Speaker 1: So this was back when I was a grad student
Speaker 1: at Harvard and I was working at the Belfer Center
Speaker 1: for Science and International Affairs, and you know that's in
Speaker 1: the Kennedy School of Government. The role of fossil fuel
Speaker 1: companies in academia had started to become a bigger issue.
Speaker 1: And this was around probably like twenty fifteen or so.
Speaker 1: For instance, I think you know, when the Journalism School
Speaker 1: at Columbia came out with the Exxon New investigation, or
Speaker 1: they started doing some work related to that. Then Exon
Speaker 1: responded by kind of threatening to take away their funding
Speaker 1: in so many words, and it just people became more
Speaker 1: and more interested in who's funding these programs at universities
Speaker 1: and is it fossil fuel companies and what kind of
Speaker 1: pressure does that put on those academic programs to do
Speaker 1: one thing or another, or study one thing or another,
Speaker 1: or not to study something.
Speaker 2: This has been front up.
Speaker 3: He first told me the story back in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 3: and it's actually kind of what got me wondering about
Speaker 3: fossil feel funding of social science programs at universities. That investigation,
Speaker 3: he mentioned, Exon knew was led by Columbia Journalism School
Speaker 3: graduates and it found that Exxon had been using climate
Speaker 3: science to shape its own business plans for decades, but
Speaker 3: had simultaneously been hiding that science from the public.
Speaker 1: I started to look into this issue at Harvard, looking
Speaker 1: at what programs are funded by oil companies, and a
Speaker 1: lot of the programs at the Kennedy School, the Government
Speaker 1: school to do with public policy, were funded by oil companies.
Speaker 1: For example, I worked at the Belfer Center for Science
Speaker 1: International Affairs. It's one of the most influential academic think
Speaker 1: tanks in the world, and the founder of that founded
Speaker 1: an oil and gas company. So back to twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: so this issue is starting to emerge. I'm starting to
Speaker 1: write about it a little bit, and it was seen
Speaker 1: as a very unpopular thing to do. And at this
Speaker 1: early stage it was seen as like just really uncouth
Speaker 1: to raise this issue. And I even had professors at
Speaker 1: the Kennedy School who just wouldn't talk to me, I
Speaker 1: think because they were upset that I was writing about
Speaker 1: the issue.
Speaker 4: But anyway, to get to the main point.
Speaker 1: Once we were called into an all staff meeting for
Speaker 1: the researchers at the Kennedy School in the Belfer Center
Speaker 1: and we were simply instructed that if any journalists come
Speaker 1: to talk to us about oil companies funding the research
Speaker 1: done there, just don't talk to them. You know, are
Speaker 1: told that we don't want activists, We don't want journalists
Speaker 1: digging around and finding out that the programs are being
Speaker 1: funded by oil companies. I mean, when I heard this,
Speaker 1: you know, I was pretty surprised that level of secrecy
Speaker 1: was being pursued.
Speaker 5: And this is Harvard that he's talking about, like the
Speaker 5: university where Jeffrey Sopron and Naomi Erescus work and there
Speaker 5: are two of the foremost scholars of how like fossil
Speaker 5: fuel propaganda even works.
Speaker 6: Just incredible.
Speaker 5: And it's funny because there are so many other schools
Speaker 5: that take corporate funding, but then they like proudly name
Speaker 5: buildings or even entire departments after them. But here's Harvard
Speaker 5: hiding this influence. Our university is generally pretty transparent about
Speaker 5: where their research funding comes from.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's like traditionally been kind of an ethical policy
Speaker 3: at universities, although I do think that it's becoming more
Speaker 3: common to hide that funding or just say anonymous donors
Speaker 3: or things like that. But at the time that this
Speaker 3: was happening at Harvard. This is like twenty fifteen. Ben
Speaker 3: found it to be very, very strange.
