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and welcome back to Marin here with you and let's check in with Mike happen
charlie our the attorney the
hosted the rain fire radio is not there as well a real fire radio dot com
is the website a PAP welcome back Tom how are you
just great you know we were having a conversation this morning
when we were putting the show together in the TV show on
and kicking around the idea I love is there some way without
really blowing up the first amendment to hold
these climate change denier see the %uh the Rex Tillerson Exxon Mobil Koch
brothers got the guys were fun day in the
the frontman the phony scientists to hold them
responsible for the literally the death
and destruction that they are causing and that they will cause in much greater
proportion around the world and the consensus we came to was we share
somebody
really knows this stuff is this analogy is for example to the tobacco industry
sane
well track along cause cancer and the new you hear what people took them on
so we decided to ask you it really
there's not a lot of analogy there um
to lie I think the best way to explain this is if you start with Michael Mann
Michael Mann
was of course the climate scientist who came up with the
the notion of the hockey stick he showed what what mankind was doing to the
environment he said was directly related
to to to mankind's use a fossil fuel
said it's killing our planet showed everybody how that was happening
and then scientist after scientist are lining up behind Michael Mann
in the industry does did exactly what I C
almost every day the industry doing and that is to attack
this scientists that didn't have anything to say about the way they're
conducting business so that's what they do with Michael Mahon and Michael Mann
brought a lawsuit in the United States there was a defamation slander
defamation lawsuit tried articulate damages about I how bad this is her name
and he actually made it past summer the first the first test which is motion to
dismiss
and at this point I think you made a pass summary judgment
but if I were advising Michael Mann I would have told him
probably you should bring this case in the UK you should bring it in
in in England because they have different standards in England for
example in England when you assert
the kind of story that his that did Michael Mann has here worries received
death threats
you know she is jobless of suffered his money is he suffered economic losses
because im
his family has suffered they've made just completely made up stories about
him just added
then thin blue is now the air in show a case like that
in the UK has a better chance at surviving that does United States and
Israel
easy readers simple reason the United States has something what they call the
New York Times malice rule and the you have to say that a person
that rises to a public figure did they have to show pretty ugly conduct in
order
to make an argument that they have been defamed because im
the first amendment protects the person who makes the claim that oh no matter
how outrageous it is
New York Times malice rule is pretty tough
to overcome in the UK not the case
matter fact is very interesting in the UK in the UK
the burden is on the defendant
the person who's made the statements to prove
that the statements cause no harm or that the state or the and that the
statements were true now
it's shifted burden and this the chances of success in the UK is much better
when you're talking about something is big as global
climate change it doesn't make any difference what forum you go to
you simply go to the best form all you really trying to do
you're trying to make the lives miserable
for the people who find this non this trash
for your tried it engaging in discovery here's what's important
what we find any time were involved in a lawsuit in you can get me
in front of %uh in front of a CEO and I have the right to ask questions
the company suffers really badly because I ask questions that cause them harm
those questions are then made public were involved right now with a half a
dozen cases like that were
the company is more concerned about the public image
then they are protecting that CEO so what you do is you go to the best forum
and I would say the best for me is the UK because iraq
whole collection reasons from that's very interesting
back if I could just dial this back to tobacco and
climate change we've gotten you had you know
RJR and and friends same to us
go ahead and you know by ronald reagan you know if you got author sore throat
smoke palm else
arm in its not going to harm you denying
harm and we now have in the climate change realm
the you've got big oil me know Exxon Mobil has actually funded some of these
groups
overtly on and presumably the Koch brothers as well
arm who are sane no carbon dioxide is really not causing problems and
meanwhile people literally have in Sandy
kill people you know there there there there are there are events that
are so %uh they fall out so outside the the normal distribution of
I've random events that they almost certainly are caused by climate change
arm is is it not possible to go after the them a
the same way in other fossil fuel industry the carbon dioxide producing
industry the same way that we went after the tobacco industry
yet one fundamental in the law the type thing you're talking about is there
is it very important fundamentals called the Pauls a graft case
the Pauls a graft case said that the person bringing the
the case has to show the the
the party they're bringing it for the connection between the conduct of the
defendant
in the injury I've the plaintive is so direct
the causal relationship we can conclude there's a causal relationship
tobacco for example what we did in the tobacco cases we got Attorney General's
from each state
that had a direct loss because the medicaid money that they're having to
pay out
for people who were dying from COPD or cancer
now this isn't quite the situation because you have you have so many
complicating factors
the best argument would be that if you had a population
that was affected with something II
it there's many ways to get to bed one ways you have to show that a population
is affected directly here's
here's ten people are here's a hundred people
in this climate change has affected those people directly
in a direct typeof injury people were on the Jersey Shore
well that that's there is a connection probably
but again Tom it is just its it's a very difficult road
to go in less you in leisure able to show
really clear-cut real clear causation in the Jersey Shore case you would have to
say but four
but for the conduct of the defendant okay
which might be the people who financed the global climate denier
might have been people actually directly involved in creating
phone eat up a literature that's coming from the university's you have signaled
for their conduct
this would not occur so we just have to wait for this for this extreme weather
gets so extreme
that I don't iight in I don't take that route I think you do what michael mann
is doing listen the the thing that you do is you make climate deniers
you put them in a posture Tom to where it's not worth it for them to be taken
to court in a place like the UK
indeed be made into a frog because what you do is
you dry up their money ultimately people don't hire them anymore
they're known as fraud they're known as climate denier frauds
who are paid for by the industry that's that's what you have to do
time and time again I've always thought the best way at this is an organization
that puts together a big bunch of money in Shipley goes after these people
wanted a time
makes their life so miserable but by god they don't wanna side of
on phone it up by asta tu literature that's coming out the university's right
now a lot of these guys who are denying climate change anything else singer
I mean the they used to be tobacco guys have course you either
the look at you you actually have people that will work for
you know you seem switch inside all the time you seem sometimes they just stay
with industry
they are what they call what I call by Austin to tonight is
there they will *** their degree though *** their position at the
University
position with a with an organization a maybe government laid
agency they will *** it for the right applied amount of money
all the time always been Kalama fast
might happen Tonio america's lawyers giving us
very good legal advice here or maybe I maybe should call
right I don't after I the fifth have great having you on
they sell my G and check out perhaps $1 Sabrina fire radio died concours listen
for
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