Transcript: AMY WESTERVELT on Uncovering Extraction /334
Ayana Young Hello and welcome to For The Wild Podcast. I'm Ayana Young. Today we are speaking with Amy Westervelt.
Amy Westervelt Since around 1980, no Global South country that has gotten into the oil business has wound up better off for it. Not one. People sometimes think or talk about colonization is this thing that happened in the past. And really, these companies have become the new colonizers.
Ayana Young Amy Westervelt is an award-winning investigative climate journalist. She writes regularly for The Guardian and The Intersect. Westervelt also runs the independent podcast production company and network Critical Frequency, where she reports and hosts Drilled, a true crime podcast about climate change and runs the company's production team on other shows, like the Peabody-nominated This Land.
Oh, Amy, I am so excited to have you here today.
Amy Westervelt I'm so excited to be here.
Ayana Young I really respect your work and have learned so much from listening to Drilled. And I just as a nother, female podcaster audio storyteller in the world, I really am excited to connect with you and share your work with our listeners. So thanks for joining us.
Amy Westervelt Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to.
Ayana Young Awesome. So as we open, I would really love to dive into a topic so much of your work deals with which is holding corporations accountable for the climate crisis. And many of us understand the realities of a changing climate and continued extraction. But I think when it comes to accountability for the crisis, things get a bit more hazy. And so what does accountability actually look like when it comes to facing the systems and organizations most responsible for climate change?
Amy Westervelt Yeah, yeah. It's a great question. And I often will have people be like, Oh, we should stop focusing on who's to blame and just focus on the solutions. And I'm kind of like, I don't really think you can have effective solutions if you don't understand where the problem comes from. And if there's never any kind of accountability along the way. So for me, that looks like, you know, eventually land back, reparations, like all of these things. And along the way, I think that the corporations that have been the most responsible for the not just the policies that we have, but also, you know, really structuring the economy the way it is, all of those things, the media the way it is, need to be held accountable in some way, like whether that is through litigation, whether it is through a change in policy that just diminishes their power and influence or take some of their profits and uses it to pay reparations, or to, you know, pay for some of the the technologies that people are saying, we need to adapt. All of those things, I think, are on the table. And I think it's kind of a multi-pronged thing. And it's also something that depends on, you know, where in the world, you are. In sort of an ideal world that looks somewhat different from how US capitalism works and most of the sort of global North system. I think that, you know, you really strip these companies have the power and money that has allowed them to get away with this. And like, kind of think through a new system in its place. Like I don't know, I feel like the the current approach that a lot of climate folks take is sort of keep everything the same, but plug everything into different energy sources. Right. And to me, that is not a solution. You know, might be something that we need to do along the way. But to me, I think the only way you get to a real solution for climate is a restructuring of the system that created it. And I think accountability is a really big part of that.
Ayana Young Yeah, when I hear you say, stripping their power, the corporation's power, that is. Yeah, there's these questions of, well, not only what does that mean, what is what is it to strip a corporation of their power? But what is the power they have? And how did they get that?
Amy Westervelt Yeah, so to me, I mean, honestly, I would really like to see lobbying go away, think tanks go away... all of these, all of these ways that corporations have used their very large sums of money to kind of control how policy works. And I think a lot of people are maybe unclear about just how broad that is. So you know, if you look at how anything becomes law, they are shaping every single part of it from public opinion and, you know, some of the really basic structural ways that the media works to funding specific research.. you know, white papers that then become the basis of legislation, to groups that write the legislation, and then push the legislation to politicians. You know, they're funding specific politicians, campaigns. They're funding attorneys general who can bring lawsuits that will help change the laws in their favor, like I think. And, you know, I think there's also a tendency for people to hear that and get really overwhelmed, like, oh, my gosh, they control everything. But I think it's important for people to understand, like, look, they have their tentacles into everything. So when a company, you know, say a fossil fuel company, for example, says something like, Well, you know, we're just doing what the market demands, or everybody knew about climate change in the 80s. And, you know, it wasn't just us that didn't do anything about it. It's like, well, they actually have a much larger role. hapless victims to the system, they are the architects of the system. So I think, you know, there are various efforts underway to kick them out of university research, for example, to limit lobbying, although there's an equally large push on behalf of the corporations to expand their ability to, to lobby and to advertise and market in certain ways. And then, you know, there's things like permitting, not giving any more permits for these big projects. So there's, a lot of people are looking at the financial side of things, and pressuring banks and investment firms to stop funding, the expansion of fossil fuel development, for example. I think it it's, it has to be a pretty wide reaching effort, if you're going to neutralize the power that these companies have. And it needs to be a pretty coordinated global effort because these are global companies. They are, in most cases, really, like, I would say, more powerful than most individual countries, because they have this level of influence over the government and society in multiple countries around the world. It's not just where they're headquartered, it's like, you know, everywhere they're operating, and everywhere that, you know, there is influence that's being wielded globally. They're there trying to kind of push things in their preferred direction. And, you know, they're again, like they're doing that because they're able to buy various economic and government systems. So the only way to change that is to change the system so that they can't have that level of sort of undue influence and power over, you know, the way that the world is moving forward.
