Speaker 1: For more than a decade now, maybe more than two decades,
Speaker 1: people have been talking about how the thing stopping us
Speaker 1: from acting on the climate crisis. It's not so much
Speaker 1: science or technology. It's not about understanding the problem or
Speaker 1: even having the technology to do something about it, but
Speaker 1: about political will. We have enough data. We know how
Speaker 1: greenhouse gas emissions change the atmosphere, we know how they'll
Speaker 1: continue to change it, we know what the impacts of
Speaker 1: those changes will be. We know that human activity is
Speaker 1: the largest source of those gases by far, and we
Speaker 1: have all sorts of good and viable options for doing
Speaker 1: things differently, and yet no government on Earth has managed
Speaker 1: to do what's required to adequately address this problem, and
Speaker 1: every international body form to deal with it remains hopelessly
Speaker 1: incapable of doing so. In a few months, I'll be
Speaker 1: headed to the thirtieth Conference of the Parties, the annual
Speaker 1: Climate Summit that brings together all the members of the
Speaker 1: UN Framework on Climate Change Convention, and ask them to
Speaker 1: figure out a way to work together.
Speaker 2: On this problem.
Speaker 1: We've covered the crisis of legitimacy facing that body before,
Speaker 1: but it's more dire than ever right now, and it
Speaker 1: does not help that the US has adopted the Toddler
Speaker 1: approach to climate change, pretending it isn't there and hoping
Speaker 1: that does the trick. And the lead up to the conference,
Speaker 1: I got my hands on a new books that's been
Speaker 1: pulled together by the Climate Social Science Network at Brown University.
Speaker 1: It's an exhaustive global survey of the pure viewed research
Speaker 1: on climate obstruction. Which might sound boring and academic, but
Speaker 1: if you're a listener to this show, you know that
Speaker 1: I love to nerd out on some social science. This
Speaker 1: is the first book of its kind because climate obstruction
Speaker 1: is a relatively new field of research and it is fascinating.
Speaker 1: It's also a really good way to prep for all
Speaker 1: the nonsense we're about to see it this year's cop
Speaker 1: in Brazil, So prep with me. I'm reading the book
Speaker 1: before I go and talking to some of the researchers
Speaker 1: who worked on it to get a sense of where
Speaker 1: we're at while we're here, and what the heck might
Speaker 1: work to get us unstuck. I'm Amy Westerbelt. Welcome to
Speaker 1: a new season of Drilled. We're calling it obstruction today.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the world of obstruction.
Speaker 3: So I'm tim Ands Roberts, I'm professor at Brown University
Speaker 3: and director of the Climate Social Science Network. Climate Social
Speaker 3: Science Network is a network of eight hundred more than
Speaker 3: eight hundred scholars. We're now in forty nine countries. So
Speaker 3: this is a group that's people who study sort of
Speaker 3: the politics of climate change, and especially we're focused on
Speaker 3: who is blocking action on climate change. Our theory of
Speaker 3: change is that we've failed largely at addressing climate change
Speaker 3: because we didn't understand the opposition that we faced, and
Speaker 3: we were quite naive about that.
Speaker 4: I'm Jennifer jack Quett. I'm a professor at the University
Speaker 4: of Miami and I'm also the research associate Research director
Speaker 4: at the Climate Social Science Network, headquartered at Brown University.
Speaker 5: Christian Downey, I'm professor at the Strand National University in Canberra.
Speaker 6: And they were joined also by Carlos Malani, professor of
Speaker 6: International Relations at Rio de Janeiro State University and coordinator
Speaker 6: of the university's Interdisciplinary Observatory on Climate Change, who was
Speaker 6: having some Wi fi issues, because hey, that's life these days.
Speaker 7: Let's start with the most basically question, Can I have
Speaker 7: you give me a quick definition of climate obstruction?
Speaker 4: Is?
Speaker 7: What is this thing we're talking about.
Speaker 4: In the book, we define climate obstruction as intentional actions
Speaker 4: and efforts to slow or block policies on climate change,
Speaker 4: and we've focused on twenty fifteen onwards or the sort
Speaker 4: of post Paris agreement world.
Speaker 7: I'm glad that you mentioned this about the reason that
Speaker 7: we haven't acted has a lot to do with not
Speaker 7: understanding the opposition, because it leads right into my next question,
Speaker 7: which is that you start with this framing of you know,
Speaker 7: we're not behind on or not acting on climate just
Speaker 7: because of you know, these various things that people have
Speaker 7: pointed to in terms of, you know, issues with neoliberalism
Speaker 7: or democracy, but also because of this concerted effort to
Speaker 7: obstruct climate action. I think it's it's so important to
Speaker 7: have it spelled out, and it's it's one of those
Speaker 7: things that seems but I've never seen it in a
Speaker 7: paper before. So can you talk a little bit about
Speaker 7: why it's important to have this really explicitly stated and supported,
Speaker 7: and how important a contribution you think this volume will
Speaker 7: be to this kind of larger understanding of the issue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I'm going to start again on this, and
Speaker 3: I promise I won't be the dominating the conversation so
Speaker 3: much later on, But these are really to me a
Speaker 3: key change in the way we're starting to think about
Speaker 3: why we're not acting on climate change. And we just
Speaker 3: here again and again that oh, humans are selfish, or
Speaker 3: the science isn't there, the technology of renewable energy just
Speaker 3: is lame, and it's you know, intermittent and unreliable. That
Speaker 3: our democracy can't function dealing with hard problems, or that
Speaker 3: neoliberalism is this economic system that drive us to make
Speaker 3: short term decisions. Or our religion, our religious base and
Speaker 3: other cultural beliefs are such that we can't solve big problems.
Speaker 3: But we have solved big problems in the past, acid, rain, ozone, lead,
Speaker 3: and asbestos. Those are just the environmental examples, but we
Speaker 3: have many others that our societies have risen to the
Speaker 3: challenge of. And I think this case is different because
Speaker 3: we've had a leading industry, the largest industry in the
Speaker 3: history of humankind, oil and gas and coal. The fossil
Speaker 3: fuel industries have learned from those past regulatory efforts and said,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, we don't have an alternative. We're just
Speaker 3: going to fight it and block any effort to really
Speaker 3: seriously address climate change, and their strategies were sophisticated. They
Speaker 3: were tailored for every political context in the world, you know,
Speaker 3: for every town or US state or subregion to nations
Speaker 3: and un negotiations as we'll talk about, and then even
Speaker 3: in the same countries, the strateg these change as the
Speaker 3: president changes or as you know, political winds shift. So
Speaker 3: you know, that's sort of answering your first question on
Speaker 3: you know why is you know, what's what's new here
Speaker 3: on why it's important to say it's not inevitable again
Speaker 3: that it's pretty fatalistic to say that humans can't solve
Speaker 3: big problems, so just throw up your hands. So we've
Speaker 3: got to address this problem. And the insights from learning
Speaker 3: about obstruction offers new knowledge about how we might actually
Speaker 3: counter it. And I would really ask my colleagues to
Speaker 3: help me on this, But I think this volume is
Speaker 3: a quantum leap. We've never had a really global look.
Speaker 3: We have one hundred and ten of the world's scholars.
Speaker 3: I mean, the list of people involved in this book
Speaker 3: is really a who's who in this area of climate
Speaker 3: politics research. And you know, we have a far range
Speaker 3: of a far wider range of sectors that we're just
Speaker 3: starting to understand we have all these topics and we
Speaker 3: pulled together a bunch of work, which is a lot
Speaker 3: of which is original. So there's we've never had anything
Speaker 3: like this, and I'm really quite excited to have this
Speaker 3: thing coming out.
Speaker 4: And I guess I would just add there amy that
Speaker 4: it was so exciting to be scholars and professors and
Speaker 4: see the coalescence around a subfield that is climate obstruction globally.
Speaker 4: And you know, we've learned a lot about the history
Speaker 4: of climate science. We understand that these companies largely understood
Speaker 4: climate science in the early even in the early twentieth
Speaker 4: century potentially, but we don't see the first example of
Speaker 4: actual climate obstruction until nineteen eighty with the American Petroleum Institute.
Speaker 3: We only know.
Speaker 4: About that now because of great reporting and digging done
Speaker 4: by civil society and journalists in the nineties. And then
Speaker 4: this field is really born in the late nineties and
Speaker 4: early two thousands in terms of having academics and scholarly attention.