Speaker 1: We always advertised and disclosed who was funding our research,
Speaker 1: and we're generally proud of it, but we definitely didn't
Speaker 1: keep it a secret, and so encountering this secrecy in
Speaker 1: the public policy space, I just thought that was so strange.
Speaker 1: And of course for me, when they said don't talk
Speaker 1: about this thing, I wanted to talk about it more.
Speaker 1: My ears perked up and I was like, probably dozing
Speaker 1: off in the back or something, and I popped up
Speaker 1: ort and.
Speaker 4: I was like, Oh, that's something interesting's going on.
Speaker 1: But I think it speaks to the broader issue, which is,
Speaker 1: to what degree has the fossil fuel industry shaped very
Speaker 1: public policy responses and paradigms and ways of thinking about
Speaker 1: climate change as a problem. How has the industry shaped
Speaker 1: those things at the basic level, at the level of
Speaker 1: students learning about them in universities.
Speaker 5: Yes, Ben, that's exactly what this whole series is about,
Speaker 5: how they've shaped thinking about not only like the problem,
Speaker 5: but also the possible solutions. Welcome to the final episode
Speaker 5: in the ABC's of Big Oil from Earth and Drilled.
Speaker 6: I'm Darna Noir.
Speaker 2: And I'm Amy Westervelt. Today. We're going to college.
Speaker 7: Stay with us.
Speaker 8: She's got a man, She's promised to love, honor.
Speaker 9: And keep house for the right way.
Speaker 8: That mean I never helped help with the dishes.
Speaker 9: Never bell does my dishes? Look that makes us to
Speaker 9: shine without washing your white.
Speaker 10: I wish I had a cat castle in the sky,
Speaker 10: away up high where bluebirds like to fly of cozy
Speaker 10: little castle with a hundred rooms or more. Dear someday,
Speaker 10: what stars for windows, clothes for rugs, or rainbow for
Speaker 10: a dawn? I wish I just wish I had a
Speaker 10: decent kitchen. Hey, we're so sad, and this is the
Speaker 10: first time I've noticed it.
Speaker 2: Nothing really not very convincing, Jane girls.
Speaker 10: Whatever it is, I've got just.
Speaker 7: A cure for it.
Speaker 3: There's a sensational sail going on watching and.
Speaker 2: You, ha would be the ideal tonic for you.
Speaker 10: I'm going down this say afternoon for smalls free.
Speaker 2: How about coming with him?
Speaker 5: A lot of ads and TV and movies and stuff
Speaker 5: from the fifties kind of paint this picture of post
Speaker 5: World War two Americans being just like so relieved that
Speaker 5: the war was over that they embraced consumerism wholeheartedly, and
Speaker 5: all of that also gets wrapped up in like patriotism
Speaker 5: and nationalism too. But Amy, it seems like you actually
Speaker 5: found something recently that revealed what was kind of going
Speaker 5: on under all that, right.
Speaker 3: Yes, I found this archive in Wisconsin that held all
Speaker 3: of the old papers of one of Standard Oil's early
Speaker 3: pr guys.
Speaker 2: His name was Earl Newsom.
Speaker 3: He worked for Standard Oil of New Jersey, which is
Speaker 3: now Exon Mobil from the late nineteen thirties to the
Speaker 3: late nineteen sixties. Either he or someone in his family
Speaker 3: donated like every single file from his business to the
Speaker 3: Wisconsin Historical Society archive, and there were dozens and dozens
Speaker 3: of boxes from his years at Standard. Okay, I've got
Speaker 3: a folder marked confidential here, so that's interesting. See what's tony.
Speaker 8: Premise?
