S7, Ep5 | Ben Franta on Oil on Big Campus

Speaker 1 [00:00:23] Welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt, Dharna Noor from Earther, and I are still working on pulling together another episode for our education series around what can be done about this problem of the fossil fuel industry infiltrating schools. In the meantime, I wanted to bring you the extended version of my interview with Ben Front, the Stanford University researcher we heard from last time, who discovered how much fossil fuel interests were shaping our understanding of economics in this country. Ben got into a lot more detail about things that he has seen at the university level. I think you'll find it interesting that conversation is coming up right after this quick break. This episode is supported by degrees. Real Talk About Planet Saving Careers, an original podcast from the Environmental Defense Fund. People ask me all the time what they can do about climate change, and I feel a little bit like a climate change guidance counselor sometimes.

Speaker 2 [00:02:00] The short answer

Speaker 1 [00:02:01] is, what are you good at? What are you interested in? Where can you plug in? What I like about degrees is that it helps people figure out how they could maybe use their job to make an impact. Degrees features candid conversations and takeaways from today's most inspiring climate change makers. Each episode tells the story of how one inspiring change maker found There, climate career and how you can, too. There's a new season out now, season three, and it's all about how, no matter the industry, you can find a planet saving job. I got a sneak preview of season three of degrees, and I loved it, especially the episode about Lake Street Drive, which is a green band, which is actually a lot harder to pull off than you might think. Just in terms of all of the disposable things that come along with touring and concerts and music venues trying to convince venues to reduce their waste. All of that stuff travel. How do you figure that out? It was really good, and there's lots more where that came from, too. These narrative stories will capture your attention and inspire you while giving you practical tips on how to get a climate focused career. Search for degrees real. Talk about planet saving careers anywhere you listen to. Podcasts will include a link in the show notes too big thanks to degree's for their support.

Speaker 2 [00:03:33] I was super interested to read your paper because actually, Darren and I were just saying, wow, like we were, I was pulling together a list of, you know, all of the things that either fossil fuel companies or, you know, sort of foundations that have represented them or their interests are investing at universities. And you know, there's so many of these economics research chairs in economic centers and whatever that I was like, I felt we need to fight. We need to like, you know, dig into the ways that they're trying to shape people's understanding of the economy and how it works. And then I found actually in the newsroom archives this insane like cross industry strategy with like confidential stamps all over it. That was like in as World War Two was about to end all of these, it was like Standard Oil, GM, General Electric, I can remember with the other ones were, but they were all freaking out. Maybe Ford about that, not that, you know, they were going to have a decline in sales because the government wasn't buying stuff from them anymore. They were worried that Americans, because the government had done such a good job of running everything during World War Two, that Americans would turn away from the idea of free enterprise. Oh, and they were like, This is the number one problem facing every industry. Like all hands on deck. So the problem solving

Speaker 3 [00:05:07] the problem was that the government was too competent based

Speaker 2 [00:05:12] on a ha,

Speaker 3 [00:05:13] and they didn't like how that worked.

Speaker 2 [00:05:15] Yes, that's that's so interesting. They were like, Oh, Americans might have actually really enjoyed this competent government over the last few years. You know,

Speaker 3 [00:05:27] I think it's only a matter of time before. The more you learn, the more you start to suspect that corporations have controlled your entire perception of reality.

Speaker 2 [00:05:39] Yes, like the moment you're born? Yeah.

Speaker 3 [00:05:42] Like, Oh my god, what is even real?

Speaker 2 [00:05:45] It is so disturbing. And I also just you just, yeah, you just see so many of the talking points that you still see today, you know, kind of being. I don't know being trumped up and sent out back then.

Speaker 3 [00:06:01] Well, it's, you know, the the PR techniques, they're so smart and going like one or more steps above the level of just the thing they're trying to sell. That's right. Terms of awareness. Right? And yes, like my yeah.

Speaker 2 [00:06:19] It's like they they shape the context, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 [00:06:23] It's sort of like, Yeah, I mean, don't sell. Don't don't sell water. Put people in a desert. Right, right. If I think my favorite example was in in that propaganda book, Bernays talks about when he worked for like the piano industry.

Speaker 2 [00:06:40] Mm hmm.

Speaker 3 [00:06:41] And he's instead of putting ads for pianos into like magazines. Mm hmm. It's like I went to architecture. Magazines and got them tools like prompts, highlight and talk about these celebrities homes that had a music room in them. Wow. A piano room in them and then that became like defined as like the American dream, sort of like you needed to have a music room, need to have a piano room. And then it was like people would buy houses with a piano room. They didn't know how to play the piano, but they were like, Now we need to get a piano for the piano room. But they never even had to advertise pianos.

Speaker 2 [00:07:22] Yeah, it was like, what?

Speaker 3 [00:07:24] Like, it's so. I mean, it's just so smart.