Speaker 4: And so now in twenty twenty five, we finally see
Speaker 4: enough research come together to just to find a global
Speaker 4: volume like this that I just think is really really exciting,
Speaker 4: and we did learn a lot of new things along
Speaker 4: the way, and.
Speaker 2: I think there's yet another issue that should be mentioned.
Speaker 2: I think this umbrella concept like climate obstruction is important
Speaker 2: because it shows how climate policies are not only a
Speaker 2: sectual policy. I mean, climate policies at the beginning were
Speaker 2: very much related to a scientific issue, to an environmental agenda.
Speaker 2: And we can really understand through the lenses of climate
Speaker 2: obstruction that climate policies they touch transport, energy, they touch agriculture,
Speaker 2: I mean, a series of other fields and other policies
Speaker 2: crossing across the board of governmental policies. And I think
Speaker 2: that this is important for the sake of understanding this
Speaker 2: umbrella concept of climate obstruction. And also I mean, and
Speaker 2: yet another issue I think that we could easily understand,
Speaker 2: particularly through chapter number four. I think it was the
Speaker 2: chapter on the far right, for example, the linkages the
Speaker 2: connections between democratic backlash and the growth of climate obstruction
Speaker 2: networks and organizations in different countries, with so many different contexts,
Speaker 2: but with this commonality of attacking climate policies altogether, also
Speaker 2: for the sake of attacking democratic advance.
Speaker 7: Okay, can you talk a little bit about what sorts
Speaker 7: of entities get involved in obstructing climate policy? I know
Speaker 7: you're like, yes, we gave you a whole book about this,
Speaker 7: but yeah, in broad strokes, what are the sorts of
Speaker 7: entities that get involved in these kinds of activities.
Speaker 5: Look, one of the key findings I guess from all
Speaker 5: the work that we've done to bring this book together
Speaker 5: is that, as you may guess, large oil and gas
Speaker 5: corporations are really front and center here, but importantly they're
Speaker 5: not the only ones. So a lot of the early
Speaker 5: work focused on organizations that your listeners will be familiar with,
Speaker 5: X on Mobile, Chevron, Shell and others, and the role
Speaker 5: that they've played obstructing action on climate change. Of course,
Speaker 5: there's a good reason to do that. We know since
Speaker 5: the nineteen eighties these organizations have spent tens hundreds of
Speaker 5: millions of dollars denying the existence of climate change, funding
Speaker 5: television campaigns, online campaign social media campaigns, etc. But as
Speaker 5: I said, they're not the only ones. So we have
Speaker 5: a lot of evidence now about the role of coal companies, utilities,
Speaker 5: car manufacturers, meat and dairy producers that have joined in
Speaker 5: efforts to delay slow down climate policies. So if you
Speaker 5: take the meat and dairy industry, for example, it's a
Speaker 5: sector that's uniquely emissions intensive compared with other agricultural industries
Speaker 5: because of its methane emissions, and so they've played a
Speaker 5: key role too. The other kind of interesting thing we
Speaker 5: observe is that you have these supply chains that create
Speaker 5: coalitions right across the economy. So if you think about
Speaker 5: utilities that we rely on to general electricity, well, in
Speaker 5: many countries they still are dependent on coal and gas,
Speaker 5: so you see coalitions between coal, gas, and utilities. Or
Speaker 5: you take one that you wouldn't really think of, like railroads.
Speaker 5: In many places, railroads are dependent on coal and so
Speaker 5: they work together to move the coal around the country.
Speaker 5: So you see these coalitions right up and down supply chains.
Speaker 5: One manifestation of this is large trade associations that represent
Speaker 5: multiple industries taking positions to block climate change. So in
Speaker 5: the US, it's well known groups like the US Chamber
Speaker 5: of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers. These are large
Speaker 5: member based organizations that represent some of the largest industries
Speaker 5: in the country. In Europe there's groups like the European
Speaker 5: Roundtable of Industrialists. In Indonesia there's the Chamber of Commerce
Speaker 5: in Industry and so on. So many of these larger
Speaker 5: bodies that represent business right across society have taken quite
Speaker 5: extreme anti climate positions in part because of these linkages
Speaker 5: across supply chains. So the short answer is, yes, it's
Speaker 5: oil and gas, but it's much more than that as well.
Speaker 7: Talk about responsibility. I really like this framing that you
Speaker 7: have in there of attribution for obstruction mapping to attribution
Speaker 7: science around emissions. So I'd love to have you guys
Speaker 7: talk about what makes fossil fuel producers uniquely liable for
Speaker 7: both climate change itself and climate obstruction. I know we
Speaker 7: just talked about the fact that they're obviously not the
Speaker 7: only ones, but they are a major source. So yeah,
Speaker 7: so what makes them uniquely liable? Yes?
Speaker 4: Thanks Samy. I feel seen with this question. So I
Speaker 4: really like it, and I think you've you've stated it
Speaker 4: well on drilled. You know, you have the actual pollution,
Speaker 4: the greenouse gas emissions, and you have a set of
Speaker 4: actors that emerge in attribution science who is responsible for
Speaker 4: these emissions. And then you have a separate issue that
Speaker 4: climate obstruction is really interested in about information pollution and
Speaker 4: the lobbying and these instructionist actions. And this is not
Speaker 4: necessarily a one to one overlap in terms of these
Speaker 4: sets of entities. So one way that it does seem
Speaker 4: uniquely different is, for instance, Saudi Aramco, state owned fossil
Speaker 4: fuel company seems less involved in climate obstruction than investor
Speaker 4: owned Exon Mobile and for all sorts of reasons, that's true,
Speaker 4: far less influential. Certainly in the US.
Speaker 2: Context, that's true.
Speaker 4: And then you also have these interesting because we've identified
Speaker 4: this network of climate obstruction, because we are aware now
Speaker 4: of major PR firms like Edelman being involved in climate obstruction.
Speaker 4: Edelman has very little to do with climate emissions, with
Speaker 4: greenhouse gas emissions, but a lot to do with information pollution,
Speaker 4: and so we identify this new set of actors who
Speaker 4: have responsibility in the realm of climate obstruction, but who
Speaker 4: may have very little responsibility in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think this is one point, as Jennifer was saying,
Speaker 5: that we were tried to make clear in the book,
Speaker 5: is that some actors are more consequential than others, and
Speaker 5: not all participants here in obstruction, you know, are equally liable.
Speaker 5: Are just kind of one additional point there that we
Speaker 5: make in the book is that these types of actors
Speaker 5: that you're talking about some of these large oil and
Speaker 5: gas producers, and we know from some great existing studies
Speaker 5: there's about ninety carbon majors, for example, that are responsible
Speaker 5: across oil, gas, and cement for a large chunk of
Speaker 5: rises in global mean average global temperatures and even sea
Speaker 5: level rise. So this attribution science is really pinpointing that.
Speaker 5: But it's not, as Jennifer was saying, it's not only
Speaker 5: that these companies are responsible for the emissions, but they
Speaker 5: also continue to spew out emissions expand their production, even
Speaker 5: though many of these firms know better than most because
Speaker 5: of their in house scientific knowledge, the damage that they're doing,
Speaker 5: how their practices are heating the planet. And then for
Speaker 5: these organizations to go on and use these huge amounts
Speaker 5: of revenues that they're generating in profits, to use a
Speaker 5: large chunk of that to then engage in political activities
Speaker 5: to try and delay policies, to try and block policies
Speaker 5: that are actually going to reduce emissions. I think that's
Speaker 5: why you're saying, some of these organizations being taken to court,
Speaker 5: being figned libel in courts and human rights commissions right
Speaker 5: across the world.
Speaker 4: And with no doubt we should think of those original
Speaker 4: emitters as the kind of beating heart of climate obstruction
Speaker 4: that you don't have Edleman without excellent mobile. But nevertheless,
Speaker 4: we have to think of the network as a whole
Speaker 4: as we identify, you know, sort of the main entities
Speaker 4: involved in shaping public opinion and politics.
Speaker 2: And there are some actors and they are very important
Speaker 2: at opening some doors that would not have been opened
Speaker 2: without their responsibility and their share of responsibility. As Jennifer said,
Speaker 2: of course, I mean the vir firm or some religious
Speaker 2: actors as the case here in Latin America for example.
Speaker 2: They are not the key emitters, but they are those
Speaker 2: who are helping pollute the information environment and contributing to
Speaker 2: the dissemination of climate and these are roles that are
Speaker 2: very important for the sake of delaying action.
