In August 1971, tobacco lobbyist Lewis Powell was chatting with his friend Gene Sydnor, education chair for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, about what the two perceived as an attack on American business and, by extension, democracy as a whole. They agreed that while there were many intersecting drivers of the 1960s backlash against American corporations, the nexus of all of it really was college campuses. Sydnor asked Powell to summarize his thoughts on the issue, and what corporate interests should do to set things right, in a memo, and Powell dutifully complied. In his 

, he laid out how university campuses and firebrand thought leaders like Ralph Nader (he really had a bee in his bonnet about Nader) were attacking the free enterprise system and ruining the country.

To confront this issue, Powell suggested that American corporations, with the support of the U.S. Chamber, mount a multi-pronged campaign that included: installing conservative faculty on as many campuses as possible, especially in social science departments; demanding that universities host as many conservative as liberal speakers in the name of academic freedom, and applying "both private and public pressure" to make this happen; auditing and editing textbooks to ensure a pro-business slant; requesting that business schools train future executives in how to deal with this problem and protect the reputation of free enterprise; and using the courts—filing amicus briefs and cases—to affect social, economic and political change. The memo was shared with Chamber leadership who were enthusiastic about the potential for the plan Powell laid out. Although it was confidential, Powell's memo was leaked when, a few months later, he was nominated to the Supreme Court.

It has often been referenced in the years since as the genesis of the conservative movement's approach to building power over the last several decades, which is probably attributing more influence to it than it had. Nonetheless, it's hard not to see the world we all live in today typed out in courier font in Powell's mem0. It's especially hard to avoid thinking of the Powell memo as we watch executives and politicians, administrators and police lose their damn minds over campus protests in solidarity with Gaza this week.

For me, after working for the past 18 months or so on a series about the global crackdown on climate protest, it's also hard not to see parallels between the campus crackdowns and the push to criminalize protest more broadly. Particularly when I look at 

 introduced by Texas Senator John Cornyn last week: it would revoke the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit thought to be "supporting terrorism," and Cornyn and his co-sponsor Angus King (I-ME) claim it's necessary to stop funds flowing from U.S. organizations to Hamas. Lest we ever miss a chance to turn a war into an excuse to strip citizens of their rights. Financing terrorism is, of course, already illegal and there are plenty of laws on the books to deal with it. This one would just make it really easy to accuse any organization of "supporting terror." It's the same type of law we've seen used to shut down civil society groups and repress climate and social justice activists in Mozambique, India, and the Philippines. As in those places, the only function it would serve here is to further repress free speech, something Cornyn and his old pal Ted Cruz supposedly care so much about preserving.

What we're seeing in the reaction to U.S. protests against the Gaza genocide—from the campus arrests to the TikTok ban to this ridiculous new law to "counter terrorism"—runs absolutely counter to the First Amendment; it's part of what we've been calling the 

free speech threat. To put an even finer point on it: it's fascism. People really balk at the use of that word, but I don't use it lightly. I'm genuinely not sure what other word one would use to describe a university president calling the police to arrest their students for peaceful protest, a government trying to shut down a media channel because it can't control it, or a law that makes it easy to brand any civil society group a terrorist organization and shut it down.

It's important in times like these to remember 

 campus protest in particular has stuck in the craw of corporate and conservative America for so long: because it is galvanizing. It's effective. It breeds solidarity. It's inspiring. And probably most importantly, it's empowering. It reminds us all that we should stand up for what's right, too. That all it takes is being willing to show up, maybe bring a tent, yell a bit, paint a sign, and most people can do that. And in fact it is our right to do that, a right people fought long and hard to give us, and one that we shouldn't squander because look at how quickly it is slipping away.

People whose continued power and wealth hinge on being able to behave badly with impunity—to pollute the commons for personal gain, to fund a genocide for political gain, to lock people up just for saying things they don't like—go absolutely ballistic when confronted with the moral clarity of bright young people prepared to sacrifice their personal comfort for the greater good. Is that reductive? Maybe a bit. It's also true.

You can get this newsletter delivered straight to your inbox every week! 

I've been hearing from people for a while that the Drilled feed starts to feel a bit cluttered when we drop newsy episodes and author interviews in there, and after a lengthy battle we've finally reclaimed the Hot Take feed, so...this week we launched a new podcast there. It's called Spill and it will feature regular climate news, interviews with creatives in the climate space (authors, filmmakers and so forth), and a monthly conversation between myself and my former Hot Take co-host Mary Annaïse Heglar about whatever we're fired up about at the moment. Our first episode dropped on Earth Day! You can check it out here and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts (and we'll keep the Drilled feed for narrative seasons only from here on out).

Reporting Update: Joanna Smith Sentenced to 60 Days in Jail + $7000 fine + 150 hours of Community Service for Climate Protest

Joanna Smith, the activist we profiled in our Real Free Speech Threat series, who drew with finger paint on the glass display case surrounding a Degas statue at the National Gallery last April, was sentenced today to 60 days in jail after pleading guilty to "injuring National Gallery property." Setting aside the absurdity of the phrase "injuring property," Judge Amy Berman Jackson took the opportunity to lecture Smith, whose protest she characterized as “narcissism”, “hubris”, “selfish”, “reckless”, “self-indulgent”, and “pointless”, while failing to acknowledge the crisis at hand. The director of the National Gallery, Kaywin Feldman, stressed the gallery’s mission to preserve art forever, unintentionally reinforcing the whole point of the protest: that we can't protect anything "forever" if we won't act to preserve a livable planet. Upon her release, Smith will be required to conduct 150 hours of community service and will be on supervised probation for two years.

