Source: The Thom Hartmann Program
URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go33Llz8hFs
Date: 21/09/2015
Event: Thom Hartmann to Paul Driessen: "...why should you not be in jail?"
Credit: The Thom Hartmann Program
People:
Thom Hartmann: You'll recall, back in 1999, when the tobacco industry was telling us "Don't worry, doesn't cause cancer, not addictive, there's no there there [?]", the Federal government commenced a prosecution under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act - RICO - it was a RICO action, it was filed in 1999. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse right now is suggesting that this should be done again, only in this case not into the tobacco companies - he says "In 1999, the Justice Department filed a civil RICO lawsuit against the major tobacco companies... alleging that the companies 'engaged in and executed — and continue to engage in and execute — a massive 50-year scheme to defraud the public, including consumers of cigarettes, in violation of RICO.'"
Um, 20 scientists now have signed a paper saying, quote, "We strongly endorse Senator Whitehouse's call for a RICO investigation" of climate deniers. "The methods of these organizations are quite similar to those used earlier by the tobacco industry. A RICO investigation... played an important role in stopping the tobacco industry from continuing to deceive the American people about the dangers of smoking." And if you want to look up the case that ultimately ended up before the Supreme Court, it was decided August 17th 2006, US vs Philip Morris, and, in fact, these people were held both criminally and civilly liable. Paul Driessen is - am I saying that right, Paul?
Paul Driessen: You are indeed.
Thom Hartmann: Okay, Paul Driessen, Senior Policy Analyst with Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow - CFACT, cfact.org is the website, a climate-change denying website - is on the line with us. Paul, why should you not be in jail? [Paul Driessen laughs.] I mean that as a serious question. You're taking money to deceive the public in a way that's killing people.
Paul Driessen: Ah, well actually the policies that are killing people are the ones that are raising energy prices and denying people in developing countries access to the technologies, the electricity, the other - low energy prices that we enjoy here in the United States -
Thom Hartmann [interrupting]: It's great if you want to start - start promoting the - f-
Paul Driessen [keeps talking]: - and what we're trying to do is actually save people's lives by getting them the same electricity - affordable, reliable, abundant - that we enjoy every day of our lives here in the United States. What - more people than live in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Europe combined still do not have electricity, and what we're trying to do is make sure they do get electricity -
Thom Hartmann [interrupting]: So you're buying solar panels and sending them to India, Paul?
Paul Driessen: Say that again? I missed that.
Thom Hartmann: So you're buying solar panels and sending them to developing countries?
Paul Driessen: Well, we do provide some solar help for Africa and, ah, a village in Yucatan as well, but no - we're talking about this real electricity, more than solar panels, which are great for distant villages that are not going to get -
Thom Hartmann [interrupting]: So you're talking about windmills.
Paul Driessen [keeps talking]: - to a full-blown electrical grid for a while. Wind and solar are fine for that but they're unreliable, they're temporary, they're -
Thom Hartmann [interrupting]: Paul - Paul -
Paul Driessen: - really expensive for the amount [?] of electricity you get.
Thom Hartmann: Paul, you're - filibustering is not - it doesn't promote any kind of conversation. I took a train across Germany, a week ago yesterday, and all the way across, every other household is covered with solar panels - there are farms of solar panels, there are farms of windmills, you can see, on the train, from Wirtsburg to Frankfurt, mean, very easily all over the country -
Paul Driessen: I've been there, myself -
Thom Hartmann: - more than half of all the electricity consumed by Germany was generated by these renewables, by wind and solar, exclusively.
Paul Driessen: Yeah, and they're paying 80 cents - in unsubsidised electricity rates, they're paying 80 cents a kilowatt/hour, which is ten times what Americans are paying, in States that are reliant still on coal. They're paying five times more than Americans are paying in those States -
Thom Hartmann [interrupting]: They are not, they are not building new nuclear power-
Thom Hartmann: - [inaudible] un-subsidised electricity - they're paying -
Thom Hartmann [interrupting]: Paul, I don't believe your numbers.
Paul Driessen: Thom?
Thom Hartmann: Paul, you are a professional climate change denier - you are paid to lie to people. Number one - I don't believe your numbers, I know Germans, you know, I used to live in Germany, and if they were paying ten times - you know, you might find one place in the United States where it's really cheap and one place where it's really expensive in Germany, but I just frankly, I have to tell you, you have no credibility with me, I don't believe you - number one. And number two, what does that have to do with whether or not you should be - you and your cronies, I'm looking at your IRS form here, and it says that last year you guys took in $1,977,332, the year before that it was $5,501,222 - presumably for the purpose of promoting the interests of the fossil fuel industry, which is heavily subsidised, to the tune of over $5 trillion worldwide, maintaining those subsidies and trashing, er, you know, renewable power. And I think, frankly, people who do that should be in jail.
