# Universities Are Saying No to Big Oil Money

An episode of [Drilled](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1439735906), 18 Oct 2022, 52 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/9d6a3040-c18e-46c3-9db1-b3ec00f0b734/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f82f371-6316-4ea6-a108-b3ec00ea9b2d

Since Standard Oil of New Jersey (now ExxonMobil) began funding universities in the late 1940s, oil companies have invested heavily in higher education, not just to fund engineering programs climate science, but crucially to fund the public policy centers and economics programs that shape policy solutions. Fossil Free Research, a new group formed by many of the same students who pushed their campuses to divest from fossil fuels, is demanding that the world's top universities break their addiction to fossil fuel money. In late September they logged their first big win: Princeton University. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:21] Speaker 1: Welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westerbelt. You might remember
[0:25] Speaker 1: in the season we did with Earther last year that
[0:28] Speaker 1: Darna Nore and I got into how much money oil
[0:31] Speaker 1: companies invest in research at top tier universities and some
[0:37] Speaker 1: of the reasons behind those investments. Although they certainly influence
[0:41] Speaker 1: how climate science is studied and which solutions are given
[0:45] Speaker 1: more research funding, we wanted to look at the social
[0:48] Speaker 1: side of the equation. Where were fossil fuel companies investing
[0:53] Speaker 1: in public policy schools, or law schools or economics programs.
[0:58] Speaker 1: How are they working to make the social and political
[1:02] Speaker 1: understanding of the problem and the available.
[1:05] Speaker 2: Solutions to it.
[1:07] Speaker 1: Seeing how most folks have coalesced around the idea that
[1:10] Speaker 1: addressing climate change is a political, not scientific question, that
[1:14] Speaker 1: seemed like an important place to look, and we were
[1:17] Speaker 1: pretty shocked by what we found. Going back to the
[1:19] Speaker 1: nineteen fifties when Standard Oil first started to heavily invest
[1:23] Speaker 1: in universities, oil companies have always thought about the social
[1:27] Speaker 1: and political conditions necessary to preserve their wealth and power,
[1:32] Speaker 1: and they have supported university research that does just that.
[1:36] Speaker 1: In recent years, university students have started to push their
[1:39] Speaker 1: campuses to refuse this money, and last week Princeton University
[1:43] Speaker 1: became the first to actually do so, or at least
[1:47] Speaker 1: take a first, very big step toward doing so. The
[1:50] Speaker 1: university announced that it would no longer accept gifts or
[1:53] Speaker 1: grants from ninety fossil fuel companies, and that it's thirty
[1:58] Speaker 1: seven point seven billion dollar endowment will also eliminate all
[2:03] Speaker 1: holdings in those companies. That list includes Exon Mobile, but
[2:08] Speaker 1: for now anyway, not BP, which continues to fund the
[2:12] Speaker 1: university's carbon mitigation initiative. Still, it's a massive step forward
[2:17] Speaker 1: and a huge win for the divestment movement. Earlier this year,
[2:21] Speaker 1: I spoke with divestment organizers at five different top tier
[2:24] Speaker 1: universities who had come together to file a legal complaint
[2:28] Speaker 1: attempting to compel their campuses to divest from fossil fuels.
[2:33] Speaker 1: The Fossil Free Research Campaign grew out of those efforts,
[2:37] Speaker 1: and I had a chance to speak with those organizers
[2:40] Speaker 1: as well, just as the initiative was getting off the ground.
[2:44] Speaker 1: I'm bringing you those interviews now because when universities like
[2:47] Speaker 1: Princeton and Harvard announced these big divestment decisions, they generally
[2:52] Speaker 1: don't credit these students that have been yelling at them
[2:55] Speaker 1: for three years to do the right thing. These students
[2:58] Speaker 1: spent countless hours researching and organizing and applying constant pressure,
[3:03] Speaker 1: and it's starting to really pay off. I also find
[3:06] Speaker 1: it really interesting to see how folks like doctor Jeffrey
[3:09] Speaker 1: Supran and doctor Ben Fronta, who started out campaigning for
[3:13] Speaker 1: divestment as grad students, have since devoted their entire careers
[3:18] Speaker 1: to climate accountability, producing a lot of the research that
[3:21] Speaker 1: this next generation of divestment organizers can draw from. I
[3:25] Speaker 1: guess too, can play at the university investment game that's
[3:29] Speaker 1: all coming up after this quick break. The entire reason
[3:56] Speaker 1: that I started looking into fossil fuel company investments was
[4:01] Speaker 1: an article that doctor Jeffrey Supran and doctor Ben Franta
[4:04] Speaker 1: wrote for The Guardian back in twenty seventeen. It was
[4:08] Speaker 1: called the fossil fuel Industry's Invisible Colonization of Academia, and
[4:13] Speaker 1: I wound up interviewing them about it and doing an
[4:15] Speaker 1: episode on that subject for the first season of Drilled.
[4:18] Speaker 1: Here's Fronta talking about the issue on that episode.
[4:22] Speaker 3: Along that set of dedicated research centers that are really
[4:27] Speaker 3: influential in technology research and training future people working in
[4:32] Speaker 3: climate also influencing the IPCC that a majority I would say,
[4:37] Speaker 3: a majority of funding in those centers comes from fossil
[4:41] Speaker 3: field groups. I was involved with helping to organize the
[4:44] Speaker 3: fossil field devestment movement at Harvard, and we would go
[4:49] Speaker 3: to faculty and we would try to solicit their support,
[4:51] Speaker 3: and we noticed something kind of interesting, which was that
[4:56] Speaker 3: most faculty were either neutral or they was support. But
[5:00] Speaker 3: the faculty that actually were opposed to it actively and
[5:04] Speaker 3: would write about it in the press, I would say,
[5:06] Speaker 3: more often than not. In fact, almost all the time
[5:09] Speaker 3: these faculty were funded by fossil fuelled group.
[5:13] Speaker 1: Then a research director at the Kennedy School of Government
[5:16] Speaker 1: called the researchers into his office and asked them not
[5:20] Speaker 1: to answer any questions about research funding.
[5:23] Speaker 3: We were called in for a staff meeting and our
[5:27] Speaker 3: research director told is you know, there's a lot of
[5:31] Speaker 3: activists and journalists snooping around and trying to inquire about
[5:36] Speaker 3: our funding and funding from the oil industry. And he said,
[5:41] Speaker 3: if anybody talks to you, don't tell them anything. You know,
[5:44] Speaker 3: don't talk to them and send them to me instead.
[5:48] Speaker 3: For an academic institution to actually tell its researchers don't
[5:53] Speaker 3: tell other people where your funding comes from.
[5:56] Speaker 1: That experience led Fronta to partner up with Supran, who
[6:00] Speaker 1: was noticing similar things at MIT. Supran has since gone
[6:04] Speaker 1: on to conduct research at Harvard with Naomi Euresquez and
[6:07] Speaker 1: is now headed to Miami University to run a research
[6:10] Speaker 1: center that will track how climate delay and denial spread
[6:13] Speaker 1: on social media. Franta went from Harvard to Stanford and
[6:18] Speaker 1: is now off to Oxford to launch a climate litigation initiative.
[6:23] Speaker 1: Last year, he published a paper about the economists that
[6:26] Speaker 1: had been hired by the American Petroleum Institute and other
[6:29] Speaker 1: fossil fuel groups to model the financial downside of acting
[6:34] Speaker 1: on climate and how they now describe those models as faulty,
[6:39] Speaker 1: although unfortunately they still underpin a lot of decision making
[6:42] Speaker 1: around climate policy. Franta even found one specific economist who
[6:47] Speaker 1: was willing to speak with him about that work. In
[6:50] Speaker 1: a nutshell, they only modeled the cost of action, never
[6:55] Speaker 1: the cost of inaction, the cost of unchecked climate change.
[6:59] Speaker 1: Kind of hard to make good decisions about what is
[7:01] Speaker 1: or isn't worth spending money on in that context. When
[7:05] Speaker 1: I talked to Fronta about that paper, he mentioned that
[7:08] Speaker 1: fossil fuel entities were heavily invested in university economics programs too,
[7:13] Speaker 1: which prompted Darna Nora and I to look into it
[7:15] Speaker 1: for our season on fossil Fuel in Schools, And what
[7:19] Speaker 1: we found was not just a seminar here or there,
[7:22] Speaker 1: but a concerted effort to fundamentally shape how we understand
[7:26] Speaker 1: and invoke economics. Starts targeting Americans when they're little kids
[7:31] Speaker 1: and never lets up. Here's fronta on why that's so concerning.
