09/02/2018

Revolving Doors: How The Fossil Fuel Lobby Has Governments Ensnared

MW - 



The polls are compelling. The wind has been sniffed. Federal Opposition leader Bill Shorten is finally making noises about pulling Labor support for Adani’s Carmichael coal project. Even surpassing the environmental madness of building the world’s biggest new thermal coal mine, the project is unbankable. It does not stack up financially. The price of generating renewable energy has plunged 50 per cent in two years and is now cheaper to deliver than new coal. Shorten is on firm ground electorally.
How did it even get this far? That such a white elephant is still staggering about, not quite dead yet, and still hopeful of more taxpayer subsidies, is testament to the power of the coal lobby in Australia. It is testament to the prolific connections between the resources lobby and government, the “revolving doors” between industry, the major political parties and the bureaucracy.
Adam Lucas and Joel Rosenzweig Holland have built a database of this network of fossil fuel influence: the people, the insiders.
Here, they discuss the major players as they unpack the web of self-interest which undermines democracy and favours corporate agendas above the welfare of ordinary Australians.


Adam Lucas* | Joel Rosenzweig Holland*

If the fossil fuel industry had a motto, it might be, “Never let the facts get in the way of our profits.” Despite receiving advice from their own scientists since the late 1970s that there was a causal link between fossil fuel consumption and dangerous anthropogenic climate change, the fossil fuel industry has for decades sought to undermine the science, and has expended considerable financial and political capital to block any efforts to make the necessary transition to less polluting alternatives.
The industry’s role in sowing doubt and confusion over the science of climate change is by now well-known and widely documented. What is less well-known is its preoccupation with infiltrating democratic governments by providing financial, logistical and personnel support to those political parties, governments and individuals which are most likely to serve its interests. Indeed, as public awareness of fossil-fuel driven climate change and the need for action has grown, the fossil fuel lobby appears to have ramped up its efforts to gain control over government policy and favourably influence public opinion.
The great gas con:
How Australia got sucked dry
Whistleblower Simone Marsh unpacks the startling evidence of how the Australian public was shortchanged by both Big Gas and Queensland Inc. The result is the present gas crisis and the recent, unprecedented move by the Federal Government to intervene in the market. This is a story of “revolving doors” between industry and government and influence peddling, … Continue reading
Concerned at the hollowing-out of democracy, which these trends clearly demonstrate, we began last year to consolidate and extend the work of journalists and researchers who had chronicled some of this revolving-door activity in an attempt to determine just how extensive the influence of the fossil fuel industry has been on the nation’s policy-makers.

“So far, we have managed to compile a list of well over 150 former and current politicians, political advisors and bureaucrats who have either moved from the fossil fuel and mining industries into public office or vice-versa over the past decade”

