Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to Drill. I'm Amy Westervelt. Today
Speaker 1: we are continuing making our way through the book Climate Obstruction,
Speaker 1: a Global Survey. And good news, this book is now
Speaker 1: officially out and available for free download. We'll stick a
Speaker 1: link in the show notes and on the website. Today
Speaker 1: I am joined by Jen Schneider at Boise State University
Speaker 1: and Gregory Trencher from Kyoto University to talk about the coal, utilities,
Speaker 1: and transportation industries. So we talked last time about the
Speaker 1: fossil fuel industry and the role that it has played
Speaker 1: in obstructing climate policy at the global level, but it's
Speaker 1: not the only industry that is working to do that,
Speaker 1: and today we're going to dig into three more. All
Speaker 1: three of these industries have mounted efforts to stop governments
Speaker 1: from regulating emissions or transitioning to cleaner energy, and a
Speaker 1: lot of times they kind of dovetail with each other.
Speaker 1: So coal, for example, and railroad companies often lobby together
Speaker 1: because in some ways the railroad industry has been heavily
Speaker 1: dependent on coal and vice versa. We're going to dig
Speaker 1: into those intersections and what the strategies from these industries
Speaker 1: look like and how they differ from the fossil fuel
Speaker 1: industry's approach. In today's episode, I learned a lot, and
Speaker 1: I hope you will too. So you wrote in the
Speaker 1: chapter about why you ended up looking at coal, transportation,
Speaker 1: and utilities together. But I was wondering reading it if
Speaker 1: you were always looking at them together, or if the
Speaker 1: research sort of led in that direction.
Speaker 2: I wish I had an exciting answer for that, but
Speaker 2: I actually you've always focused on the coal industry, and
Speaker 2: I think Greg has written quite a bit about coal
Speaker 2: as well, but also transportation. I think you could write
Speaker 2: a whole chapter just on coal. I think that would
Speaker 2: be fascinating. But the editors asked us to connect them,
Speaker 2: and I think the I think the argument really was
Speaker 2: that when you think about coal and transport and others,
Speaker 2: you know, like the steel industry or railroad, they're very,
Speaker 2: very connected in terms of the way things flow globally,
Speaker 2: so pretty hard to talk about the coal industry without
Speaker 2: also talking about the trains that carry coal, for example.
Speaker 2: So coal's futures are connected to the railroad's futures, and
Speaker 2: so I think it made sense, sort of from a
Speaker 2: logical perspective to think about them as connected. And then
Speaker 2: as we were writing Greg, it just became clearer and
Speaker 2: clearer that so many of them were kind of borrowing
Speaker 2: ideas from each other, or had some of them had
Speaker 2: shared kind of front groups or shared strategies for speaking
Speaker 2: about climate changer climate policy.
Speaker 3: I agree, yeah, And I think if you went looking
Speaker 3: for the links across these sectors, all these industries, you
Speaker 3: would find them. But I think it's just like a
Speaker 3: habit of all lot of researchers to sort of focus
Speaker 3: on particular silos. So I think there's a lot of
Speaker 3: people that sort of identify themselves as core researchers and
Speaker 3: they don't really sort of do research on the transportation industry.
Speaker 3: I myself have been doing research and transportation and call separately,
Speaker 3: but we've had very few occasions, I think, to look
Speaker 3: at these from that more of a macro picture.
Speaker 4: So I think the chapter provided this.
Speaker 1: I was actually like, wow, I never thought of these
Speaker 1: things as being linked, but there were so many connections
Speaker 1: between all of them, even just the thing about trains
Speaker 1: and call. It's like, of course, I've thought about that
Speaker 1: a little bit, but I don't know. The railroad industry
Speaker 1: always sort of gets a pass on this stuff because
Speaker 1: we think it's just like romantic train travel and not
Speaker 1: you know, chemicals and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, until there's an accident or something, and then people
Speaker 2: will pay attention to things like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a struggle for any book, but especially
Speaker 1: climate right now. How much do you feel like the
Speaker 1: research has changed, even just in the last six months,
Speaker 1: especially around cole Not that it was dying before, as
Speaker 1: you point out, but even more so it seems like
Speaker 1: it's it's come roaring back. How much is the landscape
Speaker 1: changing in which these tactics are being deployed. Well, I
Speaker 1: can maybe speak in the US context, So I think
Speaker 1: in the United States, the challenge for scholars is that
Speaker 1: on the one hand, there might be federal rhetoric or
Speaker 1: executive actions that point towards say the president's values or
Speaker 1: the new administration's values. But then there's reality, a lot
Speaker 1: of which I think is determined by industry and by
Speaker 1: economic trends. So, for example, I think during the first
Speaker 1: Trump administration, President Trump really argued that he was going
Speaker 1: to bring the coal industry back, that it would come
Speaker 1: roaring back. That was part of the sort of make
Speaker 1: America great again promise. The coal industry was facing such
Speaker 1: serious economic headwinds that that just wasn't going to be possible.
Speaker 1: So I think you can see new investments in things
Speaker 1: like the coal industry or movements away from electric cars
Speaker 1: sort of in terms of the rhetoric, will industry, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of spin on a dime and match that. It
Speaker 1: certainly takes its cues from those political winds that are blowing.
Speaker 1: But I think it takes a.
Speaker 2: Lot longer for us to see actual infrastructure change in
Speaker 2: the long term because those those systems are really big
Speaker 2: and complicated.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it has anything changed over the last six months,
Speaker 3: I would say that probably no, especially like I think
Speaker 3: if we're thinking about like the direction of decarbonization or
Speaker 3: let's say less best interests or something like this. So
Speaker 3: to give you an example, in that automobile industry, over
Speaker 3: the probably past two or so years, around the world,
Speaker 3: we're seeing a lot of car makers making quite ambitious
Speaker 3: targets to increase the production and the sales of evs. So,
Speaker 3: you know, companies like the BM Group the day in
Speaker 3: the group in Japan, we had like our big companies
Speaker 3: to Honda awake in these pledges and what we've seen
Speaker 3: actually is a bit of a skating back of these
Speaker 3: pledges and the scating back series to be happen for
Speaker 3: a few reasons.
