Climate Action Within Reach: Amy Westervelt
JUNE 2, 2022
“Climate is just not the same as other political issues.”
Amy Westervelt is a climate journalist and the founder and executive producer of the Critical Frequency Podcast Network. She hosts the Drilled and Hot Take podcasts. We discuss the long tentacles of the fossil fuel industry, the key takeaways from this year’s IPCC report, and how a small group of people have locked us into climate crisis.
We have the tools and technology to mitigate the climate crisis now and the reasons that we're not taking dramatic action come down to political will. We could reduce emissions by about 40% by taking advantage of all the things that already exist, like public transit. We need to stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry, incentivize a shift towards renewables, and push for systemic change that gives more options to everybody. There is also a huge potential to decarbonize via the food system. Community action is key to democracy and to solving climate.
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Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Amy Westervelt
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producers: Zack Travis and Sara Burningham
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Amy Westervelt Transcript
Mila Atmos: [00:00:00] Thanks to Shopify for supporting Future Hindsight. Shopify is a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, giving entrepreneurs like myself the resources once reserved for big business. For a free 14-day trial and full access to Shopify's entire suite of features go to shopify.com/hopeful.
Mila Atmos: [00:00:26] Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for you and me. I'm Mila Atmos. The greatest challenge facing civic life, indeed facing all life on Earth, is the climate crisis. Earlier this year, the IPCC, that's the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change, released a series of reports that are hard to overstate in terms of the urgent five-alarm fire wake-up-and-do-something message they sent. And yet, amidst war, pandemic, polarization, and well, everything, the alarm bells did not ring loudly -- or for long -- in the media. Insert your scream into the void here, folks! How is this possible? How can we continue to shuffle toward an unlivable climate while not demanding the drastic and urgent action needed to confront the climate crisis and mitigate its impacts? Amy Westervelt has thought about these questions and tried to communicate their answers more than just about anyone I can think of. And crucially, she spent the month of April reading all 3,000 pages of the third report that was released, focusing on mitigations. Amy Westervelt is a climate journalist and the founder and executive producer of the Critical Frequency Podcast Network. She hosts the Drilled and Hot Take podcasts. Amy, welcome to Future Hindsight. Thank you for joining us.
Amy Westervelt: [00:02:03] Thank you so much for having me.
Mila Atmos: [00:02:05] I think I want to start with the central premise of Future Hindsight here, to take big ideas and turn them into action items, because I think one of the riddles of the response to climate change is that we are inundated with messages that the climate crisis is too big and too hard, and we can't do anything about it. And you've, you've really drilled down, excuse the pun, on the ways in which this messaging is actually part of a concerted campaign designed to stop us from taking action. Can you solve that riddle for us? The too big, too hard we should probably give up riddle?
Amy Westervelt: [00:02:42] Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't know if I can solve it. I wish, but, you know, A - I think it's important for people to understand that every percentage of a degree matters. There's been this very swift, I think, response to this latest round of IPCC reports to say, okay, well, 1.5 is out the window. So this goal has come out of the Paris Climate Accord a few years ago that's trying to keep warming to 1.5 degrees or less, which the most recent IPCC reports are saying like, okay, we're overshooting that goal right now. You know. It's, it's sort of hurtling out of reach. And I've seen so many people go, okay, forget 1.5, let's focus on two degrees. Well, every 0.1 of a degree between 1.5 and 2 is a meaningful difference to the number of people who stay alive, the number of species that stay alive, the stability of ecosystems, all of that. So I think it's really, really important for people to understand that actually every little thing does make a difference. And I also think it's important for people to look at the other end of the spectrum that we're seeing in these IPCC reports, which is that the absolute worst of warming. So like the five, six degree hellscape that was outlined a few years ago is almost entirely off the table at this point. So that's a tiny bit of good news, you know. But the big news in this, in this report for me was this new chapter that they've added on what they call demand and services. So the idea there is that, look, when we talk about people in less developed countries needing energy, what we're actually talking about is the need for certain services like shelter and food and mobility and these kind of basic things.
