Episodes
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In her new book, The Language of Climate Politics, Guenther digs into six key rhetorical devices that are being used to slow or block climate action. For an academic book, it's made some folks on the Internet awfully mad. In this episode we talk about why, what went into her research, and what it tells us about the coming months.
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We first released our "Mad Men of Big Oil" season on all the pro-fossil fuel propaganda that came before climate denial, and the role the PR industry has played in helping various polluting industries shape our ideas around the economy, the environment, and the relationship between the two back in January 2020. It inspired various campaigns to clean up the industry and in 2024, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres specifically referenced the need to hold these "Mad Men fueling climate disaster" to account. At this year's Climate Week we did a special live version of this season, and figured it was a good time to re-up it. It's evergreen, and people are talking about it more and more these days. Check your feeds for Season 3 to listen to the rest!
Ad Note: The first 150 of you will receive the first month of a Planet Wild membership from me for free. Click on this link https://planetwild.com/drilled, or use the code DRILLED9 later. Not satisfied anymore? You can cancel at any time. If you want to see how Planet Wild works first, check out their latest YouTube video link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPbCjH45uwI&t=2s.
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Missing episodes?
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Drilled reporter Molly Taft joins us to talk about newly released research on fossil fuel funding of university research, and share interviews with climate disinformation researcher Geoffrey Supran, who authored one of the recent studies, and with philosopher of science Craig Callender at UCSD, which just passed a precedent-setting policy to require disclosure of funding on research.
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This week we bring you an episode of our climate talk show, Spill, for a deep dive from Mary Annaïse Heglar and Amy Westervelt on what Project 2025 lays out for climate, what we might hear (and not hear) about climate in this week's presidential debate, rethinking the climate movement and politics, and more.
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In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts vs. EPA that when the U.S. Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970, climate science was “in its infancy,” implying that government officials could never have intended for the legislation to cover the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2022, SCOTUS doubled down on that idea, ruling in West Virginia v EPA that since the Clean Air Act didn't explicitly talk about climate change, the EPA cannot regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Now, new historical evidence unearthed by a team of Harvard University researchers led by Naomi Oreskes calls the court's understanding of the history of climate science into question, which could have major implications for the government's ability to regulate climate-changing emissions.
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Carbon capture has always seemed a little scammy, but in a blockbuster investigation co-published with Vox this week, we discovered just *how* scammy. Carolyn Raffensperger, executive director of the Science and Environmental Health Network, joins to walk us through the many issues with the technology, from the fact that it delivers little to no climate benefit to the fact that it creates a massive new public health threat.
Read more here: https://drilled.media/news/ccs
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In 2017, El Salvador became the first country in the world to pass an outright ban on mining. It was an effort to protect the country's water, and its people. Now, self-proclaimed "coolest dictator in the world" Nayib Bukele wants to bring mining back to boost the economy, which took a major hit thanks to his embrace of Bitcoin as the national currency in 2021. The activists who helped pass the ban are standing in his way. The solution? Accuse them of a decades-old unsolved murder. The activists go on trial this week. Reporter Sebastian Escalon brings us this story, narrated by Yessenia Funes.
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This week, we bring you an episode from our climate litigation podcast, Damages, because we've been getting SO MANY emails about what sorts of legal strategies might still be available for climate accountability given everything happening at the Supreme Court. Public Citizen has been working with various prosecutors to explore the idea of using criminal law to hold oil companies accountable for climate change, but is it really viable? The group's senior climate policy counsel, Aaron Regunburg, joins us to discuss.
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As part of our ongoing series looking into new climate problems the fossil fuel industry is peddling as solutions, we did a deep dive into the push to position liquefied natural gas—a fossil fuel—as "green" and discovered one particularly active lobbying group.
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Fossil fuel companies can't push ideas like "low carbon gas" or overstate the emissions-reduction potential of technologies like carbon capture without the help of a whole system of folks who help them sell the idea. The role management consultancies play in that process has been largely under-covered, but today we dig into just how helpful they've been through the story of one consultancy in particular. Reporter Maddie Stone walks us through how multinational consultancy ICF, which is well known for its government climate work, also works to produce reports the fossil fuel industry uses to promote oil and gas.
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The backlash against ESG is continuing, with a string of lawsuits aimed at shutting down shareholder activism. We don't often talk about shareholder activism in the vein of protecting protest, but it's absolutely part of the story. Andrew Behar, CEO of shareholder advocacy group As You Sow, joins us to explain what's going on, and why anyone who cares about basic rights needs to be tuning into the ESG fight.
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Lots of news lately on stories we've been following, so in today's episode: an update! The landmark Carbon Majors report has been updated with some surprising new data, and the European Court of Human Rights has sent down an historic ruling that will shape how EU legislators look at energy and climate.
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In France, the unthinkable has happened for polluting industries: the working-class Yellow Vest movement, racial equity movements, and progressive climate activists have joined forces in a multi-racial, cross-class coalition called Earth Uprisings. The response has been shockingly violent and extreme. Reporter Anna Pujol-Mazzini takes us there.
Check out Fatima Ouassak's new book Pour Une Écologie Pirate
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Late last year, Brown University's Climate and Development Lab put out a comprehensive report looking at the opposition to wind energy on the east coast of the U.S., called "Against the Wind." Today, the lead author of that report, Isaac Slevin, walks us through what's real and what's manufactured in this opposition, which has not only continued to grow in the U.S. but now influenced a similar movement in Australia.
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Shell announced in late 2023 that it would be shutting down all of its onshore activities in Nigeria and concentrating its efforts offshore. It leaves behind poisoned water, multiple political and economic crises, and a country that is measurably worse off today than when its oil industry began. Meanwhile the government continues to target environmental activists.
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Last year, headlines all over the world proclaimed victory for the environment: finally, after more than a decade of promises, there would be no more drilling in Yasuní National Park, a large swath of the Ecuadorian Amazon. But as Macy Lipkin reports, all wasn't what it seemed.
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Check out the limited-run series Hazard NYC from The City, all about how climate change intersects with Superfund sites in New York City. Start with episode one here: https://www.thecity.nyc/2024/02/14/newtown-creek-superfund-pollution-hazardnyc-faqnyc-podcast/
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In her new book Saving Ourselves, Dana R. Fisher compiles years worth of research on protest in general and climate protest in particular for a comprehensive look at tactics, what "works," what a protest "working" even means, where the movement is likely to go next and where it needs to go to achieve real climate action.
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The U.S. government's definition of what constitutes an "ecoterrorist" has long driven backlash against environmental activists and in recent years that definition has only broadened. Investigative reporter and Drilled senior editor Alleen Brown dug into this recently and found that the Department of Homeland Security had been warning officials in Atlanta about the threat posed by "Defend the Atlanta Forest" for months before police raided the forest, ultimately killing one protestor, and charging dozens more with domestic terrorism and racketeering. It was such an overreaction that even mainstream media covered it.
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In June 2022, Michel Forst became the first UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders. In that role he has spent the past year visiting various countries and speaking out about the increasingly onerous laws and aggressive tactics being used against climate protestors. Today he released a statement on the UK, saying he is "extremely worried" about "the increasingly severe crackdowns on environmental defenders in the United Kingdom, including in relation to the exercise of the right to peaceful protest."
In this episode, our France reporter Anna Pujol-Mazzini talks to Forst about his new position, what it means, and what power he has to do something about the creeping crackdown on climate protest.
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