The Angry Clean Energy Guy on the climate change lawsuits tsunami spreading around the world to hold polluters to account; and on plastic particles falling out of the sky with snow in the Arctic and plastic raining on the Rocky Mountains and on the Pyrenees mountains - and what to do about it. Hero of the Week: Medi Bastoni, a 43-year-old father of 4, walking 700km backwards from his home to Jakarta to shine the spotlight on Indonesia's deforestation. Villain of the Week: Jennifer Wilcox, for spreading Big Oil propaganda via a Ted Talk on "a new way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere" which is pie in the sky and just an excuse to use more dirty natural gas
The Angry Clean Energy Guy will be back on 30 August
The Angry Clean Energy Guy on the climate change lawsuits tsunami spreading around the world to hold polluters to account; and on plastic particles falling out of the sky with snow in the Arctic and plastic raining on the Rocky Mountains and on the Pyrenees mountains - and what to do about it. Hero of the Week: Medi Bastoni, a 43-year-old father of 4, walking 700km backwards from his home to Jakarta to shine the spotlight on Indonesia's deforestation. Villain of the Week: Jennifer Wilcox, for spreading Big Oil propaganda via a Ted Talk on "a new way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere" which is pie in the sky and just an excuse to use more dirty natural gas
The Angry Clean Energy Guy will be back on 30 August
[inaudible].
Speaker 2:Welcome to episode 19 of the angry, clean energy eye with me Assad resume. I am so happy you're here. Thank you. Today I want to talk first about climate change lawsuits. Climate change lawsuits matter enormously. They are bubbling below the surface of the daily news grind, but they can make so many companies and they can ruin so many others and they can change the business models that are being applied. So destructively to the world at large. Today I also want to talk about plastics. The news flow over the past two weeks on plastics has been nothing short of horrible. However, there are so many things that we can do to solve the plastics problem once and for all. And on a minor note, the angry teen energy guy will come back every two weeks. Now that I am at 19 episodes and counting and that the website, the angry, clean energy guy.com is up. There is an enormous wealth of information there too, which I will start adding more slowly.
Speaker 1:[inaudible]
Speaker 3:so let's talk about climate change lawsuits. First of all, there are so many is over a thousand in the United States alone. These are generally lawsuits that are trying to hold power to account and buy power. I mean governments on the one hand and polluters on the other hand and polluters would be oil, gas and coal companies. So there are a thousand over a thousand cases in the United States alone and climate change lawsuits are now spreading like at tsunami across so far 28 countries. The number two country after the United States in terms of lawsuits is Australia with almost 100 100 lawsuits. Then you've got European wide lawsuits and there are 55 of these 53 in the UK, 17 in New Zealand, 16 in Canada, six in France, three in Ireland. They are also in Nigeria, in the Philippines, in Uganda, in Ukraine, in Sweden, in Poland, in Norway, in the Netherlands. There are 10 in India, two in Pakistan, three in South Africa, et Cetera. These lawsuits matter, they matter because what they fundamentally are going after, the question they're trying to answer is who should pay for the damage fossil fuels? Cause who should pay for the fact that we've known that increased use of oil, gas and call is totally destructive to our health and to the planet. And we've known that for over 40 years, yet we haven't done anything about it. So they are about a fundamental question. Who should pay for the damage? Only gas and call. Cause especially if you take into account the fact that we've known about this damage for over 40 years, but all oil, gas and coal companies have done everything but try and mitigate any of it. So the climate change lawsuits are not about whether we should or should not use fossil fuels. Any reasonable observer accepts that we will still be using some fossil fuels even beyond 2050 but the point is it should be not even 2% of our energy needs. And so the related question, the climate change lawsuits ask is what are the consequences of hiding information that all companies knew about decades ago? Then using massive amounts of money and we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars each year to misinform deliberately the public to shift responsibility deliberately and very smartly. I must add to the public and to keep the politicians globally on message with some of the typical nonsense being, oh, call is important because it alleviates poverty or we need coal to power our economies where gas is clean or even gas is cleaner than coal, all of which are factually false. Now, this tsunami of climate change lawsuits terrifies all companies because all companies know that they know. Not only oil companies know that it is a matter of public record, that Exxon had detailed forecasts of what's going to happen to the global climate by now all the way back in 1982 their papers were on earth and they were published. They're dated 12 November, 1982 so Exxon actually confirmed climate change consensus back in 1982 with an in depth inhouse paper and its own climate models. That's the same company that later would mark climate models as unreliable. It's the same company that campaign to stop global action to fossil fuel emissions. They were not alone. Of course, all the oil companies whose names you might know that the same, so that would be Exxon mobile of course, but of course as well, Shell and BP and two tile and Chevron and ConocoPhillips and of course the state owned companies as well around the world. That's the state owned