The Chaser Report - EXTRA: Craig's new movie and the IPCC Report | Craig Reucassel | Ketan Joshi

Episode Date: August 13, 2021

In today's extra Saturday edition – Craig directed a movie! He's here to tell us about The Big Deal, a doco that looks at how money influences our political system. The results of all this influence-buying can be seen in today's other conversation, where climate specialist Ketan Joshi talks us through the landmark IPCC Report on climate change – what's in those 3,900 pages, anyway? And can we do anything stop a climate catastrophe? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chase of Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report for Saturday the 14th of August, a special Saturday edition with some content we couldn't fit in during the week just to keep you entertained during your weekend. And to start things off, Craig has directed a film, Charles. Yes, this is a film about, well, it's called The Big Deal and it's about money and power and politics and influence. It's his directorial debut. Yes, he can't tell us about it. And the best thing about the movie is that Craig's not in it.

It's actually Christian Van Vuren, the Bondi hipsters. But Craig's worked very close with him. It sounds amazing, and Craig's going to tell us all about it. Also today, Ketan Joshi, who's an expert on All Matters Climate, is going to talk us through the IPCC report. Charles, you caught up with him this week. How upbeats he feeling about it? Look, I was feeling very depressed about the IPCC report,

but Katan has actually read. Well, he actually isn't read it because it's 3900 pages long, But he's read the summary, and he's going to give us a summary of the summary. Do you think that passes muster, Gabby, as an effort for a special Saturday episode? I mean, seriously? You know what? Anything goes now. You guys always tell me to research for this, and do you think I've ever done it?

No. I think the very fact that no one's going to read that document is exactly the reason why the world is burning. Okay, so he's giving a summary of the summary of the summary. Charles, you interviewed him. Can you give us a summary of the summary of the summary? Here we go. Which is that there is reason for hope in this report, which I thought was just doom and gloom.

There's this sort of... He's really happy with it. Clearly neither of the two of you have read the report. But anyway, that's fine. Well, hear what he has to say. He's a great guy. There's no news today, by the way, straight into the content after this.

It's the Chaser Report on a Saturday, special extra edition, and here's Craig Rucastell. Now, so Craig, you've done a film. Yes, I have. I've directed a film. bizarrely. A bit of a big deal to direct a film.

It was. Although, yeah, look, you say that. It's extremely time-consuming and painful. Like, it's just an absolute gut wrench. So did you have this image that Stephen Spielberg just, you know, becomes director, it's a few days

work, and then Star Wars gets produced or whatever? Is that what you imagined directing was? The problem is this, right? Is that Stephen Spielberg is in the edit suite of the movie that Steven Spielberg is shot, right? But you see, when I'm in the edit suite trying to edit it, it's been shot, you know, directed by me.

And that's just the real size. You're going, where's the coverage? We don't have the shot for that. Somebody should have thought of this. Yeah, he's going to have shots for this. Why do we do this? Thankfully, Christian Van Vuehruiter is brilliant, so he could always provide something.

But, you know, just me cleaning up after myself the whole time. So what is it about? What's the film about? It is about democracy and, It's about money and politics and influence and all of that kind of stuff. It starts as somebody you may know, actually. Sam Dastiari is in it. And it is, it's interesting.

Oh my God, did he tell you that you were being recorded when you interviewed him? Yeah, that's right. He told me, yeah, that was the great thing about doing recording with Sam Dostari, is that you're like, oh, if the audio guy stuff's up, the Chinese government will have this. It's cool we had to get a backup file. And AGO will have another backup. Yeah, yeah, and AXO as well, yeah, that's right. But it's actually interesting.

Literally last night I had a kind of, you know, a chat with lots of people who'd seen the film for the first time. And in the kind of online chat, the comments from people coming through, people are like just, I can't believe how honest Sam Dastyari is about it. Because he just kind of... It's not a word that you associate with Sam Destiari. This is the great thing about Sam is that ironically he's like so honest.

He just lays out everything kind of really truthfully about how it works. Because he doesn't think there's anything wrong with it. And he's obviously trying to lie in some other way. He doesn't realize that that's the bit he should have been lying about that. That's great. No, he is fantastic, actually. He's, like, it's, you know, you do these really long interviews. This is what kills you about making a documentary movie.

