In the last few months, a group of Dutch investigative reporters have been doing a great job publishing various stories on what Shelle knew and when. They have a project called the Shell Papers. It is on the Platform for Authentic Journalism in the Netherlands, which is a collaborative formed by four investigative journalists for the purposes of digging into things exactly like this. I'm joined today by two of those journalists. I'm going to let them introduce themselves.
So my name is Alexander Berner. I'm an investigative journalist for a platform Authentic Juristic from the Netherlands.
My name is Yelis Musk. I'm also an investigative reporter at the Platform for Authentic journal And.
What is the Platform for Authentic Journalism?
Yeah, the platform. We are a collective of four investrative reporters. We started out about five years ago because we wanted to contribute to certain undervalued topics within the Dutch media world.
So most of all we focused in the beginning on complex issues like trade agreements and their impacts on the new environments and society in general, and then we moved on bid by bids towards lobbying, because lobbying was also like a big part of the whole Ttip and free trade negotiations, right, and from lobbying we sort of moved on naturally almost to climate change, seeing that the most lobby topic. Probably at this moment.
We're going to talk about some of their latest findings, including in particular shells direct funding of one well known climate denier in the Netherlands sounds to me like this guy was sort of the Threads singer of Holland that story and more. After a message from this episode's sponsor, I'm Amy Westervelt and this is drilled.
A year ago we started the Shell papers where we wanted to do a Foyer request regarding about fifteen years of documents regarding communication between the Dutch government and Royal Dutch Shell in order to see like structurally what kind of cooperation exists between Shell and the Dutch States. So we wanted to see, like what ways does Shell influence Dutch policy.
How did you kind of come upon the person who's at the center of your latest investing.
Yeah, we investigated fitz Butcher, a man who we didn't know actually before our investigation, but fitz Bitcher is generally known or was known in the nineties as one of the founders of the climate skeptic movement in An, Netherlands, and before that he was known as one of the founders of the Club of Rome, which was finalday in nineteen sixty eight and weren't against the excessive economic growth
with its famous report Limits to Growth. So he was in general a well known scientist, professor in chemistry, and he actually got involved in the climate debate in the nineties through his own articles and lectures. He appeared on television and the newspapers and radio interviews, and yeah, he was one of the first known climate skeptics, which in the first decade when when the topic became a heart issue in global politics.
So that's an interesting trajectory though, from the Club of Rome to climate skeptic.
Yeah, always fascinating. Fascinated us because it seemed a bit contradictory to be first part of the group which warned against too much excessive economic growth and then to be to seem to be on the other side of the debate, right,
But yeah, this is an interesting history as well. It seemed like what we know from people who actually know him, from the Club of Rome who have also written about his role in this club, is that he within this club where or this informal network, he was also part of the more conservative wing, let's say, within this, within this network, so it was not necessarily contradictory that within this copy already also took a position where he actually
kind of downplaced the panic that followed the publication of the of the first report. So, especially within the Netherlands, this Club of Rome had a huge impact. It became like a media hype in the words of fitz Butcher,
and he was actually a bit annoyed by this. We see this also in his personal archive that he was he didn't like this, this panic, and this was like the first time that he became an outspoken actually a critic of the environmental movement, which although he was part of the group, he also took a stance against the environment movement which used this report to call for you know, government interference in business. He was pro.
Market, so he wanted businesses to choose to limit growth themselves.
Yeah, some self for strength, right. Also in his Club of Rome activities, his whole point was that there's no such thing as well, there is such a thing as depletion of resources. But the problem is that we cannot access a lot of those, so we need to develop more technology in order to reach oil and gas or coal in places that are thus far unreachable.
Interesting, that's really interesting.
Okay, So did you get a sense of how he sort of got into the climate skeptic movement in the nineties.
Yeah, Well, actually he was involved or interested in the topic already since the end of the seventies, nineteen seventy nine, as I understand it, there was already an international conference about it and some attention to it. So he was interested in this debate from the beginning. And this was still at a time when he combined his work as an academic with advisory work for Royal Buds SHELL, So
he has always combined this during his career. He was at the same time a professor and also part time advisor of Board of Royal dotch Sheell regarding research their research policy. So he worked for SHELL from nineteen fifty three to nineteen eighty three, so for more or less, and he was familiar with the heads the main CEOs, you know, he considered them to be his personal friends.
