Why Political Will is the Real Barrier to Climate Action

those changes will be. We know that human activity is the largest source of those gases by far, and we have all sorts of good and viable options for doing things differently, and yet no government on Earth has managed to do what's required to adequately address this problem, and every international body form to deal with it remains hopelessly

incapable of doing so. In a few months, I'll be headed to the thirtieth Conference of the Parties, the annual Climate Summit that brings together all the members of the UN Framework on Climate Change Convention, and ask them to figure out a way to work together.

on climate obstruction. Which might sound boring and academic, but if you're a listener to this show, you know that I love to nerd out on some social science. This is the first book of its kind because climate obstruction is a relatively new field of research and it is fascinating. It's also a really good way to prep for all the nonsense we're about to see it this year's cop

in Brazil, So prep with me. I'm reading the book before I go and talking to some of the researchers who worked on it to get a sense of where we're at while we're here, and what the heck might work to get us unstuck. I'm Amy Westerbelt. Welcome to a new season of Drilled. We're calling it obstruction today. Welcome to the world of obstruction.

who is blocking action on climate change. Our theory of change is that we've failed largely at addressing climate change because we didn't understand the opposition that we faced, and we were quite naive about that.

obstruct climate action. I think it's it's so important to have it spelled out, and it's it's one of those things that seems but I've never seen it in a paper before. So can you talk a little bit about why it's important to have this really explicitly stated and supported, and how important a contribution you think this volume will be to this kind of larger understanding of the issue.

is lame, and it's you know, intermittent and unreliable. That our democracy can't function dealing with hard problems, or that neoliberalism is this economic system that drive us to make short term decisions. Or our religion, our religious base and other cultural beliefs are such that we can't solve big problems. But we have solved big problems in the past, acid, rain, ozone, lead,

and asbestos. Those are just the environmental examples, but we have many others that our societies have risen to the challenge of. And I think this case is different because we've had a leading industry, the largest industry in the history of humankind, oil and gas and coal. The fossil fuel industries have learned from those past regulatory efforts and said, wait a minute, we don't have an alternative. We're just going to fight it and block any effort to really

seriously address climate change, and their strategies were sophisticated. They were tailored for every political context in the world, you know, for every town or US state or subregion to nations and un negotiations as we'll talk about, and then even in the same countries, the strateg these change as the

president changes or as you know, political winds shift. So you know, that's sort of answering your first question on you know why is you know, what's what's new here on why it's important to say it's not inevitable again that it's pretty fatalistic to say that humans can't solve big problems, so just throw up your hands. So we've got to address this problem. And the insights from learning about obstruction offers new knowledge about how we might actually

counter it. And I would really ask my colleagues to help me on this, But I think this volume is a quantum leap. We've never had a really global look. We have one hundred and ten of the world's scholars. I mean, the list of people involved in this book is really a who's who in this area of climate

politics research. And you know, we have a far range of a far wider range of sectors that we're just starting to understand we have all these topics and we pulled together a bunch of work, which is a lot of which is original. So there's we've never had anything like this, and I'm really quite excited to have this thing coming out.

of climate science. We understand that these companies largely understood climate science in the early even in the early twentieth century potentially, but we don't see the first example of actual climate obstruction until nineteen eighty with the American Petroleum Institute.

And we can really understand through the lenses of climate obstruction that climate policies they touch transport, energy, they touch agriculture, I mean, a series of other fields and other policies crossing across the board of governmental policies. And I think that this is important for the sake of understanding this umbrella concept of climate obstruction. And also I mean, and yet another issue I think that we could easily understand,

particularly through chapter number four. I think it was the chapter on the far right, for example, the linkages the connections between democratic backlash and the growth of climate obstruction networks and organizations in different countries, with so many different contexts, but with this commonality of attacking climate policies altogether, also for the sake of attacking democratic advance.