[7:36] Speaker 2: And that's obvious that we should ask is what effect
[7:40] Speaker 2: has that had? What has been the influence of decades
[7:45] Speaker 2: of finding from these special interests. Latest research is one
[7:49] Speaker 2: example some new research that will be out soon, and
[7:52] Speaker 2: by the time this airs, it might already be out.
[7:55] Speaker 2: It tracks the activity of a group of economic consultants
[8:00] Speaker 2: who were hired by the petroleum industry for decades to
[8:04] Speaker 2: produce analyzes that were then used by the companies and
[8:08] Speaker 2: by others opposing restrictions on fossil fuels to tell the
[8:11] Speaker 2: public that it would just be way too expensive to
[8:14] Speaker 2: act on climate, and that in any case, climate was
[8:18] Speaker 2: not going to be a big deal, so the best
[8:20] Speaker 2: thing to do is just do nothing and This was
[8:23] Speaker 2: the economic ammunition that the industry used alongside their scientific
[8:29] Speaker 2: merchants of doubt.
[8:36] Speaker 1: As all of the fossil fuel investment in university research
[8:39] Speaker 1: was happening, universities were themselves investing in fossil fuel companies,
[8:44] Speaker 1: and students, including Supran and Fronta when they were still
[8:47] Speaker 1: grad students, were pushing for them to divest. There have
[8:51] Speaker 1: been some big wins in the campus divestment movement over
[8:54] Speaker 1: the past decade. The entire University of California system divested,
[8:58] Speaker 1: for example, finally agreed to divest last year. The divestment
[9:03] Speaker 1: movement spawned the Sunrise movement as well, and last year
[9:07] Speaker 1: the Fossil Free Research campaign too. But there are still
[9:10] Speaker 1: plenty of prestige schools that are heavily invested in fossil fuels,
[9:14] Speaker 1: which is why earlier this year, students from five top
[9:18] Speaker 1: tier schools came together to file a legal complaint alleging
[9:21] Speaker 1: that actually it's illegal for their universities to be invested
[9:24] Speaker 1: in fossil fuel stocks. I spoke with Hannah Reynolds from Princeton,
[9:28] Speaker 1: Christopher Rilling from Stanford, and Aditi Lelly and Zara Bia
[9:33] Speaker 1: Bonnie from Vanderbilt. Shortly after that complaint was filed. I
[9:42] Speaker 1: wanted to start with just a little bit of background,
[9:45] Speaker 1: just to have you guys repeat how you all ended
[9:49] Speaker 1: up involved in this and what prompted the decision for
[9:52] Speaker 1: the universities to kind of join forces on this complaint.
[9:57] Speaker 4: I can touch on this, and I'm from the Vanderbilt campaign.
[10:02] Speaker 4: So we were a group, as all of the five schools,
[10:06] Speaker 4: a divestment activism group on our own campuses, and we
[10:10] Speaker 4: had a meeting with someone from Harvard, which at that
[10:13] Speaker 4: point had recently divested, and we were really excited to
[10:17] Speaker 4: learn about how they finally got to that point after
[10:20] Speaker 4: a decade of trying to convince their administration that this
[10:23] Speaker 4: was of importance. And so we had a meeting with
[10:27] Speaker 4: this person and they advised us to contact CDP Climate
[10:32] Speaker 4: Defense Projects, and so that's how we kind of got
[10:35] Speaker 4: into the realm of the legal complaint. And when talking
[10:41] Speaker 4: with the people at CDP ted Hamilton specifically, we learned
[10:45] Speaker 4: that there was a bunch of other schools that were
[10:47] Speaker 4: going to be filing with the same date and on
[10:50] Speaker 4: the same timeline. So of course each campaign is in
[10:55] Speaker 4: filing was confidential, So we asked if it would be
[10:58] Speaker 4: okay to you know, learn about who else was filing
[11:01] Speaker 4: so that we could kind of share ideas, strategies, just advice,
[11:06] Speaker 4: and all the campaigns said yes, And it happened to
[11:09] Speaker 4: be not only Vanderbilt, but Stanford, MIT, Princeton, am I
[11:14] Speaker 4: forgetting antlement?
[11:17] Speaker 1: Yeah, oh my god, thank you?
[11:19] Speaker 4: Yes, so and then we yeah asked to be put
[11:22] Speaker 4: in touch with the other campaigns and from there we
[11:24] Speaker 4: just started a signal chat and realized that there was
[11:27] Speaker 4: a lot of mobilization not just within our campaigns but
[11:31] Speaker 4: across campaigns that could help us really accelerate the movement.
[11:36] Speaker 1: And so this particular law UPMIFA is using that law
[11:41] Speaker 1: as something that CDP had come up with and been
[11:44] Speaker 1: thinking about or did that come from the campus divestment groups?
[11:49] Speaker 5: That idea, Yeah, that came from the CDP. And I
[11:53] Speaker 5: think the strategy had already been used, you know at
[11:56] Speaker 5: Harvard and Cornell where they were both successful in investing
[12:00] Speaker 5: only a couple months after this happened, but then also
[12:02] Speaker 5: at like several other universities at this point. So as
[12:05] Speaker 5: the CDP kind of came to us with this idea,
[12:08] Speaker 5: and you know, like Harvard had kind of introduced it
[12:10] Speaker 5: to us before connecting us to them.
[12:12] Speaker 1: Yeah, and what's happening now? Where are we at as
[12:15] Speaker 1: of today?
[12:16] Speaker 6: I jump in on this a little bit, and then
[12:18] Speaker 6: I know a couple of the other states have actually
[12:20] Speaker 6: gotten a little bit more response. So I think, Chris,
[12:22] Speaker 6: if you want to jump into that would be great. So,
[12:24] Speaker 6: as of right now, we filed all five of the complaints,
[12:28] Speaker 6: and we have through the media attention that we've gotten
[12:30] Speaker 6: and made our schools aware that that has happened, made
[12:32] Speaker 6: our administrations aware, and have also started campaigns to make
[12:36] Speaker 6: sure that our state attorney generals take the complaints seriously
[12:39] Speaker 6: and follow it through on it. Because right now, once
[12:42] Speaker 6: we've filed those complaints, it really goes into the hands
[12:45] Speaker 6: of our state attorney generals because it's up to them
[12:47] Speaker 6: to what severity and with what intensity they decided to
[12:50] Speaker 6: investigate what we've brought to them. And so we really
[12:53] Speaker 6: hope that just they did in the Massachusetts State Attorney
[12:56] Speaker 6: General's office, they actually take this really seriously and start
[12:59] Speaker 6: investigating that. And so our role right now is really
[13:02] Speaker 6: pressuring the state attorney generals to do that and take
[13:05] Speaker 6: it seriously. And then here at Vanderbilt, we i think
[13:10] Speaker 6: Tennessee might be the only one which actually has a
[13:12] Speaker 6: Republican attorney general, if I'm not wrong. So it's definitely
[13:16] Speaker 6: a little bit of a different situation here with the
[13:18] Speaker 6: amount of pressure that we're going to be putting in
[13:20] Speaker 6: to make sure that they pay attention, because we realize
[13:23] Speaker 6: that the politics of it are definitely different in this
[13:25] Speaker 6: environment that they might be in states like Massachusetts or
[13:28] Speaker 6: Connecticut to health.
[13:29] Speaker 1: And then I know that that Harvard did divest right,
[13:34] Speaker 1: so you know, does that I don't know, how does
[13:36] Speaker 1: that impact the complaint as it kind of moves forward
[13:40] Speaker 1: if some of the campuses are complying or at least,
[13:45] Speaker 1: you know, starting to consider that and some are not.
[13:50] Speaker 7: I think there's a few threads to that. One is
[13:53] Speaker 7: I think that there's a lot of different Harvard is
[13:57] Speaker 7: obviously very like a front runnings, and a lot of
[14:01] Speaker 7: other schools will depend and make their policy decisions based
[14:04] Speaker 7: on how Harvard reacts. That's specifically how Stafford is acted.
