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Speaker 1: Welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westerbelt. You might remember

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Speaker 1: in the season we did with Earther last year that

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Speaker 1: Darna Nore and I got into how much money oil

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Speaker 1: companies invest in research at top tier universities and some

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Speaker 1: of the reasons behind those investments. Although they certainly influence

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Speaker 1: how climate science is studied and which solutions are given

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Speaker 1: more research funding, we wanted to look at the social

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Speaker 1: side of the equation. Where were fossil fuel companies investing

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Speaker 1: in public policy schools, or law schools or economics programs.

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Speaker 1: How are they working to make the social and political

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Speaker 1: understanding of the problem and the available.

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Speaker 2: Solutions to it.

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Speaker 1: Seeing how most folks have coalesced around the idea that

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Speaker 1: addressing climate change is a political, not scientific question, that

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Speaker 1: seemed like an important place to look, and we were

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Speaker 1: pretty shocked by what we found. Going back to the

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Speaker 1: nineteen fifties when Standard Oil first started to heavily invest

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Speaker 1: in universities, oil companies have always thought about the social

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Speaker 1: and political conditions necessary to preserve their wealth and power,

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Speaker 1: and they have supported university research that does just that.

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Speaker 1: In recent years, university students have started to push their

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Speaker 1: campuses to refuse this money, and last week Princeton University

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Speaker 1: became the first to actually do so, or at least

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Speaker 1: take a first, very big step toward doing so. The

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Speaker 1: university announced that it would no longer accept gifts or

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Speaker 1: grants from ninety fossil fuel companies, and that it's thirty

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Speaker 1: seven point seven billion dollar endowment will also eliminate all

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Speaker 1: holdings in those companies. That list includes Exon Mobile, but

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Speaker 1: for now anyway, not BP, which continues to fund the

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Speaker 1: university's carbon mitigation initiative. Still, it's a massive step forward

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Speaker 1: and a huge win for the divestment movement. Earlier this year,

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Speaker 1: I spoke with divestment organizers at five different top tier

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Speaker 1: universities who had come together to file a legal complaint

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Speaker 1: attempting to compel their campuses to divest from fossil fuels.

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Speaker 1: The Fossil Free Research Campaign grew out of those efforts,

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Speaker 1: and I had a chance to speak with those organizers

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Speaker 1: as well, just as the initiative was getting off the ground.

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Speaker 1: I'm bringing you those interviews now because when universities like

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Speaker 1: Princeton and Harvard announced these big divestment decisions, they generally

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Speaker 1: don't credit these students that have been yelling at them

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Speaker 1: for three years to do the right thing. These students

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Speaker 1: spent countless hours researching and organizing and applying constant pressure,

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Speaker 1: and it's starting to really pay off. I also find

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Speaker 1: it really interesting to see how folks like doctor Jeffrey

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Speaker 1: Supran and doctor Ben Fronta, who started out campaigning for

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Speaker 1: divestment as grad students, have since devoted their entire careers

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Speaker 1: to climate accountability, producing a lot of the research that

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Speaker 1: this next generation of divestment organizers can draw from. I

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Speaker 1: guess too, can play at the university investment game that's

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Speaker 1: all coming up after this quick break. The entire reason

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Speaker 1: that I started looking into fossil fuel company investments was

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Speaker 1: an article that doctor Jeffrey Supran and doctor Ben Franta

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Speaker 1: wrote for The Guardian back in twenty seventeen. It was

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Speaker 1: called the fossil fuel Industry's Invisible Colonization of Academia, and

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Speaker 1: I wound up interviewing them about it and doing an

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Speaker 1: episode on that subject for the first season of Drilled.

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Speaker 1: Here's Fronta talking about the issue on that episode.

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Speaker 3: Along that set of dedicated research centers that are really

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Speaker 3: influential in technology research and training future people working in

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Speaker 3: climate also influencing the IPCC that a majority I would say,

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Speaker 3: a majority of funding in those centers comes from fossil

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Speaker 3: field groups. I was involved with helping to organize the

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Speaker 3: fossil field devestment movement at Harvard, and we would go

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Speaker 3: to faculty and we would try to solicit their support,

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Speaker 3: and we noticed something kind of interesting, which was that

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Speaker 3: most faculty were either neutral or they was support. But

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Speaker 3: the faculty that actually were opposed to it actively and

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Speaker 3: would write about it in the press, I would say,

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Speaker 3: more often than not. In fact, almost all the time

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Speaker 3: these faculty were funded by fossil fuelled group.

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Speaker 1: Then a research director at the Kennedy School of Government

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Speaker 1: called the researchers into his office and asked them not

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Speaker 1: to answer any questions about research funding.

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Speaker 3: We were called in for a staff meeting and our

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Speaker 3: research director told is you know, there's a lot of

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Speaker 3: activists and journalists snooping around and trying to inquire about

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Speaker 3: our funding and funding from the oil industry. And he said,

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Speaker 3: if anybody talks to you, don't tell them anything. You know,

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Speaker 3: don't talk to them and send them to me instead.

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Speaker 3: For an academic institution to actually tell its researchers don't

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Speaker 3: tell other people where your funding comes from.

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Speaker 1: That experience led Fronta to partner up with Supran, who

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Speaker 1: was noticing similar things at MIT. Supran has since gone

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Speaker 1: on to conduct research at Harvard with Naomi Euresquez and

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Speaker 1: is now headed to Miami University to run a research

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Speaker 1: center that will track how climate delay and denial spread

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Speaker 1: on social media. Franta went from Harvard to Stanford and

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Speaker 1: is now off to Oxford to launch a climate litigation initiative.

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Speaker 1: Last year, he published a paper about the economists that

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Speaker 1: had been hired by the American Petroleum Institute and other

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Speaker 1: fossil fuel groups to model the financial downside of acting

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Speaker 1: on climate and how they now describe those models as faulty,

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Speaker 1: although unfortunately they still underpin a lot of decision making

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Speaker 1: around climate policy. Franta even found one specific economist who

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Speaker 1: was willing to speak with him about that work. In

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Speaker 1: a nutshell, they only modeled the cost of action, never

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Speaker 1: the cost of inaction, the cost of unchecked climate change.

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Speaker 1: Kind of hard to make good decisions about what is

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Speaker 1: or isn't worth spending money on in that context. When

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Speaker 1: I talked to Fronta about that paper, he mentioned that

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Speaker 1: fossil fuel entities were heavily invested in university economics programs too,

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Speaker 1: which prompted Darna Nora and I to look into it

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Speaker 1: for our season on fossil Fuel in Schools, And what

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Speaker 1: we found was not just a seminar here or there,

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Speaker 1: but a concerted effort to fundamentally shape how we understand

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Speaker 1: and invoke economics. Starts targeting Americans when they're little kids

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Speaker 1: and never lets up. Here's fronta on why that's so concerning.

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Speaker 2: And that's obvious that we should ask is what effect

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Speaker 2: has that had? What has been the influence of decades

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Speaker 2: of finding from these special interests. Latest research is one

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Speaker 2: example some new research that will be out soon, and

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Speaker 2: by the time this airs, it might already be out.

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Speaker 2: It tracks the activity of a group of economic consultants

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Speaker 2: who were hired by the petroleum industry for decades to

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Speaker 2: produce analyzes that were then used by the companies and

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Speaker 2: by others opposing restrictions on fossil fuels to tell the

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Speaker 2: public that it would just be way too expensive to

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Speaker 2: act on climate, and that in any case, climate was

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Speaker 2: not going to be a big deal, so the best

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Speaker 2: thing to do is just do nothing and This was

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Speaker 2: the economic ammunition that the industry used alongside their scientific

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Speaker 2: merchants of doubt.

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Speaker 1: As all of the fossil fuel investment in university research

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Speaker 1: was happening, universities were themselves investing in fossil fuel companies,

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Speaker 1: and students, including Supran and Fronta when they were still

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Speaker 1: grad students, were pushing for them to divest. There have

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Speaker 1: been some big wins in the campus divestment movement over

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Speaker 1: the past decade. The entire University of California system divested,

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Speaker 1: for example, finally agreed to divest last year. The divestment

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Speaker 1: movement spawned the Sunrise movement as well, and last year

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Speaker 1: the Fossil Free Research campaign too. But there are still

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Speaker 1: plenty of prestige schools that are heavily invested in fossil fuels,

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Speaker 1: which is why earlier this year, students from five top

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Speaker 1: tier schools came together to file a legal complaint alleging

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Speaker 1: that actually it's illegal for their universities to be invested

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Speaker 1: in fossil fuel stocks. I spoke with Hannah Reynolds from Princeton,

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Speaker 1: Christopher Rilling from Stanford, and Aditi Lelly and Zara Bia

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Speaker 1: Bonnie from Vanderbilt. Shortly after that complaint was filed. I

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Speaker 1: wanted to start with just a little bit of background,

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Speaker 1: just to have you guys repeat how you all ended

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Speaker 1: up involved in this and what prompted the decision for

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Speaker 1: the universities to kind of join forces on this complaint.

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Speaker 4: I can touch on this, and I'm from the Vanderbilt campaign.

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Speaker 4: So we were a group, as all of the five schools,

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Speaker 4: a divestment activism group on our own campuses, and we

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Speaker 4: had a meeting with someone from Harvard, which at that

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Speaker 4: point had recently divested, and we were really excited to

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Speaker 4: learn about how they finally got to that point after

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Speaker 4: a decade of trying to convince their administration that this

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Speaker 4: was of importance. And so we had a meeting with

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Speaker 4: this person and they advised us to contact CDP Climate

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Speaker 4: Defense Projects, and so that's how we kind of got

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Speaker 4: into the realm of the legal complaint. And when talking

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Speaker 4: with the people at CDP ted Hamilton specifically, we learned

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Speaker 4: that there was a bunch of other schools that were

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Speaker 4: going to be filing with the same date and on

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Speaker 4: the same timeline. So of course each campaign is in

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Speaker 4: filing was confidential, So we asked if it would be

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Speaker 4: okay to you know, learn about who else was filing

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Speaker 4: so that we could kind of share ideas, strategies, just advice,

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Speaker 4: and all the campaigns said yes, And it happened to

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Speaker 4: be not only Vanderbilt, but Stanford, MIT, Princeton, am I

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Speaker 4: forgetting antlement?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, oh my god, thank you?

