# Rep. Ro Khanna: Inside the House Climate Disinformation Investigation

An episode of [Drilled](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1439735906), 20 Dec 2022, 18 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/pdrl.fm/3e5572/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/9a7ab5ee-ce11-48ff-a544-b3ec00ea9b1e/f8e5dd0a-47c6-427e-bfbc-b3ec00f060e5/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f82f371-6316-4ea6-a108-b3ec00ea9b2d

The House Oversight Committee wrapped its investigation into climate disinformation, publishing a tranche of revealing internal documents on how the world's largest oil companies have misled the public about their committements to energy transition. Representative Ro Khanna, who helped spearhead the investigation, joins us to discuss. Additional resources: The Intercept Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:05] Speaker 1: Welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. The House Oversight
[0:08] Speaker 1: Committee has wrapped up its investigation into climate disinformation. They
[0:14] Speaker 1: haven't released their final report yet, but they have put
[0:17] Speaker 1: out a memo, and they have also published the last
[0:21] Speaker 1: batch of documents from the subpoenas that went out in
[0:24] Speaker 1: this investigation. Between the first batch and dispatch, there are
[0:28] Speaker 1: about fifteen hundred pages of internal emails, strategy documents, and
[0:33] Speaker 1: memos from the oil majors and the American Petroleum Institute,
[0:37] Speaker 1: and they tell a really interesting story. For me, as
[0:40] Speaker 1: someone who spends a lot of time looking at these
[0:43] Speaker 1: kinds of documents from the last one hundred years or so,
[0:46] Speaker 1: what's really striking is just how little the industry's strategy
[0:50] Speaker 1: has actually changed in the last decades. I guess if
[0:54] Speaker 1: it ain't broke, don't fix it. I've got longer analysis
[0:57] Speaker 1: of all of the details in these documents up at
[1:00] Speaker 1: Drilled podcast dot com and also in the intercept. I'll
[1:04] Speaker 1: drop links to those in the show notes. But today
[1:06] Speaker 1: I have with me one of the people who spearheaded
[1:08] Speaker 1: this investigation, Representative Rocanna. I asked him what really jumped
[1:13] Speaker 1: out at him in these documents, where the investigation might
[1:17] Speaker 1: lead in more. That conversation is coming up after this
[1:20] Speaker 1: quick break.
[1:29] Speaker 2: Thank you for joining me.
[1:30] Speaker 3: I appreciate it.
[1:31] Speaker 2: I'm sure lots of people are asking you questions about
[1:34] Speaker 2: this report and the new document's coming in, so I'm
[1:36] Speaker 2: curious to hear, first off, if there was anything in
[1:40] Speaker 2: this latest batch of documents that particularly jumps out to
[1:43] Speaker 2: you as very interesting or surprising, or something you want
[1:48] Speaker 2: to particularly draw folks attention to.
[1:51] Speaker 3: Two things.
[1:52] Speaker 4: First, the explicit strategy that greenwashing will give them quote
[1:59] Speaker 4: a license to further operate in entrenching the fossil fuel industry.
[2:04] Speaker 4: And you saw that with the American Petroleum Institute and
[2:07] Speaker 4: Chevron and an MVP and number of companies. The idea is, Okay,
[2:11] Speaker 4: we'll cut in how we operate our plant, but we're
[2:16] Speaker 4: going to produce more and ultimately this is going to
[2:18] Speaker 4: be more emissions, and giving money about being a green
[2:23] Speaker 4: company actually will allow us to emit more. It's that cynical,
[2:27] Speaker 4: it's that explicit, it's in the documents. The second thing
[2:31] Speaker 4: is the culture of bullying, the fact that they want
[2:35] Speaker 4: bedbug bugs for Sunrise kids in the last tranch of documents.
[2:38] Speaker 4: And then this tranch. We see that they are going
[2:42] Speaker 4: after a New York Times reporter, Roco, who covered the hearings,
[2:46] Speaker 4: pushing her off covering these hearings, trying to silence the
[2:51] Speaker 4: New York Times and intimidate the New York Times, and
[2:55] Speaker 4: we see that this has been their strategy with the press.
[2:58] Speaker 2: That's super interesting actually in the wake of the FTI
[3:02] Speaker 2: consulting reporting that Heroko did too, and knowing the relationship
[3:06] Speaker 2: between those guys and Exxon and all of these companies.
