Ben Franta on Big Oil in College

this country. Ben got into a lot more detail about things that he has seen at the university level. I think you'll find it interesting that conversation is coming up right after this quick break. This episode is supported by Degrees Real Talk about Planet Saving Careers, an original podcast from the Environmental Defense Fund. People ask me all the time what they can do about climate change, and I feel a little bit like a climate change guidance counselor

sun time. The short answer is, what do you get at?

a planet saving job. I got a sneak preview of season three of Degrees, and I loved it, especially the episode about Lake Street Drive, which is a green band, which is actually a lot harder to pull off than you might think, just in terms of all of the disposable things that come along with touring and concerts and music venues, trying to convey venues to reduce their waste, all of that stuff travel, How do you figure that out? It was really good and there's lots more where that

came from, too. These narrative stories will capture your attention and inspire you while giving you practical tips on how to get a climate focused career. Search for Degrees Real talk about planet saving careers anywhere you listen to podcasts will include a link in the show notes. Too Big

thanks to Degrees for their support. I was super interested to read your paper because actually Darna and I were just saying, wow, like I was pulling together a list of you know, all of the things that either fossil fuel companies or you know, sort of foundations that have represented them or their interests are investing in at universities, and you know, there's so many of these economics research chairs and economic centers and whatever that I was like,

I feel like we need to find we need to like, you know, dig into the ways that they're trying to shape people's understanding of the economy and how it works. And then I found actually in the Newsome archives this insane like cross industry strategy with like confidential stamps all over it that was like in as World War Two was about to end, all of these it was like Standard Oil, GM, General Electric. I can't remember what the other ones were, but they were all freaking out, maybe

Ford about that. Not that you know, they were going to have a decline in sales because the government wasn't buying.

room in them. And then that became like the defined as like the American dream sort of like you needed to have a music room, need to have a piano room. And then it was like people would buy houses with a piano room. They didn't know how to play the piano, but they were like, now we need to get a piano for the piano room. But they never even had to advertise pianos. Yeah, it was like what, like, it's so I mean, it's just so smart.

or so. For instance, I think you know when the Journalist School journalism school at Columbia came out with the Exon New Investigation or they started doing some work related to that. Then Exxon responded by kind of threatening to take away their funding in so many words, and it just people became more and more interested in you know, who's who's funding these these programs at universities, and you know,

is it fossil fuel companies? And what kind of pressure does that put on those academic programs to do one thing or another, or study one thing or another, or or not to study something. And I started to look into this issue at Harvard, looking at what programs are funded by by oil companies, and a lot of the programs at the Kennedy School, the Government school to do with public policy were funded and as far as I still know, as I know, they still are funded by

big oil companies. You know, for example, I worked at the Belfer Center for Science International Affairs. It's one of the most influential academic think tanks in the world world, and the founder of that founded an oil and gas company. That's how he made his fortune to begin with. The environmental economics program at Harvard funded by oil companies and so on. So it's not just that public policy schools

are being funded by oil companies. Sometimes it's that the programs that are focused on climate or environment or sustainability in particular, those are often funded by the oil companies. Now, so back to twenty fifteen, so this issue is starting to emerge. I'm starting to write about it a little bit, and it was seen as a very unpopular thing to do.

But anyway, to get to the main point. Once we were called into an all staff meeting for the researchers at the Kennedy School in the Belafare Center, and we were simply told instructed that, you know, if any journalists come to talk to us about you know, oil companies funding the research done there, just don't talk to them,

you know, don't talk to the journalists. We don't want you know, we were told that we don't want activists, we don't want journalists digging around and and you know, finding out that that the programs are being funded by oil companies, and I mean when I heard this, I you know, I was pretty surprised that that level of secrecy was being pursued. I mean, at that time, I was mostly working in physics, because that's what my PhD was,

in applied physics. And you know, often we would get funded from all sorts of places, including like Department of Defense, sources that you know, not everybody would think are great. But regardless, we always advertised and disclosed who was funding our research, and we were generally proud of it, but we definitely didn't keep it a secret, right And so, you know, encountering this secrecy in the public policy space,

I just thought that was so strange. And of course for me, you know, when they said don't talk about this thing, you know, I wanted to talk about it. My ears bricked up and I was like, you know, I was, you know, probably dozing off in the back or something, and I like, my you know, I popped up alert and I was like, oh, that's something interesting

is going on. So yeah, you know, and but I think it speaks to the broader issue, which is, which is, to what degree have has the fossil fuel industry shaped very public policy responses and paradigms and ways of thinking about climate change as a problem. How has the industry shaped those things at the basic level, at the level of students learning about them and in universities, you know.

