Senate Select Committee on Information Integrity on Climate Change and Energy

An attempt by climate denial, anti-renewables and conservative campaign groups to pressure an Australian senate inquiry investigating astroturfing and climate misinformation may have backfired by inadvertently disclosing more information about these groups and how they operate than intended, the committee chair says.

 to investigate bad faith lobbying that relied on tactics such as astroturfing and the spread of misinformation and disinformation to disrupt efforts to end climate pollution in Australia. To date the inquiry has received over 200 submissions with its first public hearings held in late September.

Committee chair Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, a Greens Senator from Tasmania, said the process has already been targeted by the same kind of campaigns it is seeking to investigate, after Advance, a pressure group closely associated with conservative politics, sought to spam the email accounts of senators serving on the committee. Whish-Wilson said he personally received more than 5000 emails in the space of a weekend and is aware several groups had encouraged their members either to write committee members or make submissions to the process. “I honestly thought the volume of submissions would be a lot higher in terms of numbers,” Whish-Wilson said. “One of the biggest surprises of the inquiry so far is the amount of information we’ve been able to glean from the submissions. I don’t think the pressure campaign has rattled anyone at all. In fact I think it’s provided a fascinating insight in how organizations are using AI to generate submissions and write emails that appear distinct, and public relations firms to coordinate these campaigns.”

The inquiry has only just begun public hearings and has so far published 227 submissions on its website. Drilled – which contributed a submission to the inquiry – sought to analyze this material and found at least 96 submissions, more than 40 percent of submissions, were authored by organizations or people promoting climate denial in some form. A third of submissions were associated with figures promoting “hard climate denial”; the other two thirds – 64 submissions – were considered to display some form of “soft climate denial”. This describes situations where the author does not explicitly challenge climate science or deny  human activity was responsible for causing it, but instead attacks efforts to address the problem. Soft climate denial was differentiated from hard climate denial by intent. Whatever the motivations—some may be motivated by genuinely felt concerns about development issues—or ignorance, the result is a de facto defense of the continued production and consumption of oil, gas and coal. An additional two submissions were considered soft climate denial in the Australian context based on their overall message and conclusions even though they appeared to accept, or were ambiguous about, the author’s views on the science of climate change. Those submissions that were wholly irrelevant or unrelated to the overall inquiry, such as those promoting fusion power, were not counted in this group.

Where it was possible to associate a submission or author with a geographic location, at least a third of those engaging in soft-denial could be linked to specific anti-renewables campaigns in Queensland and New South Wales, or allied groups in other parts of the country who appeared to have made contributions in solidarity. These included group submissions on behalf of specific campaigns, and submissions from both the leadership of these groups and members. The combined effect of many of these contributions was an attempt to use the inquiry process to prosecute renewables projects and their developers for alleged misinformation, dishonesty or corruption.

Many submissions in this group were single-page documents that were often incoherent, expressed general anti-government sentiment, attacked the focus of the inquiry, or attempted to prosecute specific renewable energy projects targeted by past campaigns. The two most frequently cited campaigns were those undertaken against a proposed offshore wind project in the Illawarra, New South Wales, and the Chalumbin wind farm project near Ravenshoe, Far North Queensland.

Brown University Professor J. Timmons Roberts, speaking to the committee by video link in late September, described how his team’s research had shown many anti-renewables groups start out organically with genuine concerns but are later co-opted by other organizations or individuals with specific agendas.

“A lot of these concerns are genuinely felt,” Roberts said. “People do care about their places and are willing to fight for them, and I respect that very much.”

“When those fears are whipped up by external interests that have a self-interest which is based on their commercial attempts to do whatever it is, there are other outside interests that want to manipulate these communities, and I think that's deeply problematic.”

This was reflected in some submissions where authors described how they had previously volunteered with small, regional community groups in a volunteer capacity, before they eventually became drawn into larger anti-renewables campaigns. Though far fewer, the inquiry also received submissions from individuals, often anonymous, who said they were residents of these regions and supported renewable energy projects. These submissions expressed frustration at what they believed was widespread misinformation in their communities, and in some cases described examples of harassment, bullying and intimidation. There was also some nuance between anti-renewable submissions. Some contributors, for instance, urged the committee to distinguish criticism of individual energy projects, their developers and broader ecological concerns, from flat anti-renewables sentiment and climate denial. In this instance, Drilled counted apparent “

” submissions as soft climate denial as many still repeated falsehoods about renewable energy, climate change or the broader energy transition, and ultimately had the effect of preserving the dominance of oil, gas and coal by undermining technologies needed to phase them out.

These were accompanied by more sophisticated attempts to flip the script. In a manner reminiscent of DARVO attacks—an acronym for “

Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender

”—some submissions sought to use the inquiry’s terms of reference to indict groups campaigning for action to address climate change and accuse them of being the true astroturfed organisations. One submission from the National Rational Energy Network, an anti-renewables group led by ex-Queensland police officer Katy McCallum, once 

as “one of the loudest campaigners against Australia’s energy rollout”, involved a 12-page analysis of climate group Farmers For Climate Action. In her submission, McCallum sought to attack the group’s legitimacy as a representative voice for regional people. At the end, McCallum cited both Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg and John Stuart Mill’s 1859 treatise 

as authorities. A long-time McCallum ally, Jim Willmott from Property Rights Australia, also contributed a submission to the inquiry. Another submission by prominent anti-renewables group, Rainforest Reserves Australia was revealed in 

 to have been written using AI. The group’s submission referred to a nonexistent windfarm and cites scientific articles that don’t exist.