Paul Driessen: Well, that's a nice sentiment -
Thom Hartmann [interrupting]: So why should you not be in jail?
Paul Driessen [keeps talking]: - [inaudible] Federal government, silence debate and First Amendment Freedom of Speech -
Thom Hartmann [interrupting]: I am talking about racketeering influenced organised crime.
Paul Driessen [keeps talking]: - [inaudible] Thom, it is going on by the climate -
Thom Hartmann [interrupting]: Sir, I am calling you a criminal. Are you not going to respond to that?
Paul Driessen: Yeah, I'm trying to respond to it, if you give me a chance. The bottom line is: what we are getting in total is used for all our various programs. We get no oil money - Chesapeake Energy, Chesapeake Gas gave Sierra Club $25 million, that's 15 years' worth of CFACT money for one campaign against coal money, against coal companies. And, I guess, under -
Thom Hartmann [interrupting]: Was it a campaign against coal companies or was it a campaign to save the world?
Paul Driessen: Well, if you want to believe in radical climate change that's going to -
Thom Hartmann [interrupting]: Right, so once again you're falling back on your denier thing. Why should you not be - you know, obviously you are part of a, of a racket, of a, of a scam, here, this is a scam to deceive American people and enrich the oil industry and the Koch brothers.
Paul Driessen: - my background's in geology, I've studied the glaciers, the ice ages and so forth - that's some serious climate change. My home in Wisconsin was - my home site in Wisconsin was buried five times by mile-thick glaciers. They came, they went - right now, we're in an interglacial -
Thom Hartmann [interrupting]: Which has to do with nothing.
Paul Driessen [keeps talking]: - driven by natural, powerful natural interconnected, very complex forces that we don't understand yet, and we certainly don't have any control over -
Thom Hartmann [interrupting]: Paul, it's a really nice little schtick - that's what you should be in jail for, saying that kind of stuff. These are - what you're saying - are demonstrable lies.
Paul Driessen: Thom, come on -
Thom Hartmann [interrupting]: Paul, Paul, just hold off, just a second.
Paul Driessen: You guys don't want to have a debate on this -
Thom Hartmann: There is no debate, Paul. There is no debate. There's 100% of the scientists in the world, who are not funded by the fossil fuel industry, would say that what you are engaging in is criminal racketeering.
Paul Driessen [laughs]: That is an outrageous comment - it's un-American, it's anti-Freedom of Speech -
Thom Hartmann [interrupting]: I know that's what the tobacco industry said when we called them on their lies, too.
Paul Driessen [keeps talking]: - against academic freedom -
Thom Hartmann [interrupting]: It's what the asbestos industry said when we called them on their lies.
Paul Driessen: I'm not talking asbestos -
Thom Hartmann [interrupting]: You are killing people, Paul.
Paul Driessen: Thom -
Thom Hartmann: You've got 5 million refugees - climate change refugees - fleeing into Europe right now, because of the droughts in Syria. [Paul Driessen is laughing.] Laughing doesn't make it less real. Dead children, Paul! Your responsibility.
Paul Driessen: It has nothing to do with the drought. They would stay there - they've been through droughts hundreds of times in those areas. They're fleeing ISIS butchers, who are beheading little children. They're not -
Thom Hartmann [interrupting]: It's all the consequence of climate change, it absolutely is. Well, California's burning, the Middle East is dry - you know, a million and a half farmers had to leave their farms, five years ago, in Syria, and go into the cities because their farms turned from productive farmland into desert land. And the government's response was so brutal to those people, it led to a civil war. Obviously, you have no interest - just pot [?] him, Donald [an aside, possibly to an assistant to put Paul Driessen on mute] - you have no interest in having a conversation here, because you're constantly trying to talk over me. Once again, Paul, why should you not be prosecuted for racketeering?
Paul Driessen: I'm sorry?
Thom Hartmann: Why should you not be prosecuted for racketeering? [Paul Driessen is trying to answer.] Why - why should the fossil fuel denial industry?
Paul Driessen: - have a debate, Thom, what we're trying to do, having a - we're trying to have a discussion -
Thom Hartmann [interrupting]: - about whether or not you should be in jail.
Paul Driessen: - figures that are not being brought out by the other side -
Thom Hartmann [interrupting]: But you're not debating me, Paul .
Paul Driessen: I'm not being given much of a chance.
Thom Hartmann: Well no, I've asked you over and over again, what - okay, well we're out of time. Uh, Paul Driessen, Senior Policy Analyst with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, cfact.org is the website, check it out. Paul - thank you for dropping by, today.
Paul Driessen: Thank you, Thom.
Thom Hartmann: Good talking.