October 2, 2022 • 47 mins
Climate Money Watchdog founders Dina Rasor and Greg Williams recap our first twenty episodes. We cover such issues as:
- Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)
- How Community Choice Aggregation can make renewable energy more accessible
- How community organizing can stop dangerous and wasteful projects
- How oversight by government and private citizens can prevent waste
See our main web site, our episode listing on Buzzsprout, or wherever you like to get your podcasts for full listing.
Visit us at climatemoneywatchdog.org!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Greg Williams (00:10):
Thanks to our listeners for joining us for
another episode of climate moneywatchdog where we study how the
federal government spends itsmoney on mitigating climate
change and protecting theenvironment. This is our 21st
episode. And we're going to begoing back and looking at the 20
episodes that have come beforethis. And highlighting what we
(00:33):
think is most interesting abouteach of those episodes. These
have covered a lot of ground,everywhere from municipal
politics, all the way on up tothe federal, across lots of
different technologies, lots ofdifferent approaches to
mitigating climate change. Andwe we think this is going to be
an interesting recap.
Dina Rasor (00:55):
Yes, and I'm Dana razor, and I'm the Executive
Director, and Greg is my cofounder. And we want reason that
we want to start doing itchange. We're doing those we're
going to talk about the stuffthat we learned with no way to
do it. And when we started thisa year ago, we were learning and
(01:18):
then there was no money beingspent. And then all the sudden
the infrastructure law passed,and then the inflation act
Reduction Act passed. And bothof those things just suddenly
shot money, a lot of money. Thisis the largest amount of money
(01:38):
that has been ever spent onclimate change. And so if the
money spent wrong or abuse theopponents of climate spending,
we use any fraud. Waste is acudgel to destroy current and
future things. So we're going tobe looking at money including
large spending programs such asthe Evie electric vehicle
(02:00):
charging, and we have a onepodcast on that subject. And
Biden's already accepted theEevee charging plans for all 50
states. And we are concernedthat the states that lean
against climate spending wereput may purloined the climate
money into other spendingprograms like they did with
(02:20):
COVID money. Another big areathat we looked at, and I'm we
have three different to podcastson this is carbon capture and
sequestration CCS. And it'soften seen as a bridge
technology.
Greg Williams (02:39):
I think it's worth reminding the audience
that we have a whole episode onthe example of Solyndra, which
was a company that the Obama andthe Obama administration
guaranteed a loan for them. Andthey quickly went out of
business, which gate really gavea black eye to the government's
(03:00):
role in supporting the solarpanel industry. And we want to
make sure that that kind ofthing doesn't happen again, both
that the money isn't wasted, andthat environmental protection
and climate change mitigationdoesn't get a bad name, because
of one or a few or heaven forbidmany programs were that are
(03:21):
mismanaged.
Dina Rasor (03:24):
Yes. And that that podcast was had an old friend of
mine named Eric Thorson, and hewas the former inspector general
the Treasury for 11 years. Andso and was actually the one that
played Clean up on aisle five,on Solyndra thing that once it
happened, his he and hisinvestigators went in to see
(03:47):
what went wrong. Andinterestingly, it was really
that there wasn't a lot offraud. There was just the
Department of Energy didn't dotheir due diligence. And for
they put out this tremendouslybig loan, they pushed it out too
fast. And it collapsed. And eventhough it was a smaller part of
(04:09):
all the money that was in thatloan program that was done
successfully and actually mademoney for the government, it was
used as a cudgel by people whoagainst climate change and
waving the bloody flag ofSolyndra every time you brought
up spending. So yes, so anotherbig area that we have been going
is, like I said, was carboncapture and sequestration. And
(04:32):
we have three of them on that.
What that means is that you are,it's really kind of a
complicated situation. Soinstead of not burning the fuel
at all, you burn the fuel,whether it's coal or natural
gas, or other things, and youcapture the carbon out of the
(04:54):
smokestack and unfold Shouldn'tweigh hasn't been, it hasn't
been that successful. Andsometimes it's only about 40% of
the carbon. And so you, youcapture the carbon, you
pressurize it very highly usedto have to have a series of
pipelines all across country, abig pipeline network, which
(05:18):
they're planning to build, whichwhich is talked about in these
in these three issues. And youtransported by pipelines, which
are very popular this day tobuild right. And then you see,
Quester it in caves. caimans,Canyon, cane has underground
caverns underground. And it sitsthere. And they say they're
(05:45):
going to try to find a way touse it. But the problem is that
when they want to use it, theythey so far they've used it, and
Greg can go into this more, theyuse this to extract more oil out
of old, old wells, which meansthere is more oil you pull out,
(06:06):
burn, try to capture the carbon,put it into grants. So it's
already underground. Can't wejust leave it there? Because if
you bring it up, and it hasreally had a high failure rate
in the past, and we talk about,we have three podcasts on that,
and one of them is a greatpodcast we did with Dr. Charles
(06:29):
Harvey. And Dr. Curt house. Andthey're one is one is in private
industry, the Kurhaus. He'sworking on batteries. And Dr.
Harvey is with MIT. And theystarted a company run by Dr.
Paths about seven years ago, wasone of the first startups on
(06:50):
carbon capture, because this wasthe way to go. This is what
we're going to have to do as abridge technology. Because
renewables are a way down theline, there's got to be you
can't use them all. They can'treplace everything. And they so
they did their startup company.
But they soon found out that therenewables were advancing so
(07:12):
quickly that CCS cannot competeon price or technology. And CCS
has had an entire history offailure. They keep waiting for
that technology, aha, that wouldmake it thing but they years
ago, they were the first theywere the pioneers going into
(07:33):
carbon capture, and they walkedaway and said, it's just not
gonna work. I mean, you can dothe technology, but it'll never
be able to compete.
Greg Williams (07:42):
So one of the things that really struck me
about that episode is that I'vebeen wondering why there isn't
somebody jumping up and down andsaying the emperor has no
clothes. You know, we see theCCS projects, trying and failing
over and over again. And itmakes me wonder, why is there
still so much widespread and andwell funded support for, for
(08:07):
these projects. And Dr. Harvey,Dr. House, made it very clear,
the oil industry uses carbondioxide to extract more oil. And
they have been capturing and andsequestering carbon dioxide for
for many years for half acentury in some cases. But they
(08:30):
do it for a very differentreason they do it because it's a
more economical way to get oilout of the ground. And so what
happens with a lot of thesecarbon capture and sequestration
projects, is they simply get abig fat, you know, multi
hundreds of millions of dollarssubsidy for doing what they've
been doing for the last 50 yearsto extract oil, you know,
(08:54):
instead of just pumping the co2back into the ground and using
that to force more oil to thesurface. They they do that
exactly the same way they'vebeen doing all along. They make
a show of capturing some of itagain, at the at the top of the
smokestack when the oil isburned. But then they take that
(09:14):
carbon dioxide and pump it intothe ground and force more oil
out. And so once you understandthat this is fundamentally an
oil extraction subsidy programrather than a climate change
mitigation program. Youunderstand why it keeps getting
funded because it's verysuccessful as a subsidy program.
(09:36):
And the fact that it's not sosuccessful at reducing the
amount of carbon dioxide in theatmosphere is is sort of
immaterial.
Dina Rasor (09:44):
And we do when we will, I'll talk about later but
we do have, you know, an episodeon the past failures. Then it's
what's what's amazing about itis that it is that It almost
more than half of the tech, thetechnology, the research money
(10:06):
for technology is going to go tocarbon capture more than
renewables more than renewables,which is astounding to me.
Because if you can makerenewables work, you don't have
to do this whole Kabuki dance ofpulling it out, you know,
building pipelines building iteverywhere, they say they're
(10:28):
going to sell it for otherthings than oil capture, oil
extraction. And it has it'sdominated and then in the end,
the Biden administration is justlike me, you know, and Secretary
of Energy and is just are justraw writing this and they're
(10:52):
just putting out the money, oh,the carbon capture. So you know,
we are sort of sitting theregoing, talking to people to say,
this isn't going to work. And sothey talk about, you know,
renewable energy and markets andthey make clear down to the
micro grids for small company, Iwas more small towns, just this
(11:14):
little town and Lexington,Oregon that just recently bought
a huge battery, and used windand solar to run their town from
the electricity and sell theexcess to power companies. So
besides Dr. House, and Dr.