Speaker 7: Right, I want to get into the ten key findings
Speaker 7: that you summarize in this chapter for the rest of
Speaker 7: the book. Let's start with it's not just about climate denial,
Speaker 7: thank you. I feel like I can't believe we're still
Speaker 7: having that conversation where it gets us to that, but
Speaker 7: we are, so let's talk about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I will say that there were more than
Speaker 3: ten findings in this book, of course, so we had
Speaker 3: to leave a lot out of this list, but this
Speaker 3: is to me the biggest one, and people don't really
Speaker 3: often get it or know that this sort of transition
Speaker 3: has happened, that that those who were denying the reality
Speaker 3: of climate change have largely moved on. There are some
Speaker 3: you know, weirdos and you know extreme people who continue
Speaker 3: to say, oh, it's not real. I heard one just
Speaker 3: the other day at a hearing about offshore wind in
Speaker 3: Rhode Island. But he was one of twenty five pieces
Speaker 3: of testimony against offshore wind. The rest were saying things
Speaker 3: like it's not you know, it's not reliable, it's not affordable,
Speaker 3: it's going to itself cause you a lot massive environmental damage,
Speaker 3: and so on, and those kind of arguments are really
Speaker 3: attacks on climate solutions, and we're seeing a huge surgeon those.
Speaker 3: So some excellent research built on earlier work by John Cook,
Speaker 3: who has a wonderful things like a game called Cranky
Speaker 3: Uncle and about you know, how do you help sort
Speaker 3: of prebunk or help people recognize misinformation. So a categorization
Speaker 3: scheme that he built and then was built upon by
Speaker 3: Travis Cohen and mere Jim Nanco at Exeter University in
Speaker 3: the UK. And what they've shown really is that just
Speaker 3: even quantitatively, if you can use sort of AI or
Speaker 3: other machine learning to categorize you know, types of claims
Speaker 3: about climate change. And we're seeing a market shift away
Speaker 3: from this attacking the science itself about the reality of
Speaker 3: climate change, but rather much more about the solutions. So
Speaker 3: some people are calling this sort of delayism, or as
Speaker 3: William Lamb in an article called discourse, is a climate
Speaker 3: delay that's been proven useful for understanding the shift. You know,
Speaker 3: people are saying, well, we should re'll act on it later,
Speaker 3: or the techno when the technology gets better, or well,
Speaker 3: you know, we'll hope that some great technology will fall
Speaker 3: from the sky, or the you know, the usual things
Speaker 3: will become viable like nuclear fusion or you know, hydrogen
Speaker 3: and so on that you know, you've covered a lot
Speaker 3: in this on the show. So anyway, and then there's
Speaker 3: other attacks which are on the scientists and on the
Speaker 3: activists and on people like us so on the even
Speaker 3: on the journalists and the social scientists. So are there
Speaker 3: are new approaches to slowing down action climate change? They
Speaker 3: don't need to really say that it's not happening. They
Speaker 3: can now attack the solutions and those of us who
Speaker 3: are seeking the advance solutions quickly.
Speaker 2: This is not to say that climate denial does not
Speaker 2: exist anymore right here in Brazil, for example, forward added
Speaker 2: denialist government, I mean denying the actual existence of climate change, right,
Speaker 2: We had ministers have.
Speaker 7: One in the US right now.
Speaker 2: Yes, I hope that, but I think that for us
Speaker 2: to understand that, of course, obstruction is much more than denial,
Speaker 2: but denial is still there, and even it's even if
Speaker 2: it's not only denial anymore. Sometimes we can even still
Speaker 2: listen to some forms of interpretative denial, such as the
Speaker 2: current president of Petro brass under government right saying that,
Speaker 2: for example, drilling oil at the mouth of the Amazon
Speaker 2: doesn't have anything to do with floods in the South
Speaker 2: cone of Brazil. Well, that's the sort of dissociating cause
Speaker 2: and effect. And I think that these are kinds of
Speaker 2: messages that, in spite of all the advances in the
Speaker 2: scientific fields, we can still listen from politicians and key
Speaker 2: managers of oil industries and other businesses.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. Okay, We've said, we've
Speaker 7: mentioned this a couple of times already, but we'll probably
Speaker 7: repeat it a few more that it's not it's not
Speaker 7: just oil. It's not just big oil though, So can
Speaker 7: I have you guys talk a little bit about what
Speaker 7: are some of these other industries that are particularly involved
Speaker 7: in climate obstruction? We mentioned animal egg before, so Jennifer,
Speaker 7: I'm sure you'll have more to add on that, but
Speaker 7: what are some of the other ones as well?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think part of our excitement around this book
Speaker 4: was expanding out the sectors that we talk about, and
Speaker 4: so we have various chapters dedicated to other sectors, one
Speaker 4: of which is animal agriculture. And we have known since
Speaker 4: two thousand and six when we got the first global
Speaker 4: assessment of livestocks impacts on greenhouse gases that the livestock
Speaker 4: sector counts for anywhere from fifteen to twenty five percent
Speaker 4: of anthropogenic warming, depending on the kind of accounting that
Speaker 4: you use. So it's not the biggest greenhouse gas emitter,
Speaker 4: but it's up there. And in terms of what's interesting
Speaker 4: is you'll hear in the animal agriculture industry frequently say
Speaker 4: that they get a disproportionate amount of attention relative to
Speaker 4: their emissions, and I think our view is inverted to that.
Speaker 4: So again this kind of you know, sort of classic
Speaker 4: difference I think between what the scholars might say and
Speaker 4: what the industry might say. But yeah, animal agriculture is
Speaker 4: a major polluter. As to why it hasn't received the
Speaker 4: same amount of attention, one reason, of course, is that
Speaker 4: the science itself on attribution has lagged behind what we
Speaker 4: know about just sort of warming generally. So you know,
Speaker 4: as we've understood climate change, we've had to understand who
Speaker 4: is actually responsible for it, and identifying the livestock sector
Speaker 4: has come later than it has around some of the
Speaker 4: other sectors. Notably, of course, the IPCCED does not identify
Speaker 4: livestock as a particular sector. Animal agriculture is included here
Speaker 4: because now we have a growing body of evidence, it's
Speaker 4: not huge, less than a dozen papers actually, but to
Speaker 4: show that the meat and dairy industry has actively been
Speaker 4: involved in climate obstruction, that they have downplayed, denied, delayed,
Speaker 4: lobbied against, influenced public discourse around the topic of climate change.
Speaker 4: And that was a prerequisite. A lot of people would
Speaker 4: have liked to see. A lot of author for instance,
Speaker 4: would have liked to see the financial sector and it's
Speaker 4: rule in climate obstruction, but because we don't have a
Speaker 4: scholarly basis on which to build that body of evidence,
Speaker 4: we set it aside for the next volume.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the only point to add there, I guess is
Speaker 5: one of the really nice things about this book was
Speaker 5: to spotlight some of these industries that we've been talking
Speaker 5: about that don't always get the attention. So oil, gas
Speaker 5: and coal, yes, but utilities. Actually, we don't have a
Speaker 5: huge amount of scholarly information about utilities, and yet the
Speaker 5: little we do know is that they've played a key
Speaker 5: role all the way back to the early nineteen nineties
Speaker 5: in some of the original coalitions, like the Global Climate Coalition,
Speaker 5: that played such a significant role obstructing climate change, and
Speaker 5: in many countries they still do. And in many jurisdictions
Speaker 5: there's some of the most powerful corporations. There's some of
Speaker 5: them as state owned entities as well. So utilities is
Speaker 5: one that we talk a little bit about in the book,
Speaker 5: and others that perhaps your listeners don't think so much about,
Speaker 5: like car manufacturers, organizations like Toyota, for example. You wouldn't
Speaker 5: necessarily jump to or imagine when you're talking about climate obstruction,
Speaker 5: but some of these car manufacturers that have bet on
Speaker 5: you internal combustion engines, continuing for some time, continue to
Speaker 5: obstruct things like fuel efficiency standards for cars. So right
Speaker 5: across the economy, a whole range of sector is a
Speaker 5: whole range of corporations that don't necessarily come to mind.