Speaker 3: Hmm, Okay, this is some kind of strategy. It's nineteen
Speaker 3: forty four. Wow, Okay, holy shit. At the top, there's
Speaker 3: typed at the top of this page, says the premise,
Speaker 3: and then it goes next to crushing the axis and
Speaker 3: avoiding runaway inflation while we're doing it. The most important
Speaker 3: problem confronting us is to keep the American people convinced
Speaker 3: of the intrinsic social and economic worth of the free
Speaker 3: enterprise system and of its periority over statism, so that
Speaker 3: the people will be determined to remove unnecessary governmental controls
Speaker 3: and re establish competitive, democratic, free enterprise capitalism when the
Speaker 3: war is won. I found this plan from nineteen forty four,
Speaker 3: so the year that World War Two was ending. This
Speaker 3: plan goes on to lay out how various companies and
Speaker 3: industries can coordinate their pro free enterprise campaigns without seeming
Speaker 3: like they're coordinating, and of course without using the words
Speaker 3: free enterprise. There's even a whole bit about how they're
Speaker 3: not going to use the US Chamber of Commerce or
Speaker 3: the National Association of Manufacturers because you know, everyone knows
Speaker 3: they're just shills for business.
Speaker 5: And again, this is around nineteen forty four, so let
Speaker 5: me just make sure I've got this straight. Americans got
Speaker 5: too used to the idea that the government could actually
Speaker 5: maybe you know, do a pretty good job of taking
Speaker 5: care of them and making society work. And that was
Speaker 5: bad for business because if people started thinking that the
Speaker 5: state should be involved in their lives, then that means oh,
Speaker 5: no regulation and maybe even a slippery slope to communism.
Speaker 3: Exactly, and The reason this really blew my mind is
Speaker 3: that I happened to read this nineteen forty four strategy
Speaker 3: document the same day that I read all the stuff
Speaker 3: from Frank Abrams on why standards should invest in universities.
Speaker 2: So you might remember that name from the first episode
Speaker 2: of this series.
Speaker 3: Abrams was a VP at Standard Oil of New Jersey
Speaker 3: during this same time period, and by the early fifties
Speaker 3: he was leading the company's university investments and encouraging other
Speaker 3: companies and industries to do the same, precisely to push
Speaker 3: this exact idea that government intervention is bad, that free
Speaker 3: enterprise is what keeps America free. He was also really
Speaker 3: big on the idea that companies needed to support private
Speaker 3: universities or else the only ones left would be government funded.
Speaker 6: Oh no, communist universities.
Speaker 5: But yeah, it totally makes sense that they'd be donating
Speaker 5: to more private universities, although just to be clear, corporations
Speaker 5: definitely donate massive amounts of money to public universities too.
Speaker 5: A lot of what this points to is that it
Speaker 5: really wasn't so much that companies were actually concerned about
Speaker 5: American people becoming too an independent. It's not about the
Speaker 5: independence of American people. That's not what scares them. It's
Speaker 5: really that they wanted the American public to be dependent, sure,
Speaker 5: but on them, not on the government.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 3: So today American companies provide a little over thirteen percent
Speaker 3: of the funding for universities, which is a pretty large
Speaker 3: percentage of the money that you know is funding all
Speaker 3: kinds of research in the country. Another thirteen and a
Speaker 3: half percent comes from this nebulous other organizations category, which
Speaker 3: is mostly what are called donor advised funds. And to
Speaker 3: give you some indication of what those generally are, donors
Speaker 3: trust the pot of money that the Kochs use to
Speaker 3: fund all kinds of stuff, from right wing legislation firm
Speaker 3: ALEC to news networks that publish free market propaganda to
Speaker 3: climate denying university centers. It's a donor advice fund. So
Speaker 3: this means that you know, there's a fair bit of
Speaker 3: you know, kind of hidden corporate money also going into universities.
Speaker 3: The rest is pretty evenly split between foundations and high
Speaker 3: net worth individuals. You know, there's like this whole idea
Speaker 3: right now of like the liberal elite trope of universities.
Speaker 3: But all this talk of conservative right wing like pro
Speaker 3: business ideas being muzzled kind of seems like totally misguided.
Speaker 3: I mean, it sure seems like the conservative agenda at
Speaker 3: school is alive and a well and flush with cash too. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's right, and that's really important because when we looked
Speaker 3: into what oil companies and the people who love them
Speaker 3: were funding at universities, especially when we looked outside of
Speaker 3: the scientific sphere, a lot of it.
