"Shane Smith:" "This week on VICE:" "Inside Assad's Syria." "(gunshots)" "(speaking foreign language)" "(chanting)" "Isobel Yeung:" "Something very bizarre about that." "I can't help but feel that they might've been here for us." "Smith:" "And then, an investigation into a massive global cover-up." "Woman:" "What we've learned recently is that ExxonMobil were aware of the science, they understood it was a serious threat, but in public, they told us that it wasn't." "Anybody that tells you they've got this figured out is not being truthful with you." "Smith:" "We just landed here in the North Sea to see how actually big oil and gas can do something to reduce emissions." "(theme music playing)" "Go, go, go!" "(indistinct shouting)" "In the fall of 2016, the civil war in Syria reached its tipping point in the battle for Aleppo." "The city was divided between the eastern half, controlled by rebel groups, and the western half, controlled by longtime Syrian dictator" "Bashar Al-Assad." "Assad has been sharply condemned by the international community for a long list of atrocities, including using chemical weapons on his own people." "Now, despite this international condemnation, his forces retook the city with the help of the Russian military." "And, along the way, earned the tacit approval of the incoming American president." "If Putin wants to go and knock the hell out of ISIS," "I am all for it, 100%." "And I'm looking at Assad and saying, maybe he's better than the kind of people that we're supposed to be backing." "Smith:" "Isobel Yeung went to government-controlled Aleppo just before the city fell to see what an Assad victory will look like going forward." "(distant gunfire, explosions)" "Yeung:" "We've just got to the city of Aleppo, which has had several hundred mortars falling over the last couple of days." "The government has tried to take a major supply road of the rebels, and the rebels have retaliated by sending hundreds of mortars." "So, no neighborhood is very safe." "The whole of Aleppo is essentially a front line." "You can see the remains of gas cannisters, which are responsible for blowing up this area." "Oh, careful." "Every corner there's, uh, these tarps, which are put up to try and block snipers' views because the opposition are literally just down there." "We're hearing several mortars very close to this area." " (man speaking)" " Wait?" "There's a sniper down there?" "Yeung:" "Go, go, go!" "There's just sniper corners all around Aleppo." "(sighs)" "Fucking hell." "Whoa." "There's still some people living up there." "A bunch of IDPs, who have nowhere else to go are living in these buildings, even though there's snipers on every corner." "So they're trying to tap into these temporary generators that are put up." "This web of wires is insane." "There's just kids wandering around here." "Yeung:" "We were initially told that these civilian areas were safe," "But it quickly became evident that even government-controlled Aleppo was not secure." "This is one of the houses that's been hit by what the locals here call "Hell 2,"" "which I think is..." "You can see the remnants of that in here." "Which is basically just... gas which is held inside these glass jars or cannisters, and just blasts the walls and really obliterates the place." "(explosion) Fuck." "My God, this place gives me the... freaks." "This is so scary." "(sighs) I really don't know how people can still..." "Like, there's literally someone still living next door." "(chatter, laughter)" "Hello." "Salaam." " Salaam." " Salaam." "Isobel." "I feel a bit silly being sat here in my flak jacket, my body armor, and you guys just... chilling like it's a normal day." "I can hear explosions going off every few seconds." "Are you guys scared?" "(speaking foreign language)" "Yeung:" "For nearly six years, this has been the reality for Syrian civilians." "(chanting)" "When the Arab Spring reached Aleppo in 2012," "Assad's response was a brutal crackdown, followed by a siege of rebel dominated parts of the city, cutting food and essential supplies." "Then came massive shelling and indiscriminate bombings." "But while we were there, the government was keen to show us that their side was also taking casualties." "We are receiving almost 100 cases..." " 100 cases a day?" " Yes, daily." "Yeung:" "How are the sanctions impacting your work here?" "(Ateekh speaking)" "Yeung:" "Do you ever get scared?" "Does that happen a lot?" "The electricity just goes..." "No problem." "Okay." "This is definitely not easy conditions to work under." "But civilians living here have little option but to endure the suffering." "Yeung:" "Salaam." "What happened to your baby?" "Why are you still in Aleppo?" "Why haven't you left?" "Yeung:" "But while the civilians in Assad's Aleppo felt trapped, those in rebel-held territory were in an utterly hopeless situation as Assad made his final push for an Aleppo takeover... leading desperate civilians to flood social media with their cries for help." "(speaking English)" "(woman wailing)" "(speaking in foreign language)" "(speaking in English)" "(explosions) (shouting)" "Yeung:" "But their pleas for help went unanswered." "Assad's forces took control of Aleppo's last strongholds, and those who survived were bussed away from their homes." "This was a defining moment for Assad, representing a major step towards regaining complete control." "To see what life is like for those living under the dictator's tightening grip, we traveled to the capital of Syria, Damascus." "♪ ♪" "(gunshots)" "(men singing)" "Yeung:" "We're in the Christian neighborhood