Speaker 5: We're now starting to see emerging interest, unfortunately, showing that
Speaker 5: these organizations too engage in the types of political activities
Speaker 5: that really marror what oil and gas have been doing
Speaker 5: as well.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that kind of leads to my next question, which
Speaker 7: is about the tree associations. So you mentioned that tree
Speaker 7: associations have this huge rule to play in climate obstruction,
Speaker 7: and I'm wondering if you can give a little bit
Speaker 7: of an overview and then a couple of examples of
Speaker 7: specific ones and what they get up to.
Speaker 5: Sure, So we've spoken about these networks of organizations, and
Speaker 5: some of the language we use is there's a whole
Speaker 5: range of organizations that really enable climate obstruction. You actually
Speaker 5: might have seen the U and Secretary General last year
Speaker 5: calling on for example, to stop I think in his words,
Speaker 5: you know, halting planetary obstruction for example. So there's a
Speaker 5: whole range of enablers and trade associations perhaps one of
Speaker 5: the most important. To give you an example, perhaps I
Speaker 5: can draw on some of the work that I've been
Speaker 5: doing with Robert Brawl which has really kind of focused
Speaker 5: in on the political expenditure of these organizations. So to
Speaker 5: be clear, what's a trade association, Well that really these
Speaker 5: are member based organizations that firms kind of hide behind
Speaker 5: often to do their dirty work. So I'm talking about
Speaker 5: groups like the American Patrolling Institute, one of the largest
Speaker 5: in the US, probably one of the largest in the world.
Speaker 5: It represents Shell bp exon Mobil, but it also represents
Speaker 5: a whole range of refiners and others. And so what
Speaker 5: we did in one piece of work is we went
Speaker 5: through their tax filings of about ninety organizations that have
Speaker 5: engaged on climate issues between twenty eight and twenty eighteen,
Speaker 5: just to see, you know, how much money do they
Speaker 5: have at their disposal, how much money they spending on politics.
Speaker 5: And what we found over that decade is of those
Speaker 5: around ninety trade associations that are working on climate issues,
Speaker 5: they had total revenues of more than twenty five billion
Speaker 5: US dollars, so huge sums of money the oil and
Speaker 5: gas sector alone. This is just the trade associations had
Speaker 5: four point six billion US dollars in revenues. What was
Speaker 5: also interesting is that thirteen percent of that, or about
Speaker 5: three point four billion, was just being spent on political activities.
Speaker 5: So these trade associations that are working on climate change
Speaker 5: issues in the US were spending three point four billion
Speaker 5: US over a decade on a whole range of political
Speaker 5: activities to try and shape climate policies. The other kind
Speaker 5: of scary thing to know about these numbers is from
Speaker 5: the political science literature, we know that actually firms themselves
Speaker 5: spend more on politics than trade associations, so three point
Speaker 5: four billion is really just scratching the surface. And then
Speaker 5: the other thing we're interested in was what are they
Speaker 5: spending that money on? So coming we've spoken a moment
Speaker 5: ago about Edelman and others, but advertising and promotion was
Speaker 5: the largest was the largest pot. So these organizations spent
Speaker 5: again hopefully I'm not drowning you in figures here, but
Speaker 5: two point two billion dollars just on advertising promotions. So
Speaker 5: most of their political spending is going to social media campaigns,
Speaker 5: television campaigns, radio.
Speaker 2: And others.
Speaker 5: And that's a lot more than they actually spent on lobbing.
Speaker 5: They also spent huge sums of money, almost four hundred
Speaker 5: million on external grants to other organizations. So, yes, we
Speaker 5: tend to think about these organizations. They do the lobbying
Speaker 5: and this type of stuff, but they also do a
Speaker 5: lot of pr They do a lot of external grants,
Speaker 5: and that was one thing I was curious about, you know,
Speaker 5: why are you guys giving all these external grants to
Speaker 5: sporting organizations, museums, historical societies, and others. And a few
Speaker 5: years ago I was I did some interviews with some
Speaker 5: of the lobbyists in these organizations, and I noted that
Speaker 5: a bunch of them were giving small amounts of money
Speaker 5: to a whole range of charitable organizations in Washington, DC.
Speaker 5: And you would ask them why, and some people said, oh,
Speaker 5: it's just simply because we want to solve Alzheimers, for example.
Speaker 5: But when you pushed a little bit more, you know,
Speaker 5: does it really begs you care about cancer or solving Alzheimer's.
Speaker 5: You know, it probably won't come as a surprise to
Speaker 5: those that work in Washington, d C. But often you
Speaker 5: give a small there's a charitable dinner in DC. You
Speaker 5: give ten thousand dollars to a particular organization, and that
Speaker 5: buys you a seat at the table, and perhaps at
Speaker 5: that particular dinner, the honorary guest that night is the
Speaker 5: Senate Finance Chairman. So you buy a seat at the table,
Speaker 5: the money goes to this charity, You sit next to
Speaker 5: the Senate Finance Chairman, you organize a meeting with their
Speaker 5: chief of staff on Monday morning, and that's how you
Speaker 5: facilitate lobbing. So these are very sophisticated playbooks that these
Speaker 5: trade associations are using to shape climate and energy policies
Speaker 5: on behalf of their members, and there's huge sums of money,
Speaker 5: as we detail in the book.
Speaker 2: Going to this, I.
Speaker 4: Would only add to that that the first instance of
Speaker 4: climate obstruction that we note in the book is by
Speaker 4: the American Petroleum Institute in nineteen eighty so a trade association.
Speaker 4: And the first example we have of climate obstruction by
Speaker 4: the meat and dairy industry is by the nowtional Cattleman's
Speaker 4: Beef Association in nineteen eighty nine, and we know that
Speaker 4: they've been heavily involved moving forward from there too. So
Speaker 4: again the role of trade associations does appear to be
Speaker 4: prominent across many different sectors.
Speaker 7: I find it interesting to look at the trade groups
Speaker 7: that are sort of cross industry. Like I've been obsessed
Speaker 7: with obsessively monitoring IATA for the last couple of years
Speaker 7: because i just think it's interesting that you've got like
Speaker 7: the oil companies, the airlines, and they're putting out so
Speaker 7: much garbage about sustainable aviation fuels at the face. But anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 7: I'm curious about the cross industry groups and how active
Speaker 7: they are and why industries might hide out in those groups.
Speaker 5: It allows firms to hide in the crowd. So the
Speaker 5: authors in chapter three use that phrase. I mean, it
Speaker 5: came up in a lot of interviews I've done as well.
Speaker 5: You know, often they'll talk about trade associations as the
Speaker 5: tip of the spear or but it allows firms to
Speaker 5: kind of go out in public and say, you know,
Speaker 5: we support the Paris Agreement, we support net zero, but
Speaker 5: at the same time channel money to organizations that can
Speaker 5: come out and try and undermine these agreements, undermine policies
Speaker 5: to meet them. So it's really a way to protect
Speaker 5: the social license of the firms that are members of them.
Speaker 5: So we often see firms say one thing in public,
Speaker 5: the CEO will give a press statement or so on.
Speaker 5: But if you follow where the money is actually going
Speaker 5: to these trade associations, they're undertaking political activities that are
Speaker 5: in direct contradiction to what some of the leaders of
Speaker 5: these firms are saying in public. So it's that reputational protection.
Speaker 5: I think that really comes out in some of the
Speaker 5: chapters in this book as well.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, okay, let's talk about another layer to this,
Speaker 7: the think tanks, which are just everywhere and growing all
Speaker 7: the time. How do they get involved in climate obstruction
Speaker 7: and what are some good examples of the think tanks
Speaker 7: that are particularly involved.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that based on the context of Latin
Speaker 2: American countries, I think thanks are not very a very
Speaker 2: frequent reality, right, and very often they have been set
Speaker 2: up in Brazil, in Argentina and Chile and other countries
Speaker 2: also through funds coming from Global North countries and Global
Speaker 2: North companies, right exactly to portray this image of producing
Speaker 2: scientific knowledge, policy relevant knowledge, but with a key message
Speaker 2: of spreading out, spreading they need to let's wait a
Speaker 2: little bit and then implement later when we have more
Speaker 2: information about what is really needed to do, perhaps in
Speaker 2: a less costly way, when more technology is available so
Speaker 2: that we don't have to be confronted with all the
Speaker 2: costs that are here. I mean for us to implement
Speaker 2: through clipe of climate policies. So I think I think
Speaker 2: Thanks they are one of these inge actors, together with
Speaker 2: religious groups, which help open doors, particularly between the official
Speaker 2: and civil society world right, because they are within the
Speaker 2: civil society. Very often you don't know if they're speaking
Speaker 2: on behalf of a government or on behalf of civil society,
Speaker 2: because they have this nature that is kind of hybrid.
