About the Guest:
Geoff Dembicki is an investigative climate journalist based in NYC. He is a regular contributor to the media outlet DeSmog and author ofThe Petroleum Papers, which was named a top ten book of 2022 by the Washington Post.
Episode Transcript:
Leah Dajches: Let's play a game. I'm going to read you a quote by a US president, and I want you to try to guess who said it. "Our land, water, and soil support a remarkable range of human activities. But they can only take so much, and we must remember to treat them not as a given, but as a gift. These issues know no ideology, no political boundaries." Did you assume these words in support of addressing the challenges of climate change were spoken by Joe Biden, or maybe Barack Obama? Did you guess Bill Clinton? Well, you're wrong. The statement is taken from a 1988 campaign speech given by former President George H. W. Bush. That same president helped launch the UN's framework for addressing climate change. That convention would later lead to important agreements on the issue. And yes, George H. W. Bush was a Republican because climate change was once a bipartisan issue until it wasn't. What happened?
Matt Jordan: To find out, we're going to talk with Geoff Dembicki. Geoff's work exposes how fossil fuel companies did their own research about climate change early in the game so they would know how to frame counterarguments once the science became more widespread. An investigative climate journalist, Geoff is a regular contributor to the media outlet DeSmog and author of The Petroleum Papers, which was named a top 10 book in 2022 by the Washington Post. We're going to talk with Geoff about how these climate companies use the public media system to sow skepticism and cynicism about climate change. Geoff, welcome to News Over Noise.
Geoff Dembicki: Thanks for having me here.
Matt Jordan: So, your research on the book that flowed from it described misinformation campaigns enacted through news media around the topic of climate change. So, tell us a little bit about what brought you to this research and kind of what you learned about that.
Geoff Dembicki: Sure. So, I grew up in the province of Alberta in Canada. And we kind of joke that it's Canadian Texas-- huge oil and gas industry. You drive around and you see farms and cowboys. And the politics in a lot of ways are kind of similar to a Republican state. And so, I grew up always being around oil and gas infrastructure. And as I got older and got into journalism, I started to get interested in how these companies were able to maintain high levels of support for their businesses, even while the news about climate change became more and more dire. And so that's kind of what led me to this topic of climate disinformation and misinformation.
Leah Dajches: I noticed that you label yourself as an investigative climate journalist. What exactly does this mean?
Geoff Dembicki: Investigative climate journalists to me means kind of going beyond the immediate news headlines of the day and looking into the deeper power structures that kind of determine what news we even see, or what political decisions are being made about climate change. So, these days, I do a lot of that work by going into primary documents. So, the oil industry has been producing documents about its own knowledge on climate change for decades and decades. And so that's something that myself and a lot of other journalists have a lot of interest in. And I also look at more contemporary stuff, too. But it's basically trying to go deeper than regular news.
Matt Jordan: So, what you're doing is you're looking at what the oil and research has told them about climate change, and then wondering why it's not showing up in the media in the same way? Is that a fair way of characterizing it?
Geoff Dembicki: To some extent, yeah. But a lot of this sort of deeper more investigative material about oil and gas has been making its way into mainstream media for a few years now and really changing the conversation.
Matt Jordan: So, describe how it makes its way into mainstream media. So obviously, it starts with think tanks that are funded by the fossil fuel industry. But so how does it-- how does this-- how do these ideas and frames make their way into everyday public conversation?
Geoff Dembicki: Well, if we're talking about climate change denial or softer forms of it, the classic model of that, which is what characterized a lot of the '90s and 2000s, you would have some innocuous sounding group or a think tank or some type of scientist, and usually they had industry connections. And they would put out this idea that climate science is uncertain, and you shouldn't trust it. And they were very good at getting those types of stories placed in The New York Times and many other media outlets. And these days, that's still happening to an extent, but it's just-- it's a little bit more subtle and hard to pin down.
Matt Jordan: So, do they-- a think tank will put out like talking points memo that they want their people to be sounding off on whenever they're in media? Or is it just about framing-- or maybe it's not just about-- it's both of these things-- about making sure that things like say the economic frame is always the one that is used. So how does this work exactly?
