Introducing the Climate Money Watchdog and Climate & Capital Media Partnership - Peter McKillop

In this episode we welcome Peter McKillop, the founder and CEO of our new partner, Climate & Capital Media.

Peter is the founder of Climate & Capital Media. Climate & Capital Media is a mission-driven information platform exploring the business and finance of climate change.

Climate & Capital delivers original reporting, intelligence and insight from our global network of journalists, researchers, and investors with a focus on climate-related businesses, technology, and public policy, particularly for the emerging generation of economic leaders who will shape tomorrow’s global agenda.

Prior to Climate & Capital, Peter McKillop was a Managing Director at BlackRock, where he was responsible for leading the firm’s strategic communications and messaging for its iShares ETF and Indexing business. He has also held senior communication leadership positions at J.P. Morgan, KKR, UBS, and Bank of America. Before entering the financial communications field, Peter was a senior correspondent and bureau chief for Newsweek in New York, Tokyo, and Hong Kong.

Our discussion ranges across the following topics, among others:

·      Why it’s especially important and vital to have good oversight over the hundreds of billions of dollars of climate money about to be spent?

·      Our goals for this new oversight collaboration between Climate Money Watchdog and Climate & Capital Media

·      How the climate community will react to the idea of needing oversight unemployment money and the need to police itself.

·      What we should do as climate money watchers when the climate deniers try to use spending failure and scandals to discredit all climate work.

·      How important sources, especially inside sources within the climate effort are to finding out what is going wrong

·      Why we are concerned about whistleblowers in the past who have dumped un-vetted, un-redacted into the public arena. How practices of people like Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning can hurt the communities they’re trying to help.

·      As a long-time journalists, what concerns us now about the state of journalism, it's sustainability, and its ability to do oversight.

Transcript

Gregory A. Williams: 0:10

Thanks for joining us for another episode of climate money watchdog where we investigate and report on how federal dollars are being spent on mitigating climate change and protecting the environment. We're a private, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that does not accept advertisers or sponsors. So we can only do this work with your support. So please visit us at climate money watchdog.org To learn more about us and consider making a donation. My name is Greg Williams, and I learned to investigate and report on waste, fraud and abuse on federal spending while working at the project on government oversight, or Pogo 30 years ago, I learned to do independent research as well as to work with confidential informants or whistleblowers to uncover things like overpriced spare parts, like the infamous $435 hammers, and expensive military weapons systems that didn't work as advertised. I was taught by my co host, Dina razor, who founded Pogo in 1981, and founded climate money watchdog with me last year, Dina has spent 40 years investigating and sometimes recovering billions of dollars wasted by the Defense Department and other branches of government. She did this at Pogo, as an independent journalist, and as an author, and professional investigator. Dana, would you'd like to say a few words before I introduce introduce tonight's guest.

Dina Rasor: 1:33

Well, I'm delighted that we're having Peter MacKillop with us from climate and capital, and I will be able to announce that we are going to be affiliating with them and taking over doing their podcasts and have to so we'll have two platforms for our podcast. And we're working towards an affiliation where we become their investigative unit. And it climate and capital, which Peter can tell you more about is looking at the business side of climate money. And that's perfect for us. Because we look at the business side too. And every, every business, and every business that's getting this money from the federal government definitely needs a private watchdog looking over them. So we're going to be working on that lurking with sources and whistleblowers. So I'm delighted to do this podcast with him and that we're going to be able to join forces and reach a much bigger audience.

Gregory A. Williams: 2:40

Peter, would you like to say a few words about yourself about climate? In capital? Yes, great.

Peter McKillop: 2:45

Well, thank you. We are as well delighted. We started climbing capital for four years ago, right, it really during almost the beginning of the pandemic. And we felt there was a gap in the amount of information about climate and business and finance, which interestingly now is actually quite the rage is as people move into the new clean economy. And as we've had incredible milestones like the Biden, you know, half a trillion dollar climate funding. But having said that, and the reason that we're partnering with every with you guys is that we think that how you spend that money is as important as how you get the money. And as we all know, the best way to make sure that you spend it correctly is to keep it really tight watchdog kind of status. And I think Dina and Greg, you guys have done a terrific job of that over the last couple of decades, with some of the biggest, you know, biggest divisions of the government. And I really think that holding people accountable on everything isn't just how they spend the money, but how they're actually attacking climate action is kind of at the core of what we do. Simply we like to follow the money.