Submissions from more traditional climate deniers offered a who’s who of a previous generation. Historically, public discussions of climate change in Australia have been dominated by networks of typically older men, usually retired professionals or executives, who are well-connected among sections of the media, politics and the corporate world. The 30 submissions Drilled counted as promoting hard climate denial functioned as a self-reported list of who was still operating. Among the prominent figures to contribute was geologist Ian Plimer, perhaps Australia’s most internationally recognizable climate sceptic. Plimer started out as a newspaper columnist who, infamously, sold his house to 

finance a doomed lawsuit against creationists in the 90s

 before later turning to climate denial in the following decades. A reporter with 

 who once challenged Plimer on his ideas during an interview later described him as “

one of the most difficult and evasive interviewees I have ever spoken to

”. A biographical note attached to Plimer’s submission disclosed that he is currently “a director of various unlisted private Hancock Prospecting iron, energy, research and copper exploration companies.” Hancock Prospecting’s executive chair is Australia’s richest woman, iron ore billionaire Gina Rinehart. Alan Moran, another prominent figure and former employee of Australian think tank the Institute of Public Affairs who has campaigned heavily against any embrace of renewable energy, provided a submission through his organization, Australian Environment Foundation. At least three other submissions directly referred to Moran’s work or were made by people associated with his organization.

Another notable entry was offered by far right One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts who has been compulsively drawn to every significant public forum organized by the Australian government on the subject of climate change. Roberts, a former coal mine manager, infamously encountered the science of climate change while on a holiday with his wife to the Whitsundays where he watched Al Gore’s 

 Roberts was so confronted by the documentary’s message, he responded by attempting to disprove it frame by frame. The culmination of this process was a 300,000 word, 135-page treatise titled 

published in 2013, that even conservative commentator and climate-sceptic Andrew Bolt described as “

”. To support his thesis that climate change was an “antihuman” hoax to bring about a socialist New World Order aided by bankers and politicians, Roberts cited 

and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories at points. In 2016 he was elected to the federal senate to represent Queensland with Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and has been a vocal opponent to any effort to address climate change.

Roberts’ submission was not the only contribution from an explicitly political figure. Unusually, Scott McCamish, an electorate officer for Victorian Senator Ralph Babet, a representative from the right-wing United Australia Party, contributed a six-page submission denying the science of climate change. Ordinarily, political staffers seek to avoid the limelight as they are not democratically elected, and their public activities may interfere with the work of their employer.

The average length of a submission to the inquiry was ten pages, but this was skewed by a number of notable outliers. Conservative pressure group Advance contributed the longest submission at 80 pages, with anti-wind campaign group, Rainforest Reserves Australia contributing a 78-page document and Senator Roberts offering a clipped 71-page thesis. Both Advance and Rainforest Reserves Australia expressed outrage and concern that they were being unfairly labelled astroturf groups under the inquiry’s Terms of Reference. Advance’s submission included a forward by executive director Matthew Sheahan, a figure described by 

a less-charismatic Australian answer to US right-wing strategist and media personality Steve Bannon

. The core part of the document offered a brief response to the terms of reference that criticized the inquiry as a “politically motivated attack on ordinary Australians”, with the rest made up of three attachments that ran to 62 pages, mostly composed of newspaper clippings.

As a point of contrast, a separate submission from the Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society analyzed the political ad spend of Advance with social media company Meta. It found the group had placed 4,443 ads on Meta platforms with a budget between $1m and $1.6m, generating approximately 193m impressions. This level of activity, the submission found, placed Advance in the same league as both dominant political parties in Australia, without the same scrutiny. Its messaging relied on culture war talking points to promote opposition to policies designed to transition the economy and amplify “climate contrarian arguments”.

“By combining high-volume culture-war advertising with persistent anti-renewable and anti-climate organic messaging, Advance is attempting to influence the wider public sphere in ways that rival party campaigns while evading the same levels of scrutiny and accountability,” it said.

As an organization, Advance is officially independent but is closely associated with the hard right of the conservative Liberal National Coalition, with 

several prominent political figures sitting on its board or involved in its operations in some capacity

. A notable figure among the organization’s early supporters was Maurice Newman, a totemic personality on the Australian right wing. As a stockbroker in the 70s, Newman helped organize for Chicago economist Milton Friedman to make two visits to Australia. These visits helped lay the ideological foundation for the financialization of the Australian economy through the 1980s and 1990s. Ironically, Friedman, the godfather of US-style Libertarianism, was himself found in 1946 by the Buchanan Committee to have taken money from the national real estate lobby to 

give their preferred policy proposals an independent, academic and ideological veneer

. The Committee, created to investigate “direct and indirect lobbying”, ended up exposing the first Libertarian think tank, The Federation for Economic Education, as a creation of big business lobbying.

Since this early success, Newman himself has gone on to have a storied career in Australian politics, being appointed to the board of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the Australian Stock Exchange. In 2014, Newman served as a political adviser to conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who sits on the board of Advance, at a time when he began a very public campaign against renewable energy through an earlier-generation anti-wind group named “Stop These Things”. In an article published 

, Newman wrote that wind turbines are “grossly inefficient, extremely expensive, socially inequitable, a danger to human health, environmentally harmful, divisive for communities, a blot on the landscape, and don’t even achieve the purpose for which they were designed – namely the reliable generation of electricity and the reduction of CO2 emissions”.

Drilled only counted four explicitly commercial entities making submissions to the enquiry, and four groups that could be considered trade associations, most of which had been invited to participate. These organizations represented both fossil fuel and renewable interests, but at least three submissions were openly associated with the coal industry. One submission by Future Coal, an entity representing a global coal industry alliance that promotes so-called “sustainable coal”, aired frustrations with how Australia’s energy grid was being planned. Another by Nick Jorss, Chair of Queensland metallurgical coal miner Bowen Coking Coal, asked the committee to investigate activist group Sunrise, alleging that it had received “tens of millions of dollars in international funding from major climate philanthropies” to “manufacture fake grassroots movements”. A third submission by the Queensland-based industry association, Coal Australia, called for Australian intelligence agencies to investigate climate activists as foreign actors.