there's a good reason to do that. We know since the nineteen eighties these organizations have spent tens hundreds of millions of dollars denying the existence of climate change, funding television campaigns, online campaign social media campaigns, etc. But as I said, they're not the only ones. So we have a lot of evidence now about the role of coal companies, utilities, car manufacturers, meat and dairy producers that have joined in

efforts to delay slow down climate policies. So if you take the meat and dairy industry, for example, it's a sector that's uniquely emissions intensive compared with other agricultural industries because of its methane emissions, and so they've played a key role too. The other kind of interesting thing we observe is that you have these supply chains that create

coalitions right across the economy. So if you think about utilities that we rely on to general electricity, well, in many countries they still are dependent on coal and gas, so you see coalitions between coal, gas, and utilities. Or you take one that you wouldn't really think of, like railroads. In many places, railroads are dependent on coal and so they work together to move the coal around the country. So you see these coalitions right up and down supply chains.

One manifestation of this is large trade associations that represent multiple industries taking positions to block climate change. So in the US, it's well known groups like the US Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers. These are large member based organizations that represent some of the largest industries in the country. In Europe there's groups like the European Roundtable of Industrialists. In Indonesia there's the Chamber of Commerce

in Industry and so on. So many of these larger bodies that represent business right across society have taken quite extreme anti climate positions in part because of these linkages across supply chains. So the short answer is, yes, it's oil and gas, but it's much more than that as well.

the lobbying and these instructionist actions. And this is not necessarily a one to one overlap in terms of these sets of entities. So one way that it does seem uniquely different is, for instance, Saudi Aramco, state owned fossil fuel company seems less involved in climate obstruction than investor owned Exon Mobile and for all sorts of reasons, that's true, far less influential. Certainly in the US.

Edelman has very little to do with climate emissions, with greenhouse gas emissions, but a lot to do with information pollution, and so we identify this new set of actors who have responsibility in the realm of climate obstruction, but who may have very little responsibility in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.

Are just kind of one additional point there that we make in the book is that these types of actors that you're talking about some of these large oil and gas producers, and we know from some great existing studies there's about ninety carbon majors, for example, that are responsible across oil, gas, and cement for a large chunk of rises in global mean average global temperatures and even sea level rise. So this attribution science is really pinpointing that.

But it's not, as Jennifer was saying, it's not only that these companies are responsible for the emissions, but they also continue to spew out emissions expand their production, even though many of these firms know better than most because of their in house scientific knowledge, the damage that they're doing,

how their practices are heating the planet. And then for these organizations to go on and use these huge amounts of revenues that they're generating in profits, to use a large chunk of that to then engage in political activities to try and delay policies, to try and block policies that are actually going to reduce emissions. I think that's why you're saying, some of these organizations being taken to court, being figned libel in courts and human rights commissions right across the world.

They are not the key emitters, but they are those who are helping pollute the information environment and contributing to the dissemination of climate and these are roles that are very important for the sake of delaying action.

to say, oh, it's not real. I heard one just the other day at a hearing about offshore wind in Rhode Island. But he was one of twenty five pieces of testimony against offshore wind. The rest were saying things like it's not you know, it's not reliable, it's not affordable, it's going to itself cause you a lot massive environmental damage, and so on, and those kind of arguments are really attacks on climate solutions, and we're seeing a huge surgeon those.

So some excellent research built on earlier work by John Cook, who has a wonderful things like a game called Cranky Uncle and about you know, how do you help sort of prebunk or help people recognize misinformation. So a categorization scheme that he built and then was built upon by Travis Cohen and mere Jim Nanco at Exeter University in

the UK. And what they've shown really is that just even quantitatively, if you can use sort of AI or other machine learning to categorize you know, types of claims about climate change. And we're seeing a market shift away from this attacking the science itself about the reality of climate change, but rather much more about the solutions. So some people are calling this sort of delayism, or as William Lamb in an article called discourse, is a climate

delay that's been proven useful for understanding the shift. You know, people are saying, well, we should re'll act on it later, or the techno when the technology gets better, or well, you know, we'll hope that some great technology will fall from the sky, or the you know, the usual things will become viable like nuclear fusion or you know, hydrogen and so on that you know, you've covered a lot

in this on the show. So anyway, and then there's other attacks which are on the scientists and on the activists and on people like us so on the even on the journalists and the social scientists. So are there are new approaches to slowing down action climate change? They don't need to really say that it's not happening. They can now attack the solutions and those of us who are seeking the advance solutions quickly.

