Why Climate Change is the Most Divisive Issue w:Barbara Freese | Joe Rogan

The Gerald G. Ogan experience. Pleasure to meet you. How did you get started on this and how did you get interested in the subject? I got interested in this subject through climate change, climate denials specifically. I'm an environmental attorney and back in the 1990s I worked for the state of Minnesota and we found ourselves very briefly sort of on the front lines of the scientific debate over climate change and the way that happened was the state had passed a law saying that utilities regulators should try to estimate the cost to the environment of generating electricity. We get most of our power from coal or we did then. And so we looked at coal emissions. We looked at the traditional pollutants that we had regulated for a long time and my client was the pollution control agency so I was familiar with those. What we also looked at though and I wasn't familiar with was CO2 and its effect on climate change because while that was a big issue globally, there was already a global treaty signed to fight climate change. States had not taken a look at that and what happened was we struck a nerve with the coal industry and they sent to Minnesota a bunch of witnesses, a bunch of scientists to testify that we did not have to worry about climate change and it wasn't going to happen or if it did it would be just a little and we'd like it and that all of those scientists, the IPCC, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, those scientists that the rest of the world including the US government in the treaty signed by George H.W. Bush, the ones that they were relying on, those scientists were basically biased. They were biased because they were in it for the money somehow, they wanted research grants or they had some political agenda. It was kind of vague but it was clear they did not want us worrying about this issue at all. Trevor Burrus They told you that it would be just a little and that you would like it? What did they mean by that? Dr. Susanne Pollard Oh yeah. Well, a couple of things. One of the arguments and you will still hear this sometimes is that CO2 is a plant fertilizer which is true and therefore more CO2 makes the world a happier place for plants and therefore better for everybody else and to the point where one of the coal interests who were parties had put out a video saying that the earth was deficient in CO2 and by digging up the coal and burning it we were correcting that. So that was one of the arguments. The other was it will be mild, it will be warm, the winters won't be as cold and hey, this is Minnesota so you guys are going to appreciate those warmer winters. So yeah, there was a lot of crazy stuff that hasn't gone away. In fact, in many ways it has gotten a lot worse but there were certainly enough to leave me shocked. Trevor Burrus Was that the first time you were ever aware that corporations do send in people to try to diffuse arguments or pollute the waters? Dr. Susanne Pollard I don't think I was quite that naive but I'd certainly never seen anything like this. These were people under oath and they were saying things that were pretty extreme and many of which would just get a lot more extreme. Trevor Burrus And they were scientists. Dr. Susanne Pollard The ones I cross examined were mainly the scientists. They also sent in some other witnesses as well. So they didn't actually work in a coal company. They were hired by the coal industry to come in and testify. Trevor Burrus And these scientists, presumably, they were paid to do this? Dr. Susanne Pollard Yes. Trevor Burrus So is that, I mean, how do you track that? Like if you have scientists and they come in and they say things that you know are not accurate or deceptive, how do you find out what their motivation is? Did you ask them if they've been paid? Dr. Susanne Pollard We were able to put some things in the record regarding how much money they had gotten from different fossil fuel interests over the years. So we definitely did point to that, argue about that. We didn't realize some of the witnesses had a much deeper history than we understood in science denial. One of the witnesses was a pretty prominent scientist named Frederick Seitz who has since died. But we didn't know what I didn't know when I cross examined him. I mean, this was a shoestring operation, was that he had spent a lot of time actually consulting for the tobacco industry. So that would have been nice to bring up. Trevor Burrus We had talked about, just before the podcast, the film Merchants of Doubt, and that's how it kind of got into your work, that that film touches on that, how people who worked for the tobacco industry eventually went to work to deny manmade climate change. Dr. Susanne Pollard Right. In his case, he had actually been a physicist who was very involved in the Cold War weapons program. So he kind of came at it from that direction. And it wasn't until really he had retired from his sort of main scientific and academic work that he was brought into work for the tobacco industry. But what happened was this handful of scientists profiled in that movie and in the book by the same name, they would also then work with these nonprofit groups, these free market groups that were strongly opposed to regulation of industries. And so in those same groups then would address lots of different issues from tobacco to ozone and now to climate change and really a lot of other scientific issues as well for industries facing regulation. Trevor Burrus Another really divisive aspect of this is that it's become some sort of a left versus right ideological issue. Like there's a lot of people on the right that I've had conversations with people that really don't have any idea what they're talking about where they instantly deny that climate change is a real issue. And when you press them on it, and just that's one of the benefits of having the sort of long form conversations is that if you're doing this on CNN, and it's one of those talking head things where you only have seven minutes and there's three people shouting over each other, it's very hard to get to the heart of why do you believe this? But when you're talking over long podcasts, hours long, you get to these people and they'll adamantly deny that it's an issue, but they don't know why. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like a thing if you're a right wing pundit or a right wing person and you're saying right wing things, you're going to say climate change is not our issue. What our issue right now is the economy. What we've got to do right now is support jobs and people. There's a lot of people that need to put food on the table. There's a lot of people that need to and then they get this sort of a ranting, raving, pro economic standpoint and it becomes a denial of environmental problems that becomes left versus right. It's very strange. I don't understand why anyone like how can that not be a universal issue? How could anyone not want the world to be better for our grandchildren? How could anybody not want less pollution? But it becomes this thing where we have all these different categories that are left and right. And once you're on one side, you automatically seem to oppose those things that are in the other party's ideas. Well, in fact, there's one survey I cite in here that showed that climate change was the most polarized issue in the American political landscape, even more than abortion. Really? More than abortion. It's crazy. More than abortion. Now, that was a snapshot in time and I think maybe that's changing. Certainly you see with younger Republicans a lot more concerned about