First, a note: There are fewer and fewer of these stories to choose from. I remember as recently as a year ago it was actually tough to whittle it down to five; now I often feel like I'm casting about to flesh out this list. The decimation of media in general has resulted in a 

reduction in climate stories, particularly in accountability or investigative reporting. That makes the work we're doing here at Drilled even more important. 

Please consider supporting it if you're able!

The Wall Street Journal called oil and gas a "sunset industry" this week. Justin Mikulka spotted it and highlighted why it's such a 

 deal in his excellent newsletter, in a piece called 

"The EPA's Carbon Crackdown Is Finally Here"

The EPA finally finalized its power plant rules and thankfully the energy wonks at Heat Map are here to walk us through the ins and outs of how these rules will reduce emissions and what they mean for the future of coal and gas.

Wake-up call’: pipeline leak exposes carbon capture safety gaps, advocates say 

by Nina Lakhani for The Guardian. A terrifying story when you consider that the fossil fuel industry, and Exxon in particular, is banking on carbon capture as its get-out-of-jail-free card for the next several decades.

EU votes to leave energy treaty as green rules pushed through 

by Alice Hancock for the FT. The European Parliament passed strong climate legislation this week despite major political and industry opposition. It will be 

 interesting to see how this plays out over the rest of the year and how it impacts companies headquartered elsewhere but doing business in and with Europe.

Fellow Freelancers: Don’t Marry Rich, Organize!

 - by Amy Littlefield for The Nation. When news went digital, most outlets transitioned the bulk of their staff to freelance reporters, making life unstable for the vast majority of journalists and thus news, particularly new in the public interest, unstable. All of which makes democracy unstable! In this piece Littlefield offers an alternative to the "marry rich or have a trust fund" advice most freelancers get: organize and build solidarity. (

If you're wondering what this has to do with climate, I can currently count on one hand the number of climate reporters I know who have full-time salaries

This Week’s Newsletters: Campus Protests, Climate Crackdowns, and More

This episode contains depictions of police violence, explosions and injuries.

There is also some medical content. Please take care as you listen

 Ouais qui je suis? Ben Nathalie Duval, Hein? Hein,

 In 2018, Nathalie Duval was living in a small town near the Loire Valley in central France. It’s known for its rich history and landscape… Its picturesque vineyards and castles. Nathalie and her town are working class. She’s a mother of five and a grandmother, and at the time she was working a temp job at the post office, sorting the mail. Things were always tight. She never seemed to have enough money to take care of everyone.

 ma ma vie ressemblait comme tout le monde, hein? hein?

My life was like that of everyone, right?

This is Nathalie – speaking through a voice actor.

Euh, à un peuple lambda, tout simplement hein, je travaille, j'élève mes enfants.

en fin de compte c'est travaille, consomme et ferme ta gueule.

Like the average person, I simply work and raise my kids. At the end of the day, you just have to work, consume and shut your mouth.

 The working class is always struggling, but this particular moment was especially hard.

French president Emmanuel Macron was newly elected at the time. And while so many people were struggling to make ends meet…he told people that it was 

 fault they couldn’t make it work. That if someone really wanted to find a job…all they had to do was cross the street and go look for one. And that 

At the same time…the price of everything was going up…food, clothes…and gas. Which Nathalie needed to get to work everyday. It was more than living paycheck to paycheck…it was shift to shift. She could only afford to get 10 or 20 euros worth of gas – or petrol – at a time.

So when Nathalie heard that there was going to be a new tax on fuel? She was furious. She was worried about climate change -- but she also wanted to be able to pay her bills. So she decided to go to a protest in her town.

 j'allais dans des manifs. Mais voilà, c'était pas c'est pas des des manifs qui me touchaient réellement. donc euh, là là, quand je suis sorti, oui, c'était pour le carburant, parce que là, ça touchait tout le monde. C'était pas trois, quatre personnes dehors, c'étaient des milliers de dehors c'est ça qui était beau.

I was going to protests -- but they weren’t protests that really affected me. So that time, when I went out, yes, it was for the petrol, because it affected everyone. It wasn’t three or four people out, it was thousands. That’s what was beautiful

 Nathalie was going with her son, Mickael, who is in his thirties and also had a temp job as a postal worker. Together, they’d suit up in these - bright - yellow - vests - and head to the streets – where they’d meet up with a sea of protestors…ALL wearing - bright - yellow - vests -.

They’re the kind you might see construction workers wearing. In France, everyone has to keep one in their car. If they break down, or if they have some kind of emergency, they put it on.

And in a symbolic sign of collective distress…the yellow vest has become the distinctive uniform for this ragtag group of protesters. In fact they’re now simply known as: The Yellow Vests. Les Gilets Jaunes.