Speaker 2: It's a think thank and you don't know if it's
Speaker 2: really coming from a social movement, from a civil society
Speaker 2: or from a government. And I think this hinge function
Speaker 2: opening doors. It's very important because if you withdraw the
Speaker 2: hinge of a door, it's going to open somehow, but
Speaker 2: it's not going to open so easily. And I think
Speaker 2: they played this role which is very important.
Speaker 5: The other thing I think that's stay tailed quite clearly
Speaker 5: in the book, And there's some terrific work by a
Speaker 5: handful of research is focusing trying to understand this network
Speaker 5: of think tanks. Now many of the most dominant are
Speaker 5: in the US. As Cars were saying, they're channeling money
Speaker 5: right across the world. But we spend a little bit
Speaker 5: of time in some of the chapters talking about the
Speaker 5: Atlas Network. So this for those of your listeners that
Speaker 5: haven't heard of the Atlas Network, this is a global
Speaker 5: network of organizations of think tanks. They're very much free
Speaker 5: market orientated and they focus on neoliberal policies. It's organizations
Speaker 5: like the Heartland Institute in the US, the Free Market
Speaker 5: Foundation in South Africa, the Global Warming Policy Foundation in
Speaker 5: the United Kingdom. In my own country in Australia, the
Speaker 5: Institute for Public Affairs is another prominent trade association. And
Speaker 5: so we see this network of organizations. We're starting to
Speaker 5: know a lot more about how they operate, the interlinkages
Speaker 5: between them, including funding flows, personnel, the interlocks between boards
Speaker 5: and so forth. But in many countries, as Carlos is saying,
Speaker 5: they play a very very influential role. Here in Australia,
Speaker 5: the Institute for Public Affairs that I just mentioned, for example,
Speaker 5: has very close ties to a number of conservative politicians
Speaker 5: that have been very outspoken even questioning the science of
Speaker 5: climate change. And I'm sure that's true right across the world.
Speaker 5: So we're seeing this close connection the way they spread ideas,
Speaker 5: but also their links right into national parliaments.
Speaker 7: I just spent a bunch of time at the Atlas
Speaker 7: Archive in California, and my favorite little like tidbit from
Speaker 7: there was this project where they funneled money, The API
Speaker 7: funneled money through Atlas to this fringe Catholic priest to
Speaker 7: try to work on getting Catholic bishops to be less
Speaker 7: interested in environmental issues and in fact to get them
Speaker 7: to think about environmentalism as like a cult that was
Speaker 7: a dangerous threat to Catholicism.
Speaker 5: Wow, there's not life, right.
Speaker 7: It's amazing. Yeah, it's wild. It's wild how much they do.
Speaker 2: I think that they also play a role in organizing
Speaker 2: a political message that is broader, that goes beyond climate
Speaker 2: through the organization of seedback here in Brazil. In other countries,
Speaker 2: for example, conservative political they play a key role because
Speaker 2: they get funds. I mean, they get support even from
Speaker 2: governmental authorities, depending on the government, and they organize a
Speaker 2: conference and that gives legitimation I mean in terms of
Speaker 2: the image that they could portray socially. Everybody, Oh, they
Speaker 2: are organizing a conference, so they are knowledgeable. They must
Speaker 2: be respected because they're organizing something. That is, they bring presidents,
Speaker 2: i mean leaders from different countries not only to talk
Speaker 2: about climate, but climate is always there of course.
Speaker 7: Yeah, okay, we've mentioned the PR firms a couple of times,
Speaker 7: but let's talk about them more specifically as kind of
Speaker 7: agents of obstruction. How do they operate? How do they
Speaker 7: kind of act to enable climate obstruction?
Speaker 4: So, as we mentioned earlier, PR firms are worked for hire.
Speaker 4: They're doing works on behalf of their clients. They don't
Speaker 4: do the work that they do without having money behind that.
Speaker 4: On the other hand, we also know that PR firms
Speaker 4: want to position themselves to be sort of loyal to
Speaker 4: certain industries to guarantee certain kinds of contracts moving forward,
Speaker 4: and so we see deep relationships between some PR firms
Speaker 4: and some polluting industries. There were Again, because we focused
Speaker 4: in this volume on twenty fifteen to the present, you know,
Speaker 4: we're really interested in work scholarship around that time as well,
Speaker 4: and so there have been examples. In chapter four on
Speaker 4: the animal agriculture industry of the Red Flag, it's an
Speaker 4: Irish PR firm very involved in positioning the animal agriculture
Speaker 4: industry as sustainable and so much so in fact, that
Speaker 4: extinction rebellion, you know, protested outside of Red Flag's headquarters
Speaker 4: in twenty nineteen because of this immense amount of bidding
Speaker 4: that they do on behalf of the animal agg industry.
Speaker 4: And there were a few other interesting examples I think
Speaker 4: of PR firms that people may not have typically heard
Speaker 4: of as being involved in climate obstruction that appear in
Speaker 4: this volume.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I was actually going to talk about Edelman, but maybe
Speaker 5: you're sick if do you want to hear more about it.
Speaker 5: I was just going to use the Energy Citizens example
Speaker 5: as a good one. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's an
Speaker 5: older one now, but I guess we were talking about
Speaker 5: trade associations a moment ago, and so firms higher PR firms,
Speaker 5: but also trade associations higher PR firms as well. So
Speaker 5: they work for a whole range of organizations in these
Speaker 5: networks that are obstructing action on climate change. And this
Speaker 5: is an older example, but I think it's just a
Speaker 5: classic case of how these things operate.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: So, in January twenty twelve, ahead of the US presidential elections,
Speaker 5: we saw this alliance of organizations and citizens called Energy
Speaker 5: Citizens runner canpaign titled I'm an Energy Voter.
Speaker 4: In the world in oil and natural gas production. That
Speaker 4: means lower energy costs, more growth, more security for Americans.
Speaker 7: More energy means more opportunity.
Speaker 3: We just see the right policies to make it happen.
Speaker 6: I'm Chris and I'm an energy voter.
Speaker 5: So it's this kind of campaign that sprung up. And
Speaker 5: the campaign involved newspapers, online, TV ads, and you had
Speaker 5: ordinary Americans looking into the camera saying, I'm an energy voter.
Speaker 5: I care about energy, I want to support American jobs.
Speaker 5: I support more oil and gas drilling. You could go
Speaker 5: to a website, say called vote for Energy dot org
Speaker 5: that told you more information about where different politicians stood
Speaker 5: on energy issues. Now, this all looks like a kind
Speaker 5: of grassroots, legitimate campaign by ordinary citizens that cared about
Speaker 5: energy issues. But it turns out, thanks to a lot
Speaker 5: of great investigative journalism and others, that actually the American
Speaker 5: Petroleum Institute, this organization we've been talking about, had contracted
Speaker 5: Edelman to run the campaign, to pay for the actors
Speaker 5: to appear in these ads, to set up the website,
Speaker 5: to do all this type of work. So that's really
Speaker 5: what these pr firms are doing. They're running a whole
Speaker 5: lot of AstroTurf organizations as well. It's not just setting
Speaker 5: up a TV campaign. And when we went back through
Speaker 5: the tax data, I looked at before what we actually
Speaker 5: saw in those years when Edelman set up the Energy
Speaker 5: Citizens campaign on behalf of the American Patrollum Institute. We
Speaker 5: know that the API paid Edelman one hundred and twenty
Speaker 5: million dollars in contracts for public relations in those two years.
Speaker 5: So I think there's some clear links there and large
Speaker 5: sums of money behind these types of campaigns that organizations
Speaker 5: like Edelman and others run for trade associations and for firms.
Speaker 4: I just want to jump in to add. You know,
Speaker 4: you can see in these campaigns in this framing in general,
Speaker 4: why some of these other sectors then get lost visa
Speaker 4: the oil and gas Because often, especially in the United States,
Speaker 4: climate change and energy are really completed and it's about
Speaker 4: energy use or energy voter and not necessarily about emissions.
