TRANSCRIPT 🔗
00:00:01
Speaker 1: Previously on drilled these advertorials, which it became clear were part of a very comprehensive exomobile climate change communication plan, whereby they took out advertorials every Thursday between nineteen seventy two and the two thousands.
00:00:16
Speaker 2: We started digging into oil company's comprehensive media influenced strategies in the last episode and will continue following those strategies today. We know that they attempted to influence reporters and editors through accusations of bias, that they paid scientists to promote theories their own scientists had proven false, and that they created the op AD, which effectively shifted coverage of climate change. In the same way that oil company publicists were able to weaponize journalists insecurities about bias against them, they were also able to exploit certain vulnerabilities in science communication and science journalism.
00:00:48
Speaker 3: Isn't what we're good at necessarily, Like if you look at the characteristics of what makes the gig scientists, it's actually often diametrically opposed to what makes a good communicator.
00:00:58
Speaker 2: That's climate scientists. Akatharine Haho a longtime leader in her field. She is a good communicator and she says between that and her gender, she's had to work twice as hard to earn credibility as a scientist. This is something I heard over and over again from scientists that the general sense is if you're good at communicating, you're either not good at science or you're not focused on it. Former Exon scientist Moral Cohen said this too.
00:01:23
Speaker 4: I mean the general attitude would feel that there would be a kind of dilution of his scientific focus. He would be taken less seriously as a scientist.
00:01:35
Speaker 2: As a company that had long employed hundreds of scientists, Exon Mobil knew this too. They also knew another key hallmark of science communication, it's a wash in uncertainty. That's in part because of how science works. Predictions that come true and repeatable studies and results build consensus over time. But scientists never closed the door on another possible explanation. It also has to do with how science funding works. Only someone not interested in future research grants would fail to include the phrase more research is needed in their report, knowing that scientists would be caught off guard by the notion that they must be certain about something, and that corporate execs are generally better at communicating than scientists. The oil industry was able to continuously call climate modeling into question even as companies like Exxon and Mobile were using those same models to prospect for fossil fuels. Here's former Exon CEO Lee Raymond giving a speech in the nineties, more than a decade after his own companies. Scientists have said there is consensus in the scientific community around climate.
00:02:40
Speaker 5: Change, the scientific evidence remains inconclusive as to whether human activities affect the global climate.
00:02:48
Speaker 2: It all played into the industry's strategy for victory, and we know that because they wrote it down in a memo that was actually published in the New York Times in the late nineteen nineties. In it, the American Patrollum Institute indicate that victory will be achieved when they can successfully help people air quotes understand that there are uncertainties in climate science. That quote recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the air quotes again conventional wisdom.
00:03:18
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00:03:50
Speaker 2: Another measure of victory, media coverage reflects balance on climate science and recognition of the validity of viewpoints that challenge the current conventional wisdom. The stated project goal in the victory memo is a majority of the American public, including industry leadership, recognizes that significant uncertainties exist in climate science and therefore raises questions among those, eg. Congress who chart the future US course on climate change. Here's our document guy Kurt Davies with that.
00:04:23
Speaker 7: They said victory will be achieved when we get uncertainty into people's mouths, and they talk about targeting science teachers and congress people and reporters specifically, and when media is turned around that they will have achieved success. And then if we don't do this now, there may be no moment when we can declare victory for our efforts. Like they knew it was now or never in nineteen ninety eight, it was getting away from them.
00:04:48
Speaker 2: The key goal of the victory strategy was to ensure that the Kyoto Protocol would not be a binding one. In fact, one of the bullet points in the portion of the memo that defines what victory would look like as quote, victory will be achieved when those promoting the Kyoto Treaty on the basis of extant science appear to be out of touch with reality.
00:05:10
Speaker 7: They have metrics on how they're going to win, how many members of Congress, number of talk show appearances, percent, immediate very scientific, multimillion dollar budgets on data centers and outreach and media and so forth, and then go to evidence of the funding, which back to the nineteen ninety eight memo, they talked about specific funding sources API Business Roundtable,
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Edison Electric Independent Patroleum Association of America, and National Mining Association and their members. So they thought they would go out to these trade associations plus the membership, which is all the oil companies, all the coal companies, all of business, and then run that money through alek C fact committed enterprisens to Fronts of Freedom at Marshal Institute. It was on the front page of the New York Times. And there you have the team, which includes two people who were on the Trump transition team, and multiple groups and companies Exon, Southern Company, and Chevron were in this room developing this plan. You know, even though it was on the front page of thew York Times, they went ahead with it.
00:06:22
Speaker 2: The plan outlined in this victory memo was crafted twenty years after Exon scientists had told executives what was happening and how bad it could be. Exon scientists Ed Garvey had long since left the company by this point, and says he watched in horror as they worked to undermine everything he and his colleagues had done.
00:06:40
Speaker 8: I found it very scary. I felt kind of powerless at that point. I really think we had something at Exon. We're going to be an energy company, and we recognize this problem, and so we're going to help direct the country away from fossil fuels. And then instead of just said no, we just we just want to make money on oil and we don't really care what happens. I mean, it upsets me. That's like I say, It's just it was definitely a missed opportunity to lead. I do think that if Exon, maybe anal company leaned on the government in the eighties to say do this, that government would have come around on.
