S1, Ep6 | Feb 2020: More Fucking Greenwashing! With Maddie Stone

Mary Heglar [00:00:11] Hello and welcome to Hot Take the podcast where we talk about how to tell the greatest story of all time, the climate crisis. I'm Mary Annaise Heglar.

Amy Westervelt [00:00:22] And I'm Amy Westervelt. And I'm so glad to be back with you!

Mary Heglar [00:00:26] Yeah, we really missed you last time for the live show at Amherst College. Wen sends his regards.

Amy Westervelt [00:00:31] I know I'm sad I missed that, but excited that this time I get to be here while we're talking to Maddie Stone, our guest co-host.

Mary Heglar [00:00:38] Yeah. I know. I'm so excited.

Amy Westervelt [00:00:41] I knew Maddie from her work at Earther. And let's be honest from Twitter.

[00:00:44] How does one know anyone new?

Amy Westervelt [00:00:51] Yeah, but Maddie was the science editor at Gizmodo before she launched Earther. So she founded that site. It's kind of the environment site at Gizmodo. And then recently I read her bio and was like, oh, wow. She also happens to have a PhD in Earth sciences. Yeah. I feel humbled.

Mary Heglar [00:01:09] I feel I feel like I got a lot of questions and she's going to have all the answers.

Amy Westervelt [00:01:18] I know! Yeah. Maddie recently left Earther to begin freelancing and her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, National Geographic and more. Yeah, impressive, Maddie.

Mary Heglar [00:01:28] Very impressive. Yeah. I'm really excited to talk to her, too. She's really into the tech and climate beat. And with all the developments this month in particular, really this year in tech and climate and then the political scene and our inbox full of listener questions.

Amy Westervelt [00:01:43] I'm really glad we have her  to talk it all through.

Mary Heglar [00:01:46] Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited too! Also note that all the articles that we're gonna talk about here are linked, as always in our Twitter feed. That's at Real Hot Take. And we will also have links in the show notes.

Amy Westervelt [00:02:00] Yep. And please make sure that you're following us there as well. Okay. Ready to get started?

Mary Heglar [00:02:04] Yep. Let's go ahead.

Mary Heglar [00:02:11] Hey, Maddie, thank you so much for joining us.

Maddie Stone [00:02:13] Thank you for having me here.

Mary Heglar [00:02:15] Of course. So first question, how did you get into journalism and the climate beat?

Maddie Stone [00:02:19] Sure. So my plan was never to be a journalist. Both of my parents are journalists. And I kind of had this plan as a child that I was going to do anything but what my parents did. But now it's funny how life works out sometimes. So I started out on a science track. I did an undergrad studying ecology. And then I went to grad school here at Penn for environmental science. And I was really kind of setting myself up to go down this academic research track. And then a couple of years into this p._h._d program, I was already getting pretty burnt out with lab work and with sort of being very kind of deeply immersed in this one particular topic area. But at the same time, kind of felt like I was missing some of the bigger picture. And so as a bit of an escape for myself, I started blogging just in my spare time about I can relate to that science, climate and things I was passionate about. And it, you know, kind of grew and grew into this bigger and bigger hobby and part of my life. And I slowly came to realize that this was the aspect of science that really mattered to me was this public communication. And, you know, trying to demystify what science is, how science works. And some of these big picture problems facing society like climate change that have this kind of core scientific component to them. And so, you know, I finished out my p._h._d. I worked with my advisor who was really supportive of me kind of pursuing this this different path. And I worked at Penn for a little while in the communications department. So I kind of got a, you know, rudimentary introduction to the nuts and bolts of journalism through that. And by the time I finished my dissertation and I sort of hit the ground running, started freelancing at a few places and a few months after that, that a full time job at Gizmodo writing, kind of just being a general science reporter. But my environmental background, I kept getting pushed more and more to write about climate change. Actually, when I started when I kind of first struck out as a science reporter, I kind of avoided climate as a topic.

Mary Heglar [00:04:43] Why?

Maddie Stone [00:04:45] That's a great question. You know, climate has always been part of my identity. It's like it's been something that's been on my radar for so long now. It's hard to remember a time when I wasn't aware of climate change. And when I first, you know, learned kind of about the climate crisis in college, I was weirdly fascinated by this idea that, you know, humanity has the power to shape the earth in such a profound way. Then when I got into grad school and I was in a geology department, so I kind of got this deeper time perspective on climate change and that, you know, deep time perspective. And looking back at how Earth's climate has changed so much throughout history and we've really been through these apocalypses in the past and how so many of them have been driven by carbon dioxide and by climate change really made what's happening today deeply unsettling.

Maddie Stone [00:05:46] Yeah, to me and you know, frankly, by the time I left grad school and started out as a journalist, I was kind of depressed with the whole thing, both from you learning about it from a scientific perspective and sort of watching political inaction unfolding on an international scale.

Maddie Stone [00:06:03] And initially, I just I wanted to run away from it. You know, I wanted to write about space and dinosaurs and cool deep sea. Just go home. It was my editors and fellow journalists who were like, no, this is this is your area. This is what you know. You know, you should be writing about this. And so I credit my colleagues for not letting me run away from climate change.

[00:06:24] Well, I'm glad you did it, too.

[00:06:28] It's so funny. Okay, so your beat has kind of emerged as this intersection between tech and climate. What kind of drew you to that? And then what are you seeing in that realm right now?

[00:06:39] Yeah, I think I think my time at Gizmodo really has a lot to do with that. You know, Gizmodo has its roots as a consumer technology site. I was hired when the site was making an expansion into science journalism more broadly, but I was sort of hired as the first science journalist in this sea of, you know, gadget writers. And so I was kind of surrounded by folks who had this very different perspective and this very different knowledge base from me. And so I think as my beat became more and more climate, the connections with technology were always something I was thinking about. And I think ultimately what makes this very important and fascinating to me is just how pervasive technology is in our lives these days. You know, we are so much more connected than we've ever been. We have all of these high tech devices that really, you know, allow us to communicate and live our lives in a way that seemed like science fiction a couple of decades ago. And I think one of the results of just how technology has crept into our lives and taken over so many, so many different aspects of our lives is that we've just given a handful of large corporations an enormous amount of power over our future, very similar to how during the industrial revolution, societies embraced fossil fuels and inadvertently handed a huge amount of power to the fossil fuel industry. And so I see sort of the evolution of tech in the evolution of energy as having these parallels and also being intrinsically linked. So, you know, how are we going to solve the climate crisis? We're going to use technology right where we're going to build wind turbines. We're gonna build solar panels. We're going to build batteries and electric cars. We're gonna create these more efficient computerized systems to run our energy grids and our infrastructure. So we need technology. But technology is also, you know, not a democracy. It is a handful of very powerful corporations, mostly run by men who are making decisions in their financial interests, in the financial interests of their shareholders. And those interests do not always necessarily intersect with having a habitable, livable just planet. Yeah. Yeah. And I think one of the recent trends that's been really fascinating and also disturbing is to see these large tech companies that talk a big game about climate change, turning around the fossil fuel industry and being like, hey, we have all of these big data tools that can help you extract more oil faster from the ground, reduce your upstream expenditures and remain profitable and competitive. And we would like you to use them, right?

[00:09:42] Right. And they sort of like tout that out is like this is how we're helping the fossil fuel industry be more efficient. Yeah. And therefore, is reducing emissions because it's making it more efficient.

[00:09:53] So there's this fascinating greenwashing aspect to this whole thing where, you know, companies like Amazon, Microsoft and Google really I think want the world to think that they are doing everything in their power to fight climate change, you know, whether building renewable energy to power their data centers.

[00:10:13] And they are, you know, doing new green shipping things in the case of Amazon and then reporting their carbon footprints and have all these goals to reduce their carbon footprint by X amount and meeting the goals, the Paris agreement 10 years early. So, you know, they've, I think, read the room and realized that this is an issue to a lot of people and something that they need to, you know, at least take some steps and measures toward addressing.

