Speaker 1: In the last few months, a group of Dutch investigative
Speaker 1: reporters have been doing a great job publishing various stories
Speaker 1: on what Shelle knew and when. They have a project
Speaker 1: called the Shell Papers. It is on the Platform for
Speaker 1: Authentic Journalism in the Netherlands, which is a collaborative formed
Speaker 1: by four investigative journalists for the purposes of digging into
Speaker 1: things exactly like this. I'm joined today by two of
Speaker 1: those journalists. I'm going to let them introduce themselves.
Speaker 2: So my name is Alexander Berner. I'm an investigative journalist
Speaker 2: for a platform Authentic Juristic from the Netherlands.
Speaker 3: My name is Yelis Musk. I'm also an investigative reporter
Speaker 3: at the Platform for Authentic journal And.
Speaker 1: What is the Platform for Authentic Journalism?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the platform. We are a collective of four investrative reporters.
Speaker 3: We started out about five years ago because we wanted
Speaker 3: to contribute to certain undervalued topics within the Dutch media world.
Speaker 3: So most of all we focused in the beginning on
Speaker 3: complex issues like trade agreements and their impacts on the
Speaker 3: new environments and society in general, and then we moved
Speaker 3: on bid by bids towards lobbying, because lobbying was also
Speaker 3: like a big part of the whole Ttip and free
Speaker 3: trade negotiations, right, and from lobbying we sort of moved
Speaker 3: on naturally almost to climate change, seeing that the most
Speaker 3: lobby topic. Probably at this moment.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about some of their latest findings,
Speaker 1: including in particular shells direct funding of one well known
Speaker 1: climate denier in the Netherlands sounds to me like this
Speaker 1: guy was sort of the Threads singer of Holland that
Speaker 1: story and more. After a message from this episode's sponsor,
Speaker 1: I'm Amy Westervelt and this is drilled.
Speaker 3: A year ago we started the Shell papers where we
Speaker 3: wanted to do a Foyer request regarding about fifteen years
Speaker 3: of documents regarding communication between the Dutch government and Royal
Speaker 3: Dutch Shell in order to see like structurally what kind
Speaker 3: of cooperation exists between Shell and the Dutch States. So
Speaker 3: we wanted to see, like what ways does Shell influence
Speaker 3: Dutch policy.
Speaker 1: How did you kind of come upon the person who's
Speaker 1: at the center of your latest investing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we investigated fitz Butcher, a man who we didn't
Speaker 2: know actually before our investigation, but fitz Bitcher is generally
Speaker 2: known or was known in the nineties as one of
Speaker 2: the founders of the climate skeptic movement in An, Netherlands,
Speaker 2: and before that he was known as one of the
Speaker 2: founders of the Club of Rome, which was finalday in
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight and weren't against the excessive economic growth
Speaker 2: with its famous report Limits to Growth. So he was
Speaker 2: in general a well known scientist, professor in chemistry, and
Speaker 2: he actually got involved in the climate debate in the
Speaker 2: nineties through his own articles and lectures. He appeared on
Speaker 2: television and the newspapers and radio interviews, and yeah, he
Speaker 2: was one of the first known climate skeptics, which in
Speaker 2: the first decade when when the topic became a heart
Speaker 2: issue in global politics.
Speaker 1: So that's an interesting trajectory though, from the Club of
Speaker 1: Rome to climate skeptic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, always fascinating. Fascinated us because it seemed a bit
Speaker 2: contradictory to be first part of the group which warned
Speaker 2: against too much excessive economic growth and then to be
Speaker 2: to seem to be on the other side of the debate, right,
Speaker 2: But yeah, this is an interesting history as well. It
Speaker 2: seemed like what we know from people who actually know him,
Speaker 2: from the Club of Rome who have also written about
Speaker 2: his role in this club, is that he within this
Speaker 2: club where or this informal network, he was also part
Speaker 2: of the more conservative wing, let's say, within this, within
Speaker 2: this network, so it was not necessarily contradictory that within
Speaker 2: this copy already also took a position where he actually
Speaker 2: kind of downplaced the panic that followed the publication of
Speaker 2: the of the first report. So, especially within the Netherlands,
Speaker 2: this Club of Rome had a huge impact. It became
Speaker 2: like a media hype in the words of fitz Butcher,
Speaker 2: and he was actually a bit annoyed by this. We
Speaker 2: see this also in his personal archive that he was
Speaker 2: he didn't like this, this panic, and this was like
Speaker 2: the first time that he became an outspoken actually a
Speaker 2: critic of the environmental movement, which although he was part
Speaker 2: of the group, he also took a stance against the
Speaker 2: environment movement which used this report to call for you know,
Speaker 2: government interference in business. He was pro.