Harvey, we have podcasts withMark Z. Jacobson, Stanford, very
impressive guy who studied 145countries and their power needs,
(11:38):
and believes that all of thesecountries, including the US can
transform only to renewableenergy doesn't need carbon
capture, or nuclear. And thelarge investment the world would
have to put in there worldwide,could be paid off in six years
because the renewables makemoney and make energy so cheap.
(11:59):
So we'll be watchdogging CCSbecause it failed in the past.
We have a podcast outlining thatwith Bob Bauman of all the
failures, and he's my formerinvestigative partner. And
during the Obama administration,they put out a lot of money 1.1
billion for tests things andthey failed. And they were
(12:21):
supposed to build a lovin ofthese plants, they built one,
only one actually opened andit's already closed, because
it's just this not economicallyviable. So we're also looking at
grassroots efforts. Mike Eisen,filled it from the San Juan
Alliance in Farmington, NewMexico, really impressive group
(12:44):
impressive guy. They had a coalplant that was supposed to be
retired, and this area has hadthis coal plant. And he actually
sent extracting coal to nearbyin this big power grid, just
polluting the hell out of theplace for years. And so they're
going to close it in comes ahedge fund, and says, Oh, we can
(13:08):
save this planet, it doesn'thave to close because we're
going to put carbon capture onit. And we're going to reap the
carbon credits. And you know, wewill be able to sell it and you
know, this and that it'll workand everything else. Well, this
is just ridiculous. Because, youknow, it's the dog chasing tail
again, you're, you could reach,you could change to something
(13:31):
else, this thing is going toshut down. It's already ancient
and polluting, and it does mynew carbon capture on those coal
plants. It does not remove thedangerous pollution that gives
people asthma, and otherterrible lung diseases and all
kinds of problems. benzene, youknow, I could go through coal
ash, I've stood on a call lashmountain, and I'm telling you,
(13:55):
it's toxic. So anyway, they theyworked against this hedge fund
and said, This is ridiculous. Wehave to close it, the hedge fund
finally realized that theycouldn't get anybody to invest
in it. So they thought they'dget government money coming in
the federal government moneythat's coming in, but then they
just gave up and left. So thethis little group along with
(14:17):
Indian tribes, they're reallywork to get it shut down. And
one of the things that one ofthe things we want to do is look
at groups like this and helppublicize their efforts, help
them investigate. So if you knowsome group like that, let us
(14:39):
know. We're going to keepworking with the
with the San Juan Alliance,we're spending the money, money
that we want to work withwhistleblowers and sources.
Greg Williams (14:53):
So I think something that's worth pointing
out about the San Juan Alliance,is that that's an example A
victory through localpersistence and local self
taught expertise. This is not agroup of people who have a lot
of money or a lot of academiccredentials. It's a bunch of
(15:14):
people who care about theircommunity have lived there for
many, many years. Understand thelocal zoning and and other laws.
And by sheer organizing and anddetermination managed to stop
this, this very ill consideredproject and another podcast
(15:36):
episode where we, where we talkabout that kind of grassroots
effort and grassroots triumphingover much better funded
organizations is one where wespeak with somebody from Marin
County energy, about CommunityChoice aggregation, and how they
overcame a very well fundedlocal utility company, namely
(16:00):
PGD, and succeeded in gettingresidents access to renewable
power at a time when VGA was wassaying that that was not
economically feasible.
Dina Rasor (16:14):
That's right. And one of the things they just got
me about the Farmington, NewMexico, the things that were
things I learned from talking toMike eyes and felt is that it
started as I think, as anindustry term, but now,
environmental, so picked it up,they call the areas where
(16:34):
they've had pollution going onfor years and years, you know,
poor, with poor people livingthere who can't really complain
because of the jobs and theyjust live in the pollution. They
call them the industries callthem sacrifice Jones zones, Oh,
these are sacrifice zones,they're heavily polluted. They
(16:55):
don't have people in it, that itcan protect themselves. And so
now, the second one Alliancewants to take this can Valley
that's been just creamed by, youknow, they dug up coal, they
burned coal, a lot of otherthings, and oil, and so heavily
(17:18):
polluted. Now they want to getfederal money to clean up the
pollution, and also get money totransfer to clean energy, such
as solar, because they have ahuge electric grid already there
to take out the power that wasdone for the coal plant, and
they can, solar is very good inthat part of the country. And
then they could change it tosolar and still have the
(17:40):
infrastructure to do it. Andthey're one of the things Biden
really made big in hisemployment money. He said, we're
going to, we're going to Cabottrickle down to environmental
justice, and emphasize peoplethat need to find more jobs, and
(18:00):
transfer them to learning aboutgiving them money to cook to
transfer to clean energy. Andthat always, that always sounds
great. But somehow, on things inthe past, I've seen money suck
at the top be sucked out at thetop, and not get down to the
people that actually made it. Sowe're going to be looking at
(18:22):
money designated NGOs,communities and see how
difficult it is to get. And ifthere's any bad actors, like
what's happened, what's happenedto COVID money, which $42
billion COVID, money stolen,okay, so this, this happens, and
it happens when you have to movequickly, like we do. But these
we want to try to make sure thatthese communities who have been
(18:46):
overlooked so long, actually getthe money and we'll be working
with will be working with theSan Juan Alliance on their
stuff. But I'd also say anysmall organization or group
activists want to come and comeand do a podcast with us or call
(19:06):
us and ask for help becausewe've done a lot of
investigations that is what wewill do. So
Greg Williams (19:16):
so another context in which community
action is it's been aninteresting part of these these
episodes is we had an interviewwith with Brittany Trang as a
recent graduate student whodiscovered a much more effective
much less costly means ofbreaking down so called Forever
chemicals in the classes of peefast and P FOSS. And the reason
(19:41):
that that's important to localcommunities is just about
anywhere there's there's anairport or someplace where
firefighting foam has been usedextensively. And, you know, we
have a great example just downthe river here and in Newburgh,
New York and in Princeton,Massachusetts, where my sister
lives there. These hugecontaminations with with
(20:06):
firefighting foam and pee fastand until recently that the best
you could do with this stuff istry to collect it and bury it or
somehow contain it. And theexciting thing about Brittany
trains work is she's figured outand began a whole field of study
around how you can takedifferent kinds of very
(20:29):
dangerous, very persistentchemicals. And without a lot of
energy without a lot of money.
You can not contain them, butliterally break them down and
turn them into cam chemicalsthat are that are essentially
not harmful ones that exist in,in the environment already and
don't pose any concerns forhuman or, or other life. And so
(20:52):
having scientists like that onthe on the podcast is always
interested in is alwaysinteresting in terms of just
improving our understanding ofhow these environmental issues
work.
Dina Rasor (21:08):
Yeah, I mean, she, she was a very interesting
interview, she's a graduatestudent, she's now turned to
journalism. She got her PhD, butshe, her professor said, you
know, there's a simple methodthat nobody pays attention to,
because I don't think it'llwork. But I want to try it. And
she's like, it won't work. Andso he said, but let's try it.
(21:29):
And it worked. And boy, I tellyou got the attention of
everybody because this, thischemical is called Forever
chemicals because they can'textract it out of the water and
soil. And now if they can breakit down, it'd be an payfast is
very dangerous. And it's allover the place. And I hate to
(21:49):
tell you that they used to putit in everything, you know, your
Teflon frying pan, your cookyour food and soft one time,
they said they put it on dentalfloss, so that it would make the
last slide easier because it'skind of a Teflon kind of
quality. And I thought, oh mygosh, it's one of those things
that you know, like, bestest,they have I mean, they put it in
(22:12):
everything. And then they foundout this is not good. So it,
this was a I love doinginterviews like that she's not
somebody that's, you know, wellknown. She's not in the usual
circles. And but on the otherhand, she made a she and her
professor made a breakthroughthat could really do that. And
(22:33):
we will be looking at pollutionas well as climate because what
we call Earth overreach. AndEarth overreach is finding out
how much is can the earthregenerate what we take out and
pulling
Greg Williams (22:48):
every year. So an episode. Yeah, an episode that
spoke pretty directly to thatwas the one in which we
interviewed Jeff Creek of theCarbon Cycle Institute. And he
wasn't describing so much anyparticular high tech method of
removing pollution so much as reenvisioning farming with, with a
(23:10):
focus on on the carbon cycle,and increasing the amount of
carbon that's retained in thesoil. And that is drawn out of
the atmosphere by whatever it isthat you're growing. And so it
doesn't require any particularlynew technology or techniques.
