Raising Hell: Issue 61: Nothing For No Reason

Whether you’re working with 400 words, 2000 or 60k, time, length and legal considerations always mean something gets left out of a story. One of the advantages of Raising Hell as a newsletter, beyond building a war chest for future projects, is that it gives me a chance to circle back and highlight something that never made it to print but which should still be published as a matter of public interest.

For example, last week I published a story with Guardian Australia looking at the ways in which oil and gas companies are doing their best to work their ways into schools. Its origin owes much to Raising Hell’s generous subscribers. Thanks to your support I was able to attend the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association’s national conference in Brisbane this year. I’ve managed to get several stories out of that field trip, including my recent contribution to Rolling Stone Australia, but there have been others that have taken some more time to get out the door.

This one — looking at how fossil fuel companies are working to get into schools — is one such project. It was only recently, when Santos was dropped from a university-sponsored science expo, that there was a strong enough news hook to get it over the line. The significance of this story should be plain: when you have companies responsible for making the special sauce that causes climate change — and a long history of concealing the science — we should think carefully before letting them shape what kids get taught.

As the story explains, these companies have tried all manner and means to get into school, many of which are deeply funny and reminiscent of that old timey meme:

I’m not going to rehash that whole business but instead I want to focus on one crucial bit of data that, for reasons of length, I ended up having to leave out: a revealing exchange with Lucy Snelling, head of corporate and commercial at Queensland gas company state gas, where she described kids hostility to the oil and gas industry as “brainwashing”. Snelling made the comment during a panel on the mainstage where she appeared alongside figures like Exxon’s Kory Judd and Woodside CEO Meg O’Neill. Unlike her counterparts who spoke with the coy evasiveness of well practiced corporate diplomacy, Snelling wore her heart on the her sleeve:

Snelling: I think it's really a huge challenge and I think it comes back to some of these issues about public perception about the industry. And I think we have to work very hard. I think that there's a big task in the schools, we have to get into the schools and try to work with the teachers, because there is a widespread perception, I think amongst the teaching staff, that these industries --that the world is moving away and that there's no future. And I've been arguing, if you want to do hydrogen, how do you get to hydrogen? If you want to do, you know, be at the forefront of rare metals, if you want to do batteries, if you want to do all of these things, you have to have these skills? Okay? And then I trust to the money. Once they get the skill base, they'll go with the jobs or they'll go with the money and where the opportunities are. But I think we've got to try and sell it on a basis that for these people, because some of them are well past the stage where you can fight the brainwashing that they've received. Perhaps I shouldn't use those terms.

Chair: [Asked by chair to clarify whether she thinks it is "actually brainwashing"]

Snelling: I-- I look, it's a lack of education. But it's a real challenge. And I think it comes back to the trust question, --trust issue as well. It's like the old thing about lawyers. Lawyers are terrible -- except my lawyer. It's the same sort of thing if the people --you will find that the greatest areas of concern about fossil fuel industries are the areas which are the furthest distance away from the activity. Apart from just going and filling up with a petrol station. You will find that in areas in the communities in which we act and we are operating there are actually pretty high levels of trust. And they accept us, and they welcome us. So part of our real challenge is to try to bring our presence into the communities, which we're not. Because otherwise, I think you get this body of support which is arguing against us.

It was this exchange that formed the basis of the story. Sitting in the audience, I remember I was only half paying attention when she said this. It was very much a “saying the quiet part out loud” moment that prompted me to go looking for more.

Later, while working on the story for The Guardian, I asked her about the moment and Snelling was clear in saying she “regretted” using the phrase “brainwashing”. She then clearly frame the issue as she saw it and it was this response I quoted in the story as provided a good summary of a problem the way the industry sees the world.

But I was also interested in her choice of words. Personally, I have no doubt Snelling regretted her language. It was the kind of candidate moment that revealed how industry figures really think and talk about the world when they’re behind closed doors. In many ways, it was refreshingly honest but its significance went beyond just the questionable choice of language. What it confirmed was the logic by which the oil and gas companies are approaching these sorts of problems: it was a statement of intent, a clear exploration of how the industry buys loyalties and the ulterior motives which guide its engagement other institutions in society.

More significantly, it was also a statement that should inspire action, or at least caution among organisations working with oil and gas companies. A good rule of thumb is to approach it like prison: for a business that, globally, pulls $3bn a day, nothing is free.

For the Fortnight: September 28 to October 11

Reporting In

Where I recap what I’ve been doing this last fortnight so you know I’m not just using your money to stimulate the local economy …

***LIVE SHOW!*** ***UPDATED*** Due to the untimely demise of the monarch this the talk organised by Unley City Library had to be postponed. Do not worry, however, as this just means more time to buy tickets. Details below!

• ‘‘Fossil fuels in schools: industry faces pushback in fight for hearts and minds of next generation” (The Guardian Australia, 4 October 2022).
• “Football Australia under pressure to issue lifetime bans for Sydney Unitans who made Nazi salute” (The Guardian Australia, 2 October 2022).
• “Inside the Optus breach” (The Saturday Paper, 1 October 2022).
• “Perth Festival and Chevron to split after decades long partnership” (The Age, 8 October 2022).

