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[Music] what do you do when you learn the product you make threatens the entire planet exxonmobil provides an essential
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component of modern society affordable reliable and abundant energy [Music] nexon new
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i can tell honestly that exxon knew so this was a model from 1982 with right startlingly accurate projections into the press that's correct [Music]
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they realized that it was going to be an existential threat to their business but they made a deeply unethical decision i don't think science is settled i mean
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how could it be matter of fact science is never settled climate skeptics and denialists were in a position of strength in every decisive fight we had won we do not know how fast change will
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occur or even how some of our actions could impact it there was such a cozy relationship between the white house and the industry they were sowing doubt and truly
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casting aspersions on science those decades of deception have created a delay in our own understanding of the issue that is irrecoverable we can never get that time back
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these kinds of events will become more frequent and probably more intense as a result of human-induced global warming the un says this is a code red for humanity
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[Music] [Music] in 1998 there was this meeting in
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washington dc that's convened by the american petroleum institute exxon is in the room chevron southern company with various think tank officers communications professionals and
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right-wing libertarian professionals [Music] and they're hatching a plan to stop people from worrying about climate change [Music] now by 1998 there was a clear
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international scientific consensus that co2 emissions from fossil fuels were causing global warming [Music] the plan is a wide and concerted effort to install uncertainty around climate
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science to decrease political pressure by sowing doubt around the science their targets include media members of congress
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school teachers average citizens the plan right at the top says victory will be achieved when recognition of uncertainties becomes
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part of the quote conventional wisdom they said that it was never implemented but what it shows is an intentionality we need people to not care so much about climate change they want to kill the science
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they need uncertainty to rule the day our country faces a big choice about the future we are truly at a fork in the road with the help of congress environmental
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groups and industry we will require all power plants to meet clean air standards in order to reduce emissions [Music] the new millennium began with a historic
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u.s presidential election both candidates pledged to tackle climate change [Music] the democrat candidate al gore had long
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advocated combating global warming [Music] in this election the environment itself is on the ballot and there's a big difference between us i'll never put polluters in charge of our environmental laws
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his republican rival george bush was a former oil executive from texas i mean look global warming needs to be taken very seriously and i take it seriously both of us care a lot about
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the environment we may have different approaches during the campaign of 2000 george w bush put out a a position paper and a speech and a statement saying that he
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was all in favor of putting limits on carbon emissions and he was in favor of all kinds of government measures it dampened the sharp contrast
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that i had thought was going to be very clear whenever there's a transition of power in washington d.c there's a great deal of talk about a change in the culture as well
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bush won the contest having promised to introduce a national limit on america's carbon dioxide emissions governor whitman reflects a growing consensus in this country about environmental policy
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she and i share the same point of view the new president recruited christine todd whitman to run the u.s environmental protection agency and turn his pledge into action i grew up on a farm
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and when you grow up on the land you see the impact that humans have on it very directly i did a lot of things to improve the environment here in the state of new jersey while i was governor and so it
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was kind of a good fit from that perspective we had talked about climate change before i accepted the position some sort of a cap on carbon that limits the amount of emissions is what's critical
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we were the largest admitter if we put a cap on carbon that was sending an enormous signal and would give us the opportunity to work with the rest of the world i thought it was very urgent and the president agreed with me we were
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on the same page i thought that this was our opportunity that we could really get it done six weeks after the inauguration whitman prepared to travel to an international gathering of environmental ministers
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before i went to my first g8 environmental minister's meeting in italy i went to the white house and i basically said look i am going to say we'll put a cap on carbon because that had been in the campaign literature and
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i ran that all the way up the flagpole at the white house to make sure it was okay and fine go ahead [Music]
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the president has indicated he acknowledges that global warming is a primary importance it's at the top of his agenda but while whitman was in italy the fossil fuel industry was pressuring the
