00:01:13.560I really respect your work and have learned so much
00:01:18.000from listening to Drilled and I just as a another female podcaster audio storyteller in the world
00:01:31.160I really am excited to connect with you and share your work with our listeners so thanks for joining
00:01:40.760us. Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited too. Awesome. So as we open, I would
00:01:48.200really love to dive into a topic so much of your work deals with, which is holding corporations
00:01:56.960accountable for the climate crisis. And many of us understand the realities of a changing climate
00:02:03.880and continued extraction. But I think when it comes to accountability for the crisis,
00:02:10.740things get a bit more hazy. And so what does accountability actually look like when it comes
00:02:19.640to facing the systems and organizations most responsible for climate change?
00:02:26.040Yeah, yeah. It's a great question. And I often will have people be like,
00:02:30.960oh we should stop focusing on who's to blame and just focus on the solutions and i i'm kind of like
00:02:38.720um i don't really think you can have effective solutions if you don't understand where the
00:02:46.240problem comes from and if there's never any kind of accountability along the way so for me that
00:02:52.620looks like you know eventually land back reparations like all of these things um and along
00:03:00.340the way, I think that the corporations that have been the most responsible for the, not
00:03:11.080just the policies that we have, but also, you know, really structuring the economy the
00:03:16.980way it is, all of those things, the media, the way it is, need to be held accountable
00:03:24.160in some way, whether that is through litigation, whether it is through a change in policy that just
00:03:32.900diminishes their power and influence or takes some of their profits and uses it to pay
00:03:41.500reparations or to pay for some of the technologies that people are saying we need to adapt. All of
00:03:49.980those things, I think, are on the table. And I think it's kind of a multi pronged thing. And
00:03:56.160it's also something that depends on, you know, where in the world you are, and sort of an ideal
00:04:01.660world that looks somewhat different from how US capitalism works. And most of the sort of global
00:04:10.620North system, I think that, you know, you really strip these companies of the power and money that
00:04:21.140has allowed them to get away with this. And like, I don't know, I feel like the current approach
00:04:27.740that a lot of climate folks take is sort of keep everything the same, but plug everything into
00:04:35.760different energy sources, right? And to me, that is not a solution. You know, it might be something
00:04:42.780that we need to do along the way. But to me, I think the only way you get to a real solution for
00:04:48.640climate is a restructuring of the system that created it. And I think accountability is a
00:04:56.320really big part of that. Yeah, when I hear you say, stripping their power, the corporation's
00:05:04.540power that is. There's these questions of, well, not only what does that mean, what is it to strip
00:05:12.280a corporation of their power, but what is the power they have and how did they get that?
00:05:17.400Yeah. So to me, I mean, honestly, I would really like to see lobbying go away, think tanks go away,
00:05:24.060all of these ways that corporations have used their very large sums of money to kind of control
00:05:32.600how policy works. And I think a lot of people are maybe unclear about just how broad that
00:05:39.140is. So, you know, if you look at how anything becomes law, they are shaping every single
00:05:48.860part of it from public opinion and, you know, some of the really basic structural ways that
00:05:55.060the media works, to funding specific research, you know, white papers that then become the basis
00:06:03.320of legislation, to groups that write the legislation and then push the legislation
00:06:10.440to politicians. You know, they're funding specific politicians' campaigns. They're funding
00:06:16.760attorneys general who can bring lawsuits that will help change the laws in their favor.
00:06:23.300Like, I think, and I, and, you know, I think there's also a tendency for people to hear that and get really overwhelmed, like, oh, my gosh, they control everything. But I think it's important for people to understand, like, look, they have their tentacles into everything.
00:06:38.800So when a company, say a fossil fuel company, for example, says something like, well, we're just doing what the market demands, or everybody knew about climate change in the 80s. And it wasn't just us that didn't do anything about it. It's like, well, they are the architects of the system.
00:07:00.160So, you know, there are various efforts underway to kick them out of university research, for example, to limit lobbying, although there's an equally large push on behalf of the corporations to expand their ability to lobby and to advertise and market in certain ways.
00:07:24.080And then there's things like permitting, not giving any more permits for these big projects. There's a lot of people are looking at the financial side of things and pressuring banks and investment firms to stop funding the expansion of fossil fuel development, for example.
00:07:43.620I think it has to be a pretty wide reaching effort if you're going to neutralize the power that these companies have. And it needs to be a pretty coordinated global effort because these are global companies.
