Drilled S14, Ep 6 | How the Coal, Utilities and Transportation Industries Obstruct Climate Policy
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Oct 14, 2025 Jen Schneider, a researcher at Boise State University, and Gregory Trencher from Kyoto University, dive into the tactics used by the coal, utilities, and transportation industries to obstruct climate policies. They discuss how these industries combine forces, leveraging rhetoric like fearmongering and the illusion of grassroots support to maintain fossil fuel reliance. The duo also explores the impact of political changes on industry strategies and how unions align with industry interests, while offering insights on exposing corporate lobbying efforts.
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Industries Are Interconnected
- Coal, transport and utilities are deeply interconnected and share strategies to resist climate policy.
- Studying them together reveals shared front groups, narratives, and political links that single-sector studies miss.
Path Dependency Slows Change
- Political rhetoric can shift quickly but industrial infrastructures and capital are path-dependent and change slowly.
- Companies take cues from politics, yet long-lived systems limit how fast technology or practices actually transform.
Lock-In Requires Outsiders To Break It
- Industries lock in technologies, workers and capital, making rapid transitions unlikely without external disruptors.
- New entrants like Tesla and BYD illustrate how outsiders can break that lock-in and accelerate change.