The Daily Beast Podcast - Are We Just Going to Ignore That Exxon Video?

Episode Date: July 11, 2021

A lobbyist for a giant oil company admitted in a video that the industry spreads disinfo to stop efforts to combat climate change and no one really talked about it. Molly Jong-Fast had Emily Atkins, climate reporter and author of the daily climate newsletter, HEATED, come on this bonus episode The New Abnormal to find out why: “The fuckery is immense.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another bonus episode of the new abnormal. We thank you so much for being here. Today we have an extra special episode with Emily Atkin, the author of the Daily Climate Newsletter, Heated. And we're going to talk about how we actually change the discussion around climate change. By the way, if you want an alert when each bonus episode from the new abnormal drops, you can subscribe in your member dashboard. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash newsletters to sign up for email alerts.

Hi, Emily. Welcome to the new abnormal. Thank you for having me. Very excited. You know, one of the many reasons why I wanted to have you was you talked about this idea that like with the pandemic, where we had to learn how to write about COVID, we need to learn how to write about climate. That more generalized people in the opinion space and in the more straight, newsy space, need to know how to cover climate. Yeah. I mean, I've really wanted this. for a long time. I think that it would really benefit everyone's analysis of the way the world works, especially for general reporters and pundits on politics. As someone that's been looking at climate

change for seven and a half years, I don't understand how you can pundit about the political future or about our future at all without having a basic understanding of climate change. Because all this is just going to get worse. I don't even mean that as I'm like not a pessimist. in that way, but I'm a reporter, and I know it's getting a worse. Well, you're not incredibly old, but Jesse and I are incredibly old, so we know we're not incredibly old, but we are in our 40s, early, early, very young 40s, but we have seen, I mean, certainly I've seen the change in summers, you know, you never had 90 degree, 100 degree days in New York in June, ever. And now it's a regular thing. I mean, we can see it anecdotally.

Yeah, and you've been able to see it anecdotally in other countries for many years, but we are very focused on our own lives and our own realities. And that's always been the challenge with climate change is that it's very hard to see past your short-term reality in exactly the place that you are. And this is climate changes as if a global pandemic has been playing out in the Philippines, in Pakistan, in Antarctica, and killing a bunch of people, and we just haven't been paying attention. This has been pretty real for a lot of people for a long time, and now it's really starting to become real for all of us. And I just hope that people don't forget it in the winter when it's really nice all of a sudden and we're just happy about it.

Let's talk about Exxon because I am obsessed. There was this video last week. It got no attention, which gets me furious. I'm so pissed. I'm so pissed, right? I saw this video and I was like, holy shit, they gave away the fucking game, right?

We saw Exxon lobbyists be like, yeah, we control these senators, and yeah, this is what we do, and yeah, this is how we cut. It was like, by the way, I also thought it was an advertisement for Biden's climate change plan because they were like,

we cannot let it pass. It will totally fuck us up. And I was like, yes, yes, yes, it's got to be good then, or at least better, you know, if they hate it, it's got to be a little bit good. And then they said, and you know, with this corporate, if they actually managed to, you know, tax us,

that will be a billion dollars. Like, I don't understand why mainstream media didn't pick this story up. It seems like the biggest thing that's happened in a long time. Yeah, I mean, I know Chris Hayes did a segment on it. Ali Vell she did a segment on it. I think Bill Weir at CNN covered it for a couple minutes. There's no video of it on CNN of that segment.

I've checked because I'm also, super pissed about this and when that happens I start getting in a research hole I'm like well did they do it did they did they cover it where is it you know and it's funny because I did a tweet where I said that I did a tweet I did a tweet I tweeted I tweeted actually that's worse maybe I did a tweet is better I like I did a tweet I'm into it I did a twittering about about the article when it came out and I said basically like, holy shit, I'm speechless. This Exxon official just admitted on camera that the company works to prevent effective climate action by using third party quote unquote whipping boys. He actually said whipping boys, so nobody knows it's them. And then I said, these recordings should be played

on every TV station in the world. It was, I kid you not, my most retweeted tweet ever. I got 17,000 retweets. It has, I'm just looking at the analytics now. It has 5.3 million. impressions and it still didn't happen. So, and this is made for TV, right? It's literally a dude. It's a video. And it's happening. I mean, the visuals are just, if you could even think about it, like the opportunity for

a great segment, great visuals that you could play over and over, just the people lining up at cooling centers across the country, people, you know, the death tolls on the West Coast from the heat rising. It's like, I think officials are investigating over like 500 deaths that could have been from the extreme heat. These wildfires, these storms. As this is happening, you have a guy saying, literally he said, on camera, did we deny the science? Yes. Did we join some of these shadow groups to prevent action?

