The Power of Big Oil Part Two: Doubt (full documentary) | FRONTLINE

[Music] for more than 150 years oil and gas has played a critical role in our society improving human lives raising standards of living and enabling unprecedented economic growth what do you do when your industry can no longer exist without creating catastrophes worldwide the impacts of climate change are intensifying it's important to understand the past you can't understand where you are if you don't know how you got there in a special three-part series the epic story of our failure to tackle climate change the whole world is heating up and the role of the fossil fuel industry the big oil knowingly spread disinformation now in part two how big oil continued its campaign of doubt i could assert to you that i don't think this has happened lee raymond is salient because he's hammering away the idea of scientific uncertainty even as the science grew more certain and the political struggles overtaking action we do not know how fast change will occur there just was no appetite economically politically to go forward with a cap on carbon my brother charles and i provided the funds to start the americans for prosperity we had a multi-faceted hard-hitting approach pressuring republicans in weak need and democrats who were vulnerable this was the end of climate legislation in the u.s congress for a long time we had a shot at it and we got beat we continue to maintain a position that has evolved with science and is today consistent with the science we won't solve the climate crisis unless we solve the misinformation crisis in 1998 there was this meeting in dc it's convened by the american petroleum institute [Music] exxon is in the room chevron southern company with various think tank officers communications professionals and right-wing libertarian professionals they're hatching a plan to stop people from worrying about climate change less than a year earlier some of those in the room had helped block american participation in a major international attempt to combat climate change they feared more threats on the horizon [Music] the plan is a wide and concerted effort to install uncertainty around climate science to decrease political pressure by sowing doubt around the science their targets include media members of congress school teachers average citizens [Music] the plan right at the top says victory will be achieved when recognition of uncertainties becomes 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 we need uncertainty to rule the day [Music] [Music] our country faces a big choice about the future we are truly at a fork in the road with the help of congress environmental groups and industry we will require all power plants to meet clean air standards in order to reduce emissions new millennium began with a presidential campaign [Applause] one candidate had long advocated for action to combat global warming 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 his republican rival was an oil man from texas who was also talking about action on climate change i mean look global warming needs to be taken very seriously and i take it seriously both of us care a lot about 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 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 that i had thought was going to be very clear [Music] 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 [Applause] bush had pledged that he would place a national limit on america's carbon dioxide emissions governor whitman reflects a growing consensus in this country about environmental policy she and i share the same point of view once in office president bush tapped christy todd whitman to run the environmental protection agency to turn his pledge into action we had talked about it before i accepted the position some sort of a cap on carbon that limits the amount of emissions is what's critical and the president agreed with me we were on the same page i thought that this was our opportunity that we could really get it done [Music] less than two months after the inauguration whitman prepared to travel to a gathering of environmental ministers from eight of the world's largest economies before i went to my first g8 environmental ministers 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 i ran that all the way up the flagpole at the white house to make sure it was okay and fine go ahead [Music] 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 a very different message was being promoted through the top ranks of the bush administration haley barber an influential republican and energy lobbyist had written to vice president dick cheney questioning whether the carbon cap idea was eco-extremism and risked exacerbating the country's energy problems other prominent voices some from think tanks funded by the fossil fuel industry joined in too opposing climate action 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 my objective while at 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 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 are not going to commit a lot of resources to address them until that uncertainty clears up do you believe that the people of the united states should do anything because of the weather um you know in fact uh epa administration debate is performance art i was pretty good at that performance art i was the good communicating gunslinger [Music] and save the environment mr taylor last word we've already had 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 down so far 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 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 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 that said we're not doing a cap on carbon 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 in the wind i was really blindsided when i found that we were backing out of that pledge i was monumentally disappointed the administration was extremely close to the energy industry the vice president was industry through and through and he was very persuasive in his arguments as were some of the republicans on the hill about how this was going to kill the economy that we needed more energy 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 the vice president was stressing the need for more fossil fuels [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 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 the president too veered from the tone he'd struck as a candidate and was emphasizing the uncertainty of climate