The Power of Big Oil, Part Three: Delay (full documentary) | FRONTLINE
for more than 150 years oil and gas has played a critical role in our society improving human lives raising standards of living and enabling unprecedented economic growth what do you do when your industry can no longer exist without creating catastrophes worldwide the impacts of climate change are intensifying it's important to understand the past you can't understand where you are if you don't know how you got there in a special three-part series the epic story of our failure to tackle climate change the whole world is heating up and the role of the fossil fuel industry this big oil knowingly spread disinformation now in the third and final part big oil pivots to a new energy source renewables weren't quite there yet natural gas could provide continuous 24-hour generation doing something for the first time taking advantage of this new resource you don't always know what you don't know and over time what we learned is very very scary the challenges that have delayed climate action we have a supply of natural gas that can last america nearly 100 years the united states is now the number one producer of oil and natural gas energy crisis exacerbated by russia's warrants 60 million barrels of oil from reserves around the world we all want a clean climate but what we want more than that is to be able to fill up our cars below four dollars a gallon we're still very much in the fossil fuel we continue to maintain a position that has evolved with science and is today consistent with the science we won't solve the climate crisis unless we solve the misinformation crisis hey guys nice night huh there's this great irony of the obama administration he comes in promising to be the climate president he's going to address these issues and at the same time we're in the middle of a recession and one of the few rays of job growth is in oil and gas and nowhere is the promise of innovation greater than in american made energy the country down on its heels and here comes the oil industry generating lots of oil generating tax revenue it was a great story for the oil industry to sell over the last three years we've opened millions of new acres for oil and gas exploration the potential for natural gas was huge we have a supply of natural gas that can last america nearly 100 years when obama said we had 100 years of natural gas we panicked because we knew the climate was changing so fast we didn't take the alternative path of drastically increasing investment in renewables thank you god bless you and god bless the united states of america it should have happened in the obama years and we've exacerbated climate change problem for 10 years when we could have been diminishing it the bible says no man can serve two masters well we kind of had two masters at that point we were trying to be a climate leader but we were trying to be an energy superpower it's impossible really to be both there are massive fracking booms happening in texas north dakota pennsylvania oh i mean just look at that it's much of the middle of this it's led to unprecedented expansion in towns from catoola to oil fields fueling a red-hot energy boom in the u.s during the early years of the obama administration despite widespread concern about climate change the fossil fuel industry was experiencing an historic boom with tens of thousands of new wells across the united states it was driven in large part by a new technology for extracting oil and natural gas it would be a turning point for the fossil fuel industry and the fight against climate change tony and graffia had helped make it happen i certainly didn't grow up questioning fossil fuels it was just 1950s usa everything was automatic and wonderful we didn't realize it at the time but fossil fuels were driving what we call western civilization and still today i value what fossil fuels have done for the world in the early 1980s in graffia was part of a team of u.s government engineers tasked to solve a problem u.s oil and natural gas production had just fallen off right off the end of the table uh since the oil embargo hold on that's it all out of gas that is i'm going to line two hours in i can't get gears this is baloney america was becoming increasingly dependent on imported oil and gas from unreliable sources after its own reserves declined there was a quest to unlock new domestic fossil fuels nobody had thought about spending a lot of money trying to get oil and gas out of shale nobody knew how to do it and most people in the industry the vast majority of the people in the industry said it couldn't be done ingraphia's team began devising new ways to extract large deposits of oil and gas trapped in shale rock formations across america they called it fluid driven fracture now known as fracking even in this small piece of marsala shale there is stored methane which becomes natural gas when it's produced and if one were to estimate the total amount of methane thousands of square miles under all these states it's many many trillions of cubic feet of natural gas energy how do you get energy out of the earth it all comes by cracking rock oil embargo energy crisis crack rock help it would take decades before fracking technology was perfected the process was complicated and expensive and the urgency eventually abated that changed when hurricane katrina hit in 2005. the latest information from the national hurricane center puts katrina on a path headed for new orleans we're expecting winds there up to 145 miles per hour with gusts up to 170. the storm was part