00:08:00.940They are, in most cases, really, like, I would say, more powerful than most individual countries, because they have this level of influence over the government and society in multiple countries around the world.
00:08:18.780It's not just where they're headquartered. It's like, you know, everywhere they're operating and everywhere that, you know, there is influence that's being wielded globally. They are there trying to kind of push things in their preferred direction.
00:08:36.000uh and you know there again like they're doing that because they're able to uh by you know various
00:08:45.620economic and government systems so the only way to change that is to change the system so that
00:08:52.820they can't have that level of of sort of undue influence and and power over you know the way
00:09:01.720that the world is moving forward. Oh, gosh, that was a really great, direct and concise way to
00:09:11.900explain this to us. I really appreciate the reminders. Is there an example of this that
00:09:17.820you could share with us so we could take what you just said and apply it to something that,
00:09:23.800you know, whether it's in real time or something that was in the past so that we can really
00:09:27.640dig our teeth into understanding this even better. There is. And also, I feel like a lot of the ways
00:09:35.860that it's happened in the past are also in some ways cautionary tales. So the one that a lot of
00:09:41.720people point to is the tobacco industry, right? That, you know, okay, the tobacco industry had
00:09:47.560this really coordinated effort to mislead people about the impacts of its product. And it was very
00:09:55.320successful in doing that and made a lot of money. And then there was this big effort to, um, hold
00:10:02.580them legally accountable for the health impacts that they were creating. And, and it resulted in
00:10:09.140a massive settlement, you know, the tobacco companies had to pay out tens of millions of
00:10:13.940dollars, all of this stuff. And everyone kind of points to that as like, see, this is what we're
00:10:18.360talking about. However, I would caution people to embrace that too much because all of the big
00:10:26.460tobacco companies still exist. And they're the same people that went on to mislead the public
00:10:31.920about vaping. They also moved their entire marketing apparatus to global South countries
00:10:39.680where smoking has continued to rise over the last 10 years and mostly because they're deploying the
00:10:46.880exact same playbook. So this is why I'm kind of like, look, it needs to be global, because that's
00:10:53.440what always happens when a company or an industry is held accountable in one place, they just sort
00:10:58.800of, you know, spin the globe and look for a new market. And I think that, you know, we need to
00:11:05.860think through this sort of like multi pronged accountability approach, like it can't just be
00:11:13.100in the courts. It can't just be a change in policy. It really needs to be across all of the
00:11:19.180many aspects of civil society that these companies are involved in.
00:11:26.580Yeah, I can see that. I wanted to mention in the New York Times review of Private Empire,
00:11:34.940which is about ExxonMobil. Adam Haaschild writes, quote, ExxonMobil executives care less
00:11:42.960about Americans' belief in climate change, Cole suggests, than they do about Americans' belief
00:11:49.320in punitive damages from lawsuits, end quote. So yeah, just to dissect this a little bit,
00:11:56.820what is the actual issue we need to address here? And how do large corporations like ExxonMobil
00:12:03.120benefit from our collective confusion and distraction? And maybe a secondary part is
00:12:11.040like, does Exxon even care about what people think about climate change? Or do they care
00:12:17.600about being held accountable? Which I think I'm kind of maybe answering my thought a little bit
00:12:22.620there, but not in the detail I want you to. So please, yeah, let's get into this.
00:12:28.400Yeah, Exxon does not care at all what people think about climate change. They only care about,
00:12:33.840you know, what they can be held accountable for and how much it's going to cost them.
00:12:38.320Like one of the greatest tricks that the fossil fuel industry in particular ever played on the public came from mobile before it was ExxonMobil.
00:12:48.480And it was the invention of the corporate person. And this idea that, you know, Exxon is like a guy, you know, that has, you know, the same thought processes and values and morals as an actual human person.
00:13:09.100and it does not. Exxon as a corporation has many if not more of the same rights that humans have
00:13:17.660but it is not a human and it does not have values and morals and ethics. It has laws and it has
00:13:25.960market fluctuations and that is all it cares about. This is a company that exists solely for
00:13:31.800the purpose of enriching shareholders. It will therefore do whatever is in its power to continue
00:13:38.800to do that. And the only thing that can stop it is litigation and policy. And the thing that
00:13:47.840sort of underpins both of those things in most cases is social license or sort of the will of
00:13:57.440the public. So those are the things that can actually change how a massive multinational
00:14:04.200corporation operates i like i have a story i always tell about the whole like believing climate
00:14:09.680science thing which is that like i uh covered this lawsuit uh on the west coast of the u.s and
00:14:18.020canada it was several different fishermen crab fishermen who were all part of a trade association
00:14:26.400that sued the largest 30 oil companies for their role in delaying action on climate change.
