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Speaker 1: In Season one of Drilled, we examined the creation of

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Speaker 1: climate denial. We talked to scientists and uncovered documents that

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Speaker 1: outlined a decades long propaganda campaign launched by big oil.

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Speaker 1: We dug into a lot, but there was still plenty

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Speaker 1: that we didn't quite get to. For one thing, climate

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Speaker 1: scientist Ken Caldera said something to me that I couldn't

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Speaker 1: get out of my mind.

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Speaker 2: Eric Barron was performing paleoclimate simulations and then running the

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Speaker 2: model and trying to figure out where in ancient times

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Speaker 2: the upwelling zones might have been in the oceans, because

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Speaker 2: those would be zones where oil might form. And the

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Speaker 2: oil companies were funding this work as part of their

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Speaker 2: oil exploration. At the same time that they were kind

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Speaker 2: of talking down the models in terms of their ability

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Speaker 2: to have futility for current policy, they were used those

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Speaker 2: very same models to help guide their oil prospect thing.

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Speaker 1: I don't know if you caught that, but what he's

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Speaker 1: saying there is that during the same years that companies

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Speaker 1: were saying that climate science was just too uncertain to

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Speaker 1: inform regulations or for anyone to make decisions about the

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Speaker 1: future based on it, they were using that exact same

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Speaker 1: science to prospect for more oil. So obviously they felt

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Speaker 1: pretty confident about those models. And then when I started

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Speaker 1: reading the full complaint filed in that legal case we

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Speaker 1: mentioned at the end of Season one, where West Coast

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Speaker 1: crab fishermen are suing oil companies, I came across this

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Speaker 1: list of patents that oil companies started applying for in

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Speaker 1: the seventies for all the various types of machinery and

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Speaker 1: boats that you'd need to drill in a melting Arctic.

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Speaker 1: Here's a summary. In nineteen seventy three, Exxon got a

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Speaker 1: patent for a cargo ship capable of breaking through sea

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Speaker 1: ice and for an oil tanker designed specifically for use

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Speaker 1: in previously unreachable areas of the Arctic. Next year, Chevron

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Speaker 1: got a patent for a mobile Arctic drilling platform that

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Speaker 1: would allow for drilling in areas with increased ice flow

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Speaker 1: movement due to warming temperatures. Then Texaco got one for

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Speaker 1: an apparatus that would allow for drilling in previously unreachable

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Speaker 1: Arctic areas. Shell picked up a similar pattern in nineteen

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Speaker 1: eighty four, as I was digging into all that, news

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Speaker 1: broke about an ongoing case in Massachusetts focused on an

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Speaker 1: exonmobile oil storage facility.

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Speaker 3: It's a new twist on David versus Goliath as an

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Speaker 3: environmental group begins legal action against Exon Mobil. The Conservation

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Speaker 3: Law Foundation is alleging petroleum giant knowingly work to discredit

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Speaker 3: climate change science for more than three decades. Suit goes

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Speaker 3: on to say the Fortune five hundred company has caused

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Speaker 3: extensive environmental damage like in this area along the Mystic

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Speaker 3: River in Chelsea and Everett.

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Speaker 1: The suit alleges that Exxon is putting several coastal towns

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Speaker 1: at risk of toxic exposures by not adequately updating its

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Speaker 1: facility in the face of rising sea levels and increase

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Speaker 1: to extreme weather. Exon has filed multiple motions to dismiss

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Speaker 1: the case, but the judges ruled in favor of the

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Speaker 1: Conservation Law Foundation. Now Exon spokespeople are saying the storage

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Speaker 1: facility is prepared for sea level rise. The company says

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Speaker 1: it has quote engineered its facilities robustly with extreme weather

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Speaker 1: events in mind and can manage the risk. That all

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Speaker 1: reminded me of a random job I had in my

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Speaker 1: early twenties. I worked in the marketing department of an

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Speaker 1: engineering firm and Yeah, it was as interesting as it sounds.