Speaker 7: Let's talk about governments. There are obviously major agents of
Speaker 7: climate destruction and obstruction. Yeah, how do governments get involved
Speaker 7: in climate obstruction? I think sometimes people might think of
Speaker 7: climate obstruction as being something that's happening on the way
Speaker 7: to government. But you talk in this book about how
Speaker 7: governments themselves are often doing this too. So let's talk
Speaker 7: about some examples.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm going to jump on this talking about the
Speaker 2: Volscenara administration. Of course, because climate denial existed in Brazil
Speaker 2: prior to his administration. Of course, there were books, there
Speaker 2: were reports that had been published way before his administration.
Speaker 2: But what the machinery, the governmental machinery, made possible was
Speaker 2: to make climate denial something official as part of the
Speaker 2: actual rhetoric of the government, and not only of the rhetoric,
Speaker 2: but of the actions of that government, I mean nationally
Speaker 2: and globally, through the participation of a country like Brazil
Speaker 2: and multi natural climate negotiations. For example, it's interesting to
Speaker 2: see the behavior, the change of behavior between the Brazilian
Speaker 2: governments in the annunciation of the Paris Agreement in twenty
Speaker 2: fifteen and later on in Glasgow had another cop and
Speaker 2: we had another government, and the behavior and the political
Speaker 2: stances taken by that government the same country, but different
Speaker 2: governments were totally different, right. And another level of differentuciation,
Speaker 2: which I believe is also important, is to see how
Speaker 2: similar leaders may actually act differently if we compare like
Speaker 2: we're doing some research comparing Brazil and Argentina the two cases.
Speaker 2: For example, the ma Lay government doesn't have a very
Speaker 2: much strong opinion about climate but it's also because Argentina
Speaker 2: doesn't play the same level the same road at Brazil
Speaker 2: has historically played in multilateral climate negotiations, and also because
Speaker 2: the environmental movement and the climate movement in Argentina is
Speaker 2: not so strong to the level that climate obstruction would
Speaker 2: be needed. So when we make this comparison between Brazil
Speaker 2: and Argentina, it's interesting to see that climate obstruction is
Speaker 2: also it also conflates with the level of organization of
Speaker 2: environmental movements and climate movements nationally, right, and if there
Speaker 2: is a climate governance at the national level, then climate
Speaker 2: obstruction will need to be stronger in order to dismantal legislation,
Speaker 2: to go against the organization of participatory councils, for example
Speaker 2: at the national level, where civil society the science community
Speaker 2: may play a role. When you don't have that kind
Speaker 2: of governance organized at the national level the Argentinian case,
Speaker 2: of course, you don't need to have such strong climate
Speaker 2: obstruction actually us to the same level.
Speaker 3: It's going to talk about Trump, So I would jump
Speaker 3: in there talk about Trump. So here in the US,
Speaker 3: it's just you know, people are in shock about how
Speaker 3: effective the rollback has been of American climate policy. And
Speaker 3: you know, we've of course had been through this before
Speaker 3: in the Trump's first term, but they kind of failed
Speaker 3: to achieve a lot of the rollback that they were
Speaker 3: seeking to because they did a sloppy job and they
Speaker 3: had whatever, poorly written laws and so on. But anyway,
Speaker 3: so we've seen, and we're seeing right now in the
Speaker 3: US a shocking attack on climate action by the government itself.
Speaker 3: It's a new phase of obstruction, there's no question. And
Speaker 3: this is you know, this volume we finished before Trump
Speaker 3: came into office for the second time, that is, and
Speaker 3: so there's going to need to be you know, the
Speaker 3: new phase of Trump led obstruction volume sometime in the future.
Speaker 3: But the point I'd like to make is that there's
Speaker 3: always been obstruction, and the US has actually always been
Speaker 3: a leader of obstruction globally. That in the UN negotiations
Speaker 3: we have I've been attending for, you know, over twenty
Speaker 3: five years, and it's you know, the US was always
Speaker 3: the problem child the rest of the world waited for
Speaker 3: to figure out what the heck the US was going
Speaker 3: to do because we have this crazy supermajority required by
Speaker 3: the Senate, and everybody in the world, in the smallest
Speaker 3: African countries know about the quirks of you know, Joe
Speaker 3: Manchin or something in the US Senate. And there's been
Speaker 3: you know, very sophisticated blocking of global action in the US, sorry,
Speaker 3: by the US negotiating team through all those years, through
Speaker 3: democratic and republican administry. It's been bad. The US has
Speaker 3: with a few, very few exceptions, like in the run
Speaker 3: up to the Paaris agreement, the US did a little better. Anyway,
Speaker 3: the US has been really important and I think there's
Speaker 3: much to be learned from that because we need still
Speaker 3: to understand where did the US position come from. How
Speaker 3: did the US government become such a a force for
Speaker 3: obstruction in global solution to climate change? And we really
Speaker 3: can go back to the beginning when the UN f
Speaker 3: Triple C, the UN Climate Treaty was being first drafted.
Speaker 3: There was very strong influence from the oil and gas
Speaker 3: and coal industries. They organized, they got their way, they
Speaker 3: used their trade organizations, their politics, you know, their political connections.
Speaker 3: So there's different types of government led obstruction. Some are
Speaker 3: more subtle and some are extremely blunt, but I think
Speaker 3: it's really important for us to understand both.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 4: I want to tie you together something Carlos and Timmons were saying,
Speaker 4: because Carlos brought up the difference between Brazil and Argentina,
Speaker 4: and don't forget the US is the largest historical emitter
Speaker 4: if you think about the nation state, and as a result,
Speaker 4: it waffles between a position of high responsibility and a
Speaker 4: position of high denial. And this book volume is focused
Speaker 4: on twenty fifteen to the presence, so unfortunately that encompasses
Speaker 4: both Trump one and two presidencies. And the legitimization, I
Speaker 4: think was the word you were using, Carlos, of having
Speaker 4: the political leader, the top person in office in the
Speaker 4: United States, call climate change a hoax, use very dramatic,
Speaker 4: incendiary language in the twenty first century, and withdraw from
Speaker 4: the Paris Agreement, which Obama helped design and get through politically,
Speaker 4: just shows I think you know the constant in schizophrenia
Speaker 4: that we live with in this country regarding both climate
Speaker 4: obstruction and climate policy.
Speaker 3: I want to jump last in with one last point,
Speaker 3: and that is that by withdrawing from the Paris Agreement,
Speaker 3: there is ironically an opportunity for the rest of the
Speaker 3: world to move forward without its major obstructor so at
Speaker 3: least in the negotiating room. But you know, you have
Speaker 3: to ask why would they If the largest historic emitter
Speaker 3: and the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world
Speaker 3: doesn't act, why should they. So anyway, there's the double
Speaker 3: edge there on government led obstruction. In the US case
Speaker 3: right now, let's.
Speaker 2: To say that, well, the US has withdrawn from the
Speaker 2: agreement and it's not going to participate in cop But
Speaker 2: for example, now in Bond, Japan was playing the US role, right,
Speaker 2: and many negotiators was just saying, well, now we missed
Speaker 2: the US because Japan is even worse. So I mean,
Speaker 2: you may not be there, but you have others playing
Speaker 2: the role.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I can jump been a little bit more
Speaker 3: on the UNFC and even the IPCC, but I think
Speaker 3: this is a frontier for more research. We have a
Speaker 3: group that CSSN, one of the working groups that studies
Speaker 3: obstruction in both of those contexts, and they will be
Speaker 3: at the negotiations this next time, collaboratively doing ethnographic research
Speaker 3: in the negotiating rooms and identifying when they see obstruction.
Speaker 3: It's going to be really I think, quite illuminating. There's
Speaker 3: a couple of articles that have been really important. Danielle
Speaker 3: fell Zone at Rutgers has led US study on loss
Speaker 3: and damage and this really important climate change issue affecting
Speaker 3: the poorest countries in the world, and how the US
Speaker 3: and other countries managed to keep it off the negotiating
Speaker 3: table for decades. I mean, it was raised in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety one or two by Vanuwatu, you know, and yet
Speaker 3: that issue just got absolutely stuffed in the garbage and
Speaker 3: kept out out of the negotiations. And then there there's
Speaker 3: another piece in one of our sort of policy briefings
Speaker 3: from CSSN about Saudi Arabia, and they just repeatedly use
Speaker 3: all the tricks in the book to slow down and
Speaker 3: stop progress in the negotiations at the UNF Triple C negotiations,
Speaker 3: all kinds, you know, just endless tricks, and they're effective.