And he just, like, really long interviews and you've got to cut them down to small bits. And Destiari, there was just so much gold. It was actually really important. It was so hard to actually fit it in. Because the thing about Sam Destiari, for people who don't know who he is, is, he was in the thick of ALP politics for many, many years. he actually ran the New South Wales arm of the Labor Party. Bodies are buried because he was the one he... Yeah, well, shot them.

Yeah, because he was the one burying all the bodies, and then he became a senator, and then he just committed a bit of light treason. And then because he got so jettisoned by that whole institution, he's now able to speak honestly about it. It's an extraordinary arc. But it is interesting because he was like the biggest fundraiser the Labor Party's ever had.

And essentially, you know, the thing with Sam is he's quite a brilliant guy. So, you know, he's put in charge of fundraising. he just absolutely nails it. But then just to hear him talk about that process is just, it's quite frightening. Is it a depressing movie? No, well, this is the interesting thing about, like, we filmed this over a period of kind of in and out of lockdowns and all this kind of stuff. And the first part of like the first several months was all the kind of

filming the problem of money in politics and influence and all this kind of stuff. And it got really depressing, to be honest, it was actually quite fundamentally depressing. But we ended up also filming some other parts. which kind of looked at, I guess, pushed back against things like the voices for movements or different kind of movements or different communities that kind of stood up and pushed back against things. And it became really, like at the end, I was in tears, but just because it was really uplifting, actually. So there's kind of, there's both. It's kind of, there's depressing parts. As Sam to say, I just lays out here, everything happens. And you kind of

see how just normalized all this stuff is actually. And then there is kind of, there's a bit of uplifting stuff as well. But yeah, I don't know. It's, it was also, it was amazing. doing it though as well because doing a movie about democracy in Australia and one of the problems with it like kind of money and influence in this. The hardest part of it was that there was so many other scandals dropping about different other parts of how shit our democracy is. We kept having to go, no, no, focus, focus. We can't cover all of the shit bits of our democracy at once. We literally only have several hours to do it. So are you going to run for office now that you've seen how it works from the inside? Oh, God. This is the thing. It's kind of,

it's depressing. And what I think is fascinating about it is that a lot of politicians hate it too. Like, they don't want it. And this is what's the, kind of the uplifting part about it is because a lot of the change has to come. Some of the change can come from outside, but a lot of the change has to come from within politicians and making changes. And that has happened at times. Like different states have made great changes to laws and try to fix this a little bit. It hasn't always fixed it, you know, but it's made step changes in the right direction. And that's because there are lots of politicians in each party that hate this kind of fundraising and this kind of bullshit and this kind of influence. So there is, you know,

It's not like all the politicians love this stuff. You know, there is a kind of hope that you could get positive change here. Well, the Liberal Party ran in the last election on the platform of setting up a national integrity commission. So, clearly, they're on board. How's that going? What happened with that? Oh, look, just a bit of a delay. Now's not the time.

No, they set up the commission. But before they set up the commission, they needed to make sure everybody in the commission had a place to park. And so they had to... A car park, yeah. Yeah, they want to make a few car parks happen, okay? You know, little steps, little steps. Well, they did actually, like, the actual kind of plan they put out for a National Integrity Commission basically seemed to predominantly protect the politicians and everyone else's got in trouble. It's like, yeah, I don't think that's what we were really calling for, guys.

I might want to wrap that up a bit. So, yeah, like. I mean, full credit of them for losing so many ministers without a proper National Integrity Commission. But did you find out, Craig, did McDonald's pay for the product placement in Skomo's rumor? Because they would have been a lot of money. the high, you're always making these in-getting jokes. He has gone on to Carl and Jackie O and denied it, guys.