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Speaker 1: My job was to write case studies, and the firm

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Speaker 1: just so happened to have done quite a bit of

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Speaker 1: work for the oil and gas industry. I remembered writing

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Speaker 1: about projects where they had helped to engineer offshore oil

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Speaker 1: platforms to make them resilient to sea level rise. That

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Speaker 1: job was a long time ago, so I reached out

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Speaker 1: to the guy who had headed up that department to

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Speaker 1: ask when exactly the oil companies had started to work

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Speaker 1: on this stuff. He wrote back right away, Oh, oil

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Speaker 1: and gas folks have always been big on this. I

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Speaker 1: don't have a specific date, but pretty much from the

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Speaker 1: bating of their existence. So while oil companies were protecting

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Speaker 1: their assets, everyone else took a thirty year break from

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Speaker 1: paying attention to climate change. And they did so in

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Speaker 1: part because oil companies convinced them to, not just through

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Speaker 1: their own direct communications, but through an extensive, decades long

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Speaker 1: propaganda campaign that served to undermine the science and promote

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Speaker 1: the message that climate science and climate models were just

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Speaker 1: too uncertain to inform regulations or anyone's future plans. Science

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Speaker 1: that the oil companies themselves were, at the same time

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Speaker 1: relying on extensively. Now, as sea levels rise and the

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Speaker 1: oceans warm up, some communities and industries are really feeling

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Speaker 1: the consequences of those decades. One group in particular has

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Speaker 1: decided to take matters into their own hands. That's the

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Speaker 1: story we're going to follow this season. I'm Ami Westervelt.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to the second season of DRILLT. We're calling it

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Speaker 1: hot water.

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Speaker 4: All communities across America there's a sense of being forgotten

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Speaker 4: and left behind.

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Speaker 3: Our downtown used to be a precious place.

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Speaker 5: It died, it died. What good does an insurance car

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Speaker 5: do if there aren't any doctors in town?

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Speaker 1: And this is the situation in much of rural America. Democrats,

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Speaker 1: we really have failed to be in rural America. When

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Speaker 1: we talk about rural America these days, we don't usually

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Speaker 1: mean coastal towns. In fact, most people think coastal is

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Speaker 1: the opposite of rural America. Coastal elites and all that.

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Speaker 1: But despite their size and cultural influence, La San Francisco, Portland,

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Speaker 1: and Seattle are not all the coastal West has to offer.

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Speaker 1: Between these big urban hubs are dozens of small fishing

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Speaker 1: towns where life revolves around seasons, and currents. Towns like

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Speaker 1: Crescent City, way up at the northern tip of California

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Speaker 1: near the Oregon border. Crescent City has a few claims

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Speaker 1: to fame. For one, it's the soonami capital of the

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Speaker 1: Continental United States. The town was pretty well destroyed by

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Speaker 1: a tsunami in nineteen sixty four, and the harbor was

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Speaker 1: totaled by another one in twenty eleven. It's also absolutely

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Speaker 1: covered in sea lions certain times of the year, like

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Speaker 1: when I visited in March. And despite the fact that

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Speaker 1: a tsunami could destroy your boat, its harbor is one

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Speaker 1: of the biggest crab ports on the West Coast. Almost

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Speaker 1: everyone in Crescent City has some connection to the harbor.

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Speaker 1: I meet Ben Platt on the docks early on a

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Speaker 1: Sunday morning. He's running late because the time just changed,

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Speaker 1: but he's also anxious, because that's just the deal for

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Speaker 1: crabbers these days. With his flannel shirt and his baseball

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Speaker 1: cap and stubble, he looks like a fisherman straight out

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Speaker 1: of Central Casting, but his story and his take on

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Speaker 1: the world is a little less expected. Ben lives a

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Speaker 1: few hundred miles south of here, but he keeps his

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Speaker 1: boat in Crescent City. Because it allows him to not

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Speaker 1: only crab out of Crescent City and ports south, but

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Speaker 1: also had to Washington and Alaska for tuna and when possible, salmon.

