Earl Newsom: The Man Behind the Curtain

Petroganda: The Original Narrative—Energy Security

Leaked BP Docs Show: Protest Works. That's Why It's Important to Protect It.

The Reason Covid-19 and Climate Seem So Similar: Disinformation

The Fossil Fuel Industry Is Returning to Its Favorite Story

Is Big Oil Turning on Big Auto?

Petroganda: The World's Greatest Neighbor

Petroganda: We're Part of the Solution

Petroganda: We Make Your Life Work

Petroganda: The Economy vs. The Environment

Disinformation Techniques: A Glossary

Inside the Campaign That Put an Oil Boss in Charge of a Climate Summit

The Dairy Industry Is Scared, and Queen Latifah Is Here to Make It OK2Milk

Fossil Fuel Industry Ads: You Can’t Live If Living Is Without Us

Three Congressional Hearings on Climate Disinfo Bring New Industry Documents to Light

This Is Not the First Time Climate Has Been Part of the "Culture War”

Readers for Sale: How Legacy Media Legitimizes Big Oil’s Climate Talking Points

Reuters, New York Times Top List of Fossil Fuel Industry’s Media Partners

Amy Westervelt

Molly Taft

The fossil fuel industry was one of the first major users of PR in the U.S. and it continues to spend more than most other industries. PR firms don’t just handle media placements and advertising for fossil fuel clients, they help craft strategies. As one publicist put it to me recently, “it wasn’t the oil companies that invented greenwashing, it was PR firms.” Despite the billions of dollars it’s spent on PR over the years, the industry and its favorite firms are not exactly innovative. They come back to the same five key narratives over and over again, leaning on whichever plays best at any particular point in time: 

 - From fueling wars to preserving national security, the industry loves to highlight it’s role in keeping America safe…even when it’s profiting from wars that it has also helped to manufacture. 

- Keeping nature separate from humans and reminding us over and over again that economic growth is more important than conservation has helped the industry stave off regulation for decades. 

 - From keeping the lights on to providing the building blocks for life-saving medical devices, smart phones, cosmetics and fast fashion, the industry loves to remind consumers that they need it. 

 - Nothing keeps regulation away like voluntary solutions that make it seem like the industry is really trying. 

 - Just in case people still aren’t thrilled about dirty air, dirty water, and climate change, the industry makes sure to fund museums, sports, aquariums, and schools, which serves the dual purpose of cleaning up its image and making communities feel dependent on the industry and thus less likely to criticize it.

Edelman Documents

E. Bruce Harrison Documents

John Hill Documents

Ivy Lee Documents

Newsom Documents

Schmertz Documents

Berman Documents

Bernays Documents

S1 Climate Denial Documents

Media Greenwashing

S9, Ep3 | The Next Citizens United Will Be a Climate Case

S9, Ep2 | A Legal Strategy

S3, Ep9 | Jay Rosen and Nicholas Johnson on What the Media Can Do About Disinformation

S3, Ep7 | John Hill and the Tobacco-Oil-Plastic Triangle

S3, Ep8 | Meet The Harrisons

S9, Ep1 | The Panic

S3, Ep6 | Manipulating the Masses and Predicting the Future—Edward Bernays and W. Howard Chase

S3, Ep5 | Oil Slick, Part 2—False Equivalence and Free Speech

S3, Ep4 | Oil Slick, Part 1—The Rise of the Corporate Persona

S3, Ep3 | Psychological Warfare, Astroturfing, and Another Tobacco-Oil Connection

S3, Ep2 | The Oil-Nazi-Propaganda Triangle

S3, Ep1 | The Father of Public Relations

Petroganda

How Big Oil Killed Our Political Imagination

How the 'Father of Forestry' Inspired Big Oil

The Fossil Fuel Industry’s Century-Long Quest to Invade Elementary Schools

Why the Fossil Fuel Industry Infiltrated Schools

Get 'Em While They're Young

Dharna Noor

Fossil Fuel Funding In Schools

S7, Ep7 | Katie Worth on the State of Climate Education in the U.S.