Speaker 2 [00:07:27] It's so smart. I can't remember where I read this. If it was there or somewhere else that the watch example, the like pocket watches and wristwatches.

Speaker 3 [00:07:35] I'm not sure,

Speaker 2 [00:07:37] OK, the this watch manufacturer came to him and to help. They wanted to see if they could break down the gender taboo about men wearing wristwatches because apparently at the time it was like if you were a wristwatch, you were gay. Like, only women wear wristwatches and like real men, had pocket watches and whatever. And so he commissioned a report. Who knows if it was, like, even valid. But he commissioned a report like that. U.S. soldiers? Well, first he was like, Who's the most manly man? Yeah, soldiers. And then he was like, OK. U.S. soldiers are getting picked off in the trenches when they light a match to look at their pocket watch. And so he convinced the army to make wristwatches standard issue. Yeah. And and there you go. That became like a masculine accessory, just like this guy was so smart. Yeah, he was very much, you know, he knew he was smart and like, really liked being smarter than, you know.

Speaker 3 [00:08:41] Yeah, exactly. I mean, yeah, it's kind of a godlike, yeah, sort of feeling probably to think that you're shaping people's like fundamental perceptions about, you know, what's cool, what's not cool, what's masculine, what's good, all of this stuff, right? I mean, yeah, they're making decisions that they think are their own.

Speaker 2 [00:09:04] Yes. Yeah. I mean about about, you know, like silly things like what kind of watch you're going to have, but then also about really big things. I mean, that's the thing that I find so interesting, too, is it's sort of like the same techniques, whether they're trying to sell watches or, you know, policy. So I was hoping to get you talking about. I have I think I have you telling me this story a long time ago on really bad phone tape, but when you were at Harvard and you realized that the Harvard Kennedy School had a lot of fossil fuel funding, and I think it I think it was you that said that someone didn't want students to talk to reporters about having that funding.

Speaker 3 [00:10:03] Yeah. So now you're getting into the juicy details of this is back, yeah,

Speaker 2 [00:10:11] spill the dirt, the beans.

Speaker 3 [00:10:15] Yeah, yeah. So this was back when I was a grad student at Harvard and I was working at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Hmm. And you know, that's in the Kennedy School of Government. The role of fossil fuel companies in academia had started to become a bigger issue. And this was around probably like twenty fifteen or so, for instance. I think, you know, when the journalists school journalism school at Columbia came out with the Exxon new investigation or they started doing some work related to that, then Exxon responded by kind of threatening to take away their funding in so many words, and just people became more and more interested in, you know, who's who's funding these, these programs at universities. And you know, is it fossil fuel companies and what kind of pressure does that put on those academic programs to do one thing or another study one thing or another or or not to study something? And I started to look into this issue at Harvard looking at what programs are funded by by oil companies and a lot of the programs at the Kennedy School and Government School to do with public policy were funded. And as far as I still know, as I know, they still are funded by big oil companies. You know, for example, I worked at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs is one of the most influential academic think tanks in the world. And the the founder of that founded an oil and gas company. That's how he made his fortune to begin with the Environmental Economics Program at Harvard, funded by oil companies and so on. So it's not just that public policy schools are being funded by oil companies. Sometimes it's that. The programs that are focused on climate or environment or sustainability in particular, those are often funded by the oil companies now. So back to 2015. So this issue is starting to emerge, I'm starting to write about it a little bit. Mm-Hmm. And it was seen as a very unpopular thing to do.

Speaker 2 [00:12:48] Yes, I have heard that. Yes, I remember a year you had quite a like Twitter kerfuffle. Happen about this stuff, right?