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Speaker 1: He grew up in another coastal town just like this one,

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Speaker 1: but a few hundred miles south, called Point Arena. It's

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Speaker 1: a tiny, one dock town, the sort of place where

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Speaker 1: kids could cut school early to fish.

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Speaker 6: You could get out of school back then. My brother

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Speaker 6: would get out like a month or so early. They'd

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Speaker 6: let him get out so he could go work on

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Speaker 6: a boat. And so he started working on other boats

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Speaker 6: other than the family boat when he was like twelve.

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Speaker 1: Ben is in his fifties, so we're not talking about

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Speaker 1: something that happened one hundred years ago. This is fairly

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Speaker 1: recent history. He and his brother Dan started going out

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Speaker 1: with their dad, Buzz, on his boat when they were

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Speaker 1: about nine. Dan eventually joined the Marines and spent the

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Speaker 1: rest of his life on boats, but Ben liked school.

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Speaker 1: He went off to college at Humboldt State in northern

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Speaker 1: California and then made his way to La.

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Speaker 6: I worked in the film business there in la for

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Speaker 6: about eight years, and I also I was playing music

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Speaker 6: shows and frock bands that was really why I was there.

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Speaker 6: I was pursuing that dream and that went pretty good

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Speaker 6: for a while, actually, but I went from drinking to drugging,

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Speaker 6: and that became a big problem for me. So I

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Speaker 6: have almost twenty two years clean and sober now. But

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Speaker 6: when I hit bot On, my was homeless in Los Angeles.

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Speaker 6: I was in and out of jail and a lot

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Speaker 6: of trouble, and in my last day there, I almost died.

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Speaker 6: I got in a fight and got stabbed and I

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Speaker 6: almost bled out, and so that was kind of that

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Speaker 6: was my wake up call. And so I followed my

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Speaker 6: dad's suggestion and just kind of went back with them to.

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Speaker 2: Poor brag.

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Speaker 1: Ben went to what he describes as sort of a

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Speaker 1: bargain basement rehab.

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Speaker 6: There wasn't even really counselors or anything, but it was

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Speaker 6: a safe place to be for someone that was trying

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Speaker 6: to recover from drug addiction.

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Speaker 1: On pass is from rehab, he'd go fishing with his

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Speaker 1: dad and I had been injured.

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Speaker 6: I had very little use in my left hand and

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Speaker 6: arm I had been going fishing with him a little

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Speaker 6: bit and it helped a lot to use my hand

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Speaker 6: and stuff. And I loved spending time with my dad

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Speaker 6: again because I'd been out of touch for quite a while.

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Speaker 6: So I stayed there for a year, and then my

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Speaker 6: dad died pretty suddenly. He had a few different boats,

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Speaker 6: He had a couple of skiffs, he was doing live

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Speaker 6: rock cod, he was rebuilding his big boat. I was

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Speaker 6: doing a new repower on the engine, and so I

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Speaker 6: moved into town at that point with a year cleaning

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Speaker 6: sober to help my step moom out. And so I

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Speaker 6: was like, well, there's this leaky old skiff with an

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Speaker 6: outboard motor that doesn't run very well in a trailer

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Speaker 6: and a little pickup truck, and so I tried it

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Speaker 6: and did well at that, and then I actually sank

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Speaker 6: that first boat and was fishing out of a kayak

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Speaker 6: for a while with a friend of mine. We had

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Speaker 6: little live wells in the back of our pickup trucks

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Speaker 6: with little air pomps, and we were selling to the

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Speaker 6: live Asian market live rockid all hook and line, and

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Speaker 6: it was pretty cool. It was like sport fishing, but

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Speaker 6: making money at it. And then I got a better boat.

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Speaker 6: I got a Boston whaler with a little bit better

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Speaker 6: engine on it, and eventually rendered my own little alley

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Speaker 6: house in Fort Bragg.

