In the finale of our Real Free Speech Threat season, we look at how the U.S. military and its national security agencies have helped stoke a global crackdown on environmental protest, and bring you the inspiring story of one Filipino land defender who's been targeted by the state for years and is still fighting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Introducing…our first podcast crossover season! Later this year we’ll be bringing you a season in collaboration with the podcast Non-Toxic, hosted by journalist and culture critic Daniel Penny, about the intersection between masculinity and climate. In this episode we introduce Daniel and his work, and talk a bit about what you can expect from this season. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We have covered before how the fossil fuel industry created the advertorial and how it continues work with media on the modern incarnation: sponsored content, created by the media outlets themselves. To be clear, it’s outlets’ internal brand studios that write op-eds, craft slide shows and videos, and produce podcasts for fossil fuel companies, not their editorial staff. But these services are explicitly marketed as a way to make corporate content mirror the editorial content in style and approa...
A new season of Hazard-NJ is out now, this time diving into PFAS, or "forever chemicals." Find it everywhere you get your pods. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In November, a Dutch court ruled in Shell's favor on an appeal in a big international climate case. It got loads of headlines around the world, but it wasn't quite the win for Shell that a lot of media coverage has made it out to be. Although it walked back some things, the court reaffirmed a key component of the original ruling: that Shell is legally required to reduce its global emissions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
How did our democracy get replaced by a kleptocracy? Discover the truth on Master Plan, a new podcast from The Lever. Hosted by David Sirota, former speechwriter for Bernie Sanders and Oscar-nominated co-writer of Don’t Look Up, Master Plan exposes the deliberate scheme to legalize corruption in the U.S., allowing the wealthy to buy policies that benefit themselves and screw everyone else. The Lever has unearthed never-before-reported documents proving this 50-year plot was a coordinated effort ...
From October-December 2024, Fuel to Fork is taking over the Feed podcast with a 7-episode series exposing the hidden role fossil fuels play in the food we eat. Today, Fuel to Fork co-hosts Anna Lappé and Matthew Kessler join us to talk through that history and why it's remained hidden for so long. Check out Fuel to Fork here: https://tabledebates.org/fueltofork Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Today we're sharing an episode of the podcast Reclaimed. It centers on a group of Americans who’ve been denied a basic human right: water. I’m talking about the Navajo people. More than one-third of households in the Navajo Nation do not have access to clean water. Right now, there’s a landmark bill in front of Congress that could change this — but it took more than 150 years to get here. “Reclaimed” takes you back to the very beginning when the Navajo reservation was first created. And it revea...
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. Ad Notes: 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 ...
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"...
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. Secure your privacy with Surfshark! Enter coupon code DRILLED for 4 months EXTRA at https://surfshark.com/DRILLED...
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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 hi...
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 Learn more about your ad ...
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...
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, j...
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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 know...
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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 chargi...
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 peac...
About a decade after UK courts made history with the first "climate necessity" ruling in history, the UK government has passed new laws that not only restrict what protesters can do, but also how protesters are allowed to defend themselves in court. Some judges don't apply the new laws so strictly, but others have held people in contempt for just trying to explain themselves. In some courtrooms, the climate necessity defense has been effectively outlawed. How did that happen? And how did it happ...
While protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation garnered international news coverage, at the southern end of the pipeline, cops moonlighting as pipeline security were suppressing free speech with impunity. In this episode, reporter Karen Savage tells us what happened at Bayou Bridge, and what lessons the story holds for the climate movement and for anyone who believes in the importance of democracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone...
