# Winning the War: Fighting Back Against Decades of Climate Delay

An episode of [Drilled](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1439735906), 9 Oct 2018, 20 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/dfd67580-ebda-4553-9dcb-b3ec00f4f989/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f82f371-6316-4ea6-a108-b3ec00ea9b2d

Fossil fuel disinformation and campaigns have cost the world 30 years of action, but all is not lost. The technology to address climate change exists and if there's one thing about America's history, it's that radical social change is entirely possible. Support us: https://www.patreon.com/Drilled See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:04] Speaker 1: Previously undrilled.
[0:06] Speaker 2: They had such a good job that the public is
[0:09] Speaker 2: more skeptical of climate change now than the oil companies.
[0:12] Speaker 1: Are the world's largest oil companies are embroiled in multiple
[0:16] Speaker 1: lawsuits across the country and the globe at the moment.
[0:19] Speaker 1: While the technicalities of these suits differ, they're all mostly
[0:22] Speaker 1: about the same thing. These companies spent millions of dollars
[0:26] Speaker 1: to manufacture doubt about climate change when they knew the
[0:29] Speaker 1: science was sound. They knew it was sound because they
[0:32] Speaker 1: funded a lot of it. They used this science to
[0:36] Speaker 1: guide business decisions for themselves, while paying pr agencies, front groups,
[0:40] Speaker 1: and scientists for hire to tell everyone else it was bunk.
[0:44] Speaker 3: Exomobil posted on their website, read the documents, and so
[0:49] Speaker 3: we did. And they claimed that anyone who'd read these
[0:51] Speaker 3: documents would see that they exonerated them, but in fact
[0:54] Speaker 3: they didn't at all. In fact, if anything, they painted
[0:57] Speaker 3: a more distressing picture of how much Exon news about
[1:00] Speaker 3: this problem scientifically, and yet how much confusion they showed
[1:04] Speaker 3: in public about it.
[1:05] Speaker 4: Mere fact that a climate modeling group was established and
[1:10] Speaker 4: the Tanker project was funded indicates that upper management felt
[1:16] Speaker 4: this was a good idea and wanted to pursue it funded.
[1:19] Speaker 5: The issue was not were we going to have a problem.
[1:21] Speaker 5: The issue was simply, how soon and how fast and
[1:24] Speaker 5: how bad is it going to be? Not if nobody
[1:26] Speaker 5: at Exon when I was there, was discussing.
[1:28] Speaker 1: These influence campaigns were wildly successful. Climate changes here and
[1:53] Speaker 1: its impacts are noticeable. It has intensified storms and wildfires
[1:58] Speaker 1: to the extent that once rare natural disasters are happening
[2:01] Speaker 1: every year. Those disasters are taking lives, and some of
[2:05] Speaker 1: those deaths have been directly linked to climate change. In
[2:10] Speaker 1: two thousand and seven, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
[2:14] Speaker 1: the IPCC, estimated that one hundred and fifty thousand people
[2:18] Speaker 1: per year were dying from climate change. That number has
[2:22] Speaker 1: only risen in the decades since. As I talk into
[2:25] Speaker 1: this mic, the death toll in California's latest batch of
[2:28] Speaker 1: catastrophic wildfires has reached twenty five. Entire communities have disappeared.
[2:34] Speaker 1: Former Exon consultant Marty Hofer says he can't help but
[2:38] Speaker 1: see the oil industry's fingerprints on that.
[2:41] Speaker 2: Frankly, it's very depressing when I hear about the wildfires
[2:45] Speaker 2: in California. Now, some of those could be attributed to
[2:50] Speaker 2: I mean the climate. There's no question that this is
[2:53] Speaker 2: due to climate change in the warming of the oceans.
[2:56] Speaker 2: Some of those could probably be attributed to x on
[3:01] Speaker 2: products that became CO two and went into the atmosphere.
[3:05] Speaker 2: And that's the crass.
