Context starting part 2:
Wide and concerted effort to decrease political pressure on fossil fuel corporations by obfuscating the extent of the certainty of the science - uncertainty must rule climate change.
George W. Bush v.s. Al Gore election
- Bush claimed that he would place a limit on the U.S.A.’s carbon emissions
- Cap on carbon emissions would be something critical
- Bush wins the election, shame that we aren’t really getting to why since it also largely has to do with the first chapter of the film and I think genuinely that not going over the influence of fossil fuel think tanks, connections to oil and gas in Texas, evangelical influences
- Bush administration went back on his word about carbon cap idea (eco-extremist to put a carbon emissions cap on the country) it would drive up already inflated energy costs in the country
- Dick Cheney - extremely connected to the energy industry, like W
- George W. Bush continues to play down the certainty of findings of climate science
- Whitman resigns more or less as a result of the carbon cap, office had no appetite for addressing climate change at all in the 2000s.
Bill Heins
- Worked as a geoscientist for exxon mobil, doing cool science shit with tools far beyond what universities are capable of, geoscientists working in the company know securely that climate change is fundamentally a cause of CO2 emissions. Scientific team at Exxon is of a different opinion about climate change than the company. Asserts that you need to have an understanding of climate sciences at a very deep level to be able to create the modern tools that have allowed people to more easily find fossil fuel deposits and a pre-qualifier of that understanding is knowing the cause of climate warming is human caused CO2 emissions. (Still ultimately did all of this work)
- Exxon Mobil published “advertorials” which are advertisements that read like articles so that readers will read their propaganda thinking that a journal published it as a story
Obama
- Climate change back on the plate
- Climate change mostly accepted as real by voter base
- (This, even now, is somehow not the case)
Exxon in the 2010s urged to make a statement about climate change that confirms that it is anthropomorphic and that Exxon should stop lobbying against climate policy (this part didn’t really happen obviously and it’s also very late) — This was CEO Rex Stillerson, nothing substantive changed after the landmark speech, they didn’t endorse any climate bills, they did continue lobbying underhandedly.
Koch brothers continue efforts to target vulnerable specifically republican politicians who will work to strike down the cap-and-trade bill.
What’s the cap and trade bill?
A cap-and-trade bill sets a hard legal limit (“cap”) on the total greenhouse gases that companies can emit and creates a marketplace where companies can buy or sell pollution permits (“trade”). It uses market forces to lower pollution over time. This is what Carbon Credits is more or less except there are a lot of voluntary markets for that.
Part One is really just way more in-depth and gives a greater overview of history, this is basically just a climate legislation fail compilation.
I want to get to part 3 and learn about climate and MAGA or whatever and how much time they spend on it.
I don’t appreciate that there wasn’t much coverage on the bush election since it was an extremely big deal lol