Amy Westervelt: [00:04:45] And you don't actually have to provide those in an emissions-heavy fossil-fueled kind of way, and they really lay out a blueprint for that in terms of everything from, you know, individual choices that people can make within existing systems to really pushing for the kinds of systemic changes that give everybody more options. So, for example, public transit. Take public transit if it's available to you. Push for public transit. If it's not, these kind of very basic but very helpful things that could actually deliver a 40% decrease in emissions while improving quality of life for everyone who's living in poverty around the world. If we can shift diets away from meat, not off of meat entirely, but maybe away from as meat heavy as they are in the global north at the moment, and shift towards public transit and, you know, electrify things, that they're... Basically what they were trying to do is lay out all the things that we have the technology to do right now. If we did all of those things, then we could reduce emissions by 40%. So almost half of the emissions that we need to reduce, we could do that just by taking advantage of all the things that already exist. So those are the kinds of things
that I think are helpful to hang on to. When you're feeling really overwhelmed about the climate crisis, it is really big and it is really overwhelming. But no one person has to do every single thing. You know, everyone has a role and everyone kind of needs to play that role. But if you get locked into this idea that you have to be working on all of the things all of the time, that's very paralyzing and not not super conducive to action.
Mila Atmos: [00:06:37] Right. Right.
Amy Westervelt: [00:06:38] We actually have the technologies that we need now, and we really just need to avail ourselves of them both individually and systemically, which that's another kind of real key thing that comes up in this space all the time is this idea that we have to pit individual choices against systemic change. And I think, you know, it's a both / and, like take the individual choices that you can and that are available to you. And if you're able to push for for systemic change, that gives more options to everybody, that's sort of like the key to to achieving these things, right?
Mila Atmos: [00:07:17] Like do do all the solutions. Do everything here and there. Amy Westervelt: [00:07:21] Yeah,
Mila Atmos: [00:07:21] Comprehensively. So I'd like to break down the IPCC reports, thousands of pages in three parts. You mentioned the demand chapter, but from all this year's reports, what are the key takeaways?
Amy Westervelt: [00:07:32] I think honestly, the biggest takeaway is really we have everything we need to do, what needs to be done and the reasons that we're not doing it come down to political will and sort of corporate blocking of those things. We've kind of known this for a while, but this kind of batch of IPCC report states it unequivocally that, "look, the problem is not that we don't understand the science, and it's not that we don't have the technology available to us. And it's not that we don't know what we need to do. It's that there are powerful states and powerful companies that are very reliant on the fossil fuel industry or money from fossil fuels that have been blocking those actions." So that to me seems like the really key challenge right now is removing those obstacles from action.
Mila Atmos: [00:08:31] Mm hmm. So let's talk about the things already available to us, right? Like when we talk about decarbonizing, what does that currently look like? What are the big things that we're already doing?
Amy Westervelt: [00:08:41] I think it's important to note that the cost of renewable energy technology has dropped more rapidly than anyone really expected it to. So there is a pretty major shift towards clean energy that's happening right now. There is a shift towards electrification that's happening. I think it's important also to remember in the context of that, that electrification is not like zero impact on the environment. You know, we're already starting to see what happens when you shift your dependency on fossil fuels to a dependency on lithium and other types of minerals and metals. Right. So there's kind of a cautionary tale that runs throughout actually the IPCC report to you that's sort of reminding people, look, let's not make the same mistake again here. Let's look at this industry with an eye towards sustainability instead of extraction. But yeah, that's happening, right? The energy system is being decarbonized more rapidly than most people would have predicted even ten years ago. You're also seeing a shift in the transportation space towards electrification there. Again, there's a caveat of, you know, a shift towards sort of personal transit being electrified by companies that are sometimes fighting against public transit, which is an inherently more climate friendly option. So there's more more work needed on that front. There is a huge potential to decarbonize via the food system. So that is something that I'm seeing people focus on more and more. The idea of shifting towards a more plant based diet, improving the way that meat is produced and consumed, looking at more sustainable land use practices within the food system. All of that is a big area of opportunity for decarbonization. The other big one is reforestation. You know, not that planting a million trees is going to solve climate change as a lot of people have have tended to suggest. But reforestation is a key carbon removal strategy, and it's one that there, again, you know, we're able to do now and not kind of wait for technology on. So those are the big areas that are available to us now and that are being utilized now and just kind of need even more uptake.
Mila Atmos: [00:11:24] Right. Yeah. Especially, you know, I just read an article yesterday about the deforestation in Brazil has just continued at a more rapid pace and it's just heartbreaking. It's like, hello, you know, it's 2022 and here we are. But
Amy Westervelt: [00:11:38] I know.
Mila Atmos: [00:11:39] It's, it's yeah, it's crazy. So what does decarbonization need to
look like in the near future in terms of policy?