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Speaker 1: When I talked about on the phone before heading up

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Speaker 1: to Crescent City. He told me that the fishing community

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Speaker 1: had sort of been his salvation at a pretty dark

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Speaker 1: point in his life. That if you work hard and

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Speaker 1: you're loyal, this community has your back. It's one of

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Speaker 1: those communities where you're either part of it or you're

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Speaker 1: someone who's never pissed in saltwater. Just taking a little

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Speaker 1: break here to tell you about a show that I

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Speaker 1: have in regular rotation, Latina to Latina, profiles a different

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Speaker 1: woman each week, touching on everything from their personal histories

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Speaker 1: to their professional triumphs. You might recognize host and ace

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Speaker 1: interviewer Elicia Menandez from PBS's I'm Important Company. She does

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Speaker 1: a great job on this show too. Listeners of Drilled

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Speaker 1: should particularly check out the recent interview with climate scientist

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Speaker 1: turned environmental justice advocate Nicole Hernandez. She's really fascinating on

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Speaker 1: everything from how her background has informed her work and

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Speaker 1: how the Latino community in particular understands and is responding

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Speaker 1: to climate change. Hernandez has been instrumental in getting people

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Speaker 1: to understand what happens during quote unquote sunny day floods

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Speaker 1: in Miami, and she's just really really interesting to listen to,

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Speaker 1: So check that out. Rest The episodes are great too.

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Speaker 1: You can subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Radio Public, really wherever

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Speaker 1: you get your podcasts, and it's great to check it out.

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Speaker 1: I also want to recommend a website that does a

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Speaker 1: great job of keeping track of all the various climate

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Speaker 1: lawsuits happening right now. Climate Liability News sent me to

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Speaker 1: the Courtroom Climate science tutorial where I first got the

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Speaker 1: idea to do Drilled. Their reporters are really on top

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Speaker 1: of this stuff in a way that no one else is,

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Speaker 1: so it's a great one stop shop if you want

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Speaker 1: to know what's happening with these cases. Okay, back to

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Speaker 1: the show. There are plenty of fisher women up and

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Speaker 1: down this coast too, who are also integral parts of

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Speaker 1: the community, perhaps none more so than Lori French down

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Speaker 1: in morro Bay, about five hundred miles south of Crescent City. Well,

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Speaker 1: Ben fits a lot of the images you might have

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Speaker 1: in your head about a fisherman. He's also a college educated,

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Speaker 1: fairly left leaning, and he told me I.

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Speaker 6: Come from long line of Jewish liberal activists.

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Speaker 1: Politically, he's a representative of about half the fleet. Laurie's

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Speaker 1: more conservative, more representative of the other half of the fleet,

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Speaker 1: and over the past several months, at least a dozen

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Speaker 1: people told me if I wanted to understand West Coast fishing,

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Speaker 1: I had to talk to Lorie French.

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Speaker 5: You know, there's only like six or seven crabbers down here. Yeah,

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Speaker 5: most of us are old school. We have We've been

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Speaker 5: in for generation.

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Speaker 1: Laurie's husband, Jeff, has fished all his life, and now

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Speaker 1: one of her sons, Lauren, is a commercial fisherman too.

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Speaker 1: When I asked to meet her and Jeff after talking

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Speaker 1: to them on the phone, she said Jeff doesn't talk

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Speaker 1: to reporters, that he and his brother and her son

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Speaker 1: had appointed her the family spokesperson. She suggested we meet

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Speaker 1: at a Mexican restaurant in more Obey because her friend

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Speaker 1: owns it and she needed to coordinate with him around

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Speaker 1: the annual crab feed. Laurie's sort of a community caretaker.

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Speaker 1: She's big on gatherings and she does a lot to

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Speaker 1: support the fishing community up and down the coast. She's

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Speaker 1: also fairly conservative politically, although she never identified herself as

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Speaker 1: aligned with any particular political party, But she says a

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Speaker 1: lot of things like this. For example, when talking about

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Speaker 1: the federal government.