And I it's the these these questions, you know, as we were just talking about, you know, burnets and other masters of the craft of public perception, they're not just shaped by you know, the final answer that you get when you're analyzing a problem. It's shaped by how do you even think about the problem in the first place? What's the paradigm with through which you are seeing a

problem defining it? You know, And that's the level that's the sort of all encompassing scale where that's relevant for when people are learning about these issues in universities, you know, among other scales, but that's a really important one. So you know, I think, to me, that just speaks to that broader issue. And of course I think since then,

finally now today there's more and more awareness that. Yes, especially big oil companies have been very present in these elite, very influential academic programs in the social sciences, in the policy arena. And the question that's obvious that we should ask is what effect has that had, right, What has been the influence of decades of funding from these special interests.

Obviously there's a conflict of interest when these programs are meant to defend society against the problems that these companies are creating, and yet these programs are dependent on those companies to exist. So it's a big issue and I you know, I think the time it's more than ripe to address it.

merchants of doubt. And so if you look back into the newspaper record and you know that record of communication from the oil companies, they often employed this two pronged stress strategy of using the scientific merchants of doubt to cast doubt on the science itself. And you know by them, I mean the people that people like Naomi Orescus and other historians, Eric Conway and other historians have have documented and their think tanks like the George Marshall Institute and

so on. That's the scientific side to litigate the science. Then on the economic side, you have the economists hired by the patroleum industry often to say it's just way too expensive to do anything. And so that's this other side that has not been examined as much. Yeah, it's really it has been allowed to survive. I think because it hasn't been examined. It's sort of flown under the radar.

their record. You know, that might be you know, a few thousand articles, and I'll sort them in chronological order, and I'll read all of them just to just to get the story, just to see, you know, what are their phases of communication, you know, what are the battles they're fighting at different times. And I was doing that over you know, it takes many days to read that much material, but I was doing doing that and I noticed that, huh, like these there are these economists that

keep coming up again and again. Wow, And I was like, that's interesting, and this is you know, this was stuff from like the early to mid nineteen nineties, so this is a while ago. I thought, Oh, I'm sure they're not, you know, doing stuff anymore. Then at the same time I was doing this research, President Trump announced that the US was going to pull out of the Paris Agreement.

And in his speech, I think this was in twenty seventeen, he said that the Paris Agreement was going to cost you know, an American family, you know, four thousand dollars per year or something like that. You know, it's going to cost a lot of money. And I thought, this doesn't really make sense, because those parts of the Paris Agreement are not legally binding to begin with. I thought, who are the economists that are saying this? Who where

where's this analysis coming from? To give President Trump the talking points, you know, to say that in a speech. And I looked up the economic analysis that that President Trump used and it was the same people. It was the same economists that I had that I had noticed. We're working on these things in like the mid nineties, doing giving the same talking points against the Kyoto Protocol of course ninety seven.

the end of it, that's for sure. Yeah, you know, and people forget it's you know, in the nineties, there were some some enterprising journalists who did notice the industry's influence right at the time, and they, you know, they're heroes. They were saying things that nobody else was saying. They were seeing things no one else was seeing, and you know. Unfortunately, just not enough people listened to them at the time,

so some people noticed, but not enough people noticed. And so you know, just because one person noticed something at one time doesn't mean that everybody knows. Right, it's very important fact.

It's like every economics department at every major university is run by someone who's part of the NBER, which sounds and acts like it's some kind of neutral you know, or maybe government entity, but is ye at all And I'm just like, oh my gosh, these guys have been influencing like how people think about economics, you know, since the twenties, and they've been you know, funded by sort of titans of industry all along.

right right. You know, So it's like how far back do you want to go in terms of you know, special interests, moneyed interests, vested interests, corporate interests often you know, trying to cultivate certain scientific ideas for political advantage, you know. And I mean it goes back, you know, at least that far, you know, and it's been it's never stopped.