Nous les gilets jaunes, on se battait pour le carburant sans carburant, on ne peut pas travailler, on ne travailler, on n'a pas d'argent. on d'argent, on fait comment pour faire vivre les enfants? on fait comment pour payer nos factures?

Us Yellow Vests, we were fighting for petrol, because without petrol you can’t go to work, and without work you don’t have money. Without money, how do you provide for the kids? How do you pay your bills?

The Yellow vest protests started as a reaction to a rise in fuel prices. So at the beginning…they were supported by notorious climate deniers… like Donald Trump. And they got a reputation for being opposed to climate action. But in fact, most of the Yellow Vests actually wanted better climate policies… they just didn’t want to do it at the expense of the working class.

And quickly, their demands came to be about much more: social justice… taxing the rich, environmental policies that don’t leave workers behind…  and… ultimately, getting the President to resign.

The movement is made up of mostly working class people, who live away from large urban centres. People who bear the brunt of the cost of living crisis and rely heavily on their cars. So…they protest by occupying roundabouts. There, you can see people from all over the political spectrum -- far-right, far-left, and people who refused to vote at all. And a lot of these protesters were women. Women like Nathalie.

At first, when Nathalie and Mickael went to all of these demonstrations… for higher wages… against pension reform… for workers rights… they expected pushback from the police. That’s because they were seeing so many officers, in riot gear, deployed for the protests. They’d brought single-doses of saline solution in their bags to wash tear gas away from their eyes -- just in case.

Instead, the police seemed indifferent, even benevolent at times. It almost seemed like they were on the side of the protesters.

 j'avais été une manif à Paris je sais plus laquelle c'est et sur une manif à Paris. Il y d'un côté tous les tous les CRS et de l'autre côté il y avait aussi des CRS et tout côté droit. Je me rappelle les CRS, ils avaient enlevé leurs casques et ils nous souriaient, ils faisaient rien du tout, rien du tout, quoi. ils étaient là, ils ne bougeaient pas, ils nous surveillaient quoi

I went to a protest in Paris - I can’t remember which one anymore. At this protest in Paris, on one side you had all of the riot police, and they had taken off their helmets, and they were smiling at us. They weren’t doing anything, they weren’t moving, they were just watching us.

Ils avaient le bouclier à la main, leur casque dans les mains. J’ai dit bravo à vous, pour une fois, ça fait plaisir. On s'est dit tiens, ils ne sont pas tous pareils.

They had their shield in one hand, their helmet in the other. I said well done to you, for once, that was nice. We thought -- huh, maybe they’re not all the same

 ils avaient enlevé leur casque comme pour vous dire, vous n'avez pas à avoir peur de nous?

They had taken their helmets off as if to say -- you don’t have to be scared of us?

 Over the next few months, the protests kept getting bigger. Until eventually it wasn’t just thousands…but 

 of people descending on the streets every weekend. [beat]

And the police were not as supportive as that first experience Nathalie described. At all.

The French police were systematically using force, and illegally corRAHling protesters. Dozens of people were blinded by rubber bullets and at least five had their hands ripped off by tear gas grenades. But this didn't deter Mickael and Nathalie.

Over the years, the protests became a way of life for them. They made lots of friends in the Yellow Vests. By March 2023, they’d been to dozens of these demonstrations. So when they found out about one against the privatisation of water in this small town called Sainte-Soline…it made sense that they’d go.

Mickael got out of his night shift, he took a power nap, and then a friend picked him up to go meet the rest of their group. Nathalie had her own late shift the night before, and she was exhausted. So before Mickael walked out the door, she said the thing that any parent would say to their kid…

Mickael and his friends drove two hours to Sainte-Soline. When they got there, the police stopped them and checked their car. Then they let them through to this big, open field where the protest was taking place.

At home, Nathalie was easing into her morning after her long night shift. She was drinking her cappuccino and had the TV on in the background. And then out of the corner of her eye…she noticed something unsettling… Clashes between the police and protesters. [beat/pause] There was tear gas and people in gas masks and smoke billowing from torched police cars

She tried calling Mickael… but he didn't answer. Which isn’t that unusual for him…

 Mickaël et son téléphone, c'est tout un art, il en perd tout le temps, à chaque fois qu'il va manifester

Mickael and his phone… it’s a whole thing. He always loses one, every time he goes to a protest

 Eventually she managed to get through to one of his friends. When she talked to Mickael, he said they'd just parked the car. They could see protesters in the distance, but they were still far from the reservoirs. They decided to go in anyway. From where they stood, it didn't look that bad, and they had come all this way. So Nathalie told him again, just in case...

 tu fais attention, il me fait je fais attention maman promis OK, d'accord

I said be careful, he said yes mum, I promise I’ll be careful, I said ok, fine

Mickael and his friends start walking towards the crowd. It’s a big field, and there are cars parked all around them. New groups of demonstrators are still arriving from all sides in their rain boots. They can see different convoys making their way to the reservoir, and they decide to follow one of them.

And then, as they get closer, they start seeing what Nathalie just saw...

[beat/pause + news clip as a transition?]

Around 1PM, a national news network announced that two protesters were in critical condition.

And under her breath, she started repeating to herself, like a slow, soft prayer :

pourvu qu'il n'y ait pas mon fils, pourvu qu'il n'y ait pas mon fils, pourvu qu'il n'y a mon fils

Please let it not be my son. Let it not be Mickael.