Gregory A. Williams: 4:04

So how do you think the climate community will react to the idea of needing needing oversight? And, and, and, and the idea that somebody needs to police themselves?

Peter McKillop: 4:16

Well, you know, it's funny that I'm sure it'll be mixed. And the idea that somehow they're like the Defense Department, I'm sure is, will surprise them. But I think we've learned the hard lesson even with climate, that, that it doesn't matter what the how good the cause is, there's still always going to be plenty of fraud and plenty of waste. And I think that the concern I have perhaps a legitimate concern is that this this kind of, you know, focus on fraud and waste will be politicized and is being politicized by by the Republicans who want to cut any kind of climate funding. But I think that kind of comes with the turf. And I'm sure it was probably What the Conservatives were saying about the Defense Department four decades ago. But I think the reality is that money is money. How it's spent is is real. And I think everyone has to be held accountable for doing that. And I think there's a way to be absolutely, you know, straightforward and honest about that, and not in any way undermine the ultimate cause or mission. In fact, it's the opposite. The Republicans are you are looking for an opportunity to attack it. And as people may remember, the Solyndra scandal where and they use that as a way to really undermine a lot of Obama, President Obama's climate agenda. So in a way, this kind of inoculate inoculates the the kind of the spending, if they know that they're getting very rigorous oversight.

Dina Rasor: 5:52

It's always been a problem. An any thing that I've ever investigated were the people who actually have the federal money, or the companies Oh, don't do this, because this will make us look bad. And I'm always like, hey, it's gonna come out, it's gonna come out eventually. And so I think that's really important. It's very frustrating, because I know there's going to be people, as we get more and more into this are going to be a fearful that we're giving anti climate people fuel to criticize us. But I've always found this true in almost every endeavor, right? I've been, if you're doing good government, work and stuff, do your own policing, do your own policing, because if you find it out, and you try to fix it, and you voted to go, but if you try to hide it, and they find it, then you're gonna get the equivalent of you know, 15 Benghazi hearings, over something, and so that it always makes sense, it's much more credible, if the group that is advocating for the money and getting the money the climate community which is very broad now with a lot of business people and a lot of activists and everybody else if you don't point out your own false and, and police your own, that their own companies and investments and everything else. This is not just federal but investments and everything else. Then you're you're setting yourself up to be the horse whipped a lot more than if you just state we're doing this we this was bad actor, we did it, we got it out, you know, it's a classic thing in Washington, get it you be the first person to get out your bad news.

Gregory A. Williams: 7:37

I think it's worth reminding people that some of the most powerful allies that we could always count on it, Pogo were the most highly decorated, then living American soldier, the most accomplished fighter pilot, the person responsible for completely overhauling our, our, our defense doctrine, the person who designed the most effective Air to Air weapon in history, and a guy who designed three of the most effective fighter planes in the history of the United States. So you don't have to be an opponent to something to, to want to see it done. Well.

Peter McKillop: 8:17

On that point, and I think Dena was great to point this out, you know, back in, when Obama was president, there was another massive spend by the government following the great financial crisis of 2008. And nine, the American Recovery Act, and both parties were acutely aware of just how politically unpopular that was. So both parties, or at least Obama came up with a plan that created a very kind of rigorous oversight that was led, by the way by Vice President Joe Biden, and putting together a kind of oversight board, which really played that kind of that government watchdog role, kind of at a very kind of multi. It looked across all the agencies rather than what you had. And I think, you know, I think we'd be we're far better at explaining that.

