been an axe of turtle. many migrants depend on the goodwill of libyans, such as hamad al deep, who started the fully s san charity organization. 7 years ago. i was during ramadan laborers don't find work, so we try to help them and give them food. it's our obligation is muslims to help those in need. libya has been engulfed in conflict and political divisions for more than a decade. but migrant still risk coming here because there are no job opportunities at all. although difficult and at times dangerous. for some, it's their only hope to provide for themselves and their families. ma, trina, ultra 0 tripoli. ah, this is our desert, easier, top stories, ukrainian president ballasa. mr. lansky says russia has begun the full scale

offensive to seize control of the eastern regions. these include areas where russian back separatists have fought the ukrainian army for 8 years. that is zamora cook. now we can already state that russian troops have begun the battle for the dumbass to which they have been preparing for a long time that a significant part of the entire russian army is now concentrated on this offensive . no matter how many russian troops are driven there, we will fight. we will defend ourselves, and we will do it every day. we won't keep up anything ukrainian and we don't need anything foreign. or several people have died out, a russian missiles hit the ukrainian city of livermore, and the 1st civilians killed in the western city which had previously been considered relatively safe. russia's president vladimir putin has told his economic officials at western sanctions, backfiring with the measures causing a surgeon inflation and unemployment in europe. and the u. s. most because may as

walnuts around 200000 jobs in the russian capital are at risk because foreign companies have either left or suspended operations. israeli ass strikes have hit count used by hello south to walk. it was, it was southern israel and the gods with us at early a wound of retaliation. consultations between israeli forces and palestinians in occupied east. she was a 17 year old palestinian girl, whose shots by is there any forces during a raid in the occupied? westbank has died. 100 could do or was injured on saturday. her mother says she was on her way to an english class. janine 21 people have been killed during is writing operations across the west bank over the last 3 weeks. those you headlines coming up next on now does. there is a stream ah, we understand the differences of cultures across the world. so no matter how you

take it out, 0 will bring you the news and current affairs that matter. to you, al jazeera. ah, i have the ok, thanks for watching the stream. one of the biggest news stories of our time is our global climate crises. and that is why out his ear is part of a global, correct. if of journalists call covering climate, now we bring you stories about time it all of the times and you can stay up to date . one of the biggest scandals in the climate emergency is the doc money that is filtered in to climate action to either slow it down or stop it. it sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it's actually fat. and that is what we're delving into the day. us special

interest versus climate action. we're going to be doing that with ad guests. hello, miko rebecca, charlie. good. see all 3 of you, michael. welcome to the stream. please introduce yourself to a global audience. your thanks very much. i'm michael. man. i'm a professor at penn state university and the climate researcher and also author of the new climate war. get to happen. hello there, rebecca. welcome to the string bucket, back to the st. remind our audience. here you are. what day? hi, i'm rebecca lieber. i'm a reporter on climate change. i'd box get to have you and charlie. hello, introduce yourself. try global audience. hello, my name's charlie cray. i am with greenpeace usa based in washington dc. get to handle so you have made all of your panel if you on youtube right now app comics section is life. your comments or thoughts can be right here. this conversation is part of the covering climate. now i'm democracy series that were linking up

u. s. special interests with democracy. what is the problem? what if you saying, let us know you're part of the shad. mike, i'm going to start with you because your recent book, the new climate war suggests that there is a battle going on. what is that wall? yes. so you know, the old battle was this effort by fossil fuel interests and dark money groups. conservative foundations, conservative politicians and media outlets. this effort to deny that climate change is real, but people can see that it's real. people can see that it's happening now. and so that just isn't tenable anymore, that doesn't mean that the polluters and those promoting them have given up the battle. instead, they've turned to other tactics, delay, deflection, division even do mongering to convince us it's too late. that's what i call the new climate, or rebecca su reporting this, it sounds like a thriller, a sounds like a conspiracy theory, but we have seen this before in the tobacco industry,

and some of the same playbook tactics are being used in the fossil fuel industry to try and persuade the public that what they're saying is not what they're seeing . rebecca, how do you, how you tell that story? exactly. this is a very similar playbook to what big tobacco use. but i think the most important thing about it is it keeps shifting just like michael said, this is no longer just a, a debate that climate deniers are trying to have over whether climate change is real or not. there are now shifting that to more obstruction and delayed tactics. and just like we saw with tobacco companies, oil companies are intent on delay in climate action. as long as possible. charlie, there's some work that the greenpeace journalism did, which was they tracked down and found an exxon mobil lobbyist. and i want to