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white house to reverse course haley barber an influential republican and energy lobbyist had written to vice president dick cheney who was shaping the administration's energy policy
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the letter questioned whether the carbon cap idea was eco-extremism and in the media think tanks funded by big oil attacked whitman and climate science
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well this global warming controversy is unprovable but that doesn't stop people on both sides from swearing they know what the heck is going on joining us now from washington is jerry taylor the cato institute's director of natural resource studies
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my objective while a cato was to demonstrate to smart engaged people that the case against climate action was far stronger than they realized and i honestly and in good faith felt
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that the arguments against climate action were far far stronger and so that was my job and i did it well for most people if things are very uncertain they're not going to commit a
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lot of resources to address them into that uncertainty it clears up debate is performance art i was pretty good at that performance art i was the good communicating gunslinger
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mr taylor last word two months ago when christy todd whitman was nominated at the epa she was asked about global warming and babbled something about ozone depletion so she's scarce to the expert i don't want to cite about global climate science but should we do anything mr taylor we've already had
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about a third of the amount of warming that we're going to get this century it's already happened and crop yields are up life expectancy is up all right you're fine and miss callahan is batting it down so far
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the administration was extremely close to the energy industry and those conservative think tanks when i returned from italy i heard some rumors that all of a sudden we weren't going to go forward with a cap on carbon
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so i asked for a meeting with the president went over and met with him and it was a done deal in fact as i walked out of the office after that meeting the vice president was just coming by
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and said do you have a letter for me i didn't know what letter he was talking about he asked the secretary and they handed him an envelope and he was on his way up to the hill and it was the letter to the senate that said we're not doing a cap on carbon
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too bad rest of the world the president claims he dropped the plan because it would drive up already inflated energy costs but the announcement left his epa chief who had vigorously promoted the curbs twisting
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in the wind i was really blindsided when i found that we were backing out of that pledge i was monumentally disappointed especially in the way that we did essentially flipping the bird to the
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rest of the world the industry is a great lobbyist vice president dick cheney had previously headed halliburton one of the world's largest oil service corporations
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you got that feeling that there was a pretty open door that they had to the west wing and vice president cheney who was certainly not a believer in climate change or doing much about it
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the vice president was industry through and through and he was very persuasive in his arguments as were the republicans on the hill about how this was going to kill the economy that we needed more energy
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we could not start to put a cap on carbon and so there just was no appetite economically politically or otherwise to go forward with a cap on carbon
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[Music] some things about the future we cannot know years down the road alternative fuels may become a great deal more plentiful than they are today but we are not yet
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in any position to stake our economy and our way of life on that possibility for years down the road this will continue to be true five months into his presidency george
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bush had adopted the oil industry line of emphasizing the uncertainties in climate science we do not know how fast change will occur or even how some of our actions could
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impact it it really was a tragedy if president bush had gone forward with a cap on carbon it would have made an enormous difference the head of the u.s environmental protection agency announced her
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resignation today christine whitman said she wanted to spend more time with her family once we'd gone through this what i would call a debacle over the cap on carbon
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there was no appetite for addressing climate change at all that was it i mean you just didn't talk about it the industry was winning a lot of battles that i was losing i mean ultimately that's what led me to leave
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the administration i wasn't going to just be a rubber stamp for industry and i just had had enough to the weather now and it is awful triple digit temperature soldiers are
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helping residents from parts of north yorkshire to leave their flooded homes hurricane opal is the ninth hurricane of this long season in many places the downforce triggered flash floods 12 people killed by last week's series
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of california storms the most expensive in the state's history history's biggest merger created america's largest company and together exxon and mobile will be the biggest oil company in the world
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123 000 employees 200 billion dollars in revenue and 47 000 gas stations worldwide the bush administration's decision not to act on climate change was a victory
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for america's oil companies especially exxonmobil [Music] its ceo lee raymond was close to the vice president you're rolling yes sir