of an emerging trend of extreme weather events it devastated the gulf coast and damaged oil and gas production natural gas prices surged making it more attractive to use new drilling and fracking technologies to get oil and gas from shale formations you have this amazing irony of this huge a hurricane uh this climate event causing natural gas prices to go up do you have a figure or an estimate of how high we might see natural gas prices go we've seen prices double over the last couple of years and then with hurricane katrina prices have doubled yet again all of a sudden these companies are saying wow you know we're getting huge profits the climate crisis was creating a huge market boom which was being solved by people going out and drilling more natural gas which was feeding into the climate crisis it was a self-contained cycle wall street took note over the next several years investors would begin pumping billions of dollars into companies with fracking operations gold covered the boom for the wall street journal and worked with us on this film most people in the oil and gas industry most reporters like myself that were covering it thought that oil and gas in the united states was over we had found all the good reserves we had drilled all the big wells but shale changed all that it was unexpected it was dramatic and it was lubricated by billions and billions of dollars coming out of wall street thanks to record-breaking u.s production natural gas will continue to be a bargain at chesapeake energy we explore for american natural gas no one would be more responsible for driving the fracking boom than aubry mcclendon ceo of chesapeake energy aubry mcclendon was a great visionary he was a bigger than life individual if there's one message i'd like to effectively communicate today it's that america is at the beginning of a great natural gas boom and this boom he believed that natural gas was the fuel of the future and that's he called it that all the time the technological breakthrough that we have developed in finding gas from shales changes everything about what you think about natural gas scarcity in america with the growing awareness about fossil fuels effect on the climate mclendon believed that natural gas which releases less co2 than oil or coal when burned could be marketed as part of the solution he said well what do you think you know he said do we need an association or an organization just focused on the gas opportunities out there so we started the clean skies foundation it was just doing everything we possibly could to get out the message what if america had its own clean energy abundant and available for the next century or more and possibly indefinitely the fossil fuel industry tries to make this argument that we can be part of the solution we can be a force for good on climate that we'll go out and we'll drill the natural gas which is going to help us lower um our emissions doing a world of good for our economy energy security and our irreplaceable planet earth at the time most of the country's power was generated by coal mcclendon saw an opportunity to position natural gas as a clean alternative he starts courting probably the most prominent environmentalist in the country carl pope at the sierra club we were working with chesapeake to kill coal and they were providing us with financial support i think it was quite clear the chesapeake's objective was to build markets for natural gas at the expense of coal the concept that we were trying to convey was to say eventually we have to be off all fossil fuels but we have to get off coal first oil second and gas third so we have the opportunity to replace a very dirty fossil fuel coal with a much cleaner fossil fuel natural gas for the next 20 or 30 years and that's going to make it even cheaper to decarbonize our economy now you're a major environment with the sierra club behind him mclendon had laid out a powerful marketing strategy for natural gas a strategy that would be embraced by x exxonmobil marks the spot exxon mobil announcing it is buying xto energy and it's a 41 billion dollar deal including some mobile is making a bet here on natural gas in 2010 exxon mobil purchased fracking company xto for 41 billion dollars overnight it had become america's largest natural gas producer but inside the company some engineers were concerned about the sudden move into fracking exxon mobil felt that they had to get into the shale gas game in order for wall street to see them as a growth prospect darlang chang had joined exxon mobil after getting his phd in mechanical engineering he worked on conventional natural gas projects abroad before becoming part of the company's fracking push in the u.s my peers when they were recruiting me they told me that axon mobile was going to be part of the energy transition over my career they talked about the excitement of having gas be a bridge fuel to the future of energy i think one of the biggest challenges that the world is facing today is to develop all the energy we need in an environmentally friendly way the fact that natural gas was much cleaner burning than coal that it produced half the carbon dioxide emissions of coal those are very appealing to me but chang knew that the methane and natural gas had the potential to do significant damage if allowed to leak into the atmosphere natural gas is primarily methane