oil companies. They were all complicit in one way or another with big oil, so the big, the big guys, Exxon, Chevron, Shell, total, BP fronting the deceit and the lies. These guys have been building defenses to their offshore oil rigs for decades to fight against the consequences of rising sea levels and climate change while at the same time trying to mislead the public and keep politicians on message with hundreds of millions of dollars a year. It's the same people. If this rings a distant bell which says tobacco on it, then you are absolutely on message. It's the right bell. Oil. Gas and coal companies have lied for decades about global warming risks. Exactly as tobacco companies lied about the connection between smoking and cancer. It's the same playbook. So today obviously oil and gas companies are desperate to stop the climate change lawsuits that I was referring to because these ultimately would hold them financially responsible for their role in climate change. And if they were held financially responsible, then they wouldn't have a penny to drill or extract more oil and gas. They're shareholders. Obviously those who have not sold out of the stock yet would be wiped out as well. And we would suffer once again because our pensions, the pensions of the public that are still invested in fossil fuels would also disappear. So there's a whole chain of responsibility here and it doesn't stop at oil and gas companies, but an easy message for pensions everywhere is to just sell out of these stocks because they are coming down and they're coming down. In part, I personally feel it's an important part because of these climate change lawsuits. Imagine what would happen the minute in oil and gas executive from Exxon testifies in open court that they knowingly misled the public about the climate threat and that they have done knowingly since at least 1982 and yes, that's exactly what happened in the case of the tobacco industry, if you're sitting on a jury and you hear that executive saying the truth, then obviously you convict and then obviously they have to pay humongously large fines and they might go out of business. The tobacco companies back in 98 signed on to the largest civil litigation settlement in US history. It forced the big tobacco companies to stop advertising, to limit lobbying, to restrict product placement, to fund anti-smoking campaigns, and to pay more than$200 billion over 25 years. Now, if you put that into perspective, the oil and gas companies are potentially on the hook to pay 10 times, 20 times a hundred times that amount because what they've done is far, far more destructive. They've gone after the very fabric of our planet and of our climate and therefore they've gone after the very fabric of our civilization. For short term profit, so keep an eye out on this climate change litigation. It can change everything. It can become a huge financial liability on a large segment of the current stock and bond market and that's the oil companies, the gas companies, the coal companies, but also a lot of other companies that use a lot of fossil fuels in their products including petrochemical companies and cement companies and steel companies and the climate change lawsuits can also make an enormous amount of companies and that would be green companies and companies that are substituting for fossil fuels and these are across the transportation sector. Soon the aircraft sector, the shipping sector, they are across obviously the electricity sector as well. Energy efficiency buildings. There's a huge part of the stock market and the bond market and the capital markets. There's a huge part of our collective wealth that can win big because of these climate change lawsuits and there's also a huge part that can lose big because the climate change suits to Nami is coming. You just have to be on the right side of history by investing in green and divesting from dirty oil, gas and coal. And where this might go, which is also very interesting, is that this climate change lawsuits, tsunami could lead the public and governments eventually to treat climate change as a health problem, not just an environmental problem. In other words, and to give an example, you would start putting warning labels on cars and buses and trucks that run on diesel and petrol school buses that run on diesel for example, should carry a right now, and it should say your kids are inhaling this buses smoke and what they're inhaling causes all sorts of respiratory problems. Why don't they, they should. And that's without even getting to the climate change dimension of that diesel fuel. And then if parents still want their kids on diesel buses, they can make that choice for themselves. But obviously they won't. They will ask for electric buses. Electric buses are already cost competitive today, globally. And I don't understand why they are not everywhere. So put those warning labels on the buses, on the cars, put the warning labels on the plains, put the warning labels on plastic, put the warning labels on gas heaters, make everyone understand the consequences of their consumer choices, especially when they know or they should know that there are many alternatives. Right now it's just that in many cases these alternatives are being lobbied out of the market. There's a wall of money between the consumer and even a basic knowledge of these alternatives and I very much hope that the climate lawsuits to Nami will dismantle that wall and we'll do that very quickly by relying on the wisdom of the judiciary and judges in at least the 28 countries where this litigation is underway right now. I published the transcript of each podcast about two or three days after the podcast is live. You will find there additional resources that points you to fantastic databases where you can look at every single one of these climate change lawsuits and then decide for yourself where this is going and what to do about it.