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as chairman and chief executive officer of one of the world's leading energy companies lee raymond has helped to improve the lives of countless people all over the world and as the head of a major science and knowledge-based corporation lee
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understands the critical importance of science and technology to continued progress and economic growth both at home and abroad i've been investigating the fossil fuel industry for decades
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exxon was a ringleader and they were at the center of the campaigns that were around in the late 90s early 2000s to stall climate policy exxon had emerged as the real bully on
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climate change headed by lee raymond who was a hardened denier number two please thank you mr chairman i'd like to comment on the findings of fact about
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the relationship between the burning of fossil fuels and climate deterioration i understand that a corporation's policy is that this remains in the realm of the unproven but i would like to state from the broad
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scientific community that this is in fact a well-established fact there is no convincing scientific evidence the human release of carbon dioxide methane or other greenhouse
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gases is causing or will in the foreseeable future cause catastrophic heating of the earth's atmosphere and disruption of the earth's climate lee raymond kept hammering away the idea of scientific uncertainty
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about human activity driving climate change even as the science grew more certain there is a substantial difference of view in the scientific community as to what exactly is going on
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i could assert to you that i don't think this is happening my mind is open enough to say i'm going to listen to the science i started working for exxon mobil in 2001
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it was one of the biggest corporations in the world at the turn of the century they were making on the order of five billion dollars a year geoscientist bill heinz had spent years studying historic climate change before
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joining exxon mobil this is the first time he's been interviewed about his experiences at the company [Music] i'm disappointed i'm angry i'm
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disenchanted at the duplicity exhibited by exxonmobil say one thing internally and to say a different thing with a much different consequence in the political arena
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he'd been hired to use his expertise in climate change to help discover new oil deposits my ambition when i joined exxon was to keep doing my science and i was blown away doing all kinds of
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really interesting earth science research at technical levels above what was happening even in top universities and not only was it appreciated but it was for a reason
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people need energy to live and we were providing that energy by now scientists at exxon mobil had developed a deep understanding of how climate change worked and were using it to their
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advantage this was real fundamental earth science we really tore apart how does the earth work and climate is a really important part of that system
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so you got to understand the climate system to search for oil and gas but there is this flip side there's this dark side of the equation the fundamental idea that we put co2 in
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the atmosphere and that makes the temperature go up and that bad everybody understands that completely clearly heinz soon began to notice a contradiction between what exxon mobil scientists knew and what the company
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management wanted to stress [Music] shortly after i joined exxon mobil there was a presentation by art green who is the chief geoscientist of exxon mobil exploration
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all the scientific staff were there and hart got up and gave his presentation about how ice core records were unreliable and here were temperature excursions in the past when there couldn't possibly be any
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human influence and here's all these reasons why we really don't have to worry about climate change he didn't clearly state it but the subtext appeared to be that his bosses
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didn't believe that climate change was something to be concerned about there was kind of stunned silence in the room and exxon mobil is a very polite place
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in that context the reaction was quite remarkable translated in modern parliaments if my children were explaining the reaction and say are you nuts no
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we don't believe you we're scientists here we don't want to we don't want to hear this stuff i took that as a good sign so i thought my scientific colleagues don't buy into this kind of narrative
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and so even if that's what high levels of management believe there are enough adults in the room to keep things on a technically sound and rational forward path
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now when i look back in hindsight i think oh crap you know that's that was really bad [Music] most of the oil industry was following
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exxon mobil's lead in casting doubt on climate science but one major player had broken ranks bp britain's biggest company which prides itself on its green credentials
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i think the penny dropped with me when i took over as ceo i realized we need to say that we are causing a problem and we need to solve that problem
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ladies and gentlemen good afternoon i believe we've come to an important moment in our consideration of the environment it is a moment for change and for rethinking
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uh corporate responsibility we had many discussions with the the leading scientists and it was very clear that there was a discernible impact on