00:14:34.420So I went off to do this story and I went on a bunch of crab boats and, you know, went
00:14:39.200from town to town meeting all of these people.
00:14:41.140And quite a few people told me that they did not believe in climate science.
00:14:47.120And yet they were named plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the oil companies about climate change.
00:14:53.000And I was like, this is so interesting.
00:14:55.440And they said, well, you know, we were shown documentation of the oil companies getting patents for things like tankers that could navigate a melting Arctic or offshore oil platforms that had been reengineered to withstand sea level rise.
00:15:12.860And these patents were filed in the early 80s by every single oil major.
00:15:36.680And that was like a real penny drop moment for me, because I was like, you know,
00:15:41.020So I wonder if like believe the scientists or believe the science is just like a way higher bar than is necessary here, you know, that maybe actually just talking about it in terms of, look, everybody should have access to the same information that's required to make decisions about their lives.
00:16:03.760one entity shouldn't have a thousand times more power to shape the world that we live in
00:16:11.260than any other entity like this kind of level playing field idea is a lot more accessible to
00:16:18.940a lot more people and also avoids a lot of the unfortunately you know increasingly rigid
00:16:25.960ideological divides around climate. So Exxon does not care whether people believe. And they do care
00:16:35.560about whether people think that they're behaving in a legal or not legal way.
00:16:42.720Oh, goodness. Gosh, you're sharing so much juicy, horrific and great information to us. And I want
00:16:54.660to talk a bit about season eight of the podcast Drilled. And in it, Drilled writes, quote,
00:17:01.920fossil fuels are in fact enormously expensive to find, extract, refine, and ship. Just listen to
00:17:09.200the fossil fuel industry. They'll tell you so when they're justifying record profits,
00:17:14.740only to turn around and claim fossil fuels are cheap when they're arguing for expanding the
00:17:20.460development of them. The reality is that fossil fuels are only cheap when they are subsidized
00:17:26.040and when citizens absorb the costs they impose on society by way of air pollution and water
00:17:32.140pollution, end quote. Gosh, I think this is so important for us to understand because with every
00:17:40.140resource extraction project, they're so expensive and there is a ton of cash flow, but it's also
00:17:50.300subsidize and a lot of times you put pencil to paper and you think well this isn't making money
00:17:55.040in the first place like for instance in the tongas national forest taxpayers were actually
00:18:01.080paying to subsidize logging the last remaining old growth on public lands because logging the
00:18:07.480old growth itself actually wasn't making money it wasn't profitable so we had to pay to cut the
00:18:13.200trees. You know, it's just like, wait, what? This is something we really need to understand. And so
00:18:19.500yeah, I would love to dive into this more with you. And then also just getting into the physical
00:18:26.780reality of oil drilling and extraction in general. Like what does extraction look like?
00:18:31.980How are consumers purposefully alienated from the exploitation of people and land
00:18:37.520that goes into extraction yeah it's often painted by the industry as like this magical thing like
00:18:48.100we just provide abundant cheap energy you know that's that's the selling point i think that this
00:18:55.860is like a it's such a huge problem because it's often people that are living close to fracking
00:19:05.300sites for example are often exposed to volatile organic compounds which can be linked to all kinds
00:19:12.160of things from asthma and emphysema to can't like various cancers low birth weight um all kinds of
00:19:23.140early child development issues and that's just like having a house that's maybe 10 miles away
00:19:30.300And like the industry kind of talks about, you know, various as though it's sort of accidental, but really it's sort of baked into how they do things, especially when it comes to gas.
00:19:43.920Gas is constantly being just released into the air, you know, and sometimes that's because there's some kind of glitch in the refining system.
00:19:57.600Sometimes it's because the price of gas has changed and it's not profitable for them to sell the gas.
00:27:21.260Oh, gosh. It's just like, wow, the insanity of these projects at this time. Of course,
00:27:29.300they were always crazy but even more now it's like how many disasters have to happen both
00:27:35.820directly extraction project disasters versus the global climate change disaster and
00:27:44.900well anyways i want to talk before i go into my own mental spin which i feel like i'm in a bit
00:27:53.240I do want to talk a bit more about Guyana and in Exxon's oil drilling gamble off Guyana's coast poses major environmental risk for The Guardian.