Ayana Young Oh, gosh, that was a really great, direct and concise way to explain this to us. I really appreciate the reminders. So is there an example of this that you could share it with us so we could take what you just said apply it to something that you know, whether it's in real time or something that was in the past so that we can really dig our teeth into understanding this even better?
Amy Westervelt There is And also I feel like they're like a lot of the ways that it's happened in the past are also, in some ways cautionary tales. So the one that a lot of people point to is the tobacco industry. Right that, you know, okay, the tobacco industry had this really coordinated effort to mislead people about the impacts of its product, and it very, you know, was very successful in doing that and made a lot of money. And then there was this big effort to hold them legally accountable for the health impacts that they were creating. And, and it resulted in a massive settlement, you know, the tobacco companies had to pay out 10s of millions of dollars. All of this stuff, everyone kind of points to this, like, see, this is what we're talking about. However, I would caution to embrace that too much, because all of the big tobacco companies still exist. And they're the same people that went on to mislead the public about vaping. They also moved their entire, you know, marketing apparatus to global south countries, where smoking has continued to rise over the last 10 years. And mostly because they're deploying the exact same playbook. So this is why I'm kind of like, look, it needs to be global, because that's what always happens when a company or an industry is held accountable in one place. They just sort of, you know, spin the globe and look for a new market. And I think that, you know, we need to think through this sort of like multi pronged accountability approach, like it can't just be in the courts, it can't just be a change in policy, it really needs to be across all of the many aspects of civil society that these companies are involved in.
Ayana Young Yeah, I can see that. I wanted to mention, in the New York Times review of Private Empire, which is about Exxon Mobil. Adam Hochschild writes, quote, "Exxon Mobil executives care less about Americans belief in climate change, [unknown] than they do about Americans belief in punitive damages from lawsuits." End Quote. And so, yeah, just dissect this a little bit like, what is the actual issue we need to address here? And how do large corporations like ExxonMobil benefit from our collective confusion and distraction? And maybe a secondary part is like, does Exxon even care about what people think about climate change? Or do they care about being held accountable? Which I think I've maybe answering my thought a little bit there, but not in the detail I want you to? So please, yeah, let's get into this.
Amy Westervelt Yeah, Exxon does not care at all, what people think about climate change. They only care about, you know, what they can be held accountable for and how much it's gonna cost them. That's like one of the the greatest tricks that the fossil fuel industry in particular ever played on the public came from Mobil, before it was Exxon Mobil. And it was the invention of the corporate person. And this idea that, you know, Exxon is like a guy, you know, that has, you know, the same thought processes and values and morals as an actual human person. And it does not. Exxon as a corporation, has many if not more of the same rights that humans have. But it is not a human, and it does not have values and morals and ethics. It has laws, and it has market fluctuations. And that is all it cares about. This is a company that exists solely for the purpose of enriching shareholders, it will therefore do whatever is in its power to continue to do that. And the only thing that can stop it is litigation and policy. And, you know, the thing that sort of underpins both of those things, in most cases, is, you know, social license or sort of the will of the public. So those are the things that can actually change how a massive multinational corporation operates. I like I have a story I always tell about the whole like, believing climate thing, which is that like I covered this lawsuit on the West Coast of the US and Canada. It was several different fishermen, crab fishermen, who were all part of a trade association that sued the largest 30 oil companies for their role in delaying action on climate change. So I went off to do this story. And I went on a bunch of crab boats and you know, went from town to town meeting all of these people, and quite a few people told me that they did not believe in climate science. And yet they were named plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the oil companies about climate change. And I was like, this is so interesting, how did this happen? And they said, Well, you know, we were shown documentation of the oil companies getting patents for things like tankers that could navigate a melting Arctic or offshore oil platforms that had been re engineered to withstand sea level rise. And these patents were filed in the early 80s by every single oil major. So they, they said, that seems unfair. And for us, we feel like, well, it doesn't matter what's causing this thing. They knew it was happening. And they use that information to prepare their industry for it. And they didn't give us the same opportunity. And that's not fair. And that was like a real penny drop moment for me, because I was like, you know, I wonder if like 'believe the scientists' or 'believe the science' is just like a way higher bar than is necessary here. That maybe actually just talking about it in terms of look, everybody should have access to the same information that's required to make decisions about their lives. One entity shouldn't have 1000 times more power to shape, the world that we live in than any other entity, like this kind of level playing field idea is a lot more accessible to a lot more people and also avoids a lot of the unfortunately, you know, increasingly rigid ideological divides around climate. So Exxon does not care whether people believe, and they do care about whether people think that they're behaving in a legal or not legal way.