And there is no higher in journalistic source. Of course. You know, if he got, if he was lying, he would have been called to. You can lie to Parliament, but you can't lie it to Kyle and Jackie O. Exactly, exactly. And also because Kyle is an expert on that topic. Like, he is actually the expert on this. If you think about it, you know, if you're going to go to Kerry O'Lean-Lee sales,

the expert on politics, they're, you know. But when it comes to the question of being a piece of shit, Kyle Samlis is the expert on that So Can't argue with that The movie is It's following Christian Van Vuren From the Bondo hipsters

And he is just lovely And wonderful And seeing And why him He was Well it's kind of You know Firstly he was kind of

He wanted to look at this initially And I kind of came on a little bit later actually But be because it's He's not an expert That's the thing He isn't he's not an expert He's not somebody fascinated by politics So it's kind of seeing things

through an average Australian's perspective of it when you're kind of exposed to it. And it was fascinating, actually, in some of the interviews where things that I realize I'd take for granted and you'd see it be described to Christian and his outrage in it, and I went, oh, fuck, of course. I've got past the point of being outraged by that. And that was the thing with politicians as well as how they generally just talk about this as if it's the norm. They've accepted this as part of the game. And so to see the outrage that people do have about it. I think that's what leads to that general kind of lack of trust there.

So, yeah, it was great to kind of, he's not only the. the love of this guy, but just to kind of actually see that through his eyes is really nice. I was outrageous as well many times as well, but there were some things that you go, shit, yeah, that is bad. Is it massively depressing as a result? Yeah, no, you know, I only cry at up-fifting things. Like, I don't cry at sad things. That's why, you know, Huggy's commercials really get me.

But it is the case. I've watched this movie now fucking millions of times, like to the point of just killing me. And there are still bits that I cry at, like each time I watch them. It's really bizarre. And bizarrely, there are different. It's interesting. There are different bits in the movie that different people are what should cry out as well, which I find really interesting.

So it's supposed to be in cinemas on the 16th of September. Yep, and Gladys is in charge of that. It'll be fine. So basically that means it'll be like what? In Western Australia and Tasmania, you'll be able to see it in cinemas on the 16th of September. What's the plan? Are you going to be able to dream it or something instead? Yeah, look, that kind of stuff is changing all the time.

You can kind of follow Twitter and. There's a big deal.org as the website. I'll make it a big deal.org as a website. And we'll keep posting updates on the Chaser socials as well. Yeah, I will tell you where it's going to be. It might be just broadcast by the Chaser report. Do you have the name of the movie yet? Oh, yeah, sorry, it's called Big Deal.

Is that a democracy for sale? It's interesting you say that, Gabby, because we almost, like, we literally didn't have a name for the movie until pretty much right at the end. titling everything is like if you if you ever try and start the name have a debate about names you basically it takes days the whole project stops you cannot do that you know that's why I presume that's why this is called the Chaser Report because you're like should we come up with a good name for you like no let's not extract it's generic and move on that's why that's that's exactly how I was named makes you wonder why kids get named actually straight

away. Yeah. Actually, it's true. The name Craig. My parents would just like, give up. To think, imagine if they'd waited a wig. You could have had a name like, I don't know. Tanya.

Blastertron or something. Blastertron. That would be a great name. Never reproduce, Gabi. Never reproduce. I don't plan on it. When I watch Huggies commercials, I cry, not out of joy. Well, I'm looking forward to all the sort of laser battles between spacecrafts.

Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's exactly what it is. A lot of special effects in there. I've been paying attention in this interview. It actually sounds a bit like episode one of Star Wars, if you think about it. It's about the Senate. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Man, I was just like, that was me trying to go, what is episode one of Star Wars? I was like, like, lost totally. That was one of the other problems with me directing was that I've never seen a movie before. This is The Chaser Report, and here's Charles's chat with Katan Joshi. Earlier in the week, the IPCC, which is the international, no, what is it? The intergovernment panel. Intergovernment panel on climate change.

Is that right? Yeah, you've got the vibe, yeah. Yeah, something like that. Anyway, it released this massive report, about 3,200 pages, I think. And, I mean, of course, we've read it here at The Chaser. But, you know, just to make sure we're across the details a little bit more. We're going to get an expert to try and help.

help unpick some of the findings of this incredibly important report. Joining us now is Katan Joshi. Now, so the report is about 3,200 pages, isn't it? 3,949. Okay. I obviously missed a few of the appendixes. But so, wait a minute. And have you, I mean, we've of course read it here, Jason, of course.