Speaker 2: A lot was economics.
Speaker 3: So for example, there's this organization called the National Bureau
Speaker 3: of Economic Research, which you know, sounds like a totally
Speaker 3: neutral government agency, right, totally.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I think for years I thought that it was
Speaker 5: like a really boring a federal agency, but it's not.
Speaker 6: It's not.
Speaker 5: It's a private, nonprofit research organization.
Speaker 3: That's right, And it claims to be non partisan, and
Speaker 3: it has all of these statements on its website about
Speaker 3: how it avoids conflict of interest and things like that.
Speaker 3: But its funders do include x on Mobile and the
Speaker 3: Bradley Foundation, which actually spends more than the entire Coke network,
Speaker 3: pushing a very conservative agenda that also includes claim and denial.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and you can see it everywhere.
Speaker 5: Like one of the top economists Mit is the president
Speaker 5: of the National Bureau of Economic Research, the president their
Speaker 5: Law and economics guy runs the Center for Law, Economics
Speaker 5: and Business at Harvard too, and that center was actually
Speaker 5: created with funding from John lm Olan and the Oln Foundation,
Speaker 5: which has a long history of funding what Source Watch calls,
Speaker 5: quote a chain of anti environmental, pro business legal advocacy
Speaker 5: organizations unquote.
Speaker 6: And where did John Owen.
Speaker 5: Make his money, Well, guns and chemicals, naturally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And a big part of what he did with
Speaker 3: all that money was fund the creation of these centers.
Speaker 2: I mean dozens of them.
Speaker 3: John m Ollen Lawn Economic Centers or centers named something
Speaker 3: similar to that, are at universities all over the country,
Speaker 3: most of the top universities.
Speaker 2: So in addition to the one at.
Speaker 3: Harvard, there's one at Stanford, UCLA, Yale, University of Virginia.
Speaker 3: I know I'm missing several in that list. Olan was
Speaker 3: a big opponent of what's called the law and economics movement,
Speaker 3: which again sounds like something fairly innocuous, you know, but
Speaker 3: it's this movement that arose amidst that whole post World
Speaker 3: War two concern that Americans would turn on free enterprise.
Speaker 3: So the law and economics folks advocated for analyzing any
Speaker 3: legislation or legal action or even legal institutions through an
Speaker 3: economic lens, so really evaluating the value of any kind
Speaker 3: of policy or law issue via its economic impact.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and John em Ollen came across this whole sort
Speaker 5: of framework in the seventies and obviously it's like a
Speaker 5: perfect fit for him.
Speaker 6: He loves it.
Speaker 5: He throws a ton of money at it, and he
Speaker 5: creates these centers that really, like most universities, start looking
Speaker 5: and you start finding them everywhere, and that really accelerates
Speaker 5: this whole movement, this whole you know, law and economics movement,
Speaker 5: and that lays the ground work for DA DA DA
Speaker 5: the Federalist Society, which of course is the organization that's
Speaker 5: been working to get more conservative judges appointed in courts
Speaker 5: throughout the country.
Speaker 11: Right.
Speaker 3: And we're talking about all of this not just because
Speaker 3: it's like weird and interesting, but also because it dovetails
Speaker 3: with some new research that ben Fronta has done looking
Speaker 3: at fossil fuel involvement in economics research, and particularly in
Speaker 3: economics research that influences policy discussions.
Speaker 1: The question that's obvious that we should ask is what
Speaker 1: effect has that had what has been the influence of
Speaker 1: decades of funding from these special interests. Latest research is
Speaker 1: one example, some new research that will be out soon,
Speaker 1: and by the time this airs, it might already be out.
Speaker 4: It tracks the.