Speaker 3 [00:12:56] Oh, yes. You know, and that was even years later. I mean, that was, you know, only a few years ago. And you know, at this early stage, it was seen as just really uncouth to to raise this issue. And I even had, you know, professors at the Kennedy School who just wouldn't talk to me. You know, I think because they were upset that I was writing about the issue. But anyway, to get to the main point, once we were called into an all staff meeting for the researchers at the Kennedy School and the Belfer Center, and we were simply told instructed that, you know, if any journalists come to talk to us about, you know, oil companies funding the research done there, just don't talk to them. Wow. You know, don't talk to the journalists we don't want, you know, we were told that we don't want activists, we don't want journalists digging around and and, you know, finding out that that the programs are being funded by oil companies. And. I mean, when I heard this, I, you know, I was pretty surprised that that level of secrecy was being pursued. I mean, at that time, I was mostly working in physics because that's what my Ph.D. was in applied physics. And, you know, often we would get funded from all sorts of places, including like Department of Defense sources that, you know, not everybody would think are great. Mm-Hmm. But regardless, we always advertised and disclosed who was funding our research, and we were generally proud of it. But we definitely didn't keep it a secret, right? And so, you know, encountering the secrecy in the public policy space, I just thought that was so strange. And of course, for me. You know, and when they said, don't don't talk about this thing, you know, I wanted to talk about it. My ears perked up and I was like, you know, I was probably dozing off in the back or something. And I like my, you know, I popped up alert and I was like, Oh, that's something interesting is going on. So, yeah, you know, and but I think it speaks to the broader issue, which is which is to what degree have has the fossil fuel industry shaped the very public policy responses and paradigms and ways of thinking about climate change as a problem? Hmm. How has the industry shaped those things at the basic level, at the level of students learning about them and in universities? You know, and it's. The these these questions, you know, as we were just talking about, you know, Bernays and other masters of the craft of public perception, and they're not just shaped by, you know, the final answer that you get when you're analyzing a problem, it's shaped by how do you even think about the problem in the first place? Right? How what's the paradigm with through which you are seeing a problem defining it? You know, and that's the level that's the sort of all encompassing scale where that's relevant for when people are learning about these issues in universities, you know, among other scales. But but that's a really important one. So I think to me, that just speaks to that, that broader issue. And of course, I think since then, finally, now today there's more and more awareness that, yes, especially big oil companies have been very present and in these elite, very influential academic programs in the social sciences, in the policy arena. Mm-Hmm. And the question that's obvious that we should ask is what effect has that had? Right? What has been the influence of decades of funding from these special interests? Obviously, there's a conflict of interest when. These programs are meant to defend society against the problems that these companies are creating, and yet these programs are dependent on those companies to exist. So it's a big issue and I think the time it's more than ripe to to address it.

Speaker 2 [00:17:32] Yeah. Can you talk about some of the other places that you have seen this come up? I know that there has there's kind of oil funding at every, every, really every big university you can think of. But are there other, I guess, public policy or economics examples that you've found that were that were surprising?

Speaker 3 [00:17:52] Yeah. So you know, this latest research is a is one example some some new research that will be out soon, and by the time this airs, it might already be out. Yeah, it tracks. The activity of a group of economic consultants who were hired by the petroleum industry for decades to produce analyzes that were then used by the companies and by others imposing restrictions on fossil fuels to tell the public that it would just be way too expensive to act on climate and that in any case, climate was not going to be a big deal. So the best thing to do is just do nothing, and this was the economic ammunition. That the industry used alongside their scientific merchants of doubt. And so if you look back into the newspaper record and you know that record of communication from the oil companies, they often employed this. Two pronged strategy of. Using the scientific merchants of doubt to cast doubt on the science itself. And and by them, I mean, the the people that people like Naomi Oreskes and other historians Eric Conway and other historians have. Have documented and there, think tanks like the George Marshall Institute and so on. That's the scientific side to litigate the science. Then on the economic side, you have the economists hired by the petroleum industry often to say it's just way too expensive to do anything. And so that that's this other side that has not been examined as much.

Speaker 2 [00:19:46] And it's really.

Speaker 3 [00:19:49] It has been allowed to survive, I think, because it hasn't been examined. It's sort of flown under the radar. Yeah. And. You know, when I first noticed this, I was really shocked because I first noticed this probably around. Maybe three years ago and I I was doing, you know, academic research. One thing I do in my historical research is I'll download the entire. Online newspaper record, for example, I study the American Petroleum Institute, and so I'll download every newspaper article on an online database with the words American Petroleum Institute and global warming or climate change in their record. You know, that might be, you know, a few thousand articles, and I'll sort them in chronological order and I'll read all of them just to just to get the story, just to see what are their phases of communication. You know, what are the battles they're fighting at different times? And I was doing that over, you know, it takes many days to read that much material. But I was doing that and I noticed that like these, there are these economists that keep coming up again and again. Wow. And I was like, That's interesting. And this, you know, this was stuff from like the early to mid 1990s. Mm-Hmm. So this is a while ago I thought, Oh, I'm sure they're not, you know, doing stuff anymore. Then at the same time, I was doing this research. President Trump announced that the US was going to pull out of the Paris Agreement.

Speaker 2 [00:21:29] Mm hmm.

Speaker 3 [00:21:30] And in his speech, I think this was in twenty seventeen. He said that the Paris Agreement was going to cost, you know, an American family, you know, $4000 per year or something like that. You know, it's going to cost a lot of money. And I thought this doesn't really make sense because those parts of the Paris Agreement are not legally binding. To begin with, I thought, who are the economists that are saying this? Who wears this analysis coming from to give President Trump the talking points? You know, to say that in a speech? And I looked up the the the economic analysis that that President Trump used and it was the same people. It was the same economists that I had that I had noticed were working on these things in like the mid-nineties doing the same, giving the same talking points against the Kyoto Protocol.

