# A Tipping Point

An episode of [Drilled](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1439735906), 16 Jun 2026, 34 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/78913c98-9421-4ea8-bb73-b46a016c8f67/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f82f371-6316-4ea6-a108-b3ec00ea9b2d

Treating climate solutions like an infinite money cheat might not be a great way to actually solve the problem, though it's sure to make plenty of "green" entrepreneurs rich. It makes sense that businessmen would stay focused on profits, but why do climate advocates keep supporting these ideas? This season is a collaboration with the Intercept Brasil. You can get the show in Portuguese on their feed as well, and companion stories at: https://www.intercept.com.br/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:17] Speaker 1: Pushkin in twenty fifteen, Western Indonesia and Singapore were covered
[0:30] Speaker 1: in toxic black smoke.
[0:32] Speaker 2: They had family living in Singapore and they couldn't breathe
[0:35] Speaker 2: for months. It was just billowing black beet smoke.
[0:39] Speaker 1: Tim Sahai is a climate policy expert at Johns Hopkins.
[0:42] Speaker 1: We talked to him last episode. Like everyone else living
[0:46] Speaker 1: in Singapore at the time, his family was living in
[0:49] Speaker 1: hazy smoke for months. Culprit wasn't a forest fire. It
[0:53] Speaker 1: was well, in a way, kind of everything we've been
[0:56] Speaker 1: talking about this season. The US had passed laws incentivizing
[1:01] Speaker 1: corn ethanol, so all the corn that used to be
[1:05] Speaker 1: used for corn oil in cooking was being used for
[1:08] Speaker 1: ethanol instead. World needed a replacement for cheap cakes and cookies,
[1:14] Speaker 1: and it found it in palm oil. Throughout the early
[1:17] Speaker 1: two thousands, much of the rainforests of Borneo were replaced
[1:21] Speaker 1: with palm oil plantations, and plantation owners would use fire
[1:26] Speaker 1: to quickly clear the rainforests. Then that fire would spread
[1:30] Speaker 1: to dried out peatland, which can burn underground for weeks.
[1:36] Speaker 2: You ended up with vast underground peat fires in Indonesia
[1:40] Speaker 2: that you just couldn't put out. You just couldn't put
[1:43] Speaker 2: them out, so it is billowing it all out right,
[1:46] Speaker 2: And a billion tons of CO two were produced.
[1:49] Speaker 1: From June to October twenty fifteen, about two and a
[1:52] Speaker 1: half million hectares of Indonesia burned. When Tim sees what's
[1:57] Speaker 1: happening now with corn ethanol in the US and Brazil,
[2:01] Speaker 1: he thinks about what his family members went through in Singapore.
[2:05] Speaker 2: So if you grow soybean oil, for example, you grow
[2:07] Speaker 2: corn oil and you say, okay, great, this thing is
[2:11] Speaker 2: awesome and green, And now everybody starts to make sort
[2:14] Speaker 2: of more corn oil, and that can sort of cause
[2:18] Speaker 2: the displacement of land that was previously growing something else.
[2:22] Speaker 2: And so then the question becomes, how do you count
[2:24] Speaker 2: that displaced the amount of land into your accounting methods.
[2:29] Speaker 1: Meaning there's a domino effect to growing more corn for fuel.
[2:33] Speaker 1: In Mato Grosso, where Bruce Rastetter and his Brazilian business
[2:37] Speaker 1: partners Marino Franz, Palo Franz and Miguel vas Ribero have
[2:41] Speaker 1: driven a massive corn boom, we've seen displacement of a
[2:45] Speaker 1: bunch of other kinds of agriculture and vegetation, not to
[2:49] Speaker 1: mention a whole lot more pollution in the US, the
[2:53] Speaker 1: Environmental Protection Agency used to require the business's account for
[2:58] Speaker 1: this kind of impact. It was called land use and
[3:02] Speaker 1: land use change.
[3:04] Speaker 2: This sounds terribly dull, and everybody's as and eyes like
[3:07] Speaker 2: you immediately glaze over. But you and I know that
[3:11] Speaker 2: this has enormous, absolutely transformational, in fact, horrific impacts upon
[3:17] Speaker 2: the world.
[3:18] Speaker 3: Right.
[3:18] Speaker 2: So, in the two thousand and seven sort of renewable
[3:20] Speaker 2: fuel mandate, which is what created this enormous boom of
[3:24] Speaker 2: corn ethanol in America, Well what happened.
[3:29] Speaker 1: That's the renewable fuel standard that you heard Bruce Rastetter
[3:32] Speaker 1: asking US politicians about in the last episode.
[3:35] Speaker 4: Let's talk about the RFAs renewable fuels next subject.
[3:38] Speaker 1: The RFAs, AAG industry backed politicians in the US Congress
[3:43] Speaker 1: fought to get rid of the requirement to account for
[3:46] Speaker 1: land use change.
[3:47] Speaker 2: And the cheapest oil that was used for your cakes
[3:52] Speaker 2: and for your cookies, you know, basically stopped becoming corn
[3:56] Speaker 2: oil because corn oil prices went up, because CON's demand
[4:00] Speaker 2: went up, and so well, what's going to be the
[4:02] Speaker 2: cheapest oil became the question, and lo and behold that answer.