00:07:17
Speaker 2: There were several key narratives crafted to achieve this quote victory, and let's make no mistake, the strategy was in fact victorious. Despite the fact that the memo was published in the New York Times on the cover, the strategy was nonetheless executed as laid out, and as you heard there from Kurt, some of the same folks working in the Trump administration today were part of drafting that memo twenty years ago. The most successful narratives included not just underscoring the supposed uncertainty of the science, but also painting those concerned about climate change as liberals and hippies, again, people who were completely out of touch with reality. It was the original gaslighting, making people feel crazy for believing something that there was actually a ton of evidence for. These campaigns also pushed the idea that acting on climate change was equivalent to undoing the Industrial Revolution, and they highlighted the social responsibility initiatives of oil companies to counterbalance their inaction on climate Perhaps the most insidious narrative instilling in the American public the idea that solving global warming is up to individuals, not systems. That it's about you driving too much, or eating too much meat, or changing your light bulbs, not any sort of broader systemic change. This is something oil companies repeat over and over again today. In presenting on the history of climate science to a judge in San Francisco earlier this year, Chevron attorney Ted Boutrose focused on the idea of oil companies simply supplying a demand, never mind that they also created that demand and made sure that no one knew there was a downside to it. The gospel of individual responsibility always plays well with American audiences of and this is no exception. That idea, perhaps more than any other, is so pervasive it's the first thing most people will say when climate change comes up. Last month, when the Inner Governmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, released its most recent and by far most straightforward and alarming report ever, indicating that we have roughly twelve years to act on climate, a large segment of the media devoted at least part of their coverage to the individual actions citizens can take to help go vegetarian, go solar, drive electric cars, all good stuff, but in making individuals responsible for the solution, we subtly hang the blame for the problem on them and their choices as well. The industry has also excelled in promoting mixed messages, doing just enough climate science to seem legit, admitting just enough truths not to seem totally illogical, or to use one of their own phrases out of touch with reality. Here's science historian Naomi or Reski's on that strategy.
00:09:57
Speaker 3: One of the reasons that it's so easy for people to s so doubt about climate change or any other issue is that if confusion is your goal, mixed messages are a very effective strategy. So you can say a lot of different things, and some of them may well be true, and you can even quote out of context the true things you have said in order to make it seem as if you are quite reasonable, as if you're not denying climate change, as if you're operating good faith, and that you are an entity to be trusted. But if you look at the total body of things that have been said by examobile or any of these other groups that have been involved in climate disinformation. What you see is this landscape of mixed messages in which you know there's probably some truth mixed in with an awful lot of falsehood and misinformation.
00:10:45
Speaker 2: Nowhere was this entire media strategy more apparent than in The New York Times magazine's issue long feature this year about the decade from nineteen seventy nine to nineteen eighty nine when we almost did something about global warming and then didn't. It's the perfect culmination of the industry's strategy. A journalist and an editor who want to ensure they don't come off as biased, a writer who is new to any sort of science fee and completely new to climate science, so fairly easily played by industry spokespeople, and a clever narrative that includes just enough truth that you don't really notice the fairy tales. The story makes the problem of climate change global. We all failed to act, apparently, not just the handful of men in power and the solution or lack thereof individual it's quote human nature. We make short sighted decisions, and there's nothing we can do to change that. Climate scientists were almost universally critical of the story, but the anti climate science lobby ate it up. I could hear Steve Molloy grinning through the phone. Maloy is a longtime energy industry communications guy who runs the website Junk Science. He was also in the room and is listed as an author on the victory memo. He's worked for Exon in the past and now works primarily for the coal industry, and he was also on the Trump administration's transition team for the e An agency he has worked to dismantle since its inception.
00:12:04
Speaker 9: These guys are trying to claim that, you know, excellon New Iran, he saw the you know, the combin issue. New York Times magazine has.
00:12:12
Speaker 2: A customer of that.
00:12:14
Speaker 9: Okay, don't think that kind of blows that whole hypothesis away because they're saying, well, everybody new in the nineteen eighties, Well, whatever.
00:12:27
Speaker 2: Victory will be achieved when climate denialis can cite a story in the New York Times magazine as a proof of the validity of their take on global warming. Next time on drilled.
00:12:45
Speaker 5: Literally. Since after World War Two, the fossil fuel companies have actively engaged in public relations campaigns to sell the automobile and fossil fuels as the Earthen way of Life.
00:13:04
Speaker 2: Drilled is produced and distributed by Critical Frequency. Reporting for this series was done by me Amy Westervelt. Our producer and composer is David Whited. Our executive producer is Richard Wiles. Our story and concept consultant was Raka Murphy. For cover art was designed by Lucas Lisakowski. You can find Drilled wherever you listen to podcasts. Please remember to rate and review the podcast. It helps us find new listeners. Thanks for listening, See you next time.