It's been riveting, reading. But have you read it all? I've read. So you get, what they do is they release this thing called a summary for policy makers, and it's like 30 pages. And that's relatively readable. You know, I read it. It's the cliff notes.

What we want from you is a summary of the summary. Right. And I suppose a top line question, I think this is the one we've, on everyone's mind, is are we all going to die? There's two answers to that question. So,

okay, so this gets into some really existential and philosophical questions about how much we control the future. So I won't get into that, even though it's what I've been thinking about for the past three days. There's two parts to what the IPCC report is telling us. The first part is what's already locked in from the emissions that we've already released, right?

Like 2.something trillion gigatons since the mid-1700s. And that amount is going to cause an amount of warming that we know for sure is going to happen, right? So they quantify that. They use physical science to quantify that. And then on top of that, it's also worth noting there's like momentum in the systems of like human society right like so it is actually true that you can't shut off the world's cold plants overnight because you actually need to replace them

with something else and it takes time to build a wind farm and a solar farm and and you know batteries and stuff so what i'm hearing from you is that barnaby joyce has got a point and and is it totally in the worst faith possible and you know arguing against a completely different point yes he does. And so, but, you know, basically the second story in the report is what we can still avoid, right? So, depending on how fast we reduce emissions, it's like a completely linear relationship between how bad the impacts are, right? Like, it's, it's, um, uh, there's a graphic in the summary that is just like a scatter plot of like, how much emissions, how bad are the impacts? And it's just like a straight line, right? Because, uh, every gigaton that we don't release is, um, reduced climate

impacts and so the physical science is actually being directed towards the future as well to say okay if we release a lot of more greenhouse gases in the future what are the impacts if we manage to curb them what are the impacts avoided you know what or like and what's kind of still baked into the system so but why can't we just sequester all that carbon like I got into a fight earlier this week with somebody who just went well hang on like why don't we just invent a machine that puts it all back in the ground? Why is that so impossible? What's the problem with that? It's just hard to invent machines. I mean, you know, like in the 60s and 70s, we didn't have wind and solar and those had to be, you know, basically developed into technologies that was

commercial enough that you could deploy them around the world really cheaply. That happened. That's an amazing thing, but it was hard. It was a really, really hard process. That happened over many decades from like government subsidies and deployments and fights about subsidies and fights about wind farms. But is there a machine? Yeah, there is a machine. So there's two, there's two ways you can suck a carbon from the atmosphere. The first is using a machine. So you can, like there's some technologies in development. One of them is called direct air capture, for instance, right? And it's literally what it sounds like. It's getting carbon dioxide from the air, capturing it. And in fact, in some case, you could potentially use it for stuff, right? Because carbon is useful once you

capture it. So they're trying to also try and make it like into a commercial thing. So some companies are doing that. The other way you can do it is what are called nature-based solutions. So the natural like basically the restoration cycle of living things on earth that photosynthesize, they actually consume carbon dioxide. And so the idea is if you plant a bunch of extra trees, those trees will suck in more carbon. But there's a huge, huge problem with that in that first of all, that carbon stays right on the surface level of the earth. earth. And secondly, you know, bushfires and wildfires, they burn down trees. And we are expecting more of those things. When the federal government sort of goes, oh, no, well, we're going to

invest all the money in, you know, the technology side, like the carbon capture side, because that's how we can keep coal green. What, like, is that just bullshit, is it? Like, that's actually a really important, that's actually a really important distinction. So you've described carbon capture, which is there are so many different like types of categorizations right so what i was talking about just then was taking carbon from the atmosphere and trying to remove it um yeah very hard very energy intensive also very hard and energy intensive is if you know it's easy just burn more coal to run the machines to capture the yeah you joke but people are proposing this it's like a real anyway i'm not going to get into that that's a that's a my blood pressure can't handle it this week um

what you're describing with the Australian government is carbon capture. So that's actually not taking carbon from the atmosphere, but trying to prevent it at the point of the fossil fuel power station, right? So before it even gets released into the atmosphere, you have a machine, you have something added onto your coal plant that captures it before it actually ends up in the sky. And then, hypothetically, you could use that carbon to do something. So the only time that this has been useful,