[3:16] Speaker 1: And since the argument is often made that it would
[3:19] Speaker 1: be economically disastrous to act on climate, it's worth noting
[3:22] Speaker 1: that the impacts of climate change have cost billions of
[3:25] Speaker 1: dollars in addition to lives lost. Scientists have calculated that
[3:29] Speaker 1: two billion out of the twelve billion dollars in losses
[3:32] Speaker 1: caused by Superstorm Sandy can be laid at the feet
[3:35] Speaker 1: of climate change, which raised sea levels and exacerbated storm surge.
[3:45] Speaker 1: In November, commercial crab fishermen along the West Coast came
[3:49] Speaker 1: together under the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations PCFFA,
[3:54] Speaker 1: the West coast largest commercial fishing association, to file suit
[3:58] Speaker 1: against thirty fossil fuel companies that they hold accountable for
[4:01] Speaker 1: losses caused by four straight years of fishery closures that
[4:05] Speaker 1: have harmed krabbers, their businesses, their families, and local communities
[4:09] Speaker 1: in California and Oregon. The key issue for crab fishermen
[4:12] Speaker 1: is that warmer waters cause more algal blooms, and those
[4:15] Speaker 1: blooms release an acid called demoic acid. Demoic acid is
[4:19] Speaker 1: a potent neurotoxin, so if it builds up in crabs,
[4:23] Speaker 1: fishermen can't fish those crabs and people can't eat them.
[4:26] Speaker 1: Here's Noah Oppenheim, pcffa's executive director explaining the suit.
[4:32] Speaker 6: In twenty fifteen, testing of crabs pre season showed that
[4:38] Speaker 6: crabs were testing at far above unsafe levels of demoic acid,
[4:43] Speaker 6: which is potent neurotoxin produced by an algae in the ocean.
[4:49] Speaker 6: It persists in warm temperatures and it shut down the
[4:53] Speaker 6: fishery for five months and it was devastating, resulted in
[4:59] Speaker 6: loss of opportunity, going to be a lot of young
[5:01] Speaker 6: fishermen who have just bought their boats, bought their permit
[5:04] Speaker 6: that year or the year before, were just hung out
[5:08] Speaker 6: to dry, absolutely stuck, and when the fishery finally opened,
[5:12] Speaker 6: the damage was done. We saw tens of millions of
[5:15] Speaker 6: dollars in losses. We're expecting to see this as the
[5:19] Speaker 6: new normal. Demoic acid is going to be an issue
[5:21] Speaker 6: for this fishery and potentially others into the future. And
[5:25] Speaker 6: the connection between carbon emissions warming the oceans and the
[5:31] Speaker 6: moic acid in our praps is clear, direct causal connection.
[5:35] Speaker 6: So when you have a direct connection like that and
[5:39] Speaker 6: you have a financial harm, we feel that the responsibility
[5:43] Speaker 6: for fameliorating that harm lives not with fishermen and society,
[5:48] Speaker 6: but by the company's entities that produced the problem in
[5:52] Speaker 6: the first place.
[6:02] Speaker 1: California is ever extending fire season saw the state burn
[6:06] Speaker 1: through its annual budget for twenty eighteen four hundred and
[6:09] Speaker 1: forty two point eight million. By September, fire agencies estimated
[6:14] Speaker 1: they needed an additional two hundred and thirty four million
[6:16] Speaker 1: to continue combating fires, and that was before yet another
[6:20] Speaker 1: devastating complex of fires hit in November. If you want
[6:24] Speaker 1: to talk to someone who knows for sure that climate
[6:26] Speaker 1: change is happening, talk to a California firefighter. Here's cal
[6:30] Speaker 1: Fire Chief Ken Pemlot on Good Morning LA earlier this year.