science climate change with its potential to impact every corner of the world is an issue that must be addressed by the world we do not know how fast change will occur or even how some of our actions could 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 it would have been a huge signal coming from a republican administration the head of the u.s environmental protection agency announced her 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 there was no appetite for addressing climate change at all it wasn't going to be the number one issue it just wasn't 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 the administration i wasn't going to just be a rubber stamp for industry and i just had had enough history's biggest merger created america's largest company and together exxon and mobile will be the biggest oil company in the world 123 000 employees 200 billion dollars in revenue and 47 000 gas stations worldwide the bush administration's u-turn was a victory for big oil especially exxonmobil [Music] its ceo lee raymond was close to the vice president who'd been an oil industry executive himself these men were business associates they were friendly they were part of the same fraternity the oil fraternity you're rolling 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 base corporation lee 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 and 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 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 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 scientific community that this is in fact a well-established uh fact there is no convincing scientific evidence the human release of carbon dioxide methane or other greenhouse 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 is salient because he kept hammering away the idea of scientific uncertainty 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 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 from 1998 to 2014 exxon alone put over 30 million dollars into think tanks that were proffering uncertainty that were questioning the climate science questioning policies that were being proposed really casting doubt on anything to do with climate change at the state level at the national level and internationally [Music] i started working at exxon mobil shortly after the merger at the turn of the century they were making on the order of five billion dollars a year geoscientist bill hines had spent years studying past climate change before joining exxon mobil this is the first time he's been interviewed about his experiences at the company i'm disappointed i'm angry i'm disenchanted at the duplicity exhibited by exxonmobil to say one thing internally and to say a different thing with a much different consequence in the political arena 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 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 people need energy to live and we were providing that energy heinz says scientists at the company had developed a deep understanding of climate change and the role of burning fossil fuels 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 so you got to understand the climate system to search for oil and gas the fundamental idea that we put co2 in the atmosphere and that makes the temperature go up and that's bad everybody understands that completely clearly he says he quickly saw signs of a disconnect between what he and his colleagues knew and the position the company wanted to stress shortly after i joined exxon mobil there was a presentation by art green who is the chief geoscientist of exxon mobil exploration 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 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 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 in that context the reaction was quite remarkable translated in modern parlance if my children were explaining the reaction they'd say are you nuts [Music] no we don't believe you we're scientists here we don't want to we don't want to hear this stuff arthur greene is retired from exxonmobil and did not respond to requests for comment the company would not grant us any interviews but said in a statement that it has long acknowledged the reality and risks of climate change and it has devoted significant resources to addressing those risks and it said that it should not be surprising that there are competing views about how best to address the risks of climate change hurricane mitch smashed homes wrecked crops killed thousands of people 25 people were killed by mudslides in southern italy caused by two days of torrential rain 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 michael mccracken was one of the government's senior scientists investigating climate change during the bush administration my career was in climate modeling from 1997 to 2002 i was in charge of helping make the 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 if we really want to do something significant to slow this so that our grandchildren don't face a changing world 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 headline grabbing report for the united nations intergovernmental panel on climate change the ipcc said there was now new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities the statement that came out of the ipcc said look humans are the main cause and that turned out to be very controversial exxon mobil's response was severe her company lobbyist faxed the bush administration demanding mccracken and several others who worked with the ipcc be removed accusing them of scientific bias the facts were sent by randy randall the senior environmental advisor to exxon mobil it says the u.s was represented by clinton gore carryovers with aggressive agendas so he offered his thoughts on what should be done exxon just didn't like the science that was coming out and so was basically calling for a complete replacement of those who were leading the scientific enterprise within two years the scientists that exxon mobil had named including mccracken would retire or be replaced exxon mobil tried to control the discussion of the united states and then put off the problem we'll make our profits now and we'll slowly change but we won't do anything urgent enough as as the science was indicating and so i chose to write a letter 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 assure you that this will not make the scientific challenge of climate change and its impacts go away that 150 countries unanimously agree