[00:10:42] At the same time, they realize that there is a lot of money to be made in partnering with oil industry. And so how do you reconcile the fact that you, you know, are in a competition with these other tech companies for these lucrative oil contracts with the fact that, you know, your consumer base and a lot of your workers are deeply concerned about climate change? Well, the way they've tried to rationalize this is effectively to say, look, we're not going to leave the oil industry behind. We're going to, you know, make them transition into renewable energy. Businesses know our cloud computing servers are X times more efficient than their old servers that they're using.

[00:11:23] So they're using less energy and they're trying to create this like twisted argument that they're actually the ones who are going to, you know, push the oil industry to move beyond fossil fuels when it's very clear that the oil industry has no intention of doing that. So it's this really weird doublespeak situation.

[00:11:47] Yeah, yeah. That's why I think I find it so confusing.

[00:11:50] Yeah, it's very confusing. It's like this twisted logic. And, you know, Amazon put out a series of company position statements back in October. And I think a lot of credit goes to workers within Amazon who've been agitating for climate. Shen, that one of their position statements was climate change is a real and serious issue. I'm paraphrasing here, but essentially it was you know, climate change is real and corporations like Amazon need to take aggressive action to address it. The very next position statement says that Amazon will not stop working with the fossil fuel industry. We're not going to leave any industries behind.

[00:12:34] The figure is how they put it. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:12:39] But that kind of leads to my next question. So to really tackle climate change, we are going to need these companies to basically get their shit together. So how does a super rich company like a Google, like Microsoft, how would they get it right?

[00:12:54] That's a great question. You know, to be fair, I think companies like Google, like Apple, are doing a lot of good things and getting it right in some ways. So Apple has as of I think twenty seventeen might be twenty eighteen is running its entire business on renewable power.

[00:13:15] That's a green zone. You know, there's more it could be doing. It's not running its factories in, you know, South Asia on renewable power.

[00:13:25] But everything that is technically within the Apple ecosystem is running renewable and it's trying to, you know, expand the amount of renewable energy that goes into things like manufacturing. That's great. Google is also running all of its servers on renewable power. And Amazon recently reported its carbon footprint for the first time from which, you know, they were a couple years behind their competitors doing that. But they did. So these companies are taking steps in the right direction.

[00:13:52] But I think they have to really critically evaluate their entire business model and hold themselves accountable for. All of their business dealings, you know, I'm not in a position to tell Amazon it can't work with oil and gas companies. I don't really see that as my place. But I as a journalist am going to tell the public that when Amazon says its carbon footprint is 44 million tons a year, that calculation doesn't take into account the fact that it's offering A.I. tools to BP to help BP accelerate oil production and A.I. artificial artificial intelligence and Ashin learning and lots of tech buzzwords.

[00:14:41] Machine learning is basically like wishing learning as it's related to A.I., but it is basically using algorithms to mine. Tech journalist colleagues are gonna laugh at me if I get this wrong, but essentially a way of training algorithms on big data sets to make smart decisions faster.

[00:15:01] So it's like when my phone auto corrects tall to yell.

[00:15:04] Yeah, probably.

[00:15:06] There is some machine learning technology that went into your phone's ability to do that. Yeah. And so applied to the oil industry.

[00:15:13] Oil companies have these huge, enormous datasets of seismic data. So these are geologic datasets that contain information on where the next profitable oil deposit is. So what companies like Amazon and Microsoft and Google are doing is saying, hey, we have this A.I. tool that can help you sift through all of these terabytes of data far more efficiently than you were able to do before and find precisely where you should be drilling to maximize production and profits and, you know, minimize the cost of exploration. So, yeah, that's what they're doing.

[00:15:56] That's super interesting. So actually kind of in the same vein of, you know, newer tech stories and where the story is going now. Mary and I were reading your story on the high stakes fight over Bolivia's lithium, which I was super fascinated by because I remember reporting on this like win. The Morales proposal first came out and, you know, everyone was so excited and it was like, oh, this is great. And, you know, it's going to be such a big part of the clean energy economy and all this kind of stuff. And then and then actually I did some stuff on, you know, I live near Reno, so I did some stuff on the Tesla Gigafactory when it opened and they were claiming that they were doing 100 percent closed loop. Lithium battery recycling. And I was like, really? Because I don't think that's true.

[00:16:53] Interesting that they're claiming that and have provided no evidence that that is, in fact, happening. What is that?

[00:17:00] Oh, well, they claim that like they they basically can, like, take a Tesla battery and turn it into a new Tesla battery. Hood it's like, yeah, no, that's not true.

[00:17:09] So less than something like 5 percent of lithium batteries and lithium batteries, by the way, are the batteries in your smartphone, your laptop, basically all modern technology just like looking around the room. Batteries that run electric cars like Tesla's are just giant versions of the lithium battery in your smartphone. So they require a lot more lithium a lot more, you know, of these other rare metals like cobalt. And a big issue, kind of a looming future issue is that we're gonna need so much lithium and so much of these other metals to build these these very large batteries that to Tesla cars, but also for grid storage, for renewable energy. And we currently don't have technology for recycling them. And it's gonna be a huge e-waste challenge. But also, if we don't figure out good recycling methods, you know, that leaves us in a position where we're just going to have to continue extracting more of these resources from the earth. Yes, the lithium would then take the place of oil. Exactly. I mean, hopefully, you know, without the planet warming.

[00:18:18] Debbie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:18:20] But yes, I think this is another sort of untold reality or story about the climate crisis and the green energy transition that really doesn't get enough attention is just the material needs of transitioning to a system of high tech renewable energy. And you know how much of these hyper specialized metals we're going to need and these metals are mined often through these obscure supply chains that trace back to like a single mine in China or the Congo. And you know how little oversight and accountability there is now. These mines are run. And I think that is. Really concerning issue and one that the climate community as a whole needs to start grappling with a little bit more.

[00:19:10] Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah.

[00:19:13] What I loved about your article is it really comes to bear how many things are interconnected. Right. Like the political instability is a big part of it. Food shortages are a big part of it.

[00:19:26] Colonialism is a big part of why lithium. You know, these lithium mines are so problematic. And it's just it really shows how climates is the story on which all of these things happen. Right. Like if the landscape is the setting. So, yeah, great job.

[00:19:47] Yeah.

[00:19:47] I think a key point that I hope came across There, is that, you know, we need to transition off fossil fuels, but not any ends justify any means. And this is an opportunity to do things differently and not repeat these sort of extractive this colonialists relationships that we've had with resource rich, rich countries for centuries. Yeah. No. Yeah. Bolivia is a country that I think really wants to benefit from its resources. You know, the people I spoke with, they're not necessarily anti-mining, but they want these resources to be used in a way that benefit them and that accelerate their own energy transition. You know, they don't want to be plundered to supply Teslas to people in New York and London. Yeah, and that's understandable. While many of Bolivia's lithium challenges from the technical to the socio political are idiosyncratic, tensions among regional, national and international interests when it comes to a strategic mineral resource are nothing new. And the tough questions Bolivia faces about the future of its lithium. Who gets to develop it? How and who benefits are illustrative of a broader ideological battle over how the green energy revolution will play out. Will it be neo liberalism as usual, with large corporations coming into underdeveloped regions and extracting resources for their own benefit? Or will technical know how and manufacturing capacity be developed within resource rich countries like Bolivia with those countries reaping the economic rewards?

[00:21:28] If Bolivia's lithium goes commercial, will it be exported across oceans, powering up Tesla's from New York to London? Or will it stay within South America, fueling the region's own energy revolution?

[00:21:41] So the last question we ask all of our guests, what would you like to see change in climate story-telling in 2020?

[00:21:50] Obviously I'm biased, but I would like to see more stories about climate and tech, and I think we've already gotten off to a great start on that front. With 20/20, we've. Yeah. And climate have sort of been at the forefront of the conversation. So I would like to see that trend continue. I think I'd also like to see more climate storytelling from non traditional avenues and more storytelling, not from climate reporters and not even necessarily from reporters.