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Speaker 4: Yes, so and then we yeah asked to be put

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Speaker 4: in touch with the other campaigns and from there we

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Speaker 4: just started a signal chat and realized that there was

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Speaker 4: a lot of mobilization not just within our campaigns but

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Speaker 4: across campaigns that could help us really accelerate the movement.

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Speaker 1: And so this particular law UPMIFA is using that law

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Speaker 1: as something that CDP had come up with and been

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Speaker 1: thinking about or did that come from the campus divestment groups?

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Speaker 5: That idea, Yeah, that came from the CDP. And I

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Speaker 5: think the strategy had already been used, you know at

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Speaker 5: Harvard and Cornell where they were both successful in investing

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Speaker 5: only a couple months after this happened, but then also

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Speaker 5: at like several other universities at this point. So as

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Speaker 5: the CDP kind of came to us with this idea,

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Speaker 5: and you know, like Harvard had kind of introduced it

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Speaker 5: to us before connecting us to them.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and what's happening now? Where are we at as

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Speaker 1: of today?

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Speaker 6: I jump in on this a little bit, and then

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Speaker 6: I know a couple of the other states have actually

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Speaker 6: gotten a little bit more response. So I think, Chris,

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Speaker 6: if you want to jump into that would be great. So,

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Speaker 6: as of right now, we filed all five of the complaints,

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Speaker 6: and we have through the media attention that we've gotten

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Speaker 6: and made our schools aware that that has happened, made

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Speaker 6: our administrations aware, and have also started campaigns to make

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Speaker 6: sure that our state attorney generals take the complaints seriously

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Speaker 6: and follow it through on it. Because right now, once

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Speaker 6: we've filed those complaints, it really goes into the hands

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Speaker 6: of our state attorney generals because it's up to them

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Speaker 6: to what severity and with what intensity they decided to

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Speaker 6: investigate what we've brought to them. And so we really

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Speaker 6: hope that just they did in the Massachusetts State Attorney

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Speaker 6: General's office, they actually take this really seriously and start

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Speaker 6: investigating that. And so our role right now is really

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Speaker 6: pressuring the state attorney generals to do that and take

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Speaker 6: it seriously. And then here at Vanderbilt, we i think

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Speaker 6: Tennessee might be the only one which actually has a

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Speaker 6: Republican attorney general, if I'm not wrong. So it's definitely

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Speaker 6: a little bit of a different situation here with the

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Speaker 6: amount of pressure that we're going to be putting in

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Speaker 6: to make sure that they pay attention, because we realize

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Speaker 6: that the politics of it are definitely different in this

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Speaker 6: environment that they might be in states like Massachusetts or

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Speaker 6: Connecticut to health.

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Speaker 1: And then I know that that Harvard did divest right,

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Speaker 1: so you know, does that I don't know, how does

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Speaker 1: that impact the complaint as it kind of moves forward

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Speaker 1: if some of the campuses are complying or at least,

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Speaker 1: you know, starting to consider that and some are not.

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Speaker 7: I think there's a few threads to that. One is

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Speaker 7: I think that there's a lot of different Harvard is

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Speaker 7: obviously very like a front runnings, and a lot of

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Speaker 7: other schools will depend and make their policy decisions based

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Speaker 7: on how Harvard reacts. That's specifically how Stafford is acted.

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Speaker 7: I'm christ from Stafford, bad way, sorry, That's how Stanfford

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Speaker 7: has adopted some of its COVID policies. A lot of

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Speaker 7: its initial ideas about sending students off campus at the

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Speaker 7: beginning of the pandemic. So it's really important because Harvard

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Speaker 7: is one of the biggest endowments but also has a

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Speaker 7: lot of institutional impact and its policy is sort of

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Speaker 7: enemy to different schools, And you saw in the Boston

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Speaker 7: area right after Harvard divested, a few other local schools

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Speaker 7: tend too, which is you know, pretty I mean, it's

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Speaker 7: not definitive, but you can see that there's a connection. Additionally,

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Speaker 7: on the point of Harvard having a large endowment, it

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Speaker 7: also indicates that for schools who have endowance in the

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Speaker 7: same range and run in the same way, you often

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Speaker 7: see a lot of communication and strategy communications that happen

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Speaker 7: specifically with the Yale Endowment. There's a really famous endominent

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Speaker 7: share there who sort of hop around in different schools

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Speaker 7: and let a lot of different research and thinking on

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Speaker 7: institutional investing and sort of the third third that I'll

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Speaker 7: mention is the idea that just because Harvard has, you know,

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Speaker 7: made this commitment to divesting, doesn't mean that one that

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Speaker 7: they've gotten out of their asset classes already that are

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Speaker 7: the point of this legal complaint, But two doesn't mean

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Speaker 7: that the legal proceedings still couldn't happen, right, because the

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Speaker 7: law has been broken in the past, these are still

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Speaker 7: potentially active considerations, so they're not out of the woods yet.

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Speaker 7: So that's sort of a signal to other schools that,

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Speaker 7: you know, what are we doing, what what do we

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Speaker 7: need to look into? Are do we have to cover

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Speaker 7: our bases covered? And Stanford so far has responded to

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Speaker 7: just a handful of requests for comment basically indicating that no,

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Speaker 7: Stanford's endowment is following all the laws as far as

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Speaker 7: we're aware. So that's sort of all we've heard from them. Yeah,

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Speaker 7: those are just a different ways.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I can add on to that, just because Princeton,

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Speaker 5: being proximity of Harvard and also in the Ivy League,

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Speaker 5: has this history, I guess, of a following Harvard in

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Speaker 5: a lot of different things, especially related to racial justice

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Speaker 5: and stuff. But some of the things that I've heard

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Speaker 5: both our administrators say and folks in the Harvard campaign

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Speaker 5: have mentioned is that Harvard claimed that, you know, this

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Speaker 5: legal complaint had nothing to do with their choice to devest,

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Speaker 5: that they were already in the process of divesting before

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Speaker 5: it happened. So that's I think one way that we

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Speaker 5: might see our schools react to it is, even if

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Speaker 5: they do choose to divest, they might not credit the

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Speaker 5: legal complaint to that right. And then the other thing is,

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Speaker 5: like our administrators have said, like our president still denies

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Speaker 5: that Harvard has committed to divest. He's I don't think

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Speaker 5: they actually divested. So you know, there's there's that kind

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Speaker 5: of thing like where there's just still this like unwillingness

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Speaker 5: to just see what's happening and call it what it is,

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Speaker 5: So that I think that could also surface as well.

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Speaker 6: Just adding to that, I think at least at Andergilt

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Speaker 6: referring to Harvard as also a lot about rhetoric, because

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Speaker 6: there's a lot of rhetoric here of calling ourselves the

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Speaker 6: Harvard of the South and things like that. And so

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Speaker 6: we've been really adamant about saying that if you want

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Speaker 6: to draw those comparisons, then you have to follow through

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Speaker 6: on the same actions that Harvard is taking. And so

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Speaker 6: that was part of the just rhetoric that porqush is

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Speaker 6: well about using it as a precedent.

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Speaker 1: Mmmmm h yeah.

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Speaker 4: And sorry to jump onto what Hannah was saying. Even

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Speaker 4: though Harvard didn't acknowledge the legal plant and it's in

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Speaker 4: the Chancellor President's divestment press release, he used the terms

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Speaker 4: prudent investments, which is the key kind of term of

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Speaker 4: vpm IFA. So that's why that they believe that that

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Speaker 4: strategy got them to divestment.

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Speaker 1: Interesting, that's super interesting. I've done a bunch of research

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Speaker 1: on fossil fuel funding of research on all of these campuses,

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Speaker 1: and I wonder if some of the hasitation from some

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Speaker 1: of these universities around investment is in part linked to

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Speaker 1: the fact that they have large amounts of money that

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Speaker 1: they're taking from fossil fuel companies as well. And I'm

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Speaker 1: curious what you guys have seen with respect to that.

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Speaker 5: Princeton has a really unique situation because, unlike any other

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Speaker 5: school in the country, Princeton has a requirement that if

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Speaker 5: we're going to divest, we also need to dissociate from

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Speaker 5: those companies and the products they produce, which is basically

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Speaker 5: a completely arbitrary thing, but that was created by Princeton

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Speaker 5: after South African apartheid divestment campaigns because they didn't want

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Speaker 5: it to be so easy to divest from things. But

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Speaker 5: basically that means we have to have plans to not

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Speaker 5: be like driving cars that have gas if we're going

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Speaker 5: to divest from gas companies, or we need to be

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Speaker 5: moving to renewables to heat our dorms and stuff like that.

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Speaker 5: Those are the kind of claims that makes. But it

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Speaker 5: also makes this claim that we need to you know,

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Speaker 5: dissociation also means any research funding from these companies, and

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Speaker 5: currently much of our energy and environmental research is funded

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Speaker 5: by Exxon and BP and some by Shell as well,

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Speaker 5: and so a lot of faculty members are unwilling to

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Speaker 5: support investment because of this. Because of this requirement Princeton

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Speaker 5: put in as well. And yeah, so I think that's

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Speaker 5: a huge factor.