Ayana Young Oh, goodness, gosh, you're sharing so much juicy, horrific and great information to us. And I want to talk a bit about Season Eight of the podcast Drilled, and in it Drilled writes, quote, "Fossil fuels are, in fact enormously expensive to find, extract, refine, and ship. Just listen to the fossil fuel industry, they'll tell you so when they're justifying record profits. Only to turn around and claim fossil fuels are cheap when they're arguing for expanding the development of them. The reality is that fossil fuels are only cheap when they're subsidized. And when citizens absorb the costs they impose on society by way of air pollution and water pollution." end quote. Gosh, I think this is so important for us to understand, because with every resource extraction project, they're so expensive. And there is a ton of cash flow. But it's also subsidized. And a lot of times you put pencil to paper and you think, well, this isn't making money in the first place. Like for instance, in the Tongass National Forest, taxpayers were actually paying to subsidize logging the last remaining old growth on public lands. Because logging the old growth itself actually wasn't making money. It wasn't profitable. So we had to pay to cut the trees. You know, it's just like, wait, what, this is something we really need to understand. And so yeah, I would love to dive into this more with you. And then also, just getting into the physical reality of oil drilling and extraction in general, like, what does extraction look like? How our consumer is purposefully alienated from the exploitation of people and land that goes into extraction?
Amy Westervelt Yeah, it's often painted by the industry as like, this magical thing. Like we just provide abundant cheap energy. You know, that's that's the selling point. I think this is like a it's such a huge problem, because it's often people that are living close to fracking sites, for example, are often exposed to volatile organic compounds, which can be linked to all kinds of things from asthma and emphysema to count like various cancers, low birth weight, all kinds of early child development issues. And that's just like having a house that's maybe 10 miles away. And like that the industry kind of talks about, you know, various, as though it's sort of accidental, but really, it's sort of baked into how they do things, especially when it comes to gas. Gas is constantly being just released into the air, you know. And sometimes that's because there's some kind of glitch in the refining system, sometimes it's because the price of gas has changed. And it's not profitable for them to sell the gas. So they just burn it off. Whatever the reason is, it's totally calculated by the company's profit motive, and the communities surrounding those areas really suffer. So the poor air quality thing is a big deal. Water, of course, like, you know, there are oil spills and gas spills constantly. I can't, you know, it's like, every month, there's a new pipeline that's leaking somewhere into water, land as well, you know, there's soil contamination. There's also just the general disruption of ecosystems that comes with large scale fracking, and drilling. And then I think something that people don't realize is like, if you live near a refinery, or if you live near a, a well site, there was a lot of traffic noise and light pollution that makes your life pretty crappy. I know, like there, I did a story a few years ago about this community in Colorado, that it was there was like an elderly community and they were in this, you know, what they thought was like a retirement complex, right, like a bunch of people who were over 65, and had retired to this town, and they were living in this little community and then a fracking wells site starts in right next door. And then COVID hits, and they're locked down requirements, so they're trapped in their homes, with like, 24/7, super bright lights, and really loud hydraulic fracturing happening. Which is, you know, like, they use explosives. There's like, a lot of it's very loud. And these people were like, "This is horrible. How is it possible that this was even allowed?" There was like, there were a bunch of sort of permitting loopholes that were afforded to the company that was doing it. But that's not uncommon. You know, it's like that's happening, wherever they're operating. It's not this clean, quiet, efficient system that they try to portray it as. It is dirty, it is loud. And it's polluting, and nobody really wants it in their community. And the other thing they do a lot is talk about how, basically like, we bring affordable energy to everyone, right? Like, if you have an oil refinery next door then obviously, your electricity prices are going to be low, right? No, not so like the proximity to extraction has almost no correlation whatsoever, with either access to energy or the affordability of it. Which is wild to me, because I'm like, man, if I were like a marketing person in the industry, constantly telling everyone about how we're solving energy poverty, I would be trying to get the company I work for to actually do something about that issue.
