may i just say to all delegates i
apologize for
the way this process has unfolded i'm
deeply sorry this is the president of
cop26 welling up with tears as he closes
negotiations on our last potential
chance to avert climate catastrophe
why did it fail because of people like
this
a highly paid network of politicians
lobbyists and investors conspiring from
the shadows to block climate action
sacrificing humanity itself for
short-term profit
these people are the biggest threat to
our planet right now
and
they're winning
mr pink knows how they greenwash your
money mr white knows how they buy your
politicians miss blue knows how they
steal your elections and miss black
knows how they sue the out of your
government
they've agreed to reveal to us
how these dark arts work this green
market was intended to trick all of us
they put them up in a five-star hotel
there's maybe an expensive handbag with
caviar i was becoming victim of
harassment because i used the word that
is used that probably doesn't have as
much access to this information because
the scale and power of fossil companies
exists in every part of your life
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that might well spell the end of our
survival on this planet
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i was the chief investment officer for
sustainable investing in blackrock the
world's largest asset manager that now
has around 10 trillion dollars under
management that's trillions with a t
you could say that it's the company that
controls the world blackrock owns fossil
fuel reserves equivalent to nearly 10
trillion gigatons of carbon-related
emission if you were to use that all in
one year that would be 30
of the total emissions in 2017.
having led what was called the largest
and the most ambitious effort ever to
turn wall street green
i can tell you that the vast majority of
his marketing and it doesn't work and
it's wasting our time
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i'm a member of the european parliament
so i vote on all legislation in the
european union the most important
decisions in a way are taken here in
brussels in the european parliament from
regulating engines for cars to emissions
trading how power plants are regulated
in the european union
for decades the fossil fuel industry has
done everything to lobby to confuse the
scientific debate to cast doubt about
what they knew that the climate change
exists it's man-made and it's going to
heat the planet in a way that is
threatening our existence on it and this
is the result of a constant onslaught of
lobbying
i am an elected state representative in
the united states i was very shocked to
find out as i was on the campaign trail
that most elected officials democrats
and republicans and those running for
office
take tens of thousands of dollars from
fossil fuel companies and they do it
without any type of regret or remorse
i was the head of the energy efficiency
unit located in brussels i worked on the
energy startup 3t which protects foreign
investment in fossil fuels by means of
private arbitration where companies can
ask for billions of euros of
compensation if the climate policy
impacts their profit
these whistleblowers come from the world
of the white collar elite where the soft
edge of polluting power tries to
convince us that rather than damaging
the planet fossil fuel companies are
actually the ones trying to save it
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we found out the fossil fuel industry
was causing global warming in the 80s
oil and gas companies who had secretly
known this for decades began to act
differently
they began trying to convince us that
they were good for society which is good
for you good for us and good for the
future of britain they even started to
claim that they were protectors of the
environment if we told you that a
certain oil company wanted to push a
pipeline through this lovely welsh
valley
sending bulldozers into the snowdonia
national park you would probably quite
rightly be very alarmed
this is the valley after not before
shell laid its pipeline you can be sure
of shell
but can you
several years after this commercial was
released 150 tons of oil leaked from
another shell pipeline nearby killing
scores of local wildlife
shell's reputation for conservation
meant that the judge let them off with a
low fine
green washing had begun
and as energy companies lulled our
concerns with this public illusion
secretly they began to infiltrate
governments
courts
and banks to ensure that society would
always be powerless to stop the oil
our whistleblowers are going to tell us
how this new reality was invented
the divestment movement has been one of
the most powerful tools in the fight
against climate change by encouraging
investors to move their money out of oil
and gas and turn their investment
portfolios green
but who moves the money around and where
does it go my job entailed going across
all of our investment processes across
the firm for 10 trillion dollars of
investing
and to make sure that these investment
processes were taking into consideration
environmental and social factors
sometimes called esg or environmental
social and corporate governance factors
to make sure that we're investing as
responsibly as possible while still
serving our client interests of
maximizing the return on their
investments
the people in charge of managing
investment portfolios like blackrock
couldn't risk losing money by moving
investments out of the insanely
profitable fossil fuel trade and into
greener companies
so they had to come up with a plan
they created a new kind of sustainable
investment product called an esg fund
which stands for environmental social
and corporate governance
the best way to think about it is that
this is the biggest and the most
large-scale effort ever to turn wall
street green
but it's all a carefully crafted
illusion
i started to realize that none of it
made any sense
so every single time we would have a
choice we have to focus on either
making money or making the world a
better place
and the reality is while we were telling
the world that you could do both at the
same time the reality is
that most of that was just marketing to
get people to feel better about what
we're doing they're just moving money
around behind the scenes
these esg funds still contain fossil
fuel investments
in fact other than the new esg label
they're almost identical and wall street
at large is using that as an opportunity
to then exploit the growing social angst
about the fact that nothing is getting
done
by selling a bunch of
disingenuous investment products to the
market that create the impression that
they're doing something about it when in
fact it's just an opportunity to get
more fees out of people and because no
one actually
is regulating what it means to be green
there is no evidence that any of these
things lower emissions or create any
kind of impact
blackrock became acutely aware of
negative public opinion when protesters
stormed their offices in paris
but their solution was to simply say
that their investments were green and
they did that by changing the very
definition of green itself if you go to
the grocery store
and you see two apples and they're the
exact same in every way but one of them
has an organic sticker most people will
pick the one that's organic
governments could easily solve this by
regulating what counts as a green
investment
but not only are they failing to do that
they're actually going in the opposite
direction while oil and coal are the
traditional bogeymen of climate change
natural gas also accounts for 8 billion