Speaker 1: Market, so he wanted businesses to choose to limit growth themselves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some self for strength, right. Also in his Club
Speaker 3: of Rome activities, his whole point was that there's no
Speaker 3: such thing as well, there is such a thing as
Speaker 3: depletion of resources. But the problem is that we cannot
Speaker 3: access a lot of those, so we need to develop
Speaker 3: more technology in order to reach oil and gas or
Speaker 3: coal in places that are thus far unreachable.
Speaker 1: Interesting, that's really interesting.
Speaker 4: Okay, So did you get a sense of how he
Speaker 4: sort of got into the climate skeptic movement in the nineties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, actually he was involved or interested in the
Speaker 2: topic already since the end of the seventies, nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 2: as I understand it, there was already an international conference
Speaker 2: about it and some attention to it. So he was
Speaker 2: interested in this debate from the beginning. And this was
Speaker 2: still at a time when he combined his work as
Speaker 2: an academic with advisory work for Royal Buds SHELL, So
Speaker 2: he has always combined this during his career. He was
Speaker 2: at the same time a professor and also part time
Speaker 2: advisor of Board of Royal dotch Sheell regarding research their
Speaker 2: research policy. So he worked for SHELL from nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: three to nineteen eighty three, so for more or less,
Speaker 2: and he was familiar with the heads the main CEOs,
Speaker 2: you know, he considered them to be his personal friends.
Speaker 2: At the end of the seventies, is there was a
Speaker 2: discussion about the greenhouse effect beginning, so he got involved
Speaker 2: in immediately and also supported by Shell already in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy nine. The first sign of support from Royal Dotchell
Speaker 2: to him regarding the greenhouse effect is actually from nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy nine when Shell financed the small research of fitz
Speaker 2: Butcher into the greenhouse effect to see what was right
Speaker 2: and what was wrong about this theory, as he would
Speaker 2: call it. And this was actually already the first time
Speaker 2: when he started to develop his his skeptic arguments and
Speaker 2: am vision, and we see from personal notes in his
Speaker 2: personal archive that he, you know, he had this skeptic
Speaker 2: theory based on the gaia theory of James Lovelock, believing
Speaker 2: in the self regulating powers of planet Earth and you know,
Speaker 2: believing in the in the positive feedback effects. But he
Speaker 2: was never a climate science scientist. He was a he
Speaker 2: was a professor in chemistry. So but he started to
Speaker 2: read in the eighties as well the literature from American
Speaker 2: climate skeptics Richard Linson, and he already knew, you know,
Speaker 2: people like Fred Singer and other American skeptics, which you
Speaker 2: have talked about in your podcast.
Speaker 3: As well.
Speaker 2: He knew them from international policycles like the OECD, for
Speaker 2: which he was also a delegate, So he was familiar
Speaker 2: with the American skeptics and he followed them, but he
Speaker 2: didn't really became a vocal critic of the climate scientist
Speaker 2: until nineteen eighty nine or less. What we found to
Speaker 2: be his CO two project, as he called it, like
Speaker 2: a big skeptic project, which which he ran for almost
Speaker 2: a decade that started in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 1: Interesting, and did the funding for that come from Shell
Speaker 1: as well?
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, that's that's our main discovery. So and the
Speaker 2: biggest surprise to us because you know, we started this
Speaker 2: research just to investigate, to write a kind of like
Speaker 2: a background article about what is already known about Shell's
Speaker 2: role in the climate debate, and we didn't we didn't
Speaker 2: expect to find this kind of direct support to climate
Speaker 2: skeptics because in general Shell is known as as more
Speaker 2: like a unlike Exon, you know, like a company which
Speaker 2: has a bit of attention for the environment and which
Speaker 2: isn't that aggressive in funding you know, climate denihilism. That's
Speaker 2: why we didn't expect to find this kind of direct support.
Speaker 2: But his personal archive is Butcher. He died in two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight, so he left his archive in the
Speaker 2: city of Harlem, in a small archive, one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty six boxes, boards of meetings and letters and personal notes.
Speaker 2: Fascinating to read. But yeah, the story that we discovered
Speaker 2: in his archive is that he was supported from the
Speaker 2: very beginning Byshell to start this CEO two project, to
Speaker 2: get involved publicly in the climate debate, to be critical
Speaker 2: about climate science and the IPCC. And he received direct
Speaker 2: financial support for this as well from nineteen ninety to
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety eight around one million gillains, So that's like
Speaker 2: eight hundred thousands euros today.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Wow, And can you talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: what this carbon project of his was did he? I
Speaker 1: think I read it in your story that he was
Speaker 1: one of these guys who've pushed the idea that, you know,
Speaker 1: more CO two just means more plants on earth and
Speaker 1: that's a good thing.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: That was his favorite argument, was that CO two is
Speaker 3: a blessing because yes, plants I use it to grow.