At the end of the seventies, is there was a discussion about the greenhouse effect beginning, so he got involved in immediately and also supported by Shell already in nineteen seventy nine. The first sign of support from Royal Dotchell to him regarding the greenhouse effect is actually from nineteen seventy nine when Shell financed the small research of fitz Butcher into the greenhouse effect to see what was right and what was wrong about this theory, as he would
call it. And this was actually already the first time when he started to develop his his skeptic arguments and am vision, and we see from personal notes in his personal archive that he, you know, he had this skeptic theory based on the gaia theory of James Lovelock, believing in the self regulating powers of planet Earth and you know, believing in the in the positive feedback effects. But he was never a climate science scientist. He was a he
was a professor in chemistry. So but he started to read in the eighties as well the literature from American climate skeptics Richard Linson, and he already knew, you know, people like Fred Singer and other American skeptics, which you have talked about in your podcast.
As well.
He knew them from international policycles like the OECD, for which he was also a delegate, So he was familiar with the American skeptics and he followed them, but he didn't really became a vocal critic of the climate scientist until nineteen eighty nine or less. What we found to be his CO two project, as he called it, like a big skeptic project, which which he ran for almost a decade that started in nineteen eighty nine.
Interesting, and did the funding for that come from Shell as well?
Yes, yeah, that's that's our main discovery. So and the biggest surprise to us because you know, we started this research just to investigate, to write a kind of like a background article about what is already known about Shell's role in the climate debate, and we didn't we didn't expect to find this kind of direct support to climate skeptics because in general Shell is known as as more like a unlike Exon, you know, like a company which has a bit of attention for the environment and which
isn't that aggressive in funding you know, climate denihilism. That's why we didn't expect to find this kind of direct support. But his personal archive is Butcher. He died in two thousand and eight, so he left his archive in the city of Harlem, in a small archive, one hundred and fifty six boxes, boards of meetings and letters and personal notes.
Fascinating to read. But yeah, the story that we discovered in his archive is that he was supported from the very beginning Byshell to start this CEO two project, to get involved publicly in the climate debate, to be critical about climate science and the IPCC. And he received direct financial support for this as well from nineteen ninety to nineteen ninety eight around one million gillains, So that's like eight hundred thousands euros today.
Wow.
Wow, And can you talk a little bit more about what this carbon project of his was did he? I think I read it in your story that he was one of these guys who've pushed the idea that, you know, more CO two just means more plants on earth and that's a good thing.
Yes.
That was his favorite argument, was that CO two is a blessing because yes, plants I use it to grow. He also referred to garden houses and how they add COEO two in order to a stimulate the growth of
plants and things like that. That was one of his favorite talking points of the Blessings of CO two, because he hated the way that CO two was portrayed in the media as if it was like toxic or poisonous or something like that, making the claim that it's essential for life on earth, which is of course true, but not the issue.
Right right, Yeah, that's interesting. So what kinds of things was he doing through this project.
Well, the type of things that he did was mostly well getting himself in the public eye. So he wrote articles, published several books and became like the spokesperson for the climate skeptic movement as it was growing then in the nineties, And in nineteen ninety six he in one of his notes he says that he's become the opposition leader of
the climate skeptic movement in the Netherlands. And so he for example, was invited for parliamentary commission that was charged in nineteen ninety five by the Dutch government in order to sort of see like climate change, what is it and what are we supposed to do about it? He said things in the same line as the CO two is good for plans, and those were the quotes that also made it to the Dutch national news. But on the other hand, he was maybe even more influential in
his own network. Basically so is a Butcher he had throughout his life. He had several he was on the board of several big Dutch companies, and the way that he works is like he would write an article or publish a book, he would send it to his friends in the boardrooms, and then they would use it again to lobby towards politician against taking measurements in order to reduce CO two E missions. For example, like there are letters in the archive between fitz Butcher and Karl Heinz.
Bichel was then part of the board of directors of Bayer, the big German chemical company, and then Bichol writes in response to receiving his books, very enthusiastic about the book, and that he sent it through to the Dutch Minister of the Environment. I think it's sort of similar towards
the way that that skeptics have worked in general. So you write an article or a book that has some scientific weights to it, you send that to your friends and they use it then to start lobbying or say that a there are so much doubts about climate change. You shouldn't take any measures to reduce your two issues, because we don't even know if those measures are necessary.
Right, you know, I I've spent a lot of time studying these guys because I find them interesting just from like a psychological standpoint too. So I'm curious if you found anything that indicated sort of and you know, what the ideological underpinning of his work was, or you know, like what was driving him beyond just you know, getting money from Shell and whoever else.