The techniques that he wasdescribing are ones that have
(23:30):
been in use for hundreds ofyears. But if you if you change
your focus from thinkingexclusively about how many
dollars of revenue can wegenerate through what we're what
we're growing to how can wemaximize the the carbon that's
retained in the soil, you canprofoundly change the equation
(23:52):
of commercial farming, you're,you're no longer using
petrochemicals to createfertilizers and pump them into
the ground and and then pull allthat carbon out in the in the
form of produce so that nothingis left in the soil, you can do
this all in a very closed loop.
Way, where if you just keepproducing food, keeping in mind
(24:15):
that the carbon cycle, you cansignificantly increase the
amount that's retained in thesoil. And I think he said that
something on the order of athird of the carbon that is now
in the atmosphere that we don'twant to be in the atmosphere is
now missing from the soilthrough the through the process
(24:36):
of industrial farming. And so ina while there isn't a
particularly fast way to do it.
We can't you know, snap ourfingers and install, you know,
some multibillion dollar carboncapture facilities to do this
but over time, if we move thatcarbon back from the atmosphere
into the soil, doing nothingother than changing the way we
(25:00):
Think about farming, we willhave solved about a third of the
the atmospheric carbon problem.
Dina Rasor (25:07):
And ironically, what he's that this area is not
getting very much funding. He'snot here he's, he's he's going
to look into grants and stuff.
But the amount of money that'sappropriated for this is
minuscule. Compared to othermisguided programs, you know,
programs like like carboncapture that just, you know,
it's just, it's a dog chasingits tail. And I'm we're looking
(25:30):
for I'm looking to try to do afuture podcast because the he
has farmers out there in MarionCounty, close to where I live,
and they do experimental farms.
And plan to, I want to plan toto visit those farms and talk to
the farmer and see how they doactually do it, and then move
(25:52):
out for future podcast, we cantalk about this and get more on
out because we think this issomething that's
underrepresented, run,underfunded, underrepresented,
represented. And also, but alsocould make a huge difference
that people are overlooking. Wealso have a two episodes on
(26:20):
something that I've worked onfor years. And that is, there is
a, there's two different laws,one is called the qui tam False
Claims Act law. And and then theother is this SEC whistleblower
program. And I've worked on quitam laws quick and cases for
years. And that's where you ifyou have knowledge, and it
(26:42):
doesn't matter if you're anemployee is you have to have
original knowledge. But if youhave knowledge that something is
going wrong, there, then you canfile a lawsuit on behalf of the
federal government. And with youknow, with obviously, these qui
tam lawyers, and if thegovernment decides not to do the
(27:04):
case, you can take it to thecourts yourself, although that's
hard to do, it is notimpossible. But what happens no
matter what happens, and usuallythe company settle, you get up
to 25% of the money that goesback to the federal government.
And so that, that woke up a lotof lawyers, when we passed, we
had it read read written in1986. Because people are started
(27:27):
thinking, hey, whistleblowerscan help me make money instead
of lose money. So we have onewith Josh, attorney, Josh, Josh,
for us. And he talked about thequi tam False Claims Act. And
it's quite a, it's quite deepand quite detailed in how he
(27:49):
thinks it could fit intoclimate. And then we had, you
know, Poppy, Poppy Alexander ofConstantine cannon, on new ideas
on how to use SEC whistleblowerproud program, it's really kind
of really interesting. And shesaid, instead of going after the
issue, that they're wastingmoney in fraud and waste, it's
(28:10):
hard to do. They all signedcontracts, and they have
contract clauses. Let's say.
You, you know, if you take thiscontract, you have all kinds of
environmental laws you'resupposed to pass to,
Greg Williams (28:29):
excuse me.
environmental laws with whichthey are promised to comply. And
so a big part of that are thethe fraud. A big part of the way
they're framing the fraud is bysaying that the company is
engaging this in this business,you know, let's say it's making
(28:51):
widgets, but they they'reclaiming that they will do so in
compliance with a series ofenvironmental laws. And so if
they don't comply, or if theycomply to a lesser degree, then
they're promising that fraud hasa value that can be you know,
the entire value of thecontract. And so you can sue
(29:12):
them for having defrauded thegovernment of that value.
Dina Rasor (29:20):
And then the SEC the yet and then the SEC can go
ahead and cancel and cancel thecancel the contract completely.
Not only just cancel thecontract and get the money back,
can I get the money back but tocancel the contract completely.
So this is a way that because alot if you're going to have a
(29:41):
polluting oriented company doingstuff, they're going to try to
skirt around these environmentallaws. And a lot of times it's
hard to prove that they're doingbut it's if you can prove that
they aren't following theseenvironmental laws. It has the
same effect of proving thatthey're doing fraud.
Greg Williams (30:00):
I think that the even more interesting aspect of
the SEC involvement that the CIIintroduced us to was the idea
that if you are promisingthrough your proxy statement,
your your annual report, as apublicly traded company that you
are engaging in so called ESGpractices in environmental,
(30:20):
social and governance issues,you are in a threat, in effect,
promising your share yourshareholders that you're doing
these things. And if you don't,in fact, live up to those
promises, you are defrauding allof the shareholders. And an
important function of theSecurities and Exchange
(30:40):
Commission is to make sure thatpublicly traded stocks are
publicly traded lawfully andwithout fraud. And so they've
figured out that you can goafter a company for the entire
change in market capitalization.
So if a company increases itsits overall value by billions of
(31:01):
dollars, in part by defraudingits shareholders, by not
actually fulfilling the ESGpromises they make, once again,
the SEC can go after them forthat. And if you bring this to
the attention of the SEC, theSEC, he chooses not to follow up
on it, you as a private citizencan potentially go after them
(31:22):
for those huge amounts of money.
Dina Rasor (31:27):
Yeah, and then it's sort of like, you know, the
classic thing is saying, how didthey catch el Cal Al Capone, tax
fraud, something that wascompletely a side bar that he
did, because they could neverprove that he hired hits or
anything, but sometimes you haveto just go and get them on a
technicality. And I was reallyexcited because I think this
(31:48):
could be an area and we havethese two really bright lawyers
in. And it's the both episodesare really interesting. They're
I mean, I'm amazed on how, howgood they are.
Greg Williams (32:05):
So in another area of public engagement, we
had a great interview with EliotNegan, of the Union of Concerned
Scientists, and he was sharingwith us is the research that
he's done over many years aboutthe Koch brothers, and other
supportive Alec, and how Alecproduces so called template
(32:32):
legislation, which they then useto get different state and
municipal governments to to passbusiness friendly laws that may
be very lenient, and may be verydeceptive in terms of how they
deal with environmentalprotection and and climate
change. And while I understoodthat, that was an effective way
(32:55):
to funnel money in the directionof business friendly
legislation, I had no idea. Ithink there were two things that
were a revelation to me. One isjust how thinly staffed state
legislators are I mean, Dina andI both have a lot of experience
dealing with federallegislators. And we've always
(33:17):
known that senators have muchbigger staffs than then
representatives. But you getdown to the state level, and
they may have no staff, youknow, no legislative assistants,
and in those cases, when, whenan organization like Alec shows
up, and they have expertwitnesses, they have pre written
legislation, they have marketingmaterials, it's just very easy
(33:41):
to go ahead and go that route.
It's a way to, to relativelyeasily show your effectiveness
at a legislator without havingto put anywhere near the effort
into it that that you wouldotherwise have two
Dina Rasor (33:56):
Yeah, and, and Alec is, it's called the American
Legislative Exchange Council.