Geoff Dembicki: So, a more contemporary example might be the Biden administration is proposing a new policy on climate change. And then immediately, a think tank, like The Heritage Foundation, for example, will put out a study saying this new climate policy will kill 1 million American jobs. And then journalists who are sort of on the lookout for any type of controversy or high-stakes drama will then report on that study, along with the legislation proposal. And that sort of gets this message out that anything we do on climate change will cost a lot of jobs and hurt communities.
Matt Jordan: And so that means that the conversation is not about climate change. It's about jobs.
Geoff Dembicki: Yeah. And, I mean, to an extent, climate policy is all about economics because we're talking about changing the way our economy functions and making it less polluting. And there are a lot of positive jobs created in that process. And so, when groups that are opposed to climate action try to get attention in the media, it's always about focusing on jobs destroyed rather than jobs and industries created.
Matt Jordan: Because that makes it seem like a crisis. Is there a flak element to this? One thing that media theorists talk about is how companies with a lot of resources can, say, threaten to pull advertisements as a way to discipline news organizations to keep them from running certain types of things. Do you have evidence of that happening in relation to climate change as well?
Geoff Dembicki: I think it's maybe a bit more subtle than that. I think these anti-climate frames get repeated so many times and by so many different organizations that it begins to seem to many journalists and editors like this is just common sense, or this is how a reasonable policymaker must think. And so that kind of gets internalized and then influences the coverage. But you also still see examples of oil and gas companies using legacy media to promote false and misleading claims. So, there was on an episode of The New York Times podcast, The Daily, just a few days ago, BP ran an ad saying that it is committed to fixing climate change, but it didn't mention that it's also producing more oil and gas than ever before in its history.
Matt Jordan: So, is that just greenwashing, which is what people call public relations techniques to make it seem like a company that is polluter is really concerned in the environment? Or is there something else going on?
Geoff Dembicki: I think that's a pretty classic example of greenwashing. And the reason that we're still talking about greenwashing after so many years and companies are doing it is because it seems to work for them.
Matt Jordan: Is it because it takes it off of what they don't want us talking about and puts it on what they do want us talking about?
Geoff Dembicki: Yeah. It's a form of deflection. But I think there's a more insidious consequence of greenwashing, which is that it sets up companies and organizations that are contributing most to the climate emergency and portrays them instead as climate leaders. And then that allows them entry to the policymaking space. So, for example, at the most recent COP talks in Dubai, the international climate negotiations, there were more fossil fuel delegates at this year's talks than ever before in the history of this process.
Matt Jordan: So, what types of solutions do fossil fuel companies offer? So, it's, we'll fix the problem. We'll self-regulate. We'll clean it up. We've heard this kind of thing in every economic sector. What are they offering as solutions?
Geoff Dembicki: These days it's all about carbon capture and storage. And so, this idea has been around for decades. But it's a technology that oil and gas and also coal and other major industrial polluters, say will allow them to capture their greenhouse gas emissions and then effectively bury those emissions deep underground. And so, on the surface, this sounds great and makes a certain amount of intuitive sense. But carbon capture and storage is incredibly expensive technology. And there's not really any great example of it working at scale anyplace around the world. And so, by oil and gas companies constantly saying that they support this technology and they want taxpayer money for it, they can look like they're taking the problem really seriously while still not really altering any of the fundamentals of their business.
Matt Jordan: Right. I remember reading in The New York Times about, I want to say, two or three months ago a story-- was an op-ed, that was essentially arguing that all we needed to do was to dump iron dust into the oceans, and that allowed for kind of exponentially more carbon capture. And I wonder if this is the type of thing that a think tank would create and seed out there to get people distracted from keeping it in the ground.
Geoff Dembicki: It's definitely possible. And I think one way to gauge whether a climate solution you're hearing about in the news is legitimate or not is how complicated this solution is because what you described sounds incredibly complicated. Carbon capture and storage is also very complicated. But installing a lot of wind and solar and transitioning off of gas-powered vehicles into electric vehicles is pretty simple. It doesn't require a lot of technology that doesn't already exist.