Dina Rasor: 9:13

Well, I here's my frustration about it is that is that it was it was put in place. It was they did a rat, what rat bar, which was a group of IGS, they put a really tough IG guy in there. They had oversight, but they also had built in all this, you know, database so that every average person can go and look in their community where the federal money is going and what's being spent on. And it wasn't 100% success, but the amount of fraud was much lower than expected. You know, I don't know if I totally agree with the government things but usually you expect, but they say, two to 8%, but I'd say more like 20% and According to the government, the Obama administration, it was less than 1%. And no, no, you know, I think that's but still it shows that it worked. But my frustration is that this, Biden was just bird dog in this like crazy because he had these IGS board and he had this other and everything else. And he was doing it with Ron client. Who was it his time that that time the Deputy Chief of Staff, I mean, no, the chief of staff to Vice President. And so these two put this together, because they knew this is going to be a problem. But then when we passed this climate bill, which is just so important, and so important not to be encumbered with, you know, all the usual political nonsense, they didn't put the same kind of language in. And I was astounded because it happened after, you know, it happened before I was actually in the mix and looking at it. And I asked someone who knows the inside of it. And I said, Why, why would they not put in the same kind of things that were so successful with the with the gun rack? And they said, well, they got mad because they saved all this money, and they kept all this fraud, but they didn't get credit for it. But well, maybe they didn't get credit for it. But if you do have a big scandal and everything else, you don't you need something to point to. So this is this was my frustration. When I when Greg and I were sitting there, saying, you know, somebody's got to look at this. And so we are, we are hoping that that kind of oversight, gets some traction in the in the Congress now. And that that's points out the most important thing about having independent watchdogs, because when you did, they're doing an independent watchdog, and they know it, then they're more likely to, to make sure that something embarrassing doesn't come out.

Gregory A. Williams: 12:04

So I just wanted to take a moment to explain for our listeners who aren't yet fascinated with government oversight, that an IG is an inspector general, this is an independent senior official in each of the major executive branches, defense, agriculture, energy, and so forth, whose entire job is to investigate how business is conducted within that department. And so, by coordinating among them, Biden created this very powerful team of people who could oversee the entirety of all of that recovery spending. And Inspector

Dina Rasor: 12:42

General is outside of the ministration, they're considered independence, so they can't get that political pressure.

Peter McKillop: 12:49

I wanted to pick up on the important point Dina made about the need for the private watchdog as well. And I'll quickly I'll hand it over to you first, but the idea that, you know, you can't just have a government out, you know, overseeing itself, for obvious reasons. And there being a can go into kind of reasons why, and some examples why. But having said that, it's really, really important to give insiders in the government a place where they can kind of go, that is not a government site. And I know that's what y'all have been working on for the last couple of decades. So perhaps you can say, talk a little bit about that balance, getting a private eye, as well as a government oversight.

Dina Rasor: 13:32

When we were doing the Department of Defense, the Department of fence got all defensive to use punting, but about what we were doing and what we were putting out. And so they beefed up their hotline. Oh, trust us, you can call us everything else. And you know, when we started really looking at it, it was more of a sting operation. Who is it out there talking? And so I said, Don't call the hotline, do all the reporting that you have to do in the federal government, to the right people, but don't call the hotline. And because anything that you say or send to them, they they would actually give to the company that you sent it about? Like if you send something in from Lockheed, they give it to Lockheed say, What do you think? So the lucky wouldn't take a rocket scientist, but lucky to figure out who this was, and then go after him. So the best thing that we were able to do in the government and in business, is to get an informal group of sources and not really whistleblowers because they didn't know public, if you can get inside sources, to work on stuff with you who are frustrated, leak you documents, they sit in on the meetings, I mean, when a whistleblower comes out, sets their hair on fire, and then they're completely blocked from all their documentation, and everything else of what's going on. They always come back say, well, we fix that now. We fix that now. But I had sources in there for years that would sit in two very important meetings of how to deal with whatever we were exposing. And so I usually knew what they were going to say before they said it. So they they live, they live to, you know, keep on leaking responsibly. And we and I've never had anyone caught and fired. I was and proud of that because No, no story is worth that kind of thing. But that's the way I think that the do that. And then there's one other point I wanted to say on that is there the climate, I've noticed that the climate startups and the climate companies and everything else, there are a lot of millennials and Gen Z's who are quitting their tech jobs. Because they say this is the most important thing in my lifetime. And I want to work on it, you know, I have the I have the skills, I have the whatever, and they're gonna go in there. And they are idealistic about the fact that they're going to go in there and help us keep from having a climate disaster. The problem with this is that they don't really realize how they're going to run up against money. I think they understand it from being fossil fuel, but I don't think they are going to understand it once these technologies start competing together. And they're going to start promoting technologies that really aren't going to do anything. And these people are going to get disillusioned. And I think they're absolutely right to be sources, to come to the outside in companies and tell you what's going on.