cone of Brazil. Well, that's the sort of dissociating cause and effect. And I think that these are kinds of messages that, in spite of all the advances in the scientific fields, we can still listen from politicians and key managers of oil industries and other businesses.

you use. So it's not the biggest greenhouse gas emitter, but it's up there. And in terms of what's interesting is you'll hear in the animal agriculture industry frequently say that they get a disproportionate amount of attention relative to their emissions, and I think our view is inverted to that. So again this kind of you know, sort of classic difference I think between what the scholars might say and what the industry might say. But yeah, animal agriculture is

a major polluter. As to why it hasn't received the same amount of attention, one reason, of course, is that the science itself on attribution has lagged behind what we know about just sort of warming generally. So you know, as we've understood climate change, we've had to understand who is actually responsible for it, and identifying the livestock sector has come later than it has around some of the other sectors. Notably, of course, the IPCCED does not identify

livestock as a particular sector. Animal agriculture is included here because now we have a growing body of evidence, it's not huge, less than a dozen papers actually, but to show that the meat and dairy industry has actively been involved in climate obstruction, that they have downplayed, denied, delayed, lobbied against, influenced public discourse around the topic of climate change. And that was a prerequisite. A lot of people would

have liked to see. A lot of author for instance, would have liked to see the financial sector and it's rule in climate obstruction, but because we don't have a scholarly basis on which to build that body of evidence, we set it aside for the next volume.

and coal, yes, but utilities. Actually, we don't have a huge amount of scholarly information about utilities, and yet the little we do know is that they've played a key role all the way back to the early nineteen nineties in some of the original coalitions, like the Global Climate Coalition, that played such a significant role obstructing climate change, and in many countries they still do. And in many jurisdictions there's some of the most powerful corporations. There's some of

them as state owned entities as well. So utilities is one that we talk a little bit about in the book, and others that perhaps your listeners don't think so much about, like car manufacturers, organizations like Toyota, for example. You wouldn't necessarily jump to or imagine when you're talking about climate obstruction, but some of these car manufacturers that have bet on you internal combustion engines, continuing for some time, continue to

obstruct things like fuel efficiency standards for cars. So right across the economy, a whole range of sector is a whole range of corporations that don't necessarily come to mind. We're now starting to see emerging interest, unfortunately, showing that these organizations too engage in the types of political activities that really marror what oil and gas have been doing as well.

the most important. To give you an example, perhaps I can draw on some of the work that I've been doing with Robert Brawl which has really kind of focused in on the political expenditure of these organizations. So to be clear, what's a trade association, Well that really these are member based organizations that firms kind of hide behind

often to do their dirty work. So I'm talking about groups like the American Patrolling Institute, one of the largest in the US, probably one of the largest in the world. It represents Shell bp exon Mobil, but it also represents

a whole range of refiners and others. And so what we did in one piece of work is we went through their tax filings of about ninety organizations that have engaged on climate issues between twenty eight and twenty eighteen, just to see, you know, how much money do they have at their disposal, how much money they spending on politics.

And what we found over that decade is of those around ninety trade associations that are working on climate issues, they had total revenues of more than twenty five billion US dollars, so huge sums of money the oil and gas sector alone. This is just the trade associations had four point six billion US dollars in revenues. What was also interesting is that thirteen percent of that, or about three point four billion, was just being spent on political activities.

