Molly Taft

Lawrence Carter

Rishika Pardikar

Amy Westervelt

Ben Stockton

The Missing Ambition at COP28

The COP That PR Firms Built

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

COP28 and the Limits of Eco Modernism

Revealed: UAE State Oil Company Planned Major "Green" Rebrand Ahead of COP28 Climate Summit

For a long time there’s been a call amongst some climate advocates in the U.S. for the government to nationalize oil in order to manage the transition away from fossil fuels. The counter-argument is usually to point at countries like Venezuela, Russia, Saudi Arabia, or the United Arab Emirates, all of which have only doubled down on fossil fuel development since nationalizing their industries. With that in mind, we began in 2023 to dig into this question and get a feel for how petrostates operate, starting with the host of this year’s Conference of the Parties (COP28), the United Arab Emirates. 

Our partners on much of this first phase of petrostate reporting are the Centre for Climate Reporting in the U.K. 

Petrostate Documents

Newsom Documents

Petrostates

Reporting on climate disinformation has increased exponentially over the past decade. In 2015, reporters at 

published the stories collectively referred to as “Exxon Knew,” on the 

about climate change that Exxon scientists shared with the company’s management beginning in the 1970s. Since then, reporters at various outlets and researchers at NGOs have written about similar disinformation campaigns at 

 that first obstructed and then delayed climate action. Still others have dug into how the 

 that made it harder for the U.S. to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

This work has gone a long way towards building an understanding of how the world’s most powerful governments have failed to act to avoid a crisis scientists have been warning about for more than 50 years. But it’s important to keep in mind that the behaviors and strategies that obstructed climate action for decades weren’t just retired in the 2010s, when the oil companies decided it was no longer beneficial to pretend climate change wasn’t real. Nor are they limited solely to shaping how we understand the problem of climate change. These strategies have also been used to 

how the public and political leaders think about solutions to the problem, and to drive funding and attention toward solutions that continue to benefit the fossil fuel industry.

The same tactics fossil fuel companies used to cast doubt on or obscure climate science and to downplay the problem have, in recent years, been increasingly used to push false solutions to the climate crisis. The industry knows that “solutions”  like carbon capture, liquefied natural gas, hydrogen, and renewable natural gas will work only to protect its profits, not to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The tactics they use include 

 that skews public discourse and policymaking in the direction of their preferred solutions; creating coalitions to push those solutions via lobbying and PR; hiring management consultancies to conduct skewed analysis supporting those solutions; and amplifying disinformation via PR and advertising campaigns. 

Over the past several months, Drilled has been digging into what the industry says privately about its preferred climate solutions compared to what it says publicly about them. We’ve talked to current and former staff at oil companies as well as expert scientists, dug up primary documents, and watched countless hours of promotional videos. 

Tackling information pollution and cleaning up our information ecosystem is a key first step toward acting on climate. In a recent interview with Drilled, Rutgers media studies professor Melissa Aronczyk explained why. 

“The stuff we see as disinformation—the misleading ad campaigns, or the executives saying very misleading things on cable news—it’s just the tip of the iceberg,” she said. “To really understand and address climate disinformation, you have to see the whole picture, see how they shape all of these different types of information and data that become the building blocks of policy. You have to see what university research they’re funding, what parameters they’re putting on economic models, how they’re interacting with management consultants, what trade groups they’re participating in, what research and lobbying coalitions they’re part of, how they’re approaching thought leadership and influencers, how they’re shaping cultural norms, and how all of that is being done in service of pushing particular policies or keeping regulation at bay.”

In a series that will run throughout the summer, both here on our website and in the Drilled podcast, we’ll dig into  key examples of this around the world. We’ll show you how fossil fuel companies have used the same tactics they used to suppress and spin climate science to block the energy transition, warp international climate negotiations, blur the language around government climate commitments, and get governments all over the world to commit billions of dollars toward “climate solutions” that will extend the life of fossil fuels for decades to come and continue to obstruct and delay real solutions.

 with several pieces co-published with media partners. 

Denial to Delay

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.