Speaker 2 [00:22:25] Of course. 97. God damn it. I swear the like the the Groundhog Day ness of all of that is so infuriating. It's just wow. We're right back at the same place again in the same thing is happening, and we still don't actually know how it happened the first time. I know. And yet people, I think I find this all the time that people are like, OK, we know. We know. What are you going to work on next? And I'm like, I don't think we do. No, actually, I don't think we know. I think we've just scratched the surface. Oh yeah. Of what happened then. I agree.

Speaker 3 [00:23:00] While we have so far, I think is just a faint trace. Yeah, of what has what occurred. And I mean, there's much more. I mean, at least I feel like we're continuing to find important material, important records that reshape our understanding of what has happened and doesn't seem to be close to getting to that to the end of it, that's for sure. Yeah. You know, and people forget it's you know, in the 90s, there were some, some enterprising journalists who did notice the industry's influence right at the time. And they, you know, they're heroes. They were saying things that nobody else was saying. They were seeing things someone else was seeing. And. You know, unfortunately, just not enough people listen to them at the time, so some people noticed, but not enough people noticed. Hmm. And so, you know, just because one person noticed something at one time doesn't mean that everybody knows. Right? This very important

Speaker 2 [00:24:08] fact. Did you look into the National Bureau of Economic Research? I haven't

Speaker 3 [00:24:14] really. I haven't

Speaker 2 [00:24:15] really been. I just started looking into them. And ExxonMobil is a funder of them now. Uh huh.. Uh huh.. And the Bradley Foundation has funded them forever. They had donations for a long time from Scaife and all and all the usual suspects. But like, I'm I'm looking back now through the the Wayback Machine to see exactly when Exxon came on. So I can see, like what exactly their influence has been, because it's crazy, it's like those guys are like, you know, the president of the NBER is like the main I don't know. He's in charge of the economics program at M.I.T.. So like vice president is like runs the economics department at Harvard. It's like every, every economics department at every major university is run by someone who's part of the NBER, which sounds and acts like it's some kind of neutral, you know, or maybe government entity, but isn't it all? And and I'm just like, Oh my gosh, these guys have been influencing like how people think about economics, you know, since the twenties and they've been, you know, funded by sort of titans of industry all along, you know?

Speaker 3 [00:25:38] Yeah, it's like, how far back do you want to go? I mean, yeah, the development of neoclassical economics, which basically asserted that. You know, the economy left to its own devices would spontaneously find an equilibrium that was optimal for natural, at least magic. Yeah, I mean, you know, in many ways that was formulated as a scientific defense against Marxism. Right, right. You know, so it's like, how far back do you want to go in terms of, you know, special interest, moneyed interest, vested interests, corporate interests often, you know, trying to cultivate certain scientific ideas for political advantage? You know, and I mean, it goes back, you know, at least that far, you know, and it's been it's never stopped really.

Speaker 2 [00:26:35] Like what you see is the PR industry comes about right when like right after the very, very first regulation is passed on any industry in the U.S. and on the railroads in the late late. Eighteen hundreds and right, when people who don't look like the people who are running, all these companies start to get the vote and like, it is a tool to circumvent democracy. And and it's I don't know, I'm just even actually even with the like the economists, you know, what's this face? Ivy League created the Bureau of Railroad Economics for the railroads, and all those economists were portrayed as being totally independent. Nobody knew that that thing was created by a PR firm and funded by the industry. And those economists got quoted in every newspaper all the time about the economic implications of various policies around the railroads. You know, and that was like, what, 1890, 1897, maybe? So, yeah, I just I don't know. Totally.

Speaker 3 [00:27:48] You know, in so many of those strategies are dependent on not being seen, not being identified. You know, I mean, that's sort of the whole whole idea behind, like any third party technique, is to conceal the messenger, of course. And. You know, that's why it's so effective, often simply simply revealing what's going on. I know that's not always sufficient, but you know, it can be hugely impactful just to be able to see to recognize something. Yes. I mean, that's why when I saw, you know what was happening with President Trump in the Paris Agreement and he was using the same talking points, it is. I thought it was worth pointing out that, look, you know, we have seen this before. This isn't new, right? This is the same exact strategy, same talking points, even in the same people that you use this strategy back in mid 90s, the 2000s to fight the cap and trade, you know, domestic U.S. legislation proposals. You know, all all of these proposals for decades. It's the same thing. So, you know, at least if if we can come to recognize it for what it is, hopefully, you know, some of it's obstructing power can be taken away.

Speaker 2 [00:29:09] Can you tell us who who this economists or these economists were and a little bit about them?