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the climate as a result of human activity the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is rising and the temperature of the earth's surface
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is increasing this is a remarkable moment because suddenly you have this ceo stepping away from that circle of wagons or from that camp and saying no we actually think we
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have to do something positive on this [Music] the response from the oil and gas industry i think the right word is astonished astonished and very defensive
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lee raymond was furious at this and the friction between him and john brown between exxon and bp was tremendous behind the scenes because he had broken creed
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lee raymond did not approve of what i had said and made it very clear to me that this was the wrong way to go and he pointed out that as far as he was concerned their mandate
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was to abide by the law and produce the maximum amount of profits based on the law that existed at the time beyond darkness there is light beyond a thorn
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there is a rose we built a renewable energy business we set up a special unit for that and we had a tagline called beyond petroleum beyond 10 seconds nine
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there was of course this big suspended judgment you know was this for real beyond power responsibility when the bp beyond petroleum campaign
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launched they were spending 200 million on the bp image scrub while they were spending less than a quarter of that on on actual solar programs winter summer
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beyond darkness light beyond petroleum bp the bp little green flower logo and their beyond petroleum was derided and
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ridiculed within exxon mobil when you talk about green washing that would be kind of the operational definition i thought it was smoke and mirrors i thought it's like hey
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look at the sock puppet over here we're going to be green and you know don't pay attention to what we're really doing people thought it was green wash but i don't think that was the intent behind it
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bp was fundamentally an oil and gas company it was in the process of transitioning and a very slow and long transition but it started it
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unmistakably cone-shaped and hovering over homes in staffordshire the tornado ripped through the skies leaving a trail of destruction days of torrential rain have led to flooding and mudslides in southern italy
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that have devastated mountains the people had no warning of the deluge it came in the dead of night as they slept record temperatures in italy kosovo and france have also sparked blazes
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by the early 2000s scientists were finding more evidence that climate change was increasing the likelihood of extreme weather events michael mccracken was one of the us government's senior climate scientists
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[Music] my career was in climate modeling from 1997 to 2002 i was in charge of helping make the
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first climate assessment on the u.s what would be the impacts and what we found is that there was no question that it was rising concentrations of co2 doing that
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so that puts more pressure on this issue of phasing out fossil fuels if we really want to do something significant to slow this so that our grandchildren don't face a changing world
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we're going to have to do a substantial movement away from the key fossil fuels of coal and oil particularly in january 2001 mccracken participated in a report for the un's
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intergovernmental panel on climate change the ipcc it predicted an increase in droughts floods and violent storms over the coming century
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due to rising co2 emissions [Music] the statement that came out of the ipcc said look humans are the main cause
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and that turned out to be very controversial exxon mobil went on the offensive they faxed the bush administration demanding mccracken and several other americans who worked with the ipcc be
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removed accusing them of scientific bias the facts were sent by randy randall the senior environmental advisor to exxon mobil february 6 2001 [Music]
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it says the u.s was represented by clinton gore carryovers with aggressive agendas so he offered his thoughts on what should be done they also targeted the ipcc chairman
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british professor robert watson their issue was can watson be replaced now at the request of the united states i think they were trying to get him replaced because
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then they could have better control they would have gotten ipcc to focus more on the uncertainties exxon just didn't like the science that was coming out and so was basically calling for a complete
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replacement of those who were leading the scientific enterprise within two years the americans that exxonmobil had named including mccracken and the british ipcc
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chairman watson would retire or be replaced exxon mobil tried to control the discussion in the united states and then put off the problem we'll make our
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profits now and we'll slowly change but we won't do anything urgent enough as as the science was indicating so my term was going to be ending and so i chose to write a letter
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so it was end of september 2002 directed to lee raymond as chairman and chief executive but copied to everybody else dear mr raymond while my departure may be satisfying to exxon mobil i can
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assure you that this will not make the scientific challenge of climate change and its impacts go away that countries unanimously agree about the science of this issue is not because of some green conspiracy but because of the