Ayana Young Yeah, absolutely. Gosh. Well, there was another topic I wanted to discuss woven throughout Season Eight of Drilled, where you discuss the mechanisms and infrastructure of drilling, including the massive spending and resources that go into, say, offshore rigs and oil transportation. So I just love if you could give us more details about the scale of extraction and exploitation we're talking about here?
Amy Westervelt Yeah. Yeah, it's massive. I mean, this is where I find it really amusing that, you know, oil companies will sort of, you know, say one minute, like, we've invested billions of dollars in this, and we need to get a return on that investment. And the next minute, you know, talk about how cheap and affordable and easy energy is, right? So Exxon talks all the time about how it has invested 10s of billions of dollars over a decade in exploration, offshore Guyana. And that that includes, you know, doing a lot of geological surveys to try to figure out where there might be fossil fuels and then drilling what are called exploratory wells. So, you know, smaller wells on the floor of the ocean to see like, is there any oil and gas under there? And then once they find something, it's a big production. Like they are currently using these things floating production offshore vessels, I want to say something like that. FPSO's is what they call them. And they're these giant, giant tankers offshore that can both serve as sort of a platform for the drilling and also store oil and gas on board and then ship it directly from the ocean to wherever it's going. Rght now, most of it is going to Europe. So that's the other thing. Like, again, you know, a big part of Exxon selling point in Guyana is like we're going to, we're going to provide affordable energy to Guyana. But most of the oil and gas that's being extracted there is being shipped elsewhere for higher profits. And there, I think they now have two of these large vessels operating, their plan is to have as many as 10 within the next five years. They are ramping up at a breakneck speed and that is something that's also of quite a bit of concern. You know, they are regularly kind of bragging to shareholders in the media about how quickly they've been able to move in Guyana and most of the sort of third-party folks who are watching that are saying, we're pretty sure they're moving that quickly, because there's not really any oversight happening. So like we're talking, you know, it's 40 miles offshore, and this to 1000 feet, that they're drilling in very deep water out in the middle of nowhere. Like, if there's an oil spill there, the currents could take it to 14 different Caribbean countries plus potentially Venezuela. So a lot of potential impact for an oil spill that seems almost destined to happen. They're also getting a tremendous amount of gas, along with the oil that they're drilling out there and have had kind of consistent problem figuring out what to do with that gas for a long time. They were just burning it off. Now they're they're trying to come up with some other ideas.
Ayana Young Gosh, just like wow, the the insanity of these projects at this time. Of course, they were always crazy but even more now it's like, how many disasters have to happen both directly extraction project disasters versus the global climate change disaster. And Well, anyways, I want to talk before I go into my own mental spin, which I feel like I'm in a bit. I do want to talk a bit more about Guyana, and in Exxon's oil drilling gamble off Guyana's Coast poses major environmental risk for The Guardian. That's a title of an article. Antonio yo house writes, quote, "By 2025, Exxon expects to produce 800,000 barrels of oil a day, surpassing estimates for its entire oil and natural gas production in the southwestern US Permian Basin by 100,000 barrels that year. Guyana would then represent Exxon's largest single source of fossil fuel production anywhere in the world." End quote.
Amy Westervelt They've you increase that to a million barrels a day by 2025? And yeah, I mean, it would be them, it would mean that the production in Guyana would be would represent about 25% to 30% of Exxon's total global oil production. Which is really, I mean, that is an incredible amount, and especially when you think about the fact that this is a country that shipped its very first barrel of oil in 2019. It's staggering, that they have built the industry there this quickly. But it's complicated to you know, because the president of Guyana made this speech recently where he talked about the fact that, you know, during the Glasgow Conference of the Parties, the COP, this sort of annual meeting of global leaders to try to come up with a climate treaty that it's becoming like, honestly a little bit like more laughable each year. The number of fossil fuel Representatives just keeps growing. And you have like all of these oil states hosting them now and I don't know. But anyway, that you US and several other big you know, global North countries said, Okay, we're not going to approve any financing for like development funding financing for projects related to fossil fuels moving forward. Well, the President of Guyana said okay, but then why are you allowing them in your own countries? And I think that's a valid point. You know, you look at the the massive increase in production in Guyana, and you think, Oh, my God, how is this happening right now, especially when we know so much and all those things. But then also, it's tough for countries like the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Norway, to say, 'Oh, you guys shouldn't do that,' when we haven't stopped doing it in, in these countries, you know. And, like most of the oil that's being produced there, is being consumed by people in global North countries.