[14:08] Speaker 7: I'm christ from Stafford, bad way, sorry, That's how Stanfford
[14:11] Speaker 7: has adopted some of its COVID policies. A lot of
[14:15] Speaker 7: its initial ideas about sending students off campus at the
[14:19] Speaker 7: beginning of the pandemic. So it's really important because Harvard
[14:23] Speaker 7: is one of the biggest endowments but also has a
[14:26] Speaker 7: lot of institutional impact and its policy is sort of
[14:29] Speaker 7: enemy to different schools, And you saw in the Boston
[14:32] Speaker 7: area right after Harvard divested, a few other local schools
[14:35] Speaker 7: tend too, which is you know, pretty I mean, it's
[14:38] Speaker 7: not definitive, but you can see that there's a connection. Additionally,
[14:41] Speaker 7: on the point of Harvard having a large endowment, it
[14:43] Speaker 7: also indicates that for schools who have endowance in the
[14:47] Speaker 7: same range and run in the same way, you often
[14:49] Speaker 7: see a lot of communication and strategy communications that happen
[14:54] Speaker 7: specifically with the Yale Endowment. There's a really famous endominent
[14:58] Speaker 7: share there who sort of hop around in different schools
[15:01] Speaker 7: and let a lot of different research and thinking on
[15:04] Speaker 7: institutional investing and sort of the third third that I'll
[15:07] Speaker 7: mention is the idea that just because Harvard has, you know,
[15:11] Speaker 7: made this commitment to divesting, doesn't mean that one that
[15:16] Speaker 7: they've gotten out of their asset classes already that are
[15:19] Speaker 7: the point of this legal complaint, But two doesn't mean
[15:22] Speaker 7: that the legal proceedings still couldn't happen, right, because the
[15:27] Speaker 7: law has been broken in the past, these are still
[15:29] Speaker 7: potentially active considerations, so they're not out of the woods yet.
[15:34] Speaker 7: So that's sort of a signal to other schools that,
[15:36] Speaker 7: you know, what are we doing, what what do we
[15:38] Speaker 7: need to look into? Are do we have to cover
[15:40] Speaker 7: our bases covered? And Stanford so far has responded to
[15:44] Speaker 7: just a handful of requests for comment basically indicating that no,
[15:47] Speaker 7: Stanford's endowment is following all the laws as far as
[15:50] Speaker 7: we're aware. So that's sort of all we've heard from them. Yeah,
[15:54] Speaker 7: those are just a different ways.
[15:57] Speaker 5: Yeah, I can add on to that, just because Princeton,
[15:59] Speaker 5: being proximity of Harvard and also in the Ivy League,
[16:02] Speaker 5: has this history, I guess, of a following Harvard in
[16:06] Speaker 5: a lot of different things, especially related to racial justice
[16:08] Speaker 5: and stuff. But some of the things that I've heard
[16:12] Speaker 5: both our administrators say and folks in the Harvard campaign
[16:16] Speaker 5: have mentioned is that Harvard claimed that, you know, this
[16:19] Speaker 5: legal complaint had nothing to do with their choice to devest,
[16:22] Speaker 5: that they were already in the process of divesting before
[16:24] Speaker 5: it happened. So that's I think one way that we
[16:27] Speaker 5: might see our schools react to it is, even if
[16:30] Speaker 5: they do choose to divest, they might not credit the
[16:32] Speaker 5: legal complaint to that right. And then the other thing is,
[16:36] Speaker 5: like our administrators have said, like our president still denies
[16:39] Speaker 5: that Harvard has committed to divest. He's I don't think
[16:42] Speaker 5: they actually divested. So you know, there's there's that kind
[16:46] Speaker 5: of thing like where there's just still this like unwillingness
[16:50] Speaker 5: to just see what's happening and call it what it is,
[16:52] Speaker 5: So that I think that could also surface as well.
[16:56] Speaker 6: Just adding to that, I think at least at Andergilt
[16:59] Speaker 6: referring to Harvard as also a lot about rhetoric, because
[17:01] Speaker 6: there's a lot of rhetoric here of calling ourselves the
[17:03] Speaker 6: Harvard of the South and things like that. And so
[17:06] Speaker 6: we've been really adamant about saying that if you want
[17:08] Speaker 6: to draw those comparisons, then you have to follow through
[17:11] Speaker 6: on the same actions that Harvard is taking. And so
[17:14] Speaker 6: that was part of the just rhetoric that porqush is
[17:17] Speaker 6: well about using it as a precedent.
[17:20] Speaker 1: Mmmmm h yeah.
[17:22] Speaker 4: And sorry to jump onto what Hannah was saying. Even
[17:25] Speaker 4: though Harvard didn't acknowledge the legal plant and it's in
[17:30] Speaker 4: the Chancellor President's divestment press release, he used the terms
[17:35] Speaker 4: prudent investments, which is the key kind of term of
[17:40] Speaker 4: vpm IFA. So that's why that they believe that that
[17:44] Speaker 4: strategy got them to divestment.
[17:47] Speaker 1: Interesting, that's super interesting. I've done a bunch of research
[17:51] Speaker 1: on fossil fuel funding of research on all of these campuses,
[17:57] Speaker 1: and I wonder if some of the hasitation from some
[18:01] Speaker 1: of these universities around investment is in part linked to
[18:05] Speaker 1: the fact that they have large amounts of money that
[18:08] Speaker 1: they're taking from fossil fuel companies as well. And I'm
[18:13] Speaker 1: curious what you guys have seen with respect to that.
[18:16] Speaker 5: Princeton has a really unique situation because, unlike any other
[18:19] Speaker 5: school in the country, Princeton has a requirement that if
[18:22] Speaker 5: we're going to divest, we also need to dissociate from
[18:25] Speaker 5: those companies and the products they produce, which is basically
[18:29] Speaker 5: a completely arbitrary thing, but that was created by Princeton
[18:32] Speaker 5: after South African apartheid divestment campaigns because they didn't want
[18:36] Speaker 5: it to be so easy to divest from things. But
[18:39] Speaker 5: basically that means we have to have plans to not
[18:44] Speaker 5: be like driving cars that have gas if we're going
[18:47] Speaker 5: to divest from gas companies, or we need to be
[18:50] Speaker 5: moving to renewables to heat our dorms and stuff like that.
[18:54] Speaker 5: Those are the kind of claims that makes. But it
[18:56] Speaker 5: also makes this claim that we need to you know,
[18:58] Speaker 5: dissociation also means any research funding from these companies, and
[19:03] Speaker 5: currently much of our energy and environmental research is funded
[19:07] Speaker 5: by Exxon and BP and some by Shell as well,
[19:10] Speaker 5: and so a lot of faculty members are unwilling to
[19:13] Speaker 5: support investment because of this. Because of this requirement Princeton
[19:16] Speaker 5: put in as well. And yeah, so I think that's
[19:20] Speaker 5: a huge factor.
[19:27] Speaker 1: Did you catch that Princeton has had a policy in
[19:30] Speaker 1: place since the apartheid divestment days that was intended to
[19:34] Speaker 1: make it harder for the university to be compelled to
[19:37] Speaker 1: divest from anything. It requires that if they're going to
[19:40] Speaker 1: decide to pull investments from any particular company or sector,
[19:44] Speaker 1: they must also disassociate themselves with everything that company or
[19:48] Speaker 1: sector does, which makes their announcement last week a really,
[19:52] Speaker 1: really big deal. It means that not only are they
[19:55] Speaker 1: divesting their investment portfolio from fossil fuels, but they're saying
[20:00] Speaker 1: to fossil fuel research money and moving toward eliminating fossil
[20:03] Speaker 1: fuel use on campus. Obviously, none of that will happen overnight,
[20:07] Speaker 1: but it's a really big move. The presence of fossil
[20:13] Speaker 1: fuel research money has made a lot of other campuses
[20:16] Speaker 1: slow to divest. Here's Christopher Rilling from Stanford.