play a little clip of how he described his job, what he was doing. and then he, you talk about the damage that can be down by lobbyists, in the fossil fuel industry, as have listeners have a look festival. did we aggressively fight against some of the science? yes. how did we hide our science? absolutely. no, it did need to be joining some of these shadow groups to work against some of the lead efforts. yes, that's true. ok. but there is nothing. there's nothing illegal about what you know . we were looking out for our investments. we were looking out for our, our, our shareholders that's exactly the

playbook a minor part of it. as dr. man described, lobbyists are crawling all over washington dc. there's probably $10000.00 registered, corporate lobbyists and the fossil fuel industry. and some of the other interests that i depend upon them politically, so to speak are, are some of the most powerful on the hill. i'm. we hear it all the time from senator white house and some of the other senators and leaders who are trying to get climate related legislation through and getting blocked at every turn. and so, you know, though, it's not surprising and in fact, it's not just these companies themselves, they often operate through very powerful business trade associations, like the u. s. chamber of commerce. wanted to share with our some of the places the money is coming from. i'm not sure at this stage whether it's doc money such as you

can tell me when i say this to you, i'm garage may kiss. i want to do that in air quotes. does your process, charles, i don't trust her coke foundation. so those 2 are, you know, i really primarily connected to charles coke and a whole network of billionaires and center millionaires who use these foundations as kind of passed through to find a whole slew of non profits. other trust limited liability corporations and the money cascades down to a whole network. and what ends up happening is the ultimate recipient. you don't know where their ultimate source of funding is and that's why we call them dark money green because these, these entities don't really report their ultimate source of money. so donors trust you don't know who their real finders are. they report who they give money to, but you don't know who gave them the money to give them that. that's a good tourist organized, a really good point. wow. i so as barry about us. okay. yeah,

i get that. let me just look then i'm michael. please help me here. groups receiving this money. so we don't know, nessie the source of the money comes from certain organizations and then goes to the sp specific grapes, some of them, some of the big ones, tell us about some of these so that you understand the way the money filters through the system. sure. so, you know, these are some of the usual suspects when it comes to climate change. denial ism, the heritage foundation, e. i, the merc kato center federalist society. these are essentially laundering outfits. and so the dark money comes in, presumably from folks like the coke brothers from exxon mobil and fossil fuel companies. it gets laundered through dark money to these organizations that serve as mouth pieces for promoting industry friendly propaganda, climate change, denial, propaganda. so rebecca, we have an indian, i to say a newish administration,

who said part of the mandate was to address climate action to address the climate emergency. how is not going? has us special interest disappeared? because you have an administration that is saying that it's committed to climate change kind of action. yeah, this is doc money, an auction basically because we have a bill that it represents the most historic level of spending we could have in this country on climate change in over a decade. that's built back better, but that bill has not passed the senate and not is largely because of a single sen. joe mansion of west virginia. 9 now going back to the video that you showed earlier of the exxon lobbyist, i believe it was in that same video where exxon was also brought me about. it's access to jo mansion in, in helping block this bill. so we still have not had this legislation passed into

law, and you can trace that back to the money that's been spent to delay it. this legislation shaped the public messaging so that it doesn't pass and also pressure. lawmakers like joe manchin into not voting in favor for this. so i'm really glad you mentioned joe mentioned because i have a 2nd to say, so go ahead. you can just, you know, we can let the republican party have a pass here. i mean, mike lofgren, who was a 30 year staffer for a senator from ohio, wrote a book called the parties over pub, came out before trump, and essentially described the republican party as in india, logical cult. and what he means by that is that, you know, they don't take a stand on issues, they don't evaluate the facts. what they do is they've, they're likely tribal heard that follows the logical agenda. and so what happens is

you can always count and then devote against climate legislation. and so you have to get every single democrat lined up. and when it's a thin margin, someone like jo, mansion steps and becomes incredibly pivotal. and credibly obstructive. i'm going to share something with, without wanting to just my but my question is that you've got something on your mind. go ahead articulated before i share this with our dance. sure, sure thing. i, you know, i agree with everything. they're both rebec and charlie said, here in what's remarkable is that we've normalized the republican party. we take it as a given that they are going to oppose any efforts to do anything meaningful to address the climate crisis. it's sort of remarkable that it now falls on every single democrat, and indeed, if just 2 of them, not just joe mentioned, but kristen cinema in this case, wish to block the climate agenda. they're able to do so right now because of this republican obstruction. i am going to share something that i found on rebecca's

