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248: The Politics of Oil - Royce Kurmelovs
56 Plays1 month ago
Oil is a divisive issue. Climate change debates remain as heated as ever in Australia with nuclear energy, renewables and the legacy realities of oil and gas necessity remaining at the heart of the story. In the face of our climate crisis, my guest says “today is the time for a wake-up call to the dangers of unchecked power and influence”. Royce Kurmelovs’s latest written work is titled Slick: Australia’s toxic relationship with Big Oil is a damning portrait of greed, ignorance and environmental neglect, leaving not a shred of doubt as to the oil and gas industry’s complicity in the climate crisis we currently face.
Royce is a journalist and author whose reporting has appeared in Rolling Stone, Science, The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, The Monthly, the BBC, Al Jazeera English and other publications.
Royce's bestselling first book, The Death of Holden, explored the closure of the Australian car industry on communities across South Australia and Victoria. His critically acclaimed second book, Rogue Nation, published in 2016 documented the fracturing of Australian politics. His third book Boom and Bust presented a portrait of Western Australia after the mining book, while his fourth book Just Money revealed the pyramid of debt on which the Australian economy was built.
In short, Royce has some challenging and well-researched ideas for us and in this episode, he discusses:
1. Why did you write your fifth book, Slick, which investigates the Australian oil industry to understand what they knew about climate change when they knew it, and how they worked to make sure nothing was done to address it.
2. How can we get off this oil-reliance train?
3. How can energy remain democratic – as in poorer nations like the Philippines or Africa can’t afford to invest in the new technologies needed as fast as say the USA or Australia. What would make that cleaner energy transition fairer and maybe faster?
Connect further:
(37) Royce Kurmelovs | LinkedIn
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the politics of everything. I'm Amber Danes, your host and podcast producer. This is a half hour of power podcast dropping every week where I unpack the politics of everything from money to motherhood, nutrition to narcissism, startups to secularism, the environment, quality and much, much more.
00:00:22
Speaker
Our guests are seasoned in the field of topic of their choice, even if you've not heard of them yet. This is a nonpartisan show. So while I love exploring varied views and get a buzz from a healthy debate of ideas, this is not a purely blue, white, green program. Please subscribe, tune in and enjoy the politics of everything.
Critique of the Oil Industry
00:00:46
Speaker
Oiler's divisive issue, climate change debates remain as heated as ever in Australia with nuclear energy, renewables and the legacy realities of oil and gas being a necessity remaining at the heart of this story. In the face of our climate crisis, my guest today says now is the time for a wake up call to the danger of unchecked power and influence.
00:01:07
Speaker
Royce Kemelov's latest book is called Slick, Australia's toxic relationship with big oil and it's a damning portrait of greed, ignorance and environmental neglect, leaving not a shred of doubt as to the oil and gas industry's complicity in the climate crisis we face. Royce is actually a journalist and author whose reporting has appeared in numerous publications such as Rolling Stone, Science, The Guardian, The Saturday Paper, Al Jazeera English and a range of other publications.
00:01:32
Speaker
Royce's best-selling first book, The Death of Holden, explored the closure of the Australian car industry on communities across South Australia and Victoria. His quickly acclaimed second book, Rogue Nation, published in 2016, documented the fracturing of Australian politics. His third book, Boom and Bust, presented a portrait of Western Australia after the mining boom, while his fourth book, Just Money, revealed the pyramid of debt on which Australia's economy was built.
00:01:56
Speaker
And this is a huge topic and I can't wait to get stuck into it with Royce on the politics of everything. Welcome to the show. Thank you. It's good to hear you.
Podcasting with Zencastr
00:02:05
Speaker
Podcasting remotely can be challenging, but it doesn't have to be. Since day one of the politics of everything, I have relied on Zincasters all in one solution to make the process quick and painless, the way it should be for those of us who just love great content and want to get our ideas out into the world. If you know me, I'm obsessed with quality in terms of my guests, my sound, and everything about my show has to be great the first time. I'm Time Paul.
00:02:30
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It's so easy to use Zencastr. I'm not tech savvy and you don't need to be either. There's nothing to download. Just click on the link and off we go. Zencastr is all about making your podcasting experience easy and with everything from local recording to automatic post productions now in their toolkit, you don't have to leave your browser to get that episode done and done fast.