“Coal Australia believes there should be constant vigilance on threats to Australia’s energy security,” Coal Australia’s submission said. “We believe that guarding against climate change and energy misinformation – including through foreign funded and aided environmental activism and climate change and energy misinformation – would be maximized by a regular report to Parliament from those agencies charged with national security, intelligence and oversight of elections.”

Short submissions were received from the Institute of Public Affairs and Centre for Independent Studies, two think tanks that have been associated with 

, a global network of more than 500 “free market” think tanks. Each sought to defend themselves from allegations that they acted in concert with or as part of a coordinated action with other organizations on campaigns.

On the other side, there were a raft of significant submissions from climate groups both within Australia and internationally, including Eliza Morgera, UN Special Rapporteur on Climate Change and Human Rights and the International Panel on the Information Environment. Drilled was among four media organizations to contribute, including wire-service Australian Associated Press. Major trade groups such as Australian Energy Producers and the Minerals Council of Australia were notably absent.

The curious lack of industry input, and the overall composition of the submissions, suggests the extent to which the public conversation on climate change in Australia is largely left to proxies. Even if there is no strict coordination or nexus, an alignment of interests means the dynamic works to their advantage. With the next round of hearings yet to be scheduled, and the deadline for its final report to be delivered on 4 February 2026, Tasmanian Senator Peter Whish-Wilson says the body has its work cut out for it. There is already “substantial” evidence before the committee, he says, but any judgements will have to wait for the process to play out.

“Even if all we get out of this inquiry is that the average Australian realizes that what they’re reading about how climate change is a hoax, even in the comments, it’s bullshit, that it was put there by someone with a vested interest, that it’s ideological – that’s a good thing,” he says. “That itself would be an outcome for me, that we raise a level of awareness so people can apply a more critical lens to what people are reading and hearing.”

In Attempt to Spam Climate Information Integrity Investigation, Australia’s Climate Skeptics Score an Own Goal

 Hello and welcome back to Drilled. I'm Amy Westervelt. This season we are making our way through the book Climate Obstruction, a global survey.

I'm getting ready to head to the annual UN Climate Summit, the COP or conference of the parties in November, and to prep for it. I am reading up on all of the research so far about climate obstruction and how it works around the world. In today's episode, a really important topic, especially for this year's COP, which is how climate obstruction works in the Global South, and how some of these structures in place continue to privilege Global North countries over Global South countries when we're talking about climate negotiations, which then makes it that much harder to even talk about climate policy in the Global South without it seeming like something that is patently unfair.

Joining me to talk about this today are two leading experts on this question. They oversaw a chapter in this book that pulls together all the research that we have so far on it. Ruth McKie from De Montfort University and Omar Faruque at Queen’s University in Canada.

Our conversation is coming up after this quick break.

So I'm gonna ask you a really, really dumb basic question, and that is, please define Global South for us. Let's set the context here.

 That basic question is probably a very big question. So I think for us, setting it out into the context of this [00:02:00] chapter, we see the Global South in its geopolitical sense. So it's a group of countries that have a history of colonialism, neo imperialism, and so that historical context of non-Western nations that now sit within a very different economic and social structure to western nations that really it's driven by political and economic marginalization, which then in turn has implications, at least for us in our case, how it then stands with addressing climate, the climate crisis. So we can't see the global south and global south countries as this one complete same [00:03:00] picture set of countries.

Rather it's a reflection of the geopolitical history in which we've distinguished between western global north countries and then non-Western countries in the global south. So I think that's the best way that we've come to define the global south and how we deploy it in this chapter.

 Okay, so you talk about these five major considerations when we're looking at climate obstruction in the global south, and I wanna talk about all five of them, but, but let's start with, what you were just talking about, Ruth, that like these, you know, there's a lot of very different countries in, in different regions of the world that are in this category of global south.

So, that means that they have varying commitments and there are varying commitments even within the countries. Can you talk about those contrasts and how they play out both [00:04:00] within the countries and sort of beyond them and between them.

 Okay, so I'll, I'll, I'll pick this up. So here we are referring to the, variations in climate commitments among countries in the global south. And, we see that these countries, as Ruth mentioned, given the fact that we are looking at these countries from the vantage point of, history of colonialism, new colonialism and imperialism and their positions in global political economic order, we , see these countries' experience, shared experience in terms of disadvantages in terms of economic growth, development, prosperity, and human development.

So a common thing among all these countries is that they are in a disadvantageous situation in terms of economic growth and development and that, shapes [00:05:00] their commitment to climate action, their commitment to fulfilling their pledge, their commitment to the Paris Accord. So such disadvantages we see creating, these variations in terms of commitment. Take for example African countries. We can consider all those countries together in one category. For them, climate action is, is not a priority. Decarbonizing the economy is not a priority for them. It is energy poverty, addressing energy poverty reaching electricity to to its population.

It's something that is their priority and suddenly they will consider any sort of options to to fulfill that goal. So, when energy poverty as a result of their disadvantageous situation in terms of economic growth, prosperity, and human development is a major concern than climate action or commitment to climate [00:06:00] pledge is something that takes a backseat. We can also think about the case of India. India is a giant economy in current times, but it still considers energy, poverty, human development associated with this as is primary concern because millions of people, hundreds of millions of people in that country they do not have access to energy.

So energy poverty, energy security and disadvantages economic situation is something that is causing varying commitments to climate actions in many countries in the global south.

 It's been interesting to see the big oil majors really pick up on specifically energy poverty in Africa as like they're, you would think that they're all just charities trying to solve it. But they talk about it all the time.

 Yeah. I'll, I'll just add one thing here. Carbon majors are expressing interest in many African [00:07:00] countries to explore and develop their untapped resources by mentioning this issue of energy poverty, energy security. But there is also another layer of it, and that is the interest of countries in the global north, especially European countries, which are now facing an existential threat coming from cutting off gas from Russia.