S7, Ep6 | So…What Do We Do About This?

S7, Ep5 | Ben Franta on Oil on Big Campus

S7, Ep4 | We’re Going Streaking

S7, Ep3 | High School

S7, Ep2 | Elementary School

S7, Ep1 | The First Day of School

The ABCs of Big Oil

Could Guyana’s Exxon ruling scare big oil off risky exploration?

Guyana High Court: EPA and ExxonMobil Put Country At Grave Risk

How Exxon Captured a Country Without Firing a Shot

Debunking the "Moral Case" for Fossil Fuels

Secret Tribunals and Hand-Picked Arbiters—A Little-known System Undermines Environmental Regulation

Sarah Ventre

Kiana Wilburg

For decades now, the fossil fuel industry has told the same story: Oil equals development and prosperity. Access. Equality. Stability. A better quality of life. As the world’s fossil fuel companies race to tap the last of the planet’s oil reserves we have a chance to examine that promise up close, in real time.

What it looks like on the ground in countries like Guyana, Uganda, and Mozambique is a lot like what the first phase of extractive colonialism looked like a hundred years ago. Working with reporters living in these countries we are continuously investigating what this new flavor of oil colonialism looks like, starting with an in-depth, two-year reporting project in Guyana. 

Several miles off the coast of Guyana sits one of the world’s largest oil reserves. In 2015, ExxonMobil, which had held offshore drilling leases in the country for decades, announced it had found oil and would begin production as soon as possible. Government officials quickly got in line, and in 2019 the first barrels shipped from ExxonMobil Guyana. Today, Exxon projects that oil from Guyana could account for 25% of its total production in the next few years. But environmentalists and government corruption watchdogs have begun to push back on the project. Why 

 an oil industry in the midst of climate crisis? And especially in a country at great risk of climate impacts? Via a contract that will sooner put Guyana in debt than make it a rich oil state, no less?

In just a few years, Exxon has co-opted both government and civil society, buying up social license in every corner of the country. Oil executives and Guyanese officials are still telling the story that oil equals development and prosperity, and on paper Guyana is the fastest-growing economy in the world, but average citizens aren’t benefiting from the boom. Today, there are only a couple of journalists left covering the project with any sort of skepticism, and one lawyer left willing to take it on in court. 

Guyana Documents

S3, Ep4 | Constitutional Violation

S3, Ep2 | The Contract

S3, Ep1 | The Boom

S3 Bonus: A Verdict

S3, Ep3 | Unlimited Liability

S8 Update: Gas to Energy for Guyana, or Problem to Profit for Exxon?

S8, Ep9 | A Verdict

S8, Ep8 | The Turning Point

S8, Ep7 |  The Global Oil Rush

S8, Ep6 | Old-School Greenwashing

S8, Ep5 | On Global Poverty and Global Warming

S8, Ep4 | Constitutional Violation

S8, Ep3 | Unlimited Liability

S8, Ep2 | The Contract

S8, Ep1 | The Boom

S3, Ep8 | The Turning Point

S3, Ep7 | The Global Oil Rush

S3, Ep6 | Old-School Greenwashing

S3, Ep5 | On Global Poverty and Global Warming

New Oil Colonialism

The Supreme Court Strategy to Take Us Back to Pre-New Deal America

The Supreme Court’s Obscure Procedural Ruling in Baltimore’s Climate Case, Explained

Sackett, West Virginia and the Judicial Strategy to Gut the EPA

New Climate Case Names Enablers: API, Western States Petroleum Association, Koch Industries, and McKinsey

Why Climate Litigation Matters

Montana Kids Just Won Their Landmark Climate Lawsuit. Here’s Why. 

Supreme Negligence

False Friends of the Court, with Senator Whitehouse

California For The Win

SCOTUS Says No to Exxon, Now the Corporate Free Speech Fight Begins

Dana Drugmand

Karen Savage

In the U.S., the response to climate litigation is often “who cares when this Supreme Court is ultimately going to knock it back anyway?” And the answer is simple: discovery. Discovery is a term that describes the fact-finding phase of civil litigation. During the discovery phase, lawyers can access primary documents, depose current and former employees and executives, and generally get a whole bunch of information they couldn’t previously access. 

