Hello, and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt again. This season we are making our way through a huge collection of all the peer reviewed research we have so far on climate obstruction and how it works globally. It's
called Climate Obstruction, a Global Survey. It comes to you from the Climate Social Science Network, and in each episode of this season we're talking to the lead authors of a different chapter focus on a different area of this research, who are walking us through what we know so far
about how this stuff works. As is one of the editors of this volume, Tim Ands Roberts said in our first episode of this season, for a really long time, people who wanted climate policy had no idea what they were up against in terms of the organized and very well funded efforts to block climate policy. Sometimes in action on climate or the sort of stalled spot that we're at so far gets chalked up to, you know, bad
policy making or bad messaging from the climate movement. And while any or all of those things could very well be true, you can't discount the impact that the large, extremely well funded, very consistent, global, decades long effort to obstruct climate policy has had on our ability to make progress on this issue. Last week we talked about what climate obstruction looks like in the global south. Today we
look at local obstruction. So in a lot of cases, local governments can be really helpful in climate policy even when the national or federal or international negotiations are going badly. Sometimes a mayor or a governor can get climate policy going at the local level. But the opposite is also true. It's a real double edged sword. Local governments can also
block the implementation of national or international efforts. Joining me today to talk about how that works in both directions are Rebecca Bromley Trujillo from Christopher Newport University and Joshua Bessechis from Tulane University. That conversation is coming up after this quick break. Okay, so I know this sounds really basic, but I feel like people do actually have a lot of questions about what can non federal government entities sub
national government entities do about climate. And I know obviously this changes from country to country and even region to region, but if you could offer sort of an overview of the sorts of things that these types of government bodies can do about climate.
So our chapter focuses on certain regions such as the US, Canada, and Latin America and Europe. Certainly there's variation across those and across the globe, but generally speaking, sub national governments have a big role in things like transportation, the energy sector, land use, and so this is sort of a double edged sword. It means that they can be a source for policy that is mitigating the climate, or they.
Can be a source for obstruction.
And so we see these sub national units again, such as things like states, provinces, cities, counties. They do things like climate action plans or renewal energy requirements, or changes their transportation systems that are more efficient, and so there's a lot of opportunity. But certainly all of the sources of obstruction that happen at national levels come to play at the state and local and provincial levels as well.
Yeah, and I would just add, of course that sub national power relative to the nownational government varies considerably. So in the United States, subnational states are actually much more powerful because of the Tenth Amendment and other things like that. There's much more that they're able to do than subnational governments in other parts of the world. One thing that varies by country is how much power institutionally and legally
the subnational government has relative to the national government. And then just like Becky said, it's a double edged sword, tons of opportunities. In the US, almost all of the climate policy we've seen has been at the state level. But also there are some added challenges like less levels of media coverage. Right, so those who would obstruct can often get away with more at the state level just because there might be weaker mechanisms of accountability.
That's a good segue into the next thing I wanted to ask you about, which is the public opinion piece, and especially how this plays out in the US and Canada, just how public opinion plays into climate obstruction at this level.
So both the US and Canada, you show variation in public opinion on climate change from a range of things as to whether it's human cause, or whether the scientific consensus is there, and support for public policy to address
climate change. What I'd say is in the US there is a more pronounced polarization between liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, and so you really see this especially in the priority placed on climate policy issues, and also in terms of like the broad idea that it's human caused and so these variations and public opinion on this issue can make it easier or harder for some national governments
to pass policy, both in the US and Canada. So if you have a public that doesn't really see climate change as an important issue and doesn't really show strong support for public policy, then it's easier for those governments to then say, well, we shouldn't do anything. And I'd also say we do actually find a lot of support for renewable energy investment and other policies among both Republicans
and Democrats, or conservatives and liberals. But there is a pretty clear disconnect between some of those public positions versus positions of political elites. And I'm sure we'll talk more about how political elites plai into this process, but that connection is important to think about in both the US
and Canada. And again, in the US, public opinion overall is less supportive than it is in Canada for climate mitigation policy, but we do see some of the same challenges play out in both countries.
