The December 15, 2023, episode of CounterSpin was an archival show, featuring Janine Jackson’s December 16, 2022, interview with Richard Wiles and her August 4, 2023, interview with Matthew Cunningham-Cook, both about how corporate media filtrates news about the climate crisis. This is a lightly edited transcript.
New York Times (12/13/23)
Janine Jackson: UN Climate talks have ended with an agreement that—New York Times headlines would suggest—“Strikes Deal to Transition Away From Fossil Fuels.”
Headlines are all that many people read, but they are often misleading, and sometimes they aggressively deflect from the point of the story, which in this case is that everyone who wasn’t a polluting corporate entity seemed to come away from COP28 angry, worried and frustrated at the way that fossil fuel companies have been able to not just endanger everyone with their actions, but also hornswoggle their way into media debate, such that we’re now all supposed to consider how to balance the life of humanity on the planet with the profit margins of a handful of billionaires.
Corporate news media have a lot to answer for here in terms of public understanding of climate disruption: What needs to happen? Why isn’t it happening? Few things call more for an open, public conversation about how to best protect all of us. So why can’t we have it? Well, mystery solved: The entities that are to blame for the problem have their hands in the means that we would use to debate and conceivably address it.
Put simply, we cannot have a public conversation about how fossil fuels cause climate disruption within a corporate media moneyed by fossil fuel companies. We know that, and they know that, which is why one of the biggest outputs of polluting corporations is PR, is management of our understanding of what’s going on.
CounterSpin discussed fossil fuel corporations’ lie factory about a year ago with Richard Wiles, director of the Center for Climate Integrity. We’ll hear some of that conversation again today.
Also: When you think about climate, a lot of people go in their head to a picture of clouds and butterflies and wolves. But climate policy is about money and profit and the meaninglessness of all those beautiful vistas you might imagine. At least, that’s how many politicians think of it. We addressed that with Matthew Cunningham-Cook from the Lever in August of this year. And we’ll hear some of that conversation today as well.
So: the reality of climate disruption as filtrated through corporate media, today on CounterSpin. CounterSpin is brought to you each week by the media watchdog group FAIR.
***
Center for Climate Integrity (12/9/22)
JJ: In December 2022, the House Oversight Committee revealed documentation showing that fossil fuel companies have long been well aware of their industry’s impact on climate disruption and all of its devastating effects. And then, rather than respond humanely, they’ve opted to use every tool in the box, including bold lying and aggressive misdirection, to continue extracting every last penny that they can. So it invited a question: If an investigation falls in the forest and no laws or policies or media approaches are changed by it, does it really make a sound?
The Center for Climate Integrity collects and shares the receipts on fossil fuel companies’ deception, and I spoke with Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, in December of 2022. So here’s that conversation, starting with my first question:
***
Janine Jackson: I don’t think we can assume listeners will have heard the details from this House committee. What, most importantly to your mind, did the evidence that they unearthed show, or confirm or illustrate, about the actions and intentions of fossil fuel companies with regard to climate change?
Richard Wiles: I guess the big new findings here are internal emails, internal communications, PowerPoint presentations, prepared for the CEO of the oil majors that reveal, in a number of different ways, the way they continue to aggressively mislead the public and the Congress and the media about their role in solving climate change.
So this investigation was limited to internal documents that the company might have after the Paris Agreement in 2015. The committee subpoenaed any communications that they might have had relevant to climate change since that date.
And that’s important because there’s around 28 states and municipalities, plus another 16 communities in Puerto Rico, that are now suing oil companies for basically lying about what they knew about climate change, and their ongoing deception and greenwashing.
And the committee’s work, the documents that they’ve uncovered, have really added a lot to the evidence that will support those cases, that make the case, particularly since 2015, that the companies continue to lie about their commitment to solving the problem.
Wall Street Journal (10/3/21)
And they do it in a number of different ways. I’m sure that some of your listeners have seen Exxon’s famous and seemingly never-ending ads about algae, right, which internal emails to the company make clear is never going to be any kind of a significant contributor to solving climate change, or being a carbon-free fuel.
There’s a lot more stuff in the weeds, like the companies talk about how they support the Paris Climate Accords. But then, internally, they’re saying things like, “God, please don’t say anything that’ll commit us to advocate for the Paris Agreement.”
There’s lots about how they want to position natural gas as a climate solution, when they know that it isn’t a climate solution. And they talk about that in these documents.
So the Committee’s efforts, this investigation, has produced a lot of information that is going to be helpful to holding the companies accountable in court, and also just educating members of Congress and the media about the fact that these companies are the problem, they’re not part of the solution. They’re aggressively part of the problem.