The oil companies have been fighting like hell to avoid this phase because it will undoubtedly produce ten more “Exxon Knew” series, if not more. It will provide evidence for all the other cases, too, not just in the U.S. but globally, where the industry doesn’t have Supreme Court justices ready to do their bidding. It’s true that it’s entirely possible that any climate case that gets to the U.S. Supreme Court will result in a pro-oil ruling. But not before massively increasing the risk of accountability for these companies along the way. Even the U.S. government might be forced to finally act if the public, armed with mountains of evidence that politicians have colluded with fossil fuel executives to sell their future, demands it.

And it’s important to remember that climate litigation does not begin or end with the U.S., nor does accountability for U.S. oil companies. It’s entirely possible that documents unearthed via litigation in one country can be used to hold a company accountable in one of the other 100 countries in which it operates. 

Given the importance of climate litigation today, and the fact that in its 2022 mitigation report the IPCC included litigation as a key mitigation tool for the first time ever, we keep tabs on these cases, both on the website and via multiple podcasts.

Litigation Documents

S3, Ep11 | Supremely F*&cked

S5, Ep6 | A Verdict And a New Charge

S2, Ep1 | Ecocide

S2, Ep 6 | False Friends of the Court

S2, Ep4 | Taking Big Oil to Court

S1, Ep7 | Campaigns So Successful They’ve Landed In Court

Climate Cases

A true-crime podcast about climate change, hosted by investigative journalist Amy Westervelt. Listen here, or 

A true-crime podcast about climate change.

Drilled

Drilled S9: Herb

Drilled S8: Light, Sweet Crude

Drilled S7: The ABCs of Big Oil, with Earther

Drilled S6: The Bridge to Nowhere

Drilled S4: There Will Be Fraud

Drilled S3: The Mad Men of Big Oil

Drilled S2: Hot Water

Drilled S1: The Origins of Climate Denial

Drilled S10: The Real Free Speech Threat

Drilled S5: La Lucha En La Jungla

Law & Order meets the climate crisis as we dig into the stories behind the hundreds of climate cases around the globe. Listen here or 

Damages

Damages S3

Damages S2

Damages S1

In Rigged, we rummage through the bag of tricks used by PR to shape the world you live in. Over the last century, these tricks have rigged the media, the government… society, really...with sometimes ridiculous, and sometimes profoundly serious effects on our democracy. This is a podcast about that war for hearts and minds right here on US soil.

Listen to episodes and access transcripts here, or 

A podcast about the way the PR industry helps corporations shape the world.

Rigged

Rigged Season 1

Hot Take is a holistic, irreverent, honest look at the climate crisis and all the ways media and society are talking—and not talking—about it. Hosted by real-life friends Mary Annaïse Heglar and Amy Westervelt—an essayist and a journalist— Hot Take offers a unique perspective on the issue of climate change. With a breath of fresh humanity and humor, conversation moves swiftly from cackling about the bad week an oil company had, to speaking seriously and passionately about the unequal distribution of climate impacts and our own experiences of climate grief. And then washing it down with a round of dad jokes! Every week, we’ll connect you with the latest climate news and with the journalists and storytellers trying to make sense of this complex issue to help you see the world through climate-colored glasses. We ended production on Hot Take at the end of 2022, but you can still access episodes here, or 

A holistic, irreverent, honest look at the climate crisis and all the ways media and society are talking—and not talking—about it.

Hot Take

Hot Take S3

Hot Take S2

Hot Take S1

Petroganda

We are a global team investigating the obstacles to action on climate change, all over the world

Petroganda

The ABCs of Big Oil

New Oil Colonialism

Climate Cases

Investigating the Obstacles to Action on Climate Change.

Petroganda

We are a global team investigating the obstacles to action on climate change, all over the world

Subscribe to Our Newsletter

Petroganda

The ABCs of Big Oil

New Oil Colonialism

Climate Cases

Investigating the Obstacles to Action on Climate Change.