[3:09] Speaker 4: Really Broca's not covering it anymore, so he's been taken off,
[3:12] Speaker 4: So you know, Unfortunately, the big oil succeeds sometimes when
[3:17] Speaker 4: they engage in this kind of bullying.
[3:19] Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. I wanted to talk a little bit about
[3:21] Speaker 2: the university funding stuff that showed up, I think in
[3:24] Speaker 2: the BP documents and just the way that they talk
[3:27] Speaker 2: about how their funding of Princeton in particular and the
[3:33] Speaker 2: carbon project there allows them to kind of gain insight
[3:39] Speaker 2: into how their opponents are thinking about these things, and
[3:43] Speaker 2: also to influence the university and the research that's coming
[3:47] Speaker 2: out of their something that is a fascination of mind.
[3:51] Speaker 2: Just why these companies invest so much in university research
[3:55] Speaker 2: and especially in not just the scientific and technical research,
[3:59] Speaker 2: but also public policy to have influence there. So I'm
[4:03] Speaker 2: curious just what you think of that and also the
[4:05] Speaker 2: extent to which university research does really influence policymaking.
[4:13] Speaker 4: Well, I am concerned because the huge gifts to these
[4:18] Speaker 4: research institutions could bias the research. And what you have
[4:23] Speaker 4: is a strategy by these big old companies to fund
[4:27] Speaker 4: research both at universities and nonprofits and then have that
[4:31] Speaker 4: research be seen as quote unquote objective evidence. And we
[4:35] Speaker 4: need a whole more investigation beyond what our committee did
[4:39] Speaker 4: on what is the strategy of funding research and how
[4:43] Speaker 4: objective is that research? And how do you create the
[4:46] Speaker 4: walls of separation between the fund to get the research
[4:49] Speaker 4: many which break down.
[4:51] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I've heard even some of the campus activists
[4:54] Speaker 2: that are agitating for universities to not take any more
[4:58] Speaker 2: of this money are asking for step one to just
[5:01] Speaker 2: be transparency around it. You know that university should disclose
[5:07] Speaker 2: who they're taking money from and what the terms of
[5:09] Speaker 2: that money exactly.
[5:10] Speaker 4: Be a start, just who are you taking the money from,
[5:14] Speaker 4: what are the conditions? Look if they're giving money to studying,
[5:20] Speaker 4: you know Shakespearean literature, that's one thing, But if they're
[5:22] Speaker 4: giving money to have particular research on carbon and climate
[5:28] Speaker 4: that seems to be much more problematic. That needs to
[5:31] Speaker 4: at the very least be transparent with clear walls of separation.
[5:35] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[5:35] Speaker 2: Do you think that the documents saying what they do
[5:40] Speaker 2: about this idea of a bridge fuel and gas will
[5:44] Speaker 2: put sort of an end to that narrative? Do you
[5:47] Speaker 2: think it makes it harder for these companies to continue saying, Oh,
[5:51] Speaker 2: it's a bridge, it's a bridge, it's a bridge. Do
[5:53] Speaker 2: you expect them to stop even trying to claim it.
[5:57] Speaker 4: Well, the documents, as you see, shows that they really
[6:00] Speaker 4: believe it's their end destination.
[6:02] Speaker 3: They internally are not even talking.
[6:05] Speaker 4: About it as a bridge. They're just talking about it
[6:07] Speaker 4: as this is what we're going to be moving towards.
[6:10] Speaker 4: And that's why it's a wake up call. I think
[6:12] Speaker 4: for many people. If you care about moving to renewable,
[6:16] Speaker 4: if you care about moving to energy efficiency, that's in
[6:19] Speaker 4: direct contradiction with the internal goals of these big oil companies.
[6:23] Speaker 4: I guess my biggest concern with the big oil companies
[6:25] Speaker 4: is the lack of honesty, right. I mean, if they
[6:28] Speaker 4: were out there just saying, look, we are all at
[6:32] Speaker 4: gas companies. We don't care about this emission thing. That's
[6:35] Speaker 4: not our problem. This is our business model, this is
[6:38] Speaker 4: what we're going to do.
[6:40] Speaker 3: Then I would disagree strongly with it. But they're big,
[6:42] Speaker 3: honest to what they're doing.
[6:44] Speaker 4: The problem is that's not what they're representing because they
[6:46] Speaker 4: know the American public will put up with that. They
[6:48] Speaker 4: know their own shareholders won't put up with that. So
[6:51] Speaker 4: they're claiming to be something that they're not. They're claiming
[6:54] Speaker 4: to be greed what they aren't. And it's the duplicity
[6:58] Speaker 4: that is actually the most aggravate A gets shocking.