And it’s one thing to have somebody like me say that, or environmental advocates say that, or public interest groups say that. It’s another thing to be able to prove it with the company’s internal communications.
So that’s basically the contribution they made.
JJ: As a side note, this is with available information, right, because some of the biggest players just said, “Nope—transparency, public oversight, indicate our internal conversations? Nope, not going to do it.” Right?
RW: Right. The committee used its subpoena power. But the companies have fancy lawyers, and they’re not particularly interested in cooperating on this issue.
And so they did produce, I think, a million pages of documents, but probably roughly 900,000 of those pages, probably more than that, were things that were irrelevant, like company websites and whatever, that stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with what the committee wanted.
In a lot of cases, some of the players, like API, among others—that’s the American Petroleum Institute, the lobbying group for the oil industry—they would just redact page after page of these internal documents, and might give you a sentence or two.
So there was a lot of redactions, a lot of withholding. I think it’s clear that the companies and the trade association fundamentally obstructed this investigation.
But at the same time, they also knew they had to turn over something. And what they did turn over did contain a significant amount of evidence of this ongoing duplicity and deception around climate change, and their role in causing it, and their role in “solving it.”
JJ: Yeah. You know, it’s shorthanded to the House Oversight Committee, including by me, but it’s called the Oversight and Reform Committee.
And the Center for Climate Integrity, you guys seem post-weasel words, post–”yes, they do harm, but look at the good they also do”–style conciliation.
You seem to take the fact that fossil fuel industries are in bad faith, as not like, “Let’s talk about it,” but a factor to consider in what we do moving forward, right?
RW: Right, exactly.
JJ: I appreciate that. And so many people are like, “Oh, well, they’re the experts on the industry. So if we’re going to regulate them, obviously the industry needs to be part of how they define how we regulate them.” And it’s just such a merry-go-round.
And I want to ask you, as a group that steps outside of that, what are we calling for now? What is our work, concretely, now? How do we get off this dime?
Richard Wiles: “You’ve got to think about the oil industry the way you think about the tobacco industry…. Nobody is looking to the tobacco companies for healthcare policy.”
RW: You’ve got to think about the oil industry the way you think about the tobacco industry, the opioid industry, right? Nobody is looking to the tobacco companies for healthcare policy advice anymore, and the same for the opioid guys.
These guys, they caused a problem, and there was no way to work it out with them, right? They had a very profitable product, they knew it was killing people left and right, and they didn’t care at all.
And the only way they were stopped was by head-on confrontation in the courts—not the Congress, which they fundamentally own, but the courts.
And our view is that, while obviously the Congress has a role here, and we hope someday the Congress passes meaningful climate legislation, that certainly hasn’t happened yet.
We had a good energy bill this fall, but it didn’t do anything to reduce emissions or to rein in these companies.
The only way we’re going to have the kind of meaningful climate policy change that ushers in an era of renewable energy is if we actually beat the oil guys. We have to actually win. It’s not a negotiation, it’s a fight. They want us to think it’s a negotiation, because that means they’ve won; we’re talking to them.
But if anyone can think of a time in human history where the most powerful industry or interest group of that era, that time, voluntarily committed suicide, voluntarily said, “Ah, you know, we don’t want all this power, we don’t want all this money….”
JJ: “We’ll just show ourselves out.”
RW: “…go out of business,” right. Yeah, if you can show me that, maybe I’ll change my mind. But you’ve got to be pretty naive to think that’s what’s going to happen here.
And all the evidence shows that’s not true. We can say that, and there’s still powerful forces who think, “Oh, well, they’re just naive, of course you’re going to have to work with the oil guys.”
Well, no. And what these documents do is help make it clear to people who need to have it made clear to them, like members of Congress and the media, that the oil companies are the problem, period. That’s it. That’s the reason we don’t have climate policy. There’s no other reason. It’s because these very wealthy, powerful, vested interests make sure that the public is confused about climate change, that everybody thinks that they’re part of the solution, that all these things that we know aren’t true, and that this evidence helps us show are not true.
So our view is you’ve got to attack the companies, you’ve got to expose them for all the lies that they live off of. And you’ve got to make them pay, both reputationally and financially, through the courts, for their ongoing lies and deception. And for the damage that those lies do, in terms of the cost that communities face from extreme storms and hurricanes, and just the routine business of adapting to climate change.
Building a seawall we didn’t have to build. Now we need a cooling center, or suddenly we got to move the sewage treatment plant. Look, our drinking water’s loaded with salt water now. Whatever it is, all these costs that were foisted upon us by the industry, they need to pay.