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solid scientific underpinning for this issue to call exxon mobil's position out of the mainstream is thus a gross understatement you are on the wrong side of history and you need to find a way to change your
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position from our studios in new york city this is charlie rose [Music] lee raymond is here exxon mobil is having a record year in 2005. his career has been a remarkable financial
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performance he retires at the end of this year welcome back sounds ominous charlie it's good to be here thank you the environmental community thinks you are
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part of the problem they say the following global warming is produced by co2 emission in the air do i disagree with the premise that the earth is getting warmer yes sir no i really don't disagree with that the
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climate has changed every year for millions of years if we weren't here the climate would change there have been times in the earth history where there has been no ice on
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the earth no ice on the earth man didn't have anything to do with it [Music]
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exxonmobil continued to promote doubt and uncertainty about climate science using advertorials advertisements designed to resemble journalistic content in major american newspapers
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when i looked at those advertorials at the time i didn't take them as being that important sitting inside the organization and doing good science i thought were for
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good science i averted my gaze so this one about unsettled science is highlighting uncertainties or variabilities that are true but they're not important to the
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issue it's not something that deflects us from the basic idea that more co2 changes the climate in a bad way [Music] they were sowing down
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it was not just public posturing it was truly casting aspersions on science exxonmobil declined to grant any interviews with current executives
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in a statement the company told us there is no truth to the suggestion that it ever misled the public or policy makers about climate change and it said its public statements about climate change have always been
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consistent with the contemporary understanding of mainstream science so it would be correct to say that lee raymond was consistent with science in saying that
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we don't quite know exactly what the answer is but he was out of sync with the science of the time which said if you keep going in this direction it's going to be bad that
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conclusion has not changed in 30 or 40 years as a matter of commercial self-interest the company was casting aspersions was casting doubts was trying to make it so
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that real meaningful change didn't happen scientists are telling us that these kinds of events will become more frequent and probably more intense as a result of human-induced global warming
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extreme drought conditions are providing dangerous fuel for wildfires and the wildfire season there are many predictions that hurricane katrina will turn out to be the nation's most expensive natural disaster but certainly
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not the first to leave an entire hurricane activity that's gone up so much in correlation with the rise in tropical ocean temperatures which globally is attributable to global warming
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that the signal is pretty unmistakable [Music] as the science and the warnings became clearer and more urgent some of the fossil fuel industry's most
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reliable allies started having doubts i look back on the work i did at that time with a lot of grads i'm sure you can run through your parade of horribles that we've heard about over the years we were told that there would be massive
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die-offs from overpopulation and famine and that never happened then people would starve and that never happened and now we've got a global warming situation allegedly it became increasingly clear to me
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that as i debated smart people on the other side using state-of-the-art information that was being generated in real time in the academic literature
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that my job became increasingly difficult the arguments weren't holding up that began my move away from climate skepticism because as the 2000s play out
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the arguments for action on the scientific front become stronger and stronger and stronger if i had known at the time what exxon mobil internally knew as we
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are becoming increasingly aware uh no i would definitely have been in a different place if there was an intervention i could make through a time machine believe me i'd tackle my other self and drag him off the stage and get
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him to do something else for for a living the prime minister's warning that oil firms should pass on price cuts came as bp announced its biggest ever quarterly profits
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the bp boss has presided over a bumper time for his company he's kept profits pumping into their billions bp was now making record profits from oil and gas
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but its solar division was struggling the technologies were not as good as they are today so they were continuously loss making and vastly expensive and the
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price was coming down but we could never get it down far enough to make it a commercial proposition i left the company shortly thereafter the climate vision and bp i think took a
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time out basically after i left for quite a big period while the price of oil went through the roof and people focused on oil and gas huge profitability created a high degree of arrogance