[6:34] Speaker 7: It really is going to get worse. The last several
[6:36] Speaker 7: years have just shown us every year it continues to
[6:39] Speaker 7: progress and things are changing. If you ask career firefighters
[6:43] Speaker 7: out on the fire line who've been doing this thirty
[6:44] Speaker 7: thirty five years. These are not the kinds of fire
[6:47] Speaker 7: for the conditions we were facing. You know, just a
[6:49] Speaker 7: few decades ago. Climate change is real. It's happening. We're
[6:52] Speaker 7: seeing again more intense fires. Fires are burning more rapidly.
[6:56] Speaker 7: They're getting larger than the one hundred thousand acre or
[6:58] Speaker 7: more fire used to be the exception to the rule.
[7:00] Speaker 7: We might get that every few years. We're getting multiple
[7:02] Speaker 7: one hundred thousand acre fires each year.
[7:11] Speaker 1: Last year, Pimlat told me that one new thing that's
[7:14] Speaker 1: made fire fighting harder is that it's not getting reliably
[7:18] Speaker 1: cooler and wetter at night anymore. Nighttime was historically when
[7:22] Speaker 1: firefighters would get ahead of a fire, but recent data
[7:25] Speaker 1: indicates that nights are warming faster than days. We're seeing
[7:29] Speaker 1: record breaking natural disasters all the time now, not just
[7:33] Speaker 1: once a decade, and they do seem to be breaking
[7:36] Speaker 1: through the noise a bit. It gets a lot harder
[7:38] Speaker 1: to say climate change isn't happening when people can see
[7:41] Speaker 1: for themselves that heat waves are hotter and longer, or
[7:44] Speaker 1: that storms seem bigger and more regular than in decades past.
[7:48] Speaker 1: In last year or so, climate change has regularly made
[7:51] Speaker 1: the covers of magazines and the front pages of newspapers,
[7:54] Speaker 1: as it did back in the nineties. And that's a
[7:57] Speaker 1: positive step forward because for decades the the industry successfully
[8:01] Speaker 1: blocked the first critical step toward taking action on climate acknowledgment.
[8:08] Speaker 1: According to most of the literature on human psychology, in
[8:11] Speaker 1: order to move past our general tendency to freeze when
[8:14] Speaker 1: we're facing huge and scary challenges or big losses is
[8:18] Speaker 1: to acknowledge that the problem is there and that it's
[8:21] Speaker 1: tough to deal with. Instead, the industry put the American
[8:28] Speaker 1: public on a pathway to denial. They did so knowingly
[8:32] Speaker 1: and with purpose. Hoefort says that's what drove him to
[8:35] Speaker 1: break ties with the company.
[8:37] Speaker 2: I am not sure if I quit or was fired.
[8:41] Speaker 2: There was a disagreement. Let's put it this way, it
[8:44] Speaker 2: was a disagree When I first started working with Exon,
[8:47] Speaker 2: I was more pretty idealistic. I thought that if Exon
[8:51] Speaker 2: actually had the information on climate change and was up
[8:55] Speaker 2: to speed with the researchers, and the only way that
[8:58] Speaker 2: that could happen would be to publish papers in the
[9:01] Speaker 2: peer review literature. So I kind of insisted on that
[9:05] Speaker 2: as a condition of my consulting, and we did publish
[9:08] Speaker 2: papers and they did develop a certain expertise. But my
[9:13] Speaker 2: thought was that based on that, since we were in
[9:16] Speaker 2: the research division, but this would inform the management of
[9:20] Speaker 2: directions that the company should go in and I thought
[9:23] Speaker 2: they should pursue all alternative energy, and I thought that
[9:26] Speaker 2: they would. That didn't happen. They actually hired It was
[9:31] Speaker 2: probably not the same people who hired us. Of people
[9:34] Speaker 2: who hired me were in the research division, I have
[9:36] Speaker 2: a feeling the other guys were in public relations and
[9:40] Speaker 2: they were funding the climate change deniers. First of all,
[9:44] Speaker 2: I was frankly pissed that they were funding these climate
[9:50] Speaker 2: change deniers because I didn't think they had the credentials
[9:54] Speaker 2: of scientists. None of these people had published peer review
[9:59] Speaker 2: journal arts goes on climate science, whereas we had, so
[10:03] Speaker 2: there was a symmetry here. I mean, I can understand
[10:07] Speaker 2: that companies want to put the nicest face on these things,
[10:11] Speaker 2: so you know that have the least impact on their
[10:14] Speaker 2: bottom line, but you know, I didn't think that was
[10:17] Speaker 2: a good thing for them to do.