[4:07] Speaker 2: Instead of corn oil became displaced into palm oil. And
[4:12] Speaker 2: palm oil is one of the most horrifically like ecologically
[4:16] Speaker 2: damaging things that happened was Indonesian rainforests were raised to
[4:21] Speaker 2: the ground between two thousand and seven. In the next
[4:24] Speaker 2: fifteen years in the forests of Sumatra Bonio, particularly Boneo,
[4:30] Speaker 2: and those rainforests were raised to the ground and replaced
[4:32] Speaker 2: with palm oil plantations.
[4:40] Speaker 1: So the cornatinal boom in the US, driven by policies
[4:43] Speaker 1: that industrial agg business lobbied for all under a giant
[4:48] Speaker 1: green renewable fuels banner, increased the cost of food and
[4:53] Speaker 1: created one of the world's biggest ecological disasters and carbon
[4:57] Speaker 1: dioxide emitters in less than ten years.
[5:01] Speaker 2: It's just like one of the most sort of shocking,
[5:04] Speaker 2: shocking sort of features of what happens if you don't
[5:08] Speaker 2: take into account that displaced land effect.
[5:12] Speaker 1: Now agg businessmen are pushing for similar policies in Brazil.
[5:17] Speaker 4: That's right, emmy. When the government started to regulate where sugar, cane,
[5:21] Speaker 4: forth andol could be grown, corn ethanol entrepreneurs saw an opportunity.
[5:27] Speaker 4: Here's Lucas Ferranci, the biologist at the National Institute for
[5:31] Speaker 4: Amazonian Research that we heard from less.
[5:34] Speaker 5: Time I think pretty seizing brachiv it is.
[5:41] Speaker 3: People have to remember that one crop displaced is another
[5:44] Speaker 3: to an area that will be deforested. We have a
[5:47] Speaker 3: finite amount of land, and if we're introducing a new
[5:50] Speaker 3: crop and all of the cops we have are expanding rapidly,
[5:54] Speaker 3: where are the crops that made way for the sugar
[5:56] Speaker 3: cane plantations going.
[5:58] Speaker 1: Again, when policies or the market encouraged the expansion of
[6:02] Speaker 1: a particular crop, that means whatever else was happening on
[6:05] Speaker 1: that land that it expands to, whether it's undeveloped land
[6:10] Speaker 1: or planted with a def fron crap is impacted.
[6:14] Speaker 6: What does plantarstanage? Kind of just sugerical meceadus sponge?
[6:17] Speaker 7: Who was all the scutures spam?
[6:19] Speaker 3: When sugar cane plantations began to expand, some of the crops,
[6:23] Speaker 3: especially livestock farming, expanded significantly, particularly at the border between
[6:27] Speaker 3: the Serado and the Atlantic Forest, So there was massive deforestation.
[6:32] Speaker 3: Then back in two thousand and eight, if I'm not mistaken,
[6:35] Speaker 3: since sugar cane plantations were causing so much deforestation, a
[6:38] Speaker 3: decree was issued by President Lula prohibiting their expansion into
[6:42] Speaker 3: the Amazon and the pantanal. The intention was very good
[6:45] Speaker 3: because it prevented high demand for a new crop from
[6:48] Speaker 3: causing the degradation of that biome. However, the problem we
[6:51] Speaker 3: need to remember is that the demand was for biofuels,
[6:54] Speaker 3: not necessarily for sugar cane. We need a ban on
[6:57] Speaker 3: crops for biofuel production in these biomes, not just on
[7:00] Speaker 3: sugar cane crops.
[7:07] Speaker 1: So a well intended environmental regulation led not all more
[7:11] Speaker 1: deforestation to plant corn, but also to the embrace of
[7:15] Speaker 1: a new type of ethanol that everyone already knew was
[7:19] Speaker 1: less efficient.
[7:22] Speaker 8: You meanone is.
[7:25] Speaker 3: An advantageous for biofuel production. Sugar cane is much more efficient.
[7:30] Speaker 3: Corn is only being used because of the band of sugarcane.
[7:33] Speaker 4: That's right again, and why we've been focused on one
[7:37] Speaker 4: particular company in their approach to this season. It is
[7:40] Speaker 4: far from the only one. The problem is systemic. We've
[7:44] Speaker 4: seen corn ethanol spread not just from the US to Brazil,
[7:47] Speaker 4: but also from Brazil's middle est to other parts of
[7:50] Speaker 4: the country. More than half the new corn ethanol plants
[7:53] Speaker 4: being built in Brazil today are outside of Mattugrus. Green
[7:58] Speaker 4: colonialism isn't green at all. Of course, it's just regular
[8:02] Speaker 4: old colonialism with better marketing. But why has it been
[8:06] Speaker 4: so easy for fake green solutions to take root and
[8:09] Speaker 4: spread lip Sabrina with intercept to Brazil.
