Join Us On YouTube Today At 4 pm ET
Plus, our recent conversation with Ben Franta on how Big Oil weaponized economists
Hello! Today, we are live at 4 pm ET on The Climate Pod YouTube channel to talk about some of the biggest climate stories of the week like the UN Synthesis Report of the Nationally Determined Contributions and what Occupy Wall Street, which celebrated its 10-year anniversary yesterday, meant to the climate movement. It’s our first live broadcast, so please excuse any technical errors as we work out the process! We’d love to see you there and have a chat.
Haven’t subscribed to our YouTube channel yet? You can check out all our recent interviews (and some great past interviews) as well as some other exclusive videos we are creating for the channel. You can subscribe here.
Some of our favorite conversations this year on our YouTube channel include our talks with David Wallace-Wells, Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, and Dr. Ed Hawkins (lead author of the IPCC’s 2021 report on climate change and the creator of the #ShowYourStripes movement). We also worked with the hilarious Chad The Bird for this fantastic breakdown on why humans keep accelerating deadly drought conditions.
This week, Ben Franta joined us on The Climate Pod to talk about his latest paper, "Weaponizing Economics: Big oil, economic consultants, and climate policy delay”. It was one of our favorite conversations of the year. Ben is currently a graduate student at Stanford University focusing on the history of denial and delay tactics by the fossil fuel industry. He is also co-founder and current Director of Accountability Research for the Climate Social Science Network, a global network of social science scholars doing research on climate politics headquartered at Brown University.
He explained to us how fossil fuel companies leveraged economic experts to help slow necessary action to combat the climate crisis despite knowing for decades that their product was warming the planet. We also dive into the big question: why weren’t fossil fuel companies investing in new energy options instead of pouring money into misinformation? Franta gives his take. Finally, we also talk about Harvard University's decision to divest from fossil fuels, which Ben advocated for as a student at Harvard University almost a decade ago. You can listen to the full conversation on iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher or watch the video below.
Thank you very much for reading and following along with the show! We hope to see you soon.