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Speaker 1: Did you catch that Princeton has had a policy in

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Speaker 1: place since the apartheid divestment days that was intended to

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Speaker 1: make it harder for the university to be compelled to

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Speaker 1: divest from anything. It requires that if they're going to

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Speaker 1: decide to pull investments from any particular company or sector,

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Speaker 1: they must also disassociate themselves with everything that company or

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Speaker 1: sector does, which makes their announcement last week a really,

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Speaker 1: really big deal. It means that not only are they

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Speaker 1: divesting their investment portfolio from fossil fuels, but they're saying

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Speaker 1: to fossil fuel research money and moving toward eliminating fossil

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Speaker 1: fuel use on campus. Obviously, none of that will happen overnight,

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Speaker 1: but it's a really big move. The presence of fossil

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Speaker 1: fuel research money has made a lot of other campuses

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Speaker 1: slow to divest. Here's Christopher Rilling from Stanford.

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Speaker 7: There's a lot of news articles from Stanford Daily and

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Speaker 7: some opinions that have quotes from a twenty twenty I

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Speaker 7: believe a May twenty twenty meeting in which the Faculty Center,

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Speaker 7: which is sort of like a decision making body full

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Speaker 7: of tenured professors at the university who vote on policy

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Speaker 7: like some policy impicitly cited this funding as a reason

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Speaker 7: to not divest and expressed concern that divestiture would sort

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Speaker 7: of poison these funding sources and jeopardized grad students' ability

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Speaker 7: to study, as well as certain research departments ability to

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Speaker 7: continue the programs. And I'll drop some links in the check.

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Speaker 7: I was shocked when I read this necessarily and how

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Speaker 7: I got involved with fossil free Yeah. Yeah, And they

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Speaker 7: also use the same surprising arguments to be honest about

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Speaker 7: you know, you all fly, you all drive cars, we

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Speaker 7: all enjoy like heated homes, all because of these fossil

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Speaker 7: fuels and it just doesn't it doesn't make sense, and

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Speaker 7: it's not a good look coming from people who are

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Speaker 7: you know, who know better for sure, because they wouldn't

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Speaker 7: be where they are if they didn't. But it definitely

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Speaker 7: indicates that there's a lot more going on that's completely opaque.

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Speaker 7: And so what we've done at Sanford we have a

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Speaker 7: new school Sustainability coming about. So we've tried to meet

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Speaker 7: with the organizers of that new school to understand what

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Speaker 7: the funding structure would look like, and they explicitly said

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Speaker 7: that they wouldn't rule out funding from oil and gas

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Speaker 7: companies for school focus on climate, which was just another

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Speaker 7: shocking revelation. Yeah, and that's yeah, that's what I'll say

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Speaker 7: that it's pretty that's really interesting. It's hard to pull apart.

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Speaker 1: The Influencess really got involved with fossil free Research as

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Speaker 1: a result of that experience. It's a new campaign that

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Speaker 1: launched earlier this year, organized by you guessed it, Campus

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Speaker 1: Divestment Students. It includes universities all over the world and

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Speaker 1: it asked them to do a pretty straightforward thing, stop

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Speaker 1: taking fossil fuel research money. Hundreds of university researchers and

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Speaker 1: professors have signed on to ask their universities to do

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Speaker 1: this too, including not just those in the physical sciences,

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Speaker 1: but also those in the social sciences. I spoke with

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Speaker 1: Elana Cohen from Harvard and Joel Penrose at Cambridge University

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Speaker 1: around the time the campaign officially launched in March twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty two. Is there any specific thing that like, either

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Speaker 1: someone telling you about it, or a specific piece of

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Speaker 1: research that you saw being funded. How did you, in particular,

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Speaker 1: first hear about or did you know already going into

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Speaker 1: Harvard that there was major fossil fuel funding of research there.

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Speaker 8: Yeah, that's a great question. No, I never had the

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Speaker 8: expectation that my university would be partnering in such a

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Speaker 8: pernicious and serious way with fossil fuel companies when it

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Speaker 8: comes to climate research. I really only came to learn

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Speaker 8: about this issue through organizing around investment, and then, ultimately,

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Speaker 8: when we were able to win this massive victory at

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Speaker 8: Harvard last fall, getting the university the world's richest one,

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Speaker 8: to commit to divest our campaign started really thinking critically

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Speaker 8: about the other ways in which the industry had infiltrated Harvard,

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Speaker 8: and through extensive research because this is something that Harvard

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Speaker 8: and many US and UK universities do not make public

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Speaker 8: or are not transparent about. We discovered that so many

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Speaker 8: of the research initiatives and centers of influence on campus

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Speaker 8: were in fact sponsored by fossil fuel companies, and we

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Speaker 8: put out a report about that at Harvard Semester, just

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Speaker 8: to name one example. There are numerous initiatives like the

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Speaker 8: Corporate Responsibility Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School that are funded

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Speaker 8: by fossil fuels. There are, you know, other climate and

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Speaker 8: environmental science initiatives that are funded by fossil fuel companies,

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Speaker 8: and the information about this is incredibly disparate and lacking.

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Speaker 8: You basically have to try to Internet search your way

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Speaker 8: through individual websites and publications of every possible researcher and

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Speaker 8: research center on campuses that you can think of to

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Speaker 8: be able to even get at the tip of the

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Speaker 8: iceberg of the amount of fossil fuel money that's coming in.

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Speaker 8: And I would guess that's because our universities are fundamentally

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Speaker 8: embarrassed actually about a lot of the money that they're

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Speaker 8: getting and the fact that's going to initiatives that shape

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Speaker 8: climate policy. Because there is an obvious and inherent contradiction

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Speaker 8: between fossil fuel money and good climate change research. But

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Speaker 8: that's to say also that a big part of why

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Speaker 8: we put forward this letter and why we're working with

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Speaker 8: so many academics and climate experts to call this issue

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Speaker 8: out is that transparent and disclosure is a really big

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Speaker 8: first step. If our universities want to claim that this

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Speaker 8: money is doing anything meaningful, then at the very least

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Speaker 8: they need to start talking about where this money is

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Speaker 8: in the first place. And at the moment, the vast

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Speaker 8: majority of universities are simply not doing that. So that's

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Speaker 8: a long way of saying that I came to really

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Speaker 8: diving into this issue after thinking more about how what

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Speaker 8: is not seen on university campuses that actually provides a

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Speaker 8: critical license to the fospool industry, because when I say

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Speaker 8: not seeing, what I mean is that our universities are

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Speaker 8: not transparent about it. But fossil fuel companies are abundantly

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Speaker 8: transparent about it. They're advertising partnerships with the universities like

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Speaker 8: Princeton and Harvard and Cambridge and Oxford on their websites.

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Speaker 8: All of the time, they're citing the research that they

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Speaker 8: get to put their name brands on affiliated with these

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Speaker 8: universities to policy makers, to media, to the public all

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Speaker 8: of the time, because they want the reputational gains that

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Speaker 8: come along with affiliation with established academic institutions.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so interesting because I know when I first

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Speaker 1: talked to Ben Frantic about this, like in I don't know,

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Speaker 1: twenty seventeen or something like, when he and Jeffrey were

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Speaker 1: first starting to write about some of this stuff, he like,

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Speaker 1: one of the things that he mentioned was just that,

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Speaker 1: as you know, I think Ben's on his like third

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Speaker 1: postdoc now, right, He's like, as someone who's been you know,

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Speaker 1: in academia for a while, I had never been told

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Speaker 1: specifically to hide funding sources, and that that is something

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Speaker 1: that he had the experience of it. Harvard was like,

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Speaker 1: you know, don't talk to anybody about where this funding

436
00:26:33,800 --> 00:26:38,119
Speaker 1: comes from, which does seem very antithetical to how universities

437
00:26:38,119 --> 00:26:40,760
Speaker 1: are supposed top right, right. So, Juel, I'm curious the

438
00:26:40,800 --> 00:26:42,959
Speaker 1: same question for you went, how did this appear on

439
00:26:43,000 --> 00:26:46,000
Speaker 1: your radar and was there anything specific that you saw

440
00:26:46,080 --> 00:26:47,439
Speaker 1: or did you just sort of hear about it?

441
00:26:47,560 --> 00:26:49,439
Speaker 9: So I think I came I came to it through

442
00:26:49,480 --> 00:26:52,280
Speaker 9: a slightly different path. By the time I got to Cambridge,

443
00:26:52,640 --> 00:26:55,919
Speaker 9: Cambridge to ready divested, so I wasn't involved in that movement.

444
00:26:56,040 --> 00:26:57,680
Speaker 9: But what I was involved in was I was heavily

445
00:26:57,680 --> 00:27:01,440
Speaker 9: involved in the Extinct from a Alien campaign at Cambridge

446
00:27:01,480 --> 00:27:03,840
Speaker 9: to get Cambridge to cut its research ties with Slumberje,

447
00:27:03,960 --> 00:27:06,920
Speaker 9: which is one of the worldt premier oil field services provider,

448
00:27:07,600 --> 00:27:11,000
Speaker 9: And through that I became more and more involved with

449
00:27:11,560 --> 00:27:16,359
Speaker 9: people at Cambridge Climate Justice trying to cut ties with

450
00:27:16,359 --> 00:27:19,840
Speaker 9: with all phosophield companies through all research. And I think

451
00:27:19,840 --> 00:27:21,240
Speaker 9: one of the things that struck me was that so

452
00:27:21,320 --> 00:27:24,000
Speaker 9: many of the PhD students that I met were in

453
00:27:24,040 --> 00:27:26,840
Speaker 9: fact being funded by flossi field companies such as Lemberg

454
00:27:27,040 --> 00:27:32,760
Speaker 9: and Shell. And I guess what really really, Yeah, what

455
00:27:33,920 --> 00:27:36,200
Speaker 9: offended me in my sense of what Cambridge does stand

456
00:27:36,240 --> 00:27:39,320
Speaker 9: for is that there are only there are only so

457
00:27:39,359 --> 00:27:42,479
Speaker 9: many good PhD researchers, for example, and that they're being

458
00:27:42,520 --> 00:27:46,359
Speaker 9: funneled into an industry which is so harmful to the planet.