Gregory A. Williams: 16:30

So I think it's important to say early on that all of the work that Dena and I have done has been releasing information strictly within the boundaries of the law. And I think something that Dena rightfully takes a lot of pride in is that she has never had a whistleblower exposed. And she's never asked a whistleblower to break the law. And so there's this very narrow and difficult path that most people don't even know about, or think about when they they, they start to think about not being able to solve problems within their job and needing some outlet for for addressing the terrible things that they're seeing. So what, you know what, why don't you say a few words about, you know, appropriate leaking inappropriate leaking vetting of sources? And see where that takes us?

Dina Rasor: 17:27

Yeah, well, the thing about it is that I find that they're, they're people, the people who want to do the right thing there in the company, they see the bad thing coming. They're worried about it, they're worried about their job, they're worried about their livelihood, but they just can't live with it. And I was calling the Boy Scouts, I guess I should add Girl Scouts now too. But the fact is, these are people that were told from very honest people, if you tell the truth, you won't get spanked as a child. And then they go out and they say, Well, all I got to do is expose this, and everyone is going to be just as appalled as I am. And I'm going to be, you know, protected, and bizarre and all this kind of stuff. And they're shocked when the weight of the world falls in on them. And I always try to get sources and whistleblowers before they do it. So you can tell them, this will work, this won't work. This is how you best you know, each each source is different. And how to protect themselves how to take information out without breaking the law, how to make it so it's not traceable. And so it really and I always say to everybody who ever comes to me about investigations, I always say investigations are like bank robberies, much more successful if it's an inside job. And so I, I look for the inside jobs, I want to talk to the mayor looking from the outside in unless you file a court case, it's really hard to know what's going on in that company. And so I'm really, I'm really pleased that we're going to be looking at that kind of thing. And the Department of Defense. They didn't classify as much as they do now. But I never accepted a classified document. And yet I was able to get to, because I was a small organization back then. And I didn't have the lawyers, even if I wanted to, but I didn't want to because I didn't want to be discredited for you know, you think climate stuff is going to be a lot less national security oriented.

Gregory A. Williams: 19:36

So I know we we spoke about the distinction between the kind of whistleblowers that we've worked with, versus ones like Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, without meaning to make any value judgment about those two individuals. I think it's worth saying a few things about the difference between what they did, and the work that we typically do. With with whistleblowers.

Dina Rasor: 20:03

Yeah, want to take that, Peter?

Peter McKillop: 20:05

Yeah, I mean, I, it seems obvious for someone who's done a blissful blow, or that there's a very clear distinction between someone who will just like to share and others Manning who just take wholesale dump of confidential document and puts them on the worldwide web without any which in dangers, not just national security, which actually you should be worried about, but also the lives of people who are potentially in those documents, and sources, that is exactly not what I think should be done. What needs to be done is kind of what y'all have done over the years, which is this idea of being a confidential source for it, which is exactly the way journalism operates. For these whistleblowers, who know that and have the confidence that they can come to someone like yourself, who will then be able to translate and to make sure that this important information gets into the right hands, whether that's a congressional subcommittee or a newspaper editor. That, to me is the right way, the wrong way, is just this kind of almost nihilistic dump of information that ultimately does more harm than good.