timeline on twitter and also charlie's timeline on twitter. it was the co barum blockade. so we've been talking about the stark money in the climate emergency climate action disrupting it. but there is a way and the all ways that citizens can say, hang on a minute, we need to organize. so you can talk about joe mansion. he's a very well known thick in the democratic party. but he also is in west virginia that has a lot of coal mines and there's a lot of special interest to make sure those coal mines stay producing co. that's the set out. now have a look at the push back. oh sure. he does not care about his future as a millionaire, and as in all regard, oh, with the wind to keep their

minds a coal mine with no alternative. you seem to reason that only have a dying and a dirty clothes with their entire community. you should be you're seeing because you are blood on your hands. said charlie, here i am thinking about what you read back when michael been describing which so the full sense of don't money. ok, i'm losing the full seat belt is what was it the thought money, the really derailing what is possible in climate action. but then we see a campaign like the cold, barren blockade. how effective can that be? what is the all city dot money in climate crisis? well, well, we've seen,

i'm in the course of history in this country anyway. it's that organized people can beat organized money. and that's, that's exactly what starting to happen here. it's what we share with the sunrise movement, many, many other groups. i'm also going to bring in my cook us, michael. part of your book is not just explaining what the ways, but also how the battle can be won. help us with that. explain. yeah, no, i agree with what charlie just said with collective action is extremely important. here we have a voice today in the age of social media, we have these amazing platforms for speaking out and organizing and look the forces of darkness. and i'll call them that the forces of inaction. i call them the inactive as it's in the book, the polluters and those doing their bidding are very organized. and they have tried to hijacked social media as a cause for the promotion of misinformation. in disinformation,

we've got to take that back, we've got to use our voice. we've got to speak out in every way possible to hold those policymakers accountable. and i'd like to just point to some other examples of the way people can take part. i think doing things that support healthy democracy are certainly one step to fighting dark money and politics. of course, i think ever it's familiar with voting with, with expressing or free speech, but also there are a lot of different ways you see climate action come through. it's not just happening at a federal level in congress. you can take part in your local community to push for climate progress. and one campaign that we've seen really replicate and proliferate around the country is fighting for clean electricity to power buildings. and that's something people can, can fight for at the more local level. and i think is a great example of ways people can take more ownership in the climate crisis. i

guess i have ads, and he's on youtube right now, watching this discussion. and adam says, what changes can the us make to limit or prevent corporate law being in support of oil and gas tally? was it said that with $10000.00 low yes. registered lobby of that you have on registered lawyers, p r firms. i'm a whole suite of consultants. i mean it's, it's, you know, as you of corporate influence in washington dc. and it's kind of a frankenstein monster that deregulating campaign finance. as well as, you know, the growth of think tanks and other frank groups that corporations find. so it's, it's quite, it's quite a jog or not, you know, for instance, dark money itself, which is political spending on campaigns. i think the statistic that i read recently is that there was about $5000000.00 spent back in 2006

through dark money groups on that cycle of elections in the latest 2020 cycle, always up to $1000000000.00. we taught the, the woman in the blockade video, mentioned oligarchy. and she's absolutely right. well, we have people talk about oligarchy, from russia and other countries. what we have are $700.00 plus billionaires in the united states. many of them are fossil fuel, billionaires multi billionaires, like charles coke. and when you think about it, these are people who like, you know, oligarchy who hide their money off shore, through secret accounts and various structures. these guys are hiding their money through channels to influence politics and policy. and essentially they too are clipped kratz. but in this case, what they're stealing is democracy and our chance of a livable future. that's not always saying that this is so big. it's too difficult

to tackle. no, we have, you know, this is why they oppose the freedom to vote act, which i was a very strong bill pro. it's been called the strongest civil rights bill in 50 years. it again, jo. mansion wasn't an obstacle to it, but that bill is an amalgamation of some of the greatest policies we can enact, including public financing of elections, which is already the case. in about 14 states in over 20 cities or towns have public financing and election. we know what the solutions are, you know, better registration. you know, the kinds of things that we have seen pioneered in states across the country. so it can be done again. it, it's a matter of political will. yeah, i'm just looking at it. yes. yes or back of them, michael? oh, just just like charlie says, i think the,