Speaker 4: One, I think there's a.
Speaker 3: Lot of concern about how ferocious China is as a
Speaker 3: competitor to these Western car companies. Probably over the last
Speaker 3: year we've seen a shift towards protectionism. These companies actually
Speaker 3: now lobbying the governments asking for like trade US to
Speaker 3: protect them. This is something that I guess you could
Speaker 3: almost call it like a dirty rule of it. Western
Speaker 3: countries were criticizing China for doing this ten years ago
Speaker 3: to protect their ev industry, and now we're sort of
Speaker 3: borrowing this tactic to protect our incumbent industries that are
Speaker 3: still focused on internal combustion engines. So this is one
Speaker 3: particular example that just shows you that even some of
Speaker 3: the program that we thought was occurring is kind of
Speaker 3: encountering some pretty stiff turbulence right now. And then I
Speaker 3: think another characteristic of all these industries is what we
Speaker 3: call path dependency. We also have this very similar term
Speaker 3: called locking, and basically these industries are reflecting these structures,
Speaker 3: and the structures are political. They're also consist of infrastructure, capital, workers, people, technologies,
Speaker 3: especially in the case of internal combustion engines and aviation
Speaker 3: engines and plants, and so these change very slowly, and
Speaker 3: there's a lot of linkages across these very complex systems,
Speaker 3: and so we would never expect these to sort of
Speaker 3: change radically in sort of six months. That sort of
Speaker 3: I think flies in the face of theory of path
Speaker 3: dependency and with locking with sort of we expect rapid
Speaker 3: change to come from these people coming from the outside.
Speaker 3: So Tesla has been very symbolic of this, and now
Speaker 3: we have BYD from China that's sort of characterizing this
Speaker 3: ability to change very rapidly. These are kind of traditional
Speaker 3: industries we would never really expect rapid change to come from.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. Can I have you guys each and
Speaker 1: maybe to be this up, but I want to have
Speaker 1: you walk through and give some concrete examples of some
Speaker 1: of the rhetorical tactics in action. Climate denial is an
Speaker 1: easy one, but where are you still seeing people use
Speaker 1: kind of old school climate denial as a tactic?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think that was one of maybe the most
Speaker 2: interesting things that came out of working on this chapter
Speaker 2: was that I think there was a belief for a while,
Speaker 2: maybe for a minute, after the first Trump administration that
Speaker 2: maybe climate denial was going away, right, that maybe there
Speaker 2: was a sense that, Okay, you know, the bad George W.
Speaker 4: Bush years when.
Speaker 2: Climate denial was in its heyday are over, and there's
Speaker 2: large public consensus now, and we're seeing all of these
Speaker 2: major weather events things to people on the ground are
Speaker 2: starting to believe in climate change, and denial doesn't make
Speaker 2: sense anymore.
Speaker 4: I think we learned.
Speaker 2: Pretty quick that that was not true, and that climate
Speaker 2: denial would exist alongside all of these other strategies which say, Okay,
Speaker 2: climate change is happening, and so there's this cognitive dissonance
Speaker 2: that was happening where Okay, on the one hand, we're
Speaker 2: going to deny climate change or deny that it's a
Speaker 2: severe as scientist say, and on the other hand, okay,
Speaker 2: if it is happening, well then we can certainly, you know,
Speaker 2: innovate our way out of it. So I think that
Speaker 2: was an interesting piece that sort of emerged from the
Speaker 2: chapter around climate denial. I will say, you know, it's
Speaker 2: just really complicated with the social media landscape too, to
Speaker 2: say that, yeah, any sort of trend has gone away,
Speaker 2: because I think we have a very conspiratorial culture in
Speaker 2: a lot of pockets of the web and climate denial.
Speaker 2: Certainly it continues to thrive in those pockets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's weird to see some of the really old
Speaker 1: versions coming back. I've seen a total resurgence of the
Speaker 1: like CO two is good for plants one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the yeah, or the or the deep state is
Speaker 2: now but you know, messing with our weather to cause
Speaker 2: these major stores, and that's what's happening, you know. So
Speaker 2: there's a really interesting, i think evolution of those early
Speaker 2: climate denial ur arguments we saw.
Speaker 3: We have this idea of like denying the physical science,
Speaker 3: you know, so we can see that CT is actually
Speaker 3: good sort of tile or it's not coming from humans.
Speaker 3: But another tactic that's also tapping the science is to
Speaker 3: question the solutions. And so electric vehicles have been widely
Speaker 3: sort of promoted by governance, by stakeholders and across the world,
Speaker 3: and so we see certain companies actually saying, well, in
Speaker 3: the context of Japan, we have large auto makers saying
Speaker 3: that evs are actually not as good planet as other solutions.