00:02:51
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Royce's Career Journey
00:03:17
Speaker
Young journalist always, or did you think you might do something else? It sounds like you've had a pretty solid career. Yeah. Well, no, when I was much much younger, much more foolish, I actually you was was playing with the idea of going into death something completely different, software engineering.
00:03:32
Speaker
And then I discovered that involves a hefty amount of maths and mathematical type thinking, which wasn't really for me. um So after that, I kind of just I really love storytelling and writing. And I decided that journalism was the best way to do words it' for money, which again, I think I was wrong on that score. But You make some money. You don't make investment banking levels of money. But yeah but truth and justice, you know. and but yeah But I've made it this far and that's good. So and then I kind of the pivotal moment, though, was um I went to the US briefly and was just an intern at one point. and I was working at this dying paper, writing this feature. And I remember thinking to myself, this is fantastic. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life. And from that moment, I was kind of ruined for other careers.
00:04:15
Speaker
Excellent. I love it. I love joining the dots from where people have started and of course where they've ended up today. Your book Slick investigates the Australian oil industry to understand what they knew about climate change, when they knew and how they worked to make sure nothing was done to address it. What got you interested in this topic? Because obviously you've written about very diverse issues in the past. Why this one and why now? Yeah, it was an interesting turn for me because I mean, at the time, I think I was working as an environment reporter with The Guardian.
00:04:45
Speaker
And you know the more you ah you're reporting on this issue, particularly at that time, there was just you know report after report and story after story kind of really underscoring the gravity of this existential threat at this moment and how humanity had to do something. And it was a real education in terms of this subject that I, like I suspect many people, kind of know you know a bit about but haven't really looked at and in close detail.
00:05:09
Speaker
um you And then everything I was doing was looking at for everything from extreme weather effects to knock on effects for agriculture and cities and yeah the sponsorship of arts and sports by fossil fuel companies and all these sorts of things. And it was really clear to me then, as other people have said, that you know everything is now a climate story.
00:05:27
Speaker
yeah And when we talk about that, we've had that conversation here in Australia, as I think you hinted at in the opening, that things have been so um you know tense around the subject of climate change in this in this country for so long. A lot of the conversation yeah about about this doesn't necessarily focus on who was responsible for this or how we ended up in this spot. And so you know that that that got me thinking.
00:05:48
Speaker
And so my first step was to go to an industry conference, which was yeah run by the largest oil and gas lobby group in the country that they do it every year. And the people that go to this thing are the people that kind of shape the identity of the industry and then do the long term planning. And I really wanted to see how they were talking about climate change. But the you know three you know three days I spent there, I found that they really weren't.
00:06:09
Speaker
and That got me digging um because I i started to get curious. I was like, well, look let's let's learn more about this and what Australia was yeah know doing. was doing so um i set out to look at yeah about i so I set out to go look through kind of all the old industry documents where I could and like materials where I could find them to kind of learn what the oil and gas industry in Australia knew about climate change, when they knew it, what they were saying, and then what they did with this information.
Historical Awareness of Climate Change
00:06:33
Speaker
And yeah based on this, i was i would I found things like, for instance, that in 1972, for instance, right the Australian oil and gas industry was having a conversation about what they then called the greenhouse effect on the floor of their national conference, where everyone was listening and talking. They were aware that there was a risk. They were aware that burning fossil fuels was causing a problem and that we'd have to do something about it. And they were quite freely talking about it.
00:06:58
Speaker
um And that was really significant for me because I mean, as like many people, if you talk to them, will generally kind of think that climate change as an issue really kind of emerged in the 90s. We started talking about it then. But as it turns out, this is wrong. We've actually known there was risk for almost half a century at this point.
00:07:18
Speaker
and so wow yeah yeah And that was the first step. but The next step was then to take it one further and say, well, ah yeah like yeah it was to learn about how the industry developed and how it was connected to the US industry and how they knew about climate change and how they were actively researching this stuff even earlier than that. And they transferred that knowledge across.