[00:22:22] You know, I think I'd like to see a lot more integration of, you know, art and fiction and music into how we talk about and understand climate change. This really is, you know, so much more than a scientific issue at this point. And I think storytelling through nonscientific lenses and even non journalistic lenses is going to be really important. Yeah. In terms of expanding the conversation and helping people who don't necessarily read the Guardian environment to understand how this is relevant to their daily lives.

[00:23:08] Yeah. Yeah. So jumping out of a section. Yeah. Jarring out of its section. And I think you know, a few leading news outlets are starting to take that approach a little bit more.

[00:23:20] Yeah. There's a lot more work that can be done. And I think climate journalism is still seen as this sort of niche beat area, very much intersecting with science journalism. And that perception has I think to some degree limited the ability of other beat journalists to write stories that touch on climate. One of the things I really tried to do at Earther, which is Gizmodo, some site devoted to climate and the environment which I founded, was tell stories where tell stories about climate that don't beat you over the head with.

[00:23:57] This is a climate change story where climate is more of the twist in a story that is going to interest someone. Do you know is interested in fashion or videogames or or food or music, and so that was a real goal of mine, was to sort of expand the base of people who might be reading a climate news site. And so I think that's an ongoing challenge for journalism. Yeah.

[00:24:57] So we ready for themes and trends?

[00:25:00] Yeah, let's do themes and trends. So Jeff Bezos, the richest man on earth, right? He just man on earth. Yeah. And he created a fund for climate for it with 10 billion dollars.

[00:25:13] Sounds good, but sounds good, but a lot of buts. I would say I think the first thing to point out here is just how unfathomably wealthy Jeff Bezos is. Yeah, something like less than 10 percent of his net worth. Yeah. He's not going to sweat. Ten billion dollars. Yeah. I mean it is a lot of money. Yes. It climate charity for sure.

[00:25:38] But he probably literally sweats $10Billion.

[00:25:41] Probably literally sweats. He can make that amount of money in like 15 good minutes. Honest. Well, that's what Jeff Bezos and I have student loan debt. Right. So, I mean, it's a lot of money.

[00:26:01] He broadcast it in an Instagram post that came in at just under one hundred and thirty words. So I think there's still a lot of open questions about how it will be shut. That's a very good point. Not a lot of detail there. Yes. And so, yeah, there've been just a zillion takes on this. You know, I think some of the themes that have come out are how do you practically spend 10 billion dollars?

[00:26:27] You know what? Organizations have the capacity to receive even a small fraction of this gift and put it to good use. Yeah. Where will this, you know, potentially affect the most change if we wanted to invest into research and technology? Something I explored a little bit last week. But then the big but is OK.

[00:26:49] You know, it's great to put a good chunk of money into climate change research, maybe into policymaking, maybe get some of those, you know, old climate denying representatives out of Congress.

[00:27:03] Yeah.

[00:27:05] But, you know, at the same time, he's still CEO of this giant corporation that has a sizable carbon footprint and an ever expanding presence in the oil industry.

[00:27:18] And, you know, to what degree are we supposed to ignore that? Or does he want us to ignore that because of this huge climate gift? I mean, this doesn't erase the things Amazon is doing as a company to perpetuate our dependance on fossil fuels. And I think it's important to point that out and to say that, you know, it's a lot of money. It could be put to good use. Let's hope it's put to good use. But could Amazon be doing a lot more by rethinking its ties with the oil industry? Yeah.

[00:27:57] And for sure. Yeah.

[00:28:00] And I think it's important to note that this announcement of this Beezus climate fund comes on the heels of internal company strife over climate change.

[00:28:16] Yeah. Really reaching a boiling point. Yeah. Earlier this year, you know, you have the meaning. His employees. Meaning his employees. Exactly. You have this group that goes under the banner.

[00:28:26] Amazon Employees for Climate Justice. And they've been very vocal in calling on Beezus and calling on Amazon to drop its oil contract to be more transparent in its carbon reporting to, you know, set more aggressive carbon reduction goals.

[00:28:48] And what have they gotten for it? You know, a few of them have gotten threatening e-mails from H.R. telling them not to talk to the press anymore. Yeah. To their credit, they're still talking. They're still making a lot of noise.

[00:29:01] It's hard to imagine for me that Jeff Bezos announcement of this big climate gift would have happened in this way if not for, you know, that internal company pressure.

[00:29:14] I think those employees get a lot of credit here. Yeah, for sure.

[00:29:19] I think it's well, it's interesting because I think this completely follows on from what you were saying earlier about, you know, the climate activists and climate reporters are starting to look at the culpability of these big tech companies that do provide the means by which fossil fuel companies are becoming more. It's interesting. It's really interesting.

[00:29:46] What's also seemed to have happened over the past month is that the business case for fossil fuels has really just sort of lit on fire and burnt up. So BlackRock, one of the biggest investing companies in the world, has started making climate a cornerstone of his strategy, which is fascinating. And JP Morgan Chase is now the target of this big stop the money pipeline protests. This seems to be starting to gain a lot of traction.

[00:30:14] But my favorite part was Jim Cramer known her for freaking out on the TV machine and one of the most trusted people when it comes to financial strategies somehow.

[00:30:27] And he is now like completely anti fossil fuels, which is like amazing to see. So I just want to read a little bit from this op ed that he published in Real Money All Places.

[00:30:41] So lots of oil exists, are unhappy with my stance. But remember what I am? I am not about making friends. I am about making money. And I don't think I can help you make money in the oil and gas stocks anymore. They seem like a slowly melting ice cube, a wasting asset that will have down revenues unless oil jumps higher and stays higher after the events I just outlined. I don't expect that to happen.

[00:31:10] So he's not just anti fossil fuels anymore. He is. Fuck fossil. Oh yeah.

[00:31:18] But the really the really interesting thing about like his initial announcement was that he would he pointed out was that even though these stocks are actually performing from a profit perspective, that like these companies do deliver dividends to their shareholders. The what he's seeing in the investment space is that people don't care, that it's gotten to the point where the companies are so toxic that people don't even care if the stocks make money. So he was like, you know, what do you do with that? Like There,, the new tobacco, that's like you can't recover from that. These seem like their share prices are dropping even though these companies are posting revenue. Yeah, which is. It's just it's. Yeah, it's a big deal.

[00:32:03] It is that the houses falling down. And yeah. It's on fire. So it's a little late but it's falling down.

[00:32:15] Another thing is climate is emerging as this major political issue. So we're all masochists. So we watched the debates last couple of days. We saw the first one moderated by a climate journalists, which was last week. This week's was not moderated at all. I don't think didn't seem like it was moderated, like very limited moderation.

[00:32:39] And there was no climate question, right? No climate questions. And they happened in October to the fourth or fifth or sixth debate.

[00:32:47] No one's counting anymore. You can't count. It's literally no way to know.

[00:32:55] But, yeah. What did you all think of the debates?

[00:32:59] Oh, my God. Well, first of all, you know, I don't like. A few months ago, when there was still a lot of pressure for the the DNC to do a climate debate, Tom Perez's big explanation for why they weren't was that they were going to have climate questions in every single debate. So now there's been two where there hasn't been a single question about it. And I feel like there was that one that you pointed out, Mary, and I can remember which one it was, but it was. Where were the candidates were all trying to talk about climate. And the moderators were like, you know, save it for the climate.

[00:33:35] Get a room with you in climate. Yes.

[00:33:41] Yeah. But I thought that the one that where Vanessa Hawk was one of the moderators was great. There was a noticeable difference. Yeah. Having an actual climate journalist helping to sort of like formulate those questions, I think. And and then of course, like the stark contrast between that one and the one that just happened, which was still processing. Awful. It was really ahead.

[00:34:06] Yeah. I definitely feel like last week's debate was the most substantive climate conversation we've seen in the debates. And yes, it was just, you know, totally went backwards yet. Or one. Yeah, totally.

[00:34:19] Right. I mean, I think that's kind of what happens when you double the billionaires. You know, last night there were two billionaires on the stage. And, you know, I just think there needs to be a no billionaire role. But if we have to have one, just one but just one is DYRS motto is that he's more than his money.