of Damascus, and to be honest, it feels like we could be in so many different parts of the world right now, but definitely not Syria." "Oh." "They've just brought a poster of Assad to put on the front of the wedding vehicle." "In government-controlled Damascus, residents are inundated with pro-regime propaganda, glorifying the image of Syria's longtime dictator." "(men singing)" "Yeung:" "Day and night, people are bombarded with this message." "But for these guys, blasting propaganda isn't just a hobby." "Does the government support you to do this?" "(speaking foreign language)" "And what kind of response do you get from people you're passing?" "Yeung:" "In the West, President Assad isn't very popular." "He's got a reputation for being responsible for hundreds of thousands of people's deaths and for millions of people fleeing the country." "What do you think of that?" "Yeung:" "As we were talking, a woman who had grievances with some of Assad's security personnel approached." "Yeung:" "As soon as she appeared, government representatives, some of whom we didn't even realize were watching, blocked us from talking to her." "One security official, whose voice we disguised to protect him from the Syrian government, told us what was happening here." "Yeung:" "Why did you stop us from filming?" "(man speaking English)" "Yeung:" "Why?" "(man speaking)" "Yeung:" "I've read 1984." "Are you saying this is 1984?" "This is Big Brother?" "(man speaking)" "Yeung:" "This reference to 1984 rings true." "The Assad family has ruled Syria as an Orwellian police state for over four decades, and has only increased its repression during the current conflict." "It imprisons political opponents, detains journalists, and consistently makes enemies of the state disappear." "Unsurprisingly, throughout our time in Assad-controlled Syria, no one would go on record to openly criticize the government." "In the Western media, all we hear is a lot of atrocities that Assad has gone through." "400,000 people have been killed, millions of people displaced across the country." "Do you think that Assad has any responsibility in that?" "(speaking in English)" "Yeung:" "Like any good dictatorship, part of how Assad controls this narrative is by controlling the media." "Hello." "Hello." "Good morning." "Good morning." "Yeung:" "I'm here at Sama TV, which is a very widely-watched national TV channel." "I know that the presenters here are keen to ask me some questions." "Hoping to get the chance to throw them a couple of questions, too." "(rooster crows) ♪ ♪" "Good morning." "Thank you." "Thanks for having me." "Thanks." "The main thing is to come in from the government perspective and to see what you guys see, and to see how you guys live." "And one thing I was surprised about is the number of posters, and the level of, um, supposed loyalty here that President Assad has." "I don't know what you guys think about that as well?" "To be honest, we have a government minder with us the whole time." "We have a lot of people ensuring that there's a lot of permissions that we need to get through every single layer." "And so, getting to certain places and talking to certain people is a real issue." "I don't know if that's partly because of the restrictions that are in place for media." "Maybe you guys could tell me about that?" "Are you able to answer any of my questions?" "Yeung:" "While the hosts avoided answering any of my questions on air, one of them did agree to speak with me candidly off air." "You have millions of viewers watch" " both your morning show and your evening show." " Yeah." "Do you think the government watches it?" "Absolutely, yes." "Absolutely, yes." "Do you think they like it?" "I don't talk to anyone of them, but I think if they didn't approve, they will tell us." "Some way or another way." "The people in the West, they see millions of refugees seeking asylum, and they see people fleeing a repressive regime where they feel like they have no option but to leave." "And so, you can understand why international media and the international community would feel like" "President Assad isn't the person that he is, perhaps, portraying himself to be within the country." "Why do you think he is not the proper person?" "Then why do people..." "Are you living..." "Are you living with us?" "Are you facing the difficulties that we are facing?" "How can you have the right to decide our, our... needs?" "Let's not forget what happened in Iraq." "Just like what happened in Afghanistan." "What happened in too many areas in the world." "That doesn't give them" " the right to force us to change." " Mm-hmm." "Which is called, uh, Arabian Spring." " Arab Spring." " And it's not..." "And it's not just like spring at all." "Yeung:" "From talking with him, it was apparent that the government uses the media to portray a glossier side of Syria." "Which might explain why they were also eager to bring us to the coastal town of Latakia." "♪ ♪" "Believe it or not, we are actually in Syria." "So, this is Syria." "This is not what I was expecting from Syria." "(speaking English)" "Yeung:" "Is there something a little bit strange about having a holiday here and having fun and everyone enjoying themselves when there's a war going on?" "Yeung:" "Latakia is crucial to that strength." "Despite being a hot tourist pick for Syrian elites, it's also home to Russian fighter jets, which are playing a defining role in securing victory for Assad." "Yeung:" "Is it a little bit strange at all that all these people are here on the Mediterranean and at the same time, we've got Russian fighter