I mean that's why when I saw, you know, what was happening with President Trump in the Paris Agreement and he was using the same talking points it is, I thought it was worth pointing out that, Look, you know, we we have seen this before. This isn't new, right, This is the same exact strategy, same talking points, even in the same people you know that use this strategy back in mid nineties, the two thousands to fight the cap and trade you know, domestic US legislation proposals. You know,

all of these proposals for decades. It's the same thing. So you know, at least if we can come to recognize it for what it is, hopefully, you know, some of its obstructing power can be taken away.

a well respected economist. He before the nineties, you know, he'd worked in the Ford administration, the Carter administration, the George H. W. Bush Bush one administration, he worked in the Energy Information Administration, so he had a lot of credentials, and starting in the early nineties, nineteen ninety one or so, the petroleum industry hired him to estimate how much it would cost to to put regulations on fossil fuels to

deal with climate change. You know. So, I mean think the first the first lesson of this history is that is that governments have they tried to act, you know, that early on, and that's when this sort of obstruction game really came to force, you know, three three decades ago essentially, And you know, so basically, he'd come out with an analysis that would say, oh, if you want to reduce CO two emissions, it's going to cost you know, all this money, hundreds of dollars per tonnesia two and

that's going to you know, cost all these jobs, reduce GDP and so on. And generally he would say it's going to be really expensive, and climate change is not really going to be that bad, you know. So we had kind of two parts to it, and they were both they were both misleading in a sense at least because on the cost side, his models were inflating the costs based on the modeling approach and on the benefit side, as in global warming avoided. He didn't even address that

there was zero analysis. It was simply an assertion like global warming is not really gonna be that bad. I think at one point he said, if anything, it'll cost half a percent of gross national product in the year twenty one hundred, which is like, you know, it's okay, one hundred and ten years from now, you can predict that with zero analysis. Okay, but you know, and then he's look at the you know, look at the comparison. Action costs a lot, in action doesn't cost much. You know,

you do the math. And so the point was, don't do anything and wait, and you know, eventually he was joined by other colleagues. They worked at different economic consulting firms, and one of the main one they worked at over this period time was called Charles River Associates, which still exists. I mean, it's still a major consulting firm. But you know,

they've moved around. I think that the analysis that Trump used to leave the Paris Agreement that was done by NIRA near a economic consulting different, you know, and so they sort of moved around. But it was the same story again and again. Nineteen ninety three, the Clinton administration tried to put out what eventually was called the BTU tax, but that was this hybrid energy and carbon. It was like an energy tax that was heavier if you were

carbon intensive. And you know, same strategy. The industry litigated the science, brought out their merchants of doubt, said climate science was unproven, then brought out their economists, the same group of people who said, oh, it's going to be really really expensive. Kyoto protocol because domestic policies were failing clearly, so governments moved to the international approach through through the

UN process, Kyota pro Protocol comes out again, exact same strategy. Now, of course Kyota Protocol was you know, adopted, but it was not ratified by the United States. Of course, the United States left that with George with Georgia Bush two in the early two thousands, and again, you know, it is the same strategy. It's that this is going to be economically disastrous and the science is really is still uncertain,

and you know, it's the exact same strategy. Then now that that failed, goes back to the domestic approach again. So that's when we had this series of cap and trade bills in the in the Senate, in the House, like blacks of Market and so on and again it was, you know, every time there was a major climate policy proposal, it's like these same guys would just right would disappear again.

And you know, generally they were you know, being commissioned by the American Patroleum Institute or other industry groups, and you know, it was the same analysis. They were just you know, turning the crank essentially again and again. And you know, so it's this, it's this parallel sort of this whole shaping of economics. And eventually their analyzes became conventional wisdom. I mean, by right, by a twenty ten or so. They are they've been at this for twenty years.

And you know, senators were saying, look, it's like we don't even need to study because we know that they've already been saying this for twenty years. And so really, in a way, the scientific merchants of doubt ultimately, you know, were they failed. I guess they over overcome. Their power waned, but this the economics part that their power did not

really wane in the same way. And you know the implications are larger as well, because I looked at these economic this economic consulting firm, largely because I just stumbled upon their activities. But they were not alone. You know, there were other consulting firms doing very similar work. But also their work is not that different from the work done at MIT at the Joint program where they do economic modeling there. That program is funded by the oil industry.

Not only the oil industry, but they do receive funding from the oil industry, you know. They these groups participated in something called the Energy Modeling Forum at Stanford University.