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because you were generating so much money you could forget everything else you've seen those headlines about global warming the glaciers are melting we're doomed
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[Music] that's what several studies supposedly found but other scientific studies found exactly the opposite exxonmobil was still funding think tanks
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accused of spreading misinformation about climate change the antarctic ice sheet is getting thicker not thinner and as for carbon dioxide they call it pollution we call it life
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from 1998 onwards exxon alone put over 30 million dollars into think tanks that were proffering uncertainty that were questioning the climate science questioning policies
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that were being proposed really casting doubt on anything to do with climate change at the state level at the national level and internationally
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[Music] the company's new ceo rex tillerson now acknowledged that climate change was a risk but defended questioning the
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science when i read what these groups are publishing what they are examining are polls in science gaps in science things that don't have a good scientific basis
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under rex tillerson exxon finally admitted that man-made climate change was occurring but there was a contradiction in its business practices
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in things that rex tillerson as the leader of exxon said off the cuff about climate change and in its continued funding of organizations that um deny the reality of climate change having a
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good debate on this is what sorely needed and this rush to everyone wanted to say we got it figured out that's just i hate to say it but that ain't so but the scientific warnings were
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becoming even more urgent the world's top scientists are convinced that changes may spiral out of control because of what we're pumping into the air every day climate change is putting
00:36:42
the world on the verge of a catastrophe public support for action on climate change was at an all-time high and an oscar-winning film was sounding the alarm to a wider audience across the
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world i am al gore i used to be the next president of the united states this is patagonia 75 years ago and the same glacier today we had reality on our side
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and tragically the the felt consequences of the climate crisis were growing in intensity and frequency and severity it was time to regroup
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again and and double down [Music] i am absolutely certain that generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the
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moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal this was a big moment when president obama was elected came in with
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a mandate he campaigned on this and he got people excited about this there was no sneaking this issue past anybody this was on everyone's radar everyone knew it was coming we thought we were part of making
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history [Music] inside exxonmobil top executives were plotting how to respond
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they contacted bennett freeman a specialist in human rights and corporate responsibility i had an informal conversation in the back of a limousine
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with ken cohen at exxonmobil who was essentially their chief policy maker and public affairs officer i thought that exxon was shamefully
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out of the action because it had become so apparent that climate science was real so my advice to ken was for the company
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to finally take a public position on climate policy to make an unequivocal statement accepting the reality of climate science to
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make a unequivocal commitment to not fund any more climate denial research which exxon was infamous for supporting for funding directly
00:39:25
and to take a positive proactive position supporting action at the u.s federal level amazingly that speech happened
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globally the outlook for energy expects energy related carbon dioxide emissions to rise by an average of one percent per year through the year 2030. these two fundamental realities
00:39:52
meeting enormous demand growth and managing the risk of greenhouse gas emissions are the twin challenges of our time this company was essentially like the
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caveman from the neanderthal era who finally came out blinking into the sunshine of the very early 21st
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century yet it was i think the first time that at least at the ceo level they started just started to take a policy position
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that was potentially constructive it's important to acknowledge that this was an initial step but it's equally important even more important in my opinion to emphasize
00:40:42
that it was a step that was little and late [Music] i ask this congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution and drives the
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production of more renewable energy in america that's what we need the president began pushing a climate bill that would radically reduce carbon emissions known as the cap and trade
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bill jonathan phillips was part of the team that drafted it i was passionate about it because you can't really get any closer to the fire right i mean this is where
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laws would be made to deal with what i believed was an existential crisis for humanity the ultimate goal of the bill was to
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reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent below 2005 levels by 2050. and that's a lot of fossil industry
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a lot of oil and gas producers the coal miners the coal companies refineries it was going to hit someone's pocketbook exxonmobil opposed the bill in spite of
00:42:06