459
00:27:46,440 --> 00:27:48,119
Speaker 9: I think that's what really struck me in what really

460
00:27:48,240 --> 00:27:50,679
Speaker 9: I didn't really realize when I first came to Cambridge.

461
00:27:51,240 --> 00:27:52,680
Speaker 9: One of the thing that we must remember is there's

462
00:27:52,680 --> 00:27:54,080
Speaker 9: a lot of research to be done and only a

463
00:27:54,119 --> 00:27:56,720
Speaker 9: finite number of researchers to do it, not to mention

464
00:27:56,840 --> 00:27:59,920
Speaker 9: that our time is rapidly running out. So yeah, that

465
00:28:00,160 --> 00:28:02,080
Speaker 9: was my route into this campaign.

466
00:28:03,720 --> 00:28:06,960
Speaker 8: And I'll just add to that because Joel and the

467
00:28:07,080 --> 00:28:09,439
Speaker 8: folks who have worked on the out campaign have done

468
00:28:09,480 --> 00:28:13,000
Speaker 8: such fantastic job. One thing that is really obvious by

469
00:28:13,720 --> 00:28:18,119
Speaker 8: Schlumberge's affiliation with universities is how much the greenwashing angle

470
00:28:18,240 --> 00:28:22,040
Speaker 8: of affiliation with universities really plays into fossil fuel companies decisions. Here,

471
00:28:22,560 --> 00:28:27,720
Speaker 8: Schlumberge very strategically locates as research centers right by prestigious universities,

472
00:28:27,760 --> 00:28:31,560
Speaker 8: including Cambridge in the UK and then Harvard and MIT

473
00:28:31,920 --> 00:28:34,439
Speaker 8: in the US, and it says explicitly, and it's in

474
00:28:34,480 --> 00:28:36,840
Speaker 8: its website and its media materials, that the reason it

475
00:28:36,880 --> 00:28:39,640
Speaker 8: does that is because it wants to benefit from recruiting

476
00:28:39,680 --> 00:28:43,280
Speaker 8: from those campuses and partnering with those campuses directly. And

477
00:28:43,320 --> 00:28:47,080
Speaker 8: that's a really clear reflection of exactly what fossil fuel

478
00:28:47,080 --> 00:28:51,360
Speaker 8: companies like Schlumberge, which are responsible for just absolute environmental

479
00:28:51,440 --> 00:28:54,920
Speaker 8: catastrophes and injustices, are seeking here when they look to

480
00:28:55,080 --> 00:28:58,080
Speaker 8: universities for partnerships. It's social license.

481
00:28:58,440 --> 00:28:59,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.

482
00:28:59,280 --> 00:29:03,479
Speaker 1: I was impressed by the letter and the number and

483
00:29:03,560 --> 00:29:06,239
Speaker 1: breadth of folks that were signed on to it. Can

484
00:29:06,280 --> 00:29:08,720
Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about how that came about?

485
00:29:09,360 --> 00:29:12,680
Speaker 1: And you know, I guess how hard or not hard

486
00:29:12,680 --> 00:29:15,960
Speaker 1: it was to get researchers to sign on. What were

487
00:29:15,960 --> 00:29:20,480
Speaker 1: some of the hesitancies we're hearing from people about making

488
00:29:20,520 --> 00:29:21,080
Speaker 1: this statement.

489
00:29:21,760 --> 00:29:24,000
Speaker 8: Yeah, I can start with that. But you know, a

490
00:29:24,080 --> 00:29:29,360
Speaker 8: really common hesitation we've encountered is the idea that fossil

491
00:29:29,360 --> 00:29:34,680
Speaker 8: fuel companies may be bad actors, but they're still providing

492
00:29:34,720 --> 00:29:39,080
Speaker 8: money for ostensibly good climate research, and don't we need

493
00:29:39,240 --> 00:29:42,240
Speaker 8: just more money for climate research? But as we've made clear,

494
00:29:42,320 --> 00:29:45,880
Speaker 8: you know, the reality that there may be that there

495
00:29:45,920 --> 00:29:49,280
Speaker 8: isn't enough funding coming from our governments in the public

496
00:29:49,360 --> 00:29:52,960
Speaker 8: sector for climate change research only underscores the need for

497
00:29:53,040 --> 00:29:56,120
Speaker 8: more money to go into climate change research and for universities,

498
00:29:56,160 --> 00:29:59,960
Speaker 8: particularly rich universities, to lead the way and securing that funding.

499
00:30:00,480 --> 00:30:05,239
Speaker 8: It doesn't erase the fundamentally unjustifiable and intractable conflict that

500
00:30:05,320 --> 00:30:09,200
Speaker 8: arises when you take fossil fuel money for climate change research,

501
00:30:09,640 --> 00:30:13,120
Speaker 8: nor does it alter the reality that by taking that money.

502
00:30:13,640 --> 00:30:18,160
Speaker 8: Universities inherently lend the prestige of their reputations as well

503
00:30:18,160 --> 00:30:21,880
Speaker 8: as their resources, to companies that are trying to make

504
00:30:21,920 --> 00:30:24,280
Speaker 8: themselves look like good faith climate actors, when in fact

505
00:30:24,280 --> 00:30:27,600
Speaker 8: they're doing everything in their power to sustain a core

506
00:30:27,640 --> 00:30:30,320
Speaker 8: business model that is completely at odds with the demands

507
00:30:30,320 --> 00:30:33,800
Speaker 8: of leading climate science and climate justice. So there is

508
00:30:33,840 --> 00:30:36,479
Speaker 8: no such thing as good fossil fuel money for climate

509
00:30:36,520 --> 00:30:40,160
Speaker 8: change research because the money is inherently problematic, and also

510
00:30:40,200 --> 00:30:43,040
Speaker 8: because what we're highlighting here again is a systemic issue.

511
00:30:43,120 --> 00:30:46,640
Speaker 8: Right we need good funding for the research on which

512
00:30:46,640 --> 00:30:51,480
Speaker 8: our futures, our planet, our communities, particularly communities being disproportionally

513
00:30:51,520 --> 00:30:54,520
Speaker 8: impacted by the climate crisis, depend and that's something that

514
00:30:54,560 --> 00:30:57,600
Speaker 8: we just simply can't sacrifice to the whims of fossil

515
00:30:57,600 --> 00:31:00,560
Speaker 8: fuel companies looking to profiteer off of crisis, whether it's

516
00:31:01,000 --> 00:31:05,040
Speaker 8: immediate humanitarian crisis like Russia's war on Ukraine or the

517
00:31:05,120 --> 00:31:08,120
Speaker 8: longer term climate crisis and all of the humanitarian conflicts

518
00:31:08,320 --> 00:31:10,920
Speaker 8: that that poses. And I think it's also important to

519
00:31:10,920 --> 00:31:14,480
Speaker 8: point out again that many rich universities have a lot

520
00:31:14,520 --> 00:31:17,240
Speaker 8: of resources at their disposal and have made very clear

521
00:31:17,320 --> 00:31:21,800
Speaker 8: their ability to fundraise vast amounts of money to support

522
00:31:21,880 --> 00:31:25,000
Speaker 8: initiatives that they're interested in, So why do they not

523
00:31:25,040 --> 00:31:27,760
Speaker 8: show that same initiative with climate change research? And if

524
00:31:27,760 --> 00:31:30,320
Speaker 8: they want to claim, you know, for example, if Harvard

525
00:31:30,320 --> 00:31:33,160
Speaker 8: wants to claim that fossil view money is really contributing

526
00:31:33,200 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 8: to its research portfolio, then it needs to prove that

527
00:31:35,960 --> 00:31:38,440
Speaker 8: because right now there's no evidence to show that that's

528
00:31:38,480 --> 00:31:41,400
Speaker 8: the case. The evidence points in favor of Harvard allowing

529
00:31:41,400 --> 00:31:45,640
Speaker 8: fossil view companies to infiltrate its academic sphere and benefit

530
00:31:45,680 --> 00:31:48,080
Speaker 8: from that, but not that there's a dependence there. I mean,

531
00:31:48,240 --> 00:31:50,320
Speaker 8: the university is not transparent at all about the scale

532
00:31:50,320 --> 00:31:52,560
Speaker 8: of funding that's taken from these companies in relation to

533
00:31:52,600 --> 00:31:55,920
Speaker 8: actually its overall amounts of research money. And I mean,

534
00:31:55,960 --> 00:31:58,640
Speaker 8: with the prestige and money already available to a place

535
00:31:58,720 --> 00:32:01,640
Speaker 8: like Harvard, it's only fair that we expect it to

536
00:32:01,720 --> 00:32:07,240
Speaker 8: show leadership in accelerating a trend of fossil free climate research,

537
00:32:07,760 --> 00:32:10,320
Speaker 8: rather than playing into a status quo that only allows

538
00:32:10,360 --> 00:32:13,320
Speaker 8: the same companies destroying the planet to continue doing so

539
00:32:13,760 --> 00:32:17,560
Speaker 8: and to harm the most disadvantage communities in the process.

540
00:32:17,920 --> 00:32:19,920
Speaker 9: There's there's sort of a common query often get, is this,

541
00:32:20,160 --> 00:32:22,120
Speaker 9: there's this sort of myth that the green transition can't

542
00:32:22,120 --> 00:32:25,480
Speaker 9: be funded without the financial backing of fossil fical companies.