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Speaker 5: It was like the government brought a wind of it,

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Speaker 5: and this is going to sound really bad, but he

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Speaker 5: was like, oh, look a new crisis.

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Speaker 1: She raised an eyebrow when she heard that my kids

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Speaker 1: can't really swim yet. Her sons have all been swimming

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Speaker 1: since they could walk, of course, although they didn't grow

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Speaker 1: up fishing on their dad's boat quite the way Ben

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Speaker 1: and his brother did.

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Speaker 5: No, why not. Some of my husband's policy was like

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Speaker 5: his dad's policy, your only kids wants to be a kid,

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Speaker 5: and they concentrated on being kids, which is fine.

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Speaker 1: Lorie's son, Lauren, went to school for architecture and still

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Speaker 1: loves it, but graduated at the peak of the Great

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Speaker 1: Recession and couldn't find a job, so he started fishing

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Speaker 1: with his dad. Laurie says he still moves between the

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Speaker 1: two worlds, picking up jobs in the building industry between

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Speaker 1: fishing seasons.

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Speaker 5: He loves architecture still, but he likes fishing too. He

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Speaker 5: likes the freedom.

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Speaker 3: In metaphor, its it's.

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Speaker 5: You know, the first time he actually worked nine to five,

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Speaker 5: became mommies like a freaking exhausted. Yeah, I guess this

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Speaker 5: is harhard. Yeah, I like what you guess this. You

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Speaker 5: know Monday through Friday things. I said, you realize when

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Speaker 5: you're on the boat you work twenty four to seven

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Speaker 5: for it's so totally different.

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Speaker 1: Though it is totally different. I saw that after just

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Speaker 1: one day on a boat. Just like lots of industries

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Speaker 1: have their own shorthand their own particular window onto the world,

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Speaker 1: fishermen tend to hang together because they understand each other's

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Speaker 1: lives in a way that other people just can't really,

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Speaker 1: and a big part of what makes them who they

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Speaker 1: are is being able to weather storms literally and figuratively.

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Speaker 1: Fishing for dungeness crab is one of the most dangerous

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Speaker 1: occupations in the country, even more so than that other

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Speaker 1: type of crab fishing most Americans are familiar with. You

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Speaker 1: might remember that opening montage from the Discovery Channel's Deadliest Catch.

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Speaker 1: Let me tell you King crabs got nothing on dungeness.

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Speaker 1: But lately the tsunamis, market fluctuations and the daily grind

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Speaker 1: are the least of their problems. In fact, Ben and

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Speaker 1: Laurie and hundreds of other California fishing families like them

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Speaker 1: could be facing their biggest challenge yet, and it started

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Speaker 1: about four years ago. Our unseasonably warm weather is also

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Speaker 1: feeding the biggest algae bloom on the West Coast in decades.

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Speaker 7: This sea lion is having seizures poisoned from demoic acid,

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Speaker 7: a deadly natural toxin, being found in very high levels

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Speaker 7: from California to Washington State.

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Speaker 3: It's not unusual to have warm patches of ocean water,

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Speaker 3: but this one's much larger and hotter than normal by

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Speaker 3: up to seven degrees fahrenheit.

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Speaker 1: A patch of warm water something scientists started calling very scientifically.

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Speaker 1: The blob appeared on the Pacific Coast in the spring

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Speaker 1: of twenty fifteen. Warm currents are normal, of course, but

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Speaker 1: this was a huge mass of unusually warm water, and

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Speaker 1: it encouraged an abnormal amount of algae to grow and

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Speaker 1: then to stick around. Algal blooms would typically start to

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Speaker 1: dissipate in the summer, but these stuck around till fall,

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Speaker 1: when the crab season would usually start.

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Speaker 8: In California, fishing season for the dungeness crab has been

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Speaker 8: delayed due to high levels of a dangerous neurotype. It's

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Speaker 8: an environmental problem. Scientists blame warmer waters and an economic one.