Speaker 1: Activity of a group of economic consultants who were hired
Speaker 1: by the petroleum industry for decades to produce analyzes that
Speaker 1: were then used by the companies and by others opposing
Speaker 1: restrictions on fossil fuels to tell the public that it
Speaker 1: would just be way too expensive to act on climate,
Speaker 1: and that in any case, climate was not going to
Speaker 1: be a big deal, so the best thing to do
Speaker 1: is just do nothing. And this was the economic ammunition
Speaker 1: that the industry used alongside their scientific mergence of doubt.
Speaker 5: This point that Ben is making here is really really important.
Speaker 5: In the last decade or so, I think there's been
Speaker 5: this increasing realization amongst many people who think about climate
Speaker 5: change that climate inaction is not really caused by a
Speaker 5: lack of scientific evidence, or even really by a lack
Speaker 5: of understanding. I think mostly now we're all kind of
Speaker 5: thinking of it as an issue of political will, and
Speaker 5: this kind of stuff kind of plays directly into that
Speaker 5: and shows you where that lack of political will comes
Speaker 5: from Yeah.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: It reminds me of this thing that climate scientists Ken
Speaker 3: Caldera said to me a couple years back.
Speaker 9: You know, back in the eighties, we believe the information
Speaker 9: deficit model of social change and that if we could
Speaker 9: only get the information to policy makers that they would
Speaker 9: do the right thing.
Speaker 12: And now we see in the age of Trump that
Speaker 12: it's you know, really, it's not about information deficit. It's
Speaker 12: about power relations and people wanting to keep economic and
Speaker 12: political power, so that just telling people some more climate
Speaker 12: science isn't going to help anything. And surprise, surprise, in
Speaker 12: this country, especially after citizens United and all of that
Speaker 12: money and power, entrenched power has disproportionate political influence. You know,
Speaker 12: I don't understand how social change happens when it challenges
Speaker 12: the interests of a well entrenched and powerful minority.
Speaker 13: And I mean, it seems to me that that's the
Speaker 13: central question of how that happens. And it's not climate science,
Speaker 13: it's political strategy. I have no idea what the right
Speaker 13: answer is, but I'd like to know.
Speaker 5: Right and if that wealthy and powerful minority is also
Speaker 5: funding a bunch of economics and law and public policy programs,
Speaker 5: for instance, all of those ideas get even more entrenched.
Speaker 5: It's like this self repetuating loop where you have the
Speaker 5: research that keeps justifying the policy, and the companies and
Speaker 5: the billionaires and the think tanks keep funding the research,
Speaker 5: and that keeps going back into the policy.
Speaker 2: Yes, totally.
Speaker 3: And I should note here that Caldera himself might be
Speaker 3: getting a bird's eye view of.
Speaker 2: That, because he's.
Speaker 3: Kind of like Bill Gates's guy on climate research at
Speaker 3: the moment. But I want to be clear here that
Speaker 3: a lot of researchers who get funding one way or
Speaker 3: another from fossil fuel companies or from people or organizations
Speaker 3: that are friendly to the industry are not necessarily directly compromised.
Speaker 3: It doesn't look like, you know, some excellent executive like
Speaker 3: showing up in their lab and telling them what to research.
Speaker 3: I understandably get a little defensive about this, and we're
Speaker 3: not trying to say that that anyone at any of
Speaker 3: these many many universities is, you know, ethically compromised in
Speaker 3: some kind of personal way.
Speaker 2: We're talking about a systemic issue here.
Speaker 3: Not any one institution or academic And then you know
Speaker 3: the other problem is that there's not really like a
Speaker 3: bunch of funding waiting around if all of the fossil
Speaker 3: fuel or other industry funding goes away.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly where where are you going to get the
Speaker 5: rest of that funding if it goes away? What's there
Speaker 5: to follow the gap? Most academic researchers aren't like these
Speaker 5: few economists that ben Fronta have found. But there's some
Speaker 5: who are really pretty specifically and strategically at carrying water
Speaker 5: for the industry. Let's hear a little bit more of
Speaker 5: that story.