its new position on climate change but other major players in the oil industry would lead the counter-attack the strength of the forces of raid against us was quite quite large i
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raised 300 million dollars to run prime time advertisements in support of president obama's climate initiative i knew by then that the large polluters
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would stop at nothing to try to prevent it coke industries has been called the biggest company you never heard of the sprawling giant includes pipelines
00:42:42
petrochemicals asphalt plants trading floors based in wichita kansas it sells everything from gasoline to beef in 2009 coke industries is the second largest privately held company in the
00:42:57
united states whose annual sales are bigger than that of goldman sachs u.s steel and facebook combined coke's core business is distribution it owns 37 000 miles of international
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pipeline coke is just deeply embedded in the fossil fuel infrastructure it trades ships and transports natural gas oil
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gasoline so when you think about anything that would reduce demand or increase the price for fossil fuels it's a tremendous threat to coke's business
00:43:35
[Music] coke industries was owned by two brothers david who died in 2019 and charles people who've been inside this organization for decades
00:43:47
described david koch to me as essentially like a silent partner charles was the master strategist this is a person who understands science who lives by science who lives by data
00:44:00
and yet he's been one of the largest proponents of casting doubt on the science behind climate change this was a moment when the potential for passing climate
00:44:13
change regulation was more real than it has ever been in us history full stop that's why you saw the the the koch political machine kick into high gear
00:44:26
do you believe in anthropogenic climate change i mean there are such a thing as greenhouse gases and uh and they're contributing to that but i don't think anybody knows how much
00:44:39
i don't think science is settled i mean how could it be matter of fact science is never settled david hoffman was an environmental lawyer at coke industries this is the first time he has spoken on
00:44:52
camera about his work there my father-in-law basically his message to me was don't work for the devil this is a company that doesn't care about the impact they're having on the world in
00:45:04
the world it encouraged me even more to work for coke industries because i felt like maybe i can convince people you know within koch industries that environmental compliance is not such a bad thing
00:45:18
hoffman was given the job of assessing what the climate bill would mean for coke industries he met with a team of senior coach lobbyists i was invited to this meeting the discussion quickly turned from the
00:45:32
possibility that this bill might pass and what we should be doing to prepare for it to a discussion about how we're going to prevent it from passing who are vulnerable republicans
00:45:46
that we need to target to make sure that they don't vote for this bill we cannot let this bill pass we won't let this bill pass and we have to do everything in our power to prevent it from passing welcome to americans for prosperity
00:45:59
foundations the koch brothers poured money into the effort to kill the bill the right-wing advocacy group americans for prosperity spearheaded the effort five years ago my brother charles and i
00:46:13
uh provided the funds to start the americans for prosperity and uh it's beyond my wildest dreams how afp has grown into this enormous
00:46:26
organization 800 000 activists from nothing live years ago [Music] backed with coke money afp had begun rallying opposition on the ground across
00:46:39
the country steve lonegan a senior staffer at afp helped mobilize the movement this country is heading in the wrong direction but like americans have always done
00:46:51
we're going to rise to the occasion you know that we're not gonna let this cap and trade bill pass i see an underlying anti-american sentiment behind much of this climate
00:47:04
change discussion today's axis of evil is the communist chinese party american woke activism and the intergovernmental panel on climate change those three elements
00:47:16
together are designed to drive down america's productivity that's what's at [Music] we as stake have reached a moment of realization that the very core values and principles
00:47:28
are under attack like never before in our lifetime it became very obvious that the republican party was not prepared or willing to fight the fight and charles koch who in my opinion is a hero
00:47:44
and a visionary saw this problem so we had a multi-faceted hard-hitting approach pressuring republicans who were weak need and democrats who were vulnerable uh whose states would be impacted by this if
00:47:58
you're going to go into a war like this was the first thing you need to do is get your troops marching get them energized and that's what we did in that summer [Applause] it was a time when many republican
00:48:11
supporters were joining the conservative tea party movement which advocated lower taxes and smaller government this was a volatile time in american life
00:48:24
we had just had the biggest economic collapse since the depression the tea party movement was animated by a lot of genuine political passion coke
00:48:36
very cunningly stepped in and channeled that energy to coke's end coke took that passion and also told these people oh hey by the way the government is trying to regulate
00:48:49
greenhouse gases which is another form of socialist tyranny and they're trying to take your country away from [Applause]
00:49:02
all of a sudden people started to get really energized about climate change and not in a positive way they are people screaming and they're animated about cap and trade and it's like what what
00:49:19
just happened how did how did this happen from the summer of 2009 through the winter into the spring we gradually saw the us senate
00:49:31
back away from climate we stopped the bill from even going to a vote in the u.s senate so it died its own death and at that point everybody knew it was over uh back to the drawing board for the
00:49:49
progressive left [Music] i was more or less i think we all knew this was the end of climate legislation in the u.s congress for a long time
00:50:02
we had a shot at it and we got beat this was our one moment of opportunity when we could have done something dramatic not just for the us i think but for the world
00:50:14
to me was was a huge lost opportunity no one from coke industries would agree to an interview or respond to questions
00:50:27