Leah Dajches: If you're just joining us, this is News Over Noise. I'm Leah Dajches.
Matt Jordan: And I'm Matt Jordan.
Leah Dajches: We're talking with Geoff Dembicki, an investigative climate journalist based in New York City. So, climate change was once a bipartisan issue. What happened?
Geoff Dembicki: Well, it took a really deliberate effort on the part of oil and gas companies and some of the think tanks that were associated with them. People may forget, but in the 1980s and early '90s, doing big, aggressive legislation on the environment was seen as a pretty reasonable bipartisan thing to do. George H. W. Bush passed acid rain legislation and would go around bragging about it. And he also highlighted the real economic gains that came from that. Conservative governments all over the world did the same. And so, when climate change first started to become a big issue of public awareness in the early '90s, organizations deliberately tried to undo that consensus. And so, in my book, I talk about a specific meeting that took place at the Hilton in Washington, DC in 1991. And it was set up by the Cato Institute, which is a think tank that was founded by the oil and gas billionaire Charles Koch. And so, at this event and many others, people gathered to strategize about how to change conservative politics so that they were all about opposing environmental solutions rather than seeing them as common sense.
Matt Jordan: So, what types of things did they do? What types of-- how did they seed discord in the polity? What were the type of frames that they used to do that?
Geoff Dembicki: Well, the first thing they did was attack the fundamental science of climate change. So, at this conference I'm referring to, the Cato Institute conference, they produced a brochure that sort of described a shift in thinking that needed to happen. And the people who were who were organizing this were kind of aware that what they were doing was a little bit out there. So, they acknowledge in the materials that you may have heard about climate change. You may be concerned about it. You may think there is a scientific basis to this. But, in fact, the science is flawed, and this is an attempt on behalf of government to control your life. You won't be able to live freely if we're enacting climate legislation. And so, it was a combination of attacking the basic science and then scaremongering about the economic impacts. And so, if you imagine that sulfur rain legislation I mentioned earlier, that entire effort was based on the fact that there was sound science around acid rain and that it would be good for the economy. And so, there was a deliberate effort to undermine all of that so that no conservative could be seen as an environmentalist.
Matt Jordan: So, did that kind of cascade over into other forms of expertise like this-- is there a kind of toxicity towards scientists of all kinds in partisan media? Or is this something that has been specifically used for climate scientists?
Geoff Dembicki: I mean, I think it has bled over into sort of just a generalized distrust of experts in the United States. And it's a bit of a tragedy because that really didn't need to happen. And there was a moment when there was a different path forward for conservative politics and media. And I talk about this in the book, too. But in the late 2000s, Rupert Murdoch decided that climate change was real and it was a big deal. And he made a decision to use all of his media properties, including Fox News, to spread pro-climate messages. And what happened was along came movements like the Tea Party, which were aggressively opposed to any sort of environmental legislation or government regulation at all. And the Tea Party benefited from the involvement of oil and gas billionaires like Charles and David Koch and other people who saw its effectiveness as a way to challenge government regulation. And so, by the time the Tea Party had really gained prominence and left its mark on the United States, Fox News and a lot of Rupert Murdoch's other news properties had swung so far in that anti-expert, right-wing populist direction that there really was no going back after that.
Matt Jordan: I see. And so, they're chasing their audience, basically. Whatever the audience wants, let's give that to them, right?
Geoff Dembicki: Yeah. And they didn't want pro-climate messages, apparently.
Matt Jordan: Wow. So, you know, you're talking about Rupert Murdoch. A disinformation strategy is what we know about the media ecosystem is that they need people. They need help. They need compliant media actors and distributors for it to help. Obviously, you talk about the think tanks, like the Cato and Heritage Foundation and whatnot. How do they-- what did they know about our news media system? Like, for example, I think you talk in your book about the Global Climate Coalition, another group that-- what do these people and these strategic messaging-- what do they know about journalism and compliant actors that allows them to launder their stuff so effectively?