00:07:38
Speaker
Yeah, wow. It's interesting to know how, I guess, complicit, you know, the oil industry has been. But of course, it's not just up to them. There's obviously other players involved. Well, yeah, but I mean, there's a really fascinating story about this, right, which is that a lot of this stuff originated with people started getting really concerned about the smog over Los Angeles.
00:07:59
Speaker
and Yes, I don't remember that. I'm old enough to remember that. Exactly, come on. ah yeah yeah so like People are still really concerned about this, right? And when there was a researcher, one researcher in particular, who was kind of looking at it and started to point out that, hey, we've got all these cows in the road, they're burning petroleum, it's creating the smog. And then so that was the first thing that happened. The second thing that happened was the link between smoking and cancer got discovered in about 1950.
00:08:26
Speaker
and And a lot of these oil executives, particularly in the US, were looking at this, putting two and two together and saying, oh, well, if people start you know connecting the dots here, they're going to start trying to sue us like they're doing to the tobacco guys. So we've got to do something about this. And at that point, they started putting an actual legitimate money into this sorts of stuff.
00:08:44
Speaker
yeah and and and really kind of working up the research. And what what you find are these extraordinary reports, these extraordinary stories from these scientists who are hired from the industry over periods through the 60s and through the 70s, saying, hey, this is a serious problem we have to do something about. The unfortunate thing is that the industry then never went and shared that science with anyone else.
00:09:05
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. No, it's very similar parallels there as well. Will climate risks and our energy debates ever be settled by science alone? It seems like, you know, there is still climate change deniers out there. It's sort of a, I guess, a breed of ah thought which doesn't seem to be getting any bigger. But I feel like you can tell people all the things, show them all the graphs, and there is still people who don't seem to be taking this very seriously. Well, it's funny you ask that. That's actually a very ah it's a big and important question. And I think what surprised many climate scientists in later years is that they were quite shocked and quiet. They thought that if they had put the evidence on the record, if they said that this is what their conclusions are, that people would naturally have to respond because they're pointing at a threat and you know rationally you have to just address this. But that's not how it kind of happened.
00:10:01
Speaker
What happened instead, and you've got to take a few steps back to kind of get to this, is that particularly these oil companies, when they were doing these research programs, they had their internal scientists saying to them, hey, this is a problem. there was yeah You can find these documents. There was one internal briefing where scientists said, hey, like if we don't stop you know produc like burning oil and gas and coal, we're going to have this real problem with the climate.
00:10:22
Speaker
and the companies in turn turned around and said okay thanks for that we appreciate your input but um what we're going to do is we're going to lean into the uncertainty and doubt around the sides and we're going to really play that up in public and there's a famous document from it's called the Exxon memo where they basically say that those exact words that we're going to emphasize the uncertainty and doubt. And the reason why that is really effective when it comes to the politics of this is that politicians do not like something where it's uncertain. And if they're being asked to make a big bold step, a big major change, and suddenly the rug gets pulled out from under them, say, you know five yeah but like ah the next year, five years later,
00:10:59
Speaker
that's really scary for them. And so by creating this kind of by feeding that sense of doubt, by feeding that sense of climate denial, it was able it it basically brought things to a standstill for 20 years. It took the world that much longer to catch up because you had to make sure the ah the evidence was much stronger.
00:11:14
Speaker
and Absolutely. Yeah. That makes sense, though. When you put it that way, that that kind of you know the logic around the politics is is kind of behind most of this, as well as what's happening with big business. Yeah. and and The lesson here, really, is that like science itself is political. We tend to think of it as this kind of innate objective, you know this question, but it's who's putting together like it's it' those questions. you know who's Who's funding the reports? Who's putting them together? who How are they being presented? Who is receiving that message? All those things that make for good communication.
00:11:44
Speaker
Absolutely. How can we get off this oil alliance
Transition to Clean Energy
00:11:49
Speaker
train? I wish there was, you know, you could turn one tap off per se and then turn the other on for alternative energy sources. A lot of economies, including ours, have still got a long way to go to be able to be free, if you like, of the oil and gas reliance. Is there a pathway which you think, based on what you know so far, is going to help that happen?