We admit to being shocked at the extent of this influence at multiple levels of government. So far, we have managed to compile a list of well over 150 former and current politicians, political advisors and bureaucrats who have either moved from the fossil fuel and mining industries into public office or vice-versa over the past decade. These constitute a veritable army of lobbyists, senior executives, spin doctors and consultants acting with a single aim in mind: political and policy support for the fossil fuel industry and its allies in business and industry.
We have also found that senior politicians in relevant ministerial portfolios continue to hire people who have come straight from the mining industry, and who return to work in mining straight after leaving government.
Martin Ferguson
In early 2013, for example, Federal Resources Minister Martin Ferguson resigned from his portfolio, which was subsequently filled by former Woodside executive and WA Member for Brand, Gary Gray. Ferguson retired from politics after Labor’s election defeat in September 2013, taking on a senior role at industry lobbyists the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association (APPEA) only six months later.
Ferguson was also made a board member of British Gas, an appointment which could reasonably be interpreted as a reward for services rendered while in public office, given his facilitation (of the sale of Queensland’s gas before State or Commonwealth assessment and approvals) of BG’s $20 billion Curtis LNG/CSG export project in Queensland while resources minister. Unsurprisingly, Gray followed in his predecessor’s footsteps, joining Mineral Resources Ltd as general manager of external affairs just days after his 2016 retirement from politics.
Commonly known in the US as “the revolving door”, these activities have long been the focus of investigations by journalists, academics and activists concerned about their potentially toxic effects on democratic process, and their distortion of public policy in the service of more narrow interests.
These researchers have understandably raised questions about the probity and ethics of those concerned, including the companies and industry bodies that seek to employ them in whatever capacity. In some countries, most notably Canada and Ireland, there are strict laws governing such behaviour. Unfortunately for Australians, the best the major parties have come up with are “guidelines” which are frequently and flagrantly ignored.
Our disquiet with the ethics of this situation is that these individuals had, or acquired, detailed inside knowledge of public policy on issues which directly affected the future ability of those industries to maintain their market dominance, and which afforded their industries significant political and economic advantage.
This week’s budget papers show the government spending A$33 billion on education this year, nearly the same amount that Australia’s five new offshore gas fields will make in sales each year when they are running at full capacity. Unless prices spike higher, however, these five monster projects may never pay a cent in royalties or … Continue reading
One arena of such corporate advantage is tax, where the lobbying muscle of oil giants Chevron, Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell and others have saved them from paying billions of dollars in income tax and PRRT as successive governments dithered over reform and enforcement.
Given the recent political controversies over support for the Adani coal mine in Queensland, and the opposition of certain elements within the Federal Coalition to urgently needed reforms of the country’s energy sector, the relationships between industry and the political classes should be of concern to all Australians. The previously cited example of Martin Ferguson’s elevation to executive positions within the industry is only one in a long list of dubious concessions made by the Labor, Liberal and National parties to the siren song of fossil fuel advocacy. Other prominent examples in recent times include:
Ian Macfarlane
Perhaps the most notorious of revolving door incidents in recent times is Ian Macfarlane, former Federal Minister for Energy and Resources and self-confessed member of John Howard’s “Greenhouse Mafia”, who took up the role of CEO of the Queensland Resources Council within weeks of leaving his ministerial position, reportedly because Malcolm [Turnbull] was cool about it.
We have found even more egregious examples of senior bureaucrats and policy advisors moving backwards and forwards between government positions and industry. In 2009, for example, Brad Burke left his role as senior strategist to then-Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull to become Director of Corporate Affairs at Santos, before returning to Prime Minister Turnbull’s office in 2015 as his Deputy Chief of Staff; Burke now works for Shell Australia. Similarly, in 2012, Mitch Grayson worked as Senior Media Advisor to then-Queensland Premier Campbell Newman, before spending roughly a year as a senior advisor on the Santos GLNG project, during which time it signed a major cooperation deal with Pacific LNG. Less than a month after this deal was inked, Grayson was back at Premier Newman’s office, where he remained until the Newman Government’s defeat in 2015.
CSG lobbyists:
Untangling the web of influence peddlers
A Vote Compass survey taken during the 2016 federal election reported two-thirds of Australians opposed easing restrictions on CSG exploration, compared with just over half during the previous election. CSG is unpopular with both farmers, environmentalists and, increasingly, most other voters. Following her investigation into Barnaby’s gas bonanza, whistleblower Simone Marsh untangles the web of influence … Continue reading
Some the most alarming examples of industry influence we have uncovered relate to several members of Martin Ferguson’s ministerial staff, several of whom took up highly paid positions in the same industry over which they had previously exercised oversight immediately after leaving public office between the middle of 2010 and 2013. These include:
  • Ferguson’s secretary, John Pierce, who became chairman of the Australian Energy Market Commission,
  • Ferguson’s policy advisor between March 2008 and May 2010, Michael Bradley, who took up the position of Director of External Affairs in APPEA from May 2010 to May 2015;
  • another Ferguson policy advisor between August 2010 and March 2013, James Sorahan, who immediately took up a position as Director of Taxation for the Minerals Council of Australia, a position which he retains to this day;