Speaker 3 [00:29:15] Absolutely, yeah. So I mean, it's a small group of them, at least the group that I looked at the main one. His name is David Montgomery. And he was a well-respected. Economist he before the 90s, you know, he'd worked in the Ford administration, in the Carter administration, the the George H.W. Bush, the Bush one administration. He worked in the Energy Information Administration, so he had a lot of credentials. Mm-Hmm. And starting in the early nineties, nineteen ninety one or so the petroleum industry hired him to estimate how much it would cost to to put regulations on fossil fuels to deal with climate change. You know, so I mean, I think the first the first lesson of this history is that. Is that governments have they tried to act, you know, that early on, and that's when this sort of obstruction game really came to force, you know, three, three decades ago, essentially. Mm hmm. And you know, so basically he'd come out with an analysis that would say, Oh, if you want to reduce CO2 emissions, it's going to cost, you know, all this money hundreds of dollars per tonne of CO2. And that's going to cost all these jobs and reduce GDP and so on. And generally, he would say it's going to be really expensive.

Speaker 2 [00:30:47] Mm-Hmm.

Speaker 3 [00:30:47] And climate change is not really going to be that bad. So he had kind of two parts to it, and they were both there,, both misleading in a sense, at least because on the cost side, his models were inflating the costs based on the modeling approach and on the benefit side, as in global warming avoided. He didn't even address that. There was zero analysis. It was just simply an assertion like global warming is not really going to be that bad. I think at one point you said, if anything, it'll cost half a percent of gross national product in the year 2100, which is like, you know, it's OK. One hundred and ten years from now, you can predict that with zero analysis, OK? But you know, and then you look at, you know, look at the comparison action cost a lot. Inaction doesn't cost much. Right? You know, you do the math. And so the point was don't do anything and wait. And you know, eventually he was joined by other colleagues. They they worked at different economic consulting firms. And one of the main one they worked out over this period of time was called Charles River Associates, which still exists. I mean, it's still a major consulting firm. And but, you know, they've moved around. I think that the. The analysis that that Trump used to leave the Paris Agreement that was done by Neera Nera economic consulting different. And so they sort of moved around, but it was the same story again and again. Nineteen ninety three of the Clinton administration tried to put out what eventually was called the BTU tax, but that was this hybrid energy and carbon. It was like an energy tax that was heavier if you were carbon intensive. Mm-Hmm. And, you know, same strategy the industry litigated. The science brought out their merchants of doubt, said climate science was unproven, then brought out their economists the same group of people who said, Oh, it's going to be really, really expensive. Kyoto Protocol. Because domestic policies were failing clearly, state governments moved to the international approach through through the U.N. process. Kyoto Protocol Protocol comes out again. Exact same strategy. Now, of course, the Kyoto Protocol was, you know, adopted, but it was not ratified by the United States. Of course, the United States left that with George W with George Bush two in the early 2000s. And again, you know, it was the same strategy. It's that this is going to be economically disastrous. And the science is really is still uncertain. And, you know, it's the exact same strategy then now that that failed is back to the domestic approach again. So that's when we had this series of cap and trade bills and in the Senate, in the House, like Waxman-Markey and so on. Right. And again, it was, you know, every time there is a major climate policy proposal, it's like these same guys would just disappear again. And, you know, generally they were, you know, being commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute or other industry groups. And, you know, it was the same analysis. They were just, you know, turning the crank essentially again and again. And. You know, so it's this it's this parallel, sort of. This whole shaping of economics and eventually There, analysis became conventional wisdom, I mean by right, by a 20, 10 or so they'd already they've been at this for 20 years. Mm-Hmm. And. You know, senators were saying, look, it's like we don't even need to study because we know that they've already been saying this for 20 years and so real in a way the scientific merchants of doubt. Ultimately, you know, were they failed, I guess they over overcome their power waned, but this the economics part of their power did not really wane in the same way. And you know, the implications are larger as well because I looked at these economic, this economic consulting firm, largely because I just stumbled upon their activities. Hmm. But they were not alone. You know, there were other consulting firms doing very similar work, but also their work is not that different from the work done. At M.I.T. at the joint program, what do they do economic modeling there? That program is funded by the oil industry, not only the oil industry, but they do receive funding from the oil industry. They these groups participated in something called the Energy Modeling Forum at Stanford University,

Speaker 2 [00:35:57] which was you talking about this? It was like BP, Shell, Chevron, I mean, all of them.