Dina Rasor: 21:25

But yeah, and in getting documents, actually a lot easier than it used to be used to be, I have to copy them somewhere. And they put counters and they put counters and tabs and secret tabs on the Pentagon things. And so I would get a document and I'd have to cut off the corners and make sure there's, you know, white out on a doesn't show the drum and everything else. Now, people like Assange and Chelsea Manning, they stick a thumb drive in, and they'll suddenly they get a third thumb drive of a million documents. And I don't blame Chelsea Manning, I think Chelsea Manning was incredibly badly advised. And so was, so was Edward stone with snip Snellman. He wanted to Snowden, he wanted to vet stuff, but they were all pushing him to, you know, release and release. And then they tell him to go to Hong Kong, China, and then go to Russia, on the way to Ecuador. And I'm like, what hoops tell somebody to do something like that. So these were badly decided, but Assad is just actually the Washington Post in the New York Times came to massage and said, you've got a huge amount of documentation here. It needs to be vetted, because so much of it has our secret sources around the world, to names on it. And we have these big legal departments. And we can do this and we can vet this to make sure nobody gets killed. And he Nope, just released it all, he would not take advantage of these offers that these journalism now I'm not a big fan, completely of all journalism. But in this situation, that's what you have to do if you're going to do something that on the edge, a life and death kind of thing. You better vet every single thing you can. And it all you know, it's just good. It's just good journalism. And when he didn't do it, and he put that out. There's lots of journalists that defend him. But after 40 years of investigation, I don't because it was proven that people were killed. And no story. No experts say nothing. And they didn't really need to put those names in there to make the same points. But no, nothing is worth that. I have walked away from whistleblowers who have really good information, but they're gonna get discovered and I figure out that they just don't have the, the they're they're very moral people, but they don't have the strength to possibly lose their job, lose their family lose their livelihood, and end up driving a taxi somewhere. And I say to myself, these people don't can't go the full distance. So it's not worth exposing that because I can't hide it well enough to have them not get caught. And it was it's been frustrating, but this is a this is serious stuff. And there's going to be ironically, you know, they took Solyndra and use that, as you know, the bloody shirt a cylinder every time you know, they didn't like something. And cylinder was really I know this because we did a podcast with the former Treasury Inspector General, who was in charge of kind of pulling the mess together. That was a loan guarantee. That loan guarantee program actually made money for the federal government in whole but in cylindre Because Obama was pushing so hard and wanted this out, the Department of Energy did not do the due diligence. On the loan guarantee, it wasn't really a, it was more of a waste thing than a fraud and abuse thing. They just didn't do their job because the politics wanted to get it out there. And it turns out that cylindric really didn't have the goods to goods in the, in the organization to do it. So yes, that was a huge half, you know, half a million, half a billion dollars loss. But that low income loan thing ended up making more money for the federal government than it costs. But that's lost once you have a whipping boy.

Gregory A. Williams: 25:47

Yeah, so maybe just a fill out a few of the details for people who are not, who aren't familiar with this lender case. So first of all, a loan guarantee is an attractive arrangement for the government because it allows them to steer money in the directions that are consistent with with policy without actually costing any government money, assuming things go well. Now, the way you ensure that no government money is is expended in the case of a loan guarantees, you make sure that you don't have to pay off on the loan guarantee. And the way you do that is by having a very diligent evaluation of what you're giving the loan for. And so in this case, you know, ordinarily, you know, the the kind of information you ask for is, is essentially a business plan, what are you going to do with this money? And, in the case of Solyndra, they basically skip that step. They were so eager to get money into the hands of people who needed it in order to achieve the policy goals. That they said, Well, it's a it's a company making solar panels, how could that possibly go wrong? Well, it can go wrong if you don't have a plan for how you're going to spend the money. And so a private bank made the loan, the government guaranteed, and when the loan couldn't be paid back, the government had to pay back the loan. So you know, it wasn't a case, as far as we can tell a fraud, but just the case of how money can be wasted if you don't follow the rules and, and conduct effective oversight.