    •  Tracey Winters
  • Ferguson’s Principal Policy Advisor and Chief of Staff between 2003 and 2010, Tracey Winters, who had previously worked for Chevron and Woodside Energy, took up senior positions in Queensland Gas Company/BG Group between 2011 and 2015, and since 2016 has been working as an advisor for Caltex.
Winters worked for Martin Ferguson when he was Shadow Minister for four years before Labor won office federally in 2007.
According to Greens MLC Jeremy Buckingham, Winters is the partner of Craig Emerson, who was Federal Trade Minister in late 2010; that is, the couple both held influential positions at the time of the Commonwealth approval of the first East Coast CSG-LNG projects: Santos GLNG and QGC’s QCLNG projects.
To demonstrate the fossil fuel industry’s bipartisan commitment to influence peddling, even more members of Ian Macfarlane’s ministerial staff have made the transition to or from industry employment prior to entering, or shortly after leaving, public office.
These include:
 Stephen Galilee
  • Macfarlane’s chief of staff between 2001 and 2004, Stephen Galilee, who went on to become NSW Shadow Treasurer Mike Baird’s chief of staff between 2004 and 2011, prior to becoming CEO of the NSW Minerals Council from the year he left Baird’s office to the present;
  • Macfarlane’s chief of staff in 2006 and 2007, Malcolm Roberts, who was Executive Director of the National Generators Forum between 2009 and 2011, then Chief Executive Officer for the Energy Networks Association between 2011 and 2013, before re-entering government as a policy advisor to Queensland Premier Campbell Newman between 2013 and 2015, and who is now CEO of APPEA;
  • Macfarlane’s chief of staff in 2015, Sarah McNamara, who had previously worked for Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Federal Minister Helen Coonan, who did a five year stint as Head of Government Affairs with AGL Energy between 2008 and 2013, before returning to AGL in 2016 as General Manager of Corporate Affairs;
  • Macfarlane’s policy advisor between September 2013 and August 2015, Linday Hermes, who was Media and Communications Manager for the NSW Minerals Council between August 2010 and August 2013;
  • Robert Underdown, a senior advisor to Macfarlane while still Shadow Minister between 2007 and 2009, who immediately took up senior positions with Santos between 2009 and 2015, and now works as Head of Government Affairs for Caltex;
  • Claire Wilkinson, who was Senior Media Advisor to Macfarlane as Minister for Resources between November 2006 and December 2007, who immediately took up a position as Senior External Affairs Advisor to Royal Dutch Shell until May 2012, and External Affairs Manager for Total Australia between May 2012 and June 2016.
    • Clearly, the fossil fuel industries hire these people because they are convinced their connections enhance  access to and influence over government policy, and there is convincing evidence that industry has ramped up its efforts over the last ten years to infiltrate government at the highest levels.
Corporate lobbying:
A billion dollar business
The influencing of politicians, bureaucrats and the course of government policy is a billion-dollar business which is subsidised by taxpayers. An analysis of the financial statements of 20 of Australia’s major business lobbies found almost $2 billion in funding by corporations over the past three years. This level of peak body funding indicates the substantial … Continue reading 
Australia desperately needs laws at the state and federal level which prevent politicians, bureaucrats and policy advisors from taking positions in the private sector directly related to their portfolio responsibilities while in government immediately, or soon after, leaving public office. In Canada, the cooling off period was set at two years, though we would argue that the relevant period should be at least five years.
It also remains the case that not all Australian jurisdictions publicly disclose or even retain records of lobbyist visits to ministers and senior bureaucrats. And even in those jurisdictions that do keep public registers, there are arguably glaring omissions and inconsistencies in the kinds of records that are kept which are neither easy to access or search.
It is clear from our research that a federal anti-corruption body must be created. Australia also needs much stronger disclosure laws in relation to campaign financing and political party donations along the lines of those suggested by the Australian Greens, Victorian Labor (to have the strictest and most transparent in the country), Queensland Labor  and Federal Labor.  However, we would argue that all institutional funding should be excluded from Australian politics, including funding of the Labor Party and Australian Greens by the union movement.
Foreign donations should be banned, and all donations over $1000 should be disclosed in real time, with caps placed on donations from individuals and the quantum of public funding provided to political parties on the basis of their electoral support during elections significantly increased to minimise the need for fundraising.
The truth about political donations:
What we don’t know
The big story about the Australian Electoral Commission’s annual release of political donations disclosures is how little they really tell us. Over the last decade, the major parties have routinely only transparently disclosed 10-20 per cent of their incomes as donations. Dr Lindy Edwards from the UNSW reports. There is another 20-35 per cent of party incomes that … Continue reading 
Truth in political advertising and stronger laws holding mainstream media to account for misreporting and factual inaccuracies should also be implemented to preclude the kind of fake news that has recently begun to proliferate across multiple media platforms. It is one thing to allow these stories to circulate on the fringes of the internet, and quite another to repeat and amplify them through mainstream media outlets, which, after all, are given social licences to broadcast on the basis that they serve some minimum public interest criteria.
It may sound like hyperbole to argue that the future of our democracy is currently at stake, but we argue that it is even more serious than that. Climate scientists have been sounding increasingly dire warnings about planetary boundaries being breached over the next few decades: an inevitability if the fossil fuel industry is allowed to continue to have a free hand in determining our energy future. It is not just democracy at stake.