543
00:32:25,560 --> 00:32:27,120
Speaker 9: When I think in the UK we've seen that with

544
00:32:27,320 --> 00:32:30,360
Speaker 9: the government's refusal to implement windfull tax and oil giants

545
00:32:30,400 --> 00:32:34,160
Speaker 9: because Richie so specifically says the chancell of the Sheeka

546
00:32:34,680 --> 00:32:37,320
Speaker 9: specifically says that they need this money to invest in force,

547
00:32:37,560 --> 00:32:41,640
Speaker 9: to invest in renunal energy, Whereas I think we see, well,

548
00:32:42,440 --> 00:32:44,960
Speaker 9: does that say that less than one percent of total

549
00:32:45,000 --> 00:32:48,640
Speaker 9: expenditure of the fossil companies is on renewable energy? And fundamentally,

550
00:32:48,680 --> 00:32:51,560
Speaker 9: if these companies were committed to a green transition and

551
00:32:51,640 --> 00:32:53,920
Speaker 9: to funding a green transition, then they would be green

552
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:57,080
Speaker 9: renewable energy companies rather than fossil fuel companies. So I

553
00:32:57,080 --> 00:33:00,600
Speaker 9: think there's a fundamental misunderstanding which many people have with

554
00:33:00,640 --> 00:33:02,760
Speaker 9: regards to where the money is coming from. Asilana said,

555
00:33:02,920 --> 00:33:06,840
Speaker 9: universities and governments have an immense capacity to fundraise and

556
00:33:07,000 --> 00:33:09,320
Speaker 9: huge spending power when they put their minds to it,

557
00:33:09,400 --> 00:33:11,520
Speaker 9: and at the moment, the green transition is simply not

558
00:33:11,560 --> 00:33:12,440
Speaker 9: the heart of their agenda.

559
00:33:12,760 --> 00:33:14,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to ask you guys both kind

560
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:18,840
Speaker 1: of related to that, whether you are hearing not just

561
00:33:18,880 --> 00:33:21,360
Speaker 1: about the funding piece, but just this there's such a

562
00:33:21,400 --> 00:33:25,240
Speaker 1: pervasive idea that oil companies need to have a quote

563
00:33:25,320 --> 00:33:28,280
Speaker 1: unquote seat at the table when we're talking about transition.

564
00:33:28,360 --> 00:33:31,800
Speaker 1: I mean, you see this in you know, the cop meetings,

565
00:33:31,800 --> 00:33:34,760
Speaker 1: you see it even in the IPCC reports, all of it, right,

566
00:33:34,840 --> 00:33:37,640
Speaker 1: So I'm curious if you've come up against that too,

567
00:33:37,640 --> 00:33:40,040
Speaker 1: this idea of well, you know, we don't want to

568
00:33:40,720 --> 00:33:43,920
Speaker 1: quote unquote villainize them, or as I had someone put

569
00:33:43,920 --> 00:33:47,480
Speaker 1: it to me recently, this is ridiculous. We don't want

570
00:33:47,520 --> 00:33:51,040
Speaker 1: to do a cancel culture on fossil fuels. I'm curious

571
00:33:51,040 --> 00:33:52,560
Speaker 1: if you heard stuff like that.

572
00:33:54,200 --> 00:33:56,760
Speaker 9: Well, I think this idea that they should have a

573
00:33:56,760 --> 00:33:59,080
Speaker 9: seat at the table is fundamentally flawed because I think

574
00:33:59,480 --> 00:34:01,360
Speaker 9: they should have a seat at the table because they

575
00:34:01,360 --> 00:34:05,160
Speaker 9: are a company whose business model is diametrically opposed to

576
00:34:05,200 --> 00:34:08,440
Speaker 9: the science said climate action that we need at the moment,

577
00:34:08,480 --> 00:34:10,239
Speaker 9: and it's just wrong to endow them with the power

578
00:34:10,239 --> 00:34:14,800
Speaker 9: to influence such a such a transition. Just as to backup,

579
00:34:14,840 --> 00:34:18,880
Speaker 9: companies have almost been universally banned from funding clinical research

580
00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:22,440
Speaker 9: due to their extensive record of disinformation, I think so

581
00:34:22,440 --> 00:34:25,240
Speaker 9: so should phosophy companies be locked out of the debate

582
00:34:25,320 --> 00:34:28,320
Speaker 9: as to where the green scent transition goes from now

583
00:34:28,400 --> 00:34:31,000
Speaker 9: just because of their vested interest in maintaining these status

584
00:34:31,080 --> 00:34:31,719
Speaker 9: quote yeah, and.

585
00:34:31,680 --> 00:34:33,319
Speaker 8: I mean I'll just add amy as you know, well,

586
00:34:33,520 --> 00:34:36,520
Speaker 8: you know, fossil fuel companies have literally just shown in

587
00:34:36,640 --> 00:34:39,279
Speaker 8: every single possible way that they have no interest in

588
00:34:39,320 --> 00:34:43,160
Speaker 8: being part of a rapid or just renewable energy transition.

589
00:34:43,760 --> 00:34:47,920
Speaker 8: I mean, they're rejecting shareholder proposals left and right for decarbonization.

590
00:34:48,200 --> 00:34:50,480
Speaker 8: So there are goo shareholder engagement, right. I mean, if

591
00:34:50,800 --> 00:34:52,719
Speaker 8: you were one to advocate for that, the proof is

592
00:34:52,760 --> 00:34:55,040
Speaker 8: in the putting that you know, that's not a viable

593
00:34:55,080 --> 00:34:58,000
Speaker 8: strategy at in a reality where fossil field companies just

594
00:34:58,000 --> 00:35:02,000
Speaker 8: shoot down every possible time from shareholder to actually change

595
00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:04,600
Speaker 8: their business model, which makes sense because their profits are

596
00:35:04,600 --> 00:35:07,920
Speaker 8: dependent on that core business model surviving their lobby against

597
00:35:07,920 --> 00:35:11,080
Speaker 8: climate policy, funding trade associations, the lobby against climate policy,

598
00:35:11,120 --> 00:35:15,440
Speaker 8: spreading disinformation greenwashing consistently, which were finally, and in a

599
00:35:15,600 --> 00:35:19,480
Speaker 8: very exciting way, seeing litigation around seeing actually like organizations

600
00:35:19,520 --> 00:35:22,880
Speaker 8: and governments take on fossil people companies for those claims,

601
00:35:22,880 --> 00:35:26,960
Speaker 8: but I mean, there's just there's every single indication that

602
00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:29,440
Speaker 8: they don't want this transition to happen, that they want

603
00:35:29,440 --> 00:35:32,280
Speaker 8: to sustain their profits to the point that it causes

604
00:35:32,400 --> 00:35:36,360
Speaker 8: immense environmental and social damage. And that's just not a

605
00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:40,640
Speaker 8: reality that our universities should be supporting, particularly when they

606
00:35:40,640 --> 00:35:43,759
Speaker 8: are institutions that are meant to be at the forefront

607
00:35:43,800 --> 00:35:48,960
Speaker 8: of public thought, of public innovation, of future oriented thinking,

608
00:35:49,080 --> 00:35:52,840
Speaker 8: and of support for young people. It's their responsibility to

609
00:35:53,000 --> 00:35:55,880
Speaker 8: start showing leadership in the same way that they expect

610
00:35:55,920 --> 00:35:57,480
Speaker 8: it from their students, and in the way that their

611
00:35:57,520 --> 00:35:59,520
Speaker 8: reputations and their resources demand.

612
00:36:00,640 --> 00:36:03,400
Speaker 1: I feel like in the last five years, when this

613
00:36:03,440 --> 00:36:07,080
Speaker 1: stuff first started to get into the media sphere at least,

614
00:36:07,080 --> 00:36:11,800
Speaker 1: that there was a lot of pushback actually from climate

615
00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:15,799
Speaker 1: researchers who, you know, I think initially we're worried that

616
00:36:16,040 --> 00:36:21,400
Speaker 1: this conversation I don't know, discredited some of their research

617
00:36:21,520 --> 00:36:24,200
Speaker 1: or their colleagues research, and just to see the turnaround

618
00:36:24,320 --> 00:36:27,359
Speaker 1: from that to now where actually I've seen at least

619
00:36:27,400 --> 00:36:31,800
Speaker 1: three people that I personally know were very defensive about

620
00:36:31,800 --> 00:36:34,760
Speaker 1: this conversation five years ago signing on to this letter,

621
00:36:34,920 --> 00:36:37,280
Speaker 1: you know, is that a big that's a big shift.

622
00:36:37,480 --> 00:36:40,719
Speaker 9: Yeah. I think just as the crisis has got worse

623
00:36:40,760 --> 00:36:42,800
Speaker 9: and worse and worse, I think in this last year alone,

624
00:36:42,800 --> 00:36:45,799
Speaker 9: you've beginning you're beginning to see just how bad it's become.

625
00:36:45,800 --> 00:36:48,680
Speaker 9: In the UK, we've had three successive storm being the

626
00:36:48,680 --> 00:36:50,759
Speaker 9: worst in a very very long time, hit us one

627
00:36:50,880 --> 00:36:52,640
Speaker 9: after the other after the other after the other. So

628
00:36:52,680 --> 00:36:54,480
Speaker 9: I think people are really really starting to wake up.

629
00:36:54,520 --> 00:36:57,000
Speaker 9: And there's been a dramatic shift after divestment. People are

630
00:36:57,000 --> 00:37:00,240
Speaker 9: looking around and thinking where's the next logical step from here,

631
00:37:00,719 --> 00:37:04,840
Speaker 9: and certainly cutting top research ties is that next logical step.

632
00:37:04,920 --> 00:37:08,840
Speaker 9: I think with divestment it was very much focused on

633
00:37:08,840 --> 00:37:12,080
Speaker 9: one side of the coin, and then now we're focusing

634
00:37:12,120 --> 00:37:15,040
Speaker 9: on the other side, which is to cut flossi fuel

635
00:37:15,080 --> 00:37:17,319
Speaker 9: ties all together. And I think, yeah, you have seen

636
00:37:17,360 --> 00:37:19,560
Speaker 9: a massive public shift, not only with the public, but

637
00:37:19,560 --> 00:37:21,600
Speaker 9: also with academics, and that's very important.