It's actually a nonprofitorganization being gets tax
deduction, and they justblatantly push legislation which
is not really allowed. And I'vealways wondered how they could
go years and years without theIRS investigating them, because
(34:16):
I've run a non some nonprofitsand so it's Greg and you just
can't get away with that kind ofstuff. So then also, Greg,
didn't they you also talkedabout the Koch brothers money
and influence. When you whenyou're doing Elliott, Meghan,
guess
Greg Williams (34:38):
how they made their money in the oil
extraction business? And howover the years that they've
found a wide variety of ways offunding that model into
political influence, culminatingin Alec, but certainly with many
other methods as well and Iencourage anyone who's
(34:59):
interested in learning moreabout that either go to two
negatives material on the Unionof Concerned Scientists website
or go to our website, listen tothat, that apps that episode and
follow some of the links in thein the introduction that we
have.
Dina Rasor (35:15):
I missed that episode because I was on my
COVID holiday. Greg did a goodjob of holding down the fort.
And one of our first interviewswas with Bill McKibben, and is
really one of the mainstreamguys. He's been working on this
for 2530 years. And I can'timagine, I mean, I worked on the
(35:38):
Pentagon too. And so I know howyou feel like Sisyphus in Iraq,
but he, there's nothing hedoesn't know. And he started
this new group called third actfor older people like me to work
on climate. And so climate wisemoney watchdog is my third act,
there's no doubt about that. Andso he has set it up so that
(36:04):
people that know how to orpeople that have been through
the 60s and 70s, know how toorganize and do all those kinds
of things, to try to change,make change. These are the
people that passed, you know,the original Earth Day,
legislations and things likethat, and, and the EPA, which by
(36:24):
the way, Richard Nixon started,a lot of people don't know that.
So, but he, he really is able toboil it down after all the years
and cut through all the crap.
And he recently wrote an articlein The Atlantic magazine, which
I would recommend you take alook at. But the title alone
(36:44):
stopped me in my tracks. And Iactually wrote him and said, you
should make a bumper sticker outof this title. Because one of
the things that's frustrated meover the years is that and I've
seen not just environment butenvironment too. They want to
write policy papers. And it'sgreat to have a policy paper,
(37:04):
nobody reads it. And in this dayand age, the other side has
learned to talk in jargon, andbumper sticker, but they spoke
Bush sticker speak. And so wehave to simplify what the
situation is. And the title ofthis, of this magazine was
article was called The Earth ison fire, stop burning things.
(37:26):
And that just squares it up, youknow, in other words, you're
trying to do CCS, where you'reburning things, you know. And so
anything that requires us toburn, even if we carbon capture,
capture the carbon out of it,which we can't completely is
contributing to this, and theonly thing that's going to work
(37:49):
is to stop burning things. Andthat basically means, you know,
natural gas, oil, coal, there'sno such thing as clean coal. And
that's the stall PR and get pastthe PR that they can somehow
keep burning oil or fossil fuelsand stop this and and protect
(38:12):
the environment, which theycan't. And so whenever you sit
there and hear about all the newthings that are going on,
remember Bill McKibbenMcKinnon's thing, the Earth is
on fire stop burning things. Infact, I really am going to ask
(38:35):
him if I can make a bumpersticker about that.
Greg Williams (38:42):
So I hear again, this probably another good
opportunity to mention Jenattenti and marine clean energy
and the whole topic of CommunityChoice aggregators. Which use
you've studied for
Dina Rasor (38:56):
years. Yeah, I studied it years ago. And it's
the same kind of things going onin four or five other states.
They call it separately, butCalifornia passed the law that
you are developing what theycall Community Choice
aggregators. Not a good title.
But it's to locally developedpublic entities that can buy
clean energy and send it to theexisting power grid. In each
(39:19):
community and cough in the inthe CCA is run by local
officials from each countyboard. So MCE doesn't call
themselves marine clean energyanymore because they were so
successful. They went frommarine county to and now they
substitute into Berkeley alsorido a whole bunch of counties
(39:41):
so we know where I live, andthat they're actually my energy
provider. And it has aninteresting history because as
soon as California passed thislaw, Pacific Gas and Electric
the power the power company whomakes power and also owns the
grid has been had been trying totry to kill it right off the
(40:07):
bat. They've been around since1905. They don't used to be a
competition. And so they backedup a California proposition to
basically put in poison pill tokill the the effectiveness of
these aggravators. And they putin $14 million. This was seven
or eight years ago, that was aquite a bit. And they the
(40:28):
aggregators could organizationsare public, and they could not
protect themselves from this,this political, this political
proposition. But
Greg Williams (40:47):
it's probably important to emphasize that
we're not talking about publiclytraded companies, we're talking
about organizations that aregoverned by boards that are
comprised entirely of electedofficials. So they are quasi
government organizations thatare prohibited from lobbying the
way a private company can. Yeah.
Dina Rasor (41:10):
So the environment, there are a bunch of
environmental groups cobbledtogether $100,000. And they beat
them. It's what I call a veryErin Brockovich type victory
because she took on PG and none, two. And so PG and E is it
drives them nuts, but they'reforced to uneasy to take the
(41:31):
aggregators, to customers, letthem use their power grid lines.
And the there's the CCA is whenthey're in a community, they
tend to be you know, 100 100%clean energy, and you know, it
easy to make. So when I get mybill, it's a very interesting
(41:52):
library bill, I get charged byMCE on the power that I use,
which is all completelyrenewable. And but I also get a
bill from PG and E, which PJnews store has put it all in one
on how much it costs to have thepower go through the lines. And
(42:15):
they have now made it where theycan compete with pg&e on price
or beat them. So it Beijing isnot happy about it. But they
can't do anything about it inthat there's a bunch of them
popping up in California andother parts of the country. So
that's very interesting. I thinkanother great local, what you
(42:38):
can do locally, to then andsmall, not having a big huge
power company, which you cannot,which by the way is private, and
you cannot it's very hard tofight. So the other thing I
wanted to bring up is that, youknow, we've been, we've been
(42:59):
dumping on CCS pretty hard,because we we just don't we just
don't see the case for it. Butif there's people who don't
agree with our podcasts on CCA sor any other issue, we'd be
happy to do cockpit podcast withthem. Because we're not scared
of you know, somebody wants todebate us. It says right now we
(43:21):
were we've just beeninvestigating and looking at
what is there and what what isand what we see that has worked
and what we have done someinvestigation, see that things
that have failed. I quitefrankly, don't see how you could
ever get the permits to buildthe pipelines that you need to
do to do CCS. That's anotherarea that we've been looking at.
(43:45):
And we had, we want to also tryto get state and local groups,
efforts, through groups to helpus do podcasts on their efforts.
And if there's any sources andwhen it come to us and remain
anonymous, Greg and I have a lotof experience working with local
groups that groups any andwelcome anybody contact us. We
also have worked years withanonymous sources and protected
(44:09):
them with and kept themanonymous. And I've never had
anyone caught fired. And I'vebeen doing it for 42 years.
dating myself, but we know howto protect people. When you want
to contact us we have ways youcan contact us safely. And so
(44:31):
the money is going out the door.
The money is going out the door.
There's a lot of money beingspent, it's being spent very
quickly. And quite frankly, wehaven't seen any organization
that's dedicated just to watchthe money and boy tell you, you
have this much money and youhave this much people it isn't
all a bunch of, you know, purein the faith environmental
(44:56):
startups that are doing it withthis kind of money. You're Going
to start getting in a lot ofinfluence. And that's already
happened. Big, big fossil fuelhas already gotten in there that
are going to be getting carboncredits. And they're going to be
doing CCS development. And so wewant to watch the please if you
(45:24):
know sort of see something, takesomething, they say the money is
going out the door. And we knowhow to do investigations on
that. And we know how topublicize them. So that's kind
of we've been talking aboutevery single podcast we've done.
But the ones that justabsolutely stood out to us that
(45:45):
we thought was the mostinteresting. So take a look at
any of these that you'reinterested in. And if you
disagree with us, come on, ifyou have something new Come on,
if you want to talk about doingsomething anonymously, fine. If
you think you have a qui tamcase or SEC case, fine. We've
looked at that and we know howto get you over protected to
(46:09):
attorneys that we know.
We don't We only refer people toattorneys we know are going to
do a good job.
Greg Williams (46:18):
So this probably a good time to to remind our
listeners that we are anonprofit, nonpartisan
organization and we do not takeany kind of sponsorships or
corporate contributions. Wedepend entirely on contributions
from individuals. And when weencourage you to contact us, if
(46:42):
you go to our website at climatemoney watchdog.org You will find
email addresses and other waysto communicate with us on a
completely secure and encryptedbasis. So that you don't need to
reveal your identity to us. Soagain, we encourage you to visit
us at climate money watchdog.orgAnd thanks again for being our
(47:06):
listeners and we hope to see youat our next episode.