Climate Cases

Around the world, climate and other environmental protestors are being harassed, attacked, and arrested at an increasing rate. Laws are being passed that levy life-altering prison sentences and fines on protestors arrested near anything deemed “critical infrastructure,” which is defined so broadly it’s hard to find a public space that 

 be near it anymore. Corporations are suing protestors and NGOs, comparing protest to organized crime. Governments are growing increasingly comfortable branding environmental protestors as “domestic terrorists” or instruments of “foreign influence,” and going after the nonprofit status of environmental nonprofits. And so far the media is largely participating in the rhetorical “othering” of protestors, opting in most cases to focus on the disruption that protest causes rather than the change it seeks, and to marginalize activists. In this print and audio series we’ll take an in-depth look at how climate protest has evolved in recent years, where this backlash is coming from, how it’s grown so quickly, and what it feels like to be someone who’s concerned enough about the future of humanity to join a protest, only to find themselves facing police violence and several years in jail.

We’ve worked with reporters on almost every continent to cover this trend from as many angles as possible and trace how particular tactics and ideas have spread across borders. The result is more than two dozen print and audio stories that we’ll be releasing over the next several months. The stellar team behind this project includes: 

Alleen Brown is an independent investigative journalist. Her reporting on state and corporate repression of Indigenous-led Dakota Access Pipeline opponents at Standing Rock has been cited in civil rights cases, reports submitted to international human rights bodies, and more than a dozen books. Her investigation mapping over 6,500 prisons against heat, wildfire, and flood risk has provided foundational information for organizers and policymakers defining what climate change will mean for mass incarceration. She has reported extensively on the intersections between environmental crises and racism, poverty, immigration, violence against women, and criminalization. She was previously a staff reporter at The Intercept and has written for Grist, The Guardian, Inside Climate News, The Appeal and other publications. Alleen is from St. Paul, Minnesota, and lives in New York.

Fredrick Mugira is a Ugandan multiple award-winning water and climate change journalist, media trainer and development communication specialist with over 10 years of wide-ranging experience. He has reported from various countries in Africa, Europe, Asia and USA. Fredrick has won various continental and national journalism awards including: the prestigious CNN/Multichoice African Journalist award; the UN Development Journalism Award; the 2018 and 2015 Climate Change Media Partnership (CCMP) fellowships. He was also shortlisted for the Energy/Water journalism Lifetime Achievement award at the Africa Utility awards 2018. He heads Water Journalists Africa, a network of over 700 journalists in 50 African countries who report on water. He cofounded InfoNile, a geojournalism platform mapping data on water issues in the Nile River basin with journalism stories to promote transboundary peace. 

Anna Pujol-Mazzini is an investigative journalist, podcast producer and fact-checker. She is a former international correspondent for Reuters, AFP and The Daily Telegraph and she specialises in gender, LGBTQIA+ rights and the environment.
Her work has been published by The Washington Post, Reuters, TIME Magazine, National Geographic, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph, among others.

Martha Troian is an award-winning independent journalist and writer. Specializing in investigative journalism, she has worked for and contributed to media outlets across North America for close to 15 years, often writing about Indigenous politics, justice, crime, data deficits, and environmental and human rights issues. She was the McLaughlin Centre Science Journalism fellow with the William Southam Journalism Fellowship at Massey College, University of Toronto for 2019-2020. Previously she was a participant of the Investigative Journalism Intensive Program at Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity. Currently, she is working as a producer with the Institute for Investigative Journalism probing water contamination and Indigenous communities. She is proudly from Lac Seul First Nation and Wabauskang First Nation in northwestern Ontario, and a mother to her young son.

Geoff Dembicki is an award-winning journalist and author from Alberta, Canada, currently based in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to VICE, DeSmog, The Tyee and his work has also appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Policy and The Guardian. He’s the author of Are We Screwed? How a New Generation is Fighting to Survive Climate Change, which was published internationally by Bloomsbury USA in 2017, and The Petroleum Papers, published by Greystone Books in 2022.

Karen Savage is an investigative journalist who has covered environmental justice communities extensively and has been reporting on resistance to pipeline construction in Louisiana since 2015. Her work has appeared in Undark Magazine, The Appeal, Project Earth, Juvenile Justice Information Exchange, Bridge the Gulf, Youth Today, Truthout and City Limits. Karen is an alum of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, where she teaches environmental reporting.