and methane when it's leaked out into the atmosphere can have orders of magnitude more global warming impact than carbon dioxide chang worried that the thousands of new lightly regulated fracking operations in the u.s could be leaking massive amounts of methane and turbocharged the climate crisis shale gas was like the wild west there was already a perception that these smaller operators were not acting responsibly with the shale gas wells ra felt that having many methane gas wells was a ticking time bomb for methane gas leaks the more engineering infrastructure the more wells and the more pipes the more potential there is for leakage when they are marketing natural gas as clean energy they didn't really know what they were talking about because they were fixated on the idea that natural gas when burned produces half the carbon dioxide emissions of coal but without measurement devices to verify that you're not significantly leaking you can't be sure that your natural gas is actually giving you less of a global warming impact than coal the industry was not monitoring methane leakage so they did not have data about how much was leaking and there wasn't much appetite for management to measure methane leakage because if they found out there was a problem they would have to do something about it at the time exxonmobil and others in the industry said they were working to reduce methane emissions which were already within limits set by the epa but on the ground some in the environmental community were witnessing widespread leaks i am hunting for methane that is escaping from oil and gas facilities because that's what i do i'm a methane hunter sharon wilson worked at an environmental watchdog group in texas documenting methane emissions all of these pieces of equipment have got leaks there's a lot of methane going off the flare this is just a really really dirty sight this is an optical gas imaging camera and it makes the invisible methane and volatile organic compounds from oil and gas facilities it makes those visible these emissions what's coming out of oil and gas sites the fact that it's invisible has helped them be able to expand and help them maintain that narrative of being clean and when that is not the case the tanks are venting wilson traveled the country gathering evidence of methane leaks at fracking sites including exxon mobil wells we need to move about where that telephone pole is she'd send her findings to regulators and the press it's just disbelief that you can show someone video after video proof after proof after proof and they still do nothing i sure can't compete with the oil and gas industry pr budget that they use to pump propaganda at us that tank is emitting a lot of methane i'm showing their dirty secrets that can't be seen without this optical gas imaging camera exxonmobil would not grant us any interviews in a statement it said it has been an industry leader in the effort to reduce methane emissions and has been advancing technology to detect leaks as sharon wilson was sounding the alarm a growing number of scientists were waking up to the dangers of methane including the man who'd helped pioneer the process of fracking i became very much more concerned about climate change when i realized what shale gas and oil was going to unleash that's the great word unleash this is trey unleashed a tsunami of oil and gas yes that's what it did that's when i started feeling contradictory regret and pride pride that we had done good engineering work to help somebody eventually figure out how to do it regret that we had figured we'd help somebody figure out how to do it by going to shale we're going to prolong the fossil fuel industry and by prolonging the fossil fuel industry we're going to exacerbate climate change by now toni and graffia was a civil engineering professor at cornell university and had spent years advising oil and gas companies in 2011 he and colleagues published a critical report on the climate impact of fracking what bob howarth and i locked on to was this very crucial point which is it's not just co2 that's driving climate change it's also methane the paper said the climate impact of shale gas is such that it's worse than coal worse than oil and the reaction to the paper was disturbing i had never been a co-author of a paper that created a political firestorm the criticism came from many sides including the national academy of sciences and the leading industry group america's natural gas alliance they claimed the report had overestimated the level of methane leaks and overstated methane's impact as a greenhouse gas at first we were pilloried then we were ignored we had to endure a lot of personal attacks for no good reason i can understand people saying to me you're a traitor you took their money for 25 years you did their research and now you're saying stop yeah okay i am criticism of the cornell report also came from another academic institution mit's influential energy initiative which had just published its own report promoting natural gas as a bridge to get away from burning coal and a way to reduce co2 emissions methane emissions are very important greenhouse gas that needs to be addressed it's just that methane emissions from the oil and gas industry are actually a minority of methane emissions there's some very very tough problems uh agriculture dairy farms enormous methane emitters fortunately in contrast to carbon dioxide methane has a relatively short lifetime in the atmosphere