Amy Westervelt: [00:11:48] I think that as a really low hanging fruit kind of idea, we could stop subsidizing fossil fuels. We really need to stop the build out of fossil fuels immediately. Like that's that's not even a fringy idea. That's not just something that environmentalists say. You have the International Energy Agency, historically a very conservative, very pro fossil fuel organization, saying we cannot have new fossil fuel projects. So I think that's step one from a policy perspective. And unfortunately, right now, the United States is doing the opposite. We have seen the Russian invasion of Ukraine used as a lever to get all kinds of great policy wins for the fossil fuel industry in the last couple of months. So that's really unfortunate. In addition to sort of ending fossil fuel development and fossil fuel subsidies, you need more support for renewable energy. So like, people talk about the Build Back Better plan in the US and whether or not it could do anything at this point to address the climate crisis, which it's looking less and less likely every week. But there is one tiny policy thing in there that I think is important to think about, which is basically that it sort of removes some of the blocks to incentivizing utilities to invest in renewable energy. I think people forget sometimes that utilities have been a big problem on this front as well. It's not just fossil fuel companies. Utilities have tended to be a real ally to the fossil fuel industry on climate.
Amy Westervelt: [00:13:35] And a big part of that is that the way that policy has been structured around renewable energy has made it not super incentivized for utilities to embrace renewables. Those are some easy administrative fixes, really, you know, enabling utilities to make back their investments on renewables and incentivizing them to go that route. And I'm hoping that even in the absence of a massive package like Build Back Better, that there are some of these like tiny, wonky fixes that the federal government could make to energy policy in general that would incentivize a shift towards renewables. We'll see if they're able to do that given the current context. But that would be huge. I think incentivizing and supporting public transit from a policy perspective would be fantastic. And you have like multiple wins there. You see a public health benefit when public transit is supported. You see a productivity and work benefit. So there's an economic benefit there and you see emissions reductions. So more of
what Dr. Beth Sawin calls multisolving solutions, where you're able to make one policy move that delivers results on multiple levels, I think would be would be great to see more of and tend to be easier sells to the public because you're not just delivering something as purely an emissions reduction fix. It's like, "Oh, this makes your costs go down, it improves health and it makes your life more convenient. There's no reason to oppose it."
Mila Atmos: [00:15:22] Right. Right. Yeah, I think there are a lot of messaging issues, I think when it comes to selling these public policies and we're just, they're just not as good as the fossil fuel industry's messaging.
Amy Westervelt: [00:15:35] I mean, yeah, the attempts to message around Build Back Better were miserable. Miserable. It was like super in-the-weeds and really hard to understand and it sounded really expensive and right. All the fossil fuel industry had to say was like, this is so expensive and this is just a fringe climate policy, you know?
Mila Atmos: [00:15:55] Right. Right, exactly. Speaking of which, let's backtrack a little bit to the decision that the administration made, in fact, to build more fossil fuel infrastructure in the wake of the war in Ukraine. And to me, I was like, "what? What's happening? Why are we not investing in renewables in the name of national security?" This would have been like a super easy sell. But talk to us a little bit about like what happened, because I think not a lot of people know what happened.
Amy Westervelt: [00:16:21] Oh, God. It's so, it's really wild to watch because actually I'm working on a story right now that's pegged to some new research about exactly this issue of of how did, how did the fossil fuel industry capitalize on this so quickly?
Mila Atmos: [00:16:38] Right? How did they do it?
Amy Westervelt: [00:16:39] It's amazing. So, I mean, the answer is preparation. They were they were really starting in January, even. They were starting to reach out to the White House about, you know, if there are going to be sanctions against Russia, what they would feel comfortable with, because people forget that we kind of had this situation back in 2014 with Crimea. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is pretty much a repeat of that scenario and the fossil fuel industry really kind of lost out during that
invasion. So you saw Exxon really lose their shirt on a bunch of fossil fuel investments in Russia. You saw stiff sanctions really impact the industry and commodity pricing across the board, all kinds of things. They weren't prepared for that one. So in the wake of that, they thought through, "okay, if this happens again, what is our response going to be?" And you really saw them roll out that response very early on. Day One of Putin invading Ukraine, the American Petroleum Institute was on social media telling people, "see, this is why we need a strong American energy industry." And framing this totally false messaging that somehow some aggressive climate policy from the Biden administration that nobody else knew about was keeping them from producing enough oil and gas to to help out in this situation. So they were out there, taking hold of the narrative on social media and on cable news very early. And what you see in some new research coming out from Influence Map, which is a group in the U.K. that looks at lobbying and advertising from corporations and how that impacts policy. They were able to put together a report that shows the fossil fuel industry kind of having a two-week time span from like messaging launch to policy change. That's incredible.
Mila Atmos: [00:18:39] So fast. So fast.