Speaker 1: One thing I do in my historical research is I'll
Speaker 1: download like the entire online newspaper record. For example, I
Speaker 1: studied the American Petroleum Institute, and so I'll download every
Speaker 1: newspaper article on an online database with the words American
Speaker 1: Patrolling Institute and global warming or climate change in their record.
Speaker 1: You know, that might be a few thousand articles, and
Speaker 1: I'll sort them in chronological order, and I'll read all
Speaker 1: of them just to get the story, just to see
Speaker 1: what are their phases of communication, you know, what are
Speaker 1: the battles they're fighting at different times. And I was
Speaker 1: doing that over you know, it takes many days to
Speaker 1: read that much material, but I was doing that, and
Speaker 1: I noticed that huh, like these there are these economists
Speaker 1: that keep coming up again and again, and I was like,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. And this is you know, this was stuff
Speaker 1: from like the early to mid nineteen nineties, so this
Speaker 1: is a while ago. I thought, Oh, I'm sure they're
Speaker 1: not doing stuff anymore. Then at the same time I
Speaker 1: was doing this research, President Trump announced that the US
Speaker 1: was going to pull out of the Paris Agreement, and
Speaker 1: in his speech he said that the Paris Agreement was
Speaker 1: going to cost an American family, you know, four thousand
Speaker 1: dollars per year or something like that. You know, it's
Speaker 1: going to cost a lot of money. And I thought,
Speaker 1: this doesn't really make sense because those parts of the
Speaker 1: Paris Agreement are not legally binding to begin with. I thought,
Speaker 1: who are the economists that are saying this, Where's this
Speaker 1: analysis coming from to give President Trump the talking points,
Speaker 1: you know, to say that in a speech. And I
Speaker 1: looked up the economic analysis that that President Trump used
Speaker 1: and it was the same people.
Speaker 4: It was the same economists.
Speaker 1: That I had that I had noticed we're working on
Speaker 1: these things in like the mid nineties, giving the same
Speaker 1: talking points against the Kyoto Protocol in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 2: Oh, my God, this like history on repeat thing just
Speaker 2: kills me.
Speaker 3: The fact that it's the literal same economists giving the
Speaker 3: exact same talking points to another president pulling out of
Speaker 3: another international climate treaty twenty years later.
Speaker 1: I mean by like twenty ten or so, they'd already
Speaker 1: they've been at this for twenty years. And you know,
Speaker 1: Senators were saying, look, it's like, we don't even need
Speaker 1: to study because we know that they've.
Speaker 4: Already been saying this for twenty years.
Speaker 1: And in a way, the scientific merchants of doubt ultimately failed.
Speaker 1: I guess their power waned, but the economics part, their
Speaker 1: power did not really wane in the same way. And
Speaker 1: you know, the implications are larger as well, because I
Speaker 1: looked at this economic consulting firm largely because I just
Speaker 1: stumbled upon their activities.
Speaker 4: But they were not alone.
Speaker 1: You know, there were other consulting firms doing very similar work.
Speaker 1: But also their work is not that different from the
Speaker 1: work done at MIT, at the Joint program where they
Speaker 1: do economic modeling there. That program is funded by the
Speaker 1: oil industry. Not only the oil industry, but they do
Speaker 1: receive funding from the oil industry.
Speaker 5: There's this other Cross University group that's funded by fossil
Speaker 5: fuel interests.
Speaker 1: That Ben mentioned to these groups participated in something called
Speaker 1: the Energy Modeling Forum at Stanford University, which brought together
Speaker 1: lots of people, and that that group is funded almost
Speaker 1: entirely by fossil fuel interests.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: So there's the consulting part, then there's the academic environmental
Speaker 1: economics part, and the industry is involved with both in
Speaker 1: terms of their funding. And you know, I think at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, the question is where does
Speaker 1: this leave us?
Speaker 4: Like is the analysis wrong? First of all?
Speaker 1: Is a good question to ask, you know, I mean, okay,
Speaker 1: what if it's actually right?