[8:13] Speaker 1: And I'm Ami Westervelt with drilled Great question, Phillippe, especially
[8:18] Speaker 1: since it's been far easier for these supposed solutions to
[8:22] Speaker 1: take hold than real environmental solutions, even when there are
[8:27] Speaker 1: so many examples of them causing new and sometimes worse
[8:30] Speaker 1: environmental problems.
[8:32] Speaker 4: Especially when those solutions like reducing consumption and energy use
[8:37] Speaker 4: run counter to capitalism's model of endless growth. Today, in
[8:42] Speaker 4: our final episode, the bigger systemic problem that Bruce and
[8:46] Speaker 4: the guys represent.
[8:48] Speaker 1: Welcome to the final episode of Carbon Cowboys, Cowboys after
[8:53] Speaker 1: the break the three c's capitalism, colonialism, and climate change.
[9:11] Speaker 1: Some political economists trace capitalism back to just the industrial Age,
[9:16] Speaker 1: but in certain countries the US and Brazil, for example,
[9:20] Speaker 1: you have to start earlier, and it starts with agriculture.
[9:24] Speaker 6: In feudal Europe, a critical mass point was hit in
[9:29] Speaker 6: the fourteenth century when the Little Ice Age arrived, and
[9:32] Speaker 6: from there a great wave of peasant revolts defeated Europe's
[9:37] Speaker 6: feudal ruling classes.
[9:39] Speaker 1: That's environmental historian Jason Moore. He co authored the book
[9:43] Speaker 1: A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. It's
[9:46] Speaker 1: about the way that capitalism has devalued nature and humanity.
[9:51] Speaker 1: The Little Ice Age lasted from thirteen hundred to eighteen fifty.
[9:55] Speaker 1: Scientists call it little because it only impacted the northern hemisphere,
[10:00] Speaker 1: where temperatures dropped by a little more than half a degree.
[10:04] Speaker 1: Side note that half a degree brought forth a complete
[10:07] Speaker 1: societal revolution, So people who say a three or two
[10:11] Speaker 1: of warming is no big deal might want to study
[10:14] Speaker 1: this history.
[10:15] Speaker 6: And to make a very long and complex story short,
[10:19] Speaker 6: those ruling classes had to find a way to find
[10:23] Speaker 6: riches and power because they have been defeated in the
[10:25] Speaker 6: countryside of Western Europe.
[10:27] Speaker 1: To do that, they had to look elsewhere, to other
[10:30] Speaker 1: parts of the world where they might be able to
[10:32] Speaker 1: acquire land and with it cheap labor. The Portuguese Empire,
[10:38] Speaker 1: which eventually colonizes Brazil, is the first in the world
[10:42] Speaker 1: to colonize land outside its realm, beginning with the island
[10:46] Speaker 1: of Madera. The Spanish Empire reaches the Americas first and
[10:51] Speaker 1: immediately begins capturing and enslaving indigenous people. More says there's
[10:56] Speaker 1: a specific way they're able to justify this.
[11:04] Speaker 6: Nature enters into the vernacular at this point to mean
[11:08] Speaker 6: not human. And oh, by the way, most human beings
[11:12] Speaker 6: who work for a living are put into the realm
[11:14] Speaker 6: of nature. Women become the savages of Europe. As Sylvia
[11:18] Speaker 6: Federici reminds us, the language of savagery, wildness, barbarism comes
[11:24] Speaker 6: directly out of the English experience in Ireland, where the
[11:29] Speaker 6: English learned how to practice genocide, which they then extend
[11:33] Speaker 6: to the rest of the world.
[11:34] Speaker 9: The Spaniards go and reorganize colonial Peru and then the
[11:38] Speaker 9: process redefine indigenous peoples as naturalitis, as.
[11:41] Speaker 6: Part of nature.
[11:42] Speaker 1: So at this point that we get the whole man
[11:44] Speaker 1: versus nature frameworks that we still hear from industrial agriculture today.
[11:50] Speaker 1: This idea that it's man's job to dominate nature and
[11:54] Speaker 1: extract from it.
[11:55] Speaker 4: That message gets emphasized by religion. He is just one
[11:59] Speaker 4: example from the preacher at the Baptist church in Sohizo,
[12:02] Speaker 4: one of the towns near Lucas in mante Grosso.
[12:10] Speaker 1: Then God's and let us make humankind in our image.
[12:15] Speaker 1: They will be like us.
[12:17] Speaker 10: They will rule repeat after me, they will rule over
[12:21] Speaker 10: the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky,
[12:24] Speaker 10: over the domestic animals, over the wild animals, over all
[12:28] Speaker 10: the creatures of the earth, and over the creatures that
[12:31] Speaker 10: crawl on the ground.
[12:33] Speaker 1: Right and Christianity intersects with not just colonialism and capitalism,
[12:39] Speaker 1: but with the evolution of private property and agriculture too,
[12:44] Speaker 1: helped along by the idea that Christians are more civilized
[12:47] Speaker 1: and evolved than indigenous peoples.
[12:50] Speaker 4: Right, the doctrine of Discovery gives Christians the right to
[12:55] Speaker 4: take any land occupied by known Christians.