00:28:06.880Antonio Johas writes, quote, by 2025, Exxon expects to produce 800,000 barrels of oil a day,
00:28:18.120surpassing estimates for its entire oil and natural gas production in the southwestern U.S. Permian
00:28:24.980Basin by 100,000 barrels that year. Guyana would then represent Exxon's largest single source of
00:28:33.400fossil fuel production anywhere in the world, end quote. Yeah, they've increased that to a million
00:28:40.580barrels a day by 2025. And yeah, I mean, it would make them, it would mean that the production in
00:28:47.900Guyana would be would represent about 25% to 30% of Axon's total global oil production was,
00:28:58.640which is really, I mean, that is an incredible amount. And especially when you think about the
00:29:05.800fact that this is a country that shipped its very first barrel of oil in 2019, it's staggering that
00:29:12.560they have built the industry there this quickly, but it's complicated too, you know, because
00:29:18.140the president of Guyana made this speech recently where he talked about the fact that, you know,
00:29:23.220So during the Glasgow Conference of the Parties, the COP, you know, this sort of annual meeting of global leaders to try to come up with a climate treaty that it's becoming like, honestly, a little bit like more laughable each year.
00:29:40.460the number of fossil fuel representatives just keeps growing. And you have like all of these
00:29:46.060oil states hosting them now. And I don't know. But anyway, the US and several other big, you know,
00:29:52.260global north countries said, okay, we're not going to approve any financing for like development
00:30:01.120funding financing for projects related to fossil fuels moving forward. Well, the president of
00:30:09.240Guyana said okay but then why are you allowing them in your own countries and I think that's a
00:30:14.560valid point you know you look at the the massive increase in production in Guyana and you think
00:30:21.220oh my god how is this happening right now especially when we know so much and all those
00:30:25.740things but then also it's tough for countries like the United States United Kingdom Canada
00:30:32.400Norway to say oh you guys shouldn't do that when we haven't stopped doing it in in these countries
00:30:41.000you know um and like most of the oil that's being produced there is being consumed by people in
00:30:49.380global north countries absolutely yeah it would be interesting just to understand how this project
00:30:57.400changes the landscape of Guyana both physically and politically oh massively I mean it's taken
00:31:05.700over the whole country like it's physically not that much because it's so far offshore
00:31:12.460and Guyana is really interesting because it has a huge amount of pretty untouched
00:31:19.780rainforest and mountains, and it's quite a beautiful place. And 90% of its population
00:31:27.600is living in a fairly narrow sliver along the coast. So for people there, I think the biggest
00:31:37.440changes are that there are big export terminals being built and refineries and things like that
00:31:44.440along the shore, which is changing, you know, the look and feel of those towns and cities.
00:31:52.420You also have a huge potential risk for oil spills. There have already been several
00:31:57.460smaller oil spills. A larger one would definitely impact, you know, almost the entire population of
00:32:05.520the country because everyone is in this strip. The traffic has become a big problem. There are
00:32:14.400very large trucks that are taking, you know, supplies and materials to the port to go to these
00:32:22.000offshore production sites all the time. And it's causing a lot of problems on the roads and with
00:32:29.340traffic and also air pollution because these are heavy duty trucks that are emitting lots of fumes.
00:32:37.600Guyana in the lead up to becoming an oil country was a like a conservation darling, you know,
00:32:44.200it was one of the first countries to participate in the UN's program for kind of compensating
00:32:52.120countries for preserving their forests. It's called RED. And Norway paid Guyana tens of
00:33:00.320millions of dollars to go towards preserving its forests. It was like a top ecotourism country.
00:33:09.120It's trying to maintain that reputation.
00:33:12.780I think it's going to become increasingly difficult as the country transforms into not just an oil producing country, but really like a top oil producing country.
00:33:25.100And then politically, you know, it's been quite easy, I think, for the oil companies to capture the government and a lot of civil society.
00:33:39.120There are, you know, there are only so many civil society groups and journalists and lawyers and things like that.
00:33:45.540And the oil companies, not just Exxon, but also its partners, which are Hess and Scenic, which is the Chinese national oil company, have done a pretty good job of hiring away as many people as they can.