I’m Anna Pujol-Mazzini and this is Drilled: The Real Free Speech Threat.

France prides itself on being a country of protest. After all -- that’s how we got rid of the monarchy and why we have workers’ rights -- and it wasn’t always peaceful. But over the years, protest has gotten more dangerous, and the government started using anti-terror laws to target climate activists. Then, everything came to a head over one bloody weekend, in March 2023.

At the same time that Nathalie and Mickael and the yellow vests were taking to the streets … there was 

 movement rising up in Europe. One that was staging dramatic climate protests in London – blocking bridges, jumping onto trains during rush hour and glueing themselves to the gates of Buckingham Palace – all in an attempt to force the government to take action on climate policy. Their name:

[news montage of reporters saying “Extinction Rebellion”]

While the yellow vests were mostly working class people from rural areas… Extinction Rebellion was largely middle class, college-educated activists in cities – people who could get away with taking big risks.

“Face à l’extinction -- la rebellion! Face à l’extinction -- la rebellion!” 

This is Alice. Well – I’m going to call her Alice, for her own protection.

Alice spent her childhood moving around, mostly in France. But wherever they settled, Alice and her family would take long nature walks, trying to guess the names of the birds, or taking pictures of the landscape.

Now she’s in her mid-thirties, she’s an engineer with a master’s degree, and she’s been a climate activist for much of her life. She spent years signing petitionS, handing out flyers, going to protests and volunteering abroad. But she got frustrated : the climate crisis was looming, and she felt like she was doing too little… that things weren’t moving fast enough.

So in late 2018, when she heard about Extinction Rebellion…she decided she wanted to bring their tactics to France. And she wasn’t alone. With about a hundred other people, she started a chapter in Paris. And pretty soon…

 We started occupying for more than a week one of the sort of central public square in Paris, and it just happened really smoothly.

And the authorities weren’t sure how to respond. They’d basically never seen this sort of protest before… One that was so big, and flashy, and so ripe for media coverage.

And what we knew at the time, um, is that there was a conflict between the socialist mayor of Paris, and then the head of the police department in, in Paris, and, um, where the mayor wasn't going to Um, actively say that she was against, uh, uh, climate, uh, militants and the climate movement.

So that was kind of the first time where you could really feel that there was going to be a fracture between police and then, uh, a mayor or president or prime minister.

 The movement grew quickly to dozens of local chapters with thousands of members. They weren’t just in Paris, but also in smaller cities like Strasbourg and Bordeaux and Annecy. And lots of people were taking notice. Including… the police…

 the more... Occupation and actions, uh, the more we were also infiltrated by, um, surveillanc

 Just two years later, Extinction Rebellion and yellow vest activists like Mickaël were showing up together, marching side by side at Saint-Soline. Which…might sound really surprising to anyone who knows anything about the climate movement. That unity didn't just happen.

In January 2021, hundreds of people came together… there were old anti-nuclear activists… some farmers’ unions… and younger activists from Extinction Rebellion and the like.

They gathered in a makeshift community hall in a wetland area called Notre-Dame-des-Landes to create a new, more integrated movement.

Notre-Dames-des-Landes is a historic place for climate activism.

In the 2000s, hundreds of people moved to the area to try and stop the construction of a new airport.

They built an entire town made out of wood – complete with houses, a bakery, and shops…  And they lived there. It became a sort of social experiment.

, a zon to defend. And since then, dozens have sprouted across France. The government is so concerned that it put together a special unit to prevent their expansion. It’s a team of legal experts that helps local officials dismantle these zones as soon as they pop up.

And in this place… all these activists from very different movements, some of which had historically clashed over class and ideological differences… they decided to create a coalition of grassroots groups from all across the country, under one banner: Les Soulèvements de la Terre. The Earth Uprisings.

Their slogan: we are the earth defending itself.

In their founding text, one of the things they emphasized was that they want to get rid of the class divide that has plagued the climate movement – not just in France but all over the world. They wrote: "We do not believe in a two-tiered climate activism in which a minority prides itself on eating organic and driving a hybrid SUV while the majority is stuck in jobs they don't want to do, long daily commutes, and low-cost food."

Their goals were to take back the land from polluting industries... occupy and disarm ecocidal projects... and bring everyone together…  the farmers… the unions… the urban social justice organizers, the anarchist groups, and the people fighting against projects in their own backyards.

They decided to focus on one issue in particular: water. Which is how we end up with Mickael heading to the Sainte-Soline protest in 2023.

Across France, there are these things called “mega-basins” being built. They’re huge reservoirs that capture and store groundwater in the winter… so that farmers can irrigate their fields during summer droughts.

Thanks in part to climate change, France has just been through back to back droughts…including our first ever winter drought last year.

The problem is… pumping water from underground actually makes droughts 

. And… the reservoirs can only be used by a handful of large agribusinesses, which are mainly focused on corn fields and other irrigation plants for export. Activists say the megabasins are effectively privatising water and putting small, more sustainable farmers out of business.

 so the sort of movement against these had been growing over the months and And and I guess it became a real realization for a lot of people, what the fight for water meant and access to water. And so I think that kind of resonated for a lot of people. And it meant that a lot of people came from all over France.