00:12:11
Speaker
yeah I mean, this is kind of a good news, bad news situation. So I guess the good news is that we are doing it. we are already along going along that path. you know we the The situation is that you both have to stop the extraction of fossil fuels and you have to stop the consumption by kind of ending demand, stop people from using this. And we already have good examples across, in Australia at least, and yeah know and good examples of where that's taking place. We have Victoria, where the state government ended gas gas connections in new homes, which means if you wanted a gas connection in in your house, if you're building a house, you have to pay extra for that.
00:12:45
Speaker
And then we have situations like South Australia where you know where yeah solar penetration is just through the roof. It performs a huge part of the energy grid. And there are some kind of weeks where the entire state power grid is powered by you know solar and wind energy yeah for before a given period, because it's just that bright.
00:13:02
Speaker
And we're also seeing, as that continues, we're seeing those sorts of uptake white hat existing yeah coal and gas operations, which don't have the flexibility to turn on and off when they need to. And and so you're seeing that change kind of go through. Other states you know that are dragging their feet, um mostly they've been waiting for the federal government to kind of do the heavy lifting on this stuff. And there's a big conversation to be had about ending kind of fossil fuel subsidies and going further faster, which is what really needs to be done.
00:13:30
Speaker
But you know that that question you talk about about you know when we zoom out and look globally, um that conversation is also underway as well. So last year in Dubai, there was a big international like climate meeting. It was called the Conference of the Parties, or COP. And I was there, and i report about this I write about this in the final chapter of the book, where um the conversation there was about what people were expecting was a plan to phase out coal, oil, and gas from the world's energy grid. And people were really pushing for it because it's been 20 years of this kind of organized international framework. um and it was And the feeling was now was the time to make that happen. And what ended up coming out of that meeting
00:14:10
Speaker
under considerable pressure from groups like OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, and a few other the fossil fuel redesignations, was not so much a plan to phase out coal, oil, and gas, but kind of the beginning of the end. um What was agreed to was a plan to start phasing out oil and gas, but there were like several loopholes and Yeah, I can imagine. like yeah I've looked at some of that as well. I've got clients in that space and um one of my clients, he was also at the last COP and um it just feels like a talk fest sometimes, I have to say. It it was a very interesting experience being there on the ground. it's it if if If you're a cynical person, ah it it can kind of inflame some of those feelings.
00:14:55
Speaker
but There you go. You've pinned me in one. Well, yes. but ah yeah But at the same time, i mean the fact mean it's you have to recognise where at least a little bit of progress has we been made and the fact that people were able to agree and to actually say, yes, we do need to phase this out. That was significant, but it needed to be more. Yeah, the devil's in the detail too, I imagine as well. Absolutely.
00:15:19
Speaker
and energy become more democratic. I mean, I'm aware that, you know, I've just come back from a work trip in the Philippines, for example, places like Africa. They can't necessarily afford to invest or switch over into these new technologies, which are less oil reliant, like countries like Australia or the US or parts of Europe. What do you think will help make that clean energy transition fairer and therefore globally and holistically maybe faster?
00:15:44
Speaker
Well, that's actually a really good question as well, because one of the um ongoing international issues right now is it's long been recognized in these kind of climate frameworks that developed countries because they've been polluting for longer since the start of the Industrial Revolution. And that's how they made their money, that they're under an obligation to put up the cash to help developing countries transition. That that wasn't necessarily addressed last year, but it's expected to be kind of addressed this year and as a buydown.
00:16:11
Speaker
whether or not it is, remains to be seen. But that is a live issue right now. But what's also really interesting about this is how that issue and that question of, like well, how do we help best help developing countries can be really weaponized by oil and gas companies. And when you hear them talk about this, they say two things that I find always really, really interesting. The first is that you know they have this idea that developing countries have to follow a kind of very rigid linear path when it comes to their own use of renewable energy and getting off of coil oil and gas. Because they had this idea that you know you have to build the coal power plants, which lets you do the gas power plants, which lets you do the solar stuff once you get some money. But that's not true. The experience from places like Africa with mobile phones, for instance, is not that these people moved from a rotary landline phone to a brick mobile before they eventually arrived at the smartphone. What they did was just leapfrog to the smartphone when it became affordable enough.
00:17:07
Speaker
And this is the second part of the conversation, which is right now, china put like china the the amount of solar panels China produces on ah you know yeah on on a day could form a mountain. Thanks to that kind of just industrial output and the you know the cheap solar panel, solar power is the cheapest electricity production that has ever existed as long as humans have been walking around this planet.