[00:34:38] Did you you know, the one way to get more than your money and give some shit away? You're right. Can you believe in reparations, great.

[00:34:48] Give them you have them put that money where your mouth is. Yeah. Or where mine is. Shit. Pay off my bills. It's frustrating to me about it is that, you know, I don't need us to necessarily make climate change. I mean, I would love for it to be at the forefront of every debate. But I understand that there are a lot of issues that matter and that we need to discuss. It just feels like we never have a deep substantive dove into anything because of the way these debates are structured. I feel like we keep circling the bandwagoners that the right expression, I don't know. But, you know, I just yeah. It would be one thing if the debates were themed, we could have two hours devoted to the climate crisis. We could have two hours devoted to Medicare. Yeah. We could have deep substantive policy discussions about all of these topics. But instead we're just rehashing the same tired squabbles and talking points.

[00:35:46] Yeah, I do think we do go there with health care like they. They will spend like two, three segments of the debate on health care. So like we know in deep detail what they think about that. And what's weird is like they'll tell you that climate changes to our climate policy is too wonky. Health care policy is wonky as hell. You don't see every single payer point of service until the fuck that is right. But like when it comes, the climate will calm down here. We can't talk about physics.

[00:36:17] So, you know, I think themed debates would be a really, really good idea. What I did notice even in the debate where we talked about climate more was when we got to the climate segment, the candidates who had been like literally going for each other's throats. It seemed like everybody took a Xanax on that on that commercial break. Everybody was a lot calmer, a lot more staid. Basically, you could almost see them in their head thinking like, don't fuck up, don't fuck up, people.

[00:36:46] You think that speaks to the fact that until very recently, candidates were not expected to approach this subject? Yes, eeb level of knowledge and. BRIGER Yeah, they are things like health care. Yeah, for sure. And I think having a climate seems to be really show who's done their homework and who loves them.

[00:37:08] Exactly. And they really need to do it because climate has emerged as like not only one of the top issues for a significant portion of the left, this emerged as the top issue. So Robison mayor wrote a pretty good piece about this. Voters really care about climate change. And yeah, the polling data is pretty clear. People want to hear about this. Yeah. And then at the exact same time, on the right. Climate has emerged as a major political liability. And you're almost seeing that with like Donald Trump now saying that it's real with his trillion trees. Yeah, exactly. And even on the further right, people are like, yeah, it's real.

[00:37:54] That's why we've been building a wall and why we're doing, you know, why we're reverting to nationalism and fascism. Exactly.

[00:38:02] And I don't think that's.

[00:38:04] I mean, everything's related to everything. But I can't look at what's happening in Delhi and not think about the climate implications of why people would become so insular and cruel to people who are different.

[00:38:17] Right.

[00:38:19] So, yeah, that's something I worry about a lot.

[00:38:26] So, yeah, on a on a brighter note than that. Yeah. What the fuck is going on? The Washington Post.

[00:38:37] So why do you suppose published two really problematic pieces really recently? One is basically a puff piece on this antique Rhetta figure and the other is equating Bernie and Donald Trump as both climate deniers. Yeah.

[00:38:55] Maddie, you are the one who brought the antique Reddit's to my attention.

[00:39:00] Yeah. Tolst thought that that was interesting. So this was a profile of this young woman in Germany. Her name is Naomi.

[00:39:10] I can't remember her last name, but sort of seeped like SBI, IBT or something like that. Yeah.

[00:39:16] Right.

[00:39:17] And so The Washington Post had this profile of her because she is emerging as something of a new figure head for the Heartland Institute, which is a climate change denial machine.

[00:39:37] Machine. Yeah, I don't know a better way to put it than that. I mean, they, you know, put out white papers and policy documents and, you know, information for public school, high school science teachers on why climate change is not happening, why it's the sun, why CO2 is good.

[00:39:58] You know, all of the climate arguments for 30 years, the greatest hits alive and well.

[00:40:04] Yeah. Institute. What they don't have is young blood. So this is a creepy. Sounds super creepy. Apologize for putting that in the creepiest way possible. But this aging white dudes and it for us, we need young people to carry the torch.

[00:40:29] And so they seem to have found someone who meets their requirements. She has a YouTube channel. She talks about how we shouldn't panic over climate change. It's really not that bad. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[00:40:43] You know, her thing was, I don't want you to panic. I want you to feign a thing and then panic.

[00:40:48] You know, she doesn't.

[00:40:51] But, you know, it's like they they put this this kind of Tina and Gretta out of the ether and are now doing these, I guess, sponsored heartland videos with her. Yeah. Where she reads the script that somebody wrote about how, you know, this isn't a problem.

[00:41:10] But see, the thing is, if you had enough for the Heartland Institute to do that, you expect them to do that. But why? Washington Post? Why did you give this more airtime? Why did you give this more visibility? For what? What are you doing?

[00:41:23] My my issue with The Washington Post piece in particular was that they did not mention the known fossil fuel funding of the Heartland Institute. Like they they sort of casually referenced like, oh, yeah, she's on the payroll of the Heartland Institute but didn't like really explain what that means.

[00:41:42] I mean. But it was Juliet Eilperin, who's a great journalist. So I'm just like, I don't understand. I know that she knows that. So was it like taken out by an editor or what? What was the thinking there?

[00:41:54] I don't get it. Yeah. And then at this at the almost the exact same time, they they publish this piece basically saying that Bernie is a climate denier and everything he wants to do is like totally impossible and that fracking is actually our best friend. And he's just as bad as Donald Trump when it comes to climate. Only source is an oil tycoon.

[00:42:14] So like, yeah, I feel like. Larry, it's crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I forced you to read it right before. Yeah.

[00:42:24] Yeah, I did. And then I went on like a whole rant about it because on top. So first of all, like we know from internal oil company documents that like the oil company PR guys have for years, decades targeted the editorial boards of specific newspapers, The Washington Post included. This was written by the editorial board of The Washington Post. And it is basically a Q&A with the CEO of Total, which is a massive oil company. And it's like the editorial board of The Washington Post laundering an oil company, CEO's opinions for him.

[00:42:59] It's like it's I'm I'm really actually, like, shocked, too. Yeah.

[00:43:06] And like at the same time, The Washington Post, you know, just last year made an entire like multi media campaign for the American Petroleum Institute. So like, it's hard not to see those things as related. Yeah. This was like a huge ethical misstep, I think, for them. Totally.

[00:43:25] So a bit of a disturbing preview of what we're going to see more of as the campaign continues, and particularly if Bernie ends up getting the nomination. You know, you have to see more of these sort of centrist realist arguments, kind of equating a plan that really gets a lot of things right. You know, there's probably a lot of technical specifics you can quibble with there. Yes. A man who thinks that a single snow storm disproves global warming.

[00:44:01] Yeah. Yeah. How do you how do you equate those two? Yeah.

[00:44:07] No, no. Yeah. It's it's such a bad faith argument. I just. And like it's like the worst example of false equivalence. I think I've ever seen, you know, like it.

[00:44:18] I expect better. And yet it's still time to do better. Washington Post.

[00:44:28] So misinformation actually a very good transition from the Washington Post's shitty editorial to misinformation and climate. OK. So there was a study that came out recently that The Guardian covered that looked at activity around the 2017 announcement to pull out of Paris, and it showed that bots were more prevalent around denialism. Which is interesting. And I think it would be very interesting to see what they would find today, because there has been this big shift away from the science denial and back towards some other tactics that the industry has used forever, which is all this sort of like, you know, progress, innovation, America, let's all come together and make solutions like this is their new message. So, yeah, the other issue, of course, on Twitter is that bots can kind of say anything about climate or oil and those tweets can be used as promoted tweets and showed to everybody because the the new all the new Twitter guidelines around political advertising do not include issue advertising like a lot of companies do around climate change. Right. Yeah. I actually did a story for the nation recently where I I interviewed the spokesperson at Twitter about their policies. In the last question I asked him was like, no. Okay. Well, like, do you have any. What? Like what part of your policy addresses disinformation? And he was all like, you know, there's no nothing is the answer. There's no actual rule about that. People can say anything. And he was kind of like, well, you know, I mean, like there are laws about false advertising that, you know, people can't claim that like a product does something that it doesn't mean like. Yeah, but I'm talking about like disinformation. You know, and he's like, yeah, we don't really have anything in place for that.