 The first big protest was organised at the site of one of the basins in October 2022 in Sainte-Soline – just five months before Mickael went there with his friends. It's a small village in western France of about 600 people… Thousands showed up.

 des modes opératoires qui relèvent je n'ai pas peur de le dire, de l'éco-terrorisme que nous devons absolument combattre.

 That’s French interior minister, Gerald Darmanin. He said: the protestors used “methods which, I am not afraid to say it, amount to eco-terrorism, which we absolutely must fight.”

It was really unusual to hear a French government official use the word “terrorism” to talk about climate activists.

 And so the more the actions went on over the months, the more people would actually come. And because it's over the weekend, it means that a lot of people can travel to spend a few days there.

 Five months later, activists re-convened in Saint-Soline. People gathered in the fields on Friday night for discussions… shared meals… an evening of fun before the big day. Hundreds of brightly coloured tents popped up around the activists' camp.

 You had a lot of families and of people coming from all over France, of farmers unions political movements a lot of people who were not essentially in climate movements, but heard of what was going on and so would come there also as their first big action or yeah mass actions.

Transcription

In France, the unthinkable has happened for polluting industries: the working-class Yellow Vest movement, racial equity movements, and progressive climate activists have joined forces in a multi-racial, cross-class coalition called Earth Uprisings. The response has been shockingly violent and extreme. Reporter Anna Pujol-Mazzini takes us there.

Sainte-Soline, the Government Effort to Disband a Movement in France, and the Radical Solidarity of the Earth Uprisings

The Real Free Speech Threat

Information Pollution

Petrostates

Mad Men

In the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, both climate litigation and climate activism were listed, for the first time, as ways to potentially mitigate climate change (in other words, actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions, thereby mitigating eventual climate impacts). "Climate litigation is growing and can affect the outcome and ambition of climate governance," Chapter 13 in the IPCC mitigation report notes. Elsewhere in the chapter, it adds: "Activism, including litigation, as well as the tactics of protest and strikes, have played a substantial role in pressuring governments to create environmental laws and environmental agencies tasked with enforcing environmental laws that aimed to maintain clean air and water in countries around the world."

That report, released in 2022, cited more than 1800 climate cases making their way through courts around the world. That number has only increased as citizens, fed up with their governments' refusal to act to prevent the dangers posed by climate change, take to the courts. It's worth keeping tabs on climate litigation as it continues to represent one of the most powerful ways to hold companies and governments accountable for inaction on climate, and this month has brought a whole raft of climate litigation news.

Back in March, the Honolulu climate case became the latest climate liability case to be pitched to the U.S. Supreme Court for appeal. Fossil fuel companies have been arguing for years that these cases belong in federal rather than state court, and that argument has been solidly rejected by circuit court judges around the country. In their petition for cert to the Supreme Court, the fossil fuel defendants argue two things, one directly and the other indirectly. First, they argue—as many have before them—that federal law preempts these state-level claims. In other words, they argue that the federal government has laws on the books, namely the Clean Air Act, that it could use to regulate greenhouse gas pollution and that trumps these state-level claims. To put a finer point on it, they argue that because the Hawaii Supreme Court's take on this question—that actually because both federal and state law have failed to address this type of pollution, the plaintiffs had no choice 

 to file suit—conflicts with a ruling from the 2nd Circuit in New York a few years ago, in a very different sort of case focused on financial disclosures around climate change, which found that federal law preempted state-level arguments, the Supreme Court should take this question up and provide a final decision. This is generally a pretty appealing argument to the U.S. Supreme Court; its primary job is to be the final arbiter when two circuits, or a circuit court and a state supreme court disagree. The other argument is not explicit, but subtly woven throughout. It's one we've talked about here at Drilled quite a bit over the years and while generally I'm loathe to read between the lines of a court document, when it's written by one of the country's top First Amendment lawyers (Ted Boutrous) who happens to work at the firm that argued and won the money-as-speech case that opened the floodgates to dark money in politics (Gibson Dunn, Citizens United), and it repeatedly cites "marketing speech," I can't help but think about the industry's decades-long effort to expand legal protections for corporate free speech.

 on that history that you should go listen to, but suffice it to say beginning in the 1970s the fossil fuel industry has argued the importance of protecting corporate speech as fundamental to protecting the free flow of ideas in the "marketplace of ideas." In a 

 in the Nike v Kasky case, for example, ExxonMobil argued that when a company is addressing an issue of public concern (and it explicitly cites "global climate change" as an example), such speech "merits the 

 of First Amendment protection and is entitled to the same 'breathing space' as speech on matters of public concern by other speakers." [emphasis mine]. In several of the ongoing climate liability cases, oil company lawyers have argued that anything these companies have ever said about climate change was in the interest of shaping policy, which makes it "petitioning speech," and thus protected by the First Amendment. I suspect that if the Supreme Court takes up the Honolulu case, we'll hear that argument again. Most legal analysts I've spoken with have said they can't imagine the court would ever agree to blur the line so thoroughly between fraud and speech, but forgive me if I think the words "the Supreme Court would never" are utterly meaningless in today's world.