So they have to find out alternative sources and they have found with their, with the assistance of their carbon majors, some, some African countries as, as a source to fill that void.

 yeah. Yeah. I asked a a fossil fuel executive recently if they were planning to invest in grid infrastructure in Mozambique to, as part of their energy poverty plan. And they were like. What

most of, most of these are exported to, will be exported

 Yeah. So Ghana for example, it'll [00:08:00] export all major part of these developed fossil gas to Europe. So they are not in a position like carbon measures are not in a position or not to make any commitment to do anything locally.

 Right, so it is, it's often said that and obviously there's a lot of evidence to this effect as well, that, you know, global south countries contributed the least to climate change, but will face the impacts first and worst. Can you talk about how that plays into climate obstruction?

 That's an interesting thing that we observed in our, in our analysis of climate actions and climate delay or obstruction in the global south. The issue of least responsibility is something that is used most often than not by politicians, political elites, and even civil society groups-- environmentalists noted [00:09:00] environmentalists to to sort of justify climate delay if not climate obstruction. We, in, in this case, we are very careful in choosing our words. So, and, and, and that is also connected to the notion of climate justice. So it comes from that original 1992 UN triple C climate agreement where this notion of differentiated common, but differentiated responsibilities came in.

So the global north, the contributed overwhelmingly to, to, historical carbon emissions. So they created this sort of mess or climate crisis is now up on their shoulder to take the major responsibility to clean it up. And and that is by by reducing their emissions as well as providing technical and financial support to global south countries to, to first adapt to [00:10:00] climate crisis.

And then. Also contributing to sort of mitigation, transitioning towards green energy, all sorts of things. So the, the, the notion of least responsibility, historically least responsibility, is something that we, we, we find as a, as a kind of justification for, for delaying climate actions or, or even undertaking bold climate actions in many countries in the global south, many big countries India's name comes to our mind because India is in, in, in recent years in global even climate meetings, India is kind of, playing the role of a leader of the global south in advocating for them using the framework of climate justice. Climate fairness, all sorts of things. So, we find such emphasis, on least responsibility is a major [00:11:00] factor contributing to sidelining climate actions or delaying climate actions in many countries in, in, in, in the global south. And I would also add one particular point, least re the notion of least responsibilities is not just that sideline commitment towards greenhouse gas mitigation reducing their emission.

It directs our, their attention to most of their time, energy, and attention to building resilience and developing adaptation measures. So they're focused on least responsibility. Takes all energy and resources and attention towards adaptation and resilience. And we also see how that plays out during global climate negotiations. Global south countries call for climate finance contribution equally for mitigation and adaptation and [00:12:00] resilience. Currently, global north countries are interested in investing in mitigation, not much in terms of adaptation and resilience. So global south countries invoke these notion of climate justice least responsibilities to intervene into that that financial arrangements equally divided between mitigation and adaptation.

 I think that goes to the problem that stands in the idea of fair share and differentiated responsibility. That comes out in the

 part under the Paris Agreement and Article four. And I think this idea of equity and ensuring justice justice, it really feeds into the stalemate that then proceeds within U Conventions, U-N-S-A-C conventions almost given the example of sort of the [00:13:00] Indian negotiations.

And it presents that another bigger question around, well, what do these global U-N-F-C-C conventions. Do, are they there to push for strong climate action or are they there to do this slowly or even muddy the waters along this path? And it actually presents a problem for the probably bold action that needs to get taken to address the climate crisis.

 it against, I guess another way to say it, it's this idea of fairness with established within, within Article four. The Paris agreements fundamentally is saying, well, it's equity, it's striving for equity. And so the start from the [00:14:00] place, but I don't think equity really means and connects with justice in and of itself.

And I think that's something that underlines what

 these large U-N-F-C-C conference conferences do stand for. Equity and increase in equity, but they can't necessarily represent justice and in this case, climate justice, what we would like to see in terms of climate justice. So I think that might be one of the bigger, I guess, institutional problems of the U-N-F-C-C in their role and how that plays out.

 Yeah. Relatedly, I wanna have you define and talk a little bit about loss and damage. 'cause I feel like, you know, it's, it gets talked about at every UNF Triple C conference and everyone's like, yeah, we should do it. And like, we're gonna do it, and then they just don't do it. So, so, yeah. I'm, I'm curious Yeah.

Just for what you've [00:15:00] found on that and how, particularly the persistent failure to actually come through on loss and damage promises has made it easier for global south countries to kind of be like, well, forget it then. We can't work on this stuff if you guys aren't gonna be serious about helping to fund it.

 I think again, it goes to the stalemate and connects with what we've talked about. So this idea of loss and damage. So we mentioned this in the book, it's around the third pillar of global climate governance. So I think it helps shift from the, even the mitigating mitigation adaptation to an actual more formal financial role of providing the finances to cover the harmful impacts particularly in the global south.

And it's based on the be unavoidable reality that climate change has and will impact. On these [00:16:00] countries more so than other countries. And that goes back to the history. Think back to those geo, that geopolitical context and the historic colonial history, the neo, neo imperial history that surrounds these current relations where loss and damage is there to say, well, we are going to support you and provide you the resources to deal with these impacts.

But fundamentally that means that global, global north countries are now under, I guess, of seeking financial obligations. And when you've got that fin, those financial obligations to contribute to that loss and damage pillar, it's

giving the, again, it's. To that contentious [00:17:00] geopolitical environment with political interest, financial interest, economic stability. The conversations then go, well, how do we, how can we sort of give away so much of this money to support loss and damage for the impacts that we've, the global North, taken responsibility for its actions to put plainly.

But I guess that also comes, and this, I don't necessarily think it comes across in the chapter, but it's also reminds me of a acceptance of responsibility that the Global North is failing to achieve more so than just not wanting to spend money. It's, it then means that there is that responsibility and that ownership that needs to then.

Be accepted. And I still think when it comes [00:18:00] to global, the global North Actions, Western Europe, the US taking responsibility for that history, admitting that that's happened is what then stalls the negotiations. So we talk about word perfect policy, but an off the cuff comment would be sort of, is that a confession?