Thanks to our listeners for joining us for
another episode of climate moneywatchdog where we study how the
federal government spends itsmoney on mitigating climate
change and protecting theenvironment. This is our 21st
episode. And we're going to begoing back and looking at the 20
episodes that have come beforethis. And highlighting what we
(00:33):
think is most interesting abouteach of those episodes. These
have covered a lot of ground,everywhere from municipal
politics, all the way on up tothe federal, across lots of
different technologies, lots ofdifferent approaches to
mitigating climate change. Andwe we think this is going to be
an interesting recap.
Dina Rasor (00:55):
Yes, and I'm Dana razor, and I'm the Executive
Director, and Greg is my cofounder. And we want reason that
we want to start doing itchange. We're doing those we're
going to talk about the stuffthat we learned with no way to
do it. And when we started thisa year ago, we were learning and
(01:18):
then there was no money beingspent. And then all the sudden
the infrastructure law passed,and then the inflation act
Reduction Act passed. And bothof those things just suddenly
shot money, a lot of money. Thisis the largest amount of money
(01:38):
that has been ever spent onclimate change. And so if the
money spent wrong or abuse theopponents of climate spending,
we use any fraud. Waste is acudgel to destroy current and
future things. So we're going tobe looking at money including
large spending programs such asthe Evie electric vehicle
(02:00):
charging, and we have a onepodcast on that subject. And
Biden's already accepted theEevee charging plans for all 50
states. And we are concernedthat the states that lean
against climate spending wereput may purloined the climate
money into other spendingprograms like they did with
(02:20):
COVID money. Another big areathat we looked at, and I'm we
have three different to podcastson this is carbon capture and
sequestration CCS. And it'soften seen as a bridge
technology.
Greg Williams (02:39):
I think it's worth reminding the audience
that we have a whole episode onthe example of Solyndra, which
was a company that the Obama andthe Obama administration
guaranteed a loan for them. Andthey quickly went out of
business, which gate really gavea black eye to the government's
(03:00):
role in supporting the solarpanel industry. And we want to
make sure that that kind ofthing doesn't happen again, both
that the money isn't wasted, andthat environmental protection
and climate change mitigationdoesn't get a bad name, because
of one or a few or heaven forbidmany programs were that are
(03:21):
mismanaged.
Dina Rasor (03:24):
Yes. And that that podcast was had an old friend of
mine named Eric Thorson, and hewas the former inspector general
the Treasury for 11 years. Andso and was actually the one that
played Clean up on aisle five,on Solyndra thing that once it
happened, his he and hisinvestigators went in to see
(03:47):
what went wrong. Andinterestingly, it was really
that there wasn't a lot offraud. There was just the
Department of Energy didn't dotheir due diligence. And for
they put out this tremendouslybig loan, they pushed it out too
fast. And it collapsed. And eventhough it was a smaller part of
(04:09):
all the money that was in thatloan program that was done
successfully and actually mademoney for the government, it was
used as a cudgel by people whoagainst climate change and
waving the bloody flag ofSolyndra every time you brought
up spending. So yes, so anotherbig area that we have been going
is, like I said, was carboncapture and sequestration. And
(04:32):
we have three of them on that.
What that means is that you are,it's really kind of a
complicated situation. Soinstead of not burning the fuel
at all, you burn the fuel,whether it's coal or natural
gas, or other things, and youcapture the carbon out of the
(04:54):
smokestack and unfold Shouldn'tweigh hasn't been, it hasn't
been that successful. Andsometimes it's only about 40% of
the carbon. And so you, youcapture the carbon, you
pressurize it very highly usedto have to have a series of
pipelines all across country, abig pipeline network, which
(05:18):
they're planning to build, whichwhich is talked about in these
in these three issues. And youtransported by pipelines, which
are very popular this day tobuild right. And then you see,
Quester it in caves. caimans,Canyon, cane has underground
caverns underground. And it sitsthere. And they say they're
(05:45):
going to try to find a way touse it. But the problem is that
when they want to use it, theythey so far they've used it, and
Greg can go into this more, theyuse this to extract more oil out
of old, old wells, which meansthere is more oil you pull out,
(06:06):
burn, try to capture the carbon,put it into grants. So it's
already underground. Can't wejust leave it there? Because if
you bring it up, and it hasreally had a high failure rate
in the past, and we talk about,we have three podcasts on that,
and one of them is a greatpodcast we did with Dr. Charles
(06:29):
Harvey. And Dr. Curt house. Andthey're one is one is in private
industry, the Kurhaus. He'sworking on batteries. And Dr.
Harvey is with MIT. And theystarted a company run by Dr.
Paths about seven years ago, wasone of the first startups on
(06:50):
carbon capture, because this wasthe way to go. This is what
we're going to have to do as abridge technology. Because
renewables are a way down theline, there's got to be you
can't use them all. They can'treplace everything. And they so
they did their startup company.
But they soon found out that therenewables were advancing so
(07:12):
quickly that CCS cannot competeon price or technology. And CCS
has had an entire history offailure. They keep waiting for
that technology, aha, that wouldmake it thing but they years
ago, they were the first theywere the pioneers going into
(07:33):
carbon capture, and they walkedaway and said, it's just not
gonna work. I mean, you can dothe technology, but it'll never
be able to compete.
Greg Williams (07:42):
So one of the things that really struck me
about that episode is that I'vebeen wondering why there isn't
somebody jumping up and down andsaying the emperor has no
clothes. You know, we see theCCS projects, trying and failing
over and over again. And itmakes me wonder, why is there
still so much widespread and andwell funded support for, for
(08:07):
these projects. And Dr. Harvey,Dr. House, made it very clear,
the oil industry uses carbondioxide to extract more oil. And
they have been capturing and andsequestering carbon dioxide for
for many years for half acentury in some cases. But they
(08:30):
do it for a very differentreason they do it because it's a
more economical way to get oilout of the ground. And so what
happens with a lot of thesecarbon capture and sequestration
projects, is they simply get abig fat, you know, multi
hundreds of millions of dollarssubsidy for doing what they've
been doing for the last 50 yearsto extract oil, you know,
(08:54):
instead of just pumping the co2back into the ground and using
that to force more oil to thesurface. They they do that
exactly the same way they'vebeen doing all along. They make
a show of capturing some of itagain, at the at the top of the
smokestack when the oil isburned. But then they take that
(09:14):
carbon dioxide and pump it intothe ground and force more oil
out. And so once you understandthat this is fundamentally an
oil extraction subsidy programrather than a climate change
mitigation program. Youunderstand why it keeps getting
funded because it's verysuccessful as a subsidy program.
(09:36):
And the fact that it's not sosuccessful at reducing the
amount of carbon dioxide in theatmosphere is is sort of
immaterial.
Dina Rasor (09:44):
And we do when we will, I'll talk about later but
we do have, you know, an episodeon the past failures. Then it's
what's what's amazing about itis that it is that It almost
more than half of the tech, thetechnology, the research money
(10:06):
for technology is going to go tocarbon capture more than
renewables more than renewables,which is astounding to me.
Because if you can makerenewables work, you don't have
to do this whole Kabuki dance ofpulling it out, you know,
building pipelines building iteverywhere, they say they're
(10:28):
going to sell it for otherthings than oil capture, oil
extraction. And it has it'sdominated and then in the end,
the Biden administration is justlike me, you know, and Secretary
of Energy and is just are justraw writing this and they're
(10:52):
just putting out the money, oh,the carbon capture. So you know,
we are sort of sitting theregoing, talking to people to say,
this isn't going to work. And sothey talk about, you know,
renewable energy and markets andthey make clear down to the
micro grids for small company, Iwas more small towns, just this
(11:14):
little town and Lexington,Oregon that just recently bought
a huge battery, and used windand solar to run their town from
the electricity and sell theexcess to power companies. So
besides Dr. House, and Dr.