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Speaker 8: Dungeonus crab is a sixty million dollars a year industry.

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Speaker 1: The season was delayed that year because the algae had

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Speaker 1: led to a build up of what's called demoic acid,

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Speaker 1: a potent neurotoxin in crabs. It was particularly bad timing

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Speaker 1: for Ben.

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Speaker 6: We had just bought the house that year, so taken

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Speaker 6: on the biggest debt of our life. I'd had a

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Speaker 6: good crab season the winner that we bought the home,

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Speaker 6: but then I elected to take the whole summer off

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Speaker 6: and spend all this money, and then we had the

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Speaker 6: democ acid closure. So I'd had my crew come to

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Speaker 6: Windsor to have a gear yard there. So we spent

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Speaker 6: about a month doing gear work, and then we had

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Speaker 6: this shutdown.

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Speaker 1: And Laurie was worried about both her own family and

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Speaker 1: the broader community.

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Speaker 5: We took a pretty hard hit, and that's money that

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Speaker 5: we'll never make up again.

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Speaker 6: Guys with families, the deckhands had no backup.

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Speaker 1: Demoic Acid was first found in muscles off Canada's Prince

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Speaker 1: Edward Island and nineteen eighties, when it made a group

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Speaker 1: of people violently ill. Some were vomiting excessively some experienced

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Speaker 1: amnesia along with the intestinal issues, and four became so

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Speaker 1: ill they died. Food safety regulations emerged after the outbreak,

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Speaker 1: which quickly spread to all crustaceans and shellfish in North America.

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Speaker 1: Since then, crab have been tested every year for tomobik acid,

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Speaker 1: but in Ben and Laurie's neck of the woods, it

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Speaker 1: had never been an issue before twenty fifteen, and it

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Speaker 1: wasn't just a brief delay or inconvenience. This was the

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Speaker 1: beginning of a new reality for crabbers, one that would

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Speaker 1: bring heavy losses, legal battles, and a sort of persistent dread,

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Speaker 1: the sense that, no matter how hard they tried to

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Speaker 1: hold on, their lives were slipping away from them.

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Speaker 6: So what's happening now lately, three out of the last

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Speaker 6: four years, is we're asking these guys to sit around

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Speaker 6: and either make no money or make hardly any money

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Speaker 6: doing part time jobs. But they have to be on

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Speaker 6: call because we never know when the season is going

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Speaker 6: to start, So it's really hard for them to work

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Speaker 6: during these closures, and our boats are sitting idle for three,

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Speaker 6: four or five months at a time.

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Speaker 4: Now, next time on drilled, we'll look back at that

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Speaker 4: fateful twenty fifteen Crab season and the unexpected adversary that

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Speaker 4: Big Oil created.

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Speaker 3: It was just awful.

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Speaker 6: I mean, we couldn't pay the bills.

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Speaker 1: It was just a nightmare. We almost lost that question.

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Speaker 5: We need to start doing something.

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Speaker 6: I see things, you know, I see the tides coming

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Speaker 6: up higher.

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Speaker 4: I mean it's squirting through the parking lot down the wharf,

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Speaker 4: and I never saw that before.

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Speaker 1: Drilled is produced and distributed by Critical Frequency. The show

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Speaker 1: was created and reported by me Amy Westervelle. Raka Murthy

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Speaker 1: is our editorial advisor. An additional editing for this series

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Speaker 1: was done by Julia Ritchie. The series was mixed by

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Speaker 1: Bill Lance. Our season two theme song was composed by

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Speaker 1: Elliott Peltzman. Additional music was contributed by b Beaman and

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Speaker 1: David Whited. Season two cover art was drawn by Angela Schech.

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Speaker 1: Drilled is supported in part by a generous grant from

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Speaker 1: the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development. You can listen

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Speaker 1: and subscribe to Drilled on Apple Podcasts or wherever you

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Speaker 1: get your podcasts. If you like the show, don't forget

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Speaker 1: to give us