Speaker 13: Now?
Speaker 1: One of the nice things about this study was that
Speaker 1: one of these economists was willing to talk to me
Speaker 1: and honestly share his perspective and experiences, and we talked
Speaker 1: about the limitations.
Speaker 4: Of their models, you know.
Speaker 1: And their models were essentially based on assumptions that have
Speaker 1: become mainstream in American economics, like the economy performs optimally
Speaker 1: without intervention and so on. These are unscientific concepts that
Speaker 1: because they can't be tested, of course, but it's just
Speaker 1: taken as an article of faith that if somebody has
Speaker 1: to do something that they're not already doing it must
Speaker 1: be suboptimal. It's a circular reasoning type of logic. Then
Speaker 1: there are assumptions built into the model about how expensive
Speaker 1: clean energy is going to be, and it's assumed to
Speaker 1: be expensive like forever, like really expensive and things like that.
Speaker 1: So the way the model itself is constructed, it's not
Speaker 1: really like reliable in terms of what is this actually
Speaker 1: going to cost? So that part's not really quantitatively reliable.
Speaker 1: Then you have the other side, which is the benefit side,
Speaker 1: which is not even being addressed, right, So it's impossible
Speaker 1: to even make it a comparison in terms of like
Speaker 1: is this policy worth that are not And so at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, it's a fraudulent economic product,
Speaker 1: right economist saying we did the analysis and it's too expensive,
Speaker 1: you know, now, even by their own admission, that's not true.
Speaker 1: So and this has been going on for decades, you know.
Speaker 1: So now the question is what do we do about this?
Speaker 2: This is kind of the question across the board.
Speaker 3: Really. We've laid out in these four episodes how much
Speaker 3: the industry invests in schools, from elementary schools on through universities.
Speaker 2: But it's important to note that.
Speaker 3: Though the oil industry has different strategies for getting into
Speaker 3: each level of education, it's not like any of this
Speaker 3: stuff is unrelated.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And also, you know, even though the oil industry is
Speaker 5: sort of pushing this idea that the reign of the
Speaker 5: free market is what we need and you know, pushing
Speaker 5: the virtues of limiting governance, the public sector is actually
Speaker 5: helping them with this whole scheme. Like remember think back
Speaker 5: to episode one when Carol Muffett from the Center for
Speaker 5: International Environmental Law explain to us how the government actually
Speaker 5: had hundreds of contracts out for energy industry funded school
Speaker 5: and education projects. This is something that that slide show
Speaker 5: that he walked us through in episode one also kind
Speaker 5: of got into.
Speaker 9: I think it's really.
Speaker 8: Important to recognize that this presentation was presented to the
Speaker 8: Society of Petroleum Engineers in the early two thousands, and
Speaker 8: at the moment that he's presenting to SDE, what he's
Speaker 8: acknowledging here is that between DOE and IOGCC, which is
Speaker 8: the independent oily gas companies, there.
Speaker 11: Were more than three hundred active school outreach programs that
Speaker 11: the Energy Literacy Project had documented, along with another forty
Speaker 11: seven programs from the National Mining Association.
Speaker 5: So, speaking of that Energy Literacy Project slide show, Amy,
Speaker 5: we were actually able to have a pretty special guest
Speaker 5: on the podcast too, aren't we.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right, a huge get. We got to
Speaker 3: speak with John Tobin of the Energy Literacy Project.
Speaker 6: He's still around who made the sledge show.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: He made that slideshow back in the early two thousands.
Speaker 3: He's a long time well known industry consultant, and he
Speaker 3: explained to us that he's working on a new initiative
Speaker 3: to create university curricula with funding from the oil and
Speaker 3: gas industry and an emphasis on helping to sort of
Speaker 3: train university students to deal with the big problems facing
Speaker 3: the energy industry.