Speaker 3: And so there's quite a lot of science showing us
Speaker 3: that ev is are superior to other drive chains, especially
Speaker 3: gasoline vehicles, and so it's interesting that these solutions are
Speaker 3: now being sort of tackled by these companies from a
Speaker 3: so called like research that's tied their own studies about
Speaker 3: should show their own grafts, saying that, look, if you
Speaker 3: look at it from this perspective, the two benefits are
Speaker 3: actually superior. For in the case of Japan's hybrid vehicles,
Speaker 3: hybrid vehicles only have limited decarbonization potential according to for example, IPCC,
Speaker 3: whereas the major car companies over here very systematically denied
Speaker 3: the environmental benefits of electric vehicles to justify their further
Speaker 3: emphasis on hybrids as a dec urbanization pathway.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. Do you think that's tied into Japan's anti
Speaker 1: renewables bent a little bit too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the renewables situation, I guess is a bit
Speaker 3: complex in Japan. I would say that now Japan is
Speaker 3: not really anti renewables. About maybe twenty ten to five
Speaker 3: years ago, there was definitely a lot of pushback from
Speaker 3: the major industry associations, which we do cover in a chapter,
Speaker 3: and they were sort of saying very strongly that Japan
Speaker 3: should not too quickly to trineables because this would have
Speaker 3: ecomic percussions and electricity will come too expensive, this would
Speaker 3: push industry away, so Augus and them on. We see
Speaker 3: it's used by all these industries sort of persuade governments
Speaker 3: and not to nurse too quickly. To answer your question specifically,
Speaker 3: Japan today is making reasonable efforts towards renewables, and we're
Speaker 3: actually one of the world ladies in solar, so we
Speaker 3: make very rapid progress in solo. We're a legout in
Speaker 3: our wins and wind is I think one of these
Speaker 3: very important indicators of the energy transition. So we've got
Speaker 3: a lot of work to do there. I think like
Speaker 3: the United States, the United States has a lot of
Speaker 3: onshore wing, but they don't have much offshore wins, which
Speaker 3: is it out the story, I.
Speaker 1: Guess, yeah, and they're probably not going to get it anytimes.
Speaker 4: It's perfect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, what about corporate ventriloquism. Is there a specific
Speaker 1: example you can share of that that will help people
Speaker 1: kind of go oh yeah, okay, I see that all
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So corporate ventriloquism is this idea that these industry groups,
Speaker 2: which is like a collection of different companies and you
Speaker 2: know front groups, they come together. They have a particular
Speaker 2: set of interests and corporate friend triloquism is the idea
Speaker 2: that they can throw their voice through these organizations that
Speaker 2: they create that seem like their grassroots. So a grassroots organization,
Speaker 2: you know, like Communities for Coal something like that, and
Speaker 2: you go to the website for Communities for Coal and
Speaker 2: it looks as if this is something that people in
Speaker 2: you know, towns that rely on the coal industry have
Speaker 2: created because they love coal so much. And so we
Speaker 2: see a lot of images with flags and with picnics
Speaker 2: and children and people in military uniforms, and the idea
Speaker 2: there is that there's a flattening between the community itself
Speaker 2: and the corporations that are benefiting from coal extraction. So
Speaker 2: it makes it seem as if if the industry dies,
Speaker 2: or if this company dies, or if this company is regulated,
Speaker 2: our community too is going to die. And so it
Speaker 2: kind of creates this one to one relationship between the
Speaker 2: individual in the community and the company, and that is
Speaker 2: used to create this really anti regulatory sentiment.
Speaker 1: Okay, I wanted to ask you guys both about these
Speaker 1: these three narratives to the apocalyptic consequences for industry, technological optimism,
Speaker 1: and fossil fuel solutionism and the right to develop and
Speaker 1: the energy poverty and like just picking one if there's
Speaker 1: like a I don't know, a story you've come across
Speaker 1: that really illustrates it, or like an ad you've seen
Speaker 1: that illustrates it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so very quickly, I think femal bring has become
Speaker 3: very prominent regarding government ady promotion policies. So we see
Speaker 3: across Europe, across Japan, across I guess the United States
Speaker 3: as well. There's lots of concerns being from automobile companies
Speaker 3: that the shift tubes electric vehicles is going to cause
Speaker 3: widespread unemployment. And Toyta in Japan has used some very
Speaker 3: strong languages that described things such as business model collapse.
Speaker 3: And I think that they're probably being quite honest there
Speaker 3: because it is the shift evs, especially at the scale
Speaker 3: of like I say, one hundred percent eventually away from
Speaker 3: the dominating technologists today, which is internal combustion engine or
Speaker 3: hybrid variations. It's a completely different value Dad, it's a
Speaker 3: completely different production line. And so it is actually the
Speaker 3: collapse of the current business law. So the question is
Speaker 3: can they do it, and can they do this in
Speaker 3: a way of that's you know, kind of minimize the
Speaker 3: damage here. But this brings us to the concerns for
Speaker 3: workers unemployment, and we see that this has constantly cited
Speaker 3: as an excuse not to move too far. So I
Speaker 3: think the among gering often leads to this idea of
Speaker 3: painting this kind of impression for the public that the
Speaker 3: company is not opposing the direction of travel, not opposing
Speaker 3: a transition per se, but they're sort of arguing for
Speaker 3: a bit more time, you know, a bit more assistance.
Speaker 3: But we know that this is like a delay tactic.
Speaker 3: So this is quite common. And I can't think of
Speaker 3: the actual number, but in Japan there's huge amounts of
Speaker 3: people were estimated to be working in the automobile industry.
Speaker 3: I think it was five million. It just sounds like
Speaker 3: really really huge, and I think to get that number
Speaker 3: you have to take people working in it the insurance
Speaker 3: sector that are probably selling insurance to like, you know,
Speaker 3: homes and.
Speaker 1: Coffee shop down the street from Toyota's office.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the coffee shops and you know it's next to
Speaker 3: the service says, you'd have to bring everyone into this
Speaker 3: like so called automobile industry. But they've used this number
Speaker 3: of I'm quite sure it's five minute consistently for several
Speaker 3: years and featured that on national television, in newspaper advertisements,
Speaker 3: and so basically the message to the government was, if
Speaker 3: you sort of push us too quickly towards batteries, then
Speaker 3: these five million people are economically at risk.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's such a convincing argument because they are just saying, like,
Speaker 1: we're just want to go slow and study a litill change.