00:34:00.800and making it difficult for people to criticize the project without being worried that they're
00:34:10.660not going to be able to get a job because the people who are in government know everybody else
00:34:16.460and they're going to tell them not to hire them. It's really been quite a rapid takeover of the
00:34:23.140country. There are still, you know, some groups that are speaking out. And, you know, we covered
00:34:30.380in the season, one lawyer in particular, Melinda Janky, who's filed a bunch of cases trying to get
00:34:37.980the government to actually enforce various environmental laws that are on the books there,
00:34:45.100but just kind of being ignored for Exxon. So there's some stuff happening. But yeah,
00:34:51.000it's been a really rapid change even things like you know there's I think there's five or six
00:34:58.580hotels under construction in Georgetown right now which previously had like three and there are
00:35:05.400you know old houses that are being torn down and replaced with kind of modern high-rise condos
00:35:12.080the rents for those are outrageous compared to what people in Georgetown used to pay for rent
00:35:18.180and they're all being rented out by oil and gas executives.
00:35:22.160You know, there are whole neighborhoods
00:35:23.340that are being kind of taken over by the industry as well.
00:35:29.280I want to go back again to Drilled Season 8.
00:35:32.240And in the discussion guide, it explains, quote,
00:35:35.700according to Harvard economist Jeffrey Frankel, quote,
00:35:39.900the data suggests no positive correlation
00:35:42.560between natural resource wealth and economic growth, end quote.
00:35:46.480no positive correlation this is that's wild right this is great um and you go on to say this is
00:35:56.420thanks to something economists call the resource curse the tendency of economies that are overly
00:36:02.460tied to a particular commodity to focus everything on that commodity make a small handful of elites
00:36:09.140rich and eventually tank the economy countries with large petroleum reserves suffer a particular
00:36:15.200strain of the resource curse, the oil curse. They tend to have less democracy, less economic
00:36:21.680stability, and more frequent civil wars than countries without oil, end quote. So I really
00:36:28.760want you to get into the resource curse and how it challenges assumptions about resources and wealth
00:36:36.040and elucidate the continued effects of colonization and the wealth accumulation that accompanies it.
00:36:42.960Yeah, in my opinion, you can't talk about extraction without talking about colonialism, right? It's like the original extractive industry and colonizers extracted land, people, money, natural resources, wealth of all kinds, and redistribute it to themselves.
00:37:02.800There's some really staggering data on this, you know, like if you look at where India was pre and post British colonialism, for example, it's like, wow, okay, all of the wealth of India was just taken by the UK.
00:37:18.700And then, you know, now companies from those same colonizing countries show up in former colonies and extract their resources for the profit of the company.
00:37:32.620So it's not, I don't know, I feel like people sometimes think or talk about colonization as this thing that happened in the past.
00:37:40.760And really, it's just companies instead of specific countries that are doing it now.
00:40:39.020Well, I want to go back to the drill discussion guide and get into the topic that often
00:40:57.020corporations spin the narrative that we, quote, need oil or fossil fuels, but this
00:41:04.360just simply isn't true. And you explain that, quote, the long held belief that increased energy
00:41:11.500use results in increased life expectancy has been proven to be exactly that a belief by decades
00:41:19.240worth of peer reviewed economics research. As early as 1974, economic researchers writing in
00:41:26.900the journal science concluded that American quality of life would be just as high if we
00:41:32.220used a fraction of the energy we were using. In 2010, researchers showed that the amount of energy
00:41:38.740required to reach high life expectancy is going down, not up, over time. More recently, in 2020,
00:41:46.340economists found that while increased energy use is correlated to increased GDP, it accounts for
00:41:53.280at most 20% of improvements in life expectancy, end quote. This just feels so important because
00:42:00.920of the rhetoric and the narrative we constantly hear about quality of life, life expectancy,
00:42:07.720you know, dot, dot, dot, we can go on. So I wonder how do we become comfortable with the idea that
00:42:14.080we actually can cut down on energy use, and we're going to be okay? Yeah, yeah, I think this is such
00:42:22.840an important thing to understand, especially in global north countries, because as much as you
00:42:30.260know, I've criticized the industry's stance on energy poverty. It is a real issue. It is actually
00:42:35.440very important for people who do not have access to reliable energy to get access to that. And that
00:42:44.440is where the existing fossil fuel development resources should be going while the global north
00:42:52.960dramatically cuts its energy use to make room in the carbon budget for people that have not had
00:43:00.640access to energy before. That's the piece that I think the industry likes to, you know, sidestep
00:43:06.180is like, look, it's not even radical stuff at this point. You know, there are a lot of peer
00:43:13.240reviewed economic studies that show really conclusively that there are diminishing returns
00:43:19.400on increased energy use and that in the U.S. we use probably 10 times more than we need to.