tons of co2 a year and 40 million tons
of methane which traps 120 times more
heat than co2
but the fossil fuel companies are now
waging a secret war to classify gas as a
green investment so the european union
is about to get legislation that would
classify natural gas as green and
investment in natural gas as green
investment that might well spell
the the end of of climate-friendly
investment
and thereby
really
make our efforts to stop climate change
to respect the 1.5 degree target
so much more difficult and thereby
threaten
our survival on this planet and this is
the result of a constant onslaught of
lobbying
this hidden campaign to rebrand gas as a
clean energy has coincided with a public
psyops campaign to trick us
wherever you look
it seems that companies like chevron may
have snuck gas stoves into their ass
we know it's going to take many forms of
energy to meet the world's needs while
creating a cleaner future for all
they're hiring very well-known and
established influencers to pump gas into
their vans or use a natural gas stove
these are all different tactics that
they're putting into place
tonight i'll go after young people to go
after
a generation of people that are probably
the most aggressive in tackling climate
change and essentially
brainwash this generation of people
which is something they've been doing
for a very long time trying to influence
folks to use their products don't miss a
bunch of adventurous people going head
to head in the most amazing lower co2
emissions road trip watch it now at
youtube.com
you see fossil companies trying to trick
the american public and and maintain
their dominance through controlling
almost every part of society they not
only
pay into some of these media websites
but they even create their own
to basically serve as a fake website
that can share their propaganda and also
smear whoever they want to smear
but how did the fossil fuel lobby
convince our governments to classify gas
as a green investment
the first method they use is outright
bribery
we have seen examples in in the past
that uh countries that have a huge share
of
fossil industries azerbaijan for example
that has long-standing interest to sell
their gas to sell their oil to to europe
they have bribed politicians they have
invited them on trips for example to
azerbaijan first class flights five star
hotels they find
gift baskets with caviar
or expensive handbags or whatever in
their in their hotel rooms we have cases
on camera
where where members have accepted bribes
from undercover investigative
journalists
for some european meps the planet itself
is worth less than the price of a louis
vuitton handbag
for those who want more money a second
method comes into play
the revolving door
where politicians are offered a job upon
leaving office if they pull a few favors
the easiest thing in a way to to buy
politicians
is to offer them a job in the future
in the european commission after leaving
office more than 50 percent of of the
commissioners are joining uh different
lobby organizations the former german
chancellor
is probably the biggest example
of of such a revolving door into the
fossil fuel industry to have trader
in office
green lead
a tight line
and then after leaving office joined the
oversight board for that pipeline so he
was bought up by vladimir putin by the
it's a russian state-controlled
energy company glassprom
the third method they use is
astroturfing
where they set up front organizations
fake professorships and fake industry
organizations to convince politicians
that a chorus of people
all want them to classify gas as green
even if you're trying to talk to all
sides of the argument and get well
informed and then you maybe speak to a
professor then you speak to an industry
association speak to a couple of
companies and you're hearing the same
argument time and again and you think
well everyone
agrees on that so that must be the right
thing to do for the law that that i have
to vote on
not realizing that actually
you only ever talked to to the same
fossil fuel companies time and again
just two different uh organizations that
they fund that they control
the fossil fuel industry has even
started using an election manipulation
technique where they siphon votes away
from climate activist politicians by
paying random people with the same name
as them to run on the same ballot we
actually saw this same situation in two
other florida state senate races where
there was a fake candidate that was
filed in that election
to basically pull votes away from
democrats because that candidate
was advertised as being progressive
this has been referred to as the ghost
candidate scheme or the fake candidate
scheme and it really is
one of the most egregious examples of
political corruption
by rebranding itself financially legally
and in the public image the oil and gas
industry is weathering the tide of
climate legislation
but even when that strategy fails
they have one final secret weapon at
their disposal
an obscure agreement from the 90s called
the energy charter treaty gives fossil
fuel companies the power to sue foreign
governments for billions if they change
any law that affects their investments
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the cases are hidden from the public in
so-called shadow courts
the second any government comes up with
climate legislation corporate lawyers
appear from the shadows the foreign
investor is allowed to see you in what
you call private
so what is private arbitration it is a
shadow court its parallel system to our
justice system
a shadow court consists of three lawyers
one acts as arbitrator the other two
represent either the country or the
energy firm
but
they rotate jobs earning millions in the
process and when i say we have 146 cases
today these are the name cases it is
likely that there are more cases that we
don't know because in the in editor the
treaty there is no obligation for the
industrial model for the government that
has been sleep to make the case known
when miss black raised the alarm about
these shadow courts to her colleagues
she was bullied into submission by
fossil fuel lobbyists who had secretly
infiltrated the energy charter treaty
secretariat where they worked
it was unbelievable to be in brussels
the capital of europe in 2018 and to be
have left
and i was wondering why this guy was
reacting so
badly and in february i think 2020 found
out he works for fossil fuels company
while he was at the same time
secretariat
[Music]
[Applause]
what this means is that no matter how
loud you protest no matter who you elect
and no matter how robust international
agreements are
ultimately it will all be blocked by
three corporate lawyers in a room
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the fossil fuel industry continues to
claim they're committed to net zero
emissions by 2050.
becoming a net zero emissions energy
business by 2050 in step by society
nice words you say but what does it
actually mean
for starters it would mean not
conducting a shadow war to prevent net
zero the truth is that global warming
isn't your fault in fact just 100
companies are responsible for 71 of
global emissions
but they're willing to manipulate every
aspect of reality to hide that
across the world there's a sense that
we're finally divesting from fossil
fuels
our governments are finally investing in
green energy
and finally there are new laws being
passed to protect our climate
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by the time we realized that all three
of those things are just carefully woven
illusions
it may already be too late
hmm
[Music]
you