to me this was sort of the worst part of the underbelly of our our democracy is that it's it's basically influence peddling i became terribly disheartened by
00:50:42
what coke stood for and what i could do i felt very isolated and i couldn't in good conscience stay [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]
00:50:57
[Applause] [Music] but the cokes didn't stop there they now set about removing from office any republican politicians who'd previously supported climate action by
00:51:10
backing rival republican candidates [Applause] the republican party needed to be shored up they needed to be propped up they needed to be given a backbone you know some incumbent can be sitting
00:51:22
there all fat and happy thinking they're ensconced and can't be beaten and someone can go out of nowhere and knock them out in a primary [Applause] [Music]
00:51:37
this is where you saw the perfection of the primary strategy whereby coke would would give money to a primary opponent to take out a congressperson that had crossed coke on climate change
00:51:50
[Music] bob inglis was a republican congressman who the kochs had previously supported now they withdrew their funding and backed another candidate
00:52:03
my most enduring heresy against the orthodoxy at the time was just saying climate change is real let's do something about it they didn't want their money being spent on somebody that was talking what i was talking
00:52:16
a very memorable occasion was a big tent meeting all of my primary opponents were there the guy asking the questions was a local christian radio talk host
00:52:28
and his question for me was is climate change human caused and do you support a carbon tax and so i said yes and yes i do believe that humans contribute to
00:52:42
climate change and actually let me strike that i don't really believe it it's not an article of faith for me all of my faith tells me to look at the data the data says that's happening
00:52:55
and then it goes to the guy that we were concerned about because he's a very capable fellow no one can trade no on carbon taxes i've been a prosecutor for 16 years i'm used to having things proven to me and proving it to other people
00:53:08
uh global warming has not been proven to the satisfaction of the constituents that i've seen [Music] i remember thinking that was a particularly good political answer but
00:53:21
it won't win you a profiling courage but you know a good answer politically let's go ahead and take a look at the numbers it is a huge margin of victory english lost every county in the district he is a seasoned congressman
00:53:35
going down to a huge defeat tonight you know it's quite a spectacular face plan to get just 29 of the vote after 12 years in congress and it became a lesson to others you
00:53:46
know that you you tow the line they wanted to make sure that other republicans knew you deviate from this and we will get you and so um
00:53:58
yeah my scalp and others were hung on the wall i think to show this was gonna happen to you object lesson you know [Applause]
00:54:14
later that year republicans won a historic majority in the midterm elections many of the victorious candidates had signed an americans for prosperity pledge opposing climate change
00:54:27
legislation the achievement of 2010 the newly elected republicans the vast majority of which signed our carbon pledge was to put an end to that whole climate change argument
00:54:39
since then until now it's been a dead issue are you proud of what americans for prosperity has achieved this year man oh man we're gonna do more too in the next couple years koch industries was able to reshape the
00:54:56
republican party into one that identified with the idea that climate change is not real that the science is a hoax and that is a position of zero compromise and total opposition
00:55:10
not only to any laws but even to an acknowledgement that the problem is real i don't think in anyone's wildest imaginations on the industry side they think that the hoax argument would get to
00:55:24
become the mainstream argument of their party it did that's half of our political system so you can't really get anything done if
00:55:37
one party is not even going to be a part of the debate we're politically gridlocked and what happens in the u.s on climate policy is a major element of course of what happens globally
00:55:50
this climate crisis is burning up the planet a u.n report released just this morning says climate change is accelerating and we are running out of time to stop it punishing and extreme weather once again
00:56:08
putting lives at risk climate change is now widespread rapid and intensifying that human activity has warmed the climate mr taylor would say you about to climb in next 10 years
00:56:21
well almost all the warming we've seen in the united states has occurred at night and during the winter i absolutely feel used by my old allies there were people in the fossil fuel industry uh
00:56:34
and actors in these major oil companies who knew full well that the narratives coming out of the mainstream scientific community and the ipcc were exactly correct
00:56:48
all i have in my defense is to say that i made the argument in good faith at the time [Music] in my opinion the fossil fuel industry has been engaged in a multi-decade act
00:57:00
of fraud and had they been more forthcoming and honest about what they knew at the beginning of this debate it would have gone on a very different trajectory [Music]
00:57:14
i've been involved with the oil and gas business since uh the 60s i think i've been in an industry that's helped the world but it can't do what it
00:57:25
was doing in the past it has to change looking backwards over the last 25 years we really have lost a quarter century in what we should have been doing the world as a ecosystem as an entity is
00:57:49
in big trouble to think about the fact that we are making it worse that's a hard thing to wrap your head around [Music] if i could have seen earlier that the
00:58:01
hydrocarbon industry writ large was responsible for distracting attention from climate change i would have taken a different path i bear responsibility for
00:58:17
having created bad outcomes i consider often what kind of world are my grandchildren going to live in 50 years from now they will rightly look
00:58:30
back and say what were you thinking [Music] i can understand people saying to me you're a traitor there are massive fracking booms
00:58:46
happening in texas north dakota pennsylvania exxon mobil is making a bet here on natural gas methane is harming every single person and every animal and everything on this
00:58:57
planet the clock is ticking it's been ticking for some time global warming and that a lot of it's a hoax it's a hoax i mean it's a money-making industry okay it's a hoax
00:59:12
[Music] [Music] you
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