[20:21] Speaker 7: There's a lot of news articles from Stanford Daily and
[20:24] Speaker 7: some opinions that have quotes from a twenty twenty I
[20:28] Speaker 7: believe a May twenty twenty meeting in which the Faculty Center,
[20:32] Speaker 7: which is sort of like a decision making body full
[20:34] Speaker 7: of tenured professors at the university who vote on policy
[20:38] Speaker 7: like some policy impicitly cited this funding as a reason
[20:43] Speaker 7: to not divest and expressed concern that divestiture would sort
[20:50] Speaker 7: of poison these funding sources and jeopardized grad students' ability
[20:55] Speaker 7: to study, as well as certain research departments ability to
[20:59] Speaker 7: continue the programs. And I'll drop some links in the check.
[21:02] Speaker 7: I was shocked when I read this necessarily and how
[21:04] Speaker 7: I got involved with fossil free Yeah. Yeah, And they
[21:09] Speaker 7: also use the same surprising arguments to be honest about
[21:13] Speaker 7: you know, you all fly, you all drive cars, we
[21:15] Speaker 7: all enjoy like heated homes, all because of these fossil
[21:18] Speaker 7: fuels and it just doesn't it doesn't make sense, and
[21:23] Speaker 7: it's not a good look coming from people who are
[21:26] Speaker 7: you know, who know better for sure, because they wouldn't
[21:28] Speaker 7: be where they are if they didn't. But it definitely
[21:31] Speaker 7: indicates that there's a lot more going on that's completely opaque.
[21:35] Speaker 7: And so what we've done at Sanford we have a
[21:37] Speaker 7: new school Sustainability coming about. So we've tried to meet
[21:41] Speaker 7: with the organizers of that new school to understand what
[21:44] Speaker 7: the funding structure would look like, and they explicitly said
[21:48] Speaker 7: that they wouldn't rule out funding from oil and gas
[21:50] Speaker 7: companies for school focus on climate, which was just another
[21:54] Speaker 7: shocking revelation. Yeah, and that's yeah, that's what I'll say
[21:59] Speaker 7: that it's pretty that's really interesting. It's hard to pull apart.
[22:02] Speaker 1: The Influencess really got involved with fossil free Research as
[22:08] Speaker 1: a result of that experience. It's a new campaign that
[22:11] Speaker 1: launched earlier this year, organized by you guessed it, Campus
[22:15] Speaker 1: Divestment Students. It includes universities all over the world and
[22:19] Speaker 1: it asked them to do a pretty straightforward thing, stop
[22:22] Speaker 1: taking fossil fuel research money. Hundreds of university researchers and
[22:26] Speaker 1: professors have signed on to ask their universities to do
[22:30] Speaker 1: this too, including not just those in the physical sciences,
[22:33] Speaker 1: but also those in the social sciences. I spoke with
[22:36] Speaker 1: Elana Cohen from Harvard and Joel Penrose at Cambridge University
[22:41] Speaker 1: around the time the campaign officially launched in March twenty
[22:45] Speaker 1: twenty two. Is there any specific thing that like, either
[22:52] Speaker 1: someone telling you about it, or a specific piece of
[22:55] Speaker 1: research that you saw being funded. How did you, in particular,
[22:59] Speaker 1: first hear about or did you know already going into
[23:03] Speaker 1: Harvard that there was major fossil fuel funding of research there.
[23:08] Speaker 8: Yeah, that's a great question. No, I never had the
[23:11] Speaker 8: expectation that my university would be partnering in such a
[23:14] Speaker 8: pernicious and serious way with fossil fuel companies when it
[23:17] Speaker 8: comes to climate research. I really only came to learn
[23:21] Speaker 8: about this issue through organizing around investment, and then, ultimately,
[23:25] Speaker 8: when we were able to win this massive victory at
[23:28] Speaker 8: Harvard last fall, getting the university the world's richest one,
[23:31] Speaker 8: to commit to divest our campaign started really thinking critically
[23:35] Speaker 8: about the other ways in which the industry had infiltrated Harvard,
[23:40] Speaker 8: and through extensive research because this is something that Harvard
[23:43] Speaker 8: and many US and UK universities do not make public
[23:47] Speaker 8: or are not transparent about. We discovered that so many
[23:51] Speaker 8: of the research initiatives and centers of influence on campus
[23:54] Speaker 8: were in fact sponsored by fossil fuel companies, and we
[23:57] Speaker 8: put out a report about that at Harvard Semester, just
[24:00] Speaker 8: to name one example. There are numerous initiatives like the
[24:03] Speaker 8: Corporate Responsibility Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School that are funded
[24:07] Speaker 8: by fossil fuels. There are, you know, other climate and
[24:11] Speaker 8: environmental science initiatives that are funded by fossil fuel companies,
[24:14] Speaker 8: and the information about this is incredibly disparate and lacking.
[24:18] Speaker 8: You basically have to try to Internet search your way
[24:21] Speaker 8: through individual websites and publications of every possible researcher and
[24:25] Speaker 8: research center on campuses that you can think of to
[24:28] Speaker 8: be able to even get at the tip of the
[24:31] Speaker 8: iceberg of the amount of fossil fuel money that's coming in.
[24:33] Speaker 8: And I would guess that's because our universities are fundamentally
[24:37] Speaker 8: embarrassed actually about a lot of the money that they're
[24:39] Speaker 8: getting and the fact that's going to initiatives that shape
[24:42] Speaker 8: climate policy. Because there is an obvious and inherent contradiction
[24:46] Speaker 8: between fossil fuel money and good climate change research. But
[24:51] Speaker 8: that's to say also that a big part of why
[24:53] Speaker 8: we put forward this letter and why we're working with
[24:56] Speaker 8: so many academics and climate experts to call this issue
[24:58] Speaker 8: out is that transparent and disclosure is a really big
[25:01] Speaker 8: first step. If our universities want to claim that this
[25:06] Speaker 8: money is doing anything meaningful, then at the very least
[25:08] Speaker 8: they need to start talking about where this money is
[25:11] Speaker 8: in the first place. And at the moment, the vast
[25:13] Speaker 8: majority of universities are simply not doing that. So that's
[25:16] Speaker 8: a long way of saying that I came to really
[25:19] Speaker 8: diving into this issue after thinking more about how what
[25:23] Speaker 8: is not seen on university campuses that actually provides a
[25:26] Speaker 8: critical license to the fospool industry, because when I say
[25:29] Speaker 8: not seeing, what I mean is that our universities are
[25:31] Speaker 8: not transparent about it. But fossil fuel companies are abundantly
[25:34] Speaker 8: transparent about it. They're advertising partnerships with the universities like
[25:37] Speaker 8: Princeton and Harvard and Cambridge and Oxford on their websites.
[25:40] Speaker 8: All of the time, they're citing the research that they
[25:42] Speaker 8: get to put their name brands on affiliated with these
[25:44] Speaker 8: universities to policy makers, to media, to the public all
[25:47] Speaker 8: of the time, because they want the reputational gains that
[25:51] Speaker 8: come along with affiliation with established academic institutions.
[25:56] Speaker 1: Yeah, that's so interesting because I know when I first
[25:59] Speaker 1: talked to Ben Frantic about this, like in I don't know,
[26:03] Speaker 1: twenty seventeen or something like, when he and Jeffrey were
[26:07] Speaker 1: first starting to write about some of this stuff, he like,
[26:09] Speaker 1: one of the things that he mentioned was just that,
[26:13] Speaker 1: as you know, I think Ben's on his like third
[26:15] Speaker 1: postdoc now, right, He's like, as someone who's been you know,
[26:18] Speaker 1: in academia for a while, I had never been told
[26:22] Speaker 1: specifically to hide funding sources, and that that is something
[26:27] Speaker 1: that he had the experience of it. Harvard was like,
[26:30] Speaker 1: you know, don't talk to anybody about where this funding
[26:33] Speaker 1: comes from, which does seem very antithetical to how universities
[26:38] Speaker 1: are supposed top right, right. So, Juel, I'm curious the
[26:40] Speaker 1: same question for you went, how did this appear on
[26:43] Speaker 1: your radar and was there anything specific that you saw
[26:46] Speaker 1: or did you just sort of hear about it?
[26:47] Speaker 9: So I think I came I came to it through
[26:49] Speaker 9: a slightly different path. By the time I got to Cambridge,
[26:52] Speaker 9: Cambridge to ready divested, so I wasn't involved in that movement.