[7:02] Speaker 2: What do you think could be done on the government
[7:05] Speaker 2: side of things to not enable that duplicity? So you know,
[7:10] Speaker 2: the US government hasn't exactly been opposed to gas as
[7:13] Speaker 2: a bridge viuel itself. So to what extent could even
[7:18] Speaker 2: you know, the EPA fast treking methane rules for example,
[7:21] Speaker 2: or fast treking implementation of those rules, or I don't know,
[7:26] Speaker 2: regulating greenhouse gases under TOSCA, as you know, one petition
[7:31] Speaker 2: has asked them to do. What are things that could
[7:33] Speaker 2: be done that would maybe not stop the fossil fuel
[7:37] Speaker 2: companies from claiming these things but make it harder for
[7:40] Speaker 2: them to successfully make gas the destination.
[7:47] Speaker 3: Well, we tried and build back better.
[7:48] Speaker 4: And originally, as you know, there were rules to have
[7:52] Speaker 4: penalties for methane emissions. They were taken out partly because
[7:56] Speaker 4: of API at big oils advertising where there were targeting
[8:00] Speaker 4: specific members of Congress to oppose the methane rules. So
[8:05] Speaker 4: now it's up to the agency's EPA being the primary
[8:08] Speaker 4: one to help through executive action to have rules interpreting
[8:13] Speaker 4: the Clean Air Act and others that give them the authority.
[8:16] Speaker 4: And I'm hopeful that we will take action on that.
[8:19] Speaker 4: Methane is even worse in some ways than others. And
[8:23] Speaker 4: so let's see what EPA does.
[8:26] Speaker 2: Given that control of the House is shifting, what could
[8:30] Speaker 2: happen next with the information that's come out in this report?
[8:33] Speaker 2: Could the Department of Justice get involved? Could we see
[8:35] Speaker 2: something in the Senate?
[8:36] Speaker 3: Well, I can tease some news.
[8:37] Speaker 4: We're going to be sending the documents to a couple
[8:41] Speaker 4: of key places, and obviously we still control the White House,
[8:45] Speaker 4: we still control the Senate, so this isn't the last
[8:47] Speaker 4: of the investigation.
[8:49] Speaker 3: Okay.
[8:49] Speaker 2: Interesting, I also wanted to know or just get a
[8:53] Speaker 2: sense from you of how much do you think the
[8:55] Speaker 2: current situation with Russia, Ukraine and raising gas prices, all
[9:00] Speaker 2: of this stuff has impacted this whole conversation. Do you
[9:04] Speaker 2: get a sense that the oil companies feel like, oh, well,
[9:09] Speaker 2: no one's going to be paying attention to this stuff
[9:11] Speaker 2: because we've successfully gotten people to focus on high gas
[9:14] Speaker 2: prices instead.
[9:15] Speaker 4: Well, that's definitely the big oil company strategy. But we
[9:18] Speaker 4: need to push back with the truth. Sheldon white House
[9:21] Speaker 4: and I have shown how a big oil is actually
[9:23] Speaker 4: having record profits and that what we need is to
[9:26] Speaker 4: hold them accountable with a windfall profits tax to lower
[9:30] Speaker 4: gas prices. And I highly recommend an op ed that
[9:32] Speaker 4: Sheldon white House wrote with Lindsay Graham saying that if
[9:35] Speaker 4: America cares about national security and independence from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia,
[9:41] Speaker 4: Venezuela Petro states, the biggest thing we need to do
[9:44] Speaker 4: is to move to renewable energy to not be as
[9:47] Speaker 4: dependent on fossil fuelds. So I think that we have
[9:50] Speaker 4: to do a better job making the national security case
[9:54] Speaker 4: at this moment of volatility and precarity because of Ukraine,
[9:59] Speaker 4: where we could say to people Look, we don't want
[10:01] Speaker 4: to be behold in this Audi Arabia, we don't want
[10:04] Speaker 4: to be beholden to Russia, and we don't want to
[10:06] Speaker 4: be beholden to our own big oil companies. Let's really
[10:10] Speaker 4: double down on renewable energy.