Harvey, we have podcasts withMark Z. Jacobson, Stanford, very
impressive guy who studied 145countries and their power needs,
(11:38):
and believes that all of thesecountries, including the US can
transform only to renewableenergy doesn't need carbon
capture, or nuclear. And thelarge investment the world would
have to put in there worldwide,could be paid off in six years
because the renewables makemoney and make energy so cheap.
(11:59):
So we'll be watchdogging CCSbecause it failed in the past.
We have a podcast outlining thatwith Bob Bauman of all the
failures, and he's my formerinvestigative partner. And
during the Obama administration,they put out a lot of money 1.1
billion for tests things andthey failed. And they were
(12:21):
supposed to build a lovin ofthese plants, they built one,
only one actually opened andit's already closed, because
it's just this not economicallyviable. So we're also looking at
grassroots efforts. Mike Eisen,filled it from the San Juan
Alliance in Farmington, NewMexico, really impressive group
(12:44):
impressive guy. They had a coalplant that was supposed to be
retired, and this area has hadthis coal plant. And he actually
sent extracting coal to nearbyin this big power grid, just
polluting the hell out of theplace for years. And so they're
going to close it in comes ahedge fund, and says, Oh, we can
(13:08):
save this planet, it doesn'thave to close because we're
going to put carbon capture onit. And we're going to reap the
carbon credits. And you know, wewill be able to sell it and you
know, this and that it'll workand everything else. Well, this
is just ridiculous. Because, youknow, it's the dog chasing tail
again, you're, you could reach,you could change to something
(13:31):
else, this thing is going toshut down. It's already ancient
and polluting, and it does mynew carbon capture on those coal
plants. It does not remove thedangerous pollution that gives
people asthma, and otherterrible lung diseases and all
kinds of problems. benzene, youknow, I could go through coal
ash, I've stood on a call lashmountain, and I'm telling you,
(13:55):
it's toxic. So anyway, they theyworked against this hedge fund
and said, This is ridiculous. Wehave to close it, the hedge fund
finally realized that theycouldn't get anybody to invest
in it. So they thought they'dget government money coming in
the federal government moneythat's coming in, but then they
just gave up and left. So thethis little group along with
(14:17):
Indian tribes, they're reallywork to get it shut down. And
one of the things that one ofthe things we want to do is look
at groups like this and helppublicize their efforts, help
them investigate. So if you knowsome group like that, let us
(14:39):
know. We're going to keepworking with the
with the San Juan Alliance,we're spending the money, money
that we want to work withwhistleblowers and sources.
Greg Williams (14:53):
So I think something that's worth pointing
out about the San Juan Alliance,is that that's an example A
victory through localpersistence and local self
taught expertise. This is not agroup of people who have a lot
of money or a lot of academiccredentials. It's a bunch of
(15:14):
people who care about theircommunity have lived there for
many, many years. Understand thelocal zoning and and other laws.
And by sheer organizing and anddetermination managed to stop
this, this very ill consideredproject and another podcast
(15:36):
episode where we, where we talkabout that kind of grassroots
effort and grassroots triumphingover much better funded
organizations is one where wespeak with somebody from Marin
County energy, about CommunityChoice aggregation, and how they
overcame a very well fundedlocal utility company, namely
(16:00):
PGD, and succeeded in gettingresidents access to renewable
power at a time when VGA was wassaying that that was not
economically feasible.
Dina Rasor (16:14):
That's right. And one of the things they just got
me about the Farmington, NewMexico, the things that were
things I learned from talking toMike eyes and felt is that it
started as I think, as anindustry term, but now,
environmental, so picked it up,they call the areas where
(16:34):
they've had pollution going onfor years and years, you know,
poor, with poor people livingthere who can't really complain
because of the jobs and theyjust live in the pollution. They
call them the industries callthem sacrifice Jones zones, Oh,
these are sacrifice zones,they're heavily polluted. They
(16:55):
don't have people in it, that itcan protect themselves. And so
now, the second one Alliancewants to take this can Valley
that's been just creamed by, youknow, they dug up coal, they
burned coal, a lot of otherthings, and oil, and so heavily
(17:18):
polluted. Now they want to getfederal money to clean up the
pollution, and also get money totransfer to clean energy, such
as solar, because they have ahuge electric grid already there
to take out the power that wasdone for the coal plant, and
they can, solar is very good inthat part of the country. And
then they could change it tosolar and still have the
(17:40):
infrastructure to do it. Andthey're one of the things Biden
really made big in hisemployment money. He said, we're
going to, we're going to Cabottrickle down to environmental
justice, and emphasize peoplethat need to find more jobs, and
(18:00):
transfer them to learning aboutgiving them money to cook to
transfer to clean energy. Andthat always, that always sounds
great. But somehow, on things inthe past, I've seen money suck
at the top be sucked out at thetop, and not get down to the
people that actually made it. Sowe're going to be looking at
(18:22):
money designated NGOs,communities and see how
difficult it is to get. And ifthere's any bad actors, like
what's happened, what's happenedto COVID money, which $42
billion COVID, money stolen,okay, so this, this happens, and
it happens when you have to movequickly, like we do. But these
we want to try to make sure thatthese communities who have been
(18:46):
overlooked so long, actually getthe money and we'll be working
with will be working with theSan Juan Alliance on their
stuff. But I'd also say anysmall organization or group
activists want to come and comeand do a podcast with us or call
(19:06):
us and ask for help becausewe've done a lot of
investigations that is what wewill do. So
Greg Williams (19:16):
so another context in which community
action is it's been aninteresting part of these these
episodes is we had an interviewwith with Brittany Trang as a
recent graduate student whodiscovered a much more effective
much less costly means ofbreaking down so called Forever
chemicals in the classes of peefast and P FOSS. And the reason
(19:41):
that that's important to localcommunities is just about
anywhere there's there's anairport or someplace where
firefighting foam has been usedextensively. And, you know, we
have a great example just downthe river here and in Newburgh,
New York and in Princeton,Massachusetts, where my sister
lives there. These hugecontaminations with with
(20:06):
firefighting foam and pee fastand until recently that the best
you could do with this stuff istry to collect it and bury it or
somehow contain it. And theexciting thing about Brittany
trains work is she's figured outand began a whole field of study
around how you can takedifferent kinds of very
(20:29):
dangerous, very persistentchemicals. And without a lot of
energy without a lot of money.
You can not contain them, butliterally break them down and
turn them into cam chemicalsthat are that are essentially
not harmful ones that exist in,in the environment already and
don't pose any concerns forhuman or, or other life. And so
(20:52):
having scientists like that onthe on the podcast is always
interested in is alwaysinteresting in terms of just
improving our understanding ofhow these environmental issues
work.
Dina Rasor (21:08):
Yeah, I mean, she, she was a very interesting
interview, she's a graduatestudent, she's now turned to
journalism. She got her PhD, butshe, her professor said, you
know, there's a simple methodthat nobody pays attention to,
because I don't think it'llwork. But I want to try it. And
she's like, it won't work. Andso he said, but let's try it.
(21:29):
And it worked. And boy, I tellyou got the attention of
everybody because this, thischemical is called Forever
chemicals because they can'textract it out of the water and
soil. And now if they can breakit down, it'd be an payfast is
very dangerous. And it's allover the place. And I hate to
(21:49):
tell you that they used to putit in everything, you know, your
Teflon frying pan, your cookyour food and soft one time,
they said they put it on dentalfloss, so that it would make the
last slide easier because it'skind of a Teflon kind of
quality. And I thought, oh mygosh, it's one of those things
that you know, like, bestest,they have I mean, they put it in
(22:12):
everything. And then they foundout this is not good. So it,
this was a I love doinginterviews like that she's not
somebody that's, you know, wellknown. She's not in the usual
circles. And but on the otherhand, she made a she and her
professor made a breakthroughthat could really do that. And
(22:33):
we will be looking at pollutionas well as climate because what
we call Earth overreach. AndEarth overreach is finding out
how much is can the earthregenerate what we take out and
pulling
Greg Williams (22:48):
every year. So an episode. Yeah, an episode that
spoke pretty directly to thatwas the one in which we
interviewed Jeff Creek of theCarbon Cycle Institute. And he
wasn't describing so much anyparticular high tech method of
removing pollution so much as reenvisioning farming with, with a
(23:10):
focus on on the carbon cycle,and increasing the amount of
carbon that's retained in thesoil. And that is drawn out of
the atmosphere by whatever it isthat you're growing. And so it
doesn't require any particularlynew technology or techniques.