So these trade associations that are working on climate change issues in the US were spending three point four billion US over a decade on a whole range of political activities to try and shape climate policies. The other kind of scary thing to know about these numbers is from the political science literature, we know that actually firms themselves spend more on politics than trade associations, so three point

four billion is really just scratching the surface. And then the other thing we're interested in was what are they spending that money on? So coming we've spoken a moment ago about Edelman and others, but advertising and promotion was the largest was the largest pot. So these organizations spent again hopefully I'm not drowning you in figures here, but

two point two billion dollars just on advertising promotions. So most of their political spending is going to social media campaigns, television campaigns, radio.

sporting organizations, museums, historical societies, and others. And a few years ago I was I did some interviews with some of the lobbyists in these organizations, and I noted that a bunch of them were giving small amounts of money to a whole range of charitable organizations in Washington, DC. And you would ask them why, and some people said, oh, it's just simply because we want to solve Alzheimers, for example.

But when you pushed a little bit more, you know, does it really begs you care about cancer or solving Alzheimer's. You know, it probably won't come as a surprise to those that work in Washington, d C. But often you give a small there's a charitable dinner in DC. You give ten thousand dollars to a particular organization, and that buys you a seat at the table, and perhaps at that particular dinner, the honorary guest that night is the

Senate Finance Chairman. So you buy a seat at the table, the money goes to this charity, You sit next to the Senate Finance Chairman, you organize a meeting with their chief of staff on Monday morning, and that's how you facilitate lobbing. So these are very sophisticated playbooks that these trade associations are using to shape climate and energy policies on behalf of their members, and there's huge sums of money, as we detail in the book.

they've been heavily involved moving forward from there too. So again the role of trade associations does appear to be prominent across many different sectors.

to meet them. So it's really a way to protect the social license of the firms that are members of them. So we often see firms say one thing in public, the CEO will give a press statement or so on. But if you follow where the money is actually going to these trade associations, they're undertaking political activities that are in direct contradiction to what some of the leaders of these firms are saying in public. So it's that reputational protection.

I think that really comes out in some of the chapters in this book as well.

little bit and then implement later when we have more information about what is really needed to do, perhaps in a less costly way, when more technology is available so that we don't have to be confronted with all the costs that are here. I mean for us to implement

through clipe of climate policies. So I think I think Thanks they are one of these inge actors, together with religious groups, which help open doors, particularly between the official and civil society world right, because they are within the civil society. Very often you don't know if they're speaking on behalf of a government or on behalf of civil society, because they have this nature that is kind of hybrid.

It's a think thank and you don't know if it's really coming from a social movement, from a civil society or from a government. And I think this hinge function opening doors. It's very important because if you withdraw the hinge of a door, it's going to open somehow, but it's not going to open so easily. And I think they played this role which is very important.

network of organizations of think tanks. They're very much free market orientated and they focus on neoliberal policies. It's organizations like the Heartland Institute in the US, the Free Market Foundation in South Africa, the Global Warming Policy Foundation in the United Kingdom. In my own country in Australia, the Institute for Public Affairs is another prominent trade association. And

so we see this network of organizations. We're starting to know a lot more about how they operate, the interlinkages between them, including funding flows, personnel, the interlocks between boards and so forth. But in many countries, as Carlos is saying,

they play a very very influential role. Here in Australia, the Institute for Public Affairs that I just mentioned, for example, has very close ties to a number of conservative politicians that have been very outspoken even questioning the science of climate change. And I'm sure that's true right across the world. So we're seeing this close connection the way they spread ideas, but also their links right into national parliaments.

are organizing a conference, so they are knowledgeable. They must be respected because they're organizing something. That is, they bring presidents, i mean leaders from different countries not only to talk about climate, but climate is always there of course.

and some polluting industries. There were Again, because we focused in this volume on twenty fifteen to the present, you know, we're really interested in work scholarship around that time as well,

and so there have been examples. In chapter four on the animal agriculture industry of the Red Flag, it's an Irish PR firm very involved in positioning the animal agriculture industry as sustainable and so much so in fact, that extinction rebellion, you know, protested outside of Red Flag's headquarters in twenty nineteen because of this immense amount of bidding that they do on behalf of the animal agg industry.