Amy Westervelt: [00:18:41] It's like, it's unheard of. You know, no one else has that kind of juice. So, I mean, what that tells me is just like, look, this industry is still very powerful. They're very strategic and very well resourced. And I think there's been a little bit of a sense in the climate universe that, oh, as the market changes and as there's public opinion shifting against them and all of these things that all of this will sort of naturally make the fossil fuel industry weaker. And I just don't think that that's true. They're very strong and they're going to fight as long and as hard as they can. So, yeah, they were able to get control of the narrative really quickly. So that I mean by like week two of this invasion, I didn't see any media questioning the idea that American gas and oil was good for national security, that the most important thing was the price at the pump, and that the things that they were asking for would actually impact gas prices. That's a really key thing to all the stuff they are asking for is long term. None of it is short term. None of it has any impact at all on the prices that Americans are paying at the pump. But they successfully convinced everyone that they did.
Mila Atmos: [00:19:53] Right. Right. Like people don't realize that crude oil is a global commodity that is traded actively and has nothing to do with whether we have oil or not.
Amy Westervelt: [00:20:02] That's right. And that like production that increases now is not going to impact that market for at a minimum, six months, you know. So yeah, all of that has been very frustrating to watch and also is really like... It's to me, it made me think about the conversation about nationalizing oil and gas companies, which is like very fraught and, you know, really freaks people out in this country in particular. But to me, I look at that situation and I'm like, okay, if you had some kind of government involvement in the oil industry in this Russia-Ukraine situation, you could feasibly increase production and actually have it be a limited short term thing versus what has happened, which is that the fossil fuel industry was like, "well, we're only going to increase production if you can guarantee us demand until 2030." And they did! This, this whole deal that Biden signed with the EU is locking in this production level that they're increasing right now until 2030, which has absolutely nothing to do with immediate needs in Europe, you know. And what we know from history is that the fossil fuel industry has never just reduced production because demand has gone down. You can see that domestically in the US right now we've actually reduced our consumption of fossil fuels in the transportation and building sectors and their response to that has been to push and create and manufacture a new demand for more plastic. It has not been, "Oh, I guess we'll produce less." No, that's not what they do. So. Yeah, it's unfortunate to see and I think it just is another indication that it's going to require actually forcing the issue with these companies. There's no world in which they are just going to make the decision to shift to renewables and like discard their assets.
Mila Atmos: [00:22:06] Yes. Well, those assets, you know, they invested a lot of money in those things. So, you know, from their point of view, of course, I totally get that. But here's the question that... I don't know whether you can answer this, or if anybody can. How is it that the Biden administration actually agreed to this? I felt like this was low hanging fruit, you know, to be like actually in the name of national security, we are going to double down on solar and wind and whatever other technology we have. And then instead they did this and I thought, oh, what? Why?
Amy Westervelt: [00:22:36] It's wild because it's, it's really, it's so interesting to look at because you actually saw, I think for the first time, a lot of the public sort of realizing that and dependency on fossil fuels is inherently not secure. But for some reason, the administration, you know, went the opposite direction entirely. And even had, I mean,
there was that like ridiculous hearing that they had where they hauled in all of the oil and gas executives to kind of browbeat them for high gas prices and ended up with like a bunch of Democrats imploring oil and gas executives to produce more oil and gas.
Mila Atmos: [00:23:18] Yes. Yes. So perverse. It's like... or, you know, to allow the ethanol blend gasoline sale this summer, which actually produces more smog in hot weather. It's like, no.
Amy Westervelt: [00:23:30] Right.
Mila Atmos: [00:23:31] We're going in the wrong direction.
Amy Westervelt: [00:23:32] Yeah, it's very much the wrong direction. So honestly, I think that the Biden administration and a large segment of the Democratic Party in general is just operating in a world that doesn't exist anymore. I really think that, like they're playing this political game and not realizing that the math has changed. I think that they think, "oh, well, we don't want to be seen as, you know, putting climate policy above price at the pump" and have just totally ceded that narrative to the industry and think that being friendly to oil and gas will win them votes come November. And I just think they're wrong. And I think that they're not understanding how much the context has changed or that climate is just not the same as other political issues. I see politicians talk about this all the time in the same way that they'll talk about health care policy or transportation policy. Those are all situations where if you lose one fight, it's okay. Like you'll you'll live to fight another day and you can come back to the drawing board and make incremental change and all of those things. It's not the same with climate. And I just don't think that there's an understanding of that in that administration or in the Democratic Party in general, which is not to say that Democrats are just as bad as Republicans or any of these things that people... That people throw out, like, I do think there's a difference between politicians that feel like they need to do something on climate and politicians that don't think they have to do anything at all. But unfortunately, they're again, like, actually, when it comes to climate, both are bad.