Speaker 1: But in this very sensible way, it's hard to argue against. Okay,
Speaker 1: you mentioned workers, and I want to ask you both
Speaker 1: about unions because they show up in a like every
Speaker 1: part of this, and especially around how to bring unions
Speaker 1: on board, which you also talk about. But yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: curious what are some of the key ways that unions
Speaker 1: are getting involved in obstruction? And then what are some
Speaker 1: ways that you've seen that you know, be sort of
Speaker 1: like turned into allies.
Speaker 2: I'll speak primarily to the United States context, but I
Speaker 2: think it's been fascinating to watch unions kind of position
Speaker 2: themselves politically in relation to cole in particular, but also
Speaker 2: the railroads in that I suppose the assumption, the partisan assumption,
Speaker 2: might be that unions tend to be pro democratic or
Speaker 2: pro liberall right, that they're going to vote in favor
Speaker 2: of sort of workers' interests, and we've seen that that
Speaker 2: has not always been the case with the with the
Speaker 2: coal industry in particular, so a lot of those unions
Speaker 2: have seen a threat to the industry from climate regulation
Speaker 2: or laws as a threat to their livelihoods, and so
Speaker 2: there's been an interesting pushback or in alignment in the
Speaker 2: United States context, particularly with the Trump administration, and they're
Speaker 2: sort of pro coal policies or their pro coal approach.
Speaker 2: I think where that shifts at times is when it
Speaker 2: really comes down to the material realities of you know,
Speaker 2: conditions for workers and whether or not they're having the
Speaker 2: protections they need and getting the jobs they need. We
Speaker 2: know that automation in the coal industry has led to
Speaker 2: a huge decline in the number of jobs that one
Speaker 2: can get in that industry, and so I think, you know,
Speaker 2: it's going to be very context specific, but those are
Speaker 2: the complications that I think workers in the unions that
Speaker 2: represent them are having to naviocate.
Speaker 3: That's actually kind of a bloodspot my knowledge, but lots
Speaker 3: of researchers focus on this. So we worked with a
Speaker 3: very large team of authorsere and I kind of feel that,
Speaker 3: you know, we're getting a lot of the credits from
Speaker 3: their hard work with basically just had the pleasure of
Speaker 3: just accepting these intellectual treats, you know, and just and
Speaker 3: certainly the like in this particular way and polishing them.
Speaker 3: And we did receive a lot of material that's like
Speaker 3: far too large to fit in where many pages were
Speaker 3: given to work with, but unions were cited by many
Speaker 3: of them. And one of the messages we did see
Speaker 3: was that our unions a lot of the time they
Speaker 3: are an obstructive force, but sometimes they're kind of being persuaded,
Speaker 3: and because their main concern is jobs, and so when
Speaker 3: they sort of see legitimate strategy so let's say, to
Speaker 3: create jobs, then they actually do come on board and
Speaker 3: we see that. I think Germany is probably a great
Speaker 3: case where the unions have boys understood the coal industry
Speaker 3: in decline because of you know, climate change and because
Speaker 3: of these other economic forces they were renewals forgetting about
Speaker 3: climates becoming cheaper and more competitive that many contexts, and
Speaker 3: so they consider about their long term vitality and idea
Speaker 3: of the government sort of injecting large amounts of funds
Speaker 3: into these communities that provide these new jobs or retraining
Speaker 3: and things. This actually is interesting for some of the
Speaker 3: people in these units. Units have actually changed positions and
Speaker 3: supportant green transition packages based upon the evidence that.
Speaker 4: We receive well.
Speaker 2: And I would just say, going back to the path
Speaker 2: dependency point that Greg made earlier, a lot of these
Speaker 2: unions have been in these industry groups for a long time,
Speaker 2: so they've been coordinating with and part of those front
Speaker 2: groups that are doing that corporate ventriloquism thing. And so
Speaker 2: I think, you know, you're locked into these relationships or
Speaker 2: these coordinated activities. It's pretty tough to peel off unless
Speaker 2: there are real incentives for doing that.
Speaker 1: That's interesting, Okay. I want to ask you about the
Speaker 1: technological optimism and fossil fuel solutionism because this is the
Speaker 1: one place where I feel like it might be quite
Speaker 1: different from industry to industry.
Speaker 2: Like I think it's hard for coal to be like
Speaker 2: technolop the way. I'm wrong. Oh, you'd be surprised.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we do have this in Japan actually and Asia. Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 3: So I think one of the solutions a lot of
Speaker 3: people are familiar with is carbon capture and.
Speaker 4: Storage c cs of course, Yeah, but.
Speaker 3: What's happened recently is that all across Asia, like countries
Speaker 3: acts Vietnam and Indonesia especially, but also countries like India
Speaker 3: China as well, we have these very young cold fight
Speaker 3: palp plants, and so if these countries were to be
Speaker 3: serious about transitioning towards renewables, we're going to have to
Speaker 3: write these off before the end of their economic lives.
Speaker 3: So we're going to end up with the so called
Speaker 3: stranded asset. And not only that wells these countries are
Speaker 3: actually under a lot of stress to supply the power
Speaker 3: for their very rapidly growing populations and economies. So it's
Speaker 3: actually not easy for them to shut down, say a
Speaker 3: cold fire power plant which produces a massive amount of
Speaker 3: power and replace that with solar powers.
Speaker 4: This is a very very difficult change, and so.
Speaker 3: They have very strong interest in sort of maintaining these
Speaker 3: assets while decarbonizing. And that's open to the tour to
Speaker 3: these discussions about slow callder ammonia curve firing right being
Speaker 3: promoted very heavily by Japan, but also also by South Korea,
Speaker 3: and I guess possibly by some Chinese companies too. But
Speaker 3: this is an approach. Basically that involves producing ammonia, which
Speaker 3: is basically an energy carriers. So we can obtain this
Speaker 3: from either dirty sources such as fossil fuels or from
Speaker 3: clean sources such as renewals, and it's very similar to hydrogen.