jets flying over us, and there's fighting going on around the rest of the country?" "(speaking foreign language)" "Yeung:" "While the government may be on the cusp of rewriting history, it's impossible to whitewash the impact of Assad's brutal crackdowns across the country." "(indistinct shouting)" "We didn't have to travel far from the capital to see total devastation in the suburb of Darayya." "We're literally just a kilometer or so outside of the city center of Damascus." "We're here in the suburb of Darayya town, which just a few years ago had about 80,000 residents here." "Now, as you can see, it's been completely bombed to smithereens." "This is actually one of the hot spots of the revolution." "And the government has clamped down pretty harshly on them ever since." "You just see bits and pieces of what remains of life here." "It's pretty insane to think that there were 80,000 people, or so, living here not so long ago." "And now it's just a ghost town." "♪ ♪" "The residents of Darayya didn't just disappear." "With the town under siege, they were surrounded and starved out." "The regime allowed us to meet with a select group of soldiers." "How come there are no men here?" "(speaking foreign language)" "Who are you looking out for?" "There's reports, at least in the Western media, that there's several thousand people over there who are starving and unable to get aid." "Is that true?" "Yeung:" "But as soon as she responded, a male commander overseeing us off camera was quick to interrupt and reassert the government's official stance." "(speaking foreign language)" "So you guys haven't killed any civilians in this town?" "Yeung:" "These were the only government fighters we were permitted to talk to." "And we weren't allowed to speak to them in private." "What made you come here?" "(speaking foreign language)" "(missile whooshing)" "That sounded scar..." "That sounded really, really close." "(explosion)" "Do you get scared?" "(man shouting orders)" "(chanting)" "Yeung:" "After our photo op, a city bus came to pick up the fighters." "Something very bizarre about that." "These guys have just got ferried off on a bus." "Can't help but feel that they might have been here for us." "Much like Aleppo, in the time since we visited Darayya, what remains of the town has fallen to Assad." "And the opposition we were told were terrorists and IS fighters were revealed to be predominantly civilians, including many women and children." "With more and more territory suffering a similar fate, we spoke to one of the Assad regime's leading politicians, Fares Shihabi about the future of Syria." "The US has said that Assad is the root of all evil." "Whether or not you agree with that, the US has been against Assad, the EU has been against Assad, various international communities have been outspoken in their opposition to Assad." "Yeah." "How is he still in power?" " It seems like that is against all odds." " Yeah." "Exactly." "This is the question that you have to ask these... to all these hypocrites, the politician hypocrites in the West." "How can a guy that you put all the NATO... brain and power and intelligence against him, and you could not do it after five years?" "What does that tell you?" "Is he a superman?" "Is he really a guy with super powers?" "No." "The overwhelming majority of the Syrian people is with him." "And why are they with him?" "Because they don't want their country to go down the drain, to be a failed state, to be a form of Afghanistan." "So do you think that Assad symbolizes security and safety" " for the average everyday civilian?" " Yes." "Yes." "And symbolizes, more importantly, secularism." "We are a secular state against fundamentalism, against Islamic jihadists, against terrorism." "Why aren't you supporting us?" "Why are you siding with the side that is known to be jihadist and beards to the ground." "Why are you siding with these guys?" "It seems like anyone who is classified as the opposition in Syria is also classified as a terrorist." "No, no, no, no." "Totally wrong." "When the first protests started to take place in 2011, they were pretty peaceful democratic protests." "And the government reacted by a pretty harsh crackdown, which, arguably left these opposition groups with not much choice but to arm themselves But to..." "But to..." "Are they supposed to lie down and take it while thousands of protesters are locked up" " Look, anyone..." "No, no, no." "And detained or killed?" "No one was getting killed." "See, our reports is different than your reports." " It's pretty evident, yes." " Yes." "What we see on the ground is different than what we hear in the Western media." "So you think that the government had nothing to do with attacks on innocent civilians?" "I'm positive." "But they want to demonize us." "Fine." "This is the result." "Yeung:" "Another result is that Syria's five largest cities, which make up the backbone of the country, are all now officially in Assad's hands." "And if you want to see what the future looks like, look no further than Homs." "Yeung:" "We're in the city of Homs, which is known as the capital of the revolution." "The government actually took back complete control of the city." "In order to do so, it's left the city in a completely dire state." "I mean, it looks like some horrific film set." "Incredibly, amongst all this rubble, there are some families who are just starting to move back into the neighborhood." "Are you nervous about rebuilding this place and moving back in when there's still a war going on?" "(speaking foreign language)" "Does the government have any