Mila Atmos: [00:25:28] We're taking a quick break to thank our sponsor, and when we come back, Amy is going to explain why the fossil fuel industry has invested so heavily in cultural and academic institutions -- another frontier for decarbonization.
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Mila Atmos: [00:28:17] Let's return to our conversation with Amy Westervelt. There is another kind of decarbonization challenge that goes beyond energy supply and infrastructure, which is the way in which carbon fuel interests are intertwined with our governmental, academic, and even cultural institutions. And a lot of this work is not visible to the naked eye, but has been a central focus of the work that you do. So could
you help us see it and shine a light on where these interests are lurking and what forcing the issue on all these fronts might look like?
Amy Westervelt: [00:28:50] Yeah, I think this is an important thing to look at because people often look at climate accountability and think, "Oh, you just want to beat up on oil companies, or you just want to have someone to blame for this problem." And to me, I look at it as, no, I want to really understand how we got to this place where a fairly small group of people have locked us into decisions that impact the whole world very negatively. You know, like, how do you get how do you get there and how do you start to solve that problem in a way that doesn't land us in a similar place 100 years from now? So I think that there's been a real focus on climate science denial in this space and how fossil fuel interests have kind of captured some of the scientific debate and how they pedaled for a long time this idea that the science was uncertain and even some are still saying, well, we're not sure it's actually as urgent as you're making it out to be and all of that kind of stuff. And that's all very relevant and important. But to me, the bigger issue is just how entrenched that industry has been in shaping the way that we think about economics, the way that we conceive of sort of the American way of life, the way that we think about the political system and what's possible within it. The fossil fuel industry has been extremely involved in funding academic research since at least the 1920s, and that's not just on the scientific front.
Amy Westervelt: [00:30:31] In fact, a lot of their investments are to economics programs and law schools and public policy schools. And the whole idea there is to shape really like the context of policymaking. So it's not just that they are lobbying Congress all the time and that they give money to lots of different politicians, which all of that is also true, but it's also that they fund a lot of the information and the thought leadership and white papers and all of that stuff that policymaking draws from. So, you know, when you start to look at that, you start to realize, oh, wow, they're actually involved in so much of the fabric of society that disentangling from that industry has a ton of follow on effects. Like, where a university is going to get that funding from if it's not from fossil fuel companies, you know, which I had one student who's working on this say, well, I would rather there be less research overall than to have half of it funded by oil companies. So that's that's a fair point. But yeah, just the level to which they are involved in in shaping not just our understanding of the problem, but the context in which we're even allowed to think about solutions. It's troubling, and I think that that's
why you see such a narrow imagination around solutions like, you know, even in the clean energy space, people can't really think outside of just replacing the energy source with something different.
Amy Westervelt: [00:32:16] That's why actually I think this chapter in the IPCC report on demand was really groundbreaking because they really were kind of like, what if we put aside? The society that the fossil fuel industry has told us we're allowed to have and thought about what people actually need and and looked at. There's this research out of Yale called the Decent Living Energy Index, where they've looked at, okay, if we're going to give everyone in the world a comfortable life in terms of access to enough food and shelter and transportation and all of these kinds of things, like how do we do that in a low emissions way? How do we do it in a way that's divorced from the fossil fuel industry? That kind of thinking is still relatively new, in part because of how much that industry has colonized academia and the whole political realm. So when we talk about climate being really more an issue of political will than technology or science, that's the thing that we need to get at is... I like the idea that that you propose there of decarbonizing those spaces as well because they're, they're just so tightly integrated into so many of the areas that we need to be able to even come up with solutions they're involved in, like venture funding, too. So a lot of like these new, you know, clean tech.
Mila Atmos: [00:33:44] Yes. They're everywhere. They're Pretending. Pretending to be doing things that they're not doing.
Amy Westervelt: [00:33:49] Exactly.
Mila Atmos: [00:33:49] I mean, they're not really pretending because they're giving them the money, but it's like chump change for them, right? Because the big thing in the back that's still running produces so much that whatever they spend on these initiatives is, you know, negligible, but it green washes their reputation.
Amy Westervelt: [00:34:06] Exactly. I think the most recent numbers are... The the company that's investing the most is BP. And it's still less than 5% of their capital expenditure in anything other than fossil fuel development. So yeah, yeah.