Speaker 3 [00:36:03] Absolutely. And that that group is funded almost entirely by fossil fuel interests. So there is the consulting part. Then there's the academic environmental economics part. And the industries involved with both in terms of their funding and. You know, I think at the end of the day, the question is, you know, now where does this leave us? Is the analysis wrong? First of all, is a good question to ask, you know, mean, what if it's actually right now? One of the nice things about this study was that one of these economists was willing to talk to me and honestly share his perspective and experiences. And and we talked about the limitations of their models and their models were essentially based on. You know, based on assumptions that have become mainstream in American economics, like the economy performs optimally without intervention and so on. These are unscientific concepts that because they can't be tested, of course, right? And but it's just taken as an article of faith that if somebody has to do something that they're not already doing, it must be suboptimal. Right. And it's a tautological is a circular reasoning type of logic. And. You know, it's based on that, and then there are assumptions built into the model about how expensive clean energy is going to be, and it's assumed to be expensive, like forever, like really expensive, you know, and things like that. So the way the model itself is constructed, it's not really like reliable in terms of what is this actually going to cost? So that part's not really quantitatively reliable. Then you have the other side, which is the benefit side, which is not even being addressed, right? So it's it's impossible to even make a comparison in terms of is this policy worth it or not? And so, you know, at the end of the day. The public has been sold this I mean, it's a fraudulent, it's a fraudulent economic product. Right. You have economists saying we did the analysis and it's too expensive. Mm-Hmm. And you know, it's, you know, now even by their own admission, that's not true.

Speaker 2 [00:38:29] Mm hmm.

Speaker 3 [00:38:30] So and this has been going on for decades. So now the question is, what do we do about what do we do about this? Right, right. Yeah. And I think that

Speaker 2 [00:38:44] will, well, I don't know, embedded this is the thing that, like we were saying before that it's it's it's not just the, you know, proposed solutions, it's the entire framing of the problem. It's like the soup that we're all swimming in. I thought. But you you see, particularly the oil industry investing really, really heavily in making sure that no one can even think of an economy that doesn't work this way.

Speaker 3 [00:39:17] That's right, that's right, and you have, of course, you know, students who are going to school to study economics. You know, they're taught that this is the way the world works, that this is how economies work. And there's been some fascinating historical research done on the origins of neoclassical economics. And I think one of the most compelling some of the best work has been done by Philip Morris Ski, who's a historian of economics and. You know, and these shows quite convincingly, I think that neoclassical economics when it was formed, the basic ideas of it was an imitation of what physics was at that time. Mm-Hmm. And you know, physics was being seen as this pretty prestigious, like reliable science. You know, it's highly mathematical and economics wanted to sort of sigh and ties itself. And so it literally took the equations from physics at the time, and it took the ideas like ideas of spontaneous equilibrium. And it just said this is how the economy works. It just sort of asserted that and right, the sort of fatal flaw in that approach was that the physics version was was at least testable. It was at least falsifiable. And eventually it was, I mean, you know, new fields of physics were developed like like quantum physics because of the failures of the older models to explain observations. Right now, the the economics version was not based on observable variables that you can measure and test. It was simply an assertion of how the economy works. And no matter what you observe, you simply say. That's just a result of our theory more or less. And so it's not something that you can test or prove or disprove. And and so it's sort of persisted as as more of an ideology or a pseudo science, more than an actual scientific theory. And you know, this would just be a curiosity in the history of science if it were not for its major impacts on. Public policy today, and obviously its major impacts on climate change, because economists are invoking these theories in saying, you know, don't curtail fossil fuel use based on this model, it's going to be really expensive, right?

Speaker 2 [00:42:08] In saying these are the only allowable solutions. It's just it just immediately narrows what can be done about and about this, about this problem.

Speaker 3 [00:42:20] You know, and it like, like you said, it's not just the oil industry that benefits from these economic ideas. It's it's all regulated industries because embedded within. You know, the the the self optimal self optimizing market concept is the implication that regulation by nature is expensive. Mm-Hmm. That you should more or less let things go, you know, or at least you can't really go that wrong if you do so, all regulated industries have a sort of, you know, a benefit to be gained from from these these economic theories, the theories themselves are biased against regulating, you know, big industries.

Speaker 2 [00:43:03] I was looking at all of the different law and economics centers that the Olin Foundation has set up at every university. And, you know, they were like big funders of climate denial, too. But like John Allen was a chemicals guy, you know, and he and he was like tired of regulation and he was tired of, you know, I think a lot of these guys saw the the lawsuits in the 90s against the tobacco companies as like a serious threat to any industry. And they really set about creating conservative litigation infrastructure that would combat what they saw as like liberal public interest law. And it's always it's it's I don't know, in every single one of these places. It's combined with economics and specifically teaching this sort of laissez faire free market economics, as you know, an unquestionable truth. Mm hmm.

Speaker 3 [00:44:10] And you know, there's the whole economics part, but there's also there's other interesting parts that I think we're we're on the verge of being aware of. You know, like in some of in some of Exxon's internal documents from the 1980s in the late 1970s. About climate change, Exxon says they need to do research on not just the physical impacts of climate change, but on psychology, mass psychology and risk perception risk perception among laypeople, you know, just everyday normal regular people, but also among. The policymakers and government officials, you know, how how do you influence and control how people perceive this problem and how to respond to it? And you know, that's that's another area of social science that. And, you know, it appears, at least, that the oil industry was very interested in being being expert at and potentially influencing. But I think we don't, you know, I certainly don't know yet. You know what they did in that area. But I think it's it's bigger than just economics. You know, economics is sort of maybe the obvious one because it's used so much in public policymaking.