that doesn't mean one should ignore it it means that one better eliminate new emissions ernest moniz led mit's future of natural gas study which said the cornell work was based on unsubstantiated estimates manis would not talk about it in our interview nor would he answer questions about the funding for the study other than to say it was transparent the point is we always believe in transparency and and so that's yeah the mit report's major sponsor was aubry mcclendon's american clean skies foundation we really wanted mit in particular because they had been the authoritative source testifying before congress on all these other energy and we thought we want the gold standard and we said we believe this is the next big thing denise bode was on the advisory committee for the mit study we made our case that it was a valid emerging issue that they could add credibility to and then and then they accepted it bolstered by the mit study the industry narrative on natural gas would take hold in washington i have the high privilege and the distinct honor of presenting to you the president of the united states it became part of president obama's 2012 state of the union address where he unveiled his ambitious new energy policy this country needs an all-out all-of-the-above strategy that develops every available source of american energy he would push for investments in renewable energy but he also doubled down on oil and natural gas we have a supply of natural gas that can last america nearly 100 years and my administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy natural gas from an economic perspective the costs that were passed on consumers in terms of lower energy bills was a net plus and then we saw that fitting squarely in in the climate agenda renewables weren't quite there yet the nuclear projects were just proving to be too expensive and natural gas could provide continuous 24-hour generation thank you god bless you and god bless the united states of america we became an oil and gas country it affected our politics it affected our economy and it begins to really affect kind of how we look at the world the united states looks at the world the u.s had become the largest producer of natural gas in the world helping spark a decline in co2 emissions even as studies were piling up showing a dangerous rise in methane emissions doing something for the first time taking advantage of this new resource you don't always know what you don't know and over time what we learned about methane emissions as it relates to natural gas is very very scary heather zeichel would go on to advise the natural gas industry then lobby for renewables i think the obama administration tried to be very conscious of everything all the implications of the shale revolution but at the time i think early obama administration years we didn't have access to the kinds of information that we would have liked to and needed to have had to take the proper regulatory steps to ensure a safe and climate-friendly production as possible at mit ernest moniz says they've also learned a lot since their early research we aware how large the methane leaks could be or would be when producing natural gas no i think it's come much more into focus recently we were concerned about about leaks but i think the the quantitative scale of the issue has become more clear in recent years with better measurement devices including atmospheric measurements which are now becoming much more commonplace monice would become energy secretary in barack obama's second term where he helped advocate for the natural gas boom but by then natural gas had lost its support from the sierra club and carl pope who had allowed the group to take millions of dollars from chesapeake energy the natural gas industry excuse me the gas industry but you know they've got they've trained me to call off the natural gas and there's nothing natural about it i didn't understand how strong they were i thought the big player was oil i thought gas was kind of a junior cousin gas turns out to have an awful lot of political strength and americans had been more fully sold on the myth that gas was green firefighters are worried that a deadly southern california wildfire could continue to spread this afternoon nine major wildfires that are burning right now across the state of california 2012 is shaping up to be one of the worst fire seasons on record by the second term of the obama administration his administration was starting to get more serious about uh claimant you know if sort of its climate versus energy production he's starting to lean more on climate president obama do the right thing there had been mounting public pressure to take on the industry really was a multi-prong attack on the oil and gas industry but specifically at this fundamental nature of the oil and gas industry you've been around for a long time but your products are problematic and you've known that they've been problematic you don't deserve to continue operating in the long term obama would begin a major climate push that would lead to the historic paris agreement in 2015. in paris this morning