And there were a few other interesting examples I think of PR firms that people may not have typically heard of as being involved in climate obstruction that appear in this volume.

networks that are obstructing action on climate change. And this is an older example, but I think it's just a classic case of how these things operate.

on energy issues. Now, this all looks like a kind of grassroots, legitimate campaign by ordinary citizens that cared about energy issues. But it turns out, thanks to a lot of great investigative journalism and others, that actually the American Petroleum Institute, this organization we've been talking about, had contracted Edelman to run the campaign, to pay for the actors to appear in these ads, to set up the website, to do all this type of work. So that's really

what these pr firms are doing. They're running a whole lot of AstroTurf organizations as well. It's not just setting up a TV campaign. And when we went back through the tax data, I looked at before what we actually saw in those years when Edelman set up the Energy Citizens campaign on behalf of the American Patrollum Institute. We know that the API paid Edelman one hundred and twenty million dollars in contracts for public relations in those two years.

So I think there's some clear links there and large sums of money behind these types of campaigns that organizations like Edelman and others run for trade associations and for firms.

But what the machinery, the governmental machinery, made possible was to make climate denial something official as part of the actual rhetoric of the government, and not only of the rhetoric, but of the actions of that government, I mean nationally and globally, through the participation of a country like Brazil

and multi natural climate negotiations. For example, it's interesting to see the behavior, the change of behavior between the Brazilian governments in the annunciation of the Paris Agreement in twenty fifteen and later on in Glasgow had another cop and we had another government, and the behavior and the political stances taken by that government the same country, but different

governments were totally different, right. And another level of differentuciation, which I believe is also important, is to see how similar leaders may actually act differently if we compare like we're doing some research comparing Brazil and Argentina the two cases.

For example, the ma Lay government doesn't have a very much strong opinion about climate but it's also because Argentina doesn't play the same level the same road at Brazil has historically played in multilateral climate negotiations, and also because the environmental movement and the climate movement in Argentina is not so strong to the level that climate obstruction would

be needed. So when we make this comparison between Brazil and Argentina, it's interesting to see that climate obstruction is also it also conflates with the level of organization of environmental movements and climate movements nationally, right, and if there is a climate governance at the national level, then climate obstruction will need to be stronger in order to dismantal legislation, to go against the organization of participatory councils, for example

at the national level, where civil society the science community may play a role. When you don't have that kind of governance organized at the national level the Argentinian case, of course, you don't need to have such strong climate obstruction actually us to the same level.

had whatever, poorly written laws and so on. But anyway, so we've seen, and we're seeing right now in the US a shocking attack on climate action by the government itself. It's a new phase of obstruction, there's no question. And this is you know, this volume we finished before Trump came into office for the second time, that is, and so there's going to need to be you know, the new phase of Trump led obstruction volume sometime in the future.

But the point I'd like to make is that there's always been obstruction, and the US has actually always been

a leader of obstruction globally. That in the UN negotiations we have I've been attending for, you know, over twenty five years, and it's you know, the US was always the problem child the rest of the world waited for to figure out what the heck the US was going to do because we have this crazy supermajority required by the Senate, and everybody in the world, in the smallest African countries know about the quirks of you know, Joe

Manchin or something in the US Senate. And there's been you know, very sophisticated blocking of global action in the US, sorry, by the US negotiating team through all those years, through democratic and republican administry. It's been bad. The US has with a few, very few exceptions, like in the run up to the Paaris agreement, the US did a little better. Anyway, the US has been really important and I think there's much to be learned from that because we need still

to understand where did the US position come from. How did the US government become such a a force for obstruction in global solution to climate change? And we really can go back to the beginning when the UN f Triple C, the UN Climate Treaty was being first drafted. There was very strong influence from the oil and gas and coal industries. They organized, they got their way, they used their trade organizations, their politics, you know, their political connections.