[10:42] Speaker 1: One thing I've heard from all of the former Excellon
[10:45] Speaker 1: employees I spoke with is a sense of regret of
[10:48] Speaker 1: an opportunity lost.
[10:50] Speaker 5: I really think we had something at Exon. Yeah, okay,
[10:53] Speaker 5: we're going to be an energy company and we recognize
[10:55] Speaker 5: this problem, and so we're going to help direct the
[10:58] Speaker 5: company the country away from fossil fuel. And instead I
[11:01] Speaker 5: just said, no, we just want to make money on
[11:04] Speaker 5: oil and we don't really care what happens. I mean,
[11:09] Speaker 5: it upsets me. That's like I say, It's just it
[11:12] Speaker 5: was definitely missed opportunity to lead.
[11:15] Speaker 8: Son as a tech in this way because it cannot
[11:18] Speaker 8: plead ignorance. All the other companies at least complete ignorance,
[11:23] Speaker 8: but they cannot plead ignorance when it becomes generally scientifically accepted.
[11:28] Speaker 8: And it's well known that they're spending great deal of
[11:31] Speaker 8: money to misrepresent the science as being grossly uncertain.
[11:36] Speaker 2: There's a cost, and the basic problem is that we're
[11:40] Speaker 2: still treating the atmosphere as an open sewer to dub
[11:43] Speaker 2: co two it.
[11:45] Speaker 1: Hoefer in particular says he and some of Excellon's staff
[11:48] Speaker 1: scientists tried to warn the company decades ago, but he
[11:51] Speaker 1: takes no comfort in being able to say I told
[11:53] Speaker 1: you so.
[11:54] Speaker 2: If they had listened to me, they would have instituted
[11:58] Speaker 2: some research in alternative energy. They're doing some of it now,
[12:03] Speaker 2: they're working on algae, but they could have gotten started
[12:07] Speaker 2: on electric batteries lessian batteries because they did the initial
[12:11] Speaker 2: research on it. They could have been the ones to
[12:14] Speaker 2: build the biggest battery plant in the world like Elon
[12:18] Speaker 2: Musk is doing in the bottom now. Because this was
[12:22] Speaker 2: way ahead of that.
[12:25] Speaker 1: That didn't happen, and we're behind now and the feet
[12:28] Speaker 1: in front of us is that much harder, not least
[12:30] Speaker 1: because the United States currently has a president who regularly
[12:34] Speaker 1: refers to climate change as a hoax.
[12:36] Speaker 9: So Bamba's talking about all of this with the global
[12:40] Speaker 9: warming under a lot.
[12:41] Speaker 2: Of it's a hoax. It's a hoax.
[12:42] Speaker 3: I mean, it's some money making industry.
[12:44] Speaker 2: Okay, it's a hoax.
[12:50] Speaker 1: It's important to acknowledge that that's the result of an
[12:53] Speaker 1: industry backed decades long information war, particularly as Exon attempts
[12:58] Speaker 1: to fight various climate labe ability suits with a First
[13:01] Speaker 1: Amendment defense. The company has argued in Massachusetts, New York,
[13:05] Speaker 1: and now California that the fraud probes and liability cases
[13:09] Speaker 1: against it infringe upon its rights to free speech. That
[13:13] Speaker 1: argument hinges in large part on the notion they created
[13:16] Speaker 1: that climate change and its impacts are political ideas to
[13:20] Speaker 1: be argued about, not science to be acted upon. And
[13:23] Speaker 1: here's a promotional video from the Competitive Enterprise Institute positioning
[13:28] Speaker 1: the subsequent probes as infringing on free speech.