Speaker 1:[inaudible]
Speaker 2:I want to talk briefly about plastics. Back in April, I was intrigued by a story showing that the French and Spanish paranasal had microplastics all over them. According to the research. Then scientists discovered that 365 particles of microplastic land on every square meter each day. So that's back in April. And then a couple of days ago I saw another story about plastic that was raining from the sky in the Americans' rocky mountains where scientists discover it that microscopic fibers were falling from the sky. And then just a day ago, there was another story about plastic particles falling out of the sky with snow in the Arctic. So it's snowing plastic in the Arctic. It's raining plastic in the rocky mountains and in the perinatal mountains. This on top of what we already know, which is that some 83% of global tap and bottled water is contaminated with plastic. And that at least 400 species of animals have members that either ingested plastics or got entangled in it. So we're eating plastic via our food chain. We're drinking plastic via both our tap water and our bottled water. And now we also know that we are breathing plastic and why is that? That's because we don't actually recycle plastic. 90% of plastic is not recycled. It's also because we're inundated with in particular single use plastics. That's plastic that we use once and then throw away. It's as you know, everywhere, it's your plastic straw, your plastic cup, your plastic bag. It's everywhere. Now obviously all of us should do what we can to use less plastic, but that's not going to resolve the problem. The reason we have this problem is actually very straightforward. Plastic is 99% oil, so there you have it. We go back to big oil and big gas and the petrochemical companies, they're producing very cheap plastic because they are not paying for its pollution. If the pollution was priced, then plastic would be correctly priced it and then guess what would happen? It would just be priced out of most markets. We would keep valuable plastic plastic that we must use in medical devices, for example. At least until we find an alternative. But all the single use plastic would just disappear. So yes, individually we can all do something about plastic and we should skip that plastic bag. If you can, don't take that plastic straw, return the plastic cutlery and bring your own cup to drink. Importantly, don't get fooled when you see recycled or recyclable plastic because even though it might be recyclable, it's not being recycled or at least it's not in 90% of the cases, but most importantly, the most important action you can take is to ask for plastic to carry at source the price of its environmental pollution for big oil and big petrochemicals and big gas to pay for that pollution directly. If their plastic had a pollution surcharge on it, it would become much more expensive and we would use so much less than that. Meanwhile, they are making money hand over fist trying to us in plastic and the most important lever we have to change this is legislation, so individual action is great, but we need to focus on legislation, price, plastic out by pricing. It's pollution. Then
Speaker 1:[inaudible].
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for listening to me. The angry teen energy guy this far, my hero of the week is an Indonesian gentleman by the name of muddy, but Stoney is 43 is a father of four and he is protesting deforestation in Indonesia by walking 700 kilometers backwards all the way from his home in East Java to Jakarta. And what he's hoping to achieve is to shine the spotlight on Indonesia, devastating deforestation, most of it driven by reckless palm oil plantations. To quote him, my home is losing all of its trees, so I have to do something. I can take the pain and fatigue. Well done. Mr[inaudible], my villain of the week is Jennifer Wilcox. I came across Dr. Wilcox on a podcast called that talks daily. She's just published a Ted talk that says in you way to remove c Hutu from the atmosphere. And when you listen to the Ted talk, you realize it's just more of the big oil narrative about how all these emissions are, you know, maybe not a huge problem because maybe we can have a magic machine with which may be we can extract all that he would to back from the atmosphere. And wouldn't it be nice if that magic machine was, for example, fueled by natural gas so that we can use even more of it now? I don't know why Dr. Wilcox got herself embroiled in this kind of nonsense of a Ted talk, but frankly, doing the bidding for big oil is not on, on that note, thank you again for listening and have a great couple of weeks.
Speaker 1:[inaudible].