So there's different types of government led obstruction. Some are more subtle and some are extremely blunt, but I think it's really important for us to understand both.

both Trump one and two presidencies. And the legitimization, I think was the word you were using, Carlos, of having the political leader, the top person in office in the United States, call climate change a hoax, use very dramatic, incendiary language in the twenty first century, and withdraw from the Paris Agreement, which Obama helped design and get through politically, just shows I think you know the constant in schizophrenia that we live with in this country regarding both climate

obstruction and climate policy.

edge there on government led obstruction. In the US case right now, let's.

a couple of articles that have been really important. Danielle fell Zone at Rutgers has led US study on loss and damage and this really important climate change issue affecting the poorest countries in the world, and how the US and other countries managed to keep it off the negotiating table for decades. I mean, it was raised in nineteen ninety one or two by Vanuwatu, you know, and yet that issue just got absolutely stuffed in the garbage and

kept out out of the negotiations. And then there there's another piece in one of our sort of policy briefings from CSSN about Saudi Arabia, and they just repeatedly use all the tricks in the book to slow down and stop progress in the negotiations at the UNF Triple C negotiations, all kinds, you know, just endless tricks, and they're effective. And we also learned have learned that the US and Saudi often were in collaboration, working quietly in the background.

And then I've just started attending IPCC meetings this last year and learned, you know, there is obstruction by countries like India and China and so on that often send delegates that are there to make it more difficult to come to consensus among the scientists. And then of course there's the more formal phase of input from governments where they get to review the summary for policymakers, which is why that document ends up getting watered down so much from the scientists report.

of the things they're doing. Again with the caveat that, obviously there's the whole there's a whole book about it. But yeah, what are some examples?

So you don't need much obstruction. But in a lot of cases, what you have are industries who are trying to make themselves seem sustainable in the face of or a lot of places where you see obstruction is where you see industries who are trying to position themselves as sustainable or trying to maintain their social license to operate in the face of growing civil unrest or maybe even growing litigation, or maybe even growing threat of regulation because

specifically of climate change. And so you have this kind of obstructionist approach that may may be more about lobbying and maybe more behind closed doors like the nature Christian was describing getting a seat at the table next to a senator, or it may take the form. And I think this is what most people think of when they think of obstruction of influencing public understanding, public discourse, and the public view of the urgency to address climate change

in how we should do it. And so that type of obstruction does require a lot of social buy in, and it's achieved in all sorts of ways. The authors of chapter two on the oil and gas chapter talk about post twenty fifteen as the net zero era, that the oil and gas companies have no longer denying climate change outright as much as they are positioning themselves as understanding climate change, and that we're going to be net zero by doing a whole bunch of presumably obstructionist accounting.

Moving forward, the meat and dairy industry, you know, often talking about how sustainable the industry is, how it's not part of the problem, but ironically it's a huge part of the solution. And also that any attempts to intervene in either of these sectors would be enormously disastrous for

both the economy and for consumers in general. So there's all sorts of ways in which then the obstruction helps work with people's impression of these industries and what it means to their daily lives, in ways that the data show undermined the threat of regulation or political moves to address climate change.

so important, but where does matter a lot? And when you relate religious matters and messages with climate issues and environmental issues, portrayed that these are I don't know, something like coming from the devils, something like coming from another kind of entity. And of course dream dragon. I'm sorry, yeah,

I mean, I think this is important to understand. These are voters, right, and these social sectors and individuals, they are voters at a certain moment in time, and depending on their participation in the demography of a society, they may play a key role in decide who's going to be elected. Take the BRASIP where religious groups are very strong. Are the US case where religious groups are extremely strong in elections?

driven by you know, strong country national leaders. And I think you know, policymakers can put in place laws to increase transparency, prohibiting deceptive practices like greenwashing. There's a great EEU directives and so on that I think are path breaking and should be considered being copied around the world. So anyway, that's policymakers. I think lawyers have a big

role to play right now. I mean currently in the US conjuncture, their lawyers are critical in fighting back against substruction by failing lawsuits against the firms involved in the obstruction and either directly and there's the case of state attorney general's attorneys general or indirectly on behalf of point of such as NGOs. These and lawyers are really important. So I think i'll leave it there.