Ayana Young Absolutely. It would be interesting just to understand how this project changes the landscape of Guyana, both physically and politically,
Amy Westervelt Oh, massively. I mean, it's taken over the whole country like. It's physically not that much, because it's so far offshore and Guyana is really interesting, because it has a huge amount of pretty untouched rainforest and mountains. And it's quite a beautiful place. And 90% of its population is living in a fairly narrow sliver along the coast. So for people there, I think the biggest changes are that there are big export terminals being built and refineries and things like that along the shore, which is changing, you know, the look and feel of those towns and cities. You also have a huge potential risk for oil spills, there have already been several smaller oil spills. A larger one would definitely impact, you know, almost the entire population of the country, because everyone is in this strip. The traffic has become a big problem. There are very large trucks that are taking, you know, supplies and materials to the port to go to these offshore production sites all the time. And it's causing a lot of problems on the roads and with traffic and also air pollution because these are heavy duty trucks that are emitting lots of fumes. Guyana in the lead up to becoming an oil country was a, like a conservation darling. You know, it was one of the first countries to participate in the UN's program for kind of compensating countries for preserving their forests. It's called RED. And Norway, paid Guyana, 10s of millions of dollars to go towards preserving its forests. It was like a top ecotourism country, it's trying to maintain that reputation. I think it's going to become increasingly difficult as the country transforms into not just an oil producing country, but really like a top oil producing country. And then politically, you know, it's been quite easy, I think, for the oil companies to capture the government and a lot of civil society. It's a very small country. There are you know, there are only so many civil society groups and journalists and lawyers and things like that. And the oil companies not just Exxon, but also its partners, which are Hesh and Sinopec, which is the Chinese national oil company, have done a pretty good job of hiring away as many people as they can, and making it difficult for people to criticize the project without being worried that they're not going to be able to get a job because the people who are in government know everybody else and they're going to tell them not to hire them. So it's really been quite a rapid takeover of the country. There are still you know, some groups that are speaking out and you know, we covered in the Season One lawyer in particular Melinda Jenki who's filed a bunch of cases trying to get the government to actually enforce various environmental laws that are on the books there but just kind of being ignored for or Exxon. So there's some stuff happening. But yeah, it's been a really rapid change. Even things like you know, there's, I think there's five or six hotels under construction in Georgetown right now, which previously had like three and there are, you know, old houses that are being torn down and replaced with kind of modern high rise condos. The rents for those are outrageous compared to what people in Georgetown used to pay for rent, and they're all being rented out by oil and gas executives. You know, there are whole neighborhoods that are being kind of taken over by the industry as well.
Ayana Young Yeah. I want to go back again to Drilled, Season Eight. And the discussion guide, it explains quote, "According to Harvard economist Jeffrey Frankel," quote, "The data suggests no positive correlation between natural resource wealth and economic growth." End quote. No positive correlation.
Amy Westervelt Yeah, this is wild, right?
Ayana Young You go on to say, "This is thanks to something economist called the resource curse, the tendency of economies that are overly tied to a particular commodity, to focus everything on that commodity, make a small handful of elites rich and eventually tank the economy. countries with large petroleum reserves suffer a particular strain of the resource curse, the oil curse, they tend to have less democracy, less economic stability, and more frequent civil wars than countries without oil." End quote. So I really want you to get into the resource curse, and yeah, how it challenges assumptions about resources and wealth, and elucidate the continued effects of colonization and the wealth accumulation that accompanies it.