Speaker 2 [00:45:29] Mm-Hmm. Mm-Hmm. Well, and it is it's just always used when people are talking about climate action, and so we need a livable planet and people have been getting better and better right about making a human focus. But I feel like the economics argument did that from the beginning, right, where it's like, No, no, no, you can't do this because it'll make people poorer or it'll cost people jobs or, you know, like they they were so on that from from jump versus the environmental movement, which was like, you know, really stuck on trees and polar bears for quite a while. Mm-Hmm. Mm-Hmm. Not that, hey, I have nothing against trees, but it is. It is kind of hard to to piece it all together.

Speaker 3 [00:46:17] It is. It's sprawling, and it's one of those topics that. You only become aware of it if you're in a particular vantage point, and it's hard to get to that vantage point without being part of the issue, you know, without being sort of like it's hard to know that the Kennedy School at Harvard is funded by oil unless you're a professor at the Kennedy School, right? At that point, you're not. You're not likely to point that out to the public. Mm hmm. At least not without risking your your career or some prospects. So it's it's one of these things. It's hard for people to become aware of it if they're not, if they don't have already a vested interest in maintaining it the way it is. So I think finally, that's that's beginning to change and I don't want to, you know, criticize and I don't mean to criticize all economists. Mm-Hmm. Because. You know, this is a particular approach that I'm talking about that unfortunately has become that least for a long time, as very dominant right? And the United States at least, but it's a very diverse discipline. And I think now lately there are more and more economists who are doing really high quality work to look at. You know, how much does like sea level rise cost in terms of damage? Mm hmm. You know, when you get a very different view of the cost of climate change, if you use that bottom up approach rather than the sort of predetermined top down approach that was being used before. So it's it's also largely a matter of methodology. And this is beginning to change. And I think, you know, why is it important whether the industry is funding the work? Well now, like if the industry is is not as dominant, then there is going to be that room for, you know, other economists to use different, different approaches.

Speaker 2 [00:48:22] Right, right, right.

Speaker 3 [00:48:24] And you know, it's all a matter of what gets amplified and what doesn't.

Speaker 2 [00:48:29] I'm curious about that because I feel like with a lot of the kind of more obvious oil funding of research, you know, the funding research into energy alternatives and things like that that there is pretty clearly laid out. I mean, like actually, Stanford even has had this on their website for the

Speaker 3 [00:48:52] Global Climate Energy Project.

Speaker 2 [00:48:54] Yeah. Yeah, they had like on their website, sort of, you know, here's how we select projects and here's who weighs in where. And I mean, they just straight up admitted that the funders had the final call on what would get funded for research. But I don't think that's the case with the economic stuff, and it's also just not as not as straightforward. So did you get any have you ever, you know, from any of these things, gotten any sense of how much fossil fuel companies are dictating? You know what they want? I guess if the EPA is commissioning a study from an economist, there, just straight up telling them what, but I wonder if it's that direct in university research?