Speaker 3: He also referred to garden houses and how they add
Speaker 3: COEO two in order to a stimulate the growth of
Speaker 3: plants and things like that. That was one of his
Speaker 3: favorite talking points of the Blessings of CO two, because
Speaker 3: he hated the way that CO two was portrayed in
Speaker 3: the media as if it was like toxic or poisonous
Speaker 3: or something like that, making the claim that it's essential
Speaker 3: for life on earth, which is of course true, but
Speaker 3: not the issue.
Speaker 1: Right right, Yeah, that's interesting. So what kinds of things
Speaker 1: was he doing through this project.
Speaker 3: Well, the type of things that he did was mostly
Speaker 3: well getting himself in the public eye. So he wrote articles,
Speaker 3: published several books and became like the spokesperson for the
Speaker 3: climate skeptic movement as it was growing then in the nineties,
Speaker 3: And in nineteen ninety six he in one of his
Speaker 3: notes he says that he's become the opposition leader of
Speaker 3: the climate skeptic movement in the Netherlands. And so he
Speaker 3: for example, was invited for parliamentary commission that was charged
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety five by the Dutch government in order
Speaker 3: to sort of see like climate change, what is it
Speaker 3: and what are we supposed to do about it? He
Speaker 3: said things in the same line as the CO two
Speaker 3: is good for plans, and those were the quotes that
Speaker 3: also made it to the Dutch national news. But on
Speaker 3: the other hand, he was maybe even more influential in
Speaker 3: his own network. Basically so is a Butcher he had
Speaker 3: throughout his life. He had several he was on the
Speaker 3: board of several big Dutch companies, and the way that
Speaker 3: he works is like he would write an article or
Speaker 3: publish a book, he would send it to his friends
Speaker 3: in the boardrooms, and then they would use it again
Speaker 3: to lobby towards politician against taking measurements in order to
Speaker 3: reduce CO two E missions. For example, like there are
Speaker 3: letters in the archive between fitz Butcher and Karl Heinz.
Speaker 3: Bichel was then part of the board of directors of Bayer,
Speaker 3: the big German chemical company, and then Bichol writes in
Speaker 3: response to receiving his books, very enthusiastic about the book,
Speaker 3: and that he sent it through to the Dutch Minister
Speaker 3: of the Environment. I think it's sort of similar towards
Speaker 3: the way that that skeptics have worked in general. So
Speaker 3: you write an article or a book that has some
Speaker 3: scientific weights to it, you send that to your friends
Speaker 3: and they use it then to start lobbying or say
Speaker 3: that a there are so much doubts about climate change.
Speaker 3: You shouldn't take any measures to reduce your two issues,
Speaker 3: because we don't even know if those measures are necessary.
Speaker 4: Right, you know, I I've spent a lot of time
Speaker 4: studying these guys because I find them interesting just from
Speaker 4: like a psychological standpoint too. So I'm curious if you
Speaker 4: found anything that indicated sort of and you know, what
Speaker 4: the ideological underpinning of his work was, or you know,
Speaker 4: like what was driving him beyond just you know, getting
Speaker 4: money from Shell and whoever else.
Speaker 3: Well, the interesting thing with Butcher is that he actually
Speaker 3: he did not receive the money himself or like he worked.
Speaker 3: He worked for free. Basically, he was already retired. He
Speaker 3: was eighty years old when this project started. And the
Speaker 3: money that he received he used it to pay his
Speaker 3: two assistants and to cover like travel experienses and things
Speaker 3: like that. So you can consider him as like a
Speaker 3: true believer when it came to his a believer in
Speaker 3: his own story when it came to climate change. But
Speaker 3: also like it's a bit strange because he also liked
Speaker 3: this whole project. It lasts for nine years, and it
Speaker 3: lasts only during the time that these companies are willing
Speaker 3: to pay for it. So when in nineteen ninety eight,
Speaker 3: the funding stops. He also stops working on the COE
Speaker 3: two project and starts working on an other advisory work. So, yes,
Speaker 3: he was a true believer, but also, like I think,
Speaker 3: vulnerable for the type of the said, a prestige that
Speaker 3: came along with it. So the CEOs and these companies
Speaker 3: they are weird about climate change. They need somebody to
Speaker 3: tell another story basically, or a story that fits them better.