And I guess our view is if they’re held accountable financially, and if people understand through that process—like they do with Big Pharma now, that opioids–not good, really bad; these companies deliberately and knowingly killed people.
If we can hang that same kind of messaging around the necks of the oil and gas industry, where it belongs, then I think we can change the conversation about how we’re going to solve climate. It’ll be a much more fruitful conversation.
And if the companies have to pay, also, if these cases are successful and the companies are made to pay for the damage that they knowingly caused—and I want to emphasize that the companies knew 50 years ago that their products would cause climate change, and they wrote it down, and they talked about catastrophes that would happen. And then they decided, at some point in the early ’90s/late ’80s, that they needed to run a massive disinformation campaign instead of tell the truth. If they’re held accountable to that, it’s a big financial cost that they absolutely deserve to have to pay.
And they’ll be very different-looking industries if they’re made to pay those costs. And at that point, maybe, just maybe, we will get the kind of climate solutions that we need.
Until we do that, I don’t think there’s any reasonable path that’s going to get us to the transformational kind of change that we need to get to, if the oil companies and gas companies are just standing in the way, as powerful as they are today, and everybody thinks that really the problem is them…
Washington Post (12/9/22)
JJ: And how long a shower they take, right? And I would love to put a pin in that right there. But I feel obliged to ask you a final question, which is that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, his takeaway, as he tweeted, was, “Second only to hydrocarbons, the biggest product of the fossil fuel industry is lies.” That’s what he took away.
But then I read this Washington Post subhead, that was, “Some oil companies remain internally skeptical about the switch to a low-carbon economy even as they portray their businesses as partners in the cause, documents say.”
I mean, uff da, what the heck is that? What’s that kind of media coverage going to get us, is what I’m saying.
RW: That’s what we’re battling against, right? There’s somehow this notion that the companies have a legitimate skepticism, and internal debates about whether or not they should really try harder on climate, and that’s what the documents showed…. No, that’s not what the documents show.
The documents show that they are lying about their commitment to solving the problem. The documents show that they’re going to increase drilling in the Permian Basin by maybe 1,000% while they’re going to say that they’re in favor of the Paris Climate Accords.
That’s what the documents showed. They showed ongoing duplicity and lies. And, yeah, that’s part of the challenge, is to get the media to report this correctly.
We’re up to that challenge. And we think the more documents come out, the clearer it’s going to be, and the more attorneys general that step up and sue these companies for consumer fraud, and the more municipalities that demand to have the cost that they are spending to adapt to climate change covered by the oil companies, like they should be, the more evidence that comes out, I think, the better we’ll do.
And the more people understand, the message in the media will change. But we got a long way to go.
But this investigation is a good step in the right direction, for sure. You’re building a wall; it’s just a brick in the wall. And at some point, it’s going to be a wall that they can’t get out around. So in the meantime, we’ll just keep building. That’s what we do.
***
JJ: That was Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, last year on CounterSpin.
Once you grasp the devastating realities of climate disruption—that it’s a now thing, not a future thing; that it will clearly hurt, first and foremost, communities that are already hurt first and most, and that the science is not wanting or confused or complicated, well, then you arrive at a question: Why isn’t the obviously needed change happening? And then you’re back at boring old politics, which means connecting officials’ opinions and actions with their money.
Matthew Cunningham-Cook does just that with the Lever. He’s also written for Labor Notes, Public Employee Press and Al Jazeera America.
We talked with him in August of this year about how boring old funding bills, in this case, supported offshore oil/gas leases, slowed down wind power leases, and defunded the US’s already very limited responsibilities under the Paris Climate Accords.
***
Janine Jackson: Welcome to CounterSpin, Matthew Cunningham-Cook.
Matthew Cunningham-Cook: Thanks so much for having me on, Janine. I appreciate it.
JJ: The latest, the last I checked, is that a crucial Atlantic Ocean circulation system, that’s a cornerstone of global climate, may collapse as quickly as two years from now. Though as Julie Hollar wrote for FAIR.org, that wasn’t enough to get it on everybody’s front page.
But truly, there is no need to cite any indicators here. Anybody who believes in science and their sensory organs knows that bad things are happening and more are on the horizon, and that there are things that we can do besides throwing up our hands and saying, it is what it is.
So tell us about your recent story that tells us that there are things stepping between what people want and what is reflected in policy.
Lever (7/25/23)
MCC: We just took a look at the latest funding bills that are winding their way through the House right now, and the different insane aspects that Republicans have added.
There’s one particular component that’s extremely egregious, that bans research on climate change’s impact on fisheries. And this is while traditionally Republican states like Alaska are dealing with the collapse of their fisheries, currently.
