For almost half a century, we have been trying to talk about climate change and make sure that people are aware that the climate is changing and the consequences that come along with that. But over those 50 years, we have seen a series of campaigns that feel relentless against scientists, against conservationists, against people who are trying to make sure that everybody, you and I, know about what the what climate change will bring to us. And it's funded by people who have investments
in oil. We've been talking about this for, like I said, half a century. But the people who have been funding this have been getting away with it, even though we kind of knew who they were. There's an article that's now posted that shows what people and what companies are donating to these campaigns and why they benefit from the fossil fuel industry.
And today we're going to be talking about the frustrations that I felt and other people have felt about climate change and why people just aren't getting it. And now we even see even now to this day where we see the consequences that people are continue to, you know, speak out against it and make sure that we can't do any more progress from a government standpoint as much as we need to do because of these misinformation
campaigns. So we're going to talk about that on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is a podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. And if you're new
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get into the episode. There is one of my new of this article that I was talking about earlier about how there are organizations that funded That were funded to spread lies to the public This article came from a new a new website that I really love called the cooldown calm It's all about just sort of ways that we can help in terms of dealing with climate change. It has like business, auto tech,
outdoors, all this kind of stuff. And this is in the business section. I'm going to link to the article in the show notes or the description wherever you're watching. If you're watching on YouTube, it's in the description below. But check it out. Check out the site. Check out this article. It's a really interesting article that leads to a different article, which I'm actually going to highlight in the show notes because it's an article that will actually show
the report, the fossil fuel philanthropy report. basically saying that there are companies and organizations, non-profit organizations, like organizations who get a tax rebate. that are getting funded to spread lies. Not only just lies, but to spread apathy. So I'll take you back to a time where people started to talk about climate change. Scientists were starting to make people know. You saw scientists make people know about the ozone layer.
They said, hey, you know what? There's a hole in the ozone layer, and this is what's causing it.
It's like a bunch of CFCs. and if i was an 80s i was a 70s baby i grew up in the 80s and 90s and i remember watching shows like cartoons like gi joe kind of stuff and gi joe used to have this little thing at the end it was like a little segment called the more you know and or knowing is half the battle I think is is is what it was more you know is NBC thing but knowing is half the battle was a G. I. Joe kind of saying and it basically talk is about a variety different
things don't take candy from strangers know how to call 911 and who's a friend who's not all this kind of stuff But they also talked about the ozone layer and how the ozone layer, actually I think it was one of the episodes was about the ozone layer, how there's like CFCs in aerosol cans that was causing the hole in the ozone layer. So back then, in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, We're like, oh, OK, so there's a hole in the ozone layer and it's caused by
these CFCs. So governments got together and said, you know what? Not only do we have to stop buying these aerosol cans, but we have to stop putting CFCs in these aerosol cans. So basically put the element or the chemical that was causing the hole in the ozone layer, we need to stop putting that in the aerosol cans because that's what the scientists are saying is it's causing the hole in the ozone layer. And they did that. They actually took it out. And so aerosol cans didn't have that. And hey,
guess what? The hole in the ozone layer got smaller, right? There you go. Scientists identify the problem. The policy goes in for the government. People are like, yeah, we can't do this. Let's listen to the scientists. OK, let's put into policies, put into regulation, and businesses stop putting it in there. Perfect. Problem pretty much solved. It closed. It's opened again, but for a different reason. But now, in
the 80s, we had acid rain. So basically, the chemicals that were going into the atmosphere from a variety of different things, a lot of it had to do with mining. Because I remember in Sudbury, Ontario, near where I live, just north of where I live, like four hours, five hours north, there was acid rain. So what was happening is there was chemicals that were getting the air
from, I believe it was from mining, if I remember correctly. And then it made the rain more acidic and it was causing devastation to the environment. So scientists identified that, governments got together and said, hey, you know what? We should stop this. So let's put on regulations of what was causing it and let's stop acid rain. Acid rain went down. We don't hear about acid rain again because it's not that much of a problem as it was back in the 80s and 90s. And
now, because scientists identified it, that's great. Now, come to climate change. In the 70s, scientists started to talk about climate change. 80s, 90s, we're starting to say, hey, you know what? We really need to look out for this because it's getting worse. And it's caused by the chemicals that are put out for the fossil, the burning fossil fuels. So you're looking at carbon dioxide. You're looking at methane gas and other greenhouse gases that were warming the atmosphere and
that was causing changes and shifts in the environment. So it was warming the waters. It was causing the water to be more acidic, right? And it was causing a lot of sea level to rise. It was causing the glaciers to melt. But all of a sudden, there started to be information being like trying to get rid of that information, right? Trying to combat that information. Be like, no, no, scientists are just being This is a bunch of hippies that are doing that are saying this and
they want us to stop it We don't really need to stop. It's okay. We could just continue don't believe in climate change climate change is not a thing That was the messaging all throughout the 90s and probably most of the 2000s that we've had so far And it wasn't until recently the like last 10 years where we started to see campaigns be like, you know what? Like climate change is here. Yes, it's it's here like it's cause and it's a little bit caused by humans actually for
a while. They used to say I remember all man. I remember this was like I think it was like in the late 90s or early 2000s. It was a senator. I think was Ted Cruz that went on like David Letterman and And he basically told David Letterman, because they were talking about climate change and how the atmosphere was warming. And he's like, yes, we had a peak in 1998. And if you look at the rest of the time after that, we haven't had temperatures higher than that. Right.