Dina Rasor: 27:26

And I just want to point out and ask Peter, this, that's why I'm so pleased about this collaboration is, here's the situation of waste, here's situation of doing something that every businessman knows about every businessman and businesswoman who are going to go and get a loan from anybody, they have to you know, and everything, they're the bank or whatever they get alone venture capital, there is so much due diligence done. And the government, for political reasons skipped over that, and that, that really hurt solar, you know, solar manufacturing, for, you know, almost almost a decade. So I also wanted to ask, Peter, you know, how, you know, one how having business, talking, having a business bent and dealing with business and business money, and everything helps your organization, and how it will work with the new oversight collaboration, I'm hoping that you have great business people that when we find a problem, we can go in there and say, This isn't working. I mean, you know, there's a problem here.

Peter McKillop: 28:32

Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think the key there is to make is to understand and do to do the forensics. And there's plenty of people who who have worked for banks, and for companies who can do look at a balance sheet and look at a loan and kind of find, particularly if we're getting some sort of some sort of guidance and some sort of, you know, some of the real documents. So I think that would be very, very important. And it's absolutely critical because the to be able to maintain support, particularly among the average American voter, it is critical that they trust, how that money is being spent. At the end of the day, people still trust the US Department of Defense, and that's because they believe that they're doing a good job, when it comes to defending the country, whether they like it or not, but there has been horrendous race, waste and fraud as you have pointed out over the years. Ideally, we would be in a stalemate, similar situation, that we will see that the benefits ultimately of, of having government subsidize the clean energy economy will be will be as important and we'll be able to overcome any kind of any kind of setback from from pointing out fraud and abuse. In a way you kind of wish this had been done with the fossil fuel industry, which kind of had kind of how to have the best of all whorls, which was all the subsidies and all the tax credits they could ever possibly imagine, with absolutely no oversight. And ironically, interestingly enough, not even the private sector tried to go in there and, and, and root it out. So hopefully, in this case, it'll be a best practice going forward.

Dina Rasor: 30:22

Yeah, I think that fossil fuel people who are literally picked up the PR plan for tobacco, tobacco survived. Oh, well, and we don't know if it causes cancer. Oh, no, who knows, you know, kind of do that, that kind of thing. The difference between the Department of Defense spending and spending on climate is you hope with the Department of fence with all their waste all their fraud, make, make weapons, bend metal, as they call it, make weapons, and hope they rust, hope you don't have to go to war. And especially when you know, ground forces have become more important now. But back in there, when I did it, it was more of a you know, we're gonna push, everybody's gonna push the button and no one's gonna care. And there's never going to be an invasion of Europe and all this kind of stuff. But you have, it wastes a lot of money. And it also gives them a false sense of where, how well the weapons work, and whatever. But the climate spendings different because you aren't going to just lose the battle, or, you know, rattle your sword and not be able to deliver, or it just enormous amount of waste. They really didn't ever want to go to war. They just wanted to have the weapons for war. You know, every time that anybody, Bush Obama, anybody came and said, when sent troops? And they're like, oh, no, oh, no, yeah, because it takes out of the weapons budget. So I always had comfort in that. Because it's like, they don't really want to, they don't, they want to say they have four aces in their hands, and they really don't want to lay their cards down. But with climate, it's different. If we screw this up, and it becomes seen as a wasteful boondoggle, then there's no do overs, we're run out of time, you can't see, you know, weapons systems take 10 years to produce, and you can work on that. And you can try to see, do that. This is it, man, we, you know, the difference is we're going to lose the battle, we're going to lose, we're going to have the earth burn up. And anybody who doesn't believe that may, you know, be fine. And I always keep telling people if you're not for climate change, because you're don't worry about co2, at least be for climate change. Because the more fossil fuel and plastic we don't make, the more likely you're not going to get canceled. You know, there's there's also the pollution part of it. But I just think it's so much more important than the department defense because it's there is no do over.