Yeah. Interesting, Okay, I want to ask you about political party affiliation and how that works, especially this difference you point out between the US and Canada, where it's actually much more like if you're a Republican, you're doing this in the US, and it might be in Canada.
Yeah, So I mean at the subnational level in the US, arguably the greatest obstruction is happening within these state legislatures and by governors and other actors that you know, for the Republican Party, generally they are opposed to any sort of climate mitigation policy.
And so if there's a.
Single Republican control, whether it's a lower house or upper house of the state legislature or the governorship, it acts as a veto point for any sort of renewable energy or climate policy at that state level. And that also occurs at the local level in the US and in Canada. Certainly we see as there are shifts in party leadership from like a liberal to a conservative party leadership in Canada,
we do see some changes in what they're doing. It's just it's more based on sort of the extraction interests and economic interests there than party interests, although there's some certainly some role there.
State legislators are closer to the publics that they serve, they have fewer and then the other thing is they just have less access to information, fewer inputs into the policy making process more likely rely on autol legislation from a group like the American Legislator Change Council or ALEC, which is funded largely by fossil fuel companies. Fortunately, one of the problems that we face is one of accountability to voters. At both the state and the federal level.
There's so many, so much politicians and get away that, you know, when the public isn't paying attention, and that's even more so at the state level.
Well to your point earlier, there's just there's a lack of media coverage and just a lack of outlets that are even right there too. So yeah, anyway, okay, so how do extractive industries come to play the subnational level?
Yeah, so I can start with that one. So, I mean basically there's sort of the more overt ways and then the more subtle ways. So the more overt ways is that you know, these groups, the fossil fuel interests have tremendously skilled lobbyists. They have tremendous resources to actually help with drafting legislation and to actually intervene directly in
the legislative and regulatory process. And the regulatory process is the process that does often gets less attention, right, So like public utility commissions, or you know, in Texas, there's this railroad Commission that actually, even though it's called the Railroad Commission, it regulates the oil and gas industries. And so there's all kinds of ways in which they can just use their resources to directly influence the legislative process.
But then there's also all of these sort of ways that they try to influence the discourse, right, like the public discourse as well as the education system. So there's this great article that we cite in our chapter looking at Saskatchewan in Canada and how oil industry funded groups have produced like educational resources that are used in classrooms to like educate children about the realities with a lens
towards what's good for their industry. And then we can talk about you know, think tanks and front groups as well. But one of the big ways that they influence the discourses by funding these nonprofit organizations that you know are not called Exxon Mobile or Chevron or all these other companies. They're called things like the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which
sounds so innocuous, right and so neutral. So those are just some of the ways that they the more insidious and ways that they influence policy, as well as the more obvious ones like lobbyists and contributions and things like that.
Yeah, that reminds me. Just talking about the Texas Public Policy Foundation reminds me of another way they get involved, which is weird court cases.
Yes, and this is this is a side note, but you know, the Texas Public Policy Foundation was also heavily involved with Project twenty twenty five as well.
Yeah, well, I'll just devtail onto all of what you're saying. So certainly, fossil fuel interests get involved through think tanks, and it's really kind of a very clever way of producing misinformation, and so that links directly to that public
opinion piece. So basically you've got fossil fuel interests funding think tanks and funding these groups like Josh mentioned, and some of these groups even sound like environmental organizations like Protect our Coasts or Save the Whales, and so they will create these entities, these little groups, they will push money through them that spreads misinformation, and so we see this, you know, especially on the East Coast in the US, there's a lot of misinformation spread about offshore wind and
harm to whales. There's no evidence that that's an issue, but EXI Mobile and other fossil fuel interests are funding various entities that spread this idea. The same is true of this idea that wind farms are extremely bad for birds, for instance. So there's a lot of misinformation around those things, and if you follow the money back, it goes all the way back to those fossil fuel interests.