Speaker 3: And we also learned have learned that the US and
Speaker 3: Saudi often were in collaboration, working quietly in the background.
Speaker 3: And then I've just started attending IPCC meetings this last
Speaker 3: year and learned, you know, there is obstruction by countries
Speaker 3: like India and China and so on that often send
Speaker 3: delegates that are there to make it more difficult to
Speaker 3: come to consensus among the scientists. And then of course
Speaker 3: there's the more formal phase of input from governments where
Speaker 3: they get to review the summary for policymakers, which is
Speaker 3: why that document ends up getting watered down so much
Speaker 3: from the scientists report.
Speaker 7: I know, Saudi, maybe it's quite active in the summary
Speaker 7: for policy makers too, as is the US. Okay, one
Speaker 7: of your overarching top ten findings that you list in
Speaker 7: this chapter is obstruction starts at the top. That requires
Speaker 7: social acceptance. So I want to have you talk about
Speaker 7: how all of these different actors we've been talking about
Speaker 7: go about securing that acceptance. How are they building social
Speaker 7: acceptance or social license? What are they what are some
Speaker 7: of the things they're doing. Again with the caveat that,
Speaker 7: obviously there's the whole there's a whole book about it.
Speaker 7: But yeah, what are some examples?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I hope we've tried to do a
Speaker 4: good job of drawing out the fact that different political
Speaker 4: contexts result in different kinds of obstruction. And so in
Speaker 4: certain you know, heavy petro states without democratic regimes, you
Speaker 4: may not need obstruction whatsoever. Because you have just a
Speaker 4: perfect alignment between what the industry once and what the
Speaker 4: state wants and what the people are capable of objecting to.
Speaker 4: So you don't need much obstruction. But in a lot
Speaker 4: of cases, what you have are industries who are trying
Speaker 4: to make themselves seem sustainable in the face of or
Speaker 4: a lot of places where you see obstruction is where
Speaker 4: you see industries who are trying to position themselves as
Speaker 4: sustainable or trying to maintain their social license to operate
Speaker 4: in the face of growing civil unrest or maybe even
Speaker 4: growing litigation, or maybe even growing threat of regulation because
Speaker 4: specifically of climate change. And so you have this kind
Speaker 4: of obstructionist approach that may may be more about lobbying
Speaker 4: and maybe more behind closed doors like the nature Christian
Speaker 4: was describing getting a seat at the table next to
Speaker 4: a senator, or it may take the form. And I
Speaker 4: think this is what most people think of when they
Speaker 4: think of obstruction of influencing public understanding, public discourse, and
Speaker 4: the public view of the urgency to address climate change
Speaker 4: in how we should do it. And so that type
Speaker 4: of obstruction does require a lot of social buy in,
Speaker 4: and it's achieved in all sorts of ways. The authors
Speaker 4: of chapter two on the oil and gas chapter talk
Speaker 4: about post twenty fifteen as the net zero era, that
Speaker 4: the oil and gas companies have no longer denying climate
Speaker 4: change outright as much as they are positioning themselves as
Speaker 4: understanding climate change, and that we're going to be net
Speaker 4: zero by doing a whole bunch of presumably obstructionist accounting.
Speaker 4: Moving forward, the meat and dairy industry, you know, often
Speaker 4: talking about how sustainable the industry is, how it's not
Speaker 4: part of the problem, but ironically it's a huge part
Speaker 4: of the solution. And also that any attempts to intervene
Speaker 4: in either of these sectors would be enormously disastrous for
Speaker 4: both the economy and for consumers in general. So there's
Speaker 4: all sorts of ways in which then the obstruction helps
Speaker 4: work with people's impression of these industries and what it
Speaker 4: means to their daily lives, in ways that the data
Speaker 4: show undermined the threat of regulation or political moves to
Speaker 4: address climate change.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just to complement a little bit what Jennifer was saying,
Speaker 2: I think that when we talk about social acceptance, we
Speaker 2: also have to think of the role some religious actors,
Speaker 2: the role that they play in disseminating and giving legitimacy
Speaker 2: because they are talking about faith, about God, of course,
Speaker 2: and they are talking to some social sectors where, for example,
Speaker 2: some perhaps publicity about trade and about consumption is not
Speaker 2: so important, but where does matter a lot? And when
Speaker 2: you relate religious matters and messages with climate issues and
Speaker 2: environmental issues, portrayed that these are I don't know, something
Speaker 2: like coming from the devils, something like coming from another
Speaker 2: kind of entity. And of course dream dragon. I'm sorry, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, I think this is important to understand. These
Speaker 2: are voters, right, and these social sectors and individuals, they
Speaker 2: are voters at a certain moment in time, and depending
Speaker 2: on their participation in the demography of a society, they
Speaker 2: may play a key role in decide who's going to
Speaker 2: be elected. Take the BRASIP where religious groups are very strong.
Speaker 2: Are the US case where religious groups are extremely strong
Speaker 2: in elections?
Speaker 7: Yeah, please throw us a lifeline, and can I have
Speaker 7: each of you talk a little bit about an effort
Speaker 7: or a group or a person that you saw through
Speaker 7: your work on this book or related. Who's really combating
Speaker 7: obstruction in a way that seems effective. What are some
Speaker 7: methods that are being used or yeah, what are some
Speaker 7: groups that are having some traction batting this back.
Speaker 3: So I'll start off just talking about policymakers. There's so
Speaker 3: much that can be done. They can use regulation, legislation, leading,
Speaker 3: and then there's you know, government investigations, public shaming of
Speaker 3: bad actors. There's domestic you know, diplomatic initiatives to counter obstruction.
Speaker 3: We're seeing now being led by Brazil and France and
Speaker 3: UNESCO for example. I'm trying to save you know, to
Speaker 3: address climate information integrity through the UN process, and that's
Speaker 3: driven by you know, strong country national leaders. And I
Speaker 3: think you know, policymakers can put in place laws to
Speaker 3: increase transparency, prohibiting deceptive practices like greenwashing. There's a great
Speaker 3: EEU directives and so on that I think are path
Speaker 3: breaking and should be considered being copied around the world.
Speaker 3: So anyway, that's policymakers. I think lawyers have a big
Speaker 3: role to play right now. I mean currently in the
Speaker 3: US conjuncture, their lawyers are critical in fighting back against
Speaker 3: substruction by failing lawsuits against the firms involved in the
Speaker 3: obstruction and either directly and there's the case of state
Speaker 3: attorney general's attorneys general or indirectly on behalf of point
Speaker 3: of such as NGOs. These and lawyers are really important.
Speaker 3: So I think i'll leave it there.
Speaker 5: Maybe I'll just jump in on sorry, jump in on lawyers,
Speaker 5: because I think we should also mention the ICJ, the
Speaker 5: International Court of Justice decision the other day, right there's
Speaker 5: huge decision and this was led by states. We've mentioned
Speaker 5: states like Vanuatu, but some of these states like Solomon
Speaker 5: Islands and others that Barrister's working on their behalf that
Speaker 5: had this amazing decision and it really put the fossil
Speaker 5: fuel industry on notice and found that you know, states
Speaker 5: could be liable, could be held liable even if they continued,
Speaker 5: for example, to provide a fossil fuel subsidies for example.
Speaker 5: So I think, as Timmins was saying, you know, the
Speaker 5: legal avenues are really ramping up. The US has been
Speaker 5: leading on that front, but we've seen other avenues as well.
Speaker 5: We've seen in the book we mentioned Human Rights Commission
Speaker 5: in the Philippines for example, that looked into whether some
Speaker 5: of these entities that willfully engaged in climate instruction and
Speaker 5: found that they had. And then I think the ICAJI
Speaker 5: decision just last week will really kind of transform some
Speaker 5: of the legal discussions in a range of countries.
Speaker 2: I mean, one month before the ICJ, there was a
Speaker 2: decision by the Inter American Court of Justice, and I
Speaker 2: think that was a very interesting decision too, because it
Speaker 2: results from a very long process of consultation with civil
Speaker 2: society and scholarship here in Latin America, our group here,
Speaker 2: our observatory, we participated together with a bunch of other
Speaker 2: scholars and research groups and civil society organ decitions to
Speaker 2: send information to the court. And as a result of
Speaker 2: all this consultation process, the deliberation of the judges, they
Speaker 2: came up with a vision which incorporates the right to
Speaker 2: a sound climate, I mean a stable claims it as
Speaker 2: a human right, and that is that gives me precedence,
Speaker 2: which is really important for the connection to the human
Speaker 2: rights regime with the climate regime.
