There are seemingly endless obstacles between us and
actually addressing the climate crisis.
And I want to focus on one today that you might not be that familiar with.
It's used by oil and gas investors to make it more costly and
possibly stop climate based legislation that would stop the climate crisis or
at least fight against it from going forward.
These are investor state dispute settlements and
they might sound technical.
They are, but they're important and so we're gonna push through.
So, basically what happens is fossil fuel investors go to private
international tribunals to argue that climate change policies illegally cut
into their profits and that they thus must be compensated for that profit cut.
And now governments are scrambling to figure out how to not get sued for
billions when enacting climate policies.
And so, think about that if they can sue governments that change the law for
large quantities of money as we will describe, then there's a couple of
different ways that that can stop these bills from going forward.
One, it might cause them to backtrack to avoid further lawsuits.
Once enough of these lawsuits go forward though,
it might actually stop them from ever doing it in the first place.
If they start to feel regulating carbon emissions changed literally
outlawing certain types of mining or energy production side of countries,
they might not do it in the first place.
And that's kind of the point here.
And so, effectively these ISDS provisions, the investor state dispute
settlements allow foreign companies to buy bypass the actual judicial system
of specific states and go effectively to a court of last resort.
If they win in this environment, there's no appeal process for that, that's it.
And huge quantities of money can go out the door with no option for appeal.
They've been successful with this in the past.
And by the way these sorts of dispute settlements don't exist only for
fossil fuel companies but they make up a very large percentage of them.
20% are just from this industry out of all of them.
And you can see that fossil fuel arbitration specifically are most often
related to oil and gas, 92% of the time.
American investors by the way is a fun little note make up 30% of all of
these around the globe.
So, we're basically number one there too and it can amount to a lot of money.
The average amount awarded in fossil fuel cases of this sort is over $600 million.
That is five times the amount awarded in non-fossil fuel cases.
And we can jump into a couple of examples of how this has led to a weakening
of environmental regulations.
You can already see that this is an environment that they can choose.
They can stack the deck effectively choosing their own juries and
judges, there's no way to appeal.
And for some companies or some countries that aren't as rich as the United States.
These settlements can be absolutely backbreaking.
>> Yeah so, I'm gonna explain that as well.
First of all, guys this is exactly what corporate rule looks like,
in these trade deals.
What they say is that corporations can sue actual governments like the US government,
and take money from us if we try to protect our own citizens.
They said whoa, what are you doing?
You're kind of in my profits by protecting our citizens.
You're not allowed to do that, you're not in charge America.
We're in charge, and that is very true.
So, I'm gonna give you examples from other countries as well.
And here the right wing is not as hypocritical.
That's a rare situation.
But some in the right wing are also saying wait a minute,
this is a violation of our sovereignty, isn't it?
So, we don't have a choice if a company says I didn't make enough money off of
your citizens, give me money, we have to give it to them.
Yeah, that's right, and wait till you find out who the arbitrators are.
So, I'll give you examples of how they've done this to different countries.
They've also done it to us.
But in Pakistan, Pakistan which is way away poorer than us had to pay five $8
billion dollars because they were trying to crack down
on a company that was in their opinion doing corruption kickbacks bribes.
I don't know who's right or wrong in that case.
But Pakistan was trying to end corruption.
So, they had to pay $5.8 billion to companies they thought was corrupt,
that's unbelievable.
So wait, who was deciding this case?
Was is it somebody in Pakistan?
Not Pakistan was allowed to decide that case.
No, it was an international arbitrator.
Who are the arbitrators?
Well, funny enough their corporate lawyers, and oftentimes they work for
the same corporations, maybe not directly.
Hey, that corporation that hires him before after that particular case,
but generally they work for corporations and they're of that mindset.
So, it's not the number that john read you is not an accident.
The companies win an astounding 72% of the time.
Because the arbitrators are stacked with people who already agree with them.
So, they're like, how dare you try to stop corruption in Pakistan?
Give me $5.8 billion.
You definitely don't have to spare that you could have given to your citizens
instead.
But wait till you get a little other cases.
Uruguay and John Oliver even did a story about this on HBO.
They said warning on the cigarette packages, just like we have.
And the cigarette companies were like, how dare that cuts into our profits?
If people know that this causes cancer, they won't buy it.
I mean that's absurd, right?
They sued.
They went to the arbitration and guys remember when they lose
on average remember the John and the number John read you on average not total.
On average they win over $600 million dollars in each case.
But even if you don't lose hundreds of millions of dollars, you got to spend
millions and millions on the lawyers and then that drags out forever and ever.
And the most important part is, then the next time you're trying to pass a law,
you're like, damn it.
Do I want to deal with these guys?
It's gonna cost me anywhere from 20 million to 600 million and
sometimes $6 billion.
>> Yeah. >> So,
a lot of times they don't even pass laws to protect their own citizens because
we all the whole world lives under corporate rule.
I'm gonna give you one last example then and back to John.
So, in Egypt they try to pass an increase in the minimum wage.
Corporation sued them saying, how dare you that would increase my costs?
I would demand to pay your citizens less.
If you make me pay them more a fair wage, you owe me money.
You owe me hundreds of millions of dollars, that's insane.
So, our citizens all across the world have to be paid the lowest possible rate.
Otherwise we're gonna get sued by the people who actually run the world,
these corporate executives.
Guys, the machines have taken over.