Mila Atmos: [00:34:20] Yeah, exactly. It's meaningless. I mean, it's not meaningless, but it's meaningful for them because, you know, it provides cover rates meaningless for their bottom line. So yeah, that's right. I have a thought there about your student who said we might do less research, but maybe when you think about it, what you were saying before, maybe we would do different research, kind of like the research that Yale does, and then maybe we would have different kinds of outcomes and different solutions. You know, in a way that we couldn't have conceived as long as we were still in the growth mindset that we need an economy that grows perpetually, which is completely unrealistic.
Amy Westervelt: [00:34:55] Right? Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, the other, the other thing that they're really involved in is culture. The way that they've sort of invested in creating and maintaining the social license to operate is very, it's just interesting. Like Shell Oil is funding Jazz Fest. You know, half of the museums in the country have funding coming from oil companies in one form or another. So they, I don't know, they really embed themselves in society in a way that makes it hard for people to criticize them or not take their money.
Mila Atmos: [00:35:32] Yeah, it's difficult. It's difficult. So I have a question about your most recent season of Drilled. It focuses on so-called renewable natural gas, which is one of the great misnomers, like a kind of linguistic greenwashing.
Amy Westervelt: [00:35:47] Brilliant. It's really yeah, it's really smart.
Mila Atmos: [00:35:49] They are. And so there have been some strides in regulating natural gas, but there has also been serious pushback from the oil and gas industry. What's the latest with that? Give us like a good state / bad state run down.
Amy Westervelt: [00:36:03] Yeah, it's been really interesting. So just in the last few years, the kind of electrify everything movement has been pushing to legislate less gas in new buildings in particular. So that's been a big push. And they had some early success. They actually kind of caught the gas industry on the back foot a little bit in a way that doesn't tend to happen that much. But they they kind of quickly recovered and they have passed preemptive bans on gas bans in 18 or 19 states now. And a big part of that push has been renewable natural gas. So this is gas that is coming from sort of
captured methane, from industrial agriculture. So concentrated animal feed operations or giant hog lots and/or landfills. And, you know, I'm not opposed to capturing methane wherever it's coming, but the most generous estimates are that renewable natural gas could only ever supply about 16% of the demand for energy. So what they're doing is they're using this kind of amazing sounding zero emissions, as they call it, alternative solution to lock in gas infrastructure that will mostly have the regular old gas flowing through it and a small percentage of renewable natural gas.
Amy Westervelt: [00:37:33] So they're presenting this to a lot of state and local governments as a free choice option that enables an even better renewable solution in the form of renewable natural gas to fuel buildings. And, you know, like six months ago, I would have said it was it was pretty evenly split because you had kind of an even number of states pushing to ban gas as you had states preempting those kinds of bans. And that's still technically the case. But I think that this big Russia - Ukraine driven turn towards more natural gas is changing the math a little bit. Again, I think the industry is is once again trotting out the bridge fuel narrative that, you know, natural gas is this handy partner to clean energy. And I mean, you're seeing just a massive boom again in all of the the big fracking fields. I was just talking to someone who was out in the Permian Basin in Texas last week who was like, yeah, it's like the most wells I've ever seen. So that's unfortunate because there again, you know. They're going to find a market for that gas.
Mila Atmos: [00:38:57] Oh, yeah, for sure.
Amy Westervelt: [00:38:59] Which, I mean, you're seeing that in the plastic realm, too, right? There's a huge build out of these ethane crackers. So we're now making plastic with ethane, which is a byproduct of fracking. And there's a huge boom because it's cheaper than petroleum. And the fossil fuel industry has laid out in every company's annual reports. They're saying like, don't worry about what's happening in buildings and cars because we have this this plastic plan.
Mila Atmos: [00:39:29] Right. I think a lot of people don't understand that plastic is made from fossil fuels.
Amy Westervelt: [00:39:34] Yeah, that's still a really big gap for some reason, even in the climate space, I'm convinced I haven't found proof of this yet, but I'm convinced that there was some kind of, like, concerted effort to get climate people to think that plastic wasn't their problem. Because I still hear that even from die hard climate advocates, that they're just not clocking that plastic is part of that. I think that's starting to shift a little bit as you're seeing more and more focus on Exxon and Shell in particular getting involved in plastic. I mean, Exxon there was a report out last year that showed that Exxon is the number one producer in the world of plastic.
Mila Atmos: [00:40:14] What? Oh, my God. That's news to me.
Amy Westervelt: [00:40:17] Number one.
Mila Atmos: [00:40:18] Number one. Well, it shouldn't surprise me, I suppose.
Amy Westervelt: [00:40:20] Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? So they're the top. They're the top producer of single use plastics right now. It's very similar to like the carbon major's report. There was this report that showed that 100 companies make 90% of all the plastic in the world and and Exxon tops that list. So.