[26:56] Speaker 9: But what I was involved in was I was heavily
[26:57] Speaker 9: involved in the Extinct from a Alien campaign at Cambridge
[27:01] Speaker 9: to get Cambridge to cut its research ties with Slumberje,
[27:03] Speaker 9: which is one of the worldt premier oil field services provider,
[27:07] Speaker 9: And through that I became more and more involved with
[27:11] Speaker 9: people at Cambridge Climate Justice trying to cut ties with
[27:16] Speaker 9: with all phosophield companies through all research. And I think
[27:19] Speaker 9: one of the things that struck me was that so
[27:21] Speaker 9: many of the PhD students that I met were in
[27:24] Speaker 9: fact being funded by flossi field companies such as Lemberg
[27:27] Speaker 9: and Shell. And I guess what really really, Yeah, what
[27:33] Speaker 9: offended me in my sense of what Cambridge does stand
[27:36] Speaker 9: for is that there are only there are only so
[27:39] Speaker 9: many good PhD researchers, for example, and that they're being
[27:42] Speaker 9: funneled into an industry which is so harmful to the planet.
[27:46] Speaker 9: I think that's what really struck me in what really
[27:48] Speaker 9: I didn't really realize when I first came to Cambridge.
[27:51] Speaker 9: One of the thing that we must remember is there's
[27:52] Speaker 9: a lot of research to be done and only a
[27:54] Speaker 9: finite number of researchers to do it, not to mention
[27:56] Speaker 9: that our time is rapidly running out. So yeah, that
[28:00] Speaker 9: was my route into this campaign.
[28:03] Speaker 8: And I'll just add to that because Joel and the
[28:07] Speaker 8: folks who have worked on the out campaign have done
[28:09] Speaker 8: such fantastic job. One thing that is really obvious by
[28:13] Speaker 8: Schlumberge's affiliation with universities is how much the greenwashing angle
[28:18] Speaker 8: of affiliation with universities really plays into fossil fuel companies decisions. Here,
[28:22] Speaker 8: Schlumberge very strategically locates as research centers right by prestigious universities,
[28:27] Speaker 8: including Cambridge in the UK and then Harvard and MIT
[28:31] Speaker 8: in the US, and it says explicitly, and it's in
[28:34] Speaker 8: its website and its media materials, that the reason it
[28:36] Speaker 8: does that is because it wants to benefit from recruiting
[28:39] Speaker 8: from those campuses and partnering with those campuses directly. And
[28:43] Speaker 8: that's a really clear reflection of exactly what fossil fuel
[28:47] Speaker 8: companies like Schlumberge, which are responsible for just absolute environmental
[28:51] Speaker 8: catastrophes and injustices, are seeking here when they look to
[28:55] Speaker 8: universities for partnerships. It's social license.
[28:58] Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
[28:59] Speaker 1: I was impressed by the letter and the number and
[29:03] Speaker 1: breadth of folks that were signed on to it. Can
[29:06] Speaker 1: you talk a little bit about how that came about?
[29:09] Speaker 1: And you know, I guess how hard or not hard
[29:12] Speaker 1: it was to get researchers to sign on. What were
[29:15] Speaker 1: some of the hesitancies we're hearing from people about making
[29:20] Speaker 1: this statement.
[29:21] Speaker 8: Yeah, I can start with that. But you know, a
[29:24] Speaker 8: really common hesitation we've encountered is the idea that fossil
[29:29] Speaker 8: fuel companies may be bad actors, but they're still providing
[29:34] Speaker 8: money for ostensibly good climate research, and don't we need
[29:39] Speaker 8: just more money for climate research? But as we've made clear,
[29:42] Speaker 8: you know, the reality that there may be that there
[29:45] Speaker 8: isn't enough funding coming from our governments in the public
[29:49] Speaker 8: sector for climate change research only underscores the need for
[29:53] Speaker 8: more money to go into climate change research and for universities,
[29:56] Speaker 8: particularly rich universities, to lead the way and securing that funding.
[30:00] Speaker 8: It doesn't erase the fundamentally unjustifiable and intractable conflict that
[30:05] Speaker 8: arises when you take fossil fuel money for climate change research,
[30:09] Speaker 8: nor does it alter the reality that by taking that money.
[30:13] Speaker 8: Universities inherently lend the prestige of their reputations as well
[30:18] Speaker 8: as their resources, to companies that are trying to make
[30:21] Speaker 8: themselves look like good faith climate actors, when in fact
[30:24] Speaker 8: they're doing everything in their power to sustain a core
[30:27] Speaker 8: business model that is completely at odds with the demands
[30:30] Speaker 8: of leading climate science and climate justice. So there is
[30:33] Speaker 8: no such thing as good fossil fuel money for climate
[30:36] Speaker 8: change research because the money is inherently problematic, and also
[30:40] Speaker 8: because what we're highlighting here again is a systemic issue.
[30:43] Speaker 8: Right we need good funding for the research on which
[30:46] Speaker 8: our futures, our planet, our communities, particularly communities being disproportionally
[30:51] Speaker 8: impacted by the climate crisis, depend and that's something that
[30:54] Speaker 8: we just simply can't sacrifice to the whims of fossil
[30:57] Speaker 8: fuel companies looking to profiteer off of crisis, whether it's
[31:01] Speaker 8: immediate humanitarian crisis like Russia's war on Ukraine or the
[31:05] Speaker 8: longer term climate crisis and all of the humanitarian conflicts
[31:08] Speaker 8: that that poses. And I think it's also important to
[31:10] Speaker 8: point out again that many rich universities have a lot
[31:14] Speaker 8: of resources at their disposal and have made very clear
[31:17] Speaker 8: their ability to fundraise vast amounts of money to support
[31:21] Speaker 8: initiatives that they're interested in, So why do they not
[31:25] Speaker 8: show that same initiative with climate change research? And if
[31:27] Speaker 8: they want to claim, you know, for example, if Harvard
[31:30] Speaker 8: wants to claim that fossil view money is really contributing
[31:33] Speaker 8: to its research portfolio, then it needs to prove that
[31:35] Speaker 8: because right now there's no evidence to show that that's
[31:38] Speaker 8: the case. The evidence points in favor of Harvard allowing
[31:41] Speaker 8: fossil view companies to infiltrate its academic sphere and benefit
[31:45] Speaker 8: from that, but not that there's a dependence there. I mean,
[31:48] Speaker 8: the university is not transparent at all about the scale
[31:50] Speaker 8: of funding that's taken from these companies in relation to
[31:52] Speaker 8: actually its overall amounts of research money. And I mean,
[31:55] Speaker 8: with the prestige and money already available to a place
[31:58] Speaker 8: like Harvard, it's only fair that we expect it to
[32:01] Speaker 8: show leadership in accelerating a trend of fossil free climate research,
[32:07] Speaker 8: rather than playing into a status quo that only allows
[32:10] Speaker 8: the same companies destroying the planet to continue doing so
[32:13] Speaker 8: and to harm the most disadvantage communities in the process.
[32:17] Speaker 9: There's there's sort of a common query often get, is this,
[32:20] Speaker 9: there's this sort of myth that the green transition can't
[32:22] Speaker 9: be funded without the financial backing of fossil fical companies.
[32:25] Speaker 9: When I think in the UK we've seen that with
[32:27] Speaker 9: the government's refusal to implement windfull tax and oil giants
[32:30] Speaker 9: because Richie so specifically says the chancell of the Sheeka
[32:34] Speaker 9: specifically says that they need this money to invest in force,
[32:37] Speaker 9: to invest in renunal energy, Whereas I think we see, well,
[32:42] Speaker 9: does that say that less than one percent of total
[32:45] Speaker 9: expenditure of the fossil companies is on renewable energy? And fundamentally,
[32:48] Speaker 9: if these companies were committed to a green transition and
[32:51] Speaker 9: to funding a green transition, then they would be green
[32:54] Speaker 9: renewable energy companies rather than fossil fuel companies. So I
[32:57] Speaker 9: think there's a fundamental misunderstanding which many people have with
[33:00] Speaker 9: regards to where the money is coming from. Asilana said,
[33:02] Speaker 9: universities and governments have an immense capacity to fundraise and
[33:07] Speaker 9: huge spending power when they put their minds to it,
[33:09] Speaker 9: and at the moment, the green transition is simply not
[33:11] Speaker 9: the heart of their agenda.