So we've only peaked and now we're going down. That's basically what he said on national TV. But if you looked at the entire graph, like from the 50s and 60s, even earlier, you start to see this exponential growth. And yes, there was a slight peak in 1998 and it did go down a little bit, but it was slowly starting to rise again each year, year after year after year. And it continued to
rise and it continues to rise. And so when you have people saying, oh, yeah, well, it peaked, but now it's going down, people are like, oh, that makes sense. Like, there's this guy on TV who said it peaks and it goes down. But when you look at the actual graph and you take it into full context, you start to see, like, actually, it's slowly rising again. And we're still very high compared to where we were 50 years ago, even longer, like 100 years ago. Very, very different.
So they're just looking at minuscule in a small period of time, but we had to say the peak. And I remember talking to people. I was in university at this point, learning about climate change, learning about how it affects the ocean. But still, you didn't see or hear a lot of talk. But you hear the denial. I started to really sort of realize how many people were denying climate change on TV, in conversations. And I remember talking to my dad about this. And my brother and I
was like, yeah, I'm like, look, climate change is a big thing. We have to be careful of it. We've got to change the way we live. It's a big, big change. Because it was fossil fuels. We were relying on fossil fuels so much at that point. We were barely going to windmills, barely going to solar. That was being talked about like, it can't sustain anything. The technology is not there yet, all that kind of stuff. This is late 90s, early 2000s. And I remember talking to my dad about it. He's like,
well, we've got to be careful. We can't just change everything because the economy is dependent, especially in Canada, is dependent on fossil fuels. And it is. It is tied to oil and gas. That's what our economy is tied to. If the oil goes down, the price of oil goes down, our economy goes down because we're so focused on natural resources, especially oil and gas. Regardless of that, that deniability just kept coming into play. And then we started to hear the apathy, basically
saying, hey, you know what? Yes, climate change is here. We recognize that the climate is changing. Then they're saying, but it's not by us. Climate just changes over like a lot of time over the time period. And it's just a natural thing. We saw ebbs and flows in over time. And we just saw that we don't have to worry about it. It's not human related. Then, you know, more evidence comes out that it's human-related and more and more people are believing that.
And then they start to say, you know what, sure, it's here. I think now it's like, we just can't do anything about it. It's just the earth. The earth is just changes. Yes, so we make a little bit of a minuscule disturbance. We just can't do anything about it. You might as well just enjoy the ride and
let's just see what happens. And over this time, we keep continuing to reveal that there are companies out there who are spending money to PR firms, who are spending money on non-profit organizations like the Fraser Institute here in Canada, to proliferate all this garbage science that says, hey, you know what, we have so many science, hundreds of scientists have signed on saying climate change doesn't exist. Not true.