[12:58] Speaker 1: And the philosophical musings of John Locke suggest that land
[13:03] Speaker 1: should be owned by those who can improve it by
[13:07] Speaker 1: doing things like cutting down trees, planting crops, raising animals,
[13:11] Speaker 1: and building homes. This further justifies taking land from indigenous
[13:15] Speaker 1: people because they quote unquote aren't using it, and from
[13:18] Speaker 1: there it's just endless expansion. But at a certain point,
[13:21] Speaker 1: colonists they run on a land. That happens in the
[13:28] Speaker 1: US in the nineteen thirties between World.
[13:30] Speaker 9: War One and World War Two, and that was the
[13:32] Speaker 9: moment when there was no more.
[13:33] Speaker 7: Land to sell.
[13:35] Speaker 1: David Correa is a historical geographer at the University of
[13:38] Speaker 1: New Mexico. He says, in this moment, just before World
[13:42] Speaker 1: War Two, the US makes a turn toward industrialization because
[13:46] Speaker 1: that's the only way to keep expanding once the physical
[13:49] Speaker 1: option of more land is no longer available.
[13:53] Speaker 9: So this is the age of new immigration restrictions, the
[13:58] Speaker 9: industrialization of agriculture. It's the moment that like hybrid corn
[14:02] Speaker 9: is is invented, which dramatically increases heels.
[14:07] Speaker 1: Aha, there it is corn. So the very first steps
[14:11] Speaker 1: the US takes in the direction of industrialized agriculture is
[14:16] Speaker 1: in the cornfield.
[14:17] Speaker 9: It's also like we can improve plants, we can improve people, right,
[14:20] Speaker 9: so that this is the rise of eugenics. And their
[14:23] Speaker 9: solution was convert the Sellar strategy of constant expansion into
[14:30] Speaker 9: a different the same strategy, but like, but the expansion
[14:33] Speaker 9: will happen like at a like a genetic level, so
[14:37] Speaker 9: like we'll expand the genetic capacity of plants and the
[14:41] Speaker 9: genetic capacity of people. So it's the same thing, an expansion.
[14:45] Speaker 9: This is where the field of genetics is born. It
[14:47] Speaker 9: actually starts in a cornfield where they're working on corn,
[14:53] Speaker 9: so it's not an accident that it's a native crop.
[14:56] Speaker 9: They focus all their energy on.
[14:58] Speaker 1: First, you take indigenous land to improve it. Then you
[15:02] Speaker 1: take an indigenous crop corn which had been grown by
[15:06] Speaker 1: native people in what is now the United States for
[15:09] Speaker 1: five thousand years before colonizers arrived, and modernize it.
[15:17] Speaker 4: And you know what, Emmy, this sounds very familiar to us.
[15:21] Speaker 4: In Brazil, agriculture has always been tied to two words,
[15:25] Speaker 4: colonialism and exports. Another long and complicated story, but even
[15:33] Speaker 4: since the Portuguese colonized the country, our economic cycles have
[15:37] Speaker 4: been built around huge landholdings and monoculture crops looking to
[15:41] Speaker 4: the international markets. The idea of agricultural modernization, though, the
[15:46] Speaker 4: one that fascinates people like Bruce and his business partners,
[15:50] Speaker 4: is much more recent. He took off in the late
[15:53] Speaker 4: nineteen sixties, inspired, believe it or not, by the US model.
[15:59] Speaker 4: That's when the machines arrived, along with pesticides, genetically modified seeds,
[16:04] Speaker 4: and everything that came with them.
[16:05] Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. So, when Bruce talks about what attracted him
[16:09] Speaker 1: to Brazil, he always talked about how open the country
[16:12] Speaker 1: is to US technology.
[16:15] Speaker 4: Green colonialism is like the next phase of that expansion.
[16:20] Speaker 2: It's a country that.
[16:21] Speaker 5: Most readily accepts US technology outside.
[16:23] Speaker 7: Of the US, Yeah, just through.
[16:27] Speaker 3: It was the ecological destruction caused by colonialism that centuries ago,
[16:32] Speaker 3: beginning in the seventeenth century, gave rise to a colonial
[16:35] Speaker 3: concern for environmental preservations.
[16:38] Speaker 4: Breno Bringo is a political science and sociology professor at
[16:42] Speaker 4: the Institute of Social and Political Studies at the State
[16:46] Speaker 4: University of Huge General and an editor of the book
[16:49] Speaker 4: Green Colonialism, Volume one, Geo Politics and Social Ecological Transitions.
[16:56] Speaker 4: He doesn't argue with the idea that the carbonization and
[16:59] Speaker 4: energy transition are critical to addressing the climate crisis, but
[17:03] Speaker 4: he says green colonialism isn't doing any of that as
[17:08] Speaker 4: another fact of the colonialism.
[17:10] Speaker 3: For distinic of green colonialism is essentially reproducing the dynamics
[17:14] Speaker 3: of historical colonialism, seeking new social legismacy and the idea
[17:18] Speaker 3: of decobonization, because who would be against decarbonization?
[17:22] Speaker 4: That's the question, right.