Yes. But that's not like illegal, you know? Like we were just protecting our shareholders and protecting our. investments. And if you say that as, you know, an image of the literal world on fire plays in the background, isn't that the biggest news story in the world? I just don't understand how it's not. And, you know, I'm struck by two things about this. One is this idea that we should be recycling our plastic bottles and that we, the consumers, are the ones who are fault when, and look, I recycle my plastic bottles and I, you know, I do the things that I'm told to do. And in New York, we're very

strict about recycling, but like, we are a drop in the bucket, you know, compared to Exxon. Like, these companies are, you know, Exxon is something like the fifth most polluting company in the world, right? Like, we, these people are ruining the planet. They're telling us on television, they're doing it to make money for shareholders and no, and we're not seeing any blowback. I mean, come on, guys. This is what we sent you to Washington to do. Seriously. And that's what most of the climate activist community has been saying for the last couple months, is that they were the ones that really mobilized people and motivated people to elect Biden, get him into office. And not only are we seeing this absolute fuckery happening with the media

not really covering climate change very much, it's like nothing has really happened significantly, legislatively on climate. And we're sort of like approaching the end of the road when it comes to, are you going to pass big climate legislation or not? And it's really looking like not at this moment. I feel like some of the problem, and you saw Mitch McConnell over the weekend saying that our friends on the left don't think corporations are people,

but people have 501Ks and people have, and I mean, that is completely preposterous. But so much of the Republican Party operates on this idea that corporations should get to do whatever the fuck they want, except if they're mean to Trump, and then they should get sued into the ground. But, you know, largely, right? And so I do think we're in this fundamental time where we have these Republicans.

They will not get a vaccine that is free. That will keep them from dying. Like, we have to look to these people to help us pass climate change. It's never going to happen. I mean, I don't understand. I mean, I feel like we are at this terrifying fork in the road. And I would add to it's not just Republicans, because if you listen to that ex-examine, lobbyist recording. He named 11 senators that are crucial to Exxon to make sure there's no big climate

stuff in the infrastructure legislation, and the majority of them, six of them were Democrats. So it's not just a Republican problem, although they're the big old problem. But I do think that there's an opportunity in that accidental disclosure of those six Democrats, because if there's one thing that the climate movement has been really good at, especially in the last, years or so, it's been getting Democrats to stop being such cowards about this. And they've really done a lot. I know that it always seems like there's so much more to do because there is. But this is a space where shifts are possible. And we have seen a lot of them. But yeah, at the same time, the fuckery is immense. It seems to me like the Green Party has just like lost its mind. Is there a world in which, because the Green Party

candidates, I'm like, who the fuck is this? What is? this person is just trying to screw up, screw over Democrats. Like, is there a world in which climate activists who are so effective, and clearly this is the biggest problem, could retake the Green Party and really run candidates who could win or at least push Democrats to take the environment seriously? Well, the Green Party is supposed to be an eco-socialist party. Right. And it's so absolutely it could. But, I mean, we've seen crazy shit out of them. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I mean, my inkling about it, you know, I wouldn't say that I'm an expert on this type of thing by any means, but I've done a lot of reporting on the Green Party, talked to a lot of Green Party candidates. The Green Party sort of seems like it has too much history of being almost anti-science in a way. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And the future sort of depends on us being very scientifically literate. So I would not put my faith in a party that has such a history of doing the opposite. I would say, like, if you're going to create another party, create another party. But as we've known in the past, that's always brought. Yeah. It's so interesting.

I mean, the one good thing, which is going to kill Republicans, which will be fun to watch, is that a lot of this clean energy is much cheaper, right? wind and, you know, solar, and there are just all of these energies that are much cheaper. Well, Republicans, as you remember from the Trump administration, tried to make coal great again and are going to try to tack on lots of tax credits for oil and gas to, you know, do you think that this capitalist, you know, the cheapness of it will, I mean, look, I don't think anything is going to save us at this point, but do you think that that will help us along? So my biggest concern about this is that when you are a huge company, like Exxon, Chevron, these big oil companies,

and you see a viable competitor coming in, like renewable energy, you don't just stand by and let it happen. You try to buy the competitor. You try to become the competitor. And that's what you're seeing with these big energy conglomerates like Exxon, Chevron, BP. shell, what they're doing is they're buying up the small renewable energy companies and using them as PR to say, look at how green we are, we invested $100 million in solar energy this year, when in reality, $100 million is like a super tiny little drop in the bucket. And at the same time, their larger business model relies on continuing to extract and refine fossil fuels and doing more of it actually. If you look at these big companies, Exxon and Chevron,