responsibility for the damage that's been caused here?" "Yeung:" "It seems like this will be the legacy of the revolution against Assad... not just the destruction of entire cities, but the total acquiescence of the surviving population." "Does anyone in this town hold any blame towards the government?" "(speaking foreign language)" "Yeung:" "Even amongst the apocalyptic scenes of devastation," "Homs had an eerie sense of an echo chamber." "Whatever way we asked, we got nothing short of devout regime loyalty." "Do you blame the government at all because they were responsible for many of the attacks that took place in Homs?" "(speaking foreign language)" "♪ ♪" "Throughout our series on VICE, we've documented the global impact of climate change." "From glaciers melting in Greenland..." "There is goes!" "There it goes!" "There it goes!" "Whoa!" "Smith:" "To ice sheets disappearing in Antarctica." "They detach into big pieces that drift." "Smith:" "We've even met some of the first refugees displaced by sea level rise." "This season, however, we wanted to concentrate on the cost of climate change." "And as environmental conditions worsen, focus on who will ultimately pay the bill." "♪ ♪" "So, we're here in Miami, and as you can see, the water is coming over the seawall." "But what makes that crazy is that right next to it, we have construction." "They're actually building condos right against the seawalls that are already flooding." "But the problem isn't just with water coming over the seawall, because, as you can see here, because Miami is mostly limestone, it's porous." "So the water's just coming up from literally under the streets." "This is a so-called "sunlight flood." It's not raining." "And this is the problem that Miami faces." "It's got some of the most at-risk real estate assets in the world." "And there's a construction boom going, there's flooding happening." "So we're gonna see the cost of global warming, the sea level rise, and actually who's gonna pay for it." "Smith:" "During Superstorm Sandy in 2012, waters around New York swelled to 14 feet, ultimately causing $65 billion worth of damage." "Now almost everyone was surprised at the extent of the destruction except for Swiss Re insurance, a global insurance company who years earlier had predicted and prepared for the damage a storm like Sandy would inflict on New York." "Smith:" "We spoke to the company's chief property underwriter," "Monica Ningen, to find out how rising sea levels would impact Miami." "You guys do risk assessment." "You did risk assessment on New York and then Sandy happened." "What's the risk assessment here?" "So, when you think about risk," " we don't predict when it's gonna happen." " Right." "We really look at if it happens," " what are the consequences." " Right." "What this map shows you is if there's a three-foot rise in sea level..." "Which is the scientific consensus by the end of the century." "The dark blue is gonna be the area" " that's underwater." " Wow." "It's 145 billion..." " Billion." " 145 billion in property assets," " and 300,000 homes." " Wow." "So if you go to six feet, you now have $544 billion of property values exposed." "Half a trillion." "You have 1.4 million homes." "As an insurance company, if you're saying, okay, well, the floods are gonna get worse, and, by the way, real estate's getting more expensive, what do the costs look like?" "When you look at the residential properties in the US, that's where they're insured by the NFIP today." "Right, so that's where all of the risk goes." "Smith:" "The NFIP is the National Flood Insurance Program run by FEMA that provides coverage for homes in the US at affordable rates regardless of risk." "So they have people in higher hazard areas that are being subsidized by people in lower areas." "Smith:" "Now what that means is the program can offer cheaper rates to participants in flood-prone regions because it's subsidized by the federal government." "But as harsher storms are hitting the coastlines, the cost of this program are pilling up." " Unfortunately, it's running in the red." " Right." "How much is it losing now?" "I think it's about $20 billion in debt." "So it's $20 billion in debt, so they're sort of robbing from Peter to pay Paul." "And they expect that the government is going to bail them out." "If storms and storm surges are getting worse, we're already $20 billion plus in debt, then they won't be able to bail people out 'cause they won't have any money." "Yeah, so the NFIP has a borrowing limit, and when they've reached that limit, they have to go back to the Treasury and ask for more money." "It's everybody's best guess as to what that's gonna look like." "Smith:" "Today, Miami Beach is already trying to do something about the rising tides." "The mayor, who recognizes the threat posed by climate change, is now spending nearly half a billion dollars city-wide on projects to mitigate the rising sea levels." "But remarkably, this isn't the trend across Florida, which stands to lose thousands of square miles of land mass if current sea level rise projections hold." "But all of this is seemingly lost on Florida Governor Rick Scott, who has actually gone so far as to ban the state's department of Environmental Protection from actually using the phrases "climate change"" "and "global warming" in official documents." "Now when we first started shooting this story," "Governor Scott seemed to be one of the last holdouts against the global scientific and political consensus that climate change must be addressed, and furthermore, must be addressed now, with