[33:12] Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to ask you guys both kind
[33:14] Speaker 1: of related to that, whether you are hearing not just
[33:18] Speaker 1: about the funding piece, but just this there's such a
[33:21] Speaker 1: pervasive idea that oil companies need to have a quote
[33:25] Speaker 1: unquote seat at the table when we're talking about transition.
[33:28] Speaker 1: I mean, you see this in you know, the cop meetings,
[33:31] Speaker 1: you see it even in the IPCC reports, all of it, right,
[33:34] Speaker 1: So I'm curious if you've come up against that too,
[33:37] Speaker 1: this idea of well, you know, we don't want to
[33:40] Speaker 1: quote unquote villainize them, or as I had someone put
[33:43] Speaker 1: it to me recently, this is ridiculous. We don't want
[33:47] Speaker 1: to do a cancel culture on fossil fuels. I'm curious
[33:51] Speaker 1: if you heard stuff like that.
[33:54] Speaker 9: Well, I think this idea that they should have a
[33:56] Speaker 9: seat at the table is fundamentally flawed because I think
[33:59] Speaker 9: they should have a seat at the table because they
[34:01] Speaker 9: are a company whose business model is diametrically opposed to
[34:05] Speaker 9: the science said climate action that we need at the moment,
[34:08] Speaker 9: and it's just wrong to endow them with the power
[34:10] Speaker 9: to influence such a such a transition. Just as to backup,
[34:14] Speaker 9: companies have almost been universally banned from funding clinical research
[34:19] Speaker 9: due to their extensive record of disinformation, I think so
[34:22] Speaker 9: so should phosophy companies be locked out of the debate
[34:25] Speaker 9: as to where the green scent transition goes from now
[34:28] Speaker 9: just because of their vested interest in maintaining these status
[34:31] Speaker 9: quote yeah, and.
[34:31] Speaker 8: I mean I'll just add amy as you know, well,
[34:33] Speaker 8: you know, fossil fuel companies have literally just shown in
[34:36] Speaker 8: every single possible way that they have no interest in
[34:39] Speaker 8: being part of a rapid or just renewable energy transition.
[34:43] Speaker 8: I mean, they're rejecting shareholder proposals left and right for decarbonization.
[34:48] Speaker 8: So there are goo shareholder engagement, right. I mean, if
[34:50] Speaker 8: you were one to advocate for that, the proof is
[34:52] Speaker 8: in the putting that you know, that's not a viable
[34:55] Speaker 8: strategy at in a reality where fossil field companies just
[34:58] Speaker 8: shoot down every possible time from shareholder to actually change
[35:02] Speaker 8: their business model, which makes sense because their profits are
[35:04] Speaker 8: dependent on that core business model surviving their lobby against
[35:07] Speaker 8: climate policy, funding trade associations, the lobby against climate policy,
[35:11] Speaker 8: spreading disinformation greenwashing consistently, which were finally, and in a
[35:15] Speaker 8: very exciting way, seeing litigation around seeing actually like organizations
[35:19] Speaker 8: and governments take on fossil people companies for those claims,
[35:22] Speaker 8: but I mean, there's just there's every single indication that
[35:27] Speaker 8: they don't want this transition to happen, that they want
[35:29] Speaker 8: to sustain their profits to the point that it causes
[35:32] Speaker 8: immense environmental and social damage. And that's just not a
[35:36] Speaker 8: reality that our universities should be supporting, particularly when they
[35:40] Speaker 8: are institutions that are meant to be at the forefront
[35:43] Speaker 8: of public thought, of public innovation, of future oriented thinking,
[35:49] Speaker 8: and of support for young people. It's their responsibility to
[35:53] Speaker 8: start showing leadership in the same way that they expect
[35:55] Speaker 8: it from their students, and in the way that their
[35:57] Speaker 8: reputations and their resources demand.
[36:00] Speaker 1: I feel like in the last five years, when this
[36:03] Speaker 1: stuff first started to get into the media sphere at least,
[36:07] Speaker 1: that there was a lot of pushback actually from climate
[36:11] Speaker 1: researchers who, you know, I think initially we're worried that
[36:16] Speaker 1: this conversation I don't know, discredited some of their research
[36:21] Speaker 1: or their colleagues research, and just to see the turnaround
[36:24] Speaker 1: from that to now where actually I've seen at least
[36:27] Speaker 1: three people that I personally know were very defensive about
[36:31] Speaker 1: this conversation five years ago signing on to this letter,
[36:34] Speaker 1: you know, is that a big that's a big shift.
[36:37] Speaker 9: Yeah. I think just as the crisis has got worse
[36:40] Speaker 9: and worse and worse, I think in this last year alone,
[36:42] Speaker 9: you've beginning you're beginning to see just how bad it's become.
[36:45] Speaker 9: In the UK, we've had three successive storm being the
[36:48] Speaker 9: worst in a very very long time, hit us one
[36:50] Speaker 9: after the other after the other after the other. So
[36:52] Speaker 9: I think people are really really starting to wake up.
[36:54] Speaker 9: And there's been a dramatic shift after divestment. People are
[36:57] Speaker 9: looking around and thinking where's the next logical step from here,
[37:00] Speaker 9: and certainly cutting top research ties is that next logical step.
[37:04] Speaker 9: I think with divestment it was very much focused on
[37:08] Speaker 9: one side of the coin, and then now we're focusing
[37:12] Speaker 9: on the other side, which is to cut flossi fuel
[37:15] Speaker 9: ties all together. And I think, yeah, you have seen
[37:17] Speaker 9: a massive public shift, not only with the public, but
[37:19] Speaker 9: also with academics, and that's very important.
[37:21] Speaker 1: I know that just in looking at some of the
[37:24] Speaker 1: historical documentation of fossil fuel companies at the very beginning
[37:29] Speaker 1: of them, you know, starting to invest in university research
[37:32] Speaker 1: that you know, one of the stated goals was to
[37:36] Speaker 1: to really make sure that that university students were embracing
[37:42] Speaker 1: free market capitalism and seeing the energy industry as part
[37:46] Speaker 1: of that and all of these kinds of things, and
[37:49] Speaker 1: really wanting universities to be somewhat dependent on corporate funding
[37:53] Speaker 1: so that this kind of opportunity for influence would continue
[37:57] Speaker 1: for a long time. So I'm curious if you've heard
[37:59] Speaker 1: anything from the universities themselves or from researchers around you know, well,
[38:05] Speaker 1: where where are we going to get this money if
[38:07] Speaker 1: we don't get it from the fossil fuel industry, And
[38:10] Speaker 1: what the answers are to that.
[38:12] Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean it's a really tough question. I think
[38:16] Speaker 8: to have bad research or research that helps to prop
[38:21] Speaker 8: up fossil fuel industry propaganda and styming of climate action
[38:26] Speaker 8: is not better than having no research. So that's a baseline.
[38:29] Speaker 8: But I also think the reality again is that we
[38:33] Speaker 8: need climate research. We need honest and effective climate change
[38:36] Speaker 8: research now to be able to actually take climate action
[38:40] Speaker 8: away that allows us as a society to meet the
[38:44] Speaker 8: goals of the Paris Agreement to limit severe levels of
[38:48] Speaker 8: planetary warming, to keep open a pathway of what you know,
[38:51] Speaker 8: the International Energy Agency says is needed for net zero
[38:54] Speaker 8: emissions at a global scale by twenty fifty, which means
[38:57] Speaker 8: no new investments in new fossil fuels VI projects today.