a potential landmark deal is being revealed on climate change the first global agreement to limit under the binding international treaty countries pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions is adopted i've come here personally as leader of the world's largest economy and the second largest emitter to say that the united states of america not only recognizes our role in creating this problem we embrace our responsibility to do something about it back at home the obama administration was already taking steps to meet the treaty's obligations proposing new climate regulations including limits on methane gas emissions he was pursuing a major plan to move away from fossil fuels like coal and promote renewables like wind and solar it was called the clean power plan president obama's clean power plan the idea was that you know by 2030 could reduce the carbon emissions by 32 percent compared to 2005 levels that was an ambitious ambitious effort exxon mobil and others in the fossil fuel industry had publicly come out in support of the paris agreement but almost immediately obama's new climate agenda came under attack from republicans around the country he declared a war on fossil fuels it's all about an anti-fossil fuel strategy to shut down coal generation and fossil fuel generation in the generation of electricity and you should be very concerned about that because what is going to be replaced with if it's renewables wind the cost of that is going to be insurmountable for this country and i'm so thankful that we have attorneys general across this country who have been on the front line holding the president accountable as he's acted in that fashion it may be the most critical time in our nation's history to have a group of conservative rule of law republican attorneys general in office these issues matter oklahoma attorney general scott pruitt rallied a coalition of like-minded republican agents involving fighting the epa fighting the national labor relations board combat the coalition was backed by coal oil and natural gas companies and their allies including exxon mobil and koch industries we are pro-business we believe the oil and gas industry they shifted into counter-attack they were not going to let someone else run the narrative so they fought back you know with tooth and nail every republican attorney general matters but the attorneys general sued the administration claiming the federal government was overstepping its authority and infringing on states rights in my state i filed 30 different lawsuits against epa almost every one of those has been in concert in collaboration with the other attorneys general they argued that methane emissions from oil and gas had actually been going down in the u.s even though numerous studies showed them rising natural gas is a key opportunity to further improve environment methane emissions are down in the united states yet they're pursuing a methane regulatory regime why do we need to go out and regulate it even more than it already is the industry came out fighting those methane regulations like crazy they said that they didn't need rules they could do this voluntarily i'm going to just set up here they were marketing natural gas as part of the climate solution all the while i was collecting more and more evidence out on the ground out in the middle of it of these horrible horrible emissions i went to d.c more than once and testified for the obama rules the industry was saying one thing and i was presenting this evidence that showed that what they were saying was not true it was never true the industry was also going after another key part of obama's agenda the push to support renewable energy sources we were going gangbusters trying to put as many products in the ground as possible i mean it seemed like the greatest time to be in renewables patrick woodson had been building wind farms across the u.s for years with bipartisan support both parties were talking about how great wind was and how great renewables were then you started to see the political camps shift and all of a sudden democrats became for renewable expansion and many republicans became against obama's clean power plan was giving wind and solar a financial boost against less expensive fossil fuels like natural gas it would cause a long-lasting backlash the false promise of renewable energy in texas is taking billions of dollars from consumers and taxpayers more than 13 billion dollars of your money is being diverted to government subsidized when they started to emerge national opposition to to projects negatively impacting property values and the environment while at the same time groups were banding together that were funded in large part by certain members of the oil and gas community of a sudden you realize there was a playbook now they generally would start with the idea that the turbans were too noisy that they were eyesores eventually if they couldn't get traction with those arguments they would move on to the they're dangerous they cause disease there's not enough study behind them most of them were efforts to kind of derail local permitting ultimately they would also try and put roadblocks into how you built them you know create distance barriers or noise barriers or other things to make it harder to put projects together when you start seeing massive lobbying efforts backed by fossil fuel interests or conservative think tanks or the koch brothers pushing for new laws to roll back renewable energy standards or prevent new clean energy businesses from succeeding that's a problem charles koch has said he was not trying to prevent clean energy from succeeding and he was all for any kind of energy business that could succeed in the marketplace exxonmobil did not respond to questions about its support for the republican ags that opposed