*Dr Adam Lucas is a senior lecturer in the School of Humanities and Social Inquiry at the University of Wollongong. Adam’s research focusses on energy policy responses to anthropogenic climate change and the peaking of world oil, coal and gas production.
*Joel Rosenzweig Holland is a Sydney-based researcher interested in democratic renewal, emergent economic structures and environmental justice. He is midway through a Masters in Political Economy at the University of Sydney, and works part-time as a bicycle mechanic. 

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How To Use Critical Thinking To Spot False Climate Claims

The Conversation - 

Arguments against climate change tend to share the same flaws. gillian maniscalco/Flickr, CC BY-ND
Much of the public discussion about climate science consists of a stream of assertions. The climate is changing or it isn’t; carbon dioxide causes global warming or it doesn’t; humans are partly responsible or they are not; scientists have a rigorous process of peer review or they don’t, and so on.
Despite scientists’ best efforts at communicating with the public, not everyone knows enough about the underlying science to make a call one way or the other. Not only is climate science very complex, but it has also been targeted by deliberate obfuscation campaigns.
If we lack the expertise to evaluate the detail behind a claim, we typically substitute judgment about something complex (like climate science) with judgment about something simple (the character of people who speak about climate science).
But there are ways to analyse the strength of an argument without needing specialist knowledge. My colleagues, Dave Kinkead from the University of Queensland Critical Thinking Project and John Cook from George Mason University in the US, and I published a paper yesterday in Environmental Research Letters on a critical thinking approach to climate change denial.
We applied this simple method to 42 common climate-contrarian arguments, and found that all of them contained errors in reasoning that are independent of the science itself.
In the video abstract for the paper, we outline an example of our approach, which can be described in six simple steps.


The authors discuss the myth that climate change is natural.

Six steps to evaluate contrarian climate claims

Identify the claim
First, identify as simply as possible what the actual claim is. In this case, the argument is:
The climate is currently changing as a result of natural processes.
Construct the supporting argument
An argument requires premises (those things we take to be true for the purposes of the argument) and a conclusion (effectively the claim being made). The premises together give us reason to accept the conclusion. The argument structure is something like this:
  • Premise one: The climate has changed in the past through natural processes
  • Premise two: The climate is currently changing
  • Conclusion: The climate is currently changing through natural processes.

Determine the intended strength of the claim
Determining the exact kind of argument requires a quick detour into the difference between deductive and inductive reasoning. Bear with me!
In our paper we examined arguments against climate change that are framed as definitive claims. A claim is definitive when it says something is definitely the case, rather than being probable or possible.
Definitive claims must be supported by deductive reasoning. Essentially, this means that if the premises are true, the conclusion is inevitably true.This might sound like an obvious point, but many of our arguments are not like this. In inductive reasoning, the premises might support a conclusion but the conclusion need not be inevitable.
An example of inductive reasoning is:
  • Premise one: Every time I’ve had a chocolate-covered oyster I’ve been sick
  • Premise two: I’ve just had a chocolate-covered oyster
  • Conclusion: I’m going to be sick.
This is not a bad argument – I’ll probably get sick – but it’s not inevitable. It’s possible that every time I’ve had a chocolate-covered oyster I’ve coincidentally got sick from something else. Perhaps previous oysters have been kept in the cupboard, but the most recent one was kept in the fridge.
Because climate-contrarian arguments are often definitive, the reasoning used to support them must be deductive. That is, the premises must inevitably lead to the conclusion.