[39:01] Speaker 8: All of that, all of that making this transition in
[39:03] Speaker 8: a way that's urgent, in a way that socially just
[39:06] Speaker 8: depends upon the production of honest, effective climate research where
[39:10] Speaker 8: its integrity is not questioned, because even the questioning of
[39:13] Speaker 8: the integrity of such research and of universities credibility on
[39:17] Speaker 8: climate goes a long way in precluding the kind of
[39:20] Speaker 8: action that we need to take. But it is the
[39:22] Speaker 8: responsibility of rich universities, in particular, as we point out
[39:26] Speaker 8: on the Fossil Free Research Campaign's website, to lead the
[39:29] Speaker 8: way in securing funds for fossil free climate research and
[39:33] Speaker 8: for helping to establish those alternative funding streams. And it's
[39:36] Speaker 8: also the job of governments to participate in that, because
[39:38] Speaker 8: I mean, if good climate research is not in the
[39:41] Speaker 8: public interest, I don't know what else is right, What
[39:44] Speaker 8: else would our government's be funding right now? And that's
[39:47] Speaker 8: like a very serious policy issue that we need to
[39:49] Speaker 8: confront as well. But I will say I think it's
[39:52] Speaker 8: really important to recognize at the same time that we
[39:55] Speaker 8: make those points that many universities are absurdly on transparent
[40:00] Speaker 8: about the amount of fossil fuel money going into their
[40:03] Speaker 8: research programs, and it is very possible that we could
[40:07] Speaker 8: find out at a place like Harvard to Cambridge. You
[40:09] Speaker 8: know that that money is relatively small in the grand
[40:13] Speaker 8: scheme of things for those universities, but again, the damage
[40:16] Speaker 8: that taking that money does, that partnering with these companies does,
[40:20] Speaker 8: is immense, and so there the calculation actually would be
[40:24] Speaker 8: quite clear, right like that these universities should be divesting
[40:27] Speaker 8: their research streams from fossil fuel money in the same
[40:30] Speaker 8: way that they divest their endowments. So this is all
[40:34] Speaker 8: to say that disclosure is a really fundamental step. It's
[40:37] Speaker 8: insufficient in terms of addressing the intractable conflict of interest
[40:41] Speaker 8: posed by fossil fuel money for climate research. But these
[40:44] Speaker 8: are all things that we need to grapple with in
[40:46] Speaker 8: a sphere of meaningful and open dialogue, and that's part
[40:48] Speaker 8: of what this letter is trying to force, because universities
[40:51] Speaker 8: haven't been at the table so far in many cases
[40:54] Speaker 8: in terms of addressing this issue in the way that's
[40:56] Speaker 8: required to ensure that they're operating with integrity and with
[41:00] Speaker 8: a true commitment to advancing our future.
[41:02] Speaker 1: Joel, I'm really curious to hear from you about the
[41:05] Speaker 1: difference between this conversation in the US versus the UK,
[41:09] Speaker 1: and especially around the funding stuff and how universities are funded,
[41:14] Speaker 1: and just whether you're seeing a difference in how people
[41:17] Speaker 1: are talking about this in the UK versus how you
[41:20] Speaker 1: hear Americans talk about it.
[41:22] Speaker 9: Well, I've never been to the US. I'm not sure
[41:23] Speaker 9: how one point I am or how it is in
[41:25] Speaker 9: the US, but certainly in the UK there's a growing
[41:27] Speaker 9: realization that the core for universities to reject for SoCal
[41:30] Speaker 9: company funding is intrisingsically bound up with the call for
[41:34] Speaker 9: increased governmental investment in climate change research. This especially comes
[41:39] Speaker 9: in the wake of huge cuts to all research, including
[41:44] Speaker 9: climate change research, last year due to the coronavirus pandemic,
[41:47] Speaker 9: and there are massively growing calls for increased funding in
[41:52] Speaker 9: all areas of university research because this dependence on corporate
[41:55] Speaker 9: funding creates well research being poured into all the wrong
[41:59] Speaker 9: area is I'm sure I've said before, but I do
[42:02] Speaker 9: think that there is a there is a huge amount
[42:05] Speaker 9: of research to be done and not many people to
[42:07] Speaker 9: do it essentially right and there's this idea that there's
[42:11] Speaker 9: this idea that all research is good research, but that's
[42:14] Speaker 9: not the right, that's right, Yeah, that's just not true.
[42:17] Speaker 9: I don't think there's What we need to do is
[42:19] Speaker 9: find the most effective use of the resources we have.
[42:22] Speaker 9: And the obviously there's no definition of effective research. No
[42:25] Speaker 9: one has any of the definitive answers. But what is
[42:28] Speaker 9: clear is that you need to find a more objective
[42:31] Speaker 9: source of funding. And that is certainly what force of
[42:33] Speaker 9: your companies cannot provide. They should be the last to
[42:35] Speaker 9: decide the direction of this screen transition. And yeah, increased
[42:38] Speaker 9: governmental intervention and management of research funding is definitely the
[42:42] Speaker 9: way forward.
[42:44] Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so I know that this letter is just
[42:46] Speaker 1: the beginning. Are there things that you guys can talk
[42:48] Speaker 1: about yet that you have planned for future? Where do
[42:51] Speaker 1: you want to see this going? I mean, I assume
[42:54] Speaker 1: you want to hear universities committing to not taking fossil
[42:57] Speaker 1: fuel money for research on that. You know, Like, what's
[43:01] Speaker 1: kind of the next step in trying to encourage that
[43:05] Speaker 1: from universities?
[43:07] Speaker 8: Yeah, waday heck, yeah, that's that's the goal, to get
[43:10] Speaker 8: universities to actually implement these bands. A first step, though,
[43:14] Speaker 8: would be instigating meaningful dialogue. And by meaningful dialogue, I
[43:18] Speaker 8: don't mean like bureaucratic back and forth with administrators, which
[43:22] Speaker 8: I think the divest movement has shown in many cases
[43:24] Speaker 8: simply fails to succeed when our universities are actually corporations,
[43:29] Speaker 8: beholden to certain interests, among those the fossil fuel industry.
[43:32] Speaker 8: But what I do mean is rallying folks on campuses.
[43:35] Speaker 8: You know, this letter is really exciting to see, and
[43:37] Speaker 8: I think we're optimistic that having these more than five
[43:40] Speaker 8: hundred names of leading academics, university members, of climate experts
[43:44] Speaker 8: on the letter will inspire many, many more folks in
[43:47] Speaker 8: these fields to step forward, to use their voices, their power,
[43:50] Speaker 8: their resources, their public platforms, which students often lack to
[43:53] Speaker 8: be able to push universities in tandem with students who
[43:57] Speaker 8: can do the sort of grassroots organizing that also needs
[44:00] Speaker 8: to be done at the same time to force these conversations.
[44:03] Speaker 8: So I think we're hopeful that the letter will inspire
[44:06] Speaker 8: direct actions and new concerted organizing efforts, particularly among student
[44:10] Speaker 8: divestment campaigns that are looking for next steps in the
[44:13] Speaker 8: wake of their divestment victories in addition to mobilizing allied
[44:17] Speaker 8: bases of faculty and alumni and those across the sphere
[44:21] Speaker 8: of higher academia to push on our universities to make
[44:25] Speaker 8: real institutional change on this issue.
[44:28] Speaker 9: And I think it's.
[44:28] Speaker 8: Also worth noting, you know, the idea of a fossil
[44:31] Speaker 8: fuel money ban for climate research is so critical at
[44:33] Speaker 8: universities for the reasons that the letter lays out, which
[44:36] Speaker 8: is that universities have enormous amounts of prestige and resources
[44:40] Speaker 8: and legitimacy granted them. But this is also a model
[44:43] Speaker 8: that could easily be adopted by other research institutions, right
[44:47] Speaker 8: by organizations that are focused on climate change research, in
[44:50] Speaker 8: the same way that research institutions like Cancer UK that
[44:53] Speaker 8: focus on cancer and public health research have decided to
[44:57] Speaker 8: systematically reject tobacco money because of the inherent conflict of
[45:01] Speaker 8: interest posed between such money and research around public health.
[45:05] Speaker 8: So there are many climate change research organizations that could
[45:08] Speaker 8: adopt the same kind of policy that we've been calling
[45:10] Speaker 8: for in a university context, and I think part of
[45:13] Speaker 8: our vision also is expanding this call and seeing those
[45:16] Speaker 8: institutions come on board as well, because they have a
[45:18] Speaker 8: lot of the same cultural power and semblance of public
[45:22] Speaker 8: legitimacy that allows for their partnerships with the fossil fuel
[45:26] Speaker 8: industry to make a public impact in terms of sustaining
[45:30] Speaker 8: the industry's deadly core business model.
