer much of the year, that has
Speaker 1: severe drought problems, that is surrounded regularly by horrific wildfires,
Speaker 1: and that has the worst traffic of anywhere in the nation.
Speaker 1: You're telling me this is a bad place to hold
Speaker 1: the Olympics in the future. Would you believe that a
Speaker 1: city that can't deal with its own housing crisis and
Speaker 1: has perpetually failed the most vulnerable people in the city
Speaker 1: and failed to give them proper housing and shelter. Would
Speaker 1: think they should be doing anything else but working on
Speaker 1: fixing that by building housing. For that to be relevant,
Speaker 1: you would have to be able to cite to me
Speaker 1: evidence from I don't know, let's say more than eight
Speaker 1: cities that the Olympics increases the cost of housing in
Speaker 1: a city that holds and I doubt you can honestly
Speaker 1: name more than Why don't you check out no Olympics.
Speaker 1: I've got at least thirty to forty How long has
Speaker 1: the game's been going on? That's how long they've been
Speaker 1: fucking shut up, funck the Olympics, the Olympics. The Nazis
Speaker 1: invented the torch rel a Uh, Nazis like torches, naziszy stuff.
Speaker 1: Nazis like weird Freemasonic fascist assemblies of body. He's all
Speaker 1: moving in in synchronicity. I mean, nothing you're saying is
Speaker 1: familiar to me as someone who researches all of this
Speaker 1: term like professionally. Please do I think I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've done Lenny reefinstall yet either, And but please, oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna we have a that's gonna be a fund.
Speaker 1: The problem is that like hate her. It's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to Yeah, yeah, it'll be well, well, we'll get
Speaker 1: to her. She's a bad directors, bad director. And then
Speaker 1: she was wrongly brought back as like a feminist hero filmmaker,
Speaker 1: but feminist icon that Nazi lady. Yeah, the Nazi lady
Speaker 1: who's not even good at at making movies. Um strong
Speaker 1: takes strong, Strong takes. You know, you're gonna catch some
Speaker 1: hell on Twitter for that, because we have a lot
Speaker 1: of Lenny Reef install fans. You know what, there's more
Speaker 1: than you think, because I do say this all the
Speaker 1: time and people are always like, but the shots in
Speaker 1: a Priumph of the Will, and I'm like, yeah, they're
Speaker 1: fucking shitty and it's a boring movie anyone who's watched
Speaker 1: that whole thing ever, But if you look at how
Speaker 1: the Olympics are shown on television, it's just like Triumph
Speaker 1: of the Will. They just uncritically sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: praise the idealized human form, and I don't talk about
Speaker 1: all the fun they're doing in the cities or they
Speaker 1: hold them. So thanks for letting me do m spiel.
Speaker 1: Thanks for letting thanks for that spiel, and I just
Speaker 1: I feel like you are unreasonably slandering an event that
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't have a joke. Let's let's
Speaker 1: replace the Olympics with people failing to ski and harming themselves.
Speaker 1: Make it a real amateurs conventioned only if you want
Speaker 1: to have a skiing competition, only people who have never
Speaker 1: put on Let's replace the Olympics a worker owned jackass. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think we should really gear it towards Instagram
Speaker 1: influencers with the goal of ding out their numbers. I
Speaker 1: think they're doing that themselves. Wow, we have really gone
Speaker 1: on the war path today. Well, I want to say,
Speaker 1: last time I did this podcast, I believe the other
Speaker 1: Robert Evans was still alive. And now you're the only
Speaker 1: Robert Evans. So congratulations on being the soul Robert Evans.
Speaker 1: I am the last bearer of the name. You could
Speaker 1: start wearing a cravat and just I am regularly inhaling
Speaker 1: my body weight and cocaine to honor his memory. R
Speaker 1: I p to the other Robert Evans and long may
Speaker 1: you live real Robert Evans. Not with all this cocaine
Speaker 1: I'm doing I'm gonna tell you that much right now.
Speaker 1: Are you sure it's not a ski jump? No. Never.
Speaker 1: I will watch ski fails, but I will never go skiing.
Speaker 1: Everybody has to do a lot of cocaine and then
Speaker 1: do skiing. Those are the future games, the new Olympics rules,
Speaker 1: and we only the only place it's legal to hold
Speaker 1: they Again, we might just be describing the Nazi Olympics again,
Speaker 1: just doing a lot of speed and skiing. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: the goal is to watch people agree to do something
Speaker 1: dangerous and get hurt. And that's fine, that's noble. That's
Speaker 1: going to be when we get to the Hunger Games,
Speaker 1: which will be any moment now probably. Yeah. Yeah. That.
Speaker 1: On that note, I'm Robert Evans and Molly Lambert. He
Speaker 1: wants to say you can follow him on Twitter at
Speaker 1: irit Okay, you can follow us at Bastard's Thought on
Speaker 1: the twin Instagram and we have a t public store
Speaker 1: and he's doing a live show with Billy Wayne Davis
Speaker 1: in l A on March at Dynasty Typewriter. I do
Speaker 1: it all, Robert, I don't know. I have forgotten my
Speaker 1: name in the face of my father. Great, the episode
Speaker 1: is over. Great,