[13:34] Speaker 2: No American should fear being singled out and harassed by
[13:37] Speaker 2: a government official who takes a different point of view
[13:40] Speaker 2: on public policy questions. President Obama's Justice Department may be
[13:43] Speaker 2: going after your business if he does not like the
[13:46] Speaker 2: way you think about global warming.
[13:48] Speaker 9: Democratic attorneys general for more than a dozen states fired
[13:51] Speaker 9: off to penis seeking decades of records from climate change skeptics,
[13:55] Speaker 9: including the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
[13:58] Speaker 7: What's happened here is on lawful and on America.
[14:00] Speaker 1: This is what happens when you can't win a debate.
[14:03] Speaker 3: I couldn't pass it through Congress, so instead they're imposing
[14:06] Speaker 3: their agenda on everyone else.
[14:08] Speaker 2: Our first reaction was, hell, no, this thing is one
[14:12] Speaker 2: unconstitutional fishing expedition.
[14:15] Speaker 5: The real thing that they're after is to shut down
[14:17] Speaker 5: the global warming debate.
[14:27] Speaker 1: The first of these suits, filed against the states of
[14:29] Speaker 1: Massachusetts and New York, is ongoing, but hasn't stopped the
[14:33] Speaker 1: fraud probes from continuing or acting. New York Attorney General
[14:37] Speaker 1: Barbara Underwood from filing suit against Exon for misleading shareholders
[14:41] Speaker 1: about its actions on climate New.
[14:43] Speaker 5: York's Attorney General has filed a lawsuit against Exxon Mobile.
[14:47] Speaker 7: Alleging that the company defrauded shareholders by downplaying the expected
[14:51] Speaker 7: risk of climate change.
[14:53] Speaker 1: Holding the industry accountable for manufacturing climate denil isn't about
[14:57] Speaker 1: finding a bad guy, or even strictly about just justice,
[15:00] Speaker 1: although of course we love a good bad guy, and
[15:03] Speaker 1: I imagine lawyers like winning cases more than they like
[15:06] Speaker 1: losing them. It's about putting climate denial to rest once
[15:10] Speaker 1: and for all, and removing key obstacles to action. The
[15:16] Speaker 1: IPCC has warned in its latest and most alarming report
[15:20] Speaker 1: to date that we have roughly twelve years to keep
[15:22] Speaker 1: climate change in check. Authors of that report called for
[15:27] Speaker 1: urgent and unprecedented change, and to accomplish that, we need
[15:31] Speaker 1: systems in capital. As environmental sociologist Bob Brule points.
[15:36] Speaker 9: Out, the idea that we're all responsible for climate change
[15:43] Speaker 9: because of our individual decisions is a profoundly unsociological understanding
[15:50] Speaker 9: of how behavior is formed. Through cultural influences, behavioral influences,
[15:58] Speaker 9: and economic factors. It's blaming the victim for the real
[16:02] Speaker 9: decisions that are made about how do we structure our cities,
[16:05] Speaker 9: how do we set energy policy, how do we set
[16:09] Speaker 9: the cost of automobiles, and things like that. It obscures
[16:13] Speaker 9: the power of vested interest to be able to shape
[16:16] Speaker 9: our lives.
[16:17] Speaker 1: The idea that companies deserve more protection than people, that,
[16:21] Speaker 1: for example, Exxon's desire to say whatever it wants about
[16:24] Speaker 1: climate change is more important than the public's need to
[16:27] Speaker 1: understand the reality of the situation is one that's been
[16:30] Speaker 1: repeated over and over again in recent decades. It's become
[16:34] Speaker 1: a cornerstone of conservatism, but it doesn't need to be.