Speaker 3: They saw this guy and saw he was useful. And
Speaker 3: for Butcher was like, I matter, I still matter. I've
Speaker 3: been for my whole life. I've been in these boardrooms
Speaker 3: and been with all these important people. After I retired,
Speaker 3: this sort of stop and this was a way for
Speaker 3: him to sort of get back in the spotlight.
Speaker 1: Right, that makes sense. That's really interesting.
Speaker 4: You know, what was the impact of his work in
Speaker 4: terms of government policy or anything like? Did you did
Speaker 4: you find any evidence of him having an impact there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's you know, the opinions are they vary a
Speaker 2: little bit, but in general, like people who knew him personally,
Speaker 2: they or worked in governments at the time, some high
Speaker 2: palsy makers, they say, well, he had a huge influence
Speaker 2: just because he had such a high standing, a big reputation.
Speaker 2: He knew everybody. Everybody knew him. People who were all
Speaker 2: looking for an alternative story they came to Butcher, and
Speaker 2: so he had a huge informal influence. Also because he
Speaker 2: had this reputation of, you know, being one of the
Speaker 2: founders of the Club of Rome. So people were like,
Speaker 2: you know, if he said it, there must be some
Speaker 2: true you know, he had the image of being an
Speaker 2: you know, environmentally aware scientists. So this reputation helped him
Speaker 2: a lot. And this is actually also acknowledged in one
Speaker 2: fascinating report of a meeting with his main contact within
Speaker 2: Royal Dutch shell Hip from anglshoven So from Angelshova tells Butcher,
Speaker 2: according to this report that he has more influence as
Speaker 2: a scientist when he talks about climate than when you know,
Speaker 2: the CEOs of the companies talk about it. So they
Speaker 2: were well aware that his reputation as a scientist, as
Speaker 2: an independent scientist, helped to get his message across. And
Speaker 2: he wasn't on television and you know radio interviews. Other
Speaker 2: people say, well, you should overestimate it. It's really difficult.
Speaker 2: It's difficult to measure in general. But if we look
Speaker 2: in general to how the media in the Netherlands writes
Speaker 2: about this topic. We also see that in general the
Speaker 2: Dutch media has given ample space to the skeptic point
Speaker 2: of view. There are several reports about this. One report
Speaker 2: says that like eighteen percent of the articles in Dutch
Speaker 2: media are you Skeptical, which is of course not representative
Speaker 2: of you know, the opinions within the scientific community. If
Speaker 2: you look in the Netherlans, it's just a handful of
Speaker 2: people like Butcher, and the people who are active today,
Speaker 2: you know, they can all kind of directly or indirectly
Speaker 2: be linked to him. So you know, Fitz Butcher his
Speaker 2: influence is not only because he was present in the media,
Speaker 2: but also because he mentored like a new generation. And
Speaker 2: we see see this also in his archive that he
Speaker 2: had a lot of contact with another journalist, Simon Gosendal,
Speaker 2: who still writes today and is like one of the
Speaker 2: best known skeptics until recently. Now he starts to acknowledge
Speaker 2: that the IPCC is actually right. But he followed the
Speaker 2: mission of Fitz Butcher and he was for one of
Speaker 2: the biggest magazines of the Netherlands. He has written like
Speaker 2: dozens of articles about this and with the enormous reach
Speaker 2: another you know, well known skeptic, Hans Labone, still active today,
Speaker 2: you know, still active collaborating with the current climate skeptic
Speaker 2: groups like Clintel, which is a new organization. He was
Speaker 2: also personally mentored by Fitz Butcher. So this handful of
Speaker 2: people who has you know, reached a huge audience. They
Speaker 2: can all kind of be be linked to Pitcher and
Speaker 2: they have all well many of them have been mentored
Speaker 2: by him to spread this message and to continue his
Speaker 2: fight as he would call it himself.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's it for this time. I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this episode. Will drop links to various stories that have
Speaker 1: come out of the Shell Papers reporting in our show notes.
Speaker 1: Be sure to check those out. One thing to note
Speaker 1: after our interview, Alexandro sent me an email clarifying that
Speaker 1: it wasn't just Shell that was funding this Butcher guy.
Speaker 1: There were twenty four other firms that were also funding
Speaker 1: his climate skepticism, so he wanted to be clear that
Speaker 1: it wasn't solely a Shell campaign. However, they were really
Speaker 1: surprised to find that Shell had been directly funding this
Speaker 1: guy in any way at all. You can see all
Speaker 1: the details behind that reporting and many other stories in
Speaker 1: the links that will drop in the show notes today.
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Speaker 2: Down the back deplete the complete deta