You talked about political elites earlier and how they play into the public opinion piece too. Could I have you unpack that a little bit and maybe give some specific examples in the US and Canada.
Yeah, absolutely, So, I mean politically elites are also part of this misinformation ecosystem, if you will. And so I just mentioned think tanks possil fuel interests. Certainly political elites are joining in that effort and trying to influence public opinion, downplaying issues and.
Making it sound like renewable as a problem.
In the chapter, we talk specifically in the US about Texas and how politically leads the governor members of the state legislature in Texas use a crisis a statewide power failure back in twenty twenty one to suggest it was actually renewables that cause this, But when we actually look at the evidence, there were widespread failures related to natural gas, but they kind of grab this issue and spread that
misinformation alongside all of these other powerful interests. And so that's kind of a US example, Josh, I don't know if you have a Canadian example you want to share.
Yeah, well, the Texas example that Becky mentioned, Like, in addition to gas plants failing and being literally frozen during that winter storm in twenty twenty one, there's also more technical limitations on the Texas grid. For example, the Texas grid is not adequately connected to the Eastern and Western grids, so basically their supply is very scarce. And that's true.
And of course electrons are electrons, regardless of whether they're generated from wind turbines or gas plants or coal plants, and so those kinds of grid infrastructure issues are also at play. And yet the instinct of political elites in Texas is to immediately blame green energy and wind and solar and say that the wind doesn't always and the sun doesn't always shine and all. So in Canada we
see a lot of similar dynamics. One important difference though, is that when it comes to electricity, Kiedro electricity and nuclear play a much greater role in the country's electricity system. And so that being said, there are particular provinces like Saskatchewan and Alberta, for example, where the oil and gas industry is extremely effective at shaping elite behavior as well
as public opinion. But I guess that's one difference that I see between the US and Canada, and that in the US there are so many states that have extractive industries. They're the majority of the fifty states, whereas in Canada it's actually the minority of the provinces. But then within those provinces we see similar things in terms of fossil fuel industries and elites to what we see in the.
US, which is why Alberta wants to secede. Right. Weirdly, I have neighbors in Costa Rica who are from Canada, from Alberta and worked in the tarcans industry, and like have a giant we Love Texas poster in their house.
And like that sounds very unbranded. Yeah, it's a vibe.
Yeah, okay, So in yeah, I wonder if you if you feel comfortable talking about how this shows up in Latin America too.
Before we move on to Latin America, I have to talk about utilities. So utilities are really important because they are often monopolies within their service territories. So corporations provide a government function, which is you know, gas and electricity, and so in some states and areas of the country, the gas utilities and the electric utilities are separate companies, but in other places they're the same, like for example,
National Grid. There are many utilities that provide both gas and electric service, and they have historically been considered part of the fossil fuel industry, but really they're actually quite distinct and there are really their interests have to do with maintaining monopoly control, and so rooftop solar or virtual power plants or consumers that want to produce their own
clean energy right involves some independence from the grid. And so you know, in general, more competitive resources are clean resources, whether it's at the individual household level or utility scale. And so we end up seeing utilities very much being obstructionists. But instead of like where the oil and gas industry, what they're really obstructing to is direct competition in the
utility industry. They're obstructing to the idea that anyone other than them might control the grid, and so it's a really interesting dynamic. And of course utilities, even though their policy preferences are more nuanced, they're extremely powerful in state legislatures, at public utility commissions, et cetera. And so there's sort of this pivotal player where one once you can convince them to go green, they can be really helpful, but
until then they can be very challenging. The other kind of policies that they tend to oppose our policies known as decoupling, where the revenue that they get is decoupled from the energy that they sell, which of course is a good type of policy for promoting energy efficiency. But because their business model is so much based on building new infrastructure and having demand be higher, it ends up that they oppose those kinds of policies.