Mila Atmos: [00:40:38] Yes, we need to outlaw producing plastic, not tell consumers to stop using plastic because that's that's really where it originates, because they're going to find a market to use the plastic, to your point. Right. Like, you know, they're going to create a market because they have the supply.
Amy Westervelt: [00:40:52] Right. Exactly. That's the, and that was like a big, big thing that that this IPCC report hammered on a few times, although unfortunately not in like the summaries that a lot of people pick up, but definitely throughout the pages of the reports themselves is that, look, this idea that the fossil fuel industry is just 100% driven by demand is not true. It's a supply driven market at this point. This is a product that's looking for a market, not the other way around.
Mila Atmos: [00:41:22] Yeah. Fascinating. Who knew, right, like this would upend economics as we know it, right? Yes. Never mind supply and demand graphs. You know, it's just one way. So I want to turn to a big idea that we kind of started with, and
that is, I think the climate crisis is a democracy problem, too. I mean, yes. So more climate instability leading to more food precarity, scarcity, energy, or even water wars, competition over dwindling resources, fueling populist and nationalist movements and strongmen, autocrats, which we've seen, of course. So but can you talk to us about how climate action could also reinvigorate democracy? Do you think that's possible?
Amy Westervelt: [00:42:07] I definitely think it's possible. I actually see community as sort of the key to solving climate, and it's also key to democracy, right. As is equality, community organizing, community strengths, all of that stuff. It's sort of like this triple benefit thing that is kind of like what we need to survive the climate crisis. It's what we need to address the climate crisis and it's what gives us actual democracy, you know. So yeah, I really, really hope that the climate movement will, in the years ahead, really, really embrace the idea that protecting democracy is climate action, that protecting votes and pushing back against voter suppression is absolutely critical to climate action. You can't pass anything if you are not protecting people's votes. That's just the way it is. And yes, I do think that we are going to see climate impacts erode democracy. I mean, you're already seeing it. Like I remember people along like maybe ten years ago saying, "oh, the, you know, conservative anti climate people are going to jump straight from climate denial to eco fascism." And I think we're already seeing that. You're already seeing people use climate as a justification for anti immigration policy and as a sort of reason to batten down the hatches on all kinds of resources. Right. So, yeah, I really I think democracy is pretty fundamental to taking any kind of action on climate, and I think it needs to be protected, like I said, not just to enable us to act on it, but also to enable us to survive it.
Mila Atmos: [00:44:01] Right? Yes, we need to survive it. So what are two things everyday people could be doing to take climate action?
Amy Westervelt: [00:44:09] I think it really depends on who those people are and where they live. So like I often talk about the need to sort of become your own climate guidance counselor. You know, like what what's needed in your community and what skills do you have? And again, I think this comes back to what we were talking about at the beginning here, that like, if you think of it in terms of having to tackle everything yourself all at once, that's never going to work. So I would say think about what's needed in your community and where you're uniquely suited to help. And I also think
that building community is really, really important. So if that's just talking to your friends and family about this issue, that's helpful. You know, if it's taking part in a mutual aid effort in your community, that's helpful. Anything you can do to strengthen ties within your community is going to be helpful both for organizing and for resilience. And I think it's like kind of a low ask. It doesn't require a huge amount of of time or money or energy, and it makes you feel good. So I think that's a good one. And especially for Americans, because I feel like we have this huge sort of cultural inheritance around individualism and this hero narrative and all of that stuff. When I talk to youth climate activists, the thing that I hear them say the most is that being part of a group is like a huge relief to them, that they don't feel that like they can't take a break when they need to because they know there's this whole group of people who are also working together on this issue. So yeah, I would say like try to find and build and strengthen your community and then also think about what are you uniquely suited to do and like how does that fit into what your community needs?
Mila Atmos: [00:46:03] All good advice. So here's my last question. There's a lot of good climate action, you know, in the IPCC report actually I think is terrific and calling out the bad actors in some sense, you know, trying to upend the way that we think about the supply and demand of fossil fuels. So looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
Amy Westervelt: [00:46:27] I would say that the thing that's making me hopeful most recently is actually the advancements on rights of nature. So this is a legal concept that gives ecosystems legal rights, which I feel like people in this country almost across the board like will immediately be like, "Oh, what do you mean? Like trees have rights?" And then I remind them that corporations have human rights and like, it starts to make more sense, you know?
Mila Atmos: [00:46:55] Yes, that's right. Corporations are people, my friend. Is that not what Mitt Romney said?