Amy Westervelt Yeah, in my opinion, you can't talk about extraction without talking about colonialism, right? It's like the original extractive industry. And colonizers extracted land, people, money, natural resources, wealth of all kinds, and redistribute it to themselves. There's some really staggering data on this, you know, like, if you look at where India was pre- and post-British colonialism, for example, it's like, wow, okay. All of the wealth of India was just taken by the UK. And then, you know, now companies from those same colonizing countries, show up in former colonies and extract their resources for the profit of the company. So it's not, I don't know, I feel like people sometimes think, think or talk about colonization is this thing that happened in the past, and really, it's just companies instead of specific countries that are doing it now. But it kind of always was right. It was always like wealthy people who paid, quote, unquote, explorers to go out and find stuff for them to take. And it's pretty much the same. These companies have become the new colonizers. And very much this resource curse thing is you just see it over and over. A country like Guyana is really interesting, because they have had multiple phases of this, they've gone through diamonds, gold, bauxite, timber... Magnesium is a big thing there now, which is really interesting in comparison to the oil, because magnesium is one of the materials that people are really looking at for batteries for cars, and renewable energy. So you have this kind of dual extractive thing happening in the same country right now. And then, of course, oil. There's quite a bit of really interesting data that shows that really since around 1980, no global South country that has gotten into the oil business has wound up better off for it, not one. That's a pretty bad track record, I would say. And then, you know, you look at this energy poverty issue, which is, you know, sort of access to consistent, affordable, reliable energy. And Nigeria, which has been doing oil and gas for about as long if not longer than any other global South country is last in the world on energy access. So I think there are a lot of examples and case studies of countries that have embraced the idea of oil wealth and then wound up really just kind of being stripped of the resource and the wealth and left worse off, right. It's not is like, oh, they didn't make money off of oil. They also got a bunch of problems with water and soil and air, right, and political corruption increased. It just has not actually brought a lot of good to very many countries, especially in the last 40 years.
Ayana Young Well, I want to go back to the drill discussion guide and get into the topic that often corporations spin the narrative that we quote, need oil or fossil fuels. But this just simply isn't true. And you explain that, quote, "The long held belief that increased energy use results in increased life expectancy has been proven to be exactly that, a belief. By decade's worth of peer reviewed economics research, as early as 1974 economic researchers writing in the journal Science concluded that American quality of life would be just as high if we use a fraction of the energy we were using. In 2010, researchers showed that the amount of energy required to reach high life expectancy is going down, not up, over time. More recently, in 2020, economists found that while increased energy use is correlated to increased GDP, it accounts for at most 20% of improvements in life expectancy." End quote. This just feels so important. Because of the rhetoric and the narrative. We constantly hear about quality of life life expectancy, you know, dot, dot dot, we can go on. So I wonder how do we become comfortable with the idea that we actually can cut down on energy use? And we're going to be okay.
Amy Westervelt Yeah, I think this is such an important thing to understand, especially in global North countries, because as much as you know, I've, I've kind of criticized the industry stance on energy poverty, it is a real issue, it is actually very important for people who do not have access to reliable energy to get access to that. And that is where the existing fossil fuel development resources should be going. While the global North dramatically cuts its energy use to make room in the carbon budget for people that have not had access to energy before. That's the piece that I think the industry likes to, you know, sidestep. Like, look, it's not even radical stuff at this point. You know, there are a lot of peer reviewed economic studies that show, really conclusively, that there are diminishing returns on increased energy use, and that in the US, we use probably 10 times more than we need to. And if we're going to look at sort of like a global energy mix, and a global carbon budget, there's plenty of room to cut down on energy use here, so that we can enable folks in global South countries to get access to energy and then be able to transition to better cleaner alternatives. I actually was just talking to a fossil fuel executive today, who was again, saying, you know, the increases in life expectancy and quality of life that fossil fuels have brought to the global north should not be kept from the Global South. This is like a very big talking point. And being able to quickly say, well, actually, there's no data that backs that up, is, I think, really important, you know, for people to be able to say, look, it doesn't actually extend life expectancy. It doesn't improve quality of life beyond, you know, a pretty marginal amount. And if you're actually concerned about solving poverty, and improving quality of life and all of these other things, then why are you never talking about energy efficiency and global North countries? I mean, we're like massively over consuming in a lot of ways like I think, then then it becomes, oh, they're going to take your hamburgers, or you're not going to be allowed to fly or drive. And while yes, I think reductions and all of those things would be great. Really, like what people are talking about are pretty minor shifts in consumption, like things that most people wouldn't necessarily notice and might even have a positive impact from, like, eating slightly less meat comes with a whole bunch of health improvements, for example, walking, more biking more, all of these things are actually delivering benefits on multiple levels, not just individually, but at the public health level as well. And are not these massive, crazy radical sacrifices that they're being painted as. And whenever I asked an oil CEO or or a gas CEO about energy efficiency, they're always kind of like, oh, yeah, totally. And then they like to tell you about all of the ways that energy efficiency doesn't really work. But I think that we haven't really tried it since the 70s. And when we did, there's a whole bunch of documentation of oil and gas companies, you know, doing everything they can to lower prices enough and push enough marketing and advertising campaigns to get people, especially in the US to consume at very high levels again, like we don't actually have enough. we don't actually have the ability for everyone to be consuming at the level that Americans consume. And the good news about that, is that like, nobody actually needs to consume as much as we do to have a really good quality of life.