huge decision and this was led by states. We've mentioned states like Vanuatu, but some of these states like Solomon Islands and others that Barrister's working on their behalf that had this amazing decision and it really put the fossil fuel industry on notice and found that you know, states could be liable, could be held liable even if they continued, for example, to provide a fossil fuel subsidies for example. So I think, as Timmins was saying, you know, the

legal avenues are really ramping up. The US has been leading on that front, but we've seen other avenues as well. We've seen in the book we mentioned Human Rights Commission in the Philippines for example, that looked into whether some of these entities that willfully engaged in climate instruction and found that they had. And then I think the ICAJI decision just last week will really kind of transform some of the legal discussions in a range of countries.

send information to the court. And as a result of all this consultation process, the deliberation of the judges, they came up with a vision which incorporates the right to a sound climate, I mean a stable claims it as a human right, and that is that gives me precedence, which is really important for the connection to the human rights regime with the climate regime.

So in twenty twenty one, the first case of that for the met and dare industry occurred in Denmark with this case against Danish Crown who was claiming that it's pork was climate friendly, and Danish Crown lost that lawsuit, and now there are many more lawsuits in that ilk. And so again a challenge in the book I think was to focus in on climate obstruction activism, you know, not divestment, but uncoke my Campus as a form of

obstruction related activism. And so I love Uncoke my Campus example, and I also love this example of a podcast called Drilled, which has drilled into the history of climate obstruction for many years now and has really provided I think, a much stronger understanding of the difference between greenhouse gas pollution and information pollution. And they work together, but they are distinct.

i p IE International Panel on Information Environment. We just published another report concerning information about science and climate change. And I think that all these efforts to frame climate disinformation as an attack on information integrity changes the game, because who is going to be against integrity? Right? You have to be very brave to say publicly that you are against integrity any sort of integrity, right, and information

integrity being the one that we're talking about. Whereas climate is information, I think that it has been very often conflated with a kind of a left wing progressive political banner or something like this, right, whereas information integrity gives a new, I think, a new avenue for action on climate atroduction on climate discordition, with the support of key organizations like the Yuan UNESCO, governments like France, Chile, Brazil or the countries, and we need to spread this message

very wide and it's going to be part of COP thirty. I mean, the Brazilian government so very quickly. The connection between the climate information integrity and the possibility to fight against the far right in Brazil. It does it for the sake of climate, for the sake of the COP agenda, but also for the sake of presidential elections next year.

to see this as a key issue. Information integrity is kind of an area that's discreet enough to try to go after, but you're right that it's just a small portion of the global the total amount of obstruction that happens on climate change. You know, Bob Brule says that it's probably twenty percent or maybe even less of the whole obstruction, that a lot of obstruction is just based on structural power of the big actors who can keep

the system the way it is. And you know, this is never going to be easy to address climate change. People would rather just keep things the way they are. People fear change, but you know these actors are making it much more difficult. So it would be very exciting if an ambitious, truly ambitious country you would follow up on Brazil's effort. And we have Australia will be hosting COP thirty one. So what do you think, Christian, Will they carry the ball down the field from Brazil?

do something. But yeah, I'd be very excited if Australia kind of built on what Brazil's doing on the disinformation front because, as Tim and says, we need every actor in the world, whether it's a state, clean energy, businesses, civil society, everybody to get on board and pull towards climate action and to push back against what we've been talking about what the role of Saudi Arabia and other

countries are doing in this space. So fingers cross Brazil, you know, steps up to the plate, which which it looks like it might, and then either Australia or Turkey carries forward in the year after.

around great terms like climate integrity or information integrity. Sorry, because we've already seen in the past. You know, it's like, oh, global warming is politicized, so let's call it climate change and that will help move things forward. And we've been here before so many times.

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