Peter McKillop: 32:55

Yeah, there's also the we may be spending it in the wrong ways. And that well, that's obviously open to interpretation. We can there are some obvious places and recently that the example we've been focusing on is Bill Gates, his so called an atrium project, which is a an attempt by him to resurrect the idea of a sodium cooled nuclear reactor. This is a reactor that had been proven very dangerous over the years and had been, in fact, banned or had been stopped by Hyman Rickover, the founder of the nuclear energy program for submarines had every country but China and Russia had kind of walked away from this technology, Bill Gates for whatever reason, decided he liked it, but then he was able to use his influence in the Department of Energy to get them to, to kind of match his $2 billion, or at least he thought they were and then shortly tune was discovered that the only place you can get that fuel is guess what, Russia, which is not going to happen. So so the combination of that that was pretty overwhelming. And guess what the you know, the government kind of pull back. But that in partly was done by you know, diehard whistle Maximus whistleblower whistleblowers, but but nuclear experts who understood what was going on and have been kind of raising this issue in the public for the last, I guess, one and a half, two years and obviously once Russia invaded Ukraine, it became a pretty embarrassing situation for for the Department of Energy. However, that hasn't stopped gates from continuing to use his influence. It continued with this project.

Dina Rasor: 34:37

You can afford to you can afford to play around and whatever playground he wants to. And we've been looking we've been looking at carbon capture, not there's some innovative carbon capture stuff starting out now but the original idea of carbon capture that we're going to build pipeline bigger than the oil pipeline United States we're going to dig out dig out the fossil fuel burn it capture it in the smokestacks put it in a pipeline pressure, I sent it all over the country and then put it back in the ground. And it was and then how much they lied about the percentage, already the percentage of what they capture. And it's gone through several iterations, including at the end of the Obama administration totally failed. And yet, that has been that has been very popular. And one of the problems is, of course, is that it's popular because it gives license for big fossil fuel to keep doing what they're doing. There was that, you know, well, we'll just capture it and put it back in the ground, you know, crazy.

Peter McKillop: 35:38

There was another classic example. And the, some of us will remember the 1970s, there was this, which was our last great energy crisis, this idea that we were going to create so called synthetic fuel. And that was a massive government project became hugely subsidized. And ultimately, it was a complete failure. So again, if there had been more, more oversight on projects like that, perhaps we wouldn't have made that kind of mistake.

Gregory A. Williams: 36:06

Yeah, the other quirk, let's say, of the carbon capture business that I like to point out is that in some respects, is just a way of putting more money back in the pockets of, of the fossil fuel extractors. Much of what is done with with the captured carbon is to simply use it to pump into the ground to force more oil out of the ground. So you know, these oil companies that have been capturing this carbon dioxide for decades, and using it this way, and now they get a big, fat government subsidy to do that, you know, nevermind the fact that they're not pumping it into the ground to get it to stay there. It comes up along with the the oil when they extract the oil. And so they just keep, you know, capturing, extracting, and then pumping back into the ground, again, the same co2 over and over again, at the cost of these these fat subsidies that are paid for by the taxpayers.

Dina Rasor: 37:02

Yeah, and I'm one of the things I want to look at, you know, as soon as we get a little bit more established and going is, I think, you know, I have these things people say to me, how do you know there's going to be fraud there, and I say, Well, it's kind of like, just a Stewart Potter on pornography, I can't define it by not want to see it. And the thing that I see in the horizon is the tax credits, the tax credits are going to be so cheated. And these are the big companies. And they're already planning to do all this kind of stuff, where they don't even know the technology is going to work. But they're already promising that they're going to have X amount of savings and tax credits, and they don't even know what percentage of their of carbon they're going to be able to save. And so I think that's something where I'd love to find somebody who really understands very well to who really knows what the scam on that is. And that's by the way, that's that's a source that's just as important as a whistleblower, somebody who's a scientist, or somebody who is an accountant, or somebody who can tell you what, you know why this is all folly. And of course, you have to check them who they are and everything, but I've had, I've been able to figure that out. And it but it just to me, I just know that that's where the bad business people are going to start cheating.