So, it's not in the movies where the machines are robots.
The machines are legal fictions that we humans created called corporations.
>> Yeah. >> And they now literally rule us and
say that we're not allowed to protect our kids our own citizens and
we're not even allowed to have high wages.
If we dare to have, forget high wages just [LAUGH] living wages.
If we dare to do it whether it's Egypt or America, there's gonna be a price to pay.
We have to pay them for their loss of profits.
Which they are, why are they guaranteed profits?
Houses capitalism.
>> That's the invisible hand of the weight.
That's not how that works.
Yeah, if you're a reasonable person that isn't being paid millions of dollars to be
a part of the system.
Your mind just worlds at the possibilities of this.
So, if a state put out dietary guidance that encourage people to eat less
carbs and I own a bakery.
Can I sue them?
If they pull out of a war and
I sell weapons, can I sue them because now I can't in the future sell the weapons?
If you can sue them for
raising the minimum wage which cost the corporation money.
Well, our government has sat and done nothing and the wage hasn't gone up.
So, can the workers to the US government?
>> Yeah, why don't we let the workers?
>> We should probably form a corporation.
Honestly, none of this makes any sense.
This is what Democracy is for.
If the corporations didn't want the people of Egypt to raise the wage engage in
politics convince them of why that would be a bad thing.
But this is the socialization that we talked about after the economic collapse.
It's like they generally win in the system anyway.
But if the will of the people ever turns against them, they still win.
Just not inside of the system, they just sue the system.
It's an amazing system that they've got.
Now look, we started off talking about the environment, this is relevant here.
Back in 2017, France's Environmental Minister drafted this law with the goal
being that they were gonna end fossil fuel extraction by 2040.
So, in response a [LAUGH] Canadian oil and
gas company threatened to sue them using one of these ICDSs.
In the end they watered it down, but it's not even a French,
it's not a French company.
But a French company was like okay, in theory we've crunched the numbers,
this could hurt us at some point.
So, decades from now the French can't stop this from happening.
That's how insane this is.
Now, this is an example just for one Canadian company versus the French.
Let's jump ahead to.
So, what if we ever try to actually deal with climate change?
So, there are these estimates of how much it would actually cost.
The IEIA had these recommendations for going to net zero.
To do that, the nations could potentially be on the legal hook for
60 to $234 billion.
[LAUGH] And so, that's a high enough number.
That's enough to potentially influence many of these states,
do not want to get involved in this but the ultimate cost to taxpayers.
If you were to do this, there's a report in January of 2020,
that found that if the ISDS mechanism was used across all of this and
was used to protect fossil fuels until just halfway through the century.
States could [LAUGH] end up paying out north of $1 trillion dollars over this.
They don't have to convince people to support or prop up their industries.
They don't even have to buy politicians to stop these legislations happening.
I mean they're gonna do that too.
They have multiple levels of defense.
Just if the people ever decide that we should do something, and
if they ever get elected representatives who will do something.
The company's still win their guaranteed profits.
Why?
No reason, that they can explain to us.
There's a philosophical reason why Circuit city shut down.
They really should have sued the US government.
Weren't they guaranteed profits?
Howard Johnson's used to be a huge chain across all of America.
They really should have sued the US government because they should
be guaranteed profits in the same way that these companies are.
>> How about the cost of climate change?
So, when new Orleans gets devastated by hurricane.
Can we then go to Exxon mobile?
And these companies go, now you owe us money, I have to fix all of new Orleans
because you created climate change and climate change destroyed new Orleans.
That cut the profits of new Orleans businesses,
by the way the other businesses should sue their ass, right?
But they sue profits. But they can't sue the companies,
they could only sue the citizens through the governments because we live for
our new masters corporations.
It's just these are facts.
So no, they can pile on all their cost to us but
if they don't get a guaranteed profit, they're gonna sue us and say,
not only should you take care of our costs but you should give us profits on top.
Now last thing is, who are the bad guys here?
The good guys, in this case.
The two biggest fighters against this are Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.
But also the populist right wing are in favor of or against this concept and
are in favor of American sovereignty and protecting our citizens.
The people that are guilty are the ones that
the media tell you are the beloved moderates.
They're not at all moderate, they are corporate.
Corporate Democrats and corporate Republicans in the middle.
The so called beloved centrists that the establishment media loves so much.
Those are the crooks, those crooks get money from all those oil companies,
gas companies etcetera.
And then when they're doing trade deals,
they're like why don't we put in a provision that guarantees them profits and
they could sue our own citizens and get any money they like?
And it'll also scare us from doing taking any action against any of these
corporations, the people that brought you that are moderate Republicans and
moderate Democrats.
So, that's the reality.
And that's what you don't sue in the rest of the media because
they're also corporate media.
No, now they could sue us, [LAUGH] Or they can sue America, they can sue you guys.
You allowed the young Turks to tell the truth about how we rig all
the laws in our favor, okay?
And that cut into our profits.
So, we're doing a great job of bribing mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi.
And you guys out at us.
No, that's it, we want money.
Sorry, American citizens.
Since we [COUGH] have to serve our new corporate masters,
we cost you money by telling you the truth.
And this is insane, we're supposed to live in a Democracy.
Instead, we're all have to bow our heads to this corporate rule.
That's why we need a rebellion.
Do not listen to the mainstream media and
do not listen to establishment Democrats or Republicans.
They're not on your side