Ugochi Anyaka-Oluigbo, Reporter, Nigeria 

Ugochi Anyaka-Oluigbo is an award-winning environmental journalist and the recipient of several journalism awards including the UNEP Young Environmental Journalist 2012, 2019 Green Accord Environmental Award, Italy and UNFCCC CDM-African Radio Contest 2011. She created, produced and presented the most popular environmental show on Nigerian TV, Green Angle on TVC News. I have hosted the BBC World Service's Environmental Radio Programme, Local Warming. Ugochi comes from a community ravaged by erosion - a key factor that inspired her passion to pursue environmental journalism. I am a fellow of the Lancaster University Environment Center – Recirculate Programme. From erosions, flooding and desertification in Nigeria, oil pollution in Ogoniland of 
the Niger Delta, depleting Africa's last rain forests to frozen lapland, Finland, she has visited rugged terrains to share underreported environmental stories. She currently works as a freelance journalist covering environmental issues across Africa and Europe, and co-hosts Djoliba - a multi language African radio show on RadioX Basel, Switzerland. 

Lyndal Rowlands is a freelance journalist. Her audio journalism can be found on 

First Eat with Nakkiah Lui: an Audible Original

The Saturday Paper, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Diplomat, SBS

where she was a UN Correspondent. Lyndal’s work has been recognised with a UN Correspondents Association prize for climate journalism, a UN Foundation Press Fellowship and a UnionDocs Pod-Pod residency. She’s a member of the Media, Entertainment & Arts Alliance, The Science Journalist Association of Australia and the Society of Environmental Journalists. She was born in a valley full of brown coal mines and her favourite sound is a magpie warbling.

Rishika Pardikar is an Indian environmental journalist tracking science, law and policy. Her areas of expertise are climate change and biodiversity, both nationally within India and internationally with a keen focus on negotiations under UNFCCC and UNCBD. Her work has appeared in The Lever/ Jacobin, Foreign Policy, science magazines like AGU's Eos, China Dialogue and Indian media like The Hindu and The Wire. She lives in Bangalore.

Wudan is an award-winning narrative journalist, podcast producer, fact-checker, and entrepreneur. She writes about contrarian characters, unlikely connections, creative solutions, slow-moving crises — or any combination of the above. Her work appears in 

The Atlantic, The California Sunday Magazine, The Guardian, High Country News, Longreads, MIT Technology Review, National Geographic, The New Yorker, New York Magazine, The New York Times, 

The Real Free Speech Threat

Every few years the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) releases an assessment, which consists of several reports prepared by three working groups. Working Group I focuses on the scientific evidence for climate change; Working Group II on the impacts, adaptation and vulnerabilities; and Working Group III on mitigation, what we can do about it (and what's stopping us).  The 2018 IPCC report got a LOT of media attention, more than any previous report, thanks to a combination of uncharacteristically stark warnings from climate scientists and a media cycle that wasn't quite as inundated with crises as the current one.

On April 4, 2022, the IPCC released the mitigation report for its current cycle and folks if the 2018 report was blunt, this one is absolutely screaming "do something!!!" Yet, coverage was as slim as those pre-2018 days. There are lots of mitigating circumstances, 'scuse the pun. For a start, the release of the report was pushed back thanks to the fraught approval process for the report's Summary for Policymakers, or SPM (you can read more about that 

). That meant that reporters got zero time with the actual report before we had to write about it, which was particularly problematic because some government representatives involved in the SPM process succeeded in watering it down so much it reads like the summary of an entirely different report. Plenty of reporters will only read the SPM; if they do, they'll miss the importance of this report. Then of course there's Russia's invasion of Ukraine, subsequent war crimes, and the world bracing itself for WWIII. And the endless pulse of Covid-19 vibrating underneath at all. Not to mention mass shootings, insane school boards, book banning, a looming Trump 2024 campaign, the midterms that Democrats seem destined to lose, a Supreme Court nomination process that McConnell is doing everything to derail yet again. These are deeply troubled times. So I get why the story of yet another dire warning on climate might not register for some outlets

But that's why I'm here. I'm a climate reporter. It's all I focus on, and pretty much all I think about, and I've been covering IPCC reports for 20 years so I've got a pretty good handle on them. 

Petrostates

How the math changes when the government runs the oil company

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How the math changes when the government runs the oil company

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Petrostate Documents

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