climate change, but you're absolutely right. I mean, it remains very polarized and I don't think you can understand it. You know, it's not in I don't think it makes sense from an ideological standpoint. I think it makes sense from a tribal standpoint that we have divided and it feels good to believe the same things as the people you are affiliated with. And it's tense to not believe the same things. That's a source of hardship. And, you know, the reason it's such a big problem here is that this isn't just about making the world better for our grandkids. It's about avoiding catastrophe for our grandkids. And so that's why, you know, it is finally rising to the surface within the Democratic Party. I mean, it's been ignored or downplayed for too long. And certainly in the national campaigns, it was never perceived to be important enough or winning enough an issue to get a lot of attention. Now we see largely driven by the youth movement and insistence that, yeah, it's a time. It is absolutely time. It's 30 years past time that we get very aggressive about this. And so I don't know what happens now with with covid with George Floyd. Obviously, there are other issues dominating the news right now. But I really hope we hang on to this issue as a critical one for the election. And don't stop there because this is going to continue to require lots of pressure to make sure that we make the changes we need. Yeah, I don't think it's going to go away, I think. But other issues do come to the forefront. But what you said, I think is really interesting is that it gives you comfort to agree with the other people that are in your party, in your group. And that's something that is exacerbated by social media and manipulated by social media. And it's one of the weirder things about it is that a corporation could legally create hundreds, if not thousands of fake pages and then use those to make like I'm sure you're aware of the Internet Research Agency from Russia that had an impact on 2016 elections. And Renee DiResta did some pretty fascinating work on that where she did a deep dive into how these accounts, whether it's Facebook or Instagram or what have you, have been manipulated and how they how they use them where in one point they had a pro Texas group meet up at the exact same time as a pro Muslim group on the exact same block. Like they manipulated it. Like there was no one child's play. Exactly. It was like they were moving pieces on a chessboard and they literally set up altercations. And you would imagine that, I mean, I don't know what these fossil fuel companies or any kind of company that's involved in any something, anything that would be considered sketchy environmentally. I don't know how many manipulating sites they run or manipulative social media accounts they run. But I would imagine that's got to be part of the game plan, because online discourse, it's so easy to throw monkey wrenches into the gears, it's so easy to throw sand into the gas tank. It's so easy to sort of monkey with the numbers and change the ideas that are being discussed and change the narratives that it's just a way that you can sort of shift the public's interests and opinions on things. Yeah, I mean, if you're willing to lie and manipulate, then you have obviously a huge advantage. But there's also just the basic human tendency that when we talk to people we already agree with, we tend to then become stronger in our opinions. And so we get polarized basically. And that's even before social media. So then you sort of weaponize that polarization, that tendency. And you've got an algorithm that says, well, if you like that video, how about this video? And suddenly people are getting totally radicalized on climate change or on other issues. And so, yeah, I mean, it is a huge problem. How do we overcome the social divisions, the social distrust? How do we overcome the denial? And, you know, I think if the patterns in the book come to the fore, we will. Society will find ways to build trust again. It'll probably have a lot to do with maintaining long term accountability and not just a flash reaction to what you hear. But it could very well take decades and we will have a lot of damage done in the meantime. I wonder if there's going to be a time where there are laws against social media manipulation like that, because right now they're not. And there will be. Yeah, it seems like there has to be, because if you I can't imagine, I'm not naive enough to imagine that what's happening with the Internet research agencies in Russia is not happening here. It has to be. They understand the effectiveness of it. It's been well documented. The idea that corporations are going to step back and go, well, that's not our business. That's not what we do. I mean, that's an incredibly effective tool. And if you're going to use it to manipulate opinions on whether it's climate change or, you know, anything, you know, pharmaceutical drug overdoses, like whatever, whatever it is that you want to manipulate people with. I would imagine that that's a gigantic issue, but it's not something that really gets discussed in terms of in terms of passing legislation to prevent that stuff. Yeah. And and hopefully it gets more and more discussed because it is very scary. I mean, it turns out we humans are easily manipulated and we're easily manipulated even before social media. But now there is this incredibly sophisticated engine to drive us apart, to drive us in the direction that those best at manipulating us want us to. Yes. And it's addictive, which is even crazier. It's a completely addictive mechanism. Yeah, it really is. People are lost in their phones and lost in their computers, like when they're checking their social media stuff. And that's one of the more interesting things about these social media algorithms that it's been determined that when people are upset about things and when they're angry about things, they post more. So it's more valuable. So the algorithms favor people being upset. So they'll send you if you if you find abortion a hot topic or environmental issues, they'll start sending you those. That's what's going to show up in your feet. You're going to get more of this is what you engage in. And it's what's fascinating is it's not even really malicious in that it's just pragmatic because I have a friend who did an experiment. My friend Ari wanted to find out what would happen if he just looked up puppies. So he just looked up puppies on YouTube and looked up puppies everywhere in his feed was overwhelmed by puppies. So it's not like this some vicious plot to only feed you things that you hate. Just human nature. We tend to look at things that piss us off. It was really kind of crazy. And now we have a very sophisticated machine to drive us in the direction of getting more pissed off. And that sophisticated machine is clearly using the same sort of deceptive tactics to try to diminish their responsibility for what they're doing. Yeah, exactly. And you know, one of the things that makes these tactics, I think, work so well is that they really are based in human nature. I mean, I think that if you are an executive, you know, your your instinct is that you are doing fine and your instinct is that the other side is wrong in that. And that psychological reflex then becomes a foundation for a corporate strategy. And then that corporate strategy becomes the basis of kind of its own new industry of public relations folks and advertising people and lawyers and think tanks who will promote that. And then that becomes an ideology. That's certainly what we saw the progression for climate change and I think climate denial. And that's a dangerous trend.