in particular, they're very public about this, because they're public companies, that their long-term business strategy is to continue extracting mining, producing, refining fossil fuels indefinitely, and to do more of it actually. Their climate plans are just to reduce the carbon intensity of their operations, which just means they're like, one day we're going to develop a technology that makes oil and gas not cause climate change, which is wild, absolutely, like an absolutely wild thing to say. So you do see some renewable energy companies that are not letting themselves being bought up by big oil, and they are actually becoming a political force to be reckoned with. They donate. You saw that happen in the presidential election. For the first time,

these like big sort of secret closed door donor meetings of renewable energy people to be like, good for them. But it's nowhere near the political influence and dollars and like these industry groups, these quote unquote whipping boys, which I cannot believe this exon lobbyist said and has not been on television saying it. That's crazy. But like it's just the power imbalance is still so long. And that's why it needs to be made up by people yelling, to be honest.

So do you think that the best thing that could happen? I'm just talking, you know, I always am kind of like, what can we do to fix this? Do you think the best thing that could happen is that hedge funds and venture funds and people in private equity could focus on really committing themselves to just real renewable energies and that they could redone? themselves to like, because there are a lot of people in the tech sector who are psychos, but there are a few who are not and who are like sort of trying their best to think about climate in this way. Yeah, I mean, that's one part of it. You obviously have to see these big financial investments in renewable energy, but it's anyone who with a brain is already doing that because it's obviously the area for growth. But the problem is that you can.

can still, if you are a piece of shit and you have no moral values, you can still make a ton of money off of destroying the planet. It's still highly profitable in so many ways to invest in big oil and invest even in coal in some areas. And so that's crazy. We need we need principled investments and that means saying no to taking some money off the table and be and that's reason that we haven't had significant climate action yet, it's not because we don't have all the tools to do it. We do. I mean, there's so much information out there that we've had for so long that says we can easily make a very significant transition to renewable energy over the next 10 years. However, that requires saying no to fossil fuels. And so what I would say is the most important

thing to do is for, it's about political will, it's about moral will, and to say no. And that comes, the will to say no comes from communications. It comes from marketing. It comes from advertising. It comes from activism. And that's why I constantly say that the climate change fight is a, is a PR battle. Like the most important thing to solve climate, that needs to happen to solve climate change is that you need to take away big oil's social license to operate. And that comes from journalists. That comes from people tweeting. That comes from more television shows. It also comes from people understanding that climate change isn't just a job for climate people. Whatever job you have, you can make it a climate job. That's why I said, you know, every reporter should be a

climate reporter because every single thing is affected by climate change. So how are you not only, how are you in your job, you know, not only encouraging your company or employer not to harm the climate, but like also use their clout to build a better world? Yeah, and I think that's a really good point. And I think about that a lot. What you said was so smart about COVID, because when COVID started, I'm not a doctor. I didn't even go to college. I just am a terrible hypochondriac. So I was like, oh, my God, this is. by story, you know, and I went and was in a trial and wrote about it at nauseam and was like everyone needs to get, got my kids vaccinated, was really committed to really showing everyone,

every moment of my COVID journey. You know, I didn't get COVID, but you know what I mean? My journey through like that kind of the vaccine stuff. And like, you definitely see that COVID is run so close to climate. You know, we had these people who wouldn't believe us, you know, in January of 2020, more than a year ago, and we had to run around with their hair and fire until people took it seriously. And I feel like that is very similar to this in a lot of ways. Oh, yeah.

And then by the time it became undeniable, the deniers had brainwashed so many people that a certain amount of harm was at a certain amount of death and a certain amount of suffering was locked in from those lies. And it was because people didn't take it seriously at first. You don't see a global crisis that's killing people across the world as your responsibility

because it doesn't hit you yet and then it became too late. Yeah, that's what's scary. Yeah, but the good thing about it is that here's the lesson. Pretty easy to learn. Let's just do it. I mean, I wish that people would just, I mean, honestly, I wish the old guard of media would just get their heads out of their asses and realize I made this, I made this point on my CNN thing too, where I was just like, and I hate making this point because it shouldn't be this way, but that it's a sexy story. If you want to win a ton of journalism awards, you should cover the story of the fossil fuel industry profiting off of the mass death of vulnerable people.

Because there's a lot out there. And honestly, I really need other journalists to make this their thing because I am tired. Oh, I'm sorry. I hope you will come back and talk more about this. And I hope that what you said, I hope we will get more climate journalists. Because it's crazy to have four people on this beat or 10 people on this beat when it is really the only game in town. I completely agree. And I think the answer is just make your health care journalist a climate journalist.

Get some consultant to come in and teach everyone the basics. Everyone's beat is a climate beat. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media.

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