President Obama himself leading the call to action." "And no challenge, no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change." "And that's why I will not let this congress endanger the health of our children by turning back the clock on our efforts." "I am determined to make sure that American leadership drives international action." "Smith:" "Now, historically, the problem has always been that America, China, and the developing world could never agree on emissions standards." "But finally, because of the seriousness of the situation, on April 22, 2016, the world's major carbon emitters, including the United States and China, for the first time came together and ratified the Paris agreement." "Finally, the world's politicians had woken up to the immediacy of climate change and the reality of global scientific consensus." "(crowd chanting) USA!" "USA!" "USA!" "But then a political upset in America set the stage to slow down, and potentially even reverse the application of the Paris protocols." "United States of America, Donald Trump!" "Smith:" "President Trump, himself a climate change denier, has not only promised to pull out of the Paris agreement, but has filled top cabinet and government positions with people who are allies of, and in some cases," "key players in the fossil fuel industry." "And many of them still publicly doubt the human effect on climate change." "The science is not settled on this just because you have a group of scientists who have stood up and said "Here is the fact."" "Galileo got outvoted for a spell." "Anybody that tells you they've got this figured out is not being truthful with you." "There are too many complexities around climate science for anybody to fully understand all of the cause and effects and the consequences of what you may choose to do to attempt to affect that." "In reality, the Clean Power Plan is nothing more than an attempt by the EPA to expand federal agency power at the expense of state energy power generation." "You know Obama said the biggest problem we have is global warming." "And by the way, it's supposed to be 70 degrees today, it's freezing here!" "Speaking of global warming." "Where is..." "We need some global warming!" "Smith:" "Almost overnight, the most powerful political entity in the world, the executive and legislative branches of the United States government are now led by climate deniers, leaving America as the sole outlier in the developed world." "Now, confused as to why so many people still don't believe in global warming, and question climate science, even in the face of global scientific consensus, we spoke with Harvard professor and investigator Naomi Oreskes," "who has spent more than a decade analyzing the skepticism around climate change." "Many of us think that climate science is unsettled because that's what we've been told for 25 years." "The whole crux of the climate denial campaign is to persuade us that the science is unsettled and we don't really know." "Now how does that strategy work?" "Oreskes:" "Well, a large part of the strategy is to use the media to spread that message, to present quote, "both sides of the issue."" "Man is the cause of the warming." "Is the science settled about that?" "There's been a disconnect between what the scientific community has been saying and the way it's been presented in the media." "97% of climate scientists say we are experiencing global climate change." "Who did the survey?" "When was it done?" "There's no such survey." "I don't know." "There is!" "It's National Academy of Sciences." "There's no such survey." "Oreskes:" "They took what was really a political debate and they dressed it up as if it were a scientific debate." "If you actually listen to what scientists are saying, if you read the scientific literature, you see there is a consensus about climate change." "Between 97 and 99% say absolutely climate change is real." "It's happening." "It's underway." "It's caused by people." "Historians like myself have known for a long time that academic and government scientists were already talking about climate change in the 1960s and '70s." "What we've learned recently is that ExxonMobil knew too." "Smith:" "Now this story goes all the way back to when climate science was in its early stages." "Dr. Research:" "Due to our release through factories and automobiles every year of more than six billion tons of carbon dioxide, which helps air absorb heat from the sun, our atmosphere seems to be getting warmer." "This is bad?" "Well, it's been calculated a few degrees rise in the Earth's temperature would melt the polar ice caps." "♪ ♪" "What's particularly troubling to me is, we know that in private the oil and gas companies were aware of the science, they understood it was a serious threat, but in public they told us that it wasn't." "The scientific evidence remains inconclusive as to whether human activities affect the global climate." "In fact, many of their own in-house scientists were working with government scientists at the Department of Energy, that they wrote memos and reports to Exxon executives explaining that climate change had the potential to be both a serious problem for humanity," "and also a serious business challenge for Exxon." "One of the tragedies of this story is that we know from investigative reporting that ExxonMobil understood it before most everyone else, when there still was a lot of time to do something about it, when it wasn't too late to stop." "And instead, when the science becomes clear, and the public begins to learn about it," "Exxon makes a complete about-face and goes