[00:46:32] Great. Which is why report their ads every single time. Yes. Yeah.

[00:46:40] But but didn't he recently announced that they're going to discontinue like most of their greenwashing ads. Right. Yeah.

[00:46:47] But, but they're basically using that announcement to do more fucking greenwashing. It's amazing. Yeah. Fuckin brilliant ninja stunts.

[00:46:56] They act, they're just like oh we're going net zero by 2050 which they have now said at least like their CEO in not in the UK was saying that they're gonna do that mostly by carbon capture and offsets carburetor never as like nowhere near to me that anything about b.p.'s emissions. So like that's not gonna be a big part of it. And then, you know, offsets, I don't know, have always been problematic and continue to be problematic. So, yeah. And then, of course, it's like the I mean, what happened with BP was that there was a lawsuit filed against them of greenwashing and fraud because of their possibilities everywhere campaign. So they pulled that made this announcement. And now they've got a bunch of fucking ads about this announcement, which is a completely bullshit greenwashing announcement.

[00:47:47] So it's like, yeah, I also love what their whole like, oh, we're gonna like cut our emissions by this date or net zero by 2050. And then you ask for details and they're like we're going to tell you that later. We don't really know yet.

[00:48:02] We're still working. If I tell somebody, you know what they're like longer than anybody know and nine months for the details on that. Yeah. Like you had logit decades to figure this shit out.

[00:48:14] And then you're out here talking about calculate your carbon footprint, which you calculate it. You're the one who made my carbon footprint. And your.

[00:48:20] It's also important to point out that net zero by 2050 is like not a particularly impressive goal, but yeah, no, it's not carbon three like they are not talking about ending the use of petroleum products.

[00:48:36] Yeah, they're talking about relying on technology that is effectively vaporware right now in order to do some math in the future.

[00:48:45] Do some math in the future. That sounds like me in algebra class. Oh yeah. Some math in the theater to be fair.

[00:48:57] I'm really actually think that carbon capture technology is going to be a necessary part of the climate solution. I would like to see definitely these companies put their money where their mouth is and invest, you know, all their profits back into making it a reality. Yeah, that would be a step. Yeah, right direction.

[00:49:17] What a step in the right direction from the Guardian, though, is they're no longer taking fossil fuel at. Very happy to see that The Guardian newspaper when the figures. Forms there is. And speaking of fossil-fuel ads and news sources. Amy, you wrote an amazing piece in the nation about this. Tell us a little bit about it.

[00:49:41] Sure. Well, thank you for calling it amazing.

[00:49:46] Well, I also hear a lot about. Just like from knowing you that this is like one of the your biggest pet peeves.

[00:49:52] It is. It really is.

[00:49:54] And like I I wrote a story for them last year about the fact that all these newspapers, a lot of newspapers, internal brand studios are making campaigns for fossil fuel companies, multiple campaigns for multiple different companies. And and then I've been continuing to report on it since then and found that, you know, it's it's not just for profit media that has kind of an untenable relationship with fossil fuels. And I think a lot of people know this, but maybe some don't, that like, you know, fossil fuel companies basically funded all of PBS during the 70s and 80s. There, nickname was the Petroleum Broadcasting Service for quite some time.

[00:50:43] Yeah, I learned that from Drilled.

[00:50:46] Did you? Yeah. Yeah. So. Yeah. Anyway, so I was kind of digging into, you know.

[00:50:53] Okay. Well, The New York Times and The Washington Post do this, but like what are other companies doing? And I found that VOX made a whole podcast for the American Enterprise Institute, which they kind of like were weird about disclosing and I don't know. And also just sort of acted like, oh, well, we're just trying to show all sides of like everything. And it just was it was strange.

[00:51:18] And then, you know, there's a lot of stuff that Politico does all the time and axios newsletters and all of that stuff. And then I found that the woman who is the current president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was like a long time PR person. She and her husband ran a firm and they did PR for the Global Climate Coalition, which was like the main industry group that tanked Kyoto. And she also personally was on the National Coal Council during a time when they came up with the whole clean coal idea.

[00:51:58] So I'm like, okay, great. The person who's in charge of like the organization that decides, you know, where public public funding goes to public media sources was a longtime coal flack. And like, it's never really even been discussed. So anyway, I just think like I think it's important for people to. I mean, I've been kind of harping on this for a while. I really think that, like the media is overdue for for some accountability. Yeah. Of its own role in all of this stuff. And and they're so resistant to doing it. Like I've I like the reason that I keep writing this stuff in the nation is that no other outlet will publish it because they're all kind of complicit in it. You know, it's like. Well, like. Yeah.

[00:52:45] So anyway, maybe now you can get it in The Guardian.

[00:52:50] That's true, actually. I should talk to them.

[00:52:52] Yeah, The Guardian thing is interesting too, because we we ran an interview with the interim CEO on that decision and she's relieved that the reason that yeah, in Drilled.

[00:53:04] And then also on the Web site, Drilled, News.com, little plug there. But she explained that their thinking was that it's actually pretty easy to delineate fossil-fuel ads from any other type of ad because they don't advertise a product. So, you know, they're not advertising like gas at their gas stations, their advertising sort of corporate reputation and or issue and policy ideas. So it makes them sort of qualitatively different from other types of ads, which I thought was an interesting way to look at it. But anyway, yeah, it's frustrating.

[00:53:42] Yeah, well, great job. And yeah, we always have to say is that even though these things are happening at these outlets, there are really great reporters who are working there and we value their work.

[00:53:56] Yes. Yes. Very, very good. And it's true. Yeah, that's well, that's actually something that comes up every time I write one of these stories is like I get a certain number of reporters being like, are you accusing us of bias? I'm like, no, I'm accusing your boss of using your credibility to push greenwashing. Yeah. Yeah. Which should also piss you off. By the way you like. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Yes.

[00:54:28] To sort of redeem The Washington Post as we just like kind of beat up on them, they did publish the two fantastic pieces on Climate and Generation Z.

[00:54:41] One was in the main newspapers called How Climate Experts Think about Raising Children Who Will Inherit a Planet in Crisis. And they interviewed a lot of like really well respected climate expert experts about how they are dealing with, you know, climate. So I grabbed a few excerpts from There,, and I'm just going to read a couple of snippets from these experts. So.

[00:55:06] I think when a lot of people talk about climate change and having kids, they're looking to the future and despairing. For me, it makes me look at the present and be incredibly resolved.

[00:55:17] I have a large pivot in my life as a parent toward the cultivation of joy on a daily basis. It's easy to say in a lot harder to do because joy requires us to be vulnerable. It requires us to be in the moment. But now that I feel personally and intimately anchored in the future in a different way, I feel a different kind of fear. The fear is right up against my heart in a way that makes it harder to think about what comes next.

[00:55:45] It's really important to let kids know they were born into a changing world, but that they did not betray the world by being born and that they were born in a time when they can do profound good and have really transcendent, powerful impacts on the world.

[00:56:00] I think that was Sarah Mylie. Yeah, it was. Yeah. Mm hmm. So Amy is the resident mother on the show. I don't have kids. Maddie, do or do not you? OK, so let's let Amy go first. What's your how does this affect you?

[00:56:17] Yeah, I like this. I liked that they gave space to this conversation in general because I kind of feel like for the most part, for years, all we ever really got about the kind of parenting and climate was ongoing like to have or not have kids to be. And whether it's an intersection and whether it intersects with climate and how that makes you think about it and blah, blah, blah. So it was nice to hear, especially like these types of takes on it where it's like, oh, OK. Like, there's like what happens after that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

[00:56:58] And I think just to build off what Amy was saying there, I think that quote from Sarah at the end there really gets at how this debate we've been having like to have kids or to not have kids.

[00:57:11] You know, how much of a climate impact is this going to have? Is it you know, is it wrong of me to bring someone into the world when the world is in the state that it is?