Isn't that kind of what happened with rooftop solar in California? It was mostly utilities that were pushing that, right, Yeah, so yeah.
The more people that put solar panels on the roof, the more that the other customers that don't have solar end up paying. But of course that's a result of the rate design, the way that the public utility commissions allocate costs, and that those policies have been largely shaped
over the years by the utilities. So it's like the utilities influence has created this problem and rate design that then conveniently gets blamed on rooftop solar as opposed to all the efforts over decades to have you know, cost of service regulation where the utilities get rewarded for building more of their own infrastructure as opposed to compensating individuals who choose to put solar on their roofs. Yeah.
Right, with both utilities and oil and gas in terms of the organizations that they use at the subnational level to kind of shape policy. Do you see their investments in like community organizations and arts centers and all of that stuff as part of that as well, like sponsoring the Little League team and all that.
And sometimes it's Little League and sometimes it's like actual sports stadiums and wings of museums like Oklahoma Gas and Electric sponsors a big, a big wing of the Cowboy Museum in Oklahoma City, which is very cool but also completely unrelated to their business. They just are really good at branding.
Yes, Yeah, Virginia Dominion energy sponsors like various Christmas light displays at gardens, and yeah, I mean they're very good at branding. And it's adding to what Josh has said about utilities. I know much less than he does, but in Virginia, you know, Dominion is this really powerful investor in utility. But they kind of swing a little back
and forth. You know, when there were Democrats in control, they started to shift a little more towards more pro renewable energy types of plans because they thought, well, this is going.
To be the future, and so we need to shape what it's going to look like.
And so they got actively involved in the legislative process and shaping.
Okay, well we're going to do this, so we want to make it as favorable to us as possible.
But once Republicans took back control of state government, Dominion shifted the other way along with Republicans, and so they're playing both sides sometimes to really just to ensure that their business model performs the best.
Yeah, and I mean that it's kind of like what I was saying about like blaming you know, rooftop solar in California. So because they literally run the grid and they know more about the grid than any state policy makers. They almost have sort of like the privileges of government themselves, but the incentives of private companies. And that makes them different than other fossil fuel actors. And it's kind of like what Becky was saying is, you know, they try
to get ahead of things. They don't testify very often at the public hearings because they've usually already done their influential work at the Public Service Commission or at the state legislature. So yeah, they're really interesting actors.
Yeah, I just feel like they stay behind the scenes a lot. People just don't think of them that often.
Right, They'll think of them when they see their name on a subconscious level, like when they participate in a sporting event or an arts museum, but then they don't connect that all the way back to like their policy influence over the clean energy transition. They're just like, oh, how nice of them to sponsor this wing of the art museum.
Okay, So Latin America. I'm curious what you guys saw as not experts actually on Latin America, Like what jumped out to you as key differences between that region and what you've studied in North America.
I mean, I would say the first is it's so much more complex because certainly there's huge variation across Latin American countries in terms of their governing systems. So some are federal systems, some are unitary, but even some of their federal systems don't look anything like the US federal systems in terms of the autonomy granted the state and
local or subnational governments. And so that stood out to me also just kind of more higher levels of political corruption, less accountability, remnants of colonialism that really empowered certain interests, especially extractive industries, and so there's, yes, it's just a much more complex situation going on there, and so how things go on in each individual country than Latin America can really vary.
Yeah, just to add to that, like it's pretty clear from reading the work that our colleague Marcella put into the chapter that one thing that's different is that a lot of the energy, like the oil and gas companies, are state owned companies, so they are actually part of the national government, which makes the obstruction, which sort of changes the whole lens through which you view obstruction, because it's like the state is obstructing rather than different actors
trying to influence the state's government, and then they have really weak institutions. Even though our institutions right now in the United States are being tested. This is all new for US, But in Latin America for decades they've been dealing with the sort of corruption and weak institutions, So that's another difference.