00:43:26.980And if we're going to look at sort of like a global energy mix and a global carbon budget,
00:43:33.940there's plenty of room to cut down on energy use here so that we can enable folks in global
00:43:43.800South countries to, you know, get access to energy and then be able to transition to better,
00:43:52.600cleaner alternatives. I actually was just talking to a fossil fuel executive today who was,
00:43:58.300who was again saying, you know, the increases in life expectancy and quality of life that fossil
00:44:05.860fuels have brought to the global North should not be kept from the global South. This is like a very
00:44:12.220big talking point. And being able to quickly say, well, actually, there's no data that backs that up
00:44:20.820is, I think, really important, you know, for people to be able to say, look, it doesn't actually
00:44:25.500extend life expectancy. It doesn't improve quality of life beyond, you know, a pretty marginal
00:44:34.080amount. And if you're actually concerned about solving poverty and improving quality of life
00:44:42.660and all of these other things, then why are you never talking about energy efficiency in global
00:44:48.440North countries? I mean, we're like massively over consuming in a lot of ways. Like I think
00:44:55.180then it becomes, oh, they're going to take your hamburgers or you're not going to be allowed to
00:45:00.700fly or drive. And while yes, I think reductions in all of those things would be great, really like
00:45:08.620what people are talking about are pretty minor shifts in consumption, like things that most
00:45:15.520people wouldn't necessarily notice and might even have a positive impact from like eating slightly
00:45:23.180less meat comes with a whole bunch of health improvements, for example, walking more, biking
00:45:29.180more. All of these things are actually delivering benefits on multiple levels, not just individually,
00:45:37.320but at the public health level as well, and are not these massive, crazy, radical sacrifices that
00:45:44.400they're being painted as. And whenever I ask an oil CEO or a gas CEO about energy efficiency,
00:45:51.980they're always kind of like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. And then they like to tell you
00:45:55.500about all of the ways that energy efficiency doesn't really work. But I think that we haven't
00:46:04.420really tried it since the 70s. And when we did, there's a whole bunch of documentation of oil and
00:46:10.580gas companies, you know, doing everything they can to lower prices enough and push enough
00:46:16.240marketing and advertising campaigns to get people, especially in the US to consume at very high
00:46:23.180levels again. Like we don't actually have enough. We don't actually have the ability for everyone
00:46:30.420to be consuming at the level that Americans consume. And the good news about that is that
00:46:37.180like nobody actually needs to consume as much as we do to have a really good quality of life.
00:46:43.900Yeah, I really appreciate dissecting that issue. Because it has led to so much scarcity
00:46:52.140and hoarding and anxiety mindset that really stops us from, as a people, being able to say,
00:46:59.740no, we actually don't need this. It isn't going to make our life better.
00:47:03.800And another thing that I really am appreciative of is that this is a bigger question than just
00:47:10.280finding a replacement or a solution to turning to wind and solar and just replacing it. You had
00:47:18.040mentioned this a bit before too, but just to say BP and Exxon are also investing in solar and wind.