[00:57:19] I think Sarah's quote and perspective there, gets it, how adults having that debate out in the open can really impact the psyche of children. Yeah. Yeah. You know how harmful it can be to here. You know, maybe you shouldn't have been born like that's a horrible message to be putting out there together.

[00:57:40] Yeah, I think it's really damaging too. Yeah.

[00:57:44] And also, I think that speaks to what comes up in the other piece in that Washington Post magazine published this month, The Emotional BURDEN of Generation Zie by Jason Pullouts.

[00:57:57] And what this one talks about is like that sense of like, should I be here? And the sense of being abandoned because this piece is talked about, it sort of takes the perspective of the kid, whereas the other one took the perspective of the parents. So I'm going to ask our parents to read the expert.

[00:58:19] Oh, OK.

[00:58:24] OK. I am.

[00:58:27] That feeling of responsibility of being let down by prior generations permeated the conversations I had. And there probably isn't a good solution aside from actually solving climate change itself. For now, parents are left to walk a tightrope between being honest and being comforting, between empowering their kids and weighing them down with the responsibility of saving the world.

[00:58:52] I loved that. Yeah, yeah.

[00:58:55] I loved this because this is something that I've written about, too, that there is this very weird kind of holding of two different realities at the same time. As like a parent, especially like as a parent who works on climate change. Yeah. Thank you. You know, I'm sort of constantly like thinking about this future, but also like having to deal with all of the immediate needs of my small children.

[00:59:19] Yeah, I think yeah. It's just kind of a weird mix. Yeah.

[00:59:26] And your boys are 3 and 6, 4 and 7.

[00:59:30] Yes. Somebody has had a birthday. They did. Yes. Roscoe turned 4 last month and.

[00:59:39] Yeah. Yeah. So. So they're little but not as little as that. You know they don't have as many constant needs as they did even like a year ago.

[00:59:49] Yeah. That's so. Yeah. To what degree would you say they are aware of your work on climate change.

[00:59:59] They're totally unaware. I would say like I don't actually. This was actually an interesting thing about this Washington Post, the like interview story. Was that like it seems like a lot of these people, maybe all of them, like, actually talk to their kids about it a lot. And I have not. I have I think they've kind of been like avoiding it. It's like they know that I sort of work on this thing, but they don't really know what it is. And yeah, I've it's it's sort of a conversation that I've avoided because it's scary to me and I think it will be, too. Yeah. So that was actually good for me to. I'm like, oh, this is good. Like, I have some. These are some good tips for how to talk about it with kids.

[01:00:46] I think. Yeah.

[01:00:52] So next, we need to get into our listener questions, and we if you want to ask us a question about climate storytelling, send it to hot takes Critical Frequency there, or it gets hot takes plur.. This week we're gonna do one and a half questions.

[01:01:13] I'll start with the travel writing question.

[01:01:19] And's. OK, I'll go ahead and read it. What climate storytelling advice would you give to non climate writers? For instance, how can travel writers do a better job writing about climate and environmental issues? There's obviously a lot of overlap between climate issues and every other sector of life. But writing honestly, emotionally and movingly about the climate can be difficult when you know your audience might push back.

[01:01:43] So I think this kind of gets a little bit into what Maddie was saying earlier about what she went to see more of in climate writing. And you kind of did this with tech, because I think when you were first writing about tech, I don't think people were making the connections to climb it. Right. Right.

[01:01:57] I mean, sometimes that connection still is not so overt. I mean, another beat area that I cover occasionally is the right to repair movement, which is about literally what it's called.

[01:02:11] It's about having the right to access parts and tools to fix your devices. And it's a big movement among, you know, tinkerers and people who run repair shops. And you might think, what on earth does that have to do with climate change? Well, companies monopolizing the ability to repair an iPhone, not going say which company might be doing that.

[01:02:34] But orange and or pear pear, let's call them pear companies monopolizing their repair ecosystem creates a you know, amplifies consumerism, makes it so that instead of holding onto that iPhone for five or 10 years, we are getting a new one every 18 months. And where does the biggest climate impact of consumer technology come? It comes in the manufacturing. It comes in producing that new device. So the right to repair movement, the ability to repair our devices outside the ecosystem of a manufacturer is directly linked to climate change and, you know, our ability to live in a more sustainable way on this planet. And so I often think about climate change kind of in the ether when I'm working on a tech story, but it's not necessarily, you know, in the lead or the nut graph.

[01:03:36] It's not something I'm I'm beating the reader over the head with. I'm draw. I try to draw people in who might have completely different interests and then try to build that connection to climate change. Yeah.

[01:03:50] I mean, so she's that. Well, I say she I don't remember. I don't think I know the gender who wrote this, but we writing about it can be difficult when, you know, your audience might push back. I think that's always a risk whenever you write about literally anything, really. And if they're pushing back against climate, like I think all you can do is be honest. Right. Like I've written about climate. That's all I write about. And I get pushback.

[01:04:18] And that's that's fine. Right. Like it's going to happen. That's kind of how, you know, you're telling the truth.

[01:04:26] And I don't really see how you can write about travel without writing about climate.

[01:04:30] Right. Like there's the travel, there's the impact of the plane. There's the impact of like what's going on where you're going. Right. Like, do you still go to Venice? Can you still go to Venice? Right. Like, you have to not only look at the weather report before you go, you have to look at the climate report before you go. So it's really just about telling the whole story and not even just the whole climate story. The whole travel story and being honest about travel.

[01:04:54] Yeah, I was going to say, I wonder if how many travel writers and maybe even this question or two might be worried not about pushback like people are like I don't want to hear about climate in my travel story, but more like, oh, if you think climate change is bad, why are you flying on? Yeah. Yeah, because there's it's sort of like a double edged sword there. You know, it's like they're a little there,. I think that particular bee is a little bit, but I guess it comes up with everything. I mean, I get people telling me I shouldn't have had kids. There's one guy that I use that replies to almost everything I tweet with like some something about how, like, I shouldn't I shouldn't have had children.

Amy Westervelt [01:05:38] So that's fun.

Mary Heglar [01:05:40] BLOCK this guy.

Amy Westervelt [01:05:43]  I feel like it gives him too much attention? He'll be like excited to be blocked

Mary Heglar [01:05:50] At least mute him.

Maddie Stone [01:05:54] I'll just say one last thing here that I think it's important as journalists to interrogate your beat in a very aggressive way.

Maddie Stone [01:06:04] And so if your beat is travel and we know that, you know, the way in which the affluent west travels is fundamentally unsustainable. I think that's something you can't ignore.

Maddie Stone [01:06:20] You know, even if you got into this beat area because you love traveling. Yeah. As a journalist, it's your responsibility to take a hard look at that. Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Amy Westervelt [01:06:31] Yeah, totally.

Mary Heglar [01:06:33] Okay. So this other question is really an amalgam of many questions that we get a lot at Hot Take. So and I don't want to be flip about it because I think people are being very earnest when they send this question in. But it's something always along the lines of like I'm a white guy and I want to be part of the climate movement, part of the climate conversation, but I don't want to get in the way. So we answer this on the first episode that we did of 2020, where we first start taking listener questions. It came up in the last episode, the live show with Wen Stephenson. We've got a few other iterations of it waiting in our inbox and kind of when Amy and I were talking about it, we're kind of like, well, we answered it basically just, you know, don't be self-absorbed, like really is what it comes down to. But it seems like that's not quite enough guidance.

[01:07:29] So in a future episode, we are planning to have someone on the show who can address it more directly, because what we're realizing is that we're struggling to answer that question because we don't know what it's like to be a white man. Right. Like, I don't know how to tell you how to navigate white male privilege because I've never had it. So is it really hard for me to be like all. Do X, Y and Z? This is how you break that cycle because like I've never had the luxury of being so self-absorbed that I need to break out of it. Right.