Do you admit guilt here? And for me, that's the sense that that ongoing stalling, that word perfect policy idea, is the attempt to pause and prevent responsibility then being ironed out into this financial support. Which then again creates that stalemate. Well, if they're not going to do it, well, we're not going to do it.

And the back and forth and the back and forth continues to happen. So I think loss and damage is that necessary step that needs to be taken, that financial support to deal with those [00:19:00] consequences by the global north. But in reality, that does mean accepting more responsibility for which many countries in the global North fundamentally in there are not willing to do, given the complex social, political, and economic context that each country has in and of themselves.

So I think loss and damage is central is, but I think at the same time that's going, that is stalled because it takes too much to admit responsibility and thus the consequences that have come with that.

 Yeah, I'll just add one particular point here. Even though the loss and damage that third pillar, which emerged in recent years within UN COP system. The global north countries, powerful countries, particularly the European Union and the [00:20:00] United States, they made sure that there is no such thing there within, within, within decision making process as something that will point towards their legally mandatory obligation or something. So they, they, they make sure that such arrangements, loss and damage will not really bind them towards any sort of legal obligations. So even though that, that, that was removed from this processes in the past several years, it is only about financial support is not. Compensation or reparation. Those words are not there is is simply financial support for global south countries and we see very little in terms of [00:21:00] financial contribution to that fund as of now. Very little.

 Yeah, it's shocking every time I look at. I don't know, just some of the historical commitments versus what's actually been paid out.

Okay, so I wanna talk about we, this has come up already a little bit, the structural issues in geopolitical shifts in climate politics which are very, very complicated. So can I have you talk about the traditional approach to development and especially you know, development and growth and how that kind of often gets pitted against climate action?

 Yeah, so this is something that, that we discussed at length not just in this chapter, but also while preparing a policy brief. And and eventually this chapter, this traditional approach to development shaped by the ironclad belief in a new classical [00:22:00] economic system. Emphasizing growth, development, prosperity, improved human development through market driven processes is something that is that has historically shaped development approaches around the world, not just in the global south around the world, in global north as well. The main focus is that, okay, if we focus on economic growth, market driven economic growth, it'll increase not just economic share of, of these countries, but also increase competitiveness. And in that process of achieving growth, prosperity, and improved human development, certainly greenhouse gas emission will, will shoot up. And the logic is that countries will be able to address high greenhouse gas [00:23:00] emissions at some point in their development trajectory by using resources that they accumulated through this path of economic growth and prosperity through their actions in, in this process. So, so is the market driven approach. We characterize it as traditional approach in the sense actually the appropriate word would be the mainstream dominant approach to development, focusing on market driven mechanisms. We call it. Mainstream or dominant, because there are other approaches as well focusing on sustainability, focusing on inclusion and other issues which involve, include critique of, of these traditional approaches. So the, the idea is that I'm summarizing this complex phenomenon. The idea is relying on market driven [00:24:00] processes to develop resources to address economic concerns. Along the way we will contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, but we'll be able to deal with that at some point in that trajectory by relying on resources accumulated from this process.

 And I think it's important to add there as well, is that we think about marketing that market driven approach, that dominant approach. And we don't necessarily touch on this in the chapter, but there's a lot of literature as well as scientific evidence that attributes, and we have to acknowledge the tribute between these market driven dominant approach, neoclassic economics, that have expanded across the world over the past 100 years and have had such negative impacts on the environment with the rise in greenhouse gas emissions.

So I [00:25:00] think it's fair to say, I'm not going to say that. Capitalism is killing the climate. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that there's certainly a relationship between how the market is structured and how, and the impact that it has had on greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, when you have that very, that very much tunnel vision that dominates the economy as well as dominates the political environment, you will then constantly feed into a developmental model that will pit the environment against economic growth and prosperity.

So until we diiv, you cannot divorce the two. So until you start to see an alternative that development model, [00:26:00] then trying to address this. The climate crisis crisis will, I guess, facilitate the opportunity for obstruction to happen.

 So we talk about in some of the outside literature

for instance, we create new environments for, say, trying to take place.

So we talk about how, in the case of carbon credit systems, so we've talked about fraud within carbon credit, credit systems you've created for an environment, for a crime to take place. But that new environment is also based on climate change. The, this neoclassical approach, this that will negatively impact the environment.

 You are opening doors to try and [00:27:00] address the climate crisis, but within an environment which is not going to do so. And I think that's an important point to show why actually approaches to development that dominate the, that dominate society that will dominate UN FCC negotiations, that dominate politics will fundamentally stall the progress required and

 Have you heard this phrase in Canada? Decarbonized oil.

 oil. Yes. We've heard it in the US too. Occidental Petroleum claims to have shipped the first barrel of net zero oil, carbon negative oil.

 it is, it's, it's beyond comprehension, like the fraud and all sorts of things are now so deeply ingrained in, [00:28:00] in thought processes of our policy makers that they can say something decarbonized oil, and that's how you reach your net zero goal.

 It blows my mind that people are like, but it makes sense on the spreadsheet though.

The atmosphere doesn't care about your spreadsheet, you know? Actually, I wanna ask you guys about how these two things that we've been talking about kind of come together.

'cause there's the really complex UNF triple C stuff happening, and then there's all of the, the market forces stuff. And I feel like it is creating this situation where a lot of global south countries are getting into the oil business now, and they're talking about using that money to pay for climate adaptation because there's such a failure on international climate negotiations to get money to, to deal with this problem that they're now dependent on oil companies and the money from them to, to pay for it.

you mentioned that in your, in a note to us citing, particularly the case of Guyana, right?

speeches by Guyana's president, who talks very eloquently and. Captivates audience in describing sort of

 they were a really early mover on carbon

because they have intact forest and very rich biodiverse forest areas so that they can use that. But in, in terms of the issue of extractive industry logics to address climate action, Ghana is, is, such a fascinating case to see how they the present their case. And it shows, as you rightly pointed out, the, the failure of UN triple C system to, to mobilize financial support for these countries. Guyana, [00:30:00] most, most I, I, I guess, vast area of that country is below the sea level. And it will go underwater in coming few years.

