“Herb”, a new three-part miniseries from the climate podcast Drilled, delves into the long-standing efforts of fossil fuel companies to expand the concept and legal protections of corporate free speech, leading up to significant cases like Citizens United. The series is hosted by journalist Amy Westervelt, with the first episode available now.
The series title comes from Herb Schmertz, the Mobil Oil VP who championed corporate free speech in the 1970s. The podcast, hosted by Amy Westervelt, investigates the impact of Schmertz’s work on the current wave of positive messaging from oil companies and Mobil’s (later ExxonMobil’s) role in establishing the legal framework for expanded corporate free speech, from the Bellotti to the Citizens United Supreme Court cases.
The new season of Drilled comes as oil company attorneys are pushing for even broader corporate free speech protections. They are arguing in over two dozen climate-related cases that all public statements made by oil companies about climate change, including those known to be misleading, should be considered protected speech. Legal observers are increasingly predicting that the next significant case concerning corporate free speech will revolve around the issue of climate change.
“As soon as I saw that oil companies had appointed First Amendment experts, not liability experts, as lead counsel in the climate cases, I figured these cases would ultimately hinge on a free speech argument,” Westervelt says. “What I did not know, and few did, was that fossil fuel companies had played an integral role in creating the whole idea of corporate free speech in the first place.”