Speaker 3 [00:49:34] Yeah, I think it varies. But what I've seen is that it it doesn't have to be that direct in order to have an effect. You know, if you think about you have an entire field, let's say climate economics or environmental economics as a field, you know, if you're an industry like the oil industry, you can send someone to all the environmental economics conferences around the country, right, and monitor the research that people are doing. And there are certain paradigms and people, frankly. But you know, if you think about their work in terms of a paradigm, what they're interested in, what they're not. There are certain paradigms that are helpful for the industry and others that are not and or more or less, of course. And simply by funding certain things that you amplify that thing and that takes up more space than it would have otherwise. And so the recipient doesn't necessarily have to be even aware. You know that they're getting this money for any sort of strategic reason on the part of the industry, and I think often the recipients either are unaware or they don't like the idea, so they kind of ignore it, the possibility. But, you know, I mean, that's why in this new research, I open it with this quote from from a handbook from 1978. And this is sort of, you know, earlier. On in the sort of great modern regulatory state in the United States, you know, a lot of regulatory policies being passed in the 70s, and so the big companies are trying to figure out, well, how do we respond to this new regime? And in this in this handbook written for regulated industries to basically game the system, you know, it says one of our main recommendations is to co-opt the experts, you know, and it says, you know, this policy is made, you know, with the participation of experts, especially academics. It says a regulated firm or industry should be prepared whenever possible to co-opt these experts. This is most effectively done by identifying the leading experts in each relevant field and hiring them as consultants or advisers, or giving them research grants and the like. It requires a modicum of finesse. It must not be too blatant for the experts themselves, must not recognize that they've lost their objectivity and freedom of action, and at a minimum, it reduces the threat that these experts will testify against the industry or right against the interests of the of the industry. So this was recognized as a major central pillar of of all regulated industries strategy counter regulatory strategy. You know, from very early on, you know, from the 1970s. So, you know, in the case of climate, you know, I think what we see is that there are certain areas like, you know, the fossil fuel industry really hates renewable portfolio standards, you know, because I mean, you know, maybe your guess is as good as mine is. I'm not like super expert on renewable portfolio standards, but my impression is that they're they're hard to game. You know, it says you have to have this much renewables by this year, right? It's very straightforward, right? You know, it seems that the oil industry would much rather have a cap and trade system that it can game, that it can get little concessions with. It can manipulate the price and make it crash or make it make it soar to like, mess it up. You know, I mean, there's lots of ways to kind of mess up a cap and trade system so that it just doesn't work, right? And yeah, so you know, I see environmental economists who are big. Their whole career is based on cap and trade and doing paper after paper, after paper about cap and trade systems and how to make it optimal and how to design it for this or that, you know, they're getting funded by the oil industry. So that becomes the dominant paradigm through which people new environmental policy. Oh, cap and trade is default. Other things like renewable portfolio standard, that's that's alternative. That's what we that's not as good. You know, that's what we think about second. That's what we talk about on the last day of class if we have time. But the main thing is cap and trade. You know, even though there aren't really very many functional cap and trade systems in the world, you know, so it's like you can influence the entire way people learn about the issue. You know, another great example is hydrogen versus electric vehicles. You know, this is another thing I noticed when I was looking at industry funding was, you know, a lot of oil funding for hydrogen future, you know, for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. And like none for electric battery vehicles. And I was like, This is sort of weird. I mean, do they just think that hydrogen is better and. You know, well, I mean, obviously by this point, it's clear that at least now hydrogen vehicles are not, you know, competitive at least currently. And what a lot of people don't realize is that almost all hydrogen is made out of natural gas. And so a lot of hydrogen, you know, presumably would be either largely or significantly fossil fuel. You know, just sort of in disguise. And, you know, so it's these sort of options. It's well, we have to go to non gas vehicles. We'd rather them be hydrogen than battery. You know, it's better for us. And so through this selective funding. You know, it's not that hard to to shape the entire discussion. And of course, you know, when someone's been receiving funding for their research for decades. You know that that certainly shapes the way they think it certainly shapes, you know, where their allegiances are. Right? You know, it's going to dissuade them from, you know, rioting against the industry or testifying against it. And you know, they're going to have connections within the industry. They're going to they're going to promote the industry with their students as a place to work, you know, they're going to be getting grants. All of these things have an effect. So, yeah, I think, you know, it doesn't have to be so blatant. It doesn't have to be, you know, like a quid pro quo arrangement.

Speaker 2 [00:56:08] Yeah, I think about this with with respect to media influence all the time to like people. I don't know my my current obsession on that front is the fact that Ted Boutros, who's like Chevron's attorney, works for every major media outlet, not he's CNN's First Amendment attorney, but now he's also the New York Times attorney and reveal. And she sits on the board of ProPublica. Mm hmm. And I'm like, Yeah, like, he's not doing that because he loves the media. You know, I just think about I'm like, Well, you know, we have a First Amendment attorney, and I talked to him pretty regularly, and I talked to him about all kinds of things. And he shares his opinion as attorneys are want to do, you know, like he's a smart guy who I pay a lot of money for, in his opinion. So like, I listen to his opinion on lots of things, you know, and the idea that somehow Ted Boutrous is just lurking around the hallways of every major media outlet in the country. But it has no influence on how anyone thinks of climate liability cases just seems really unlikely. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. You know, it does seem unlikely now that you mention it clean. Yes. Yes. I'd like to keep it like it's weird to me because I'm like, Do you not know where the word influence means? Like, it's not a bribe? Like, it's subtle, you know? Mm hmm. I know.

Speaker 3 [00:57:36] Anyway, it is interesting. And that's one of the oil companies. Big defenses is their First Amendment defense. Right? But unfortunately for them, yeah, I mean, you probably know the First Amendment does not protect fraudulent communications.

Speaker 1 [00:58:10] Drilled is an original production of the Critical Frequency podcast network. This series is a collaboration with Earther, Gizmodo's climate and justice site. My co-host and co reporter for the series is Darna Noir. Our editors are Julia Richie for Drilled and Brian Kahn for Earther. Our producer is Juliana Bradley. Mixing and mastering by Peter Duff. Our fact checker is Trevor Gowan. Music is by Martin Weissenberg. Our artwork was created by Matthew Fleming. Our First Amendment attorney is James Wheaton of the First Amendment Project. You can find corresponding stories, videos and documents for this series on earther dot com. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.