If you actually scour and look at the peer-reviewed journal articles where the science happens, Like where all, everything is agreed upon and debated on, and you know, there's rivalries and stuff like that. You see a lot happening, a lot of critique about science
in the peer-reviewed journals. You see it. Not only just, you know, journals, journal articles of science that are saying that yes, climate change is getting worse, and we're still here, and you know, even if we stop everything now, we're still gonna feel it for like the next 50 to 100 years. All that's in there, but there's also a lot of scientists that are just talking about climate change in general. They may not be focused, their study may not be focused on climate change, but
overall, there is climate change. It's in there, just like, oh yeah, and climate change is affecting this, so it's a cumulative effect on a disturbance for nutrients or whatever. There's always that added factor. Scientists continue to sort of enforce the fact that climate change changes everything. Climate change changes everything. And when the United States had Obama as their president, Obama came out and said, climate change is the number one threat to the US. And then the Navy came
out and said, climate change is the number one threat to the US. And then NASA came out and said, climate change is the number one threat to the US. You had all these people coming out and saying it that were backed by science. And then all of a sudden that messaging disappeared because you had another president who came in who was just basically all for drilling oil and gas and continuing to
move that. Even with the other president, Joe Biden coming in, still saying, hey, we need to put this plan together about climate change and to reduce climate change, still approving projects for oil and gas that will continue to develop oil and gas reserves well into the future, like 30, 40, 50 years into the future. And it's just perpetuated by this misinformation that we keep seeing. Every time, and a lot of my fellow science communicators
will be able to attest to this. A lot of times, and for me, it's like every time I talk about climate change, there is somebody who's gonna write a comment that denies climate change. And the best, my favorite is like, watch this YouTube video. This YouTube video will tear every scientist that has talked about climate change, how it's affecting the world. It's gonna tear them down, all
the arguments are gonna be torn down. Forget the peer-reviewed scientists. Just listen to this YouTube person and I Fully aware that I am a person who's listening to you Who's telling you on YouTube that climate change is real and we're facing the consequences. I understand that but I'm backed by peer-reviewed science I'm backed by all those scientists who are saying hey, we have a problem here.
That's affecting our entire planet now Not in the future, but now it's gonna get worse if we continue on this path, but now we are being affected But then you continue to have these ideas by high-level officials in government who continue to say, hey, the weather's being controlled by the government to stop an election from happening that will go the opposite way. You have people who are out there, like these organizations that are being funded by oil and gas through
non-profit organizations. It's almost like laundering money in a way, but I don't know if this is illegal. But you're starting to have this, like the Koch brothers are the ones that are a part of this. If you look at this fossil fuel philanthropy report that's in this article that I'll put in the show notes, you'll see that a lot of, like Charles Koch is the guy who, or Koch, or Koch, I don't know how you pronounce it, But they're the organizations that are funding this
misinformation. And you're starting to see the ramifications of the misinformation too, because there are organizations out there who are suing oil companies for perpetuating all this misinformation in the past, and for causing delays in action by governments. And to be honest, this is my personal feeling, until we get money out of election campaigns and having businesses, even people being able to donate to specific candidates for money, then
we are not going to see a change in this. But until then, which will be a long time if it ever happens, until then, it's good to have this report. Because if you want to take action against climate change, you want to stop the companies who are fueling these misinformation campaigns by not buying from what they sell or what they own.
That could be difficult, because you might have to go, like, tangle in the weeds. But the person, the name that I keep seeing is Charles Koch, or Coke, however you pronounce it, That person is tied to multiple corporations that probably own multiple corporations. They are entrenched in our world. They own chemical companies. They own oil and
gas companies. We may not be able to get out of it right off the bat, but you can actually identify the people who are causing this misinformation, who are causing the delays in drastic action that needs to be taken to help not only save people's lives, but save our economy in the future from having to spend trillions of dollars into cleaning up the consequences of climate change. That's what it comes down to, folks. Like, we talk
about the economy and how we need to save the economy. Think about every time we have to spend money on cleaning up a hurricane that's a Category 5 in June, floods that we don't normally see, unprecedented floods, hurricanes that are getting bigger and stronger and faster that we're seeing in October, late October. Right? We are starting to see all these storms come to a head. We're starting to see sea level rise and increased storm surges because the sea level is higher. We're starting to
see that the water is getting fresher. We're starting to see that major current systems are actually changing or slowing down that will eventually shut down and cause a drastic change in our weather patterns around the globe. yet we continue to let these companies control the information that goes through. And think about it, with all the way information is spread today in terms of technology and into our phones and into our brains, we are the most
susceptible to misinformation. That is probably a big threat to us right now because what you see is what you get on different social media
platforms. And let's just be honest, No matter what side you are of an issue Both sides are on those platforms trying to put together information that will allow you to make a decision Whether that information is correct or not that is up for that is up to you to decide and up scientists to tell Right and for you to believe you got to know who you can believe because the climate Like just cluster f that we have seen in terms of a PR campaign
to do something about climate change is absolutely off its rocker. You know, we've failed as scientists, we failed as communicators to ensure that the right information gets to the right people at the right time.