about the science of this issue is not because of some green conspiracy but because of the solid scientific underpinning for this issue to call exxon mobil's position out of the mainstream is thus a gross understatement and then a few weeks later i received a response from kenneth cohen who was vice president for public affairs in summary we regret that you apparently don't understand the company's actions and activities related to this complex issue possible human-induced climate change is a long-term risk that we at exxon mobil take very seriously they had to write something from our studios in new york city this is charlie rose lee raymond is here exxon mobil is having a record year in 2005. his career has been a remarkable financial 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 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 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 the earth no ice on the earth man didn't have anything to do with it [Music] exxonmobil itself had been reinforcing this kind of message using advertorials advertisements with the appearance of editorial content in major newspapers they promoted the idea that the science of climate change was still too uncertain to limit the use of fossil fuels 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 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 issue it's not something that deflects us from the basic idea that more co2 changes the climate in a bad way they were sowing doubt it was not just public posturing it was truly casting aspersions on science [Music] lee raymond did not respond to our request for an interview in its statements to us exxonmobil said there is no truth to the suggestion that exxon mobil ever misled the public or policy makers about climate change the company said it has been consistent with the contemporary understanding of mainstream climate science so it would be correct to say that lee raymond was consistent with science in saying that 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 is a different thing than the strictly legalistic argument about being consistent with the science scientists are telling us that these kinds of events will become more frequent and probably more intense [Music] extreme drought conditions are providing dangerous fuel for wildfires there are many predictions that hurricane katrina will turn out to be the nation's most expensive natural disaster hurricane activity that's gone up so much in correlation with the rise in tropical ocean temperatures which globally is attributable to global warming the signal is pretty unmistakable as the science and the warnings became clearer and more urgent some of the fossil fuel industry's most reliable allies started having doubts i look back on the work i did at that time with a lot of grads if i had known at the time what exxon mobil internally knew as we are becoming increasingly aware uh no i would definitely have been in a different place well 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 die offs from overpopulation and famine and that never happened and people would starve and that never happened and now we've got a global warming situation allegedly it became increasingly clear to me 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 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 the arguments for action on the scientific front become stronger and stronger and stronger [Applause] at exxon mobil under a new ceo rex tillerson they had now made a public acknowledgement that the risks of climate change justified taking action but at the same time they were still raising the uncertainties and funding groups who disputed the scientific consensus i don't i don't really read that and when i read what these groups are publishing what they are examining are holes in science gaps and science things that don't have a good scientific basis under rex tillerson what they said was we just don't know and do we really want to overturn our economies and upend things to address growing co2 levels when we just don't know as i said earlier i think having a 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 is so and the oscar goes to an inconvenient truth [Applause] in 2006 al gore's film an inconvenient truth sounded the alarm to a widening audience warning of a planetary emergency all over the world we need to solve the climate crisis we have everything we need to get started with the possible exception of the will to act that's a renewable resource let's renew it we had reality on our side and tragically the the felt consequences of the climate crisis were growing in intensity and frequency and severity it was time to regroup again and and double down the president wasn't persuaded to pursue legislative action but by now had publicly stated that humans were causing climate change other republicans were shifting their positions too for my first six years in congress i said that climate change was nonsense i didn't know anything about it except that al gore was for it that's the end of the inquiry but then our son the eldest of our five kids had just turned 18 so he was voting for the first time and he came to me and he said dad i'll vote for you but you're going to clean up your act on the environment so that was step one of the metamorphosis for me step two was going to antarctica the science committee seeing the evidence in the ice core drillings in that mile of ice is an amazing record of the earth's atmosphere what it shows is stable levels of co2 and then an uptick that coincides with the industrial revolution we make climate science sound so complicated it's really not in 2007 climate change was at its most bipartisan level that i think it ever was you had republican members of congress introducing bills about it politically sort of public awareness wise this was a bit of a golden era in the united states [Music] hi i'm nancy pelosi lifelong democrat and speaker of the house and i'm newt gingrich lifelong republican and i used to be speaker we don't always see eye to eye do we know no but we do agree our country must take action to address climate change we need cleaner forms of energy and we need them fast one of the first things that nancy pelosi did as speaker was to create the select committee on energy independence and global warming and i was lucky enough to land my dream job and be a staffer on this committee this is where laws would be made to deal with what i believed was an existential crisis for humanity the committee