and currently the only sort of existing model of this working in the the real world is when oil and gas extraction facilities capture carbon in the process of extracting fossil fuels and then use that carbon as a tool for extracting more oil. It's called enhanced oil recovery. So the only current proven model for CCS commercially is worsening climate change by extracting more more oil. So supercharging your oil world? Enhanced oil recovery does my head and like it's completely wild how um they're basically trying to claim the carbon credit um for worsening the problem is it's so it's so it's so frustrating is there any hope then like it seems like it's all going to shit all the graphs are going in the wrong direction you've got all this

catastrophe where's the hope we like what why should we just not give up so so fundamentally uh i think there's something really important to remember first of all about history so uh what we're seeing very clearly now is that all of the projections from like the 2010s were of coal, oil and gas going absolutely wild, right? Like, you know, by 2020, coal would just be absolutely skyrocketing, so would oil and gas. And we've actually avoided that future. That is something that you don't see in the IPCC report, because they're not doing like a historical, like socioeconomic analysis of how well climate action worked. They're basically just taking the physical science and saying, well, we did this and this happened. And if we

do that, then this will happen in the future. But in the past, we've actually seen emissions can be avoided. Australia's renewable energy target is a brilliant example of that, because it just worked, right? Like, it has avoided emissions. Australia's emissions would be higher without the presence of that target, all the efforts of everybody who brought it into existence and all the people who defended it. And that's been operating on a scale around the whole world, right? Like, it's obviously not enough. We need to be doing way more of that. But the fundamental thing is that we know that climate action actually works to avoid emissions and therefore prevent climate impacts, which would be worse today if we hadn't bothered in the past. The same, of course, applies to the future, right? So if we try

twice as hard, then, you know, we prevent even more emissions. And around the world, it's like a big power struggle, but something I've really noticed, you know, over the past, like, say, six months, maybe even a year, the coal industry in particular is becoming really, really, really vulnerable. Coal power has basically lost its financial viability, not compared to running new wind and solar, but even to building new wind and solar. So for like a decent proportion of the world's coal plants, it's actually cheaper to shut the coal plant down and then run wind and solar instead, including the costs of integrating wind and solar into the grid. So like, you know, power lines and batteries and all that sort of extra stuff. It's still cheaper to turn the off switch on your

coal plants and then pay to build entirely new stuff and run it because wind and solar have just become that ridiculously cheap but so what so what's going on in the brains of well essentially the entire Australian federal government yeah who who who are trying to prop up these they're giving subsidies to to coal mines to expand you've got nab giving out sustainability loans to Whitehaven to expand their coal mines to Newcastle port to expand their coal ports like what is going on in what way is that a rational thing for them to be doing yeah so there's obviously those subsidies shouldn't be happening right on principle because you shouldn't be subsidizing a harmful activity do they not believe it like no I would actually put that in a really important context which is that the

reason that those subsidies are actually picking up pace particularly over the past two years in Australia is because the, um, uh, the markets are supporting those projects less and less. Um, so, uh, lenders, insurance companies, um, thanks, you know, largely to activism and, and sort of pressure on those companies, uh, making those projects far less viable, which is actually why they need those subsidies, right? So they got, but of course, um, they're basically, they've captured a part of the government and they're just running down the timer on what, whatever they can squeeze out of it. Yeah, absolutely. But it's a losing game, right? Because the realities of those markets

are actually beginning to really catch up. Coal in Australia is a really good example. What we're probably going to see is coal plants actually closing earlier than their scheduled retirement dates over the next sort of decade. That is an extremely good thing in terms of emissions because you want to remove the emissions. Like coal is just like a huge, huge chunk of Australia's emissions. but it's an extremely bad thing in the sense that there are communities like people who are working the whole community coal workers yeah so basically what is happening is there's this idea that you can basically sustain coal for longer if you just kind of give it a government intervention push to help coal stay in the system longer but all it's actually doing is making

those communities that rely on the like economic benefits of having power stations in their communities it's making them more vulnerable to when it all kind of suddenly all comes home to roost. Yeah. Yeah. And look, those communities know it. Like the Hunter Jobs Alliance partly exists because, you know, that whole coal mining community, they know that it's rubbish that it can go on forever.