the clean power plan but said it backs a variety of organizations that promote sound public policy obama's clean power plan would get stalled in the legal fight with the attorneys general and his presidency would end with his climate agenda in peril the 45th president of the united states of america donald j trump the next president would finish it off we will determine the course of america and the world for many many years to come mr trump who once called global warming a hoax signed a sweeping executive order this week calling for regulators to rewrite president obama's climate change policies two months after he became president donald trump joined scott pruitt his pick to head the epa to kill president obama's clean power plan okay trump immediately scrapped that plan so that dampened any growth that would have come from that effort we had to sort of go on the defensive again trump's vocal opposition to renewables and lack of faith in science and technology were big concerns for a number of us there's been a change of direction the president has sent a very clear message that the last eight years where we had to choose between jobs and the environment those days are over the war on coal ended the war on fossil fuels ended all right yeah it's good and you look at the trump administration who they brought in secretary of state rex tillerson former ceo of exxon heading up the department of energy rick perry a former governor of texas there were a lot of friends of the oil and gas industry that went to washington dc with the trump administration and how about these democrats they want to get rid of oil want to get rid of natural gas they want to go to wind darling i just can't watch the show tonight the wind it just stopped blowing trump attempted to roll back the obama climate agenda his administration delayed or repealed more than two dozen environmental rules and regulations including those on methane emissions a reversal of tougher obama-era standards for rules on greenhouse gas emissions and fuel economy a plan that would dramatically weaken pollution limits on coal-fired power plants new rules making it easier for oil and gas companies to release methane pressure on the industry eased off even more when president trump pulled out of the paris agreement we withdrew from the one-sided horrible horrible economically unfair close your businesses down within three years don't frack don't drill we don't want any energy the horrible paris climate accord that killed american jobs and shielded foreign polluters to pull out raises a question of where does the whole effort to reduce emissions go that sent a clear message globally that the united states was not going to play a role as a leader on climate i mean those are very good years for the oil and gas industry in the united states the united states is now the number one producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world the industry's success would continue into a new presidential administration we've won with the most votes ever cast from presidential ticket despite growing pressure to move away from fossil fuels plans have been unveiled to rewire the global financial sector 450 firms and financial institutions which control 130 trillion dollars have pledged to stop investing in fossil fuels and despite demands for accountability fossil fuel companies that deceived investors and consumers about the dangers of climate change should be must be held accountable across the country attorneys general this time democrats have been filing lawsuits against exxon mobil and other companies the minnesota attorney general is suing big oil companies claiming they lied to minnesota consumers about climate change exxonmobil has fought back claiming the litigation is politically motivated and without merit but the pressure is continuing in the courts and now in congress a hearing on capitol hill today the ceos of the world's biggest oil companies shell exxon chevron and bp a landmark hearing that puts a spotlight on the role fossil fuels have played in accelerating climate change apparent knowledge of it disinformation misinformation the committee will come to order this is a historic hearing for far too long big oil has escaped accountability for its central role in october 2021 top oil executives were questioned under oath about the industry's long history of casting doubt on fossil fuel-driven climate change we won't solve the climate crisis unless we solve the misinformation crisis i now recognize mr khanna who is the chairman of the subcommittee on the environment thank you madam chair first let me think we initiated the investigation to find out what the misinformation was what these companies knew when they knew it and it marks the beginning of scrutiny on them they've been able to avoid it duck it and not have to deal with it and now they're realizing they're not going to get away with this what do you have to say to america's children born into a burning world find it in yourself today to tell the truth it will be better for your company's futures and will be better for humanity's future my name is darren woods i'm the chairman and chief executive officer of exxonmobil corporation exxonmobil provides an essential component of modern society affordable reliable and abundant energy exxonmobil has long recognized that climate change is real and poses serious risks but there are no easy answers exxon mobil is committed to being part of the solution it was nice