You Hate To See It

A dyspeptic, snark-ridden and highly ironic round-up of the news from our shared hellscape…

• Like Praying For RainThe cost of living may be getting you down, but not so for William Meaney, a man licking his lips at the prospect of jacking up prices. A combination of inflation and low wages may mean you’re paying $11 for lettuce but if you've long suspected companies of price gouging for no reason, then you’d be correct! See, it turns out the ironically-named CEO of Iron Mountain just loves inflation. In fact, he’s been praying for it. According to a report in The Intercept, Meaney was busted saying the quiet part out loud when he told a group of Wall Street analysts back in September he had been “doing my inflation dance praying for inflation”. Why, you ask? As Meaney explained in 2018 on a separate investor call: ‘our top line is really driven by inflation. … Every point of inflation expands our margins.” And if that’s true for Iron Mountain, a data and management firm that serves 95 percent of the Fortune 1000 companies and has hardwired itself into the operation of government, you can take that to the bank.
• With Friends Like TheseAs Elon Musk continues his hot-cold flirtation with Twitter’s board in his $44bn takeover effort, the court case institute to force this real-life Hank Scorpio to buy out the social media service has at least allowed the public a look into his phone. As noted by Charlie Warzel writing in The Atlantic, the mundane sycophants who slide into Musk’s text messages with offers of a quickie $250m loan have pretty much shattered the myth of the tech genius. Curiously, this also offers some context to Musk’s recent entrée into international diplomacy with his suggestion that Ukrainians, basically, surrender to Russia: there is no problem big enough that Musk can’t fuck up in a new and exciting way — which also might be why his daughter is no longer speaking to him as opposed to, you know, communism.
• Like Wine Into WaterSo you’re an ex-Rhodesian mercenary who washed up in Tasmania after taking up arms in defence of a racist white nationalist ethno-state. What are you to do? If you’re anything like businessman Dave Hodgson — and man hellbent on doing “god’s will god’s way” — you of course get into the business of clean energy by way of dirty coal. In the same way that Jesus turned water into wine, one of Hodgson’s companies, Paladin Hydrogen, applied for permission to open an old Tasmanian coal mine so he can make hydrogen from coal “with zero emissions whatsoever”. The process — allegedly — involves crushing the coal and mixing it with water to form a slurry, with an chemical agent mixed in. Of course Hodgson can’t disclose just what the agent is right now — it could be holy water for all we know — but you know everything is absolutely on the up-and-up! Yup-yup-yup!
• Liveris KnowsAndrew Liveris is a very versatile man. On the one hand Liveris has been appointed as President of the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic games organising committee. On the other, he sits on the board of Saudi Aramco, one of the world’s biggest oil companies that is 95% owned by the Saudi Arabian government and remains the most polluting company of all time. Speaking at the Queensland Media Club on Wednesday, Liveris told his audience not to worry about climate change as the oil and gas have it sorted. “I sit at tables where I learn what the better answer is,” Liveris said. “Even if it is from the table like my previous life that emits, because if you emit you actually know the solutions.” Which is great and all, until you stop to consider Liveris is being paid to not act on said solutions.
• A New Man At The Start Of HistoryThe world might be teetering on the edge of nuclear conflict as Vladimir Putin threatens to use tactical nuclear weapons following his illegal annexation of parts of Ukraine, and the UK Government may be on the brink as Liz Truss does her best Iron Lady impersonation, but at least one noted international relations theorist is having fun on the internet. Francis Fukuyama, the guy who brought us the “end of history”, has been watching Russia’s invasion of Ukraine closely and posting vaguely cryptic observations about the course of events. And who can blame him? If word came that we had ten minutes until the world ended in nuclear hellfire, you’d probably spend it shitposting on Twitter too.

Failing Upward

Where we recognise and celebrate the true stupidity of the rich, powerful and influential…

• It might be an everyman’s dream to strap on a pair of cleats and walk onto a grassy field at the MCG to play a game of professional football, but we here at Raising Hell found ourselves thrilled when Andrew Thorburn managed to find a new spin on an old classic. Thornburn, man who belongs to a church that hates gay people and wants abortion banned, had his own chance to spend a day as Essendon CEO before he stepped down.
  The good news is that if anyone out there is worried that a fuck up in your personal or professional life might lead to negative consequences, even a brief look at Thornburn should quell any anxiety. Not only did the guy manage to get the gig at Essendon after that whole Banking Royal Commission snafu but it’s unlikely even recent events will dent his career prospects. Like our Lord and Saviour, the man is in the process rising again as living symbol of persecuted Christians everywhere. One headline in The Australian described Thornburn as “the latest sacrifice to cancel culture” while Sky reported that Liberal Opposition leader Peter Dutton wants Thorburn back in the job. Even Thornburn himself got in on the action when he released a statement expressing concern over how punishing expressions of faith in the workplace may set a bad precedent.We look forward to seeing him around the right-wing talkback circuit and, presumably, a flourishing future career in parliament.

Good Reads, Good Times

To share the love, here are some of the best or more interesting reads from the last fortnight…

• But seriously, if you can get access, check out this in The Atlantic trying to find insight from Elon Musk’s boring Tweets.
• It was the five year anniversary of Holden’s closure. I’ve been too under the gun to put anything together about this, but the ABC put together a fairly decent package quoting friend of the newsletter Dr Gemma Beale.

Before You Go (Go)…

• Are you a public sector bureaucrat whose tyrannical boss is behaving badly? Have you recently come into possession of documents showing some rich guy is trying to move their ill-gotten-gains to Curacao? Did you take a low-paying job with an evil corporation registered in Delaware that is burying toxic waste under playgrounds? If your conscience is keeping you up at night, or you’d just plain like to see some wrong-doers cast into the sea, we here at Raising Hell can suggest a course of action: leak! You can securely make contact through Signal or through encrypted message Wickr Me on my account: rorok1990. Alternatively you can send us your hard copies to: PO Box 134, Welland SA 5007
• And if you’ve come this far, consider supporting me further by picking up one of my books, leaving a review or by just telling a friend about Raising Hell!