And it will require tons of resources and, and technical knowhow to address those concerns. So who will pay for that?

 They are like, oil discovery is something that provided them with this opportunity.

 I'm not quite sure whether I'm, I'm very pessimistic in this regard. I'm not quite sure whether, even if UNFCCC system

for, for global south countries, it will sort of persuade them

 to move away from extractive development pathway

 I have seen from you reporting also [00:31:00] about Guyana that. There is a deep connections between carbon majors and political elite within Guyana.

 and, and this president, the current president, he acknowledged several times the contract between Guyana and, and, and, and the oil company is one-sided. And he, he, he, his administration cannot really do much

to address this disparity in the contract

 because the political elites and carbon majors are, on the same page in terms of exporting resources as well as exploiting a poor country in the global south.

 Okay. I wanna talk about how these geopolitical things show up with respect to then, not just the approach to development, but the actual investments in development from the development banks. So I'll give another example from Guyana. There was this really interesting thing that happened in the course of [00:32:00] them kind of building out their oil industry, where at a certain point the Biden administration in the US said that's it. The inter America's Development Bank. We're not gonna fund fossil fuel infrastructure anymore. And so, the vice president said, well, then they should stop funding fossil fuel infrastructure in their own country. And I was like, he's not wrong. He's got a point. But they just kind of went, okay, fine.

And went and got the money from China instead.

So it's a good example of okay, so it shifts, but then it just kind of comes back around.

Transcription

The U.S. is a global leader on climate obstruction, but they’re not the only ones. In this episode, M. Omar Faruque, from Queen’s University in Canada and  Ruth E. McKie from De Montfort University join us to take a look at why and how those who will bear the brunt of climate change and have contributed the least, participate in climate obstruction. 

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Few individual countries have more leverage over whether the fight against climate change succeeds than Saudi Arabia. The kingdom of 33 million people is the largest oil exporter in the world and has perhaps 

 over the price of oil than any other nation. It is home to 

 of the world’s known reserves, as well as Aramco, a state-controlled oil giant that is one of the 

 companies in the world. That profitability, in turn, funds both the Saudi state and the kingdom’s growing influence efforts around the world: From Hollywood to professional sports to gaming to Big Tech, some of America’s most well-known industries are increasingly reliant investment from the Public Investment Fund (PIF), Saudi Arabia’s 

 sovereign wealth fund. And many of the best-connected and most prestigious professional services firms in the United States and Europe—lobbying shops, public relations agencies, consultancies, law firms, and the like—happily undertake 

A startling proportion of this sprawling network of wealth and influence—as well as Saudi Arabia’s major role in the outcome of the climate crisis—traces back to the interests and favor of one individual. Mohammed bin Salman is the crown price of Saudi Arabia and the country’s de facto ruler. He chairs both the PIF and Aramco, which are two of the most powerful instruments of capital in the world. In just a decade, Crown Prince Mohammed, known as MBS, has risen ruthlessly from royal obscurity to a position of nearly total dominance. Along the way, he has rapidly liberalized the country’s economy, increased social freedoms, and offered effusive assurances about transitioning the kingdom away from oil and investing in clean energy—steps that have won praise from Western elites (and not just from the venture capitalists and Silicon Valley tycoons who envy MBS’s authoritarian control). Many of these same elite investors and executives will return to Riyadh later this month for the Saudi government’s annual “Future Investment Initiative,” an annual confab of 

networking, moneymaking, and image-laundering

Accompanying these changes, however, have been ruthless political repression at home—of which the 2018 assassination of 

 columnist Jamal Khashoggi was only the most prominent example—and, on the global stage, 

. Even as MBS seeks to reduce Saudi Arabia’s own reliance on oil revenue, it has worked alongside the United States, Russia, the United Arab Emirates, and other petrostates to 

. More recently, Saudi Arabia, like many of the U.S. tech companies in which it invests, is gleefully undermining its own climate pledges in its race to build enormous, 

Saudi Arabia, as Americans are being reminded these days, is not the 

 increasingly authoritarian nation reliant on oil extraction, determined to disrupt global climate negotiations, and obsessed with energy-ravenous AI. But as Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and former 

 publisher Karen Elliott House makes clear in her new book, 

The Man Who Would Be King: Mohammed bin Salman and the Transformation of Saudi Arabia

, it is a crucial one. House has been traveling to Saudi Arabia for more than four decades and has borne witness to both its power and its contradictions. She spent hours interviewing the crown prince and other Saudi officials for this book. But House also has “a number of personal friends…who have literally disappeared without any official explanation,” she writes.

 spoke with House about how Saudi Arabia has changed under the crown prince; whether MBS’s gamble on economic and social freedoms alongside civil and political repression is politically—or environmentally—sustainable; how Saudi Arabia’s oil and petrochemical industries serve its geopolitical interests; and why the kingdom’s promises about transitioning away from fossil fuels might be a bit less green than climate advocates would hope.

The conversation below has been condensed and edited significantly for clarity and accuracy.

If you prefer to listen to the entire conversation, you can check it out on the podcast here (or wherever you get your podcasts): 

I’ve struggled to parse what’s real and what is hype [about] the transformation in Saudi Arabia over the last decade. There’s been a lot of talk about efforts to allow women to drive, to increase the availability of entertainment, to scale back the presence of the religious police.

But there’s also a relentless fire hose of promotion—in part from a lot of wealthy, self-interested Western investors who would like to do business with the kingdom. One of the main arguments of your book is that, at least in terms of social and economic freedom, this transition is real and consequential. Can you talk about how much the country has changed over the last decade?