Check the logical structure
We can see that in the argument from step two – that the climate change is changing because of natural processes – the truth of the conclusion is not guaranteed by the truth of the premises.
In the spirit of honesty and charity, we take this invalid argument and attempt to make it valid through the addition of another (previously hidden) premise.
  • Premise one: The climate has changed in the past through natural processes
  • Premise two: The climate is currently changing
  • Premise three: If something was the cause of an event in the past, it must be the cause of the event now
  • Conclusion: The climate is currently changing through natural processes.
Adding the third premise makes the argument valid, but validity is not the same thing as truth. Validity is a necessary condition for accepting the conclusion, but it is not sufficient. There are a couple of hurdles that still need to be cleared.

Check for ambiguity
The argument mentions climate change in its premises and conclusion. But the climate can change in many ways, and the phrase itself can have a variety of meanings. The problem with this argument is that the phrase is used to describe two different kinds of change.
Current climate change is much more rapid than previous climate change – they are not the same phenomenon. The syntax conveys the impression that the argument is valid, but it is not. To clear up the ambiguity, the argument can be presented more accurately by changing the second premise:
  • Premise one: The climate has changed in the past through natural processes
  • Premise two: The climate is currently changing at a more rapid rate than can be explained by natural processes
  • Conclusion: The climate is currently changing through natural processes.
This correction for ambiguity has resulted in a conclusion that clearly does not follow from the premises. The argument has become invalid once again.
We can restore validity by considering what conclusion would follow from the premises. This leads us to the conclusion:
  • Conclusion: Human (non-natural) activity is necessary to explain current climate change.
Importantly, this conclusion has not been reached arbitrarily. It has become necessary as a result of restoring validity.
Note also that in the process of correcting for ambiguity and the consequent restoring of validity, the attempted refutation of human-induced climate science has demonstrably failed.

Check premises for truth or plausibility
Even if there were no ambiguity about the term “climate change”, the argument would still fail when the premises were tested. In step four, the third premise, “If something was the cause of an event in the past, it must be the cause of the event now”, is clearly false.
Applying the same logic to another context, we would arrive at conclusions like: people have died of natural causes in the past; therefore any particular death must be from natural causes.
Restoring validity by identifying the “hidden” premises often produces such glaringly false claims. Recognising this as a false premise does not always require knowledge of climate science.

Flow chart for argument analysis and evaluation. LARGE IMAGE
When determining the truth of a premise does require deep knowledge in a particular area of science, we may defer to experts. But there are many arguments that do not, and in these circumstances this method has optimal value.

Inoculating against poor arguments
Previous work by Cook and others has focused on the ability to inoculate people against climate science misinformation. By pre-emptively exposing people to misinformation with explanation they become “vaccinated” against it, showing “resistance” to developing beliefs based on misinformation.
This reason-based approach extends inoculation theory to argument analysis, providing a practical and transferable method of evaluating claims that does not require expertise in climate science.
Fake news may be hard to spot, but fake arguments don’t have to be.

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Humans Need To Become Smarter Thinkers To Beat Climate Denial

The Guardian - 

A new paper shows that climate myths consistently fail critical thinking tests
President Donald Trump points skyward before donning protective glasses to view the solar eclipse, 21 August 2017, at the White House in Washington. Photograph: Andrew Harnik/AP
Climate myths are often contradictory – it’s not warming, though it’s warming because of the sun, and really it’s all just an ocean cycle – but they all seem to share one thing in common: logical fallacies and reasoning errors.
John Cook, Peter Ellerton, and David Kinkead have just published a paper in Environmental Research Letters in which they examined 42 common climate myths and found that every single one demonstrates fallacious reasoning. For example, the authors made a video breaking down the logical flaws in the myth ‘climate changed naturally in the past so current climate change is natural.’