00:47:25.080And so we know that by their track record, these projects aren't necessarily going to be
00:47:31.960better for human rights violations, etc. You still need to extract rare earth minerals. It still
00:47:39.400is built on fossil fuels, like getting the materials to the factories. The replacement
00:47:45.200isn't somehow quote green and there was a quote from the discussion guide even if the whole world
00:47:50.380were to switch to non-fossil fuel energy forms maintaining an unnecessarily high level of
00:47:55.680consumption would have us bumping up against another planetary or environmental boundary in
00:48:01.640no time end quote so the question is bigger than switching to another energy form and i and i
00:48:09.320appreciate the examples that you're giving that are quite simple yeah they actually outlined this
00:48:15.880in the the most recent ipcc report for the first time they included a chapter on what they called
00:48:22.540demand response it's like the least sexy title for for this chapter which is really like hey what if
00:48:29.140we tackle the consumption problem um which is so it's like it's like heresy to say that in any
00:48:37.080global North capitalist country. But like, I haven't seen anyone who is suggesting that we
00:48:44.260tackle that, who is like, there should be no more consumer choice. We should go, you know,
00:48:51.500full eco authoritarianism, like that's the way it's painted. But it's like, these are just
00:48:57.100generally good ideas for cities that are pleasant to live in. So many things that were actually like
00:49:04.220more walkable cities, thinking through how to get portion sizes down a little bit so people aren't
00:49:12.280overeating, incentivizing walking and biking for those that can, making cities more accessible
00:49:19.980for disabled people. And they have this added benefit of delivering, I think it was close to
00:49:27.180a 50% reduction in emissions by 2040. It doesn't require new technologies. It doesn't require
00:49:34.640anything that doesn't already exist. All it requires is policies that enable people
00:49:40.280to have those options. Public transit is another one. I see people all the time
00:49:47.060pushing electric vehicles as this huge solution. And if we continue to kind of prioritize car
00:49:56.720dependency, I don't think that we're going to end up in a very good place. And that doesn't mean
00:50:03.120that I think no one should have a car. I just think that maybe people don't need to have two
00:50:09.820and three cars. Maybe not every single driver needs to be a solo driver. There are quite modest
00:50:18.260changes that we could make that, again, either people won't really feel at all or will actually
00:50:25.840be an improvement to life that would deliver very meaningful reductions. And I'm not really sure
00:50:32.520how or why the industry has been able to sort of co-opt that and turn it into,
00:50:38.800they're going to make it a crime to eat a hamburger. Yeah, not true.
00:50:43.980Yeah, we've got a lot of work to do on narrative shift. And I guess that's a good transition to
00:50:51.740talk about media and covering extraction and all of the implications of that. And I am wondering,
00:50:59.440you know, as a media maker yourself covering these issues, how can the media, mainstream media,
00:51:05.920independent media, et cetera, be better at covering and investigating extraction and all
00:51:11.220that comes with it? I think the number one thing that I would love to see shift, and like before
00:51:18.200I get to that, I do just want to acknowledge that there has been an incredible increase in coverage
00:51:24.040over the last few years. There's a very dedicated focus on this issue. You're seeing a huge increase
00:51:33.220in local TV news stations starting to connect the dots on this stuff. Lots and lots more coverage,
00:51:40.920certainly than there was. However, that said, I would love to see more outlets kind of incorporating
00:51:49.220climate as a lens onto things. So like in the same way that we do with the economy, right?
00:51:55.280Almost every story people will think about, okay, what's the economic impact of this thing?
00:52:02.240What's the economic impact of this policy? What's the economic impact of this virus
00:52:08.240throughout the COVID-19 pandemic? What's the economic impact of this or that university
00:52:16.340changing? That's something that comes up in almost every story. And I think it should be the same
00:52:22.480with climate. And the only way that you really get there is having more editors of these
00:52:29.240publications with enough of a background in climate to kind of be able to do that.
00:52:34.820And the other thing is, I really think people need to rethink how much credibility they give to corporate executives. There was actually like a targeted campaign, again, led by mobile in the 70s and 80s, to sort of like give corporate businessmen like a makeover in the media.
00:53:00.300There was like one guy at mobile in particular who really made a point of meeting with all of the big editors of different papers and outlets, going on TV all the time, meeting regularly with Hollywood executives because he felt like too many TV shows and movies would have the bad guy be like a corporate person or a businessman.
00:53:25.420man. And he really like did a lot to rehabilitate the reputation of sort of corporate executives.
00:53:33.500And now I feel like a lot of journalists will treat what an executive says as like more credible
00:53:41.140than what a researcher says, certainly than what an activist says, as though like the activist is
00:53:48.980biased, but the corporate executive is not in some way. And I just am like, come on,
00:53:55.580that needs to go. Almost anyone who talks to the press is probably trying to push one thing or
00:54:02.100another, right? That's one of the main reasons that people talk to the press. There's no way
00:54:08.280that someone whose entire financial stability is tied to a particular policy not getting passed
00:54:17.440or making an industry look good should be treated as somehow equally credible to like an academic
00:54:25.640researcher who doesn't really have any skin in the game. But it still happens a lot, a lot, a lot.