What interested me is, where did Mohammed bin Salman, who’s now 39 [years old] and was roughly 29 when he began changing the kingdom, get these ideas? He grew up in the very conservative, heavy-handed religion. That’s apparently partly what motivates him to change. He was a young kid, the only thing he could do was play video games because there was no other entertainment. Kids could kick a soccer ball around in a field of garbage here and there in town.

He is motivated. He understands that they can’t live off of oil revenue forever, and that people have to be motivated and educated to work. So he is determined to bring more resources into the world of work. Women are a major, educated resource, and they’re much more motivated than most men because they haven’t had the opportunity to do anything other than teach school.

He has obviously set back political freedom. In the days when I went there under King Fahd [and later] under King Abdullah, you weren’t ever supposed to criticize the king. But in the newspapers, you could read, “The Health Ministry failed at this.” “The Defense Ministry failed at that.” [Offer] mild criticism and you didn’t wind up in prison.

[Today] I think he feels that “I’m doing these things fast. I don’t have time to have everybody telling me how to do it and getting in the way.” He thinks he knows what to do. His whole philosophy is that what’s wrong with the world is incremental thinking. You have to have out-of-the-box thinking. Lee Kuan Yew, the [autocratic former] Singaporean prime minister, had that view: “I’m in charge here. I know I’ve got to drive you [the country] hard to get you where you ought to be.”

But the changes [in Saudi Arabia under MBS] are truly significant. To your point about how much marketing hype there is, the crown prince himself is a marketer. That was my impression of him in our first meeting. I don’t mean in a cheap, hype-y way. He is self-confident and charismatic and out to convince you that, “Here’s the way things are going to be. Here’s what I’m doing to get them there.” He likes to sell, and he’s quite effective at it, I think.

Plus, they have all this money, and they hire everybody in the world to tout what’s going on in the kingdom, like Lionel Messi, the soccer player. They tried to hire him for their soccer club. He said no. But 

they pay him [$25 million over three years]

 to promote their attempts to get the World Cup, which they did, and the country’s tourism business.

One of the things I found most remarkable in the book was the fact that most Saudis had not even heard of MBS as recently as 2015. A decade later, you describe him as having pretty much total control over the government [and] the country. How has he maintained that kind of absolute power over so many aspects of the country in such a short time?

In at least two ways. One, 60% of the country is under 30 years of age. They want change. Some of them are conservative, but most want change. He has offered them entertainment and jobs. And for those who are less enamored, he’s offered strong political suppression.

[In 2017] he put most of the senior royals 

, along with prominent businesspeople, [and] forced them to pay what he said was ill-gotten gains. It probably was. The country was very corrupt. Under Abdullah, people said that up to 30% of the budget was just taken. So [MBS] tried to intimidate the royals [and] remove the religious police from the streets. The religious scholars who didn’t agree, some of them found themselves in prison. And [he used] the old Saudi way of buying people to keep people happy. The religious police are still paid; they’re just not allowed to go out on the street and arrest anyone.

[MBS relied on] a combination of intimidation and entertainment for the young. His father [King Salman] obviously agrees with these things, or [did] at the beginning. I don’t know how active or alert his father is now. When he first became king, he obviously supported MBS, and that was a big part of his ability to consolidate control. His father got rid of the first crown prince and put in a second one, and then got rid of that crown prince and put in his son. So his father has been instrumental in helping him consolidate power.

[MBS] has the reputation of willingness to use whatever means is necessary to get and retain control so that he can reform and transform the country in the way 

 believes it ought to go. But “he” is the emphasis.

You mentioned Lee Kuan Yew, the former strongman leader of Singapore. You compare MBS to him a few times in the book. Lee [was] 

beloved by Western executives and investors

 who prize, above all else, the free flow of financial capital—and stability. One way to preserve stability within a society is through autocracy: not permitting any democratic processes, stifling political activity and criticism and dissent. You point out that even as these social and economic freedoms have genuinely increased within Saudi Arabia, the political climate has gotten even more repressive.

Fundamentally, there’s no history in Saudi Arabia of people having any control of their lives. These were Bedouin tribes and the chief was in charge and the social contract was, “Keep me from starving and I give you my loyalty.” That’s been the social contract with the Al Saud [the ruling family] for the 300 years that they’ve been in charge of Saudi Arabia.

People want government where they can count on a decent life. They don’t want an enormous amount of corruption. I mean, when I wrote my first book, Saudis were so upset with the royal family taking so much of everything that people used to steal the sheets off their hospital bed on the theory that “If the royals can steal, so can I.” They felt it was an unfair system.

They just want government that’s transparent and accountable. I think he [MBS] has tried to provide more of that transparency, having “key performance indicators” [KPIs] for all the ministers and tracking them and publishing, “Here’s what we’re trying to do. Here’s what we’ve done. Here’s what we haven’t done.” He’s not afraid of the report card.

He is the superintendent, the principal, and the star pupil. “Mr. Everything,” people call him. He did kind of come from nowhere. He was the sixth son of his father, so he shouldn’t have amounted to anything in a hierarchical society. He had government jobs, but they weren’t prominent ones, so people didn’t know much about him. And then suddenly he’s reshaping the government and he’s the deputy crown prince and then he’s the crown prince and then he’s in charge of the Public Investment Fund [and] Aramco. Everything in the country, every entity, in essence, reports to him.

I get the impression that MBS personally is quite interested in the prestige and the reputation of firms like McKinsey, who played a 

, and other Western consulting firms. I’m wondering why these firms are so involved in the government.

The Western firms all see Saudi Arabia as a place they can make money. “He’s trying to modernize, so I’ll get in there. 

 got ideas.” His whole philosophy is, “It’s better to attempt 100 things and succeed at 50, than attempt five and succeed at four.” Because of that, he has a reason to hire umpteen advisors [and] consulting firms to advise on this, that, and the other. The Line, the big city [in the 

] that they’re building, or planning to build—

Yes, it’s not there yet. They hired five different architectural firms, not one. They kind of put them all together and let the architects debate each other and then Mohammed debates with them and then that’s the end of the debate. He decides. As somebody said to me, “We used to debate and never decide. Now we decide and never debate.”