kind of political theater democrats calling the big oil and gas companies before them questioning them about their history with climate what they're doing right now i i don't even wanna argue that mr mr woods i don't even want to argue that can you just acknowledge that it was a mistake i don't think it's fair to judge somebody i'm sure darren woods the ceo of exxon doesn't like to be called before congress and yelled at and berated but i also don't think he's losing sleep over it if he is losing sleep he's probably losing sleep over whether his investors really want to stick with exxon over the long term and whether they have a plan to make money in a world where you know maybe oil and gas is is a declining source of energy we launched a low-carbon solutions business to commercialize carbon capture and other technologies in his testimony woods touted exxon mobil's investment in technology to reduce co2 emissions carbon capture and storage can remove more than ninety percent of co2 emissions from these carbon intensives exxon mobil has announced plans to spend billions on technology that captures co2 and stores it in the ground just as the industry did with natural gas years before they're promoting it as a climate solution it's not at all surprising that fossil fuel companies would promote ideas and policies that enable the continued use of fossil fuels so that they can sell these fossil fuels charles harvey is an expert on carbon storage and was a scientific advisor to a carbon storage company he calls the industry's current carbon capture push a false solution because it is diverting needed investment away from renewable energy sources there's sort of a happy story here that carbon capture and sequestration is a way to reduce emissions and keep our existing fossil fuel companies going but it's not actually the direction to go um it's sort of the the easy direction to propose to to go but it's not the direction to go to actually stop climate change or prevent prevent global warming a dire warning and a stark reality there's really one key message that emerges we are out of time drive bro atmospheric methane is skyrocketing the international energy agency says the world needs to stop drilling for oil and gas to save the planet the warnings about climate change are at their most intense ever but the industry is now raising its own intense warnings about the perils of moving away from fossil fuels everybody's saying that we need to be conscious about climate yeah i agree but there's consequences to actions sharif suki is one of the titans of the natural gas export business in the us i think we're dealing with a world where we've decided to make the hydrocarbon industry the enemy because we've convinced ourselves that we must decarbonize his company along with exxon mobil and others are embarking on massive natural gas expansion projects nobody has been confronted with what the cost of this energy transition is you still need to increase energy by fifty percent in order to satisfy the aspiration of ninety percent of the world eighty-five percent of the world's energy is hydrocarbons there is no realistic way by which you can say we're going to eliminate hydrocarbons out of the energy mix the renewables is about five percent so before it becomes a significant piece of the energy makes it's going to take decades it's not going to happen overnight and unpredictable world events like the war in ukraine make it even harder as a global energy crisis emerges exacerbated by russia's war in ukraine oil prices have been significantly impacted by the war in the last few weeks the economic toll on americans only getting worse president biden is acutely aware of this he has said he will do everything he can in his 2022 state of the union address president biden outlined his response to the new energy crisis tonight i can announce the united states has worked with 30 other countries to release 60 million barrels of oil from reserves around the world america will lead that effort we only see 30 million barrels of our own strategic petroleum reserve and we stand ready to do more if necessary united with our allies at the same time the president is pursuing a climate agenda more aggressive than any of his predecessors pushing the u.s to cut greenhouse gas emissions to as close to zero as possible by a goal known as net zero the irony of a climate president and presidents who are pushing for more climate action is that we all want a clean climate but what we want more than that is to be able to fill up our cars below four dollars a gallon and when prices start to to creep up people get unhappy the way i think about it is that we're still very much in the fossil fuel age you know as much as they talk an aspirational game about net zero by 2030 or 2040 we're not there yet and a lot can get in the way as we sit here in 2022 still need oil i'm terrified that we're not going to do nearly enough fast enough the clock is ticking it's been ticking for some time i'm not terribly optimistic that america is going to get its act together in a way that's going to allow us to kind of make a meaningful difference i'm worried we wasted the decade and now we're playing catch-up what climate change means to me is looking in the eyes of my grandchildren and wondering what kind of hell they're going to pay for more on this and other frontline programs visit our website at pbs.org
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2022-05-04 14:39