638
00:37:21,719 --> 00:37:24,560
Speaker 1: I know that just in looking at some of the

639
00:37:24,680 --> 00:37:29,840
Speaker 1: historical documentation of fossil fuel companies at the very beginning

640
00:37:29,920 --> 00:37:32,880
Speaker 1: of them, you know, starting to invest in university research

641
00:37:32,960 --> 00:37:36,399
Speaker 1: that you know, one of the stated goals was to

642
00:37:36,400 --> 00:37:42,120
Speaker 1: to really make sure that that university students were embracing

643
00:37:42,840 --> 00:37:46,879
Speaker 1: free market capitalism and seeing the energy industry as part

644
00:37:46,920 --> 00:37:48,960
Speaker 1: of that and all of these kinds of things, and

645
00:37:49,280 --> 00:37:53,160
Speaker 1: really wanting universities to be somewhat dependent on corporate funding

646
00:37:53,320 --> 00:37:57,040
Speaker 1: so that this kind of opportunity for influence would continue

647
00:37:57,080 --> 00:37:59,400
Speaker 1: for a long time. So I'm curious if you've heard

648
00:37:59,440 --> 00:38:05,239
Speaker 1: anything from the universities themselves or from researchers around you know, well,

649
00:38:05,239 --> 00:38:07,719
Speaker 1: where where are we going to get this money if

650
00:38:07,719 --> 00:38:10,000
Speaker 1: we don't get it from the fossil fuel industry, And

651
00:38:10,800 --> 00:38:12,719
Speaker 1: what the answers are to that.

652
00:38:12,920 --> 00:38:16,239
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean it's a really tough question. I think

653
00:38:16,440 --> 00:38:21,400
Speaker 8: to have bad research or research that helps to prop

654
00:38:21,560 --> 00:38:25,600
Speaker 8: up fossil fuel industry propaganda and styming of climate action

655
00:38:26,080 --> 00:38:29,799
Speaker 8: is not better than having no research. So that's a baseline.

656
00:38:29,960 --> 00:38:32,800
Speaker 8: But I also think the reality again is that we

657
00:38:33,160 --> 00:38:36,080
Speaker 8: need climate research. We need honest and effective climate change

658
00:38:36,080 --> 00:38:40,200
Speaker 8: research now to be able to actually take climate action

659
00:38:40,280 --> 00:38:44,520
Speaker 8: away that allows us as a society to meet the

660
00:38:44,920 --> 00:38:48,080
Speaker 8: goals of the Paris Agreement to limit severe levels of

661
00:38:48,160 --> 00:38:51,560
Speaker 8: planetary warming, to keep open a pathway of what you know,

662
00:38:51,640 --> 00:38:54,879
Speaker 8: the International Energy Agency says is needed for net zero

663
00:38:54,920 --> 00:38:57,480
Speaker 8: emissions at a global scale by twenty fifty, which means

664
00:38:57,760 --> 00:39:00,680
Speaker 8: no new investments in new fossil fuels VI projects today.

665
00:39:01,000 --> 00:39:03,480
Speaker 8: All of that, all of that making this transition in

666
00:39:03,520 --> 00:39:05,560
Speaker 8: a way that's urgent, in a way that socially just

667
00:39:06,080 --> 00:39:10,120
Speaker 8: depends upon the production of honest, effective climate research where

668
00:39:10,200 --> 00:39:13,520
Speaker 8: its integrity is not questioned, because even the questioning of

669
00:39:13,600 --> 00:39:17,359
Speaker 8: the integrity of such research and of universities credibility on

670
00:39:17,440 --> 00:39:20,840
Speaker 8: climate goes a long way in precluding the kind of

671
00:39:20,880 --> 00:39:22,880
Speaker 8: action that we need to take. But it is the

672
00:39:22,920 --> 00:39:26,799
Speaker 8: responsibility of rich universities, in particular, as we point out

673
00:39:26,800 --> 00:39:29,680
Speaker 8: on the Fossil Free Research Campaign's website, to lead the

674
00:39:29,719 --> 00:39:33,759
Speaker 8: way in securing funds for fossil free climate research and

675
00:39:33,840 --> 00:39:36,440
Speaker 8: for helping to establish those alternative funding streams. And it's

676
00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:38,919
Speaker 8: also the job of governments to participate in that, because

677
00:39:38,920 --> 00:39:41,560
Speaker 8: I mean, if good climate research is not in the

678
00:39:41,600 --> 00:39:44,319
Speaker 8: public interest, I don't know what else is right, What

679
00:39:44,400 --> 00:39:47,799
Speaker 8: else would our government's be funding right now? And that's

680
00:39:47,840 --> 00:39:49,840
Speaker 8: like a very serious policy issue that we need to

681
00:39:49,880 --> 00:39:52,399
Speaker 8: confront as well. But I will say I think it's

682
00:39:52,480 --> 00:39:55,040
Speaker 8: really important to recognize at the same time that we

683
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:59,960
Speaker 8: make those points that many universities are absurdly on transparent

684
00:40:00,320 --> 00:40:03,560
Speaker 8: about the amount of fossil fuel money going into their

685
00:40:03,600 --> 00:40:07,479
Speaker 8: research programs, and it is very possible that we could

686
00:40:07,480 --> 00:40:09,840
Speaker 8: find out at a place like Harvard to Cambridge. You

687
00:40:09,880 --> 00:40:13,200
Speaker 8: know that that money is relatively small in the grand

688
00:40:13,239 --> 00:40:16,600
Speaker 8: scheme of things for those universities, but again, the damage

689
00:40:16,640 --> 00:40:20,640
Speaker 8: that taking that money does, that partnering with these companies does,

690
00:40:20,800 --> 00:40:24,239
Speaker 8: is immense, and so there the calculation actually would be

691
00:40:24,320 --> 00:40:27,880
Speaker 8: quite clear, right like that these universities should be divesting

692
00:40:27,960 --> 00:40:30,879
Speaker 8: their research streams from fossil fuel money in the same

693
00:40:30,920 --> 00:40:34,480
Speaker 8: way that they divest their endowments. So this is all

694
00:40:34,640 --> 00:40:37,319
Speaker 8: to say that disclosure is a really fundamental step. It's

695
00:40:37,320 --> 00:40:41,360
Speaker 8: insufficient in terms of addressing the intractable conflict of interest

696
00:40:41,600 --> 00:40:44,640
Speaker 8: posed by fossil fuel money for climate research. But these

697
00:40:44,640 --> 00:40:46,400
Speaker 8: are all things that we need to grapple with in

698
00:40:46,400 --> 00:40:48,879
Speaker 8: a sphere of meaningful and open dialogue, and that's part

699
00:40:48,880 --> 00:40:51,799
Speaker 8: of what this letter is trying to force, because universities

700
00:40:51,840 --> 00:40:54,280
Speaker 8: haven't been at the table so far in many cases

701
00:40:54,600 --> 00:40:56,759
Speaker 8: in terms of addressing this issue in the way that's

702
00:40:56,800 --> 00:41:00,719
Speaker 8: required to ensure that they're operating with integrity and with

703
00:41:00,800 --> 00:41:02,840
Speaker 8: a true commitment to advancing our future.

704
00:41:02,920 --> 00:41:05,279
Speaker 1: Joel, I'm really curious to hear from you about the

705
00:41:05,360 --> 00:41:09,520
Speaker 1: difference between this conversation in the US versus the UK,

706
00:41:09,920 --> 00:41:14,200
Speaker 1: and especially around the funding stuff and how universities are funded,

707
00:41:14,239 --> 00:41:17,240
Speaker 1: and just whether you're seeing a difference in how people

708
00:41:17,719 --> 00:41:20,520
Speaker 1: are talking about this in the UK versus how you

709
00:41:20,600 --> 00:41:22,200
Speaker 1: hear Americans talk about it.

710
00:41:22,239 --> 00:41:23,959
Speaker 9: Well, I've never been to the US. I'm not sure

711
00:41:23,960 --> 00:41:25,640
Speaker 9: how one point I am or how it is in

712
00:41:25,680 --> 00:41:27,839
Speaker 9: the US, but certainly in the UK there's a growing

713
00:41:27,880 --> 00:41:30,800
Speaker 9: realization that the core for universities to reject for SoCal

714
00:41:30,880 --> 00:41:34,400
Speaker 9: company funding is intrisingsically bound up with the call for

715
00:41:34,440 --> 00:41:38,719
Speaker 9: increased governmental investment in climate change research. This especially comes

716
00:41:39,320 --> 00:41:44,000
Speaker 9: in the wake of huge cuts to all research, including

717
00:41:44,000 --> 00:41:47,200
Speaker 9: climate change research, last year due to the coronavirus pandemic,

718
00:41:47,440 --> 00:41:50,920
Speaker 9: and there are massively growing calls for increased funding in

719
00:41:52,000 --> 00:41:55,680
Speaker 9: all areas of university research because this dependence on corporate

720
00:41:55,719 --> 00:41:59,759
Speaker 9: funding creates well research being poured into all the wrong

721
00:41:59,760 --> 00:42:02,719
Speaker 9: area is I'm sure I've said before, but I do

722
00:42:02,760 --> 00:42:05,160
Speaker 9: think that there is a there is a huge amount

723
00:42:05,200 --> 00:42:07,080
Speaker 9: of research to be done and not many people to

724
00:42:07,120 --> 00:42:11,799
Speaker 9: do it essentially right and there's this idea that there's

725
00:42:11,800 --> 00:42:14,120
Speaker 9: this idea that all research is good research, but that's

726
00:42:14,520 --> 00:42:17,560
Speaker 9: not the right, that's right, Yeah, that's just not true.