00:17:28
Speaker
And that means it is possible to make that transition. And once you get those kind of arrays set up, you start plugging people into that. They're no longer dependent on the kind of vagaries of ah electricity grid where you might have in particular countries, like everything from yeah on one of the spectrum corrupt officials to just kind of bad maintenance to you know all sorts of stuff going on. And i does and by by by encouraging and setting up those sorts of operations, you do kind of put the power back in the hands of those people, so to speak.
00:17:57
Speaker
Absolutely. No, I think that all makes sense. Let's make it happen faster as as we all would love to see.
Personal Reflections
00:18:03
Speaker
Changing tack a little bit. I asked my guests a few consistent questions and I've got these for you as well. Do you have a non-negotiable favorite daily habit?
00:18:11
Speaker
I do, I do. you You can't see me right now, but I'm actually a very tall guy. and so If I'm being honest, I'm a big fan of breakfast. and if If I don't get that kind of blood sugar stabilised every morning consistently, I get cranky and mean, and no one really wants to deal with that. No intermittent fasting for you then after your diet. No, that's that's that's deeply concerning to me.
00:18:34
Speaker
I love it. I do love breakfast, too. I don't know. I'm not crazy at all, but I just I could probably skip dinner more than I could skip breakfast. I always think I can't handle being hungry in the morning and I do my best work in the morning. So I feel like I need all the fuel to get my brain and body going. Absolutely. a New day, fresh pot of coffee. So you start things right. Perfect. Excellent. What's been your biggest life lesson to date and what's it taught you?
00:18:59
Speaker
This is a very philosophical question. And if you allow me to get deep for a second, I think it's basically that I think you got to give people a chance to be noble. I think nine times out of 10 people will probably disappoint you, but every now and then, you know, when you give people a chance, they will step up and do something incredible and write where it counts. And I think that is the stuff that kind of keeps you keeps you going. Yeah. I like that. I mean, that's good. It's a deep question. I expect to deep answer. So I think that was bang on. How do you define your own version of success?
00:19:32
Speaker
um so Well, this is another very deep question, so we're getting very philosophical. um ah It's interesting. So a a few years back, I once saw an interview with Stephen Fry, the British actor, where he talked about living the artistic life. And bear with me, it has a point to it. um But what he was really pointing out was that if you live a really focused, goal-driven lifestyle, you tend to be unhappy whenever you get to where you're going, because you find out that what you're expecting it to be like is not really yeah kind of sucks.
00:20:01
Speaker
um And what he was suggesting is that it's it's it's better to you know do the interesting thing, to to be willing to change tack when something else comes up and follow that. and you wind up And as a result, you wind up in a happier place because you still work for it, but you didn't have the expectations about what it will be like.
00:20:17
Speaker
And when I think about in my own life, for me, the only two things I ever wanted to do was, you know, but essentially publish a book and get published from Rolling Stone. And you've done those. Yeah, exactly. I've achieved those things. yeah To me, everything else is a bonus from this point.
00:20:32
Speaker
Yeah, I like that. I think that sounds like you've kicked the goals that you set for yourself, and that's pretty satisfying. I think there's always more we could do, but I think sometimes it's be good to be happy with what we have already achieved. Yeah. What would be your final takeaway message for us today on the politics of oil?
Call to Climate Action
00:20:51
Speaker
I think if I was to take if if i to look at this, it would be that you know climate change really is an existential threat. But like it's it's not too late to do something about it. And if and if there's a sense of kind of, you know it's it's very easy to feel a sense of kind of despair or fatalism or hopelessness. But it's also important to remember that that kind of that is i kind of like there There are people out there who want you to feel that way because it means that they can continue making lots of money from this situation. But there is a much better, cleaner, healthier world to win if we, you know, if we do what's necessary to address this, if we phase out oil, gas and coal. And as I said, in some ways, we're doing it, we just have to go faster. Yeah, let's make it happen. Thank you so much for your time today, Royce. And of course, there are details of how to connect with Royce. Find out more about his various books, including his latest one Slick on the website. Until next time, do take care. Thank you.