[17:24] Speaker 1: It's a genius way to justify a continued expansion but
[17:28] Speaker 1: market it as something else, entirely.
[17:30] Speaker 4: Exactly bringing your points out that when it just continues
[17:35] Speaker 4: to commodify nature, this new green colonialism narrative is exactly
[17:39] Speaker 4: the same as regular old colonialism condex is as.
[17:44] Speaker 3: When decobonization primarily translates into corbon offset markets, investment in
[17:49] Speaker 3: technologies that perpetuate in policies, or increased production of green
[17:53] Speaker 3: raw materials without social justice and without environmental justice, it
[17:57] Speaker 3: becomes a channel for accumulation and the reproduction of green colonialism.
[18:03] Speaker 1: Sylvia Seki, an economist, geographer, and professor at University of Iowa,
[18:08] Speaker 1: said something similar about how industrial AGGERG culture approaches sustainability
[18:13] Speaker 1: in the US.
[18:15] Speaker 8: The goal is just to farm the government.
[18:17] Speaker 5: This is what these people excel at, really farming the
[18:20] Speaker 5: government and just kind of like coming up with the
[18:23] Speaker 5: narrative that.
[18:24] Speaker 11: Will carry the day, right and then without any compunction,
[18:29] Speaker 11: just switching to another narrative when the next narrative wins
[18:33] Speaker 11: the day.
[18:35] Speaker 1: And here we're going to come back to Bruce Rastetter.
[18:39] Speaker 5: Rasstetter has clearly been instrumental in promoting and supporting and
[18:45] Speaker 5: navigating and shaping the reinvention of.
[18:48] Speaker 12: Ethanol and carbon capturing and storage.
[18:51] Speaker 5: All these things are integral to this imagining of ethanol
[18:56] Speaker 5: as a long term.
[18:59] Speaker 12: Renewable, sustainable fuel. It's a putting lipstick on a.
[19:04] Speaker 4: Pick looking and in fact fs fuel in sustainability. Bruce
[19:13] Speaker 4: Raster's Brazilian company has been doing the same thing. In
[19:17] Speaker 4: addition to helping to start both for the corn ethanol
[19:19] Speaker 4: and carbon capture industries in Brazil and pushing for the
[19:23] Speaker 4: policies that will help them grow, FS has been a
[19:26] Speaker 4: pioneer in what are called green bones.
[19:29] Speaker 1: Yes, green bonds really exploded when the Paris Agreement was
[19:34] Speaker 1: signed in twenty fifteen. That agreement often gets pointed to
[19:38] Speaker 1: as this great step forward for climate, and in some
[19:41] Speaker 1: ways it was, but it also leaned really hard on
[19:45] Speaker 1: the idea of involving the private sector more in solving climate,
[19:49] Speaker 1: and especially on the idea that financializing environmental gains was
[19:54] Speaker 1: going to be this huge lever of progress. We just
[19:58] Speaker 1: needed to reform the carbon offsets and credit markets to
[20:02] Speaker 1: make sure those gains were real. On the sidelines of Paris,
[20:06] Speaker 1: Global investors even signed their own agreement called the Paris
[20:10] Speaker 1: Green Bond Statement. I don't know about U Flepe, but
[20:14] Speaker 1: I am. I'm not a big finance bro, No me neither.
[20:18] Speaker 4: So we got up Vanessa Pajea, being at the Federal
[20:21] Speaker 4: University of San Carlos, she wrote the whole paper on
[20:25] Speaker 4: green bones in Brazoo, and she walked us through it.
[20:31] Speaker 12: MAC want to.
[20:36] Speaker 13: See a corporation, a government, or a branch of the
[20:40] Speaker 13: government like a municipality or an agency. For example, the
[20:43] Speaker 13: bndes needs money to carry out a certain activity, so
[20:47] Speaker 13: it goes out to raise funds directly from investors. So
[20:51] Speaker 13: it issues this document, this debt security, and then it's
[20:54] Speaker 13: presented to these investors.
[20:56] Speaker 7: So but why is it green?
[20:57] Speaker 5: Right?
[20:58] Speaker 13: It's green because it goes through certain stages to establish credibility.
[21:02] Speaker 13: A green bond has to have its funds allocated exclusively
[21:05] Speaker 13: to projects, activities, or even assets like a power plant
[21:09] Speaker 13: for example, that will very ecological benefits.
[21:12] Speaker 7: Right, So yeah, yeah, it has to be environmentally sustainable.
[21:17] Speaker 1: Essa says. Part of Brazil's openness to US technology is
[21:21] Speaker 1: that technological approaches are viewed by financial markets as things
[21:26] Speaker 1: that stabilize agriculture and make it a good investment. There
[21:30] Speaker 1: are a lot of variables in agriculture, right There are
[21:33] Speaker 1: funguses and bugs and extreme weather. Chemicals and machines are
[21:38] Speaker 1: seen as a way to control those variables. Today's version
[21:42] Speaker 1: of the man versus nature thing.