And that they're much better transitioning to something else now with an orderly transition than to fall off a cliff in 10 years time. Yeah. So when we talk about like borrowed time, that's, it's not. just on emissions, you know, it's for, like, the people who are exposed to a sudden and chaotic, you know, hit of reality catching up with all of the denial. Like, that's a real, that's such a huge risk. And there are a lot of good people, you know, who work in, like, coal and gas and, like, you know, those industries who don't deserve to be, like, scapegoated or made vulnerable.

What should really happen is, like, the leaders of those companies and the governments should actually be stepping in and saying this is absolutely inevitable, but we're going to actually manage this decline to protect you. So what's going through the mind of the executives and things like that? Like, for people who actually control these entities, they're just, like, nobody, like, are they just evil? Are they just people who are, you know, just want to see the end of the world? Or do they know that it's happening, but they sort of think that they can buy their way out of it

or they can go to Mars instead? Like, what is, what's your, what's the vibe? Yeah, some people do. Like, obviously the people who are sort of up top, they're really, they are quite evil. Like, it's a really sort of, they're very conscious of what they're doing. And they, they very callously are aware of their own power, and they know that they can basically delay action on this to their own benefit, even if it hurts people.

But, and then, you know, people often talk about, like, the sort of the worker side of, like, people who are, like, you know, blue collar and, like, working on oil rigs and stuff, like that. But I think there's an interesting sort of middle where, you know, sort of like mid-level like managers and, you know, people like me who sort of work in like sort of comms and like, you know, things like that, right? White-collar professionals who seem to be going through this interesting process of basically sort of convincing themselves to some degree. And so you see stuff, you see it actually in a political level as well where a lot of the content that looks like green washing or it looks like trying to convince the public of something is actually

them trying to convince themselves of something. So like, you know, like those folks are probably reading those climate plans or whatever and being like, you know, I'm so glad that I work at a company that's actually dealing with climate change. I initially felt bad, but actually, you know, this company is doing the right thing. I went on down this rabbit hole a few months ago looking at tobacco company internal comms. Like there's all these amazing leaks you get from like tobacco companies and their internal comms are the same as their external comms right like they they're telling their stuff like look we care about health you know we're researching safer tobacco options and we actually want people to not smoke cigarettes and like that sort of stuff right

and you see exactly the same thing with fossil fuel companies and to some degree with like say the Australian government as well right because they have MPs and senators who want to feel like they're doing the right thing on climate change so you see like Dave Sharma or Tim Wilson, like they'll sort of post tweets about like how much they support renewable energy or how much Australia is doing really well on renewables, but they don't really engage with the huge gaps and the huge problems with the government's climate policy because you sort of, I don't know, I look at that and I'm like, I feel like they kind of just want themselves to feel a bit better about what's going on here.

I just want one final sort of hopeful message, which is what is the one thing that we can do as ordinary people to actually do something towards this 3,900-page disaster document? I mean, like, often I give an answer that's sort of a specific action, but I think I just want to give a more general sort of answer about the way we think about this, which is basically that every ton of greenhouse gas emissions is avoidable. And, you know, I completely, it's okay to engage with grief and think about what we've lost and think about, you know, everything that was kind of, you know, failed to do so far because all the power imbalance was just completely against us with the past.

But at the same time, recognize that we're actually far more capable of more things than we realize. And a lot of we have a pretty decent long history of things that we've won. If we can just expand on that in the future, just keep that principle in mind, which is basically that we have a bit more control than we realize. And it's understandable to feel helpless. But that's mostly because the people who are making this problem worse like it when we feel helpless. So, yeah, just keep that in mind when you're thinking about what you do. Keaton, Joshi, I admire your naive optimism.

And I wish you well. Thank you. The Chaser Report, less news more often. Thanks to listening to today's special Saturday edition of The Chaser Report. Normal shows will resume next week. Akees from red market phones are part of the ACUS Creator Network and I have all these stock phrases ready to go.