Geoff Dembicki: I mean, earlier on they knew that-- and this has been discussed at length among journalists and media scholars and whatever. But these actors knew that the media wanted to appear balanced and not biased in any way or ideological. And so, they were able to get climate change deniers onto the air with climate scientists because outlets and newspapers saw that as providing a form of balance. But, of course, media has gotten a bit smarter about that and realized that if you put a denier on with a scientist, you're giving equal weight to both of them, and that the strategy of denial is never to win the argument. It's just always to sow doubt about the argument. And so, I think those actors have had to shift and become more sophisticated in their strategies. But one thing that always works is if you produce a study with data, no matter what you're arguing, and no matter how suspect the data, you can always guarantee a bit of news coverage because the data gives you some authority. So, if you say Biden's climate plan will cost 1 million jobs, and we did a study that proves it, just the sheer fact of having those numbers can lead to it being covered.
Matt Jordan: There was-- I read some news this week about the EU adopting a zero-carbon net standard. What is it about their media system that is different from the US media system that allows for consensus to emerge around things like this?
Geoff Dembicki: I mean, that's a-- it's a really interesting question, especially because climate change denial only really appears to have taken off in a big way in English-speaking countries-- so Australia, Canada, US, the UK, to some extent. And in Europe, they've always been a little bit further ahead in terms of climate awareness and wanting to do something about the problem. And I don't know whether that's just differing cultural attitudes, or there's a different sense of politics. But yeah, it is true that the climate disinformation we see here hasn't taken a hold in quite the same way over there. But Europe is still home to major oil companies, like Shell and Total and Eni in Italy. And all of those companies, like the American ones, studied climate change internally going back decades and decades ago and were part of strategies to create doubt and uncertainty about the science. So, Europe definitely has played a role in this as well.
Matt Jordan: So, describe that when they-- what they studied it before maybe a lot of climate change scientists were studying it, and they found things out. What did they find out, and what did they do with that knowledge?
Geoff Dembicki: So, what I always like to say is that the oil and gas industry was really the original climate expert. They were doing some of the earliest work to figure out the link between burning fossil fuels and what that would do for the warming of the atmosphere. And so, Exxon, in particular, in the '70s, was doing super sophisticated research. At one point they spent $1 million on a tanker that sailed around the Gulf of Mexico taking air measurements. And Exxon predicted at the current levels of consuming oil and gas, the world would heat up a certain amount by the year 2000, 2020, and so on. And there were researchers, including this guy, Geoffrey Supran, who recently went back through the old Exxon predictions and matched them against the current warming that we're now seeing and found that they were very accurate. So, Exxon was doing some of the best climate science in the world at the time. And it wasn't doing it for altruistic reasons. It was doing it to understand an emerging threat that could hurt its business.
Matt Jordan: Sounds a lot like big tobacco and doing a similar thing with studies of addiction, studies of how to frame cigarettes as a thing. So, they seem similar. I wonder if some of the same PR firms worked on both.
Geoff Dembicki: Actually, some of them did, yeah. And at this-- there was a moment in the '90s when they both issues overlapped. And some of the PR people were doing cancer science denial at the same time that they were doing climate science denial.
Matt Jordan: What's the liability for a company, do you think, that buries research like this about the public interest and health outcomes if and when? I mean, the civil liability seems to be pretty high, if the tobacco industry is any indication.
Geoff Dembicki: Well, we may soon find out in regards to oil and gas because there's over 20 lawsuits in the US right now trying to hold the companies accountable for exactly this type of lying.
Matt Jordan: In relation to-- so what's the damage? Like a person dying or crops being wiped out? What are they-- what's the cause for the suit?
Geoff Dembicki: It's different in all the jurisdictions. But the lawsuits that really kicked this off were filed by the cities of San Francisco and Oakland. And they argued, or they are still arguing through their lawsuits, that those cities will have to pay heavy costs in order to adapt to rising seas and other climate consequences. And you can quantify the amount of money that the cities will have to spend. And they're arguing that the oil and gas industry intentionally lied about its own knowledge of the science. And this stalled regulations that could deal with the problem. And the costs of that are now being pushed onto taxpayers. So, it's actually-- it's quite a similar argument to what states used against the cigarette makers in the '90s.