Speaker 3: So basically we bring this to a certain country and
Speaker 3: then in the case of emoia, we can burn this
Speaker 3: and we can actually replace a portion of that call,
Speaker 3: so we can for example at place ten or twenty percent,
Speaker 3: and then the idea is to move progressively up towards
Speaker 3: replacing call together and just having the same power station
Speaker 3: in the future burning ammonia. And this is like the
Speaker 3: sort of solution that's been promised to stakehorese public to politicians.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of money being injected in this now.
Speaker 3: So this is definitely an unproven technology and Bloomberg New
Speaker 3: Energy Finance have looked to the economics. It just said,
Speaker 3: this doesn't make sense. Green Ammonia's is great. We should
Speaker 3: be using this being other industries, not in an industry
Speaker 3: where we have other cheaper solutions such as renewkes. But
Speaker 3: ammonia COFID has been used, especially pushed by Japanese copies
Speaker 3: across with young assets.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of a shell game, right, It's like, Okay,
Speaker 2: we're not clean right now, We're not you know, in
Speaker 2: alignment with climate goals right now, but if you invest
Speaker 2: in us and allow us to grow in ten years,
Speaker 2: we will we will be right. So it's always just
Speaker 2: it's like nuclear fusion. It's always just ten years away
Speaker 2: and we will get there.
Speaker 1: The same with hydrogen carbon capture, all of these technologies.
Speaker 1: They're like, if you just build it, then it'll make
Speaker 1: it cheap enough for everyone that it'll it'll all work
Speaker 1: out in the end somehow.
Speaker 2: Trust us. Amazing, Okay.
Speaker 1: So then on the right to develop an energy poverty,
Speaker 1: I mean I see this one all the time from
Speaker 1: every polluting industry, but yeah, I'm curious for like some
Speaker 1: of the specific ways that it shows up in these industries.
Speaker 1: And then also what is your standard response against that,
Speaker 1: because I feel like it maybe shows up the most
Speaker 1: with coal, even more than other fossil fuels. Coal is
Speaker 1: the one that's like, oh, but we need it for
Speaker 1: cheap energy, So how does it show up and what's
Speaker 1: the response?
Speaker 2: I mean, I really think it's sort of a co
Speaker 2: opting of liberal discourse. And then using that discourse against
Speaker 2: climate advocates. So, you know, I think a lot of
Speaker 2: environmental justice folks or climate change advocates would say that
Speaker 2: they really care about things like poverty and inequity. They
Speaker 2: care about the ways in which the global South have
Speaker 2: not been allowed to develop at the same rate or
Speaker 2: has been taken advantage of by the global North. And
Speaker 2: so you have the industry saying, oh, you care about
Speaker 2: energy poverty. Well, guess what a good way to get
Speaker 2: a lot of folks in the Global South out of
Speaker 2: energy poverty is to allow them to burn coal really quickly.
Speaker 2: Or guess what you have folks in Europe who are
Speaker 2: experiencing transportation poverty, and the best way to alleviate that
Speaker 2: is to make sure that they have access to automobiles.
Speaker 2: So Greg probably has some policy answers, But for me,
Speaker 2: as a rhetorician, I'm always thinking about ways in which
Speaker 2: that the opposition to polluting industries is turned back on
Speaker 2: itself so that it kind of takes the moral rug
Speaker 2: out from under them and allows the industry to say, actually,
Speaker 2: we're the moral ones. We're the ones who understand how
Speaker 2: to fix the world.
Speaker 3: So this idea of you know, fossil vieus being critical
Speaker 3: for human well being, for keeping the lights on, for
Speaker 3: helping countries develop their economies. This pattern has been demonstrated
Speaker 3: throughout history, I mean unfortunately. So there's actually kind of
Speaker 3: a lot of truth or sort of this corresponds, I guess,
Speaker 3: with the development trajectory of land countries and countries like
Speaker 3: China until now. So the question is should we'd be
Speaker 3: sort of alow in these countries to continue on this
Speaker 3: same path which is being shown to be so detrimental
Speaker 3: climate and to also air pullush and human health. And
Speaker 3: so what we sort of see is countries that are
Speaker 3: kind of cleaned up themselves and they sort of paint like,
Speaker 3: you know, for example, the exporting of coal as they're
Speaker 3: doing other countries of favor. And so I remember being
Speaker 3: in Japan on YouTube seeing this throughly a collages of
Speaker 3: Tokyo Oh wow, ily dear, you know, and then I
Speaker 3: realized that this is an advertisement from the Australian Minerals Council,
Speaker 3: which heavily represents Call. They're sort of saying that they're
Speaker 3: exporting Call to Japan and they're helping your client in Japan,
Speaker 3: and they're also promotes in their calls being cleaner than
Speaker 3: other sources called we're talking just about you know, black
Speaker 3: lumps carbon from the ground, right, and arguably we can
Speaker 3: see that one type is a little bit better than
Speaker 3: another type. But that's more so from not a carbon perspective,
Speaker 3: it's more from a sulfur perspective, because sulfur is actually
Speaker 3: when it has had sulfur content, this contributes to very
Speaker 3: high leveled local air pollution, which is very tremendal to
Speaker 3: human health.
Speaker 4: So Australia was sort of.