into denial mode." "So they really hit this drumbeat of uncertainty." "Smith:" "An example of this messaging can be seen by former Exxon CEO Lee Raymond in a 2005 television interview." "There is a natural variability that has nothing to do with man." "The climate has changed every year for millions of years." "It has to do with sunspots." "It has to do with the wobble of the Earth." "Oreskes:" "Exxon ran advertisements in the New York Times that followed the doubt-mongering strategy." ""The science isn't really settled, there are a lot of uncertainties." "The models, the climate models are very uncertain."" "And then we see a big influx of fossil fuel money to a whole set of what they call "third party allies."" "Think tanks that are 501c3s, these supposedly non-profit organizations that do political work, that include the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute," "The Heartland Institute." "Millions or even billions of dollars, tax-deductible dollars were being funneled." "So that means that we, the taxpayers are actually subsidizing this political activity to prevent controls on greenhouse gas emission." "Don't you think that when you write the report you ought to at least have somebody who knows something about the sun, please." "Smith:" "One scientist frequently used by these think tanks is Dr. Willie Soon, speaking here at a Heartland Institute-sponsored event, who illustrates the depth of connections the fossil fuel industry has in the skeptic community." "Because in February 2015, it emerged that" "Dr. Soon had received a total of $1.25 million from a combination of ExxonMobil," "Southern Company," "The American Petroleum Institute, and the Charles G. Koch Foundation." "Dr. Soon has since denied that his work was influenced by the fossil fuel industry." "Now in addition to funding think tanks, the oil and gas industry has also dramatically increased the amount of money it donates to political candidates." "From 12.3 million a year in 1990, to 64.4 million in 2014." "And over the last 15 years, those companies have tripled their funding for lobbyists, reaching 130 million in 2015 alone." "Now this kind of debate over scientific consensus is following the familiar pattern of another national debate that we've seen before." "Do you believe nicotine is not addictive?" "I believe nicotine is not addictive, yes." "I think there's a great deal of doubt as to whether or not cigarettes are harmful." "Why do 98% of smokers never get anything?" "That's an interesting question." "Why do non-smokers get lung cancer?" "Doesn't it all add up to the fact that we don't know and nobody knows?" "Oreskes:" "They knew that tobacco was killing people." "They knew that their product was deadly." "And they talked about it among themselves in private, but in public, they told us that it wasn't true." ""We're not really sure." "There's a lot of uncertainties." ""Many things cause cancer." "And therefore we shouldn't have" ""the government interfering in the marketplace to protect us from the harms of tobacco."" "Smith:" "Now almost the exact same strategies that were employed by Big Tobacco are now being used to deny climate change." "And in some cases, it's being done by the exact same people." "In fact, at the Heartland Institute's" "International Conference on Climate Change, which we attended, the headliner that year was Dr. Fred Singer, a Princeton-educated Astrophysicist and leader in the climate denier movement over the last 20 years." "Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant." "Please." "Others:" "Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant." "It's good for you." "Smith:" "Singer's work was also used by the tobacco industry to help perpetuate doubt around some of the dangers of smoking." "I still think that the EPA has cooked the data on secondhand smoke." "Smith:" "And other organizers, including Heartland President Joe Bast, published reports questioning some of the health risks of tobacco." "We don't see the data that backs up the public claims that global warming is a crisis." "Let's just put it this way:" "There are a lot of very strong parallels with what the tobacco industry did, and courts have found that the tobacco industry behavior was illegal." "Smith:" "And just like Big Tobacco, which cost taxpayers untold billions in health care, the cost of climate change will be astronomical." "And if it can be proven that, like tobacco, the oil companies are actually at fault, then this could be one of the largest lawsuits in history." "Now, because of this, two states' attorneys general have launched investigations against ExxonMobil, with 15 more recently declaring their public support." "One thing we hope all reasonable people can agree on is that every fossil fuel company has a responsibility to be honest with its investors and with the public about the financial and market risks posed by climate change." "Smith:" "New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is spearheading an investigation to find out exactly what Exxon knew and when." "I know it's early days in the investigation, and I sure don't want to corrupt that in any way, but why is this happening now?" "How is it going forward?" "There's really, I think, a change in public attitude." "Because people are associating changes in the weather that they're actually seeing and experiencing in their lives." "You can't deny it anymore." "We know that the water in New York harbor is a foot higher" " than it was in the early 20th century." " Right." "'Cause that's not 'cause some fancy science," " that's 'cause we