Gregory A. Williams: 38:25

So another thing that I wanted to bring up as a practice that was really important at Pogo, and I'm sure it still is, is that the rank and file journalists is under tremendous deadline pressure. And as newsrooms get smaller and smaller, and the deadlines get faster and faster, it's very difficult to develop any sort of strong understanding of highly technical matters. And so a big part of what we did at Pogo was sometimes with whistleblowers, but sometimes just on the basis of government documents, do the kind of background research that the typical modern journalist doesn't have time to do. So that when they go to press, you know, they're not, you know, scrambling to understand the mechanics of carbon capture how photovoltaic cells work, how energy is transmitted over long distances, you know, that's something we can take the the days, the weeks, the months, whatever it takes to package that research and, and and make it available. But with that said, I'm curious, Peter, to hear your take on, you know, what the state of modern journalism and what the biggest challenges are, you

Peter McKillop: 39:40

know, it's really it's particularly important, because so much of this funding is going to be happening in this at the state and local level. And that's where we've seen the greatest damage in the journalism community, where you've lost close to 70% of good journalist in the last 30 years and you've seen Ain't you're seeing, you know, one to two kind of newspapers clothes a month, the there's a real crisis of kind of journalism at that local level. And as a result, there's going to be even less oversight than there was, at a time when there's never, it's never been more important. So having the ability to go to someone like yourselves, who can understand and support and even get those stories into those local publications, is going to fill a gap that that's desperately needed.

Dina Rasor: 40:34

Yeah, and local locally, that advocacy groups are really important, the local grassroot people on the ground who know what's going on. And a lot of times they know what's going on. They kind of know how to investigate it, but they don't know what to do with what they have. And, you know, that's where I want to start. We've already had people on from local advocacy groups and stuff, because they're taking, they're sort of taking over the journalist. Now, granted, they're an advocacy group. So you have to take what they say, a grain of salt, and you know, they have to get documentation and everything else. But they're on the ground there. And they understand the dynamics. And I find that that is another area that we would like to work with. Because once that we can then show them how to responsibly investigate this and expose it without having people say, Oh, you're just an advocacy group? Yeah, that's correct.

Gregory A. Williams: 41:40

Yeah, I'd like to say that local journalism is sort of the the, where local politics thrives, it's sort of the natural habitat of, of political engagement. And for me, there's no greater example of of, you know, near extinction or threatening a species, through the, through the process of habitat destruction, then there is, you know, local politics, you know, basically being driven to extinction through the destruction of its habitat, namely, these these local newspapers.

Dina Rasor: 42:14

And then you also have to worry about the problem of all this money coming in from these dark sources. You know, basically laundered by big fossil fuel going into these communities and saying, Oh, you don't want to have a solar farm, because they're going to, it's going to cover up the farmland, and a lot of times they put it on farmland, nobody's using any way. But it's going to it's going to leak cadmium into it, and it killed all the cattle, you'll never be able to use this again for growing crops. They say the same thing about the windmills. You know, Trump just said the other day, oh, if you want to see dead birds go look it under a windmill. And they go on and on about this stuff. And they went so when they local, the local initiatives of people coming in and wanting to do big solar prop things and bringing jobs into rural areas that Biden wants to do, they tried to do that in Ohio. And they were run out. I mean, if there were farmers that wanted to have, you know, had fallow fields that hadn't really been useful forever. And they wanted to do this, they wanted to be molded in the local people got this wrong information. And everybody in the town had a fight and and these things are getting getting stopped this clean energy things are getting stopped by that. And the ironic part about that is is that they're they're they're, you know, cutting off their nose to spite the face. It's so badly that I think it's California and Michigan and New York have passed laws saying that the state can override that. And normally, I don't like states overriding local. But if the local people are being unduly affected by fossil fuel money to try to hurt clean energy, because it's their competition. That's something that needs to be explored and pointed out.

Gregory A. Williams: 44:00

Well, I think it's, it's great to see that we all have lots to discuss. But I want to be careful not to try to cover everything in our first meeting. So I look forward to more podcasts with with the two of you. But unless there's anything else that you desperately want to cover tonight, why don't we Why don't we call it rap and look forward to the next opportunity to speak together?

Peter McKillop: 44:29

I look forward to that. And I think it should be a great partnership.

Dina Rasor: 44:33

Yeah, sounds good. And I I'd like to have Peter on once a month. So we can get because you know, he's got he's dealing constantly with the business side to get a feel of what's going on. You know, what's going on?

Gregory A. Williams: 44:48

All right. Well, here's to a fruitful partnership. And thanks again for being with us tonight. Thank you