Speaker 3: Arguing that their call is, you know, clean, cleaner than
Speaker 3: others competing on minerals out the here, and yet we're
Speaker 3: arguing that they're helping Japan and Avouced country keep it
Speaker 3: chink counts in running for example, the bullet train. So
Speaker 3: that was quite a surprise to see this happening in
Speaker 3: the context of two develops countries and energy poverty. Yeah,
Speaker 3: this is a concept we here we discuss more so,
Speaker 3: I guess in developed countries setting, So you know, I
Speaker 3: guess the United States, Europe we have we know that
Speaker 3: it's true, we have people that are clearly in disadvantage
Speaker 3: positions and they're affected very strongly by the price of
Speaker 3: fossil fuels that could be, for example, for their heating,
Speaker 3: or that could be for their commuting, because especially as
Speaker 3: you know, a lot of people with lower incomes, so
Speaker 3: kind of they've chosen to purchase houses with your prices,
Speaker 3: which is usually further away from the work, and so
Speaker 3: they have to commit further, which makes them more vulnerable
Speaker 3: to a price increases such as happened about one and
Speaker 3: a half years ago with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Service
Speaker 3: energy poverty actually occurs in our United States, Australia, Japan, Europe,
Speaker 3: but we see that this is used as an excuse
Speaker 3: to sort of to make a transition, because there's always
Speaker 3: concerned that that's mobilized, that the energy transition will cost
Speaker 3: these people more money. And then we sometimes see this
Speaker 3: used as an excuse to keep fossil fuel subsidies to
Speaker 3: help suppress fossil fuel prices, to help these people serve,
Speaker 3: you know, survive, which is of course a very really
Speaker 3: important thing we shouldn't forget. There is a need to
Speaker 3: sort of help them use less energy in the first place,
Speaker 3: and to help bring the structure away from which creates
Speaker 3: is probably in their first place.
Speaker 2: So what's yournog well, and not to mention that they
Speaker 2: often bear desperate impacts of pollution from fossil fuels, so
Speaker 2: they're less able to sort of fight back against those things.
Speaker 2: They tend to have higher pollutant levels in the places
Speaker 2: where they live, less access to medical care. So those
Speaker 2: are the pieces that you don't hear as much about
Speaker 2: in those energy poverty arguments. It's a particular slice of
Speaker 2: a moral argument that they want you to take away
Speaker 2: as opposed to a moralistic sure, a complicated issue.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The thing that I always ask fossil fuel executives
Speaker 1: when they make this argument, because they do it over
Speaker 1: and over again, is what are you doing to get
Speaker 1: your coal to poor people? And then they're like, I'm
Speaker 1: sorry what They claim that this is going to solve it,
Speaker 1: but it's like, isn't it the fuel we've been using
Speaker 1: for the last hundred years? Why is it still a
Speaker 1: problem if that's the fix, you know, And they're like, no,
Speaker 1: that's a great question. We really got to start working
Speaker 1: on that more. And we have a foundation and they're
Speaker 1: going to start working on that, and it's amazing. Anyway, Okay,
Speaker 1: I want to know from each of you, what was
Speaker 1: the most surprising thing that you found in this research
Speaker 1: or in pulling the chapter together. Maybe it was in
Speaker 1: other people's research coming in.
Speaker 3: Maybe I can quickly give it a short answer there necessaria,
Speaker 3: I don't have that much knowledge, so I'm just responding
Speaker 3: to statements we're seeing in the period literature and from
Speaker 3: our colleagues. But it seems to be the case that
Speaker 3: in certain countries and that global South, especially the activists
Speaker 3: that are sort of trying to drop the expansion of
Speaker 3: coal extractionism or you know, the construction of confied help
Speaker 3: plants or something, it seems to be especially common in
Speaker 3: call have found themselves to be targeted by it, for example,
Speaker 3: a local police force by political movements, and they've incurred
Speaker 3: things such as bullying, arrests, jail sentences, and there seems
Speaker 3: to also be cases of terrible things like modes of
Speaker 3: renowned activists sort of being silenced physically forever. And so
Speaker 3: this concern it's a human rights issue, but it also
Speaker 3: creates tear and I think we can see this in
Speaker 3: the United States. Current administration has targeted very prominent, you know,
Speaker 3: academic institutions, trying to make an example out of them,
Speaker 3: which sort of sends a very strong signal to the
Speaker 3: weaker place that if you sort of do something similar,
Speaker 3: you'll be next. And so this bullying tactic seems to exist,
Speaker 3: and it's probably it hasn't caught too much pension of people. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there's been I think putting in the United States, quite
Speaker 3: a few researchers that have been to Columbia and sort
Speaker 3: of you know, I've spoken to the affected communities and yeah,
Speaker 3: this is quite a real phenomenon. And for searches that
Speaker 3: are in westerns of context, we're more predicted, we're not
Speaker 3: really exposed to this injustices in our firsthand we probably
Speaker 3: take less interest in them because we're looking more so,
Speaker 3: I guess at the issues that have a strong coalition
Speaker 3: with what we observe in our countries. But there's a
Speaker 3: few people that sort of, you know, take the trouble
Speaker 3: to visit these countries and to talk to people, and
Speaker 3: it's quite disturbing the information that they've been home.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jen, what about you was sort of the most
Speaker 1: surprising learning working on this.
Speaker 2: Maybe a related comment which is just we had an
Speaker 2: amazing team. I feel like we had Jason Amnios on
Speaker 2: the chapter. For example. It's probably the only scholar really
Speaker 2: working on maritime climate policy, which is an area I
Speaker 2: hadn't given much lot to it all.
Speaker 1: I hadn't until there were like those news stories this
Speaker 1: year about the IMO.
Speaker 2: It was like, I didn't even know this existed. This
Speaker 2: is fascinating exactly, and so he really helped us understand
Speaker 2: what was happening there, and then we could see connections
Speaker 2: to industries that I understand better, coal or utilities. But
Speaker 2: there's been so much work done on oil and gas,
Speaker 2: and I think so much public attention to oil and
Speaker 2: gas and then probably to cool next after that, but
Speaker 2: I think very little attention paid to the role of utilities,
Speaker 2: for example, and so so powerful in a lot of
Speaker 2: national contexts in blocking climate policy. And then yeah, something
Speaker 2: as a sector that's as big as you know, shipping
Speaker 2: across the seas, that's having such a huge impact, and
Speaker 2: it's almost impossible to study because like, how do you
Speaker 2: get into those closed rooms where they're making a lot
Speaker 2: of policy, And there's so much movement back and forth
Speaker 2: between government regulatory bodies and the industry. Right, So just
Speaker 2: the opaqueness of a lot of all of this I
Speaker 2: thought was pretty fascinating to think about. And yet these
Speaker 2: are huge contributors to carbonization and something that we would
Speaker 2: love to study more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fascinating. Okay, if there's anything else in the chapter
Speaker 1: that you want to make sure to draw attention to,
Speaker 1: now's your chance.