Ayana Young Yeah, I really appreciate dissecting that issue. Because it has led to so much scarcity and hoarding, and anxiety mindset that really stops us from as a people being able to say, No, we actually don't need this. It isn't going to make our life better. And another thing that I really am appreciative of is that this is a bigger question than just finding a replacement, or a solution to turning to wind and solar, just replacing it, like you had mentioned this a bit before too. But just to say BP and Exxon are also investing in solar and wind. And so we know that by their track record, these projects aren't necessarily going to be better for human rights violations, etc. You still need to extract rare earth minerals, it still is built on fossil fuels, like getting the materials to the factories, the replacement isn't somehow quote, green. And there was a quote from the discussion guide, "Even if the whole world were to switch to non fossil fuel energy forms, maintaining an unnecessarily high level of consumption would have us bumping up against another planetary or environmental boundary in no time," End quote. So the question is bigger than the switching to another energy forum. And I appreciate the examples that you're giving that are quite simple.
Amy Westervelt They actually outlined this, in the most recent IPCC report for the first time, they included a chapter on what they called demand response is like the least sexy title for this chapter, which is really like, hey, what if we tackle the consumption problem? What is so it's like, it's like heresy to say that in any global North capitalist country, but like, I haven't seen anyone who is suggesting that we tackle that. Who is like, there should be no more consumer choice. We should go, you know, full, eco authoritarianism, like, that's the way it's painted. But it's like, these are just generally good ideas for cities that are pleasant to live in. So many things that were actually like more walkable cities, thinking through how to get portion sizes down a little bit. So people aren't overeating, incentivizing, walking and biking for those that can making cities more accessible for disabled people. And they have this added benefit of delivering, I think it was close to a 50% reduction in emissions by 2040. It doesn't require new technologies, it doesn't require anything that doesn't already exist. All it requires is policies that enable people to have those options. You know, public transit is another one. I you know, I see people all the time pushing electric vehicles as this huge solution. And if we continue to, to kind of prioritize car dependency, I don't think that we're going to end up in a very good place, you know, and that doesn't mean that I think no one should have a car. I just think that maybe people don't need to have two and three cars. Maybe not every single driver needs to be a solo driver. There. There are quite like modest changes that we could make that again, you know, either people won't really feel at all or will actually be an improvement to life that would deliver very meaningful reductions. And I'm not really sure how or why the industry has been able to sort of co-opt that and turn it into, they're gonna make it a crime to eat a hamburger. Yeah, not true.
Ayana Young Yeah, we've got a lot of work to do on narrative shift. And I guess that's a good transition to talk about media and covering extraction and all of the implications of that. And I am wondering, you know, as a media maker yourself covering these issues, how can the media, mainstream media, independent media, etc, be better at covering and investigating extraction and all that comes with it?
Amy Westervelt I think the number one thing that I would love to see shift and like, before I get to that, I do just want to acknowledge that there has been an incredible increase in coverage. Over the last few years, there's a very dedicated focus on this issue, you're seeing a huge increase in like local TV news stations starting to connect the dots on this stuff. Lots and lots more coverage, certainly than there was, however, that said, I, I would love to see more outlets kind of incorporating climate as a lens onto things. So like, in the same way that we do with the economy, right, almost every story, people will think about, okay, what's the what's the economic impact of this thing? What's the economic impact of this policy? What's the economic impact of this virus throughout the COVID 19 pandemic? What's the economic impact of this or that university changing? Like, that's something that comes up in almost every story. And I think it should be the same with climate. And the only way that you really get there is having more editors at these publications with enough of a background in climate to kind of be able to do that. And the other thing is, I really think people need to rethink how much credibility they give to corporate executives. There was actually like, a targeted campaign, again, led by mobile in the 70s, and 80s, to sort of like give corporate businessman like a makeover in the media. There was like one guy at mobile in particular, who, you know, really made a point of meeting with all of the big editors of different papers and outlets, going on TV all the time, meeting regularly with Hollywood executives, because he felt like too many TV shows and movies would have the bad guy be like a corporate person or a business man. And he really like did a lot to rehabilitate the the reputation of sort of corporate executives. And now, I feel like a lot of journalists will treat what an executive says, as like, more credible than what a researcher says. Certainly than what an activist says. As though like the activist is biased, but the corporate executive is not in some way. I just am like, come on, that needs to go. Almost anyone who talks to the press is probably trying to push one thing or another, right. That's one of the main reasons that people talk to the press. There's no way that someone whose entire financial stability is tied to a particular policy not getting past or making an industry look good, should be treated as somehow equally credible to like an academic researcher who doesn't really have any skin in the game. But it still happens a lot, a lot, a lot. So I would I would like to see or a return of the, you know, 70s skepticism of business people and their motives.