picked up the idea of a carbon cap that the bush administration had rejected years earlier they wanted to set a national limit on greenhouse gas emissions and require companies to trade amongst themselves for how much each could emit the ultimate goal of the bill was to reduce carbon emissions by 80 below 2005 levels by 2050. and that's a lot of fossil industry a lot of oil and gas producers the coal miners the coal companies refineries it was going to pit someone's pocketbook [Music] the plan emerged as the 2008 presidential campaign was ramping up republican candidate john mccain came out in support of the cap and trade approach the facts of global warming demand our urgent attention especially in washington so did his opponent democrat barack obama i am absolutely certain that generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal [Music] [Applause] having worked on many presidential races and around presidential politics that was the first year where we really saw climate change as something that american voters really wanted to hear from candidates on it was interesting because we were not necessarily having a debate about whether or not climate change was real it was really how collectively can we make a meaningful contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions across the economy [Music] shortly before the presidential election exxonmobil contacted corporate responsibility specialist bennett freeman i had an informal conversation in the back of a limousine with ken cohen at exxon mobil who was essentially their chief policy maker and public affairs officer i think the observation that got ken cohen's attention was that we had this unprecedented situation where both the republican and the democratic nominee for president committed both committed to the climate agenda and we had a pretty frank conversation about the implications for the company particulate climate i thought that exxon was shamefully out of the action because it had become so apparent that climate science was real so my advice to ken was for the company to finally take a public position on climate policy to make an unequivocal statement accepting the reality of climate science to make a unequivocal commitment to not fund any more climate denial research which exxon was infamous for supporting for funding directly and to take a positive proactive position supporting action at the u.s federal level two weeks before president obama was inaugurated exxonmobil ceo tillerson would give a speech that went farther than the company had ever gone on the urgency of the climate change issue amazingly that speech happened 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 meeting enormous demand growth and managing the risk of greenhouse gas emissions are the twin challenges of our time it was i think the first time that at least at the ceo level they started just started to take a policy position 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 that it was a step that was little and late i covered exxon mobil at the wall street journal at that time and rex tillerson was a breath of fresh air he starts talking about the importance of pursuing a lower carbon path but at the end of the day i can't really point to anything substantive that changed rex tillerson did not respond to interview requests despite his speech exxonmobil did not endorse cap and trade the bill sponsored by democrats henry waxman and edward markey narrowly passed the house yays are 219. nays r212 the bill is passed [Applause] the president won a victory in the house of representatives on a sweeping climate bill june 26 2009 it was uh it was a big day it was the culmination of years of work inside i think there was a lot of relieved and happy people because this was the end of a very long road it was a huge moment it was the first legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions to pass the house of representatives now the bill needed to get through the senate we were optimistic that the senate would pick up the bill that summer and i think we were a little bit naive about that when somebody's business model is deeply affected or felt to be affected there are always going to be well-funded interests that make the case don't take any action do not regulate us one of our nation's largest private companies is proudly built on american values and skills coke industries started in the heartland exxon mobil and other companies continued their opposition to cap and trade but the fiercest pushback came from another powerful force in the industry you may not always see our name on the products you use in 2009 coke industries is the second largest privately held company in the united states whose annual sales are bigger than that of goldman sachs u.s steel and facebook combined coke is just deeply embedded in the fossil fuel infrastructure it trades ships and transports natural gas oil gasoline so when you think about anything that would reduce demand or increase the price for fossil fuels it's it's a tremendous threat to koch's business this was a moment when the potential for passing climate change regulation was more real than it has ever been in us history full stop that's why you saw the koch political machine kick into high gear do you believe in anthropogenic climate change i mean there are such a thing as greenhouse gases and and they're contributing to that but i don't think anybody knows how much 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 koch industries this is the first time he has spoken on 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 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 hoffman was given the job of assessing what the cap and trade bill would mean for coke industries he met with a team of senior coke lobbyists i was invited to this meeting the discussion quickly turned from the 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 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 [Music] americans for prosperity spearheaded the effort to stop the bill in the senate i can't tell you what a thrill it is for me to be here this morning five years ago my brother charles and i uh provided the funds to start the americans for prosperity and it's beyond my wildest dreams how afp has grown into this enormous organization 800 000 activists from nothing live years ago afp had begun rallying opposition on the ground across 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 we're going to rise to the occasion you know that we're