727
00:42:17,600 --> 00:42:19,480
Speaker 9: I don't think there's What we need to do is

728
00:42:19,520 --> 00:42:22,040
Speaker 9: find the most effective use of the resources we have.

729
00:42:22,120 --> 00:42:25,360
Speaker 9: And the obviously there's no definition of effective research. No

730
00:42:25,360 --> 00:42:28,319
Speaker 9: one has any of the definitive answers. But what is

731
00:42:28,400 --> 00:42:30,960
Speaker 9: clear is that you need to find a more objective

732
00:42:31,200 --> 00:42:33,560
Speaker 9: source of funding. And that is certainly what force of

733
00:42:33,560 --> 00:42:35,759
Speaker 9: your companies cannot provide. They should be the last to

734
00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:38,760
Speaker 9: decide the direction of this screen transition. And yeah, increased

735
00:42:38,760 --> 00:42:42,360
Speaker 9: governmental intervention and management of research funding is definitely the

736
00:42:42,360 --> 00:42:42,880
Speaker 9: way forward.

737
00:42:44,440 --> 00:42:46,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so I know that this letter is just

738
00:42:46,600 --> 00:42:48,640
Speaker 1: the beginning. Are there things that you guys can talk

739
00:42:48,680 --> 00:42:51,520
Speaker 1: about yet that you have planned for future? Where do

740
00:42:51,520 --> 00:42:53,800
Speaker 1: you want to see this going? I mean, I assume

741
00:42:54,239 --> 00:42:57,680
Speaker 1: you want to hear universities committing to not taking fossil

742
00:42:57,719 --> 00:43:01,680
Speaker 1: fuel money for research on that. You know, Like, what's

743
00:43:01,760 --> 00:43:04,520
Speaker 1: kind of the next step in trying to encourage that

744
00:43:05,080 --> 00:43:06,399
Speaker 1: from universities?

745
00:43:07,680 --> 00:43:10,839
Speaker 8: Yeah, waday heck, yeah, that's that's the goal, to get

746
00:43:10,920 --> 00:43:14,560
Speaker 8: universities to actually implement these bands. A first step, though,

747
00:43:14,560 --> 00:43:18,640
Speaker 8: would be instigating meaningful dialogue. And by meaningful dialogue, I

748
00:43:18,640 --> 00:43:22,399
Speaker 8: don't mean like bureaucratic back and forth with administrators, which

749
00:43:22,440 --> 00:43:24,680
Speaker 8: I think the divest movement has shown in many cases

750
00:43:24,960 --> 00:43:29,240
Speaker 8: simply fails to succeed when our universities are actually corporations,

751
00:43:29,360 --> 00:43:32,800
Speaker 8: beholden to certain interests, among those the fossil fuel industry.

752
00:43:32,840 --> 00:43:35,800
Speaker 8: But what I do mean is rallying folks on campuses.

753
00:43:35,840 --> 00:43:37,640
Speaker 8: You know, this letter is really exciting to see, and

754
00:43:37,640 --> 00:43:40,600
Speaker 8: I think we're optimistic that having these more than five

755
00:43:40,680 --> 00:43:44,240
Speaker 8: hundred names of leading academics, university members, of climate experts

756
00:43:44,239 --> 00:43:47,480
Speaker 8: on the letter will inspire many, many more folks in

757
00:43:47,520 --> 00:43:50,439
Speaker 8: these fields to step forward, to use their voices, their power,

758
00:43:50,480 --> 00:43:53,840
Speaker 8: their resources, their public platforms, which students often lack to

759
00:43:53,920 --> 00:43:57,080
Speaker 8: be able to push universities in tandem with students who

760
00:43:57,080 --> 00:44:00,839
Speaker 8: can do the sort of grassroots organizing that also needs

761
00:44:00,880 --> 00:44:03,400
Speaker 8: to be done at the same time to force these conversations.

762
00:44:03,640 --> 00:44:06,000
Speaker 8: So I think we're hopeful that the letter will inspire

763
00:44:06,400 --> 00:44:10,720
Speaker 8: direct actions and new concerted organizing efforts, particularly among student

764
00:44:10,760 --> 00:44:13,400
Speaker 8: divestment campaigns that are looking for next steps in the

765
00:44:13,400 --> 00:44:17,560
Speaker 8: wake of their divestment victories in addition to mobilizing allied

766
00:44:17,600 --> 00:44:21,840
Speaker 8: bases of faculty and alumni and those across the sphere

767
00:44:21,840 --> 00:44:25,399
Speaker 8: of higher academia to push on our universities to make

768
00:44:25,520 --> 00:44:27,879
Speaker 8: real institutional change on this issue.

769
00:44:28,200 --> 00:44:28,840
Speaker 9: And I think it's.

770
00:44:28,680 --> 00:44:31,000
Speaker 8: Also worth noting, you know, the idea of a fossil

771
00:44:31,000 --> 00:44:33,560
Speaker 8: fuel money ban for climate research is so critical at

772
00:44:33,640 --> 00:44:36,399
Speaker 8: universities for the reasons that the letter lays out, which

773
00:44:36,440 --> 00:44:40,279
Speaker 8: is that universities have enormous amounts of prestige and resources

774
00:44:40,320 --> 00:44:43,600
Speaker 8: and legitimacy granted them. But this is also a model

775
00:44:43,640 --> 00:44:47,040
Speaker 8: that could easily be adopted by other research institutions, right

776
00:44:47,080 --> 00:44:50,440
Speaker 8: by organizations that are focused on climate change research, in

777
00:44:50,480 --> 00:44:53,560
Speaker 8: the same way that research institutions like Cancer UK that

778
00:44:53,960 --> 00:44:57,120
Speaker 8: focus on cancer and public health research have decided to

779
00:44:57,400 --> 00:45:01,080
Speaker 8: systematically reject tobacco money because of the inherent conflict of

780
00:45:01,120 --> 00:45:04,920
Speaker 8: interest posed between such money and research around public health.

781
00:45:05,080 --> 00:45:08,000
Speaker 8: So there are many climate change research organizations that could

782
00:45:08,000 --> 00:45:10,800
Speaker 8: adopt the same kind of policy that we've been calling

783
00:45:10,840 --> 00:45:13,440
Speaker 8: for in a university context, and I think part of

784
00:45:13,440 --> 00:45:16,439
Speaker 8: our vision also is expanding this call and seeing those

785
00:45:16,480 --> 00:45:18,880
Speaker 8: institutions come on board as well, because they have a

786
00:45:18,880 --> 00:45:22,520
Speaker 8: lot of the same cultural power and semblance of public

787
00:45:22,600 --> 00:45:26,480
Speaker 8: legitimacy that allows for their partnerships with the fossil fuel

788
00:45:26,480 --> 00:45:30,080
Speaker 8: industry to make a public impact in terms of sustaining

789
00:45:30,120 --> 00:45:32,200
Speaker 8: the industry's deadly core business model.

790
00:45:32,640 --> 00:45:34,279
Speaker 9: Yeah, I would just add that I think what's been

791
00:45:34,320 --> 00:45:38,920
Speaker 9: really critical in this effort is the transnational dimension of it,

792
00:45:39,000 --> 00:45:41,480
Speaker 9: and I think the next step would be to increase

793
00:45:41,680 --> 00:45:45,480
Speaker 9: international into university corporation. You may have noticed with the

794
00:45:45,560 --> 00:45:47,879
Speaker 9: lesser it's very Harvard and Cambridge based, and I think

795
00:45:47,920 --> 00:45:49,600
Speaker 9: the next step is to try and expand that to

796
00:45:49,640 --> 00:45:53,040
Speaker 9: European universities, in South American universities, Australian universities across the

797
00:45:53,040 --> 00:45:56,080
Speaker 9: globe to create a really global effort. Fostphuel research is

798
00:45:56,120 --> 00:45:58,120
Speaker 9: just the beginning, the tip of an iceboke of a

799
00:45:58,200 --> 00:46:02,440
Speaker 9: very very much bigger and I think yeah, next step

800
00:46:02,520 --> 00:46:07,160
Speaker 9: is to increase engagement with students across campuses, not only

801
00:46:07,239 --> 00:46:09,600
Speaker 9: in the US and the UK, but across the world.

802
00:46:09,840 --> 00:46:12,480
Speaker 8: Definitely worth mentioning though that we have signatories on the

803
00:46:12,560 --> 00:46:16,239
Speaker 8: letter from I think it's over twenty maybe twenty three

804
00:46:16,320 --> 00:46:18,520
Speaker 8: universities that are outside of the US and the UK

805
00:46:18,640 --> 00:46:20,719
Speaker 8: as well, and we do explain on the website. You know,

806
00:46:20,760 --> 00:46:23,120
Speaker 8: we started with the US and UK because that's where

807
00:46:23,200 --> 00:46:25,000
Speaker 8: a lot of the student organizers you know, who are

808
00:46:25,000 --> 00:46:27,040
Speaker 8: working on us for base, but also because those universities

809
00:46:27,080 --> 00:46:29,839
Speaker 8: have among the greatest amounts of resources in the world

810
00:46:29,960 --> 00:46:31,840
Speaker 8: and have been so keen the diets of movement and

811
00:46:31,920 --> 00:46:34,680
Speaker 8: have a unique responsibility to take action. But certainly we

812
00:46:34,760 --> 00:46:36,360
Speaker 8: hope that this is a band that could apply to

813
00:46:36,400 --> 00:46:40,000
Speaker 8: many more universities in similar positions, which is universities in Canada,

814
00:46:40,080 --> 00:46:41,799
Speaker 8: and so that's why it's also really cool to see

815
00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:44,200
Speaker 8: so many academics sign on to this letter actually who

816
00:46:44,200 --> 00:46:46,839
Speaker 8: are outside of the US and the UK.