Which brings me to another drum I've been banging for years: 

the Republican Attorneys General Association, or RAGA

, and its role in cases like these, which aim to either expand rights for corporations or limit them for individuals. The great researcher Lisa Graves put a bug in my ear about RAGA years ago when I was working with Rebecca Nagle on her podcast This Land, trying to figure out why several 

 and a major corporate law firm (yes, Gibson Dunn) had shown up on a case questioning the Indian Child Welfare Act. RAGA grew out of a response to the tobacco litigation in the 1990s, which several Democratic state attorneys general had partnered on. Republicans saw potential in this strategy for pushing structural legal challenges that would benefit corporations and set about first getting more Republican AGs elected (they now outnumber Democratic AGs) and then bringing those attorneys together on cases, both on manufactured cases like the 

 case a couple years back and on responses to cases like the climate liability cases. Any time you see in a story about litigation of any kind that three or more Republican attorneys general have either brought a case or weighed in on one, that's a RAGA case. And that's important because RAGA isn't just a gathering of Republican AGs, it's also the recipient of tens of millions of dollars in secretive donations from the very industries that attorneys general are meant to regulate (see also: their 

As in every other one of these cases, in the Honolulu case Republican AGs have filed various amicus briefs along the way and they have shown up 

 to support the oil companies' petition to the Supreme Court. In their brief, 20 Republican attorneys general who spend most of their time arguing 

state's rights wring their hands about how these cases represent a threat to the sovereignty of the federal government, and also implore the Supreme Court to put an end to these cases before "litigation costs skyrocket."  They're joined in their support of this petition by the usual suspects: the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Petroleum Institute, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—all three key players in the decades-long strategy to suppress and spin climate science—plus the American Tort Reform Association, which works to stop all kinds of tort cases brought against companies for harming the public, and a fun new player: 

The American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce

, because the U.S. Chamber wasn't pro-free enterprise enough, whose lawyer is none other than former George W. Bush and Donald Trump attorney general, Bill Barr.

A response from the Supreme Court is due May 1, so we'll be watching closely to see where this one goes.

Meanwhile, outside the U.S., the European Court of Human Rights has issued a historic ruling in favor of a group of elderly Swiss citizens who argued that their government's failure to deliver on their Paris Climate Accord commitments constituted a breach of their constitutional right to a healthy environment. That case should send ripples throughout European courts, where dozens of similar cases are either already active or likely to be filed, and to the European Union as well, which is currently working through various policy decisions related to energy transition.

"It's the first time that that European Human Rights Court, the highest court in Europe, has found that climate change affects human rights now and in the future, that governments have legal duties to protect human rights in the context of the climate crisis, and that they need to adopt science-based targets to prevent further dangerous climate change," Lucy Maxwell, co-director of the Climate Litigation Network, said. "This ruling will have huge implications Not just for communities in Europe who are already taking their governments to court for weak climate action, but all around the world where there's this movement of people who are turning to the courts as a last resort because their governments are failing to act fast and effectively. This ruling will give a huge boost to that movement of climate litigation brought by communities from South Korea to Australia, to Brazil, Canada, and all throughout Europe as well."

More on that in this week's podcast episode:

Beginning tomorrow, April 15th, our fiscal sponsor Fractured Atlas is running a matching campaign: For every individual (tax-free!) donation we get, they will enter us into a raffle to receive a matching grant of $1,000. If you've ever thought about supporting our reporting, 

by Abrahm Lustgarten for ProPublica - I'm in the process of reading Lustgarten's new book on climate migration, “On The Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America,” and this excerpt is a great example of why I think it's such a terrific and important book digging into the complexities and heartbreak of climate change-imposed migration in the U.S.

How to Spot Five of the Fossil Fuel Industry's Biggest Disinformation Tactics,

 by Amy Westervelt and Kyle Pope for The Guardian - Based on our many years' worth of reporting on this subject, a handy guide to the industry's favorite false narratives (you can get more detail and documents on that front 

These Women Came to Antarctica for Science. Then the Predators Emerged

, by David Kushner for Wired - We really can't afford to be limiting the pool of people able to conduct science, work on policy, and generally tackle the climate crisis to only the demographic that made all the decisions that created it in the first place.

America's Corn Belt Bristles at $8 Billion Lifeline

 - by Kim Chipman for Bloomberg. In which corn belt Republicans start to turn on carbon capture, which is 

Because: Is it a "lifeline" if it could potentially make a bunch of people sick or kill them? An important question to ask as the industry that brought us the Valdez and Deepwater disasters begins to build the infrastructure to move highly dangerous compressed carbon around the country in the name of a supposed "climate solution" (obligatory reminder that close to 80% of captured carbon is used to extract more oil).

ICYMI Homes Need to Electrify. New Building Codes Will Make It Harder - by Jeff St. Johns for Floodlight and Canary Media

 – Building codes are one of those wonky little things that can be enormously important as we try to decarbonize. This is an excellent look at the fight brewing over them and the impact it could have.

Climate Litigation Update: From Hawaii to Switzerland

Passage of the Inflation Reduction Act in the U. S. has spurred a huge amount of investment and progress in the renewable energy space, not just in the U.S. but in other countries as well. Which in turn has driven a big uptick in anti-renewables activism, especially when it comes to offshore wind projects. In a lot of cases, the people showing up to fight wind farms, both on land and offshore, are the same people who were fighting them over a decade ago.