I mean, okay, what if it's actually right? Now? One of the nice things about this study was that one of these economists was willing to talk to me and you know, and honestly share his perspective and experiences, and we talked about the limitations of their models, you know, and their models were essentially based on, you know, based on assumptions that have become mainstream in American economics, like

the economy performs optimally without intervention and so on. These are unscientific concepts that because they can't be tested, of course, right, And but it's just taken as an article of faith that if somebody has to do something that they're not already doing, it must be suboptimal, right, And you know, it's a tautological it's a circular reasoning type of logic,

and you know, it's based on that. And then there are assumptions built into the model about how expensive clean energy is going to be, and it's assumed to be expensive like forever, like really expensive, you know, and things like that. So the way the model itself is constructed, it's not really like reliable in terms of what is this actually going to cost? So that part's not really

quantitatively reliable. Then you have the other side, which is the benefit side, which is not even being addressed, right, So it's impossible to even make it a comparison in terms of is this policy worth that are not? And so you know, at the end of the day, the public has been sold this. I mean, it's a fraudulent it's a fraudulent economic product. Right. You have economist saying we did the analysis and it's too expensive, and you know it's it's you know, now even by their own admission,

that's not true. And this has been going on for decades, you know. So now the question is what do we do about What do we do about this?

that this is how economies work. And there's been some fascinating historical research done on the origins of neoclassical economics, and I think one of the most compelling, some of the best work has been done by Phil Morowski, who's a historian of economics, and you know, and he shows quite convincingly, I think that neo classical economics when it was formed, the basic ideas of it was an imitation

of what physics was at that time. And you know, physics was being seen as this pretty prestigious, like reliable science. You know, it's highly mathematical, and economics wanted to sort of scientize itself, and so it literally took the equations from physics at the time, and it took the ideas like ideas of spontaneous equilibrium, and it just said, this is how the economy works. It just sort of asserted that.

And the sort of fatal flaw in that approach was that the physics version was at least testable, it was at least falsifiable, and eventually it was I mean, you know, new fields of physics were developed, like quantum physics, because of the failures of the older models to explain observation right now. The economics version was not based on observable variables that you can measure and test. It was simply

an assertion of how the economy works. And no matter what you observe, you simply say, that's just a result of our theory, more or less. And so it's not something that you can test or approve or disprove, and so it's sort of persisted as more of an ideology, you know, or a pseudo science more than an actual scientific theory. And you know, this would just be a curiosity in the history of science if it were not

for its major impacts on public policy today. And obviously it's major impacts on climate change, you know, because economists are invoking these theories in saying, you know, don't curtail fossil fuel use based on this model. It's going to be really expensive.

All regulated industries have a sort of you know, a benefit to be gained from from these these economic theories. The theories themselves are biased against regulating, you know, big industries.

of regulation, and he was tired of you know. I think a lot of these guys saw the lawsuits in the nineties against the tobacco companies as like a serious threat to any industry, and they really set about creating conservative litigation infrastructure that would combat what they saw as like liberal public interest law. And it's always it's I

don't know, in every single one of these places. It's combined with economics and specifically teaching this sort of lass a fair free market economics, as you know, an unquestionable truth.

everyday normal, regular people, but also among the policymakers and government officials. You know, how do you influence and control how people perceive this problem and how to respond to it? And you know, that's that's another area of social science that you know, it appears at least that the oil industry was very interested in being being expert at and potentially influencing. But I think we don't you know, I certainly don't know yet what you know, what they did

in that area. But I think it's it's bigger than just economics.

human focus. But I feel like the economics argument did that from the beginning, right where it's like, no, no, no, you can't do this because it'll make people poor, or it'll cost people jobs, or you know, like they they were so on that from jump versus the environmental movement, which was like, you know, really stuck on trees and polar bears for.

or some prospects. So it's the it's one of these things it's hard for people to become aware of it if they're not, if they don't have already a vested interest in maintaining it the way it is. So I

think finally that's beginning to change. And I don't want to, you know, criticize, and I don't mean to criticize all economists, because you know, this is a particular approach that I'm talking about that unfortunately has become that for at least for a long time, very dominant in the United States at least, But it's a very diverse discipline, and I think now lately there are more and more economists who are doing really high quality work to look at, you know,

how much does like sea level rise cost in terms of damage when you get a very different view of the cost of climate change if you use that bottom up approach rather than the sort of pre determined top down approach that was being used before. So it's also largely a matter of methodology, and this is beginning to change. And I think, you know, why is it important whether

the industry is funding the work? Well, you know, now, like if the industry is is not as dominant, then there is going to be that room for you know, other economists to use different different approaches, right right, right, And you know it's all a matter of what gets amplified and what doesn't.