The techniques that he wasdescribing are ones that have
(23:30):
been in use for hundreds ofyears. But if you if you change
your focus from thinkingexclusively about how many
dollars of revenue can wegenerate through what we're what
we're growing to how can wemaximize the the carbon that's
retained in the soil, you canprofoundly change the equation
(23:52):
of commercial farming, you're,you're no longer using
petrochemicals to createfertilizers and pump them into
the ground and and then pull allthat carbon out in the in the
form of produce so that nothingis left in the soil, you can do
this all in a very closed loop.
Way, where if you just keepproducing food, keeping in mind
(24:15):
that the carbon cycle, you cansignificantly increase the
amount that's retained in thesoil. And I think he said that
something on the order of athird of the carbon that is now
in the atmosphere that we don'twant to be in the atmosphere is
now missing from the soilthrough the through the process
(24:36):
of industrial farming. And so ina while there isn't a
particularly fast way to do it.
We can't you know, snap ourfingers and install, you know,
some multibillion dollar carboncapture facilities to do this
but over time, if we move thatcarbon back from the atmosphere
into the soil, doing nothingother than changing the way we
(25:00):
Think about farming, we willhave solved about a third of the
the atmospheric carbon problem.
Dina Rasor (25:07):
And ironically, what he's that this area is not
getting very much funding. He'snot here he's, he's he's going
to look into grants and stuff.
But the amount of money that'sappropriated for this is
minuscule. Compared to othermisguided programs, you know,
programs like like carboncapture that just, you know,
it's just, it's a dog chasingits tail. And I'm we're looking
(25:30):
for I'm looking to try to do afuture podcast because the he
has farmers out there in MarionCounty, close to where I live,
and they do experimental farms.
And plan to, I want to plan toto visit those farms and talk to
the farmer and see how they doactually do it, and then move
(25:52):
out for future podcast, we cantalk about this and get more on
out because we think this issomething that's
underrepresented, run,underfunded, underrepresented,
represented. And also, but alsocould make a huge difference
that people are overlooking. Wealso have a two episodes on
(26:20):
something that I've worked onfor years. And that is, there is
a, there's two different laws,one is called the qui tam False
Claims Act law. And and then theother is this SEC whistleblower
program. And I've worked on quitam laws quick and cases for
years. And that's where you ifyou have knowledge, and it
(26:42):
doesn't matter if you're anemployee is you have to have
original knowledge. But if youhave knowledge that something is
going wrong, there, then you canfile a lawsuit on behalf of the
federal government. And with youknow, with obviously, these qui
tam lawyers, and if thegovernment decides not to do the
(27:04):
case, you can take it to thecourts yourself, although that's
hard to do, it is notimpossible. But what happens no
matter what happens, and usuallythe company settle, you get up
to 25% of the money that goesback to the federal government.
And so that, that woke up a lotof lawyers, when we passed, we
had it read read written in1986. Because people are started
(27:27):
thinking, hey, whistleblowerscan help me make money instead
of lose money. So we have onewith Josh, attorney, Josh, Josh,
for us. And he talked about thequi tam False Claims Act. And
it's quite a, it's quite deepand quite detailed in how he
(27:49):
thinks it could fit intoclimate. And then we had, you
know, Poppy, Poppy Alexander ofConstantine cannon, on new ideas
on how to use SEC whistleblowerproud program, it's really kind
of really interesting. And shesaid, instead of going after the
issue, that they're wastingmoney in fraud and waste, it's
(28:10):
hard to do. They all signedcontracts, and they have
contract clauses. Let's say.
You, you know, if you take thiscontract, you have all kinds of
environmental laws you'resupposed to pass to,
Greg Williams (28:29):
excuse me.
environmental laws with whichthey are promised to comply. And
so a big part of that are thethe fraud. A big part of the way
they're framing the fraud is bysaying that the company is
engaging this in this business,you know, let's say it's making
(28:51):
widgets, but they they'reclaiming that they will do so in
compliance with a series ofenvironmental laws. And so if
they don't comply, or if theycomply to a lesser degree, then
they're promising that fraud hasa value that can be you know,
the entire value of thecontract. And so you can sue
(29:12):
them for having defrauded thegovernment of that value.
Dina Rasor (29:20):
And then the SEC the yet and then the SEC can go
ahead and cancel and cancel thecancel the contract completely.
Not only just cancel thecontract and get the money back,
can I get the money back but tocancel the contract completely.
So this is a way that because alot if you're going to have a
(29:41):
polluting oriented company doingstuff, they're going to try to
skirt around these environmentallaws. And a lot of times it's
hard to prove that they're doingbut it's if you can prove that
they aren't following theseenvironmental laws. It has the
same effect of proving thatthey're doing fraud.
Greg Williams (30:00):
I think that the even more interesting aspect of
the SEC involvement that the CIIintroduced us to was the idea
that if you are promisingthrough your proxy statement,
your your annual report, as apublicly traded company that you
are engaging in so called ESGpractices in environmental,
(30:20):
social and governance issues,you are in a threat, in effect,
promising your share yourshareholders that you're doing
these things. And if you don't,in fact, live up to those
promises, you are defrauding allof the shareholders. And an
important function of theSecurities and Exchange
(30:40):
Commission is to make sure thatpublicly traded stocks are
publicly traded lawfully andwithout fraud. And so they've
figured out that you can goafter a company for the entire
change in market capitalization.
So if a company increases itsits overall value by billions of
(31:01):
dollars, in part by defraudingits shareholders, by not
actually fulfilling the ESGpromises they make, once again,
the SEC can go after them forthat. And if you bring this to
the attention of the SEC, theSEC, he chooses not to follow up
on it, you as a private citizencan potentially go after them
(31:22):
for those huge amounts of money.
Dina Rasor (31:27):
Yeah, and then it's sort of like, you know, the
classic thing is saying, how didthey catch el Cal Al Capone, tax
fraud, something that wascompletely a side bar that he
did, because they could neverprove that he hired hits or
anything, but sometimes you haveto just go and get them on a
technicality. And I was reallyexcited because I think this
(31:48):
could be an area and we havethese two really bright lawyers
in. And it's the both episodesare really interesting. They're
I mean, I'm amazed on how, howgood they are.
Greg Williams (32:05):
So in another area of public engagement, we
had a great interview with EliotNegan, of the Union of Concerned
Scientists, and he was sharingwith us is the research that
he's done over many years aboutthe Koch brothers, and other
supportive Alec, and how Alecproduces so called template
(32:32):
legislation, which they then useto get different state and
municipal governments to to passbusiness friendly laws that may
be very lenient, and may be verydeceptive in terms of how they
deal with environmentalprotection and and climate
change. And while I understoodthat, that was an effective way
(32:55):
to funnel money in the directionof business friendly
legislation, I had no idea. Ithink there were two things that
were a revelation to me. One isjust how thinly staffed state
legislators are I mean, Dina andI both have a lot of experience
dealing with federallegislators. And we've always
(33:17):
known that senators have muchbigger staffs than then
representatives. But you getdown to the state level, and
they may have no staff, youknow, no legislative assistants,
and in those cases, when, whenan organization like Alec shows
up, and they have expertwitnesses, they have pre written
legislation, they have marketingmaterials, it's just very easy
(33:41):
to go ahead and go that route.
It's a way to, to relativelyeasily show your effectiveness
at a legislator without havingto put anywhere near the effort
into it that that you wouldotherwise have two
Dina Rasor (33:56):
Yeah, and, and Alec is, it's called the American
Legislative Exchange Council.
It's actually a nonprofitorganization being gets tax
deduction, and they justblatantly push legislation which
is not really allowed. And I'vealways wondered how they could
go years and years without theIRS investigating them, because
(34:16):
I've run a non some nonprofitsand so it's Greg and you just
can't get away with that kind ofstuff. So then also, Greg,
didn't they you also talkedabout the Koch brothers money
and influence. When you whenyou're doing Elliott, Meghan,
guess
Greg Williams (34:38):
how they made their money in the oil
extraction business? And howover the years that they've
found a wide variety of ways offunding that model into
political influence, culminatingin Alec, but certainly with many
other methods as well and Iencourage anyone who's
(34:59):
interested in learning moreabout that either go to two
negatives material on the Unionof Concerned Scientists website
or go to our website, listen tothat, that apps that episode and
follow some of the links in thein the introduction that we
have.