Speaker 2: Well I would just go back. You ask me for
Speaker 2: an example on corporate and tril equism, and I would
Speaker 2: just the most prominent example I can think of was
Speaker 2: an information campaign that came out of a national front
Speaker 2: group called ACE American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy something
Speaker 2: like that. Yeah, And it was called the Faces of Coal,
Speaker 2: and so it was this website. Do you remember that
Speaker 2: saved me.
Speaker 1: I had forgotten about it and then I saw it
Speaker 1: in your chapter and I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I remember this.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, it was. It was all of these like
Speaker 2: you know, hard working Americans who were quote unquote the
Speaker 2: Faces of Coal and who were meant to represent the
Speaker 2: community members who were speaking for and on behalf of coal.
Speaker 2: And it turned out they were all stock images. There
Speaker 2: were no real people. Just like you're saying, there was
Speaker 2: no real community organization that was speaking for coal. It
Speaker 2: was the front group. I'm not saying that community members
Speaker 2: don't support the coal industry, of course, some do, but
Speaker 2: to sort of represent itself as speaking for the community,
Speaker 2: as coming from the community. I think that's probably the
Speaker 2: most classic example of corporate centril equism that we have
Speaker 2: in the US.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a technic I would like to highlight exap litigation.
Speaker 3: I think for people a kind of living in Asia,
Speaker 3: just the idea of our company suing the government because
Speaker 3: they didn't like the environmental policy.
Speaker 4: It's just shocking. I think this culturally wouldn't happen.
Speaker 3: I mess there's a very very strong reason, but I
Speaker 3: think this is just part of life in the United States.
Speaker 3: But this there commun is a very prominent and visible
Speaker 3: way that companies trying to obstruct climate actions. Any particular
Speaker 3: incidences of litigation that sort of called your attention, Jen
Speaker 3: in the United States.
Speaker 2: So yeah, how do you think about a specific example?
Speaker 2: But Amy U asked at the top of the interview,
Speaker 2: you know, has anything really changed in the last six months?
Speaker 2: And maybe that is something that we really see changing,
Speaker 2: which is that as the balance of powers erodes under
Speaker 2: this Trump administration, we're definitely seeing an alignment of administrative
Speaker 2: agencies and court rulings. I think, so we're going to
Speaker 2: see a less ability for community groups, for example, to
Speaker 2: push back on companies acting in ways that they don't like.
Speaker 2: And I think more likely e companies being able to
Speaker 2: use the courts successfully to be back regulation and going
Speaker 2: all the way up to the Supreme Court and the
Speaker 2: Supreme Court sort of allowing for deregulation to continue to happen.
Speaker 4: So I think, you.
Speaker 2: Know, history will tell how intense that's going to be
Speaker 2: in how long lasting. But I suspect that is going
Speaker 2: to be one of the lasting ricacies of this particular moment.
Speaker 3: I guess maybe some people would be interested in, like,
Speaker 3: you know, what we can do about these problems and
Speaker 3: solutions the responses. And this is really difficult because unfortunately,
Speaker 3: when you look at I guess academics we specialize in
Speaker 3: sort of finding the problems in the world, at criticizing
Speaker 3: society and seeing, you know, here the problems, and then
Speaker 3: people say, okay, what do we do about this?
Speaker 4: This is much more difficult.
Speaker 3: It's not like we say, you know, we found A
Speaker 3: and B, therefore we have to do see But and
Speaker 3: it's important I think that we still train, you know,
Speaker 3: formulate strategies based upon this intelligence that we're sort of
Speaker 3: assembled here. So I think one of the most evident
Speaker 3: things is to sort of, you know, make these opaque
Speaker 3: processes less opaque. And there seems to be this recurring
Speaker 3: pattern across the world of people in powerful positions in
Speaker 3: the industry enjoy very direct access to politicians, and they're
Speaker 3: able to very heavily influence the not necessarily the political process,
Speaker 3: but you know, the rulemaking process and policies, and people
Speaker 3: that are other society actors that are also stakeholders have
Speaker 3: less resources, therefore have less connections and have less influence
Speaker 3: in this. So this is actually a problem that is
Speaker 3: prominent not only in the environmental space, but I guess
Speaker 3: in many areas. I'm sure it's also a problem like
Speaker 3: see edison. There must be many other industries where this
Speaker 3: is our concern. So how can we make these political
Speaker 3: activities of companies more visible? And so I guess this
Speaker 3: leads to something quite radical, which is governments would sort
Speaker 3: of actually very actively and transparently communicate who they met
Speaker 3: and what they spoke about with the public for example.
Speaker 3: This is sort of I think, and as we stay well,
Speaker 3: but I think that unless we have something sort of
Speaker 3: radical like this, it's going to be very hard to
Speaker 3: track these political lobbying activities. A lot of it's happening
Speaker 3: behind to closed stores, and so there have been discussions
Speaker 3: about this in Europe and I think efforts to make
Speaker 3: you love being more visible. But I think especially in
Speaker 3: contact like the United States, where lobbying and sometimes in
Speaker 3: political donations, sometimes political variation is visible, I guess in
Speaker 3: the case of Tesla and or Musk and sometimes you know,
Speaker 3: we can assume there's other very less visible donations happening.