Yeah, it's interesting. Actually, I was talking to someone in Mexico who's like a climate campaigner, and he was saying that the trouble in Mexico is not just all of the things that you deal with in any situation where people are like, but I use gas in my car, so like what about that and whatever, but also that in Mexico, saying something bad about Pemex is like saying something bad about Mexican identity.
Yes, right, And epay FA, I think is the state owned corporation Argentina, and I'm sure Brazil has something.
Marcella had described both in the chapter and discussions many examples of these sort of corruption intertwining between government leaders and these various extractive industries, and there's just so much economic interests a way that you know, the money is doled out in terms of royalties and all kinds of things.
And we talked about how in the US and Canada, like there is clearly a partisan alignment with fossil fuel interests like the Republican Party or the Conservative Party, but in a lot of these Latin American countries, irrespective of what parties empower, the industry you know, is one and the same with the you know, the national government, and they're so like it doesn't really or as much which parties are in power. The obstruction is less dependent on which parties are in power than it is here.
That's really interesting. I was going to ask you about that, the party affiliation thing and how it comes into play there.
Yeah, I mean basically just less correlated. So certainly changes in party leadership can produce changes in climate policy in Latin America, but there's just a less direct link between sort of right parties, left parties, center parties and climate policy.
Again, in Brazil, I think the assumption from outside Brazil is like, oh, Lula's in charge, so he's going to like do all this great environmental stuff. But you know, he just passed this massive rollback of environmental laws there, and he's as cozy with the Industrial Act guys as any other Brazilian prisonent.
So yeah, something else Marcella pointed out about land use. So they're to these transnational companies that are coming in and getting licenses to explore lands, and she mentions some particular indigenous lands and they say they're there to explore them for one reason, but then they may go in and do something very different, and so that's also challenge.
Yeah, okay, awesome, let's talk about Europe.
Well, what's interesting about Europe. It's so it has this supernational the EU, that dictates a lot of policy on down and so certainly there's obstruction in Europe, but it's happening at higher levels. And so it's not that there isn't any pushback at the subnational level in Europe, but it looks very different in terms of the kind of ability to make a change.
It seems less impactful.
So, for instance, even when we see major protests, you know, around renewable energy and concerns about renewable energy and economic concerns, those haven't necessarily moved those subnational governments in terms of rejecting renewable energy policy as much as it has in the US. So I think sort of the summary of the European section in terms of subnational so there is
some pushback. Much of it aligns similarly to other nations in the North America and other parts of the globe around fossil fuel interests and those sorts of things, but it hasn't been as effective at the subnational level as it has been in those places.
And just to add to that, like even the defining the subnational level is a bit more complicated because of what you're saying about the EU, Like in some ways, the EU acts maybe somehow like more like what we would see as a national government in other parts of the world, and the actual European countries or states act
like states. So because there's the supranational level in addition to the national and subnational you know, like Germany does have subnational governments that are like relatively strong, but in general it's the country. The two most consequential levels of government are the EU and then the national country level.
And then the other thing I would just point out about Europe is that it is, you know, even though it's not accurate to say that obstruction doesn't exist in Europe, compared to what we're dealing with now in our country, we really do need to give the Europeans credit. But a big part of it is that a lot of
the renewable energy industries were actually born in Europe. So like a lot of the big wind companies like vest Us or you know, avan Grid or Yberdrola, a lot of these companies that are primoriarily clean energy we were started in Europe there, and so as a proportion of the interest groups or political land, political you know groups, the fossil fuel industry is weaker in Europe than it is in North America or Latin America or pretty much
anywhere else in the world. But instead what you do have in Europe is economic populism, which like the I'm thinking about, like the yellow vest protests in France and so well, obstruction may happen there, it's not as likely to be coming from the fossil fuel industry. It's more likely to be coming from you know, still from misinformation, but also from you know, real economic inequality and how that gets and how the clean energy transition or carbon taxation might get blamed for that.