Speaker 4: I would just add that this section is a challenge
Speaker 4: including in the lawsuits. As mentioned, you know, deception and
Speaker 4: obstruction gets folded into a lot of climate cases, but
Speaker 4: the way in which obs section is sometimes litigated directly
Speaker 4: is most often through these greenwashing cases where they accuse
Speaker 4: a company potentially of lying to consumers or misleading consumers
Speaker 4: in a way that we would also see as obstructions.
Speaker 4: So in twenty twenty one, the first case of that
Speaker 4: for the met and dare industry occurred in Denmark with
Speaker 4: this case against Danish Crown who was claiming that it's
Speaker 4: pork was climate friendly, and Danish Crown lost that lawsuit,
Speaker 4: and now there are many more lawsuits in that ilk.
Speaker 4: And so again a challenge in the book I think
Speaker 4: was to focus in on climate obstruction activism, you know,
Speaker 4: not divestment, but uncoke my Campus as a form of
Speaker 4: obstruction related activism. And so I love Uncoke my Campus example,
Speaker 4: and I also love this example of a podcast called Drilled,
Speaker 4: which has drilled into the history of climate obstruction for
Speaker 4: many years now and has really provided I think, a
Speaker 4: much stronger understanding of the difference between greenhouse gas pollution
Speaker 4: and information pollution. And they work together, but they are distinct.
Speaker 7: Yeah it's kiddy, Okay, last question, we are heading into
Speaker 7: this COP. You just mentioned the climate information integrity efforts.
Speaker 7: There has been this big push to kind of make
Speaker 7: this the COP where we get ahead of climate disinformation,
Speaker 7: and I'm curious what you guys think about that, and Also,
Speaker 7: how is it different to focus on climate disinformation as
Speaker 7: opposed to climate obstruction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll just say two things about that. I think
Speaker 2: it's important to see climate disinformation as one of the
Speaker 2: key modalities of climate instruction. Right, if you take climate
Speaker 2: obstruction as an umbrella concept, they are of course connected.
Speaker 2: They're different, but one is part of the other. And
Speaker 2: I think that framing there's new framing. I really found
Speaker 2: it fascinating when I read and I discovered a global
Speaker 2: initiative about information integrity. I'm also a member of the
Speaker 2: i p IE International Panel on Information Environment. We just
Speaker 2: published another report concerning information about science and climate change.
Speaker 2: And I think that all these efforts to frame climate
Speaker 2: disinformation as an attack on information integrity changes the game,
Speaker 2: because who is going to be against integrity? Right? You
Speaker 2: have to be very brave to say publicly that you
Speaker 2: are against integrity any sort of integrity, right, and information
Speaker 2: integrity being the one that we're talking about. Whereas climate
Speaker 2: is information, I think that it has been very often
Speaker 2: conflated with a kind of a left wing progressive political
Speaker 2: banner or something like this, right, whereas information integrity gives
Speaker 2: a new, I think, a new avenue for action on
Speaker 2: climate atroduction on climate discordition, with the support of key
Speaker 2: organizations like the Yuan UNESCO, governments like France, Chile, Brazil
Speaker 2: or the countries, and we need to spread this message
Speaker 2: very wide and it's going to be part of COP thirty.
Speaker 2: I mean, the Brazilian government so very quickly. The connection
Speaker 2: between the climate information integrity and the possibility to fight
Speaker 2: against the far right in Brazil. It does it for
Speaker 2: the sake of climate, for the sake of the COP agenda,
Speaker 2: but also for the sake of presidential elections next year.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm very excited about this new initiative on the climate,
Speaker 3: the Global Initiative for Climate Information Integrity, as Carlos just described,
Speaker 3: And we do have a lot to credit to be
Speaker 3: given to Brazil for taking this up as one of
Speaker 3: the key areas that it's going to be putting forward
Speaker 3: as part of the COP thirty negotiations. So it's great
Speaker 3: to see this as a key issue. Information integrity is
Speaker 3: kind of an area that's discreet enough to try to
Speaker 3: go after, but you're right that it's just a small
Speaker 3: portion of the global the total amount of obstruction that
Speaker 3: happens on climate change. You know, Bob Brule says that
Speaker 3: it's probably twenty percent or maybe even less of the
Speaker 3: whole obstruction, that a lot of obstruction is just based
Speaker 3: on structural power of the big actors who can keep
Speaker 3: the system the way it is. And you know, this
Speaker 3: is never going to be easy to address climate change.
Speaker 3: People would rather just keep things the way they are.
Speaker 3: People fear change, but you know these actors are making
Speaker 3: it much more difficult. So it would be very exciting
Speaker 3: if an ambitious, truly ambitious country you would follow up
Speaker 3: on Brazil's effort. And we have Australia will be hosting
Speaker 3: COP thirty one. So what do you think, Christian, Will
Speaker 3: they carry the ball down the field from Brazil?
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, yeah, yeah, let's see what happens. We're still
Speaker 5: waiting on Actually Turkey and Australia are still bidding at
Speaker 5: the moment. They haven't decided, which is a bit of
Speaker 5: a problem actually because we need whichever country is going
Speaker 5: to become the host to sort that out soon. So
Speaker 5: they've got a long enough runway to actually prepare and
Speaker 5: do something. But yeah, I'd be very excited if Australia
Speaker 5: kind of built on what Brazil's doing on the disinformation
Speaker 5: front because, as Tim and says, we need every actor
Speaker 5: in the world, whether it's a state, clean energy, businesses,
Speaker 5: civil society, everybody to get on board and pull towards
Speaker 5: climate action and to push back against what we've been
Speaker 5: talking about what the role of Saudi Arabia and other
Speaker 5: countries are doing in this space. So fingers cross Brazil,
Speaker 5: you know, steps up to the plate, which which it
Speaker 5: looks like it might, and then either Australia or Turkey
Speaker 5: carries forward in the year after.
Speaker 4: If there's one lesson that studying climate obstruction should teach
Speaker 4: you is to not rest heavily on any set of laurels,
Speaker 4: whether it's cop national governments, subnational governments, you're a local newspaper.
Speaker 4: Wherever door closes, the window opens for this industry. And
Speaker 4: it's about all fronts at all times, by all people
Speaker 4: who are concerned. And I don't think there's time to
Speaker 4: stand by and watch what happens. We have to be
Speaker 4: ready for I think the obstruction that will come even
Speaker 4: around great terms like climate integrity or information integrity. Sorry,
Speaker 4: because we've already seen in the past. You know, it's like, oh,
Speaker 4: global warming is politicized, so let's call it climate change
Speaker 4: and that will help move things forward. And we've been
Speaker 4: here before so many times.
Speaker 5: You can imagine there's some office somewhere in Washington day say,
Speaker 5: where Edelman's already brainstorming how to we reframe climate integrity
Speaker 5: right like, it's probably already happening.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I mean, this is an industry and it's a
Speaker 3: big part of the whole society. But the industry is
Speaker 3: in its death throws and it's again the most powerful
Speaker 3: industry in the world, and it's not going down quietly,
Speaker 3: that's for sure.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: I understand, and I agree to a certain extent, but
Speaker 2: I think that right now it is a very progressive
Speaker 2: agenda to talk about climate information integrity. Right now, they
Speaker 2: maybe brainstorming, but they don't have yet an answer to that.
Speaker 2: So we should focus on that because I think that
Speaker 2: it's something that could help us at least deep locks
Speaker 2: some doors and unlock some windows or us for action
Speaker 2: and to do research.
Speaker 7: So awesome, all right, thanks guys.
Speaker 1: This season of Drill was reported and written by me
Speaker 1: Amy Westerbelt and produced by Peter Duff and Martin zeltz Astwik.
Speaker 1: Our theme music is Bird in the Hand by Forenoon.
Speaker 1: Our cover art was created by Matthew Fleming. Our First
Speaker 1: Amendment Attorney is James Wheaton with the First Amendment Project.
Speaker 1: We are also proud members of Reporters Shield. You can
Speaker 1: get more information on climate obstruction and what's been happening
Speaker 1: with international climate negotiations in recent years on our website
Speaker 1: at drill dot Media. You can also sign up for
Speaker 1: our newsletter there. Thanks for listening and we'll see you
Speaker 1: next time.