[10:12] Speaker 2: What's your response to folks who make the argument that
[10:15] Speaker 2: nationalizing the fossil fuel industry is also a solution to
[10:19] Speaker 2: the national security problem or reinstituting the export ban, which
[10:24] Speaker 2: I imagine would be impossible given the deal with the
[10:27] Speaker 2: EU that we currently have. But yeah, what's your answer
[10:30] Speaker 2: to those suggestions.
[10:32] Speaker 4: Well, I'm not for nationalizing it, but I am for
[10:35] Speaker 4: an export ban exempting our European allies. And that's not
[10:38] Speaker 4: something radical. That was policy until twenty fifteen, and it
[10:42] Speaker 4: seems to me we should have some policy that when
[10:46] Speaker 4: there is volatility on the price of gas, that we
[10:50] Speaker 4: prioritize the domestic market, and that seems a reasonable thing
[10:54] Speaker 4: to do the long term. While I support an export ban,
[10:57] Speaker 4: the real long term solution is a moonshot on renewable energy,
[11:01] Speaker 4: and we've got to just continue to make the case
[11:03] Speaker 4: that a moonshut on renewable energy is good for American consumers.
[11:07] Speaker 4: What better way to lower gas prices than to give
[11:10] Speaker 4: people an alternative to gas. What better way they have
[11:13] Speaker 4: national security not dependent on petro states than to have
[11:17] Speaker 4: a commodity that petro states don't own.
[11:20] Speaker 3: So I think we have to just be further in
[11:23] Speaker 3: making that case.
[11:24] Speaker 2: Do you think that there's a good understanding in the public,
[11:27] Speaker 2: or in the media for that matter, of how gas
[11:29] Speaker 2: pricing works, like enough to push back. The industry has
[11:33] Speaker 2: been very successful at entrenching this narrative that they have
[11:37] Speaker 2: nothing to do with gas pricing and that it's all
[11:40] Speaker 2: to do with environmental policy and pour them. Even though
[11:44] Speaker 2: I do think that the message about profits is starting
[11:47] Speaker 2: to break through. You know, people are starting to stay
[11:48] Speaker 2: wait a minute, these companies are historically profitable right now,
[11:52] Speaker 2: yet they're claiming that they can't do anything about this
[11:55] Speaker 2: gas price issue. How much do you think that the
[11:58] Speaker 2: public and the media are are able to push back
[12:03] Speaker 2: on that narrative.
[12:06] Speaker 3: Well, I think we need to do more.
[12:08] Speaker 4: And now they've done a good job in Europe, where
[12:10] Speaker 4: the big oil companies are paying a windfall profits tax.
[12:13] Speaker 4: Even conservative governments have done that because in Europe they
[12:16] Speaker 4: understand that these companies are making huge profits The difference
[12:18] Speaker 4: here is big oil has big money and they can
[12:21] Speaker 4: basically have these super packs and they give a lot
[12:23] Speaker 4: of money to Congress and said it so unlike Europe,
[12:26] Speaker 4: our politics are distorted by the money and the influence
[12:31] Speaker 4: of these.
[12:31] Speaker 3: Big oil companies.
[12:33] Speaker 4: But we've got to get the facts out there that look,
[12:36] Speaker 4: we're almost at record production. By twenty twenty three, we're
[12:39] Speaker 4: gonna have record production in this country. So there's a
[12:41] Speaker 4: narrative that if we just produced more, that would be
[12:44] Speaker 4: the issue. That's just not true. We have record production
[12:47] Speaker 4: on natural gas. What is the issue. The issue is
[12:50] Speaker 4: that these big oil companies have been making a lot
[12:52] Speaker 4: of money at a time that they know they could,
[12:54] Speaker 4: where the price of oil has got up because of
[12:57] Speaker 4: international markets.
[12:59] Speaker 3: What is the solution.
[13:00] Speaker 4: The solution of volatility is to have an alternative product,
[13:03] Speaker 4: you know, And it's a pretty simple. If cars cost
[13:07] Speaker 4: a lot of money and then there is a new
[13:08] Speaker 4: product to be an alternative cars, that'd be less to
[13:10] Speaker 4: bad for cars. The price would cut out. Yeah, that's
[13:13] Speaker 4: all we're saying.