[16:38] Speaker 1: Conservatives were once among the nation's most ardent conservationists. It
[16:43] Speaker 1: was only a few decades ago that conservatives backed policy
[16:46] Speaker 1: aimed at dealing with global warming. To the extent that
[16:50] Speaker 1: denying climate change has become part of the conservative identity
[16:54] Speaker 1: that was entirely manufactured by an industry trying to protect
[16:58] Speaker 1: its earnings. It's not an mutable truth, and those unprecedented
[17:02] Speaker 1: changes the IPCC has recommended, they're not as far out
[17:06] Speaker 1: of reach as they may feel, and radically changing the
[17:09] Speaker 1: energy system may not be as radical as it sounds
[17:12] Speaker 1: or as harmful to the American way of life as
[17:15] Speaker 1: the oil industry has made it out to be. The
[17:18] Speaker 1: technology already exists to tackle climate change. The obstacle now
[17:22] Speaker 1: is political will and catalyzing massive social change. But this
[17:27] Speaker 1: country is not unfamiliar with massive social change. We've seen
[17:31] Speaker 1: it every twenty or forty years since the founding of
[17:34] Speaker 1: the US, which was in itself a pretty radical act.
[17:38] Speaker 1: We might take heart in the words of Walter Monk,
[17:41] Speaker 1: a one hundred year old oceanographer renowned for helping to
[17:44] Speaker 1: invent the science of wave forecasting, which was critical to
[17:48] Speaker 1: winning World War Two. He speaks often about how quickly
[17:51] Speaker 1: things changed in order for the Allies to win that war,
[17:54] Speaker 1: and draws parallels with acting on climate change.
[17:57] Speaker 10: Here.
[17:57] Speaker 1: He is talking about that at Script's institution recently, and.
[18:01] Speaker 10: I hope we can all work effectively together to do
[18:06] Speaker 10: something about it. It's a job about It's difficult, or
[18:09] Speaker 10: maybe more difficult than the one we faced in beginning
[18:14] Speaker 10: in nineteen forty one. At that time, we had no
[18:17] Speaker 10: idea what we were going to do, and we've changed
[18:21] Speaker 10: from being in a very very difficult decision to landing
[18:25] Speaker 10: in Normandy in three and a half years. I'm still
[18:29] Speaker 10: amazed how quickly things changed.
[18:34] Speaker 1: Things need to change that quickly again, and they can.
[18:39] Speaker 1: The world is waking up again. The fossil fuel industry
[18:42] Speaker 1: is reacting to both legal and public pressure, and politicians
[18:46] Speaker 1: are finding that running on climate action is a winning
[18:49] Speaker 1: strategy as the country begins to acknowledge fully where we
[18:54] Speaker 1: are and how we got here, As people begin to
[18:56] Speaker 1: understand that it's not our fault, but that we do
[18:59] Speaker 1: hold more power to catalyze change than it may seem.
[19:03] Speaker 1: As we break through the fear and grief and paralysis,
[19:07] Speaker 1: we can change the tide and win the war. Drilled
[19:15] Speaker 1: is produced and distributed by Critical Frequency. The series was
[19:19] Speaker 1: reported by me Amy westerveldt Our producer and composer is
[19:24] Speaker 1: David Whited. Richard Wiles is our executive producer. Our story
[19:29] Speaker 1: and concept development consultant is Raka Murphy. Lucas Lisakowski designed
[19:35] Speaker 1: our cover art. Katie Ross, Michael Ann Petrella and Julia
[19:39] Speaker 1: Ritchie provided additional editing. Drilled is supported in part by
[19:44] Speaker 1: a generous grant from the Institute for governance and sustainable development.
[19:48] Speaker 1: You can find Drilled wherever you get your podcasts. Please
[19:52] Speaker 1: remember to rate and review the podcast. It helps us
[19:54] Speaker 1: find listeners. Thanks for listening.

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