Speaker 14: The emphasis on this is not just the technological or
Speaker 14: narrow expertise that the different universities have in their various classes,
Speaker 14: but putting it together in terms of something that can
Speaker 14: actually turn into a real program, and that brings some
Speaker 14: of the business, the economics, the political science, the social
Speaker 14: sciences into the picture. Before whatever they're going to present.
Speaker 14: Their solution can mean anything the decision maker wants to know.
Speaker 14: You know, how is this going to work? Can I
Speaker 14: justify this to my shareholders or my stakeholders or whatever,
Speaker 14: what's at stake here? How much if you'll excuse my French,
Speaker 14: is my butt exposed on this deal because it's personal.
Speaker 14: One of the things that when I present in these
Speaker 14: sort of sessions talking about the business decision process, try
Speaker 14: to make sure that everybody understands that whatever you're going
Speaker 14: to be forecasting here is wrong. You just hope it's
Speaker 14: within the range of what you're talking about of what
Speaker 14: actually happened. And if there's a difference between admitting to
Speaker 14: the uncertainty in if you had to be considering the
Speaker 14: price of oil and risk is personal. It's what the
Speaker 14: decision maker looks at that uncertainty is that is this
Speaker 14: a risk I can take? So it's kind of a
Speaker 14: capstone or wrapping these things together in terms of how
Speaker 14: to apply if you were a petroll an engineer was
Speaker 14: looking at this sort of thing, how do you apply
Speaker 14: that so that somebody can make is so well recent
Speaker 14: decision about whether to go ahead with the project.
Speaker 5: And Tobin said that, you know, working on this new
Speaker 5: natural resources education program, he's finding opportunities for grant funding
Speaker 5: from the public sector or from the government to get
Speaker 5: this project off the ground, but they come with some stipulations,
Speaker 5: including needing to partner with higher education institutions, So that
Speaker 5: means that he'd need to actually collaborate with colleges and
Speaker 5: universities on his energy industry funded project in order to
Speaker 5: be eligible for federal money.
Speaker 14: We dug into the financing of such things, the size
Speaker 14: of the budget that we would look for. The most
Speaker 14: direct area was we found was the US Department of Education.
Speaker 14: All of their grants require an association or partnership with
Speaker 14: in the institution of higher learning.
Speaker 11: Right.
Speaker 14: I think it's because the department they've had wants to
Speaker 14: make sure that they are at least indirectly funding colleges.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 3: So, I mean at this point, what we've found over
Speaker 3: the course of kind of researching this series is that
Speaker 3: schools across the board are pretty dependent on either you know,
Speaker 3: free materials from industry sources or, in the case of universities,
Speaker 3: on funding from corporations.
Speaker 2: So it kind of makes you wonder, is it even possible.
Speaker 3: At this point to remove this influence without losing the
Speaker 3: financial support for universities Exactly.
Speaker 5: It's a really tough problem to solve, how you know,
Speaker 5: keep education stable without all of that money. But there
Speaker 5: are definitely people working on creating real clouate education and
Speaker 5: kicking the fossil fuel industry out of schools, and we're
Speaker 5: going to bring you all of those silver linings in
Speaker 5: an extra bonus EPISOD, so.
Speaker 6: Come back for that.
Speaker 3: Drilled is an original production of the Critical Frequency podcast Network.
Speaker 3: This series is a collaboration with earther, Gizmoto's climate and
Speaker 3: justice site. My co host and co reporter for the
Speaker 3: series is Darna Noir. Our editors are Julia Richie for
Speaker 3: Drilled and Brian Kahn for Earther. Our producer is Juliana Bradley.
Speaker 3: Mixing and mastering by Peter Duff. Our factchecker is Trevor Gowan.
Speaker 3: Music is by Martin Wissenberg.
Speaker 2: Our artwork was created.
Speaker 3: By Matthew Fleming. Our First Amendment attorney is James Wheaton
Speaker 3: of the First Amendment Project. You can find corresponding stories, videos,
Speaker 3: and documents for this series on earther dot com. Thanks
Speaker 3: for listening and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 7: The att