Well, the interesting thing with Butcher is that he actually he did not receive the money himself or like he worked. He worked for free. Basically, he was already retired. He was eighty years old when this project started. And the money that he received he used it to pay his two assistants and to cover like travel experienses and things like that. So you can consider him as like a true believer when it came to his a believer in
his own story when it came to climate change. But also like it's a bit strange because he also liked this whole project. It lasts for nine years, and it lasts only during the time that these companies are willing to pay for it. So when in nineteen ninety eight, the funding stops. He also stops working on the COE two project and starts working on an other advisory work. So, yes, he was a true believer, but also, like I think, vulnerable for the type of the said, a prestige that
came along with it. So the CEOs and these companies they are weird about climate change. They need somebody to tell another story basically, or a story that fits them better. They saw this guy and saw he was useful. And for Butcher was like, I matter, I still matter. I've been for my whole life. I've been in these boardrooms and been with all these important people. After I retired, this sort of stop and this was a way for him to sort of get back in the spotlight.
Right, that makes sense. That's really interesting.
You know, what was the impact of his work in terms of government policy or anything like? Did you did you find any evidence of him having an impact there?
Yeah, it's you know, the opinions are they vary a little bit, but in general, like people who knew him personally, they or worked in governments at the time, some high palsy makers, they say, well, he had a huge influence just because he had such a high standing, a big reputation. He knew everybody. Everybody knew him. People who were all looking for an alternative story they came to Butcher, and
so he had a huge informal influence. Also because he had this reputation of, you know, being one of the founders of the Club of Rome. So people were like, you know, if he said it, there must be some true you know, he had the image of being an you know, environmentally aware scientists. So this reputation helped him
a lot. And this is actually also acknowledged in one fascinating report of a meeting with his main contact within Royal Dutch shell Hip from anglshoven So from Angelshova tells Butcher, according to this report that he has more influence as a scientist when he talks about climate than when you know, the CEOs of the companies talk about it. So they were well aware that his reputation as a scientist, as an independent scientist, helped to get his message across. And
he wasn't on television and you know radio interviews. Other people say, well, you should overestimate it. It's really difficult. It's difficult to measure in general. But if we look in general to how the media in the Netherlands writes about this topic. We also see that in general the Dutch media has given ample space to the skeptic point
of view. There are several reports about this. One report says that like eighteen percent of the articles in Dutch media are you Skeptical, which is of course not representative of you know, the opinions within the scientific community. If you look in the Netherlans, it's just a handful of people like Butcher, and the people who are active today, you know, they can all kind of directly or indirectly
be linked to him. So you know, Fitz Butcher his influence is not only because he was present in the media, but also because he mentored like a new generation. And we see see this also in his archive that he had a lot of contact with another journalist, Simon Gosendal, who still writes today and is like one of the best known skeptics until recently. Now he starts to acknowledge that the IPCC is actually right. But he followed the mission of Fitz Butcher and he was for one of
the biggest magazines of the Netherlands. He has written like dozens of articles about this and with the enormous reach another you know, well known skeptic, Hans Labone, still active today, you know, still active collaborating with the current climate skeptic groups like Clintel, which is a new organization. He was also personally mentored by Fitz Butcher. So this handful of
people who has you know, reached a huge audience. They can all kind of be be linked to Pitcher and they have all well many of them have been mentored by him to spread this message and to continue his fight as he would call it himself.
Okay, that's it for this time. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Will drop links to various stories that have come out of the Shell Papers reporting in our show notes. Be sure to check those out. One thing to note after our interview, Alexandro sent me an email clarifying that it wasn't just Shell that was funding this Butcher guy. There were twenty four other firms that were also funding his climate skepticism, so he wanted to be clear that
it wasn't solely a Shell campaign. However, they were really surprised to find that Shell had been directly funding this guy in any way at all. You can see all the details behind that reporting and many other stories in the links that will drop in the show notes today. And a reminder if you haven't yet signed up for one of our various membership options, I highly recommend doing that in the next few weeks so that you can be amongst the first to listen to our next investigative series.
It is a zinger. Speaking of which, a big shout out to our most recent Patreon sponsors. They are Sarah Hale, Civil Politics Radio, Stefan, Stephanie Black, Melissa Hoffer, David Ian McCauley, and Patricia Hine. Thank you guys. Your support keeps us going. It is paying for part of the production of that next season I mentioned, so it really very much appreciated.
We are still keeping the COVID Climate Policy Tracker going on our website as well, and we'll have a lot of new stories and series coming up on the website for you there too. Members get early access to a lot of those stories, plus bonus content both in print and in audio. You also get ad free podcast episodes, and some of our membership levels now come with merchandise.
You can get a drilled covy cup. We also have a new store launching soon with that stuff, so if you just want to mug without the membership, you'll be able to do that too. Thanks again for listening and we will see you next time.
Down the back deplete the complete deta