and that's on us because like scientists we never talked about climate change that much or we never talked about science that much before all this technology came out even then we were late because we were worried that our information would not get to the right people or would be manipulated to show something else because that's happened in the past and that's because you know sometimes when there's big business involved we are going up against you know, a lot of money. And a lot of
money can do a lot of bad things in the wrong hands. And that's what we've seen. And hopefully, this fossil fuel philanthropy report can actually get out to the right people and we can actually take action. It's getting out to the people. It's out there. We can make a difference. Just how do we do that is the next question. Right? That's really what it comes down to. How do we do that? I actually recently did, I was on Instagram and a survey came up by Meta, right? The company that owns, you
know, Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp and so forth. And it asked me a number of questions about the perception of the company, Meta itself. And it said, how do you feel about Meta when it comes to misinformation? And I was just like, it's the worst, it's the worst company for it. And
how do you feel about Meta as a company? I don't like the, and I even responded, I don't like the fact that you manipulate other companies like the government to go after other companies like TikTok because you're afraid that they're putting a dent in your profits and your share of the attention that you used to get from Instagram and from Facebook. Because TikTok is pretty much taken over. It's almost rivaling Google at
some point. I think it was higher at one point. And now you're seeing it banned at a certain time, if that ever will happen, in the US. Because let's be honest, Meta did that. They wanted to do that, they did that. And
so they're the ones who started all this inquiry. So it's really... scary when this happens but the fact that we have access now to this information where there's people who are donating and companies who are donating to these non-profit organizations that are just there to misinform you is really powerful and I'm glad this came up and I'm surprised it's not being talked about more Because a couple of months ago, I did a story on how there were over 120 senators and congresspeople who were
being paid by fossil fuel companies or fossil fuel packs that would allow them to support oil and gas rather than the environment, rather than the country that they serve in the US. Right? We're starting to see this information come out. It's in there. It's for us. And there's a huge election coming to the US. This is the time where you say, who is involved with getting funded by the Koch brothers? The Koch brothers. Let's just call it the Koch brothers. The Koch brothers.
Who is involved? Right? Then if they're funding certain people who are trying to get elected, maybe if the environment is important to you, if the economy is important to you, maybe don't vote them in. It doesn't matter what side they're on because they're both being funded by the same people. It doesn't matter what side they're on, vote somebody who's independent or vote somebody who's not being funded by them or funded less by them, right?
Somebody who will represent more about you, the people who they are there to represent rather than the companies that are donating that they end up representing in place of you. So that's just like this article just kind of got me going because I was like, I can't believe this isn't being talked about a lot. It's probably because the Koch brothers own a lot of media outlets, right? Like, let's
be honest here. You know, there's a reason why the Washington Post this year didn't, or this election term, didn't say they chose, they didn't choose a candidate they wanted to support. They've chosen a candidate all this other time, but now that, you know, Amazon donor Jeff Bezos owns them, he's like, you know, we're not going to choose a candidate because we're going to stay in the middle. You know, we're going to be journalists,
we're going to stay in the middle. Funny how most of the articles are supporting like Democratic Party sort of policies and making and sort of criticizing Republicans. But all of a sudden, now you decide to stay in the middle. Maybe it's because that when if Kamala Harris gets in as a president, you're going to see a lot of taxes come to billionaires and he's a multibillionaire and he doesn't want to give up some of his money. That's just me going
off on a tangent. But that's what's happening here, right? When these companies, these big billionaires own all these different companies at a powerful level, then all of a sudden they're like, hey, you know what? Yeah, we can do whatever we want. We decide not to take a stand. We're not gonna support either candidate. Well, there's a reason for that. There's always a reason for that. And unfortunately, that's
just how we have to deal with it. But we have to press the press. We have to press the government to say, hey, you're supposed to be representing us, not these companies that are supporting you. And this report allows us to get more information on who's being supported by this and allowing this misinformation coming and allowing the government not to go further into supporting us and by protecting citizens. And this is
all governments, not just the US, this is Canada, this is everything. to protect their citizens against environmental damage that we're causing to ourselves. So that's what I had to say. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Am I off the rocker here? Should this be more and more in the news and be covered more by multiple outlets? Or, you know, I find this election cycle, it's being ignored. Climate change in general is just being ignored.
I don't know why. It's a big division between the two. The one thing I could say why is because human rights are at at stake here. Hopefully everything goes well this week, but I do recommend that you go out and vote I suggest strongly suggested, you know And for whatever party you're going for just go out and vote. It's your right It's something you deserve to do and everybody deserves to do that. And so hopefully The environment will come out ahead, but
that's it for me today. I'd love to hear from you you can leave a comment on YouTube or Spotify or you can hit me up on Instagram at how to protect the ocean and That's at howtoprotecttheocean, all one word. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Angelo.