But all those firms are there to make money. Because he’s trying to do literally Mao’s “let a thousand flowers bloom”—he’s trying to let a thousand projects bloom—they’re all rushing in to get a piece of the money. I’m sure that much of what they do is overcharge and underperform.

You mention in the book the succession of five-year plans for transitioning the kingdom away from relying so much on oil, and how those five-year plans have been published time and time again and nothing has fundamentally changed. Can you talk about where the kingdom is at in its reliance on oil?

Oil is still the major source of revenue. It used to be about 70, 80% of budget revenue [and] 40% of the GDP of the country. The goal is to get non-oil to 60, 65% of GDP. They haven’t made 

. But they are, I believe sincerely, trying to develop renewable energy because the Saudis are the most profligate energy users in the world. They use [approximately] 3.7 million barrels a day for 30 million people—much more than anybody except China and the U.S., who have vastly greater populations.

They want to have renewable energy [at home] so that they can keep some of the fossil fuels to sell to the world because their oil is the cheapest in the world to produce. It’s roughly 

, so when it’s selling at $80, that’s huge profit. They don’t want to run out of the ability to have oil to sell.

Secondly, they’re in a climate that is incredibly hot. They already have 95 days a year that the temperature is above 100 [degrees Fahrenheit]. It’s hard to develop tourism when you have such excessively hot days, and tourism is one of the industries they’re trying to grow. 

, there are going to be 180 days over 95 degrees by [2050], so they do need to do what they can.

Nothing they’re doing is going to meet the Paris Accords [to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius]. China’s [also] ruining that, [and] various others. But they do have an incentive, I think, to produce as much renewable energy as they can, both to reduce the greenhouse gases they produce and to have oil replaced by sun and wind so they can sell it for more money.

They’re putting a chip on every possible option for energy production—green energy, solar, wind. The two [fossil fuels and renewables] are not mutually incompatible. The state of Texas is one of the few places that has managed to reduce the role of oil in its GDP. It is still America’s largest energy producer and also America’s largest producer of renewable energy. I think that’s exactly what MBS’s goal is: “We want to be a big producer of renewable energy—we need it, we use it, we can try to sell it. 

 we also want to be a major producer of oil and gas because the world is going to need it.” They have more time, they believe, to get the economy off oil. But they need to keep the country from being seen as too hot to visit.

You describe them as striving to be “the last oil producer standing.” Is it fair to say that they’re trying to reduce their own reliance on oil, while at the same time doing what they can to preserve global demand for oil as long as possible?

I would say that’s fair. They want to reduce their own demand for oil so they can have it to sell to the world. Prince Abdul Aziz, the energy minister, says [paraphrasing], “We have to not write off the third world. We can’t be so pure and holy about our air and climate change that we in essence say the rest of the 700 million people who still burn sticks for heat, that’s the only heat they can have, [that] they’re not going to be able to have oil. They deserve a chance to develop.” He’s very big on the idea that you can’t tell most of the world they have to stop their development right where they are because elite Western nations don’t want any more greenhouse gases released.

You talk in the book [about] some of the consequences, from an energy and climate perspective, of Saudi Arabia’s growing relationship with China, particularly in petrochemicals. You write that “Aramco believes the market for turning oil into chemicals will last beyond the uses of oil for gasoline.”

“Oil for gasoline” is what we often think of as the source of the climate crisis, at least from a day-to-day, individual perspective. But what does it mean for this growing investment in petrochemicals, particularly between two countries that are huge consumers of energy?

Saudi Arabia [has] a distrust of the United States from at least the Obama administration forward, but even with George W. [Bush]. And Mohammed bin Salman wants to be a big man on the world stage. He has to deal with Russia to control global energy prices. He deals with China because China is the biggest buyer of Saudi oil.

He wants a relationship with China, so investing in China and having China invest in Saudi is something that I think he sees as a good geopolitical investment. I don’t know if it’s a good energy investment. But the Chinese are doing all kinds of work in Saudi Arabia and the Saudis seem to just be investing money in petrochemical plants there. I don’t think the Saudis actually 

 China for petrochemicals. They’ve got their own. Personally, I think it’s more of a political investment than an energy investment.

I wanted to ask you about Jamal Khashoggi because you knew him pretty well. You’ve [also] gotten to know a number of other Saudis who have been imprisoned, some of whom are still imprisoned, for criticism or alleged criticism of the government. I think you describe it as “threatening national security,” one of the catch-all allegations against critics.

Abdullah, [Khashoggi] was a journalist in various newspapers and interviewed Osama bin Laden. King Abdullah’s government seemed to use him for foreigners like me to talk to—you know, if you want[ed] to talk about society in Saudi Arabia. I had dinner with him in Jeddah a couple of times, once with his wife, and saw him in Riyadh also. He worked for Prince Al Waleed bin Talal, the rich Saudi prince [and] investor in a lot of American companies.

They were trying to start a new TV channel in the Middle East, which began right after King Salman came to power. It was shut down immediately.

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S14, Ep8 | Climate Obstruction in the Global South

We are a global team investigating the obstacles to action on climate change, all over the world

In Attempt to Spam Climate Information Integrity Investigation, Australia’s Climate Skeptics Score an Own Goal

The Crown Prince, The Climate, and Us

Abdul El-Sayed on Climate Complexities and Benevolent Masculinity

Gunshots, Burned Vans and Cozy Meetings with the Resource Minister: The Fight Against Coal in New Zealand

Philippine Victims of Typhoon Odette File Landmark Legal Challenge Against Shell

Petroganda

Climate Obstruction

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S14, Ep8 | Climate Obstruction in the Global South

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