[13:14] Speaker 2: Yeah, I was talking to someone in Europe the other
[13:16] Speaker 2: day about European companies that are complying with these emissions
[13:20] Speaker 2: reductions in Europe and fighting them in the US, and
[13:23] Speaker 2: his comment as well. In Europe, it's sort of like
[13:27] Speaker 2: everyone accepts the fact that climate policy is going to
[13:31] Speaker 2: happen in the US, they still think there's a possibility
[13:35] Speaker 2: that they can stop it from happening or delay it
[13:38] Speaker 2: another ten years. And I think that we see it
[13:42] Speaker 2: in these documents too, there's a sense that the fight
[13:45] Speaker 2: is still on, seeing it in the response to the
[13:48] Speaker 2: IRA passage too, Like I'm seeing new reports coming out
[13:53] Speaker 2: that are kind of recycling stuff that people were arguing
[13:57] Speaker 2: twenty years ago about CO two greening the world and
[14:01] Speaker 2: how actually carbon emissions are a good thing for us.
[14:04] Speaker 2: I'm curious what you think about what might possibly put
[14:08] Speaker 2: an end to this. You know, we've been seeing kind
[14:11] Speaker 2: of the same talking points and the same strategies from
[14:14] Speaker 2: these companies for twenty thirty years now, and they don't
[14:17] Speaker 2: even need to come up with new ones because the
[14:19] Speaker 2: old ones still works. So having seen all of this
[14:22] Speaker 2: stuff from these companies, what do you think it would
[14:24] Speaker 2: take to get them to stop and actually transition.
[14:30] Speaker 3: One is accountability.
[14:31] Speaker 4: I mean, I think most people don't know how much
[14:34] Speaker 4: climate disinformation they've engaged it and there has to be
[14:38] Speaker 4: some enforcement in the agencies for proof and advertising, so
[14:42] Speaker 4: there should be requirements that they can't make misrepresentations about
[14:46] Speaker 4: these issues to their investors, to the American public. There
[14:50] Speaker 4: needs to be far more public awareness and public campaigns
[14:55] Speaker 4: to say, Okay, if you're going to claim that you're
[14:57] Speaker 4: going to meet the parisit courts, where is this, where
[15:00] Speaker 4: is the investment? And then that can be investor activists driven,
[15:05] Speaker 4: but ultimately it's going to take congressional standards and the
[15:08] Speaker 4: enforcement of that by agencies as well as investor activism.
[15:13] Speaker 2: One of the arguments that the oil companies are making
[15:16] Speaker 2: in court is a very nuanced free speech argument that
[15:20] Speaker 2: they say, in service of gaining particular policies is petitioning
[15:25] Speaker 2: speech and therefore protected by the First Amendment. And I'm
[15:28] Speaker 2: curious what you think of that argument.
[15:30] Speaker 4: That's if Exeon wants to say that we should have
[15:34] Speaker 4: less methane regulation, that's their first Amendment right. But what
[15:38] Speaker 4: is not their first Amendment right, in my view, is
[15:41] Speaker 4: to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to influence that.
[15:45] Speaker 4: Now under this current Supreme Court and Citizens United, unfortunately,
[15:49] Speaker 4: they've misinterpreted the Constitution to allow big money, but I
[15:53] Speaker 4: don't think big money is speech.
[15:55] Speaker 3: And the other thing that's not their right is to
[15:57] Speaker 3: mislead people.
[15:58] Speaker 4: So even with free speech, you can't have misrepresentation to
[16:02] Speaker 4: your investors. Under sec reporting, you can't have misrepresentation to
[16:07] Speaker 4: the American public. And whether they legally are misrepresenting, certainly
[16:13] Speaker 4: ethically they're misrepresenting.
[16:15] Speaker 3: And that's what a lot of the documents are showing.
[16:40] Speaker 1: That's it for this time and for this year. Big
[16:43] Speaker 1: thanks to everyone for listening every week. Really appreciate you
[16:47] Speaker 1: taking the time and spending it with us. Also, super
[16:50] Speaker 1: big thanks to those of you who are supporting us,
[16:53] Speaker 1: either by subscribing to the newsletter or subscribing to our Patreon.
[16:58] Speaker 1: It's literally because of you that we can put this
[17:00] Speaker 1: out every week. If you would like to support our work,
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[17:11] Speaker 1: will get a weekly rundown of climate coverage all the
[17:14] Speaker 1: stories and studies you should be paying attention to, as
[17:17] Speaker 1: well as at least monthly, if not more, deeper analysis
[17:21] Speaker 1: of things happening in the realm of climate accountability. Thanks again,
[17:26] Speaker 1: and we'll see you next year.

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