00:54:31.460So I would, I would like to see a return of the, you know, 70s skepticism of business people and
00:54:39.780their motives. Absolutely. Yeah. I wanted to read this quote. It was in Massive Media Cuts
00:54:48.360Equals Less Climate Coverage, which is an article you write. And it says,
00:54:52.880Meanwhile, every month or so, I hear from an investigator working for a team within an NGO,
00:54:59.440a team with more funding and stability than any newsroom in the world, but also with a very
00:55:04.440specific mandate that's usually not just informing the public. Now look, no one is saying that
00:55:12.140mainstream media in particular is some bias-free utopia with no influence or agenda. The corporate
00:55:19.080hold over media in the U.S. in particular has been well documented, but I don't know that the
00:55:25.100solution is to let NGOs take over investigative journalism entirely. Encouraging journalists to
00:55:31.260get comfortable with simply being fed scoops, whether they're coming from corporations or
00:55:35.720organizations funded by wealthy philanthropists, feels like a dangerous path, not just for climate
00:55:41.700reporting, but for democracy in general, end quote. So I'd love to hear about your experience
00:55:48.160doing this kind of reporting and take a moment to just hear your personal story and experiences with
00:55:55.600it? Yeah, yeah. There are a lot of NGOs that are hiring either former campaigners or former
00:56:03.180journalists and forming their own investigative journalism units or investigative research units
00:56:11.180and then parceling out their research to different outlets. And that's been going on for a while.
00:56:19.280It's had a big explosion in the last couple of years at the same time that there's been sort of like weekly announcements of media outlets shutting down.
00:56:30.360And I think there's room for both to exist.
00:56:33.060I don't necessarily think like, oh, NGOs should leave the investigating to journalists.
00:56:39.200But I do think that as this all kind of starts to shift over, there's a big concern that, A, you know, they're going to kind of cannibalize the outlets.
00:56:48.940And B, that, you know, like I said, that it's all part of kind of training media outlets and journalists and editors to rely on someone else to feed them information or ideas or leads or scoops in a way that that slowly erodes these journalists ability to do that for themselves over time.
00:57:13.380So I think just in general, I would like to see someone somewhere working on a major overhaul of how the media works.
00:57:24.540You know, we've been just kind of watching this slow motion car crash for the last 20 years.
00:57:32.500And I haven't, you know, I really haven't seen like a new business model proposed for that industry in decades.
00:57:41.880I just I think that journalism back in the day was one of the main threats to the power that these industries hold, you know, extractive polluting industries. One of the things that prompted the creation of the public relations industry was the power of muckraking journalism.
00:58:02.080It was, you know, Ida Tarbell going after Standard Oil at the turn of the century. It was, you know, Upton Sinclair doing his his work, revealing the disgusting conditions of meatpacking. And because of how effective that journalism was, companies started to spend a lot of money and a lot of time in shaping public opinion and also in trying to capture the media.
00:58:29.620so yeah and you know i think that like now ngos are kind of like oh we should be doing that too
00:58:36.220as opposed to kind of thinking oh this is a bad system you know
00:58:41.440um i i don't want to like i i know several people who do these investigative jobs and
00:58:49.160they're all great and they're all you know they have very good intentions but i think it's
00:58:54.920important for folks to think about the broader systemic issue. And I say that as someone who
00:59:02.040has been a climate reporter for more than 20 years now and has seen a couple of different
00:59:10.080rounds of the media going through this cycle of hiring a bunch of climate reporters,
00:59:17.540making a bunch of climate commitments and then walking that back or watering it down and doing
00:59:25.960a bunch of, you know, profiles of clean tech CEOs. Or, you know, I think the current version
00:59:33.700of that is instead of investing in investigative journalism, a lot of outlets are, you know,
00:59:41.420launching newsletters, or running a bunch of opinion pieces and essays, or listicles that
00:59:50.900are like five things you can do, you know. So I think it would be nice to see some kind of
00:59:59.660concerted effort to support the kind of investigative work that actually leads to
01:00:06.720accountability. Because it's something the industry's worked really hard to get rid of.
01:00:11.420and that's because it works. Yeah. Amy, this has been such an incredible conversation. I love your
01:00:20.800energy and your knowledge. Thank you. It's been uplifting as well as informative and the most
01:00:29.220horrifying and uplifting and energizing all at once. So good. That's great. Good. I always
01:00:36.760encourage people to like you know everyone should feel their feelings I'm very big on that like I
01:00:42.240think it can be very depressing it can feel very overwhelming all of those are very valid reactions
01:00:47.600but like once you've processed those get mad um yeah absolutely yeah thanks so much I really
01:00:57.560appreciate it thank you yeah yeah I appreciate you