take measurements, right?" " Sure." "This is not something that requires a degree in physics." "And we know that there are people getting flooded here, in South Florida, all over the United States in situations where they wouldn't have before." "We know it's happening, and we want to find out what the fossil fuel companies knew." "Smith:" "One company that the Attorney General successfully brought legal action against is Peabody Energy." "Because the lawsuit found that the company mislead its shareholders by saying that there weren't reliable projections for how climate change would affect their businesses." "Now ExxonMobil has made a similar argument... that there are no reliable models for predicting climate change." "In the case of Peabody, we learned that they were doing studies to predict the impact on the coal market of climate change and government actions to deal with climate change, but they were telling their shareholders it was impossible to estimate." "If you have studies and you are able to estimate the impact on the market for coal, you can't tell your shareholders that it's impossible to estimate the market for coal." "So they lied to their shareholders?" "They've agreed that they're going to restate all of that." "And it's something that we believe exists with other companies." "ExxonMobil, obviously, the biggest and most profitable energy company" "I think in the history of the world." "We're interested in what science they were using and what they knew." "They publicly have stated, their CEO told Congress in 2010," ""There is no competent model to predict climate change."" "We think there is a competent model, and we think they probably were using it." "Smith:" "And that former ExxonMobil CEO that used this "no reliable model" argument is Rex Tillerson, who ran ExxonMobil for ten years, and now is the Trump administration's Secretary of State." "Now before moving into government," "Tillerson oversaw the largest fossil fuel company in the world." "And as late as 2010, he testified that Exxon still had no reliable models available to predict climate change." "Being a science and engineering company, we understand the science, we understand the difficulties of modeling the science." "And as we look at the competency of those models, there's not a model available today that is competent." "We think they use the best science for their engineering, and aren't spending billions of shareholder dollars drilling in the Arctic without having the best climate science to tell them what's happening." "Smith:" "Now ExxonMobil declined to speak with us on camera about the lawsuit." "But they did reply with a statement acknowledging that climate change is in fact real, and suggesting that everyone should act to reduce greenhouse gas emissions." "Now in terms of the lawsuit, they replied, and I quote..." "Now even though Exxon refused to speak with us directly on the matter, we were able to speak to Dr. Morrel Cohen, a senior scientist at Exxon Labs for nearly two decades, on the company's early approach to climate change." "There were concerns about global warming." "And they were measuring carbon dioxide concentration of the atmosphere over the ocean by putting sensors on an oil tanker." "And they did respectable simulations." "And they were keeping up with the advance of climate science." "I mean, the science is very well established." "The people running a corporation like Exxon are not all stupid." "They are supporting activities that enable them to understand what is going on in the science on the one hand, and on the other hand, they're taking actions that enable them to slow the process of change," "and to play a significant role in controlling it to the advantage of the corporation." "They've created a situation where they can deny being deniers." "Now history has shown that despite their public skepticism," "ExxonMobil and other oil companies have quietly taken climate change science very seriously indeed." "For example, in 1989, when Dutch oil giant Shell spent millions to raise the height of its off-shore drilling platform in response to sea level rise projections." "Now this is 25 years ago that oil companies knew that sea level rise was happening." "So much so that they actually made moves to adapt to it." "Now the problem with all of this is that oil companies up until now have been less than transparent to say the least." "The only oil company that bucks that trend and was willing to be open with us is Statoil, one of the largest oil companies in the world." "And that's because it's owned by the Norwegian government, which publicly believes in climate change, and as such, is taking steps to mitigate it." "♪ ♪" "We just landed here in the North Sea on Sleipner oil and gas platform, one of the biggest in the world." "And so we actually came here just to talk to a company that, for more than 20 years, has admitted that climate change is real." "They actually supported the Kyoto Protocols, and more than that, they did something about it." "So we're gonna go around the rig, we're gonna see how it functions, and see how actually big oil and gas can do something to reduce emissions." "You guys knew that sea level rise was happening." "Shell knew it." "You said, "Look, we have to raise the level of the platforms."" "But at the same time in America, billions of dollars were being spent on saying it wasn't happening." "Right." "Smith:" "Statoil has deployed technology on its rig to extract most of the carbon from the natural gas it's drilling." "How much carbon are you capturing?" "How much are you putting