Dina Rasor (35:15):
I missed that episode because I was on my
COVID holiday. Greg did a goodjob of holding down the fort.
And one of our first interviewswas with Bill McKibben, and is
really one of the mainstreamguys. He's been working on this
for 2530 years. And I can'timagine, I mean, I worked on the
(35:38):
Pentagon too. And so I know howyou feel like Sisyphus in Iraq,
but he, there's nothing hedoesn't know. And he started
this new group called third actfor older people like me to work
on climate. And so climate wisemoney watchdog is my third act,
there's no doubt about that. Andso he has set it up so that
(36:04):
people that know how to orpeople that have been through
the 60s and 70s, know how toorganize and do all those kinds
of things, to try to change,make change. These are the
people that passed, you know,the original Earth Day,
legislations and things likethat, and, and the EPA, which by
(36:24):
the way, Richard Nixon started,a lot of people don't know that.
So, but he, he really is able toboil it down after all the years
and cut through all the crap.
And he recently wrote an articlein The Atlantic magazine, which
I would recommend you take alook at. But the title alone
(36:44):
stopped me in my tracks. And Iactually wrote him and said, you
should make a bumper sticker outof this title. Because one of
the things that's frustrated meover the years is that and I've
seen not just environment butenvironment too. They want to
write policy papers. And it'sgreat to have a policy paper,
(37:04):
nobody reads it. And in this dayand age, the other side has
learned to talk in jargon, andbumper sticker, but they spoke
Bush sticker speak. And so wehave to simplify what the
situation is. And the title ofthis, of this magazine was
article was called The Earth ison fire, stop burning things.
(37:26):
And that just squares it up, youknow, in other words, you're
trying to do CCS, where you'reburning things, you know. And so
anything that requires us toburn, even if we carbon capture,
capture the carbon out of it,which we can't completely is
contributing to this, and theonly thing that's going to work
(37:49):
is to stop burning things. Andthat basically means, you know,
natural gas, oil, coal, there'sno such thing as clean coal. And
that's the stall PR and get pastthe PR that they can somehow
keep burning oil or fossil fuelsand stop this and and protect
(38:12):
the environment, which theycan't. And so whenever you sit
there and hear about all the newthings that are going on,
remember Bill McKibbenMcKinnon's thing, the Earth is
on fire stop burning things. Infact, I really am going to ask
(38:35):
him if I can make a bumpersticker about that.
Greg Williams (38:42):
So I hear again, this probably another good
opportunity to mention Jenattenti and marine clean energy
and the whole topic of CommunityChoice aggregators. Which use
you've studied for
Dina Rasor (38:56):
years. Yeah, I studied it years ago. And it's
the same kind of things going onin four or five other states.
They call it separately, butCalifornia passed the law that
you are developing what theycall Community Choice
aggregators. Not a good title.
But it's to locally developedpublic entities that can buy
clean energy and send it to theexisting power grid. In each
(39:19):
community and cough in the inthe CCA is run by local
officials from each countyboard. So MCE doesn't call
themselves marine clean energyanymore because they were so
successful. They went frommarine county to and now they
substitute into Berkeley alsorido a whole bunch of counties
(39:41):
so we know where I live, andthat they're actually my energy
provider. And it has aninteresting history because as
soon as California passed thislaw, Pacific Gas and Electric
the power the power company whomakes power and also owns the
grid has been had been trying totry to kill it right off the
(40:07):
bat. They've been around since1905. They don't used to be a
competition. And so they backedup a California proposition to
basically put in poison pill tokill the the effectiveness of
these aggravators. And they putin $14 million. This was seven
or eight years ago, that was aquite a bit. And they the
(40:28):
aggregators could organizationsare public, and they could not
protect themselves from this,this political, this political
proposition. But
Greg Williams (40:47):
it's probably important to emphasize that
we're not talking about publiclytraded companies, we're talking
about organizations that aregoverned by boards that are
comprised entirely of electedofficials. So they are quasi
government organizations thatare prohibited from lobbying the
way a private company can. Yeah.
Dina Rasor (41:10):
So the environment, there are a bunch of
environmental groups cobbledtogether $100,000. And they beat
them. It's what I call a veryErin Brockovich type victory
because she took on PG and none, two. And so PG and E is it
drives them nuts, but they'reforced to uneasy to take the
(41:31):
aggregators, to customers, letthem use their power grid lines.
And the there's the CCA is whenthey're in a community, they
tend to be you know, 100 100%clean energy, and you know, it
easy to make. So when I get mybill, it's a very interesting
(41:52):
library bill, I get charged byMCE on the power that I use,
which is all completelyrenewable. And but I also get a
bill from PG and E, which PJnews store has put it all in one
on how much it costs to have thepower go through the lines. And
(42:15):
they have now made it where theycan compete with pg&e on price
or beat them. So it Beijing isnot happy about it. But they
can't do anything about it inthat there's a bunch of them
popping up in California andother parts of the country. So
that's very interesting. I thinkanother great local, what you
(42:38):
can do locally, to then andsmall, not having a big huge
power company, which you cannot,which by the way is private, and
you cannot it's very hard tofight. So the other thing I
wanted to bring up is that, youknow, we've been, we've been
(42:59):
dumping on CCS pretty hard,because we we just don't we just
don't see the case for it. Butif there's people who don't
agree with our podcasts on CCA sor any other issue, we'd be
happy to do cockpit podcast withthem. Because we're not scared
of you know, somebody wants todebate us. It says right now we
(43:21):
were we've just beeninvestigating and looking at
what is there and what what isand what we see that has worked
and what we have done someinvestigation, see that things
that have failed. I quitefrankly, don't see how you could
ever get the permits to buildthe pipelines that you need to
do to do CCS. That's anotherarea that we've been looking at.
(43:45):
And we had, we want to also tryto get state and local groups,
efforts, through groups to helpus do podcasts on their efforts.
And if there's any sources andwhen it come to us and remain
anonymous, Greg and I have a lotof experience working with local
groups that groups any andwelcome anybody contact us. We
also have worked years withanonymous sources and protected
(44:09):
them with and kept themanonymous. And I've never had
anyone caught fired. And I'vebeen doing it for 42 years.
dating myself, but we know howto protect people. When you want
to contact us we have ways youcan contact us safely. And so
(44:31):
the money is going out the door.
The money is going out the door.
There's a lot of money beingspent, it's being spent very
quickly. And quite frankly, wehaven't seen any organization
that's dedicated just to watchthe money and boy tell you, you
have this much money and youhave this much people it isn't
all a bunch of, you know, purein the faith environmental
(44:56):
startups that are doing it withthis kind of money. You're Going
to start getting in a lot ofinfluence. And that's already
happened. Big, big fossil fuelhas already gotten in there that
are going to be getting carboncredits. And they're going to be
doing CCS development. And so wewant to watch the please if you
(45:24):
know sort of see something, takesomething, they say the money is
going out the door. And we knowhow to do investigations on
that. And we know how topublicize them. So that's kind
of we've been talking aboutevery single podcast we've done.
But the ones that justabsolutely stood out to us that
(45:45):
we thought was the mostinteresting. So take a look at
any of these that you'reinterested in. And if you
disagree with us, come on, ifyou have something new Come on,
if you want to talk about doingsomething anonymously, fine. If
you think you have a qui tamcase or SEC case, fine. We've
looked at that and we know howto get you over protected to
(46:09):
attorneys that we know.
We don't We only refer people toattorneys we know are going to
do a good job.
Greg Williams (46:18):
So this probably a good time to to remind our
listeners that we are anonprofit, nonpartisan
organization and we do not takeany kind of sponsorships or
corporate contributions. Wedepend entirely on contributions
from individuals. And when weencourage you to contact us, if
(46:42):
you go to our website at climatemoney watchdog.org You will find
email addresses and other waysto communicate with us on a
completely secure and encryptedbasis. So that you don't need to
reveal your identity to us. Soagain, we encourage you to visit
us at climate money watchdog.orgAnd thanks again for being our
(47:06):
listeners and we hope to see youat our next episode.
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