monitor the research that people are doing. And there are certain paradigms and people frankly, but you know, if you think about their work in terms of a paradigm, what

they're interested in, what they're not. There are certain paradigms that are helpful for the industry and others that are not, or more or less of course, and simply by funding certain things, you amplify that thing, and that takes up more space than what have otherwise, And so the recipient doesn't necessarily have to be even aware, you know, that they're getting this money for any sort of strategic reason

on the part of the industry. And I think often the recipients either are unaware or they don't like the idea, so they kind of ignore it the possibility. But you know, I mean that's why in this new research I open it with this quote from from a handbook from nineteen seventy eight, and this is sort of you know, earlier on in the sort of modern regulatory state in the

United States. You know, a lot of regulatory policies being passed in the seventies, and so the big companies are trying to figure out, well, how do we respond to this new regime. And in this in this handbook written for regulated industries to basically game the system, you know, it says one of our main recommendations is to co opt the experts. You know, And it says, you know, this policy is made, you know, with the participation of experts,

especially academics. It says a regulated firm or industry should be prepared whenever possible to co opt these experts. This is most effectively done by identifying the leading experts in each relevant field and hiring them as consultants or advisors, or giving them research grants and the like. It requires a modicum of must not be too blatant for the experts themselves, must not recognize that they've lost their objectivity

and freedom of action. And at a minimum, it reduces the threat that these experts will testify against the industry or right against the interests of the of the industry. You know. So this was recognized as as a major central pillar of all regulated industry strategy counter regulatory strategy, you know, from very early on, you know, from the

nineteen seventies. So you know, in the case of climate, you know, I think what we see is that there are certain areas, like, you know, the fossil fuel industry really hates renewable portfolio standards, you know, because I mean, you know, maybe your guess is as good as mine is. I'm not like super expert renewable portfolio standards, but my impression is that they're they're hard to gain. You know.

It says you have to have this much renewables by this year, right, It's very straightforward, right, you know, it seems that the oil industry would much rather have a cap and try aid system that it can game, that it can get little you know, concessions with it. Can you know, manipulate the price and make it crash or make it make it sore, to like mess it up, you know, I mean, there's lots of ways to kind of mess up a cap and trade system so that

it just doesn't work right. And you know, so you know, I see environmental economists who are big their whole career is based on cap and trade and doing paper after paper after paper about cap and trade systems and how to make it optimal and how to design it for this or that. You know, they're getting funded by the oil industry, so that becomes the dominant paradigm through which people knew environmental policy. Oh, cap and trade is default.

Other things like renewable portfolio standard. That's that's alternative. That's what we that's not as good, you know, that's what we think about. Second, that's what we talk about on this you know, the last day of class if we have time. But the main thing is cap and trade, you know, even though there aren't really very many functional cap and trade systems in the world, you know, so it's like you can influence the entire way people learn

about the issue. You know. Another great example is hydrogen versus electric vehicles. You know, this is another thing I noticed when I was looking at industry funding, was you know a lot of oil funding for hydrogen future, you know, for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, and like none for electric battery vehicles. And I was like, this is sort of weird.

I mean, do they just think that, you know, hydrogen is better and you know, well, I mean, obviously, by this point it's clear that at least now, hydrogen you know, vehicles are not you know, competitive at least currently. And what a lot of people don't realize is that almost all hydrogen is made out of natural gas, and so a lot of hydrogen, know, presumably would be either largely or significantly fossil fuel, you know, just sort of in disguise.

And you know, so it's these sort of options. It's, well, if we have to go to non gas vehicles, we'd rather them be hydrogen than battery. You know, it's better for us. And so through this selective funding, you know, it's it's not that hard to shape the entire discussion. And of course, you know, when someone's been receiving funding for their research for decades, you know that that certainly shapes the way they think. It certainly shapes you know,

where their allegiances are. You know, it's gonna dissuade them from you know, writing against the industry or testifying against it, and you know they're going to have connections within the industry. They're gonna they're going to promote the industry with their students as a place to work. You know, they're going to be getting grants. All of these things have an effect. So yeah, I think, you know, it doesn't have to

be so blatant. It doesn't have to be you know, like a quick pro quo arrangement.