[21:44] Speaker 4: So the finance market in general created all these tools
[21:47] Speaker 4: to support a certain type of modernized agriculture. That expansion
[21:52] Speaker 4: that Koheia talking about, and the green bone markets provided
[21:56] Speaker 4: the financing for green colonialism.
[21:59] Speaker 7: We see this.
[22:00] Speaker 13: Movement beginning in the early two thousands where we see
[22:03] Speaker 13: how agreements are starting to emerge that aim to channel
[22:06] Speaker 13: private capital into initiatives that can support sustainable development project.
[22:11] Speaker 4: Right to issue a green bond, you have to go
[22:14] Speaker 4: through four procedures. First, you write up a framework.
[22:21] Speaker 13: The Brazilian government for example, has a framework. Yeah, and
[22:24] Speaker 13: then in that framework they need to specify where they'll
[22:28] Speaker 13: allocate the funds they'll receive and.
[22:30] Speaker 7: It has to be for eligible projects.
[22:32] Speaker 1: Then you have to describe the sustainability of the activities
[22:36] Speaker 1: you'll use the green bond for.
[22:41] Speaker 13: There's a third step that is how it will be
[22:44] Speaker 13: monitored over time, right during the period it's receiving these
[22:47] Speaker 13: green bond proceeds, this green bond money, this investment.
[22:51] Speaker 4: But again monitored by the company which also reports on their.
[22:55] Speaker 7: Progress e the points and think part.
[23:00] Speaker 13: And then there's a fourth step, which is how they're
[23:02] Speaker 13: going to you know, just close this data. So it's
[23:06] Speaker 13: it's basically declaratory, right like I'm going to do this,
[23:09] Speaker 13: then I'm going to do that I'm going to monitor
[23:11] Speaker 13: it this way, and I'm going to report it that way.
[23:14] Speaker 1: When they first came about in two thousand and seven
[23:17] Speaker 1: and for around the first decade of their existence, green
[23:20] Speaker 1: bonds were mostly issued by international development banks like the
[23:24] Speaker 1: World Bank, But beginning in twenty sixteen, on the heels
[23:28] Speaker 1: of the Paris Climate Accord, more corporations and governments started
[23:32] Speaker 1: to get in on the action and the market exploded.
[23:35] Speaker 1: By twenty twenty, the green bond market was approaching three
[23:38] Speaker 1: hundred billion dollars, and just two years later, by twenty
[23:42] Speaker 1: twenty two, it had ballooned to two trillion dollars. Various
[23:47] Speaker 1: methods have been developed to verify the environmental gains funded
[23:51] Speaker 1: by green bonds, and our friends at FS have embraced
[23:54] Speaker 1: a lot of them, but Vanessa says it's more about
[23:58] Speaker 1: paperwork and self reporting than actually verifying environmental.
[24:03] Speaker 12: Benefits picon and as A as a davenas.
[24:11] Speaker 13: The idea is that the government doesn't need to be
[24:13] Speaker 13: involved in this regulation or verification process. It will self
[24:17] Speaker 13: regulate by creating well dividing the stakeholders into different groups.
[24:21] Speaker 13: Right the term they use is stakeholders, and they'll monitor
[24:25] Speaker 13: each other in some way. So you have the issuer there,
[24:28] Speaker 13: they're the first stakeholder. Then you have a second party,
[24:31] Speaker 13: which are SPO's second Party Opinions, which are companies that
[24:35] Speaker 13: provide consulting in the environmental engineering and management fields and
[24:40] Speaker 13: they're the ones who will actually evaluate a green bond.
[24:43] Speaker 13: And then you have third parties that are institutions for
[24:46] Speaker 13: example like the CBI, the Climate Bonds Initiative, which are
[24:50] Speaker 13: will generally nonprofit associations or organizations in the case of
[24:54] Speaker 13: the CBI, where they create standards, so they establish benchmarks for.
[24:59] Speaker 7: What is considered a sustainable activity.
[25:01] Speaker 4: Right, so the verifications are really more about financial compliance
[25:07] Speaker 4: than anything that's happening on the ground or in the
[25:10] Speaker 4: atmosphere in Brazil. That means that things like land grabbing
[25:14] Speaker 4: and excessive agrichemico used are not factored into the equation. Now,
[25:21] Speaker 4: various actors in Brazil's government with close ties to agribusiness
[25:24] Speaker 4: are trying to present the majority of agricultural production in
[25:28] Speaker 4: Brazil as.
[25:29] Speaker 11: Green sofa fraud and your.
[25:36] Speaker 13: Problem main So a lot of things are going to
[25:40] Speaker 13: get left out right, and the monitoring itself, well, since
[25:43] Speaker 13: it's self regulating, it ends up being very declarative. So yeah,
[25:46] Speaker 13: there won't be that level of care, Like no one
[25:49] Speaker 13: will go there for a field visit for a while,
[25:51] Speaker 13: you know, to actually talk to people to analyze what
[25:54] Speaker 13: that project is generating locally. Right, if we're talking about
[25:58] Speaker 13: soybeans and corn, it's not just what the processing plant,
[26:02] Speaker 13: for example, is producing.
[26:03] Speaker 7: It has several suppliers.