They’re requiring that the Biden administration issue these offshore oil/gas leases, that slows down wind power leases, and that defunds the US’s very limited responsibilities under the Paris Climate Accords.
It’s a full-on assault on basic reason, and how we respond to the climate crisis. And what we do at the Lever that is not typically replicated in the corporate media is we just line up the policy with the campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry. So the members of Congress who are championing these draconian assaults on basic climate science receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry.
And you really don’t see this in the New York Times or the Washington Post. If they do report on these types of developments, it’s usually separated from basic questions like campaign finance, which is clearly what drives these proposed changes more than anything else.
So that’s what we did, and it’s a depressing story, for sure. What we’re hoping to do is ultimately shame the corporate media into doing more reporting like this that directly lines up policy with campaign contributions. Because if you’re reporting these two issues separately, the public is just not getting the full picture.
JJ: Absolutely. And folks are misunderstanding the disconnect, because media will do a story about the way the public feels about climate disruption, or about just the horrors of climate disruption. But, as you say, it’s going to be on a separate page than a story about campaign finance, as though it’s not a direct line from A to B.
And I want to point out: Part of what’s key about the piece that you wrote is these are not things that Republicans are putting forward, this idea of supporting bad things and also preventing responsive things; they aren’t introducing them as legislation that people can look at and think about. They’re sneaking them in, right?
Lever (9/27/22)
MCC: Yeah. It’s just these small components of appropriations bills that nobody is paying attention to that, yeah, have very meaningful consequences.
One of the most important actions that the Biden administration has started to take is this Climate Disclosure Rule, which just seems so basic, which is that publicly traded companies have these massive climate risks. They should disclose those risks to their investors. And it hasn’t happened yet, and it’s been attacked by both Republicans and so-called Democrats like Joe Manchin alike.
But this is a critical step forward for the public to be able to get information about how the nation’s largest corporations are poisoning our environment, and how it not only hurts the public, but also their own investors, which includes the pension funds and retirement accounts of tens of millions of Americans.
It’s not like they’re trying to say, “Oh, let’s pass an independent piece of legislation that bars the SEC from issuing this climate rule,” because it would never pass. Instead, they’re inserting it into the appropriations process.
And it also underscores just how much more ideologically committed Republicans are than Democrats. You very rarely see Democrats, when they control Congress, trying to use the appropriations process to expand the federal government’s ability to respond to climate change, or expand labor rights. No, it’s something that Republicans do, the opposite, foreclosing actions on the environment or on labor rights.
Matthew Cunningham-Cook: “There is bipartisan commitment to letting the planet burn, but it’s not a cornerstone of the Democratic Party’s ideology.”
JJ: And then elite media come in and say, “Can’t we all just be civil?” and introduce the idea that there should be kind of a peacemaking between an overtly ideological and rule-bending (to be generous) party, and another that says, “Oh, well no, that’s not a thing that we would do.” It’s like bringing a knife to a gunfight.
And I guess the least that we would ask of media is that they at least just call it that way. At least describe it that way, instead of making it seem like it’s a balance.
MCC: And, to be clear, Democrats like Henry Cuellar receive hundreds of thousands of dollars from the oil and gas industry. He’s on the Appropriations Committee, and I’m sure he is enabling Republicans left and right.
There is bipartisan commitment to letting the planet burn, but it’s not a cornerstone of the Democratic Party’s ideology that we should let climate change go unaddressed until the human race goes extinct. That is a cornerstone of the Republican Party’s agenda, and we’re not seeing that reported.
JJ: Thank you. And let me just say, that’s where I see the Lever and Popular Information and a bunch of other outlets coming in, just to say to folks, at a baseline level, that, yes, there actually is a disconnect between what the public wants and is calling for, and what we see coming out of Congress, that there actually are obstacles there. I think we would like all journalism to play that role, but it’s good that independent journalism is stepping up.
MCC: Yeah, I agree. Yes. That’s why we started. That’s why we do the work we do, is we saw this gaping hole, and we’re working at it. Sometimes it’s not easy, but we’re just trying to get the message out there.
***
JJ: That was Matthew Cunningham-Cook from the Lever, speaking with us earlier this year on CounterSpin.
The post ‘The Only Way to Have Meaningful Climate Policy Is to Beat the Oil Guys’<br></em><span style='color:#000000; font-size: 23px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1em; font-family: 'Open Sans','sans-serif'; padding-bottom: -10px;'>CounterSpin interview with Richard Wiles and Matthew Cunningham-Cook on climate disruption and media filters appeared first on FAIR.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
