Hello, welcome to Drill, this is Amy Westerveld. I'm here today with a bit of an update to the

history we chronicled in season 3, when we looked at the last hundred or so years of fossil

fuel propaganda. A new study from a Harvard researchers Jeffrey Supran and Naomi Arezquez highlights

how ExxonMobil in particular has used language both to undermine climate action and to push the

idea that it's an individual consumer problem. Not anything to do with them or the systems they helped

to create and continue to profit from. Lead researcher Jeffrey Supran joined me to talk through

the study's findings and what they mean for climate action more broadly. And what they might

mean for the two dozen or so climate cases making their way through the courts at the moment.

That conversation coming up after this quick break.

So basically if you run a do some code to say what words appear I think within

plus or minus five words of the words climate change and global warming there is literally no word

or phrase that is more common than risk or risks. So it basically became their watchword throughout

throughout the two thousands and likewise in terms of the words the individualized responsibility

all the same keywords pop up regarding meeting the energy demand of consumers you know meeting the

needs all these kinds of words. Did you find that you know the word risk was used to in a way to

introduce doubt like it's a risk but it's not a certainty. Was it that kind of framing or how

how is it being used? Yeah right so essentially they talk about climate risk risks you know long-term

risk potential risk potential long-term risks all permutations on the word risk and our interpretation

is that exon mobile used risk just as they have used other rhetorical cousins like uncertainty

and more research and sound science essentially the same intention of what's sometimes called strategic

ambiguity. It's exactly what the tobacco industry did which is to shift the conversation from

semantics from concepts of reality to concepts of risk and it's a very clever trick because you

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