[26:05] Speaker 13: How do you keep track of what each of these
[26:07] Speaker 13: grain suppliers is doing in terms of land use and deforestation.
[26:13] Speaker 1: In Brazil, soybean giant Amaji and cattle conglomerate JBS, for example,
[26:18] Speaker 1: have topped the green bond market.
[26:21] Speaker 4: Which brings us to the latest news from FS. In
[26:24] Speaker 4: May twenty twenty six, as we were putting the finishing
[26:27] Speaker 4: touches on this podcast, Amaji, the soybean company owned by
[26:31] Speaker 4: former Minister of Agriculture and Livestock bla Umaji in his family,
[26:36] Speaker 4: purchased a forty percent stake in FS. Bruce Haste retains
[26:41] Speaker 4: the controlling stake with forty three percent, and the remaining
[26:45] Speaker 4: seventeen percent of the companies divided amongst Rasters' Brazilian business partners.
[26:51] Speaker 4: You might remember bla Umaji was the politician who gave
[26:54] Speaker 4: a speech at the opening of fs's first corn as
[26:58] Speaker 4: an outplant in Mato Grosso. The deal was approved by
[27:01] Speaker 4: the government. Amaji took on more than seven hundred million
[27:06] Speaker 4: dollars in debt to finance the acquisition, prompting financial analysts
[27:10] Speaker 4: to each warnings about the company being overleveraged. But according
[27:15] Speaker 4: to Vanessa, these figures are into actually that high given
[27:19] Speaker 4: the amount of capital they are able to raise through
[27:22] Speaker 4: green bones. FS itself had already raised seven hundred million
[27:27] Speaker 4: dollars through these bones, and in twenty twenty one, Imagi
[27:31] Speaker 4: raised seven hundred fifty million dollars in green bones to
[27:35] Speaker 4: finance a small hydroelectric plant near indigenous lens that was
[27:41] Speaker 4: far from sustainable.
[27:42] Speaker 11: Eachinanukasda imagin Chito virgin for fIF.
[27:47] Speaker 13: They raised seven hundred and fifty million from foreign investors
[27:50] Speaker 13: very quickly. It was more than they expected, and it
[27:53] Speaker 13: was for a series of projects. One of the projects
[27:56] Speaker 13: was the construction of a power plant. If you look
[27:59] Speaker 13: at the plant and the technology, you might say, look
[28:01] Speaker 13: clean energy, it's green and sustainable. But if you put
[28:04] Speaker 13: it in context in a region that has so many
[28:07] Speaker 13: power plants in the same watershed.
[28:10] Speaker 7: Did you see it's not really that sustainable anymore.
[28:13] Speaker 13: That's obviously going to create problems for the river's own wildlife,
[28:17] Speaker 13: for the communities living in the surrounding area. That doesn't
[28:20] Speaker 13: factor into the analysis of a green bond, right, it
[28:23] Speaker 13: doesn't belong there, you know, Felipe.
[28:28] Speaker 1: Something that I think is really important for listeners to
[28:31] Speaker 1: understand here too, is that this whole infinite growth thing,
[28:35] Speaker 1: it continues no matter who is running the government. Like
[28:38] Speaker 1: in the US it was Biden that increased the incentives
[28:41] Speaker 1: for carbon capture and biofuels, and now in Brazil it's
[28:45] Speaker 1: Lula who's supporting the korn ethanol boom.
[28:48] Speaker 4: And it reminds me of something Corey Melby, the American
[28:52] Speaker 4: agriculture consultant in Brazil, set about agribusinessmen in both the
[28:56] Speaker 4: US and Brazil that they really have no ideology beyond business.
[29:03] Speaker 14: When you think of how conservatives of the past all constitution, land.
[29:09] Speaker 8: Branch, property, right, we were sack, we're sank.
[29:12] Speaker 14: But as soon as that, oh, it goes against their pipeline,
[29:15] Speaker 14: they are not conservatives anymore either.
[29:18] Speaker 8: Their business period yea, and I.
[29:24] Speaker 14: Came in Brazil, you got some of the biggest farmers
[29:26] Speaker 14: in Martro Grosso that are pro Lula at the moment.
[29:29] Speaker 8: Who would think that, you know, he's pro little guy,
[29:33] Speaker 8: pro pro small farmer.
[29:35] Speaker 14: And you've got the Maggies and the Schaffers of the
[29:37] Speaker 14: world all lighting up behind Lula for another term and
[29:42] Speaker 14: bringing Supreme Court justices out the middle of Marcro Grosso
[29:45] Speaker 14: and giving him a talon and a little village in
[29:47] Speaker 14: their name.
[29:48] Speaker 1: Yes, exactly. I've also been thinking about something Tim Sahai
[29:52] Speaker 1: said in our interview. I was asking him about why
[29:54] Speaker 1: anyone would support corn ethanol in Brazil, and it's so
[29:57] Speaker 1: clearly not even the best crop for ethanol.
[30:01] Speaker 2: From a neutral scientific perspective. Sugarcane ethanol has lower carbon intensity,
[30:06] Speaker 2: it's it's a cleaner. Just use that, don't use gone.