Amy Westervelt: [00:47:01] That's right. That's right. So so you're seeing the thing that's really interesting to me about rights of nature right now is that the winds that we're seeing on rights of nature in the US are all in conservative states. And that is very interesting to me because I think there's a way that rights of nature appeals to a sort of
libertarian like self reliance, community control kind of mindset that gets around some of the politicization of climate. So I think one key example is in Pennsylvania, where you're starting to see some towns embrace what's called home rule, which is a law that's on the books in Pennsylvania and I believe also Texas and Arizona that allows communities to basically like kick the state out of their affairs. So, you know, it definitely appeals to a particular type of conservative, but is also being used to impose limits on fracking that everyone has said forever is not possible in Pennsylvania. You know, so I think it's interesting to see that idea take hold in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Florida. These are not states that I would have expected ten years ago to see embracing rights of nature. And I think it's actually kind of freaking the industry out because it's not happening in San Francisco or New York or wherever it's happening in the Rust Belt. So they're they're starting to realize...
Mila Atmos: [00:48:36] Well, they're living with fracking.
Amy Westervelt: [00:48:38] Exactly. Exactly. So the industry is starting to kind of mobilize and try to pass preemptive legislation to block rights of nature. But when I talk to activists in Ohio, they were like, that's an illegitimate law. Like, we're we're just ignoring that. It's like, yes, I love it. They're like, I mean, we have a history in this country of not just, like accepting, you know, illegitimate laws. So we're just like finding ways around that, which I love. And again, I'm like, see, this is actually has like broad appeal across the political spectrum in a way that, you know, passing like an emissions reduction policy, unfortunately, doesn't. That's the political reality that we're living in. But this, I feel like, is interesting. And, you know, internationally, too, like there were some big wins on rights of nature in Ecuador recently. There's a huge integration of rights of nature with indigenous sovereignty that I think is really, really interesting and I think necessary to to push for real climate solutions. So so yeah, that's that's the area that I'm, I'm feeling some amount of of optimism.
Mila Atmos: [00:49:56] Excellent. Well, I love I love this idea of rights of nature. And, you know, to your point that it's happening in in red states where people are living, you know, side by side with the effects of fracking in their neighborhoods, which is incredibly unpleasant to live with, which people don't realize.
Amy Westervelt: [00:50:13] That's right. Yeah, right. Yeah.
Mila Atmos: [00:50:14] And like, we don't want to live like this anymore.
Amy Westervelt: [00:50:17] Yeah. It's made them realize, like, oh, this is why it's important to have some kind of an idea of, like the commons. This one person I talked to in Pennsylvania was like, Yeah, you know, at first everyone here was, was sort of like, whoa, just do whatever you want with your land. It's your decision. And then they quickly realized that if everyone does that, then the large number of people are going to be unfairly impacted by something that their neighbor decides to do. Right. So it got them thinking about, oh, well, wait a minute, this water source is kind of all of ours that we need and that we need to be able to protect. So it's interesting to me because I'm like, oh, that's that's awesome. Because someone could come at this from the standpoint of like property value or like a deep respect for nature, and it doesn't really matter what's driving them because the result is that this resource gets protected.
Mila Atmos: [00:51:14] Yes, that's right. That's right. Well, thank you very much, Amy, for being on the podcast. I really, really enjoyed this so much and it's been like a really wonderful conversation that's really wide ranging.
Amy Westervelt: [00:51:28] Yeah. Thanks for having me. The hour just flew by.
Mila Atmos: [00:51:31] Yeah, it really did. Amy Westervelt is a climate journalist and the founder and executive producer of the Critical Frequency Podcast Network. She hosts the Drilled and Hot Take podcasts.
Mila Atmos: [00:51:51] Next week on Future Hindsight, I'm joined by Jeff Clements, the president of American Promise. Their goal is to rectify the ills of the Citizens United decision and rid our politics of dark money once and for all, with a constitutional amendment.
Jeff Clements: [00:52:06] Because it is so systemically damaging to democracy and it's happening so quickly that it's hard to see. So we've just had a few election cycles since 2010. It has doubled every election cycle. So 2016 to 2020 doubled. We're now like $15 billion elections, Senate races that in 2010, the five most expensive Senate races, they
were like $10 million. They're now over $200 million. And most of that money coming from a donor class.
Mila Atmos: [00:52:35] Jeff Clements on putting the big money genie back in the bottle after Citizens United. That's next week on Future Hindsight. This episode was produced by Zack Travis and Sarah Burningham. Until next time, stay engaged.
The Democracy Group: [00:52:59] This podcast is part of the Democracy Group.