817
00:46:47,080 --> 00:46:48,880
Speaker 1: I wonder too if you guys have talked it all

818
00:46:48,880 --> 00:46:54,480
Speaker 1: about connecting with the handful of academic publishers that publish

819
00:46:54,560 --> 00:46:57,239
Speaker 1: a lot of this research too, all of which are

820
00:46:57,280 --> 00:47:01,480
Speaker 1: also partnering with also field companies in unfortunate ways. But

821
00:47:01,520 --> 00:47:04,760
Speaker 1: it's mostly because it's a fairly small handful. I wonder

822
00:47:04,800 --> 00:47:08,680
Speaker 1: if there's many kind of discussion around looking at them too.

823
00:47:08,719 --> 00:47:12,279
Speaker 1: So the folks like Taylor and Francis Elsevier, you know,

824
00:47:12,400 --> 00:47:17,359
Speaker 1: those the big kind of publishers of research from these

825
00:47:17,440 --> 00:47:18,600
Speaker 1: universities as well.

826
00:47:18,800 --> 00:47:20,840
Speaker 8: That's a really great idea. I mean, we have not

827
00:47:20,960 --> 00:47:23,360
Speaker 8: started organizing around that, but certainly I think that is

828
00:47:23,520 --> 00:47:25,920
Speaker 8: again part of our hope for what this letter effort

829
00:47:25,920 --> 00:47:28,280
Speaker 8: could build into. Right, the letter is meant to provide

830
00:47:28,280 --> 00:47:32,239
Speaker 8: a foundation for showing institutions that are are part of

831
00:47:32,280 --> 00:47:35,120
Speaker 8: the climate academia sphere that they need to step up

832
00:47:35,239 --> 00:47:38,200
Speaker 8: in this moment of crisis. And certainly, as you mentioned,

833
00:47:38,280 --> 00:47:41,399
Speaker 8: like climate change publishers whichhare finding amount are really really

834
00:47:41,520 --> 00:47:43,880
Speaker 8: key parts in that because they could decide not to

835
00:47:44,320 --> 00:47:46,560
Speaker 8: you know, they could implement bands on what they're going

836
00:47:46,600 --> 00:47:49,959
Speaker 8: to publish in accordance with funding. And also because again

837
00:47:50,040 --> 00:47:53,720
Speaker 8: there's there's research to show that, you know, disclosure alone

838
00:47:53,880 --> 00:47:58,160
Speaker 8: of funding sources does not mitigate skewed research outcomes. Certainly,

839
00:47:58,239 --> 00:48:02,000
Speaker 8: it doesn't mitigate the reputaeational rewards that fossil fuel companies

840
00:48:02,040 --> 00:48:05,320
Speaker 8: we get from funding this research and the adverse effects

841
00:48:05,320 --> 00:48:09,319
Speaker 8: on policy making and everything that that has to do

842
00:48:09,360 --> 00:48:12,360
Speaker 8: with as well. So definitely, focusing on publishers is a

843
00:48:12,480 --> 00:48:14,680
Speaker 8: really really good idea that we hope that this letter

844
00:48:14,719 --> 00:48:16,160
Speaker 8: can help support going forward.

845
00:48:17,239 --> 00:48:19,640
Speaker 1: I appreciate you guys taking the time. Is there anything

846
00:48:19,800 --> 00:48:22,200
Speaker 1: that you want to make sure people know about with

847
00:48:22,320 --> 00:48:25,359
Speaker 1: this initiative that I didn't already ask you about.

848
00:48:27,200 --> 00:48:29,719
Speaker 9: I guess just to let people know that the letter

849
00:48:29,840 --> 00:48:31,319
Speaker 9: is still open for people to sign. If there are

850
00:48:31,560 --> 00:48:34,959
Speaker 9: any academics listening, please check out our website and sign

851
00:48:34,960 --> 00:48:36,959
Speaker 9: the letter. I mean, the more signatures we have, the better.

852
00:48:37,120 --> 00:48:38,719
Speaker 9: And yeah, I mean it's just the start of a

853
00:48:38,800 --> 00:48:40,480
Speaker 9: very big campaign and we need all to support we

854
00:48:40,520 --> 00:48:40,919
Speaker 9: can get.

855
00:48:42,360 --> 00:48:44,560
Speaker 8: Yeah, I would just add to that now is the

856
00:48:44,560 --> 00:48:48,120
Speaker 8: moment to start organizing around this issue, particularly again for

857
00:48:48,160 --> 00:48:50,320
Speaker 8: campaigns that are looking for this next step that of

858
00:48:50,400 --> 00:48:52,680
Speaker 8: one divestment, or are looking for ways to think more

859
00:48:52,719 --> 00:48:56,600
Speaker 8: broadly about how the foss feel industry has infiltrated their universities.

860
00:48:56,640 --> 00:48:59,920
Speaker 8: This is the moment we need a renewable energy transition

861
00:49:00,160 --> 00:49:02,759
Speaker 8: now more than ever. The war on Ukraine has only

862
00:49:02,840 --> 00:49:06,960
Speaker 8: highlighted that we need systemic investment in renewable energy in

863
00:49:07,400 --> 00:49:10,360
Speaker 8: new crystal clear ways. So this is a very unique

864
00:49:10,360 --> 00:49:13,080
Speaker 8: time in which to be organizing. And I'd also just

865
00:49:13,120 --> 00:49:14,960
Speaker 8: add that there are a lot of campaigns that have

866
00:49:15,080 --> 00:49:19,160
Speaker 8: started doing incredible work in this regard that that would

867
00:49:19,200 --> 00:49:22,040
Speaker 8: provide great models for anyone looking to get involved. So

868
00:49:22,680 --> 00:49:25,000
Speaker 8: you know, we're from foss Field at Best Harvard and

869
00:49:25,280 --> 00:49:28,319
Speaker 8: Cambridge Climate Justice and the Schlumberge Out campaign run by

870
00:49:28,360 --> 00:49:31,279
Speaker 8: Extinction Remillion Cambridge. But Sunrise she W has also been

871
00:49:31,280 --> 00:49:34,080
Speaker 8: doing incredible work in this sphere. They put out a

872
00:49:34,200 --> 00:49:37,360
Speaker 8: very big report one of their organizers, through the Organization

873
00:49:37,400 --> 00:49:39,360
Speaker 8: on Cooke my campus, on the ways in which the

874
00:49:39,360 --> 00:49:43,000
Speaker 8: fossil field industry had infiltrated the George Washington University Regulatory

875
00:49:43,000 --> 00:49:45,760
Speaker 8: Study Center. And they have actually proposed their own fossil

876
00:49:45,760 --> 00:49:48,760
Speaker 8: fuel money ban, which is really really cool. It includes

877
00:49:49,040 --> 00:49:51,239
Speaker 8: not only the Carbon Underground two hundred, but also the

878
00:49:51,280 --> 00:49:55,160
Speaker 8: Slippery six or six companies that were subpoented by Congress

879
00:49:55,200 --> 00:49:57,640
Speaker 8: for their fosse field industry moufeasons and so on, and

880
00:49:57,719 --> 00:50:00,600
Speaker 8: foundations like the Coke Foundation that aid and embed the companies.

881
00:50:00,640 --> 00:50:03,400
Speaker 8: So that's just to say there's a lot of groundwork

882
00:50:03,600 --> 00:50:06,040
Speaker 8: already going on in the sphere, and what the letter

883
00:50:06,080 --> 00:50:08,600
Speaker 8: does is it really amplifies and that's an entirely new

884
00:50:08,600 --> 00:50:11,600
Speaker 8: perspective to it by showing that academics and experts are

885
00:50:11,719 --> 00:50:14,960
Speaker 8: rallying behind this cause. So this is a prime moment

886
00:50:15,080 --> 00:50:17,759
Speaker 8: to really think if you're a climate activist in any

887
00:50:17,800 --> 00:50:21,040
Speaker 8: sort of space in the academic world about how you

888
00:50:21,040 --> 00:50:24,200
Speaker 8: can leverage your position and the institutions you're tied to

889
00:50:24,200 --> 00:50:27,680
Speaker 8: to force institutions that need to show climate leadership in

890
00:50:27,680 --> 00:50:30,280
Speaker 8: this area to do so. Yeah.

891
00:50:30,400 --> 00:50:32,560
Speaker 1: I so appreciate you guys taking the time.

892
00:50:32,800 --> 00:50:34,799
Speaker 2: Thanks, Thank you so much.

893
00:50:34,840 --> 00:50:35,160
Speaker 3: Amy.

894
00:50:45,440 --> 00:50:48,279
Speaker 1: That's it for this time. I will stick links to

895
00:50:48,600 --> 00:50:52,120
Speaker 1: both information about the legal complaint and information about fossil

896
00:50:52,120 --> 00:50:54,560
Speaker 1: free research in the show notes. If you want to

897
00:50:54,680 --> 00:50:58,120
Speaker 1: follow up and find out more, you can as always

898
00:50:58,239 --> 00:51:01,240
Speaker 1: follow us at We Are Drilled and online at drilled

899
00:51:01,239 --> 00:51:03,799
Speaker 1: podcast dot com. Make sure that you sign up for

900
00:51:03,840 --> 00:51:07,080
Speaker 1: our weekly newsletter there. Thanks for listening and we'll see

901
00:51:07,080 --> 00:51:16,960
Speaker 1: you next week. Drilled is an original Critical Frequency production.

902
00:51:17,680 --> 00:51:21,160
Speaker 1: The show was created and reported by me Ami Westerveldt.

903
00:51:21,640 --> 00:51:25,560
Speaker 1: Original music and mixing and mastering for this episode by

904
00:51:25,600 --> 00:51:29,880
Speaker 1: Peter duff. Our artwork is by Matthew Fleming. For ad

905
00:51:29,920 --> 00:51:33,360
Speaker 1: free episodes and bonus content, you can sign up for

906
00:51:33,560 --> 00:51:37,120
Speaker 1: our Patreon at Patreon dot com slash Drilled