Okay, coming back to the US actually for a moment, since we are in this current moment where I think people are desperate to believe that the subnational governments can do something. Obviously, this is a again, as you mentioned, a double edged sword. It can go both ways, right, But yeah, what are you seeing the subnational governments doing to try to sort of like go against the national government on some of its energy policies.
Yeah, so this is obviously it's a difficult time for people who are trying to advance reneable energy or advance climate mitigation policy because of the national government.
We have a President Trump and office who's very supportive.
Apostle fuels and not at all supportive of renewables. And so what does states and localities kind of do to counterbalance that? I mean, for one, the states that have been active in this space for at this point, you know, around twenty plus years continue to advance their policies. So we see states passing more stringent and renewable energy mandates, one hundred percent clean energy mandates, that sort of thing. See, you know, it certainly challenges to Trump's changes to national law.
So we see attorneys general firing back at what Trump is doing through the executive branch. And so that's another role for states in the US to kind of push back and act as a sort of accountability mechanism to the federal government.
And so there's a lot going on.
Yeah, some states are doing new things, some states are pushing back on federal power. But as you mentioned again with that double edged or the states that were not engaged before are certainly not still pretty much not engaged now. So that obstruction at the subnational level really does matter, especially in a power vacuum where the federal government is either walking back or not doing anything to advance a climate policy.
Right There's this concept in the political science literature called fiscal federalism, which basically has to do with state. Even though states have a lot of autonomy, they have become in recent years, like aka Biden years, dependent on the federal government and like the funds in the IRA the Inflation Reduction Act to actually fund a lot of their innovative ideas. So they're needing state level revenue sources to become less dependent on the federal government to advance climate
and clean energy. And so I think there is probably a slowing down even across all states right now, just because there's this like frozenness. But like Becky was saying, the Democratic attorneys general have also played a big role in resisting a lot of the Trump decisions, which is sort of ironic because previously to Trump, it was like the Republican attorneys general that we're very active in like slowing down, you know, what the Biden administration was doing.
And now we're seeing the Democratic attorneys general trying to slow down the reversals of the Trump administration so that court system and the federalism remains important as ever now under Trump. The other thing is that historically, just as Becky said, it's been like a red state blue state thing. But I'm going to be working on an op ED because of some of the because of how severe some of the changes are that Trump is making now, like
getting rid of the epas and dangerment finding. I really think it's time for red states to find ways that they can make progress, and it might mean not talking about climate change and talking about it more in terms of energy affordability now that renewable energy is cheaper local
economic development. In the early years of the renewable and of renewable portfolio standards, like in Texas and other Red states like Iowa, these policies were effective because of their economic benefits, and so like going forward, even though it's been so polarized in the past. I think that encouraging red states to use their power but to define the issues in less polarizing ways can be a really important strategy because the retreat, the degree of retreat that we're
seeing from national government is like unprecedented. Like they're not just eracing what Biden did, They're like going further to prevent future federal administration from attempting to do that.
So they've all but made it illegal to say climate change.
It's something so Josh's point, Yeah, if you can avoid saying.
Those words and focus on the economic issues, sometimes that help. Sometimes also helps to focus on things like public health issues, environmental justice. Broadly speaking, tying the challenges associated with climate change their issues can help spur things along.
And we haven't talked about this at all, but a kind of.
A new both challenge and in some ways opportunity is data centers.
There. They're blowing up in the US.
In certain states more than others, and they've actually made it harder in some states to promote renewable energy because they take up so much energy that like there's a need to keep fossil fuel systems online.
In the eyes of lawmakers.
And you know, certainly people disagree with that argument, but in some states, including Texas, they're starting to think about, Okay, maybe we do need to rein in the data centers related to that energy affordability issue that Josh raised as well. And so that's that's sort of a new issue within state and local politics in terms of energy and climate, is how to kind of grapple with data centers and their expansion and how to maybe rein it in and that.
So that's a heavy debate we're seeing
MHM.