[30:09] Speaker 1: I asked Sylvia Saki about whether carbon capture or BAX
[30:13] Speaker 1: that's bio energy with carbon capture like what FS is
[30:17] Speaker 1: doing in Brazil, makes any of this any better.
[30:21] Speaker 12: So here's where I think.
[30:23] Speaker 5: I think that the problem is that very often people
[30:29] Speaker 5: don't take a system's perspective and they.
[30:32] Speaker 15: Don't consider opportunity costs right. So to me, BECX is
[30:39] Speaker 15: the latest flavor of tetsis right, which is sprinkled with
[30:47] Speaker 15: some nice glitterally sustainability and renewable kind of sugar based.
[30:53] Speaker 7: Stars or whatever.
[30:55] Speaker 12: We're talking about creating massive infrastructure to support a fossil
[31:02] Speaker 12: fuel dependent type of markets, right, So it's not scalable.
[31:07] Speaker 12: It really is complementary, not substitute with fossil fuels in
[31:13] Speaker 12: the internal combustion engine technology. It's extremely expensive.
[31:19] Speaker 1: And like, I get why corn growers would be super
[31:21] Speaker 1: into all of it because it just keeps their business going.
[31:25] Speaker 1: But why do the people who keep saying that the
[31:28] Speaker 1: climate crisis is urgent and they want to act on it,
[31:31] Speaker 1: people like fighting and Lulah for example, why do they
[31:35] Speaker 1: keep going along with it? And why is there such
[31:37] Speaker 1: an acceptance even from scientists and advocates that will never
[31:42] Speaker 1: be able to do the quote unquote neutral scientific thing.
[31:47] Speaker 4: Probably because it would be the final limit to capitalism's
[31:51] Speaker 4: endless accumulation, right.
[31:53] Speaker 1: Because it's a planetary limit, really, And that's an idea
[31:57] Speaker 1: industry and the governments it supports have been fighting for
[32:00] Speaker 1: a really long time.
[32:02] Speaker 4: Right, But the people who want to make real progress
[32:05] Speaker 4: on climate need to stop fighting it.
[32:07] Speaker 1: Yeah, that seems like a good place to start, right,
[32:11] Speaker 1: and to end this season. Thanks Filippi, it's been an
[32:15] Speaker 1: absolute honor to work with you on this, and Alisi
[32:18] Speaker 1: and Marcia and everyone else on the team in Brazil Obriga.
[32:24] Speaker 4: Thanks Emmy, it was a great honor and a pleasure
[32:26] Speaker 4: for me as well. I've learned a lot from you
[32:29] Speaker 4: and from all of you who make Drill what it is.
[32:32] Speaker 4: Thank you very much.
[32:33] Speaker 5: Yay.
[32:38] Speaker 1: We reached out to Bruce Rastatter, Harold Hamm, the Frowns Brothers,
[32:41] Speaker 1: Miguel Vas Roberto, and all Summit companies and Brazilian government
[32:46] Speaker 1: agencies mentioned in this season for comment and have incorporated
[32:49] Speaker 1: any responses we received throughout the season.
[33:00] Speaker 4: Carbon Cowboys Cowboys of the Sejadu is a collaboration between
[33:05] Speaker 4: Drilled and The Intercept to Brazil.
[33:07] Speaker 1: The show was reported and written by Philippe Sabrina and
[33:11] Speaker 1: me Amy Westervelt.
[33:12] Speaker 4: Our editors are Audrey Queen in the US and Alissa
[33:16] Speaker 4: Desolza in Brazil.
[33:18] Speaker 1: Our senior producer and sound designer is Martin saltz Ostwik.
[33:22] Speaker 1: Audio production and sound design in Brazil by Marcia Heberdoza
[33:26] Speaker 1: and Philippe Mookx.
[33:28] Speaker 4: Theme songs and original music by Eric Dana.
[33:31] Speaker 1: Additional music by Martin Saltz Ostwick. Our engineer is Peter Duff.
[33:36] Speaker 4: Artwork for DRILLD is by Matt Fleming.
[33:39] Speaker 1: US fact checking from Naomi bar Brazil.
[33:42] Speaker 4: Fact checking by Studio Frontea.
[33:44] Speaker 1: Our First Amendment attorney is James Wheaton with the First
[33:47] Speaker 1: Amendment Project. We are also proud members of Reporter Shield.
[33:52] Speaker 1: Big thanks also to Andrew Fishman, president of The Intercept Brazil.
[33:57] Speaker 4: DRILLD is distributed by Bushkin Industries.
[34:00] Speaker 1: Huge thanks to the team there, including Greta Cohen, Eric Sandler,
[34:04] Speaker 1: Grace Ross, Morgan Ratner, Owen Miller, Kira Posey, Jordan McMillan,
[34:10] Speaker 1: Brian Shrepp, and Jake Flanagan. To hear the Portuguese version
[34:14] Speaker 1: of this series, head over to The Intercept Brazil's site,
[34:18] Speaker 1: or search for The Intercept Brazil's podcast feed wherever you
[34:22] Speaker 1: listen to podcasts.

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