[45:32] Speaker 9: Yeah, I would just add that I think what's been
[45:34] Speaker 9: really critical in this effort is the transnational dimension of it,
[45:39] Speaker 9: and I think the next step would be to increase
[45:41] Speaker 9: international into university corporation. You may have noticed with the
[45:45] Speaker 9: lesser it's very Harvard and Cambridge based, and I think
[45:47] Speaker 9: the next step is to try and expand that to
[45:49] Speaker 9: European universities, in South American universities, Australian universities across the
[45:53] Speaker 9: globe to create a really global effort. Fostphuel research is
[45:56] Speaker 9: just the beginning, the tip of an iceboke of a
[45:58] Speaker 9: very very much bigger and I think yeah, next step
[46:02] Speaker 9: is to increase engagement with students across campuses, not only
[46:07] Speaker 9: in the US and the UK, but across the world.
[46:09] Speaker 8: Definitely worth mentioning though that we have signatories on the
[46:12] Speaker 8: letter from I think it's over twenty maybe twenty three
[46:16] Speaker 8: universities that are outside of the US and the UK
[46:18] Speaker 8: as well, and we do explain on the website. You know,
[46:20] Speaker 8: we started with the US and UK because that's where
[46:23] Speaker 8: a lot of the student organizers you know, who are
[46:25] Speaker 8: working on us for base, but also because those universities
[46:27] Speaker 8: have among the greatest amounts of resources in the world
[46:29] Speaker 8: and have been so keen the diets of movement and
[46:31] Speaker 8: have a unique responsibility to take action. But certainly we
[46:34] Speaker 8: hope that this is a band that could apply to
[46:36] Speaker 8: many more universities in similar positions, which is universities in Canada,
[46:40] Speaker 8: and so that's why it's also really cool to see
[46:41] Speaker 8: so many academics sign on to this letter actually who
[46:44] Speaker 8: are outside of the US and the UK.
[46:47] Speaker 1: I wonder too if you guys have talked it all
[46:48] Speaker 1: about connecting with the handful of academic publishers that publish
[46:54] Speaker 1: a lot of this research too, all of which are
[46:57] Speaker 1: also partnering with also field companies in unfortunate ways. But
[47:01] Speaker 1: it's mostly because it's a fairly small handful. I wonder
[47:04] Speaker 1: if there's many kind of discussion around looking at them too.
[47:08] Speaker 1: So the folks like Taylor and Francis Elsevier, you know,
[47:12] Speaker 1: those the big kind of publishers of research from these
[47:17] Speaker 1: universities as well.
[47:18] Speaker 8: That's a really great idea. I mean, we have not
[47:20] Speaker 8: started organizing around that, but certainly I think that is
[47:23] Speaker 8: again part of our hope for what this letter effort
[47:25] Speaker 8: could build into. Right, the letter is meant to provide
[47:28] Speaker 8: a foundation for showing institutions that are are part of
[47:32] Speaker 8: the climate academia sphere that they need to step up
[47:35] Speaker 8: in this moment of crisis. And certainly, as you mentioned,
[47:38] Speaker 8: like climate change publishers whichhare finding amount are really really
[47:41] Speaker 8: key parts in that because they could decide not to
[47:44] Speaker 8: you know, they could implement bands on what they're going
[47:46] Speaker 8: to publish in accordance with funding. And also because again
[47:50] Speaker 8: there's there's research to show that, you know, disclosure alone
[47:53] Speaker 8: of funding sources does not mitigate skewed research outcomes. Certainly,
[47:58] Speaker 8: it doesn't mitigate the reputaeational rewards that fossil fuel companies
[48:02] Speaker 8: we get from funding this research and the adverse effects
[48:05] Speaker 8: on policy making and everything that that has to do
[48:09] Speaker 8: with as well. So definitely, focusing on publishers is a
[48:12] Speaker 8: really really good idea that we hope that this letter
[48:14] Speaker 8: can help support going forward.
[48:17] Speaker 1: I appreciate you guys taking the time. Is there anything
[48:19] Speaker 1: that you want to make sure people know about with
[48:22] Speaker 1: this initiative that I didn't already ask you about.
[48:27] Speaker 9: I guess just to let people know that the letter
[48:29] Speaker 9: is still open for people to sign. If there are
[48:31] Speaker 9: any academics listening, please check out our website and sign
[48:34] Speaker 9: the letter. I mean, the more signatures we have, the better.
[48:37] Speaker 9: And yeah, I mean it's just the start of a
[48:38] Speaker 9: very big campaign and we need all to support we
[48:40] Speaker 9: can get.
[48:42] Speaker 8: Yeah, I would just add to that now is the
[48:44] Speaker 8: moment to start organizing around this issue, particularly again for
[48:48] Speaker 8: campaigns that are looking for this next step that of
[48:50] Speaker 8: one divestment, or are looking for ways to think more
[48:52] Speaker 8: broadly about how the foss feel industry has infiltrated their universities.
[48:56] Speaker 8: This is the moment we need a renewable energy transition
[49:00] Speaker 8: now more than ever. The war on Ukraine has only
[49:02] Speaker 8: highlighted that we need systemic investment in renewable energy in
[49:07] Speaker 8: new crystal clear ways. So this is a very unique
[49:10] Speaker 8: time in which to be organizing. And I'd also just
[49:13] Speaker 8: add that there are a lot of campaigns that have
[49:15] Speaker 8: started doing incredible work in this regard that that would
[49:19] Speaker 8: provide great models for anyone looking to get involved. So
[49:22] Speaker 8: you know, we're from foss Field at Best Harvard and
[49:25] Speaker 8: Cambridge Climate Justice and the Schlumberge Out campaign run by
[49:28] Speaker 8: Extinction Remillion Cambridge. But Sunrise she W has also been
[49:31] Speaker 8: doing incredible work in this sphere. They put out a
[49:34] Speaker 8: very big report one of their organizers, through the Organization
[49:37] Speaker 8: on Cooke my campus, on the ways in which the
[49:39] Speaker 8: fossil field industry had infiltrated the George Washington University Regulatory
[49:43] Speaker 8: Study Center. And they have actually proposed their own fossil
[49:45] Speaker 8: fuel money ban, which is really really cool. It includes
[49:49] Speaker 8: not only the Carbon Underground two hundred, but also the
[49:51] Speaker 8: Slippery six or six companies that were subpoented by Congress
[49:55] Speaker 8: for their fosse field industry moufeasons and so on, and
[49:57] Speaker 8: foundations like the Coke Foundation that aid and embed the companies.
[50:00] Speaker 8: So that's just to say there's a lot of groundwork
[50:03] Speaker 8: already going on in the sphere, and what the letter
[50:06] Speaker 8: does is it really amplifies and that's an entirely new
[50:08] Speaker 8: perspective to it by showing that academics and experts are
[50:11] Speaker 8: rallying behind this cause. So this is a prime moment
[50:15] Speaker 8: to really think if you're a climate activist in any
[50:17] Speaker 8: sort of space in the academic world about how you
[50:21] Speaker 8: can leverage your position and the institutions you're tied to
[50:24] Speaker 8: to force institutions that need to show climate leadership in
[50:27] Speaker 8: this area to do so. Yeah.
[50:30] Speaker 1: I so appreciate you guys taking the time.
[50:32] Speaker 2: Thanks, Thank you so much.
[50:34] Speaker 3: Amy.
[50:45] Speaker 1: That's it for this time. I will stick links to
[50:48] Speaker 1: both information about the legal complaint and information about fossil
[50:52] Speaker 1: free research in the show notes. If you want to
[50:54] Speaker 1: follow up and find out more, you can as always
[50:58] Speaker 1: follow us at We Are Drilled and online at drilled
[51:01] Speaker 1: podcast dot com. Make sure that you sign up for
[51:03] Speaker 1: our weekly newsletter there. Thanks for listening and we'll see
[51:07] Speaker 1: you next week. Drilled is an original Critical Frequency production.
[51:17] Speaker 1: The show was created and reported by me Ami Westerveldt.
[51:21] Speaker 1: Original music and mixing and mastering for this episode by
[51:25] Speaker 1: Peter duff. Our artwork is by Matthew Fleming. For ad
[51:29] Speaker 1: free episodes and bonus content, you can sign up for
[51:33] Speaker 1: our Patreon at Patreon dot com slash Drilled

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