Ayana Young Absolutely. Yeah, I wanted to read this quote, it was in massive media cuts equals less climate coverage, which is an article you write and it says, meanwhile, "Every month or so I hear from an investigator working for a team within an NGO, a team with more funding and stability than any newsroom in the world, but also with a very specific mandate that's usually not just informing the public. Now, look, no one is saying that mainstream media in particular is some bias-free utopia with no influence or agenda. The corporate hold over media in the US in particular has been well documented, but I don't know that the solution is to let NGOs take over investigative journalism entirely. Encouraging journalists to get comfortable with simply being fed scoops whether they're coming from corporations or organizations funded by wealthy philanthropist feels like a dangerous path, not just for climate reporting, but for democracy in general. " End quote. So I'd love to hear about your experience doing this kind of reporting and take a moment to just hear your personal story and experiences with it.
Amy Westervelt Yeah, yeah. There's there are a lot of NGOs that are hiring either former campaigners or former journalists and forming their own investigative journalism units, or investigative research units, and then parceling out their research to different outlets. And that's been going on for a while it's had a big explosion in the last couple of years, at the same time that there's been sort of like weekly announcements of media outlets shutting down. And I think there's room for both to exist. I don't necessarily think like, oh, NGOs should leave the investigating to journalists. But I do think that as this all kind of starts to shift over, there's a big concern that A), you know, they're going to kind of cannibalize the outlets, and B) that, you know, like I said, that it's all part of kind of training, media outlets and journalists and editors to rely on someone else to feed them information or ideas or leads or scoops in a way that that slowly erodes these journalists' ability to do that for themselves over time. So I think, just in general, I would like to see someone somewhere working on a major overhaul of how the media works. You know, we've been just kind of watching this slow motion car crash for the last 20 years. And, and I haven't, you know, I really haven't seen like a, like a new business model proposed for that industry in decades. I just I think that journalism back in the day was one of the main threats to the power that these industries hold, you know, extractive polluting industries. One of the things that prompted the creation of the public relations industry was the power of muckraking journalism. It was you know, Ida Tarbell going after Standard Oil at the turn of the century, it was, you know, Upton Sinclair doing his his work revealing the disgusting conditions of meatpacking. And because of how effective that journalism was, companies started to spend a lot of money and a lot of time in shaping public opinion and also in trying to capture the media. So yeah, and you know, I think that like now, NGOs are kind of like, oh, we shouldn't be doing that, too, as opposed to, to kind of thinking, Oh, this is a bad system, you know. I don't want to like I know several people who do these investment jobs, and they're all great. And they're all you know, they have very good intentions. But I think it's important for folks to think about the broader systemic issue. And I say that, as someone who, you know, has been a climate reporter for more than 20 years now, and has seen a couple of different, you know, rounds of the media going through this cycle of hiring a bunch of climate reporters making a bunch of climate commitments, and then walking that back or watering it down and doing a bunch of, you know, profiles of clean tech CEOs, or, you know, I think the, the current version of that is, instead of investing in investigative journalism, a lot of outlets are, you know, launching newsletters or running a bunch of opinion pieces and assays, or listicles that are like five things you can do you know. So I think it would be nice to see some kind of concerted effort to support the kind of investigative work that actually leads to accountability, because it's something the industry has worked really hard to get rid of. And that's because it works.
Ayana Young Yeah. Amy, this has been such an incredible conversation. I love your energy and your knowledge. It's been uplifting as well as informative in the most horrifying and uplifting and energizing all at once.
Amy Westervelt Good. That's great. Good. I always encourage people to like, you know, everyone should feel their feelings. I'm very big on that. Like, I think it can be very depressing. It can feel very overwhelming. All of those are very valid reactions, but like, once you've processed those, get mad. Absolutely, yeah.
Ayana Young Thanks so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
Amy Westervelt Yeah, I appreciate you. Yes!
Evan Tenenbaum Thank you to listening to For The Wild. The music you listened to today is by Jonathan Yonts, Hana Shin, and Charles Rumback and Ryley Walker. For The Wild is created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, Julia Jackson, Jackson Kroopf, and Evan Tenenbaum.