back, and what does that look like?" "Yeah." "Every year?" "So it's a huge impact." "Smith:" "Their carbon capture technology could be a model for other oil companies, thereby dramatically reducing CO2 emissions around the world." "What's actually coming up through here now?" "What you're doing here is you're taking that, separating the oil, the gas, and the CO2..." "Smith:" "Statoil takes the excess CO2 from the natural gas and sequesters it into a massive cavity under the ocean, where they say they can store it for thousands of years." "The more CO2 you take out of the gas, the less CO2 gets burned and released into the atmosphere." "So how many of these are there in the world?" "You guys work for an oil company." "Do you favor a CO2 tax for oil companies?" "Right." "Why?" "So if we tax carbon, more companies will be doing this kind of thing, which reduces the carbon released into the... the CO2 released into the atmosphere." "Smith:" "Now even though oil and gas constitutes the majority of Norway's exports, they actually imposed a tax on energy production, which encouraged Statoil to develop a cleaner way of doing business." "Now economists widely see carbon taxes like this as the most efficient way to make carbon capture and renewable energy sources more viable for energy companies." "A carbon tax is a kind of a pollution tax." "If you want to discourage people from doing something, one way to discourage it is to make that activity more expensive." "So if you think about something like pollution, if you don't want a company to dump pollution into the air, you can charge for that." "That creates a financial disincentive for that activity, and encourages the company to be more efficient in their fuel use, or switch to non-polluting forms of energy like solar and wind." "And also, it would help reflect the true cost, or what sometimes people call the social cost of carbon." "Because fossil fuels do all this damage, but we don't pay that price when we fill our car with gas." "So carbon tax is a way to make the price reflect the true cost." "Smith:" "Now today ExxonMobil publicly states that they support some form of carbon tax." "But the political atmosphere they helped shape for the last three decades patently doesn't." "That we would put American's economy at jeopardy based on scientific theory that's not settled yet, to me is just... is nonsense." "All we'll do is end up hurting our country, our people, especially the low-income individuals." "And especially with these programs they're asking us to pass that will do nothing to help the environment, but will be devastating for our economy." "Smith:" "In fact, of the top ten recipients of oil and gas industry money currently holding office, fully nine are climate skeptics, and all ten have repeatedly opposed a number of carbon tax proposals and EPA regulations on greenhouse gas emissions." "President Donald Trump was one of the top names on the list." "We're going to cancel the Paris climate agreement." "And stop..." "(crowd cheers)" "Unbelievable." "And stop all payments of the United States' tax dollars to UN global warming programs." "Smith:" "The new Secretary of Energy, former Texas Governor Rick Perry, famously vowed as presidential candidate to eliminate the department he now runs." "And Attorney General Jeff Sessions, over his career, had a record of launching legislation aimed at halting landmark climate and environmental action." "But perhaps the most troubling of all is that former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, the man who ran the company at the center of the ongoing Attorney General of New York's investigation, is now the Secretary of State." "Now with President Trump's cabinet, so stocked with climate deniers, and his party's control over the executive branch, Congress, the Senate, and assuming his nominee is approved, the Supreme Court," "America now runs the risk of setting back the clock on global climate change for the foreseeable future." "Oreskes:" "There are going to be a lot of damages associated with climate change." "Who's going to pay for that?" "Right now the model we have is that we all pay." "So I think we're going to increasingly see people raising the question, well, maybe companies like ExxonMobil, who knew that this was a problem and spent money to deny that in public, and to mislead us about these facts," "they have some additional fiscal accountability to help pay for the damages associated with climate change." " This is a huge..." " It's big." "National crisis." "This is a huge global crisis." "It's very big." "And if you are preventing people from taking action to protect themselves by putting out bad information or telling them you can't rely on all of the scientists who are all trying to tell the world that we've got a problem we have to take action on right now," "that's pretty serious." "This is not something that's gonna hurt people ten years or 20 years from now." "This is something that's hurting people today." "And if there are folks trying to dissuade the public from doing things to protect the planet and protect themselves, that's a pretty serious offense." "That's a pretty serious consequence of fraud." "And that's so big, the only thing that I can draw a parallel to is Big Tobacco." "Now that was, I believe, the largest settlement in history." "This seems to be bigger because those were just smokers, this is everyone." "It's hard to say exactly what we'll find." "But the American people are very forgiving, but once they understand that they have been wronged, the American people can be very tough."