But there are some new groups too, and they're deploying some new tactics, especially around conservation and the idea that wind turbines are bad for birds and whales. There's no science backing up these claims, but that hasn't stopped them from taking hold. Still, it's a tricky situation. We're not just talking about fossil fuel backed resistance here.

The groups opposing these projects are not just astroturf groups. Some of them are real grassroots groups comprised of citizens who are genuinely concerned about, for example, the fate of the endangered right whale and how offshore wind farms might impact it. Or the fact that, in many cases, industrial-scale renewable projects are owned and operated by oil majors. That’s a particularly tough one because a lot of climate activists have been pushing oil majors to invest in renewables for years, but at the same time those companies have behaved in such bad faith that now a lot of environmentalists and climate advocates just don’t trust them. Many of those groups with legitimate concerns, though, are being co opted and weaponized by organizations that have spent the past 20 years working to block climate policy. They don’t really care about the whales so much as they do about blocking the energy transition away from fossil fuels. 

a report out of Brown University late last year

 mapping the groups that are active on the east coast of the U. S. was especially helpful. That report is called “Against the Wind,” and it digs into the people and organizations who are actively fighting wind energy on the east coast of the U.S., which may sound niche but those folks are having an enormous influence on renewable energy projects across the country, and have even sparked some copycats in Australia. Longtime PR guy-turned-nuclear advocate Michael Shellenberger has been pushing the myth that offshore wind kills whales for longer than most. A 

 he made, featuring interviews with members of a group called the Save Right Whales Coalition, which Shellenberger’s organization Environmental Progress helped to create, has been sited by multiple anti-wind groups, as well as 

, in Australia as proof that the construction of offshore wind farms is harming whales. No peer-reviewed science has backed up this claim; marine scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and elsewhere have conducted multiple studies and so far have found that fishing boats are the primary cause of whale deaths. Warming oceans aren’t helping much either.  

The Brown report looks at how various anti-wind groups connect to each other, who's funding what, and which talking points seem to be spreading. To unpack it all, I talked to Isaac Slevin, the lead author on the report.

Prefer to listen to this interview? You can play the podcast episode right here:

 What were you hoping to find when you set out on this research?

 So over the last couple years, we've witnessed a huge rise in opposition to offshore wind across the east coast. And this isn't the first time that's happened. There was a wave of opposition to offshore wind a decade ago. There's always been the skeptics about it. But what was really interesting about this recent wave is their focus on conservation.

This isn't your run of the mill climate denial movement or climate denial disinformation tactics being employed. These are self proclaimed conservationists who are fighting against offshore wind because they say that it endangers bird populations and especially that offshore wind endangers the Right Whale, which is this rare species of whale.

Scientific literature says that it does not endanger the right whale. And so when we started on this project, we wanted to know where all of this is coming from. How are these disparate, local, anti offshore wind groups developing such sophisticated political attacks, pushing out so much rhetoric and information at a time.

And this project started looking at specifically one group in Little Compton, Rhode Island, called Green Oceans. It was a rhetorical analysis of their information and misinformation about everything from right whales, to the fishing industry, to the reliability of the turbines to impacts on national defense, and what we found when we were analyzing these rhetorical tactics was that they were shared across the movement. And not just shared by other anti offshore wind groups in Massachusetts and New Jersey, but also shared by climate denial groups like the Heartland Institute, like the Committee for Constructive Tomorrow, or CFACT.

And that was pretty interesting and pretty peculiar. So as an aside to that project, I began looking at different connections between these grassroots groups and those national think tanks, and of course the fossil fuel companies and the fossil fuel interests that fund those think tanks. And what we ended up with was an expansive web of anti offshore wind groups on the ground, working with backing from climate denial and right wing think tanks, many of which were bankrolled by classic fossil fuel industry donors like the Charles Koch Foundation, like the State Policy Network, like the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers Association.

So we didn't know what we were gonna find. We were just looking Into where all this opposition came from, and what we found was a reasonably well organized and extraordinarily well connected group of people and think tanks opposing offshore wind.

 We've been tracking these groups a little bit too, and one thing that really jumps out is just how much what I like to call lone wolf climate denier dudes, folks like Mark Morano at CFACT or Steve Milloy, who works not just for Heartland, but also the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Cato and really a whole host of organizations working against climate policy over the last couple of decades... how much guys like that have really jumped into this fight. Here's a clip from a little boat ride famed whale conservationist Mark Morano took with an anti wind group in Rhode Island just to give you a little taste.

 Isaac, can you tell me who slash what is the Cesar Rodney Institute? And then what is their relationship with the Texas Public Policy Foundation?

 so the Cesar Rodney Institute is a State Policy Network affiliate based in Delaware. The State Policy Network is this. sprawling collection of libertarian right wing think tanks. There's at least one in all 50 states. And the State Policy Network serves to back these think tanks' lobbying efforts and political efforts on the state level.

Um, that has to do with climate, and it also has to do with just about everything else relating to education. For example, a lot of these state policy network groups have been active in the critical race theory panic recently and, working against trans rights and trans healthcare.