Matt Jordan: Right.
Leah Dajches: In 2022, the Washington Post named your book, The Petroleum Papers, as one of the best books of the year. And so, I'm wondering, what's next for you?
Geoff Dembicki: So, I'm currently working with this media outlet called DeSmog, and they focus a lot on exposing climate disinformation. And so, I'm kind of building on all of the history I learned about in my book and trying to figure out what the current disinformation strategies are now and how they're adapting to digital media. And so, for an example, one of the most prominent climate crisis deniers in the world right now is Jordan Peterson. And he has a podcast on YouTube that potentially can reach more people than many legacy media outlets in the US. So essentially, people like Jordan Peterson, and also organizations like Prager University and The Daily Wire with Ben Shapiro, that effectively is mainstream media now. And they're not encumbered by any of the same sort of fact-checking or editorial standards that outlets like the Washington Post have. And so that's now where you're seeing massive, massive amounts of really dumb climate information. And it has the potential to reach millions of people, especially younger Americans, too. So that's where I'm focusing a lot of my attention on now, sort of new digital media and kind of this rising group of anti-climate influencers.
Matt Jordan: Yeah. It's interesting, you know, that when we study the rise of talk radio and things like this, their first 30 years are about railing against the mainstream. That was the source of their appeal was that they weren't the square, staid, mainstream journalists who were so boring. And that they were the people who would say what it's like. But I think you're right that that is now the mainstream, this kind of contrarian position about everything. And it just also happens to get in the way of any public opinion or consensus about how to solve problems we face emerging in the media ecosystem.
Geoff Dembicki: Yeah, absolutely. And that's kind of what makes it scary, too.
Matt Jordan: For our for our audience who might be interested in kind of following better news about climate change, who would you say is doing good work right now, or what would be places that they could they could find it?
Geoff Dembicki: Well, I should give a shout out to DeSmog because they're some of the originals. They've been doing this disinformation work for decades now. I would also say there's great journalists like Amy Westervelt, for example. She has the Drilled podcast. And she's really told the history of oil-sponsored climate denial in podcasting form. And there are just-- there really are amazing climate journalists all over the place. And some of them are working with outlets like Grist or Inside Climate News. Others are working independently. But even as newsrooms like the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times lay off hundreds of workers and cut their climate departments, it's sort of a paradox that there's more and better climate journalism being produced today than ever, I would say.
Leah Dajches: Well, on that note, I think we'll wrap it up. Thanks for being here, Geoff.
Geoff Dembicki: Yeah, and thanks for the conversation.
Leah Dajches: Wow. We just covered a lot of ground. And something that's really standing out to me is that it's fascinating to learn that the fossil fuel companies are the original climate experts, but that they use that knowledge to do bad. What stood out for you, Matt?
Matt Jordan: I was thinking as he was talking about the ways in which the fossil fuel companies managed to use the tendency of the news against them, like they knew exactly how to infiltrate it. And hopefully, some of the lessons from his book will help people figure out what some of the fault lines are and some of the weaknesses are in our news system.
Leah Dajches: That's it for this episode of News Over Noise. Our guest was Geoff Dembicki, an investigative climate journalist based in New York City. To learn more and to hear an extended version of this interview with additional content, download the podcast at wherever you subscribe to podcasts, or at newsovernoise.org. I'm Leah Dajches.
Matt Jordan: And I'm Matt Jordan.
Leah Dajches: Until next time, stay well and well-informed.
Matt Jordan: News Over Noise is produced by the Penn State Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications and WPSU. This program has been funded by the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost at Penn State and is part of the Penn State News Literacy Initiative.
[END OF TRANSCRIPT]
Episode Credits:
Producer: Lindsey Whissel Fenton
Audio Engineers: Mickey Klein, Scott Gros, Clint Yoder
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications. This program has been funded by the office of the Executive Vice President and Provost at Penn State and is part of the Penn State News Literacy Initiative.