Speaker 3: This really is I think a barrier to moving to
Speaker 3: society towards these sustainability goals. And I would just like
Speaker 3: to say another thing that I think is a big
Speaker 3: challenge here is that there's also a need for government
Speaker 3: to toughen up, to be able to sort of identify
Speaker 3: these first in interest and to sort of not be
Speaker 3: afraid of confronting industry when it has to make a
Speaker 3: particular different decision, like for example, you know about the
Speaker 3: speed of moving away from fossil fuels or the need
Speaker 3: to promote battery electrid vehicles. Unfortunately, what we're seeing is
Speaker 3: that in Europe among other countries, there seems to be
Speaker 3: the listen less capacity in government for them to sort
Speaker 3: of produce their own intelligence. They have to rely on
Speaker 3: industry and consultants for life, for example, modeling estimations about
Speaker 3: the effect of a certain policy. And so because there's
Speaker 3: less intellectual capacity in certain domains in governments, that means
Speaker 3: they have to rely in industry. This opens the door
Speaker 3: also to versted interest from industry affecting the environment policy
Speaker 3: making process.
Speaker 4: So this is a bit of a concern.
Speaker 3: That this shift towards you're seeing more of a private
Speaker 3: step to savvy in the regulation of society in an
Speaker 3: organization of a state, this actually is opening the door
Speaker 3: to and invested interests coming potentially reinforcing Lupian.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that revolving door problem, I think is really so bad.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you about that in relation
Speaker 1: to the solutions piece too that you mentioned in the chapter,
Speaker 1: about how there are some differences between these industries or
Speaker 1: maybe between groups within the same industry, and that those
Speaker 1: can be leveraged sometimes to weaken the position. Have you
Speaker 1: seen a good example of that recently? You talked about
Speaker 1: in the case of automotive, that the automakers that are
Speaker 1: better positioned to pivot to evs are better allies.
Speaker 4: May shoot then.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'm curious if you've seen that dynamic in
Speaker 1: action in an example that you could point to where
Speaker 1: one of the industry groups has turned on the other
Speaker 1: and it's led to progress.
Speaker 3: I don't have any specific examples of yeah, one sort
Speaker 3: of actor picking a fire with another, but we definitely
Speaker 3: say competition. I mean, that's one of the nice things
Speaker 3: about a democratic society a capitalist society. These companies at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, even though they might collaborate,
Speaker 3: sometimes they're still looking at for themselves. So whenever they
Speaker 3: see an opportunity to trip out their opponent or I
Speaker 3: guess to you know, create a lead, they do so.
Speaker 3: Regarding the electric vehicle transition, there are differently I think
Speaker 3: differences like in temperature, in terms of like help actively
Speaker 3: or how rapidly companies are pursuing that transition. So, for example,
Speaker 3: Nissan has been a case of a company that's produced
Speaker 3: electric vehicles, never at large scale, but that was the
Speaker 3: world's first mass producer of these vehicles, and so they
Speaker 3: took a very firm, like batricentric stance to electrification, whereas
Speaker 3: other companies chose like hybrids or hydrogen in the case
Speaker 3: of Japan, and then Volkswagen in Europe, of course, they
Speaker 3: had the dieselbed scandal that sort of pushed them to
Speaker 3: do something clean, a good, but they pursued the battery's
Speaker 3: centric pathway, and that's so they use this as an
Speaker 3: excuse always to criticize the other competing technologies, which was
Speaker 3: hydrogen fuel cells. So these companies will sort of compete
Speaker 3: with each other in that respect. But what we seen,
Speaker 3: unfortunately is there also companies that have moved rapidly towards batteries.
Speaker 3: In Putt Volkswagen, A'm suffering from economic repercussions. This is
Speaker 3: making a lot of people sort of nervous. It's a
Speaker 3: bit of a almost an incubating truth about this how
Speaker 3: energy transition, whereas speaking of literary vehicles is quite expensive
Speaker 3: and difficult, and these companies actually doing business model repercussions.
Speaker 3: And that's why markets like China, which I guess sound
Speaker 3: very large and there's just a huge demand for vehicles.
Speaker 3: And also I guess they're just able to produce these
Speaker 3: batteries cheaper and they have a more of a control
Speaker 3: of the plage and they're able to do this in
Speaker 3: a profitable way, whereas the western car companies haven't been
Speaker 3: able to do this just yet so people like us
Speaker 3: that research about obstruction. I guess we have to be
Speaker 3: careful not not falling into the basket of it's just
Speaker 3: everything's lack a white because a lot a lot of
Speaker 3: the sort of you know, the triggers for a lot
Speaker 3: of the rhetoric from these companies of genuine concerns.
Speaker 4: We should be sensitive too.
Speaker 3: But the thing is they weaponized, weaponized as a way
Speaker 3: just to slow the transition, And that's the concern. Maybe
Speaker 3: in the beginning there is a bit of your truth
Speaker 3: to some of these concerns.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we see that in the anti renewable stuff too,
Speaker 1: write where communities have valid concerns, and I don't think
Speaker 1: it helps anyone to pretend that an industrial wind farm
Speaker 1: is like some bucolic, quaint little thing.
Speaker 2: It won't be disruptive at all, it won't be noisy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's interesting.
Speaker 1: That's it for this time. Make sure you're subscribed so
Speaker 1: you don't miss an episode. You can find more on
Speaker 1: this season, including transcripts and lots of related articles and
Speaker 1: background information on our website at drilled dot Media. You
Speaker 1: can also sign up for our newsletter there. Our producers
Speaker 1: for this are Martin Saltz Ustwick and Peter duff. Our
Speaker 1: theme song is Bird in the Hand by Foreknown. Our
Speaker 1: cover art is by Matthew Fleming. Our First Amendment Attorney
Speaker 1: is James Wheaton with the First Amendment Project. The show
Speaker 1: was created, written, and reported by me Amy Westervelt. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening and see you next time.