[01:07:58] Like, I can't relate, you know, like a lot of the times in these conversations, I'm like, well, just try not to be, you know, a narcissist. And they're like, yeah, you know, I struggle with that. I'm like, oh, well, I'm out of ideas. Okay. Like, I don't know. So, you know, so. But in the meantime, until we have that episode, I'm gonna give you a little bit of advice on what not to do.

[01:08:23] All right.

[01:08:25] Going to say this as calmly as I can, but like, just please don't do this, please do not contact a woman of color that you follow on Twitter and beg her to D.M. and then send her a very long email about what do I do as a white man, especially when she's already answered the question, especially when that question is very Googleable, especially when she's not a white man and especially when she doesn't know you.

[01:08:51] Let me just promise you this.

[01:08:53] She has shit to do and this is not on that list, so don't do that.

[01:09:00] And I sound frustrated because it is frustrating. I understand this is coming from a good place, but please don't put this work on other people who like are the victims of your privilege.

Maddie Stone [01:09:14] Sounds like you've had a little bit of experience with Mary.

Mary Heglar [01:09:16] I'm staring into the abyss right now. Yeah, I've had a little bit of experience with it. I'm glad that you're trying to, you know, get right with your privilege.

Mary Heglar [01:09:26] But yeah, Google that shit, homie!

Amy Westervelt [01:09:33] Do the reading. Do the fucking reading.

[01:09:38] Or call a white guy! Ask a white guy.

[01:09:47] I can't wait to ask our future guest whether he gets a lot of these questions because I feel like actually a better thing to do would be to find and email a white man who you think is navigating that well and find out how they did it.

[01:10:05] Yeah. A better idea. Yeah. So let's go to the standout pieces shall we. Yes. Yeah. Hurray. Yeah. So Maddie, you get to go first.

[01:10:15] Excellent.

[01:10:16] So the piece I selected is from a little while back. It's from December. We'll allow it. It is on my theme, tech and climate. And I chose it because it really helped kind of crystallizing for me that this beat area I'd been developing for that last year was not just me inventing conspiracy's in my head that there really is something going on here with big tech getting in bed with big oil. And so this was a piece that ran in Logic magazine, and it is by an engineer from Microsoft who wrote it anonymously to protect their identity, presumably, but it recounts a very specific experience they had flying into Kazakhstan, where oil company Chevron is currently engaged in attempting to develop a very large new oil project called the Tengiz oilfield contains some twenty six billion barrels of oil, according to the article, making it one of the biggest potential oil fields on the planet. The project is called Tanguy Chevre Oil, or TCO for short. So, OK, in this passage, he's talking about how Microsoft sent him to anti-Roe, a city in Kazakhstan, for a weeklong workshop to help the Tengiz oilfield adopt Microsoft technology. And specifically, he was there to talk about computer vision, which is a way of processing and analyzing digital images more efficiently for a team tasked with boosting production at this oilfield from six hundred thousand two million barrels a day. So he's sorry about how they have these daily conferences with these different Chevron teams where Microsoft engineers and account managers are presenting on different aspects of what they can offer to help Chevron in its mission of extracting more oil.

[01:12:11] And they talk about how, you know, I can be use analyze these enormous seismic data sets and how computer vision can help automate the process of going through all these images. And then something kind of strange happened. And so this is the passage I selected. But the TCO managers also wanted to talk about something else. We have a lot of workers in the oil fields. It would be nice to know where they are and what they are doing. One manager said if they are doing anything at all, this is what our Chevron partners were most keen to discuss how to better surveil their workers. TCO had 30 or 40 thousand workers on site. Nearly all local Kazakhstan Kazakhstan's. They worked on rotating shifts 12 hour days for two weeks at a time to keep the oil field running around the clock. And the managers wanted to use a-I to keep a closer eye on them. They proposed using a-I machine, learning to analyze the video streams from existing CCTV cameras to monitor workers throughout the oilfield. In particular, they wanted to implement computer vision algorithms that could detect suspicious activity and then identify the worker engaging in this activity. My Microsoft colleagues and I doubted the technical feasibility of this idea enhancing workplace safe workplace safety. Would be the reason for building the system, the managers claimed. More specifically, they hope to see whether workers were drunk on site so that they could dispatch, help and prevent them from hurting themselves in order to implement the safety measure. A quote always on algorithmic monitoring system would have to be put in place, one that would also happen to give management away to see whether workers were slacking off. The TCO managers also talked about using data from the G.P.S. trackers that they installed on all of the trucks used to transport equipments to the oil sites. They told us the workers were not trustworthy. Drivers were purportedly steal equipment to sell in the black market. Using G.P.S. data. The managers wanted to build a machine learning model to identify suspicious driving activity. It's not a coincidence that minor tweaks to the same model would also allow management to monitor drivers productivity, tracking how frequently they took bathroom breaks, for example, or whether they were sticking to the fastest possible routes. The TCO managers were also interested in Microsoft products that could analyze large quantities of text. Let's say we have the ability to mine everyone's e-mails. One executive asked What information could we find? When I reflect back on this meeting, it was a surreal experience. Everyone present discussed the idea of building a workplace panopticon with complete normalcy. The TCO managers claim that monitoring workers was necessary for keeping them safe or to prevent them from stealing. But it wasn't convincing in the slightest. We knew that they simply wanted a way to discipline their low wage Kazakhstani workforce. We knew that they wanted a way to squeeze as much work as they could from each worker.

[01:14:50] That is so creepy. I got a million shil thinking about that.

[01:14:56] Yeah. It's incredibly great. Oh dear. It's a little tangential to climate, but is that why is that not. Oh it's so. Yeah.

[01:15:09] I mean and this piece is really the you know, the through the looking glass piece for me.

[01:15:17] This is the thing that convinced me that this is some real creepy shit going on. Yeah. Yeah. You know, this needs to be brought to light.

[01:15:29] Amy, do you wanna go next?

[01:15:30] Sure. Well, my standout piece was actually written by one Mary Hagler.

[01:15:37] Yeah. Yeah. I'm not embarrassed at all.

[01:15:41] I love it, though. And she and like we published it on on my website, too, so it's like just complete nepotism all the way around.

[01:15:50] And you edited it so you know, you know through it, so good at it, then you really like the thing that I I read this week that gave me chills reading it, even though I read it a few times before. So I'll just I'm going to read it's a little bit of a long excerpt, but yeah. Was hard to pick apart. Michael, we should say the title. Oh, yeah. The title is Climate Denial by any other name.

[01:16:18] Yes. The way that carbon dioxide interacts with the atmosphere is a simple matter of physics, but you can't stop there. Not if you believe climate change is manmade. You have to examine the histories of deforestation and fossil fuel infrastructure. And if you do that, honestly, you land at colonialism and slavery and see that the climate crisis is intricately interwoven with structural racism and economic inequality and patriarchy. And I could go on. I find it nearly impossible to look at the climate crisis without seeing the consequences of all the times white folks told people of color. Wait, we'll get back to it later. To be satisfied with, quote, incremental change and not push too far to settle for Band-Aids atop a gaping festering wounds. So forgive us if our ears have turned to 10. Forgive us if we refuse to help you put on your life vest first. When you're the one farthest from the flood, we've drowned in patients long enough. Furthermore, the supposed dichotomy between climate policy and social justice has been proven false over and over to the point of exhaustion. So if you can't see the connections, it's because you don't want to. In other words, if your acceptance of the climate crisis stops with the science and fails to encompass the true roots in economic and social exploitation, you are being willfully obtuse. Your privilege is clouding your vision.

[01:17:42] You maybe your friend are in denial.

[01:17:51] Thank you, Rich. Yep.

[01:17:56] So I guess I should talk about a little bit, so I've been writing this in the back of my head for a while now since I won.

[01:18:04] It might have been like October or November. There was this really big Twitter fight that erupted around.