Video abstract for paper “Deconstructing climate misinformation to identify reasoning errors” published in Environmental Research Letters by John Cook, Peter Ellerton, and David Kinkead.

Beating myths with critical thinking
Cook has previously published research on using ‘misconception-based learning’ to dislodge climate myths from peoples’ brains and replace them with facts, and beating denial by inoculating people against misinformers’ tricks. The idea is that when people are faced with a myth and a competing fact, the fact will more easily win out if the fallacy underpinning the myth is revealed. In fact, these concepts of misconception-based learning and inoculation against myths were the basis of the free online Denial101x course developed by Cook and colleagues.

 Denial101x lecture on inoculation theory by John Cook. 

The new paper published today suggests an even more proactive approach to defeating myths. If people can learn to implement a simple six-step critical thinking process, they’ll be able to evaluate whether climate-related claims are valid.
Step 1: Identify the claim being made. For example, the most popular contrarian argument: “Earth’s climate has changed naturally in the past, so current climate change is natural.”Step 2: Construct the argument by identifying the premises leading to that conclusion. In this case, the first premise is that Earth’s climate has changed in the past through natural processes, and the second premise is that the climate is currently changing. So far, so good.
Step 3: Determine whether the argument is deductive, meaning that it starts out with a general statement and reaches a definitive conclusion. In our case, ‘current climate change is natural’ qualifies as a definitive conclusion.
Step 4: Check the argument for validity; does the conclusion follow from the premises? In our example, it doesn’t follow that current climate change must be natural because climate changed naturally in the past. However, we can fix that by weakening the conclusion to “the current climate change may not be the result of human activity.” But in its weakened state, the conclusion no longer refutes human-caused global warming.
Step 4a: Identify hidden premises. By adding an extra premise to make an invalid argument valid, we can gain a deeper understanding of why the argument is flawed. In this example, the hidden assumption is “if nature caused climate change in the past, it must always be the cause of climate change.” Adding this premise makes the argument logically valid, but makes it clear why the argument is false - it commits single cause fallacy, assuming that only one thing can cause climate change.
Step 5: Check to see if the argument relies on ambiguity. For example, the argument that human activity is not necessary to explain current climate change because natural and human factors can both cause climate change is ambiguous about the ‘climate change’ in question. Not all climate change is equal, and the rate of current change is more than 20 times faster than natural climate changes. Therefore, human activity is necessary to explain current climate change.
Step 6: If the argument hasn’t yet been ruled out, determine the truth of its premises. For example, the argument that “if something was the cause in the past, it will be the cause in the future” is invalid if the effect has multiple plausible causes or mechanisms (as with climate change). In our example, this is where the myth most obviously falls apart (although it had already failed in Step 4).
Flowchart for evaluating contrarian claims. Circles indicate possible fallacies to be detected at each stage. Illustration: Cook et al. (2018), Environmental Research Letters
LARGE IMAGE
Deployment via social media and schools
The authors suggest that their six-step critical thinking process can be deployed via social media through ‘technocognition,’ and in the classroom. Co-author David Kinkead from the University of Queensland said.
We hope our work will act as a building block for developing educational and social media resources, which teach and encourage critical thinking through the examination of both misinformation and fallacious reasoning.
Lead author John Cook envisions that educators and others can use this approach to neutralize climate myths themselves:
Our critical thinking process is a useful tool that scientists, educators, and communicators can employ to identify fallacies in misinformation, which they can use to create inoculating messages that neutralize the myths. This approach is practical, achievable and potentially impactful in both the short-term (e.g., in social media applications) and long-term (incorporating this kind of content into curriculum). Misinformation needs short, sharp, immediate inoculation. Our paper provides a blueprint into how to write these inoculations.
Climate denial suffers badly from a lack of critical thinking, which has spread all the way to the White House. Teaching people to think critically can help prevent it from spreading even further.

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