not going to let this cap and trade bill pass each and every day i urge every single one of you to get up and think about what you can do that day what action you can take to change the course of history americans for prosperity emerge at a time when america was being challenged by the climate change argument 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 and a visionary saw this problem we as americans have reached the moment of realization that the very core values and principles are under attack like never before in our lifetime we had a multi-faceted hard-hitting approach pressuring republicans who were weak need and democrats who were vulnerable whose states would be impacted by this if 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 this was a volatile time in american life [Applause] 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 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 greenhouse gases which is another form of socialist tyranny and they're trying to take your country away from you [Applause] 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 just happened how did how did this happen from the summer of 2009 through the winter into the spring we gradually saw the u.s senate back away from climate basically because the handful of republicans who we thought would engage on this issue saw what was happening they don't want to be one of these people who just voted for the climate bill and now have angry protesters storming down their door [Applause] it was a bucket of cold water we stopped the bill from even going to a vote in the u.s senate so it died its own death i think we recognized the moment of relief is when we've realized they didn't have the votes to pass it and the thing just fell apart there was just too much pressure uh there were democrats who weren't voting for it in key energy states and at that point everybody knew it was over uh back to the drawing board for the progressive left i was demoralized i think we all knew this was the end of climate legislation in the u.s congress for a long time um we had a shot at it and we got beat no one from koch industries would agree to an interview or respond to questions the cap and trade bill was dead meanwhile the kochs and americans for prosperity had been pursuing another goal purging the republican party of lawmakers who didn't espouse their skeptical views on climate change i'm actually hopeful that this this vote that you made was a vote to put you out of office [Applause] the republican party needed to be shored up it needed to be propped up they needed to be given a backbone primaries are the most important part of our election system you know some incumbent can be sitting 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 it happens all the time 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 bob inglis was one of those targeted he says suddenly koch industries stopped supporting him and backed an up-and-coming conservative opponent 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 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 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 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 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 i've been prosecuted for 16 years i'm used to having things proven to me and proving it to other people uh global warming has not been proven to the satisfaction of the constituents that i see concerned i remember thinking that was a particularly good political answer but 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 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 know that you you toe the line house democrats of every stripe were voted out of office last night it was a bloodbath for democrats last night it was historic sweeping stunning republican victories all across the country [Music] many of the republicans who won the 2010 midterms had signed an afp pledge opposing climate change legislation [Music] [Applause] and openly challenged the climate science that had been accepted by some in their own party and the industry the achievement of 2010 the newly elected republicans the vast majority of which signed our carbon pledge was to put an end to the whole climate change argument 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 going to do more too in the next couple years coke industries was able to reshape the 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 not only to any laws but even to an acknowledgement that the problem is real 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 putting lives at risk climate change is now widespread rapid and intensifying that human activity the world as a ecosystem as an entity is in big trouble to think about the fact that we are making it worse that's a hard thing to wrap your head around if i could have seen earlier that the hydrocarbon industry writ large was responsible for distracting attention from climate change i would have taken a different path i bear responsibility for 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 back and say what were you thinking [Music] next time renewables weren't quite there yet and natural gas could provide continuous 24-hour generation the fossil fuel industry pivots to a new energy source when they are marketing natural gas as clean energy they didn't really know what they were talking about doing something for the first time taking advantage of this new resource you don't always know what you don't know and over time what we learned is very very scary and the challenges that have delayed climate action we have a supply of natural gas that can last america nearly 100 years the united states is now the number one producer of oil and natural gas global energy crisis is exacerbated by russia's foreign 60 million barrels of oil from reserves around the world we all want a clean climate but what we want more than that is to be able to fill up our cars below four dollars a gallon we're still very much in the fossil fuel age the third and final part of the power of big oil next time on frontline [Music] so [Music] for more on this and other frontline programs visit our website at pbs.org frontline [Music] to water front lines the power of big oil on dvd visit shop pbs or call 1 800 play pbs frontline is also available on amazon prime video [Music] you

Channel: FRONTLINE PBS | Official

Views: 1,003,923

Keywords:

Id: qMe-BYUIPLU

Length: 54min 18sec (3258 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 27 2022