[01:18:12] You know, it was a book review of Naomi Klein's book that was basically saying that social justice and climate justice are not necessarily tethered and that you can have one without the other and that we don't have time to fix all the social ills of the world because climate change is too important. And it erupted into this huge Twitter fight like climate. Twitter turned into basically the Lord of the Flies for a day. And nobody got where. Nobody got anywhere. Just a bunch of people blocked a bunch of people. Right. It was like incredibly unproductive discourse. I, of course, did not agree with that assessment, but I didn't feel like talking about it on Twitter was gonna be productive because Twitter is a place where you can be angry. Twitter is a place where you can be reactionary and honestly, like hearing that type of argument from someone who's so well-respected in the climate community and, you know, has all these bonafides. I just felt like I dont want to show you my anger. I want to show you my pain because that's really what is is at the root of this. I guess that that argument can make me angry. But more than anything, it just it just hurts because like here's a smart person with who's so well respected being like, yeah, your humanity can wait.

[01:19:29] And yeah, when. Also, like my humanity is like all of the.

[01:19:34] Since I've been committed against people of color are what led us to the climate crisis. So to solve that without solving everything else is just sending treating the symptom and that the disease is high farce. And I think if we've learned anything half assed is not gonna cut it. So I decided I was going to write something that just took me a while to finally do it. And I want to thank Amy and Drilled for giving me that outlet for it, because it's not as easy to get things like this published.

[01:20:02] So thank you for that. So good, though.

[01:20:05] It is such it was totally something like it was in need of a smart and nuanced response and not just, you know, shut up, white guy. It's like, yes. But also there's like, you know, it's not even it's not even a valid approach, you know? And yeah, like people are mad. But more so it's hurtful. And it's some I don't know, it's sort of dehumanizing.

[01:20:35] Yeah. It's lazy about it that way. It's lazy. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:20:39] It's like if you agree falsely that the climate change is fossil is manmade. You got to look at like what, manmade?

[01:20:46] I mean, you can't stop there.

[01:20:49] I also find that like the shut up white guy responses that I see on Twitter all the time, like a white guy has a bad take and everybody's like, this is why all white men, he's shut up forever.

[01:20:59] Like, I find that to be really not productive and not true. And it also, like, really less white guys off the hook, you know?

[01:21:08] You mean like you tell them they got shut up forever? OK. Then they shut up forever and they don't do any of the work. Fuck that. No. You don't shut up forever. You get better. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

[01:21:19] Yeah, you can hold people accountable without shutting them down. It's not the same things.

[01:21:24] Yes. Agreed. Yeah. All right.

[01:21:26] Do you want to read your statement, though? Yeah.

[01:21:28] Mine is actually linked in the essay that you just read because it was a big part of why I wanted to write it. I was starting to notice this trend of people of color being like, you know what, fuck climate activism. I'm done. And Karen Lewis, her manners. I hope I'm pronouncing her name correctly. Wrote a piece in Vise called Why I Quit Being a Climate Activist. She's Filipino woman living in Germany, and she had been trying to find her way in the climate movement.

[01:21:57] And then just finally, it it just didn't work out. So I'll start with her excerpt. But after a while, I realized I would only be called upon when climate organizations needed an inspiring story or a diverse voice context for a campaign or to participate in a workshop for fun while everyone else was. While everyone else on the all white project was getting paid. Whenever I would question the whiteness of the spaces and how strategies didn't take race into account, I would be met with uncomfortable silences. The last time, at a nationwide movement building workshop last April, I was asked, Well, then, why are you even here? So I decided not to be there anymore. After four years of helping organize direct action speeches, workshops and countless video calls, I started hiding and declining requests. I was burned out.

[01:22:48] I was so fucking unfortunate. I mean, there's. I almost read that part of Europe piece where you talked about like the people we can least afford to lose. And it's totally true. And like, I I feel like I know the climate movement has kind of gotten better about talking about the need to have more diversity in the climate space. But this part of it, the fact that like your act also often chasing away the people that are that have persevered to actually like break into the climate. Yeah, it's terrible. Yeah.

[01:23:24] Yeah. I've been hearing this a lot. Like just in regular conversations with people about why they either left the climate movement or don't want to be part of it. And so I was really glad to see someone write like a cohesive personal essay, like outlining all of the reasons why. And what I think is that it's like a little bit of problematic and conversations about this case apart heard from people being like, yeah. Germany's not as like or Europe's not as advanced with their discussion of race and climate and the United States, our discussions very Whited.

[01:23:58] I mean, I don't know. I haven't been over there. Maybe we are radical thinking. Yeah. I don't know.

[01:24:03] I haven't been over there. Maybe we are a little bit further along, but I know American people of color who are like fuck the climate movement because of very similar experiences to this. I've almost been there myself. Like I've definitely thought about like, you know, be easier not doing this, not putting up with this shit. Right. Because you got to deal with like the denial in the movement, whereas like those same people who are denying the history come to you to decry the people who deny the science. If that those people, the people deny the science is so racist, they would never fucking talk to me.

[01:24:38] I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:24:42] I thought this was a really, really important piece and I'm really grateful to her for being brave enough to write it.

[01:24:48] Yeah, I was really moved by this piece when I first read it. Yeah. Mm hmm. And I think it really shows that while I think there have been strides taken in recent years to make the climate movement more diverse and to integrate kind of social justice and environmental justice, there's still just so much work that needs to be done so much differently at these big green organizations.

[01:25:12] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. I think we did it.

[01:25:23] So ready for March Madness? Do I get to take a nap first? Sure. Maybe. I don't know. Got any announcements for March? Oh, yeah. I'm going to London. It's my first time ever going to London. And so it's cool. You'll have fun. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:25:41] You can. I'm gonna make penance for all the carbon emissions by doing a lot of climate work while I'm there. So be on the lookout at my Twitter feed for all the events that I'll be doing there if you want to come out and talk about the climate.

[01:25:55] And I'll do my best not to make it too, you know, said yes. And I'm really sad that that means I'm gonna miss the next show, but I'll be back soon. Any announcements from you, Amy?

[01:26:07] Just kind of the ongoing Drilled where we actually are adding three, possibly four episodes to the season. So it's gonna keep going all the way through the end of March and then Drilled News. We have some big series and stories coming up and definitely pitch me if you have ideas for stories there. I'm Amy at Drilled News.com. Is that what you meant by March Madness? Oh, my God. Every month is madness.

[01:26:37] May I? Oh, yeah, I know. In the meantime, make sure that you're following us on Twitter. You can find I said at real heartache and you can find me at at Mary Hechler and you can find Amy at at Amy WESTERVELT.

[01:26:52] And big thank you to Maddie for joining us on this episode. You can and should follow her on Twitter, too. She's at the Mad Stone. Yeah.

[01:27:01] One day. Just one day.

[01:27:03] One day. And as a reminder, all the articles that we discussed are up on our Twitter and in our show notes. And please, singer climate stories, swirling questions to hot takes at Critical Frequency dawg, that's hot takes plural.

[01:27:17] Also reminder that if you like the show, please leave us a rating or a review in i-Tunes. It helps us reach new listeners. It really helps us kind of show up in people's searches.

[01:27:26] Exactly. And only leave us good reviews. People don't want to hear your shit. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Save that for the email, damn it.

[01:27:37] All right, that's enough. We'll talk to you on a couple of weeks. Yes. Back there. Bye bye. I go. I've been getting a gift. 5, 5, 5, 5. Yeah. Yes. All right. Take care, everyone. All right.

[01:27:56] Buy Your Hot Take is produced and distributed by Critical Frequency. The show is recorded and written by Mary Hagler and me, Amy WESTERVELT. Our mixer is Tyler Morrisette. You can find hot take wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget to follow us on Twitter at the real hot take and leave us a reading or review wherever you're getting the show. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you next time.

[01:28:29] See, I specifically wrote yall into your lines and you didn't say that. No, I won't do it. What? Why?

[01:28:35] You're all for me. I grew up like it should be like. Take care, dude. That's me.

[01:28:41] That's more natural. Only do this, not gender inclusive.

[01:28:45] It is gender inclusive. Dude is totally non Jen. Yeah. Then what's the point of dude? I don't know. I think that's really a stupid word. No one asked anyone from California about that word.

[01:28:55] Do it for my gender neutral use y'all. Hey, do normalize y'all that. I'm going to make that a hashtag. Normalize your normalize. All right. I'll work on it.