the pointing initiatives that support healthy functioning democracy is really crucial. 9 i, i think just to connect the dots, why democratic initiatives are so important here. majority of the public in the u. s. certainly supports climate action. the what we see repeatedly for decades now is it's a minority of concentrated special interest where the wealth is that are fighting to block these, these kinds of flaws. so if we have a better representation in the system that we have better access to building, that means we have, we have a better shot at climate action, michael. yeah, what rebecca just said is, is right on point and, you know, look we have a situation right now. we have a system with the filibuster, where a minority of politicians and reflecting a very small minority of the american people can prevent any action on any of the

items that we've talked about. and in particular, legislation to rein in dark money. sen, sheldon white house, who's been a real leader democrat from rhode island has been a real leader here. you know, has produced no legislation but it needs now 60 votes, past the senate. and so to do anything about, you know, dark money, we now need 60 democratic votes or 50 democrats who are willing to find workarounds to deal with the filibuster problem. and right now those to hold out that we talked about joe mansion and kristin cinema have been obstacles to changing the filibuster rules so that again, that small minority cannot prevent action on any of these items that we're talking about. so once again, the solution is collective action. it's people turning out to vote in every election, not just the presidential elections or the mid term elections, but the off term elections. so that we get the representation necessary to move

these sorts of bills forward. and, you know, take back our, our, our system from polluters and moneyed interests. you know, family, i wanted to point out because your audience is international and we've been talking about, you know, united states government. but it struck me back when the paris record was being negotiated. that when john kerry was taking it there, they had to turn it into an agreement and not a treaty. and why is that? because he knew he couldn't bring it back to the united states where the republican controlled senate and get it ratified as a treaty. so that's why, you know, when we talk a lot about the u. s. congress as an institution that really is obstructing global action on climate change. we really mean it. i want to pick up on that thought because we call john po has a he, we spoke to, he's a climate and environmental justice advocate. he's based in india. and he looks to united states as being an example muddle for what climate action can achieve. and

to date, it hasn't been a very good model here. yes. in the middle off, a long delay in a climate action, even the slightest possible actions are considered us a turning point in the fight against act. lemme crisis. this action springs, hopes to people who are impacted by climate rights is in the everyday life, especially those for mobile mobile regions. this is where low being comes as a surprise strike in delaying our hampering the progress in immediate climate actions, which tend to ensure our glamour justice. when such a law being comes from our so called global leader, the title of polluter suits the most than being a leader. so mike, i'm just thinking about how many u. s. has ministrations has said that we are committed to climate action and fail to deliver. and there was the one trumpet ministration said we are not and we are

not delivering and they will weigh more successful than in the administration said yes, we do believe in climate change. and we do believe we need to actually take action . so it's michael. well, i mean, during the trip years we saw states locality step up. in the absence of any leadership, donald trump literally became the only head of state to threaten and indeed follow through and pulling out of paris agreement. so that was a huge setback. the previous administration, the obama administration had sought seen some real successes, bilateral agreement with china, that led to the paras agreement and led to some actionable commitments from major polluters of the world to, to really do something. and then there was this setback when the united states refuses to lead, as we saw during the trump administration than other countries like india and china . you know, they eas up in their efforts as well. and so american leadership is essential.

we're seeing that under the obama administration. the problem right now, of course, is obstruction by congressional republicans and a very small number of democrats who have enabled their efforts to block the bided administration's agenda on climate. and so once again, it comes down to turning out in elections and electing politicians who will act on our behalf rather than on the behalf of polluters. one other point i'd like to make, we've talked a lot about the united states, but there are some other petro states, russia in particular, which is, you know, built on its wealth and its influence off our reliance on their fossil fuels and, and europe's reliance on their fossil fuels in there now using that as a cudgel to prevent any sanctions from being being taken against them over their actions in ukraine. so this is really a reminder the that we've propped up these petra states like saudi arabia and russia is reminder of one of the other real costs of our continued dependence and

fossil fuels and why it's so important for us to get off fossil fuels. one more thought here from, from you cheve, and i'm going to ask you to do this very quickly for me. charlie fargo says this conversation is not that simple. all companies are energy companies and they're using o profits to day to fund renewable energy projects for our future. i have heard that so many times, charlie, your instant response back is what it's pennies on the dollar. i mean, it's true that some of the companies invest in um, let's say coke industries. the largest private oil and gas company in the united states is investing a little bit in batteries because they know that the market for oil and gas is going away. and transportation, and they better hedge their bet. all right, charlie and rebecca and michael, thank he for resting with his complex subject on the string, the really appreciate you audience have a look here, my laptop. this program was part of the covering climate now series. you can follow it always, and coughing,

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