And in Delaware, the Cesar Rodney Institute has become particularly interested in blocking offshore wind. And our research found that they're extraordinarily well connected there. So the Cesar Rodney Institute and one of their directors of policy, a man named David Stevenson, created an astroturf, a fake grassroots appearing anti offshore wind group called Save Our Beach Views.

And this group blasted out Tens of thousands of mailers containing misinformation about a proposed local offshore wind project and raised a substantial amount of money off of it. Now the Cesar Rodney Institute has graduated a bit from Save Our Beach Views and put that group in a coalition with itself and four other state policy network affiliates in four other states as well as four other anti offshore wind groups across the East Coast.

So Cesar Rodney Institute has emerged as a major player in this movement. And you'll see David Stevenson pop up in congressional hearings talking about offshore wind and fundraisers for some of these local anti offshore wind groups. The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a climate villain in all regards.

Way beyond the context of offshore wind, they have been working to advance particularly natural gas nationwide. This is particularly odd considering how reliant Texas is comparatively on wind power. But still, the Texas Public Policy Foundation is heavily opportunistic and jumps at every chance it can get to disparage renewable energy of all kinds.

A great example was during the freeze in Texas a couple years ago when they ran with the false narrative that Wind power was collapsing and causing unreliability in the grid and causing people to freeze when in fact it was due to natural gas and and the fossil fuel industry not being able to cope with the low temperatures.

And so the Texas Public Policy Foundation found a way to oppose an offshore wind project called Vineyard Wind by funding a lawsuit. to attack it. But the Texas Public Policy Foundation didn't sue themselves. They sued on behalf of six plaintiffs, all of which are fishing industry groups on the east coast.

All six of these groups are also members of the Responsible Offshore Development Association, or RODA, which does a lot of research and coalition building in opposition to offshore wind. So from thousands of miles away, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, also a State Policy Network affiliate, has found itself embedded, um, I should say has embedded itself in this fight that frankly only concerns it because of its ties to the fossil fuel industry.

 Is there any sort of official relationship between Texas Public Policy Foundation and Cesar Rodney? What did you find there?

 Our map did not connect them other than having people in common. So they're both State Policy Network affiliates, but that's about it. I mean, they have similar supporters. Well, I mean, the fact that they're both the premier state policy network affiliates in their states is really substantial. There's this phenomenal Jane Mayer article from I believe 2013 about how the State Policy Network works like Ikea. Straight from the mouth of the State Policy Network CEO or president at the time, who's still the State Policy Network CEO or president, that SPN works to equip all of these local think tanks with the information and strategies that they need to fight prescribed battles in their state legislatures.

And TPPF and CRI are both doing that in their respective states. So it's always going to look a little bit different whether you're talking about direct lobbying of legislators or filing lawsuits or setting up astroturf groups. That's where You know, the Ikea assemblages look a little bit different from state to state, but it's all coming from the same catalog.

And I think that remembering that is incredibly important when you're looking at how this seemingly disparate network of offshore wind opponents, but also disparate network of public education opponents of public health care opponents actually share a lot of tactics and share a lot of strategies because it's no accident that they were coming from the same playbook sponsored by the state policy network.

 I want to talk about the local people who get involved in this for one reason or another and I feel like it starts to get complicated when we talk about these people because some of them genuinely just don't like the idea of offshore wind for some reason or another.

Some of them have their own legitimate to them at least reasons for not wanting these projects, but then they get sort of co opted into this whole much broader effort. And I'd love to have you talk about that a bit, because it's complicated and that complexity gets flattened out when we talk about this stuff a lot.

 For sure. Yeah, thank you for asking that question, because I do agree that it's something that gets lost. A good place to start would be Mary Chalk. She's a co founder of the Save Right Whales Coalition and co director of Nantucket Residence for Whales, which was formerly known as Nantucket Residence Against Turbines.

And she was particularly interesting in our early research because of her conservation based rhetoric, um, talking about whales and pollution, about pristine views in Nantucket. She's appeared at events hosted by Green Oceans, which is the offshore wind group, anti offshore wind group in Little Compton, Rhode Island.

This Week’s Newsletters: Campus Protests, Climate Crackdowns, and More

Climate Litigation Update: From Hawaii to Switzerland

The U.S. Anti-Wind Movement, Explained

The Drilled 2024 Guide to Climate Disinformation

Slow Factory's Céline Semaan on Climate Justice, Collective Liberation, and Building an Unbreakable Movement

The Real Free Speech Threat

Information Pollution

Petrostates

Mad Men

Sainte-Soline, the Government Effort to Disband a Movement in France, and the Radical Solidarity of the Earth Uprisings

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

This Week’s Newsletters: Campus Protests, Climate Crackdowns, and More

Climate Litigation Update: From Hawaii to Switzerland

The U.S. Anti-Wind Movement, Explained

The Drilled 2024 Guide to Climate Disinformation

Slow Factory's Céline Semaan on Climate Justice, Collective Liberation, and Building an Unbreakable Movement

The Real Free Speech Threat

Information Pollution

Petrostates

Mad Men

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Sainte-Soline, the Government Effort to Disband a Movement in France, and the Radical Solidarity of the Earth Uprisings

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