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 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. 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

Back in 2015, twenty-one young people sued the United States for its actions to drive and exacerbate climate change. The case, Juliana v. United States, looked like it was done for back in 2021 when the 9th Circuit declared the young people did not have standing to bring the case and declined to grant a rehearing, but it's been mandated back to district court where the Juliana 21 have amended their complaint and are gearing up for round 2. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Guardian journalist Chris McGreary joins to discuss ExxonMobil's attempts in Texas to cast litigation against it as a conspiracy to muzzle its free speech rights. Read Chris's story: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/18/exxon-texas-courts-critics-climate-crimes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For decades, the fossil fuel industry has successfully framed environmentalists as silly, elitist, radical, and out of touch. And for a long time the climate movement has gone along with it, self-flagellating for caring about nature, buying into the idea that humans and nature are separate. It's well past time to rethink what it means to be an environmentalist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A conversation with Max Berger, a longtime progressive organizer who helped incubate the Sunrise Movement and has also worked in the past for Cori Bush and Elizabeth Warren, about movement building, the climate crisis, and the current unraveling of American democracy. (Check out Scene on Radio's climate season here: http://www.sceneonradio.org/the-repair/) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In several countries around the world, including Ecuador, New Zealand, and the U.S., some people are trying to protect the planet using a legal concept called “rights of nature”—infusing the law with Indigenous understandings of Mother Earth.Listen to the complete Scene on Radio season: http://www.sceneonradio.org/the-repair/Check out Degrees podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/degrees/id1536627537 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Groundbreaking new research from Brown University's Dr. Robert Brulle shows just how much oil companies have spent on PR in recent decades, and tracks how PR firms helped to architect climate obstruction. PR whistleblower Christine Arena joins with Dr. Brulle to discuss his research and the many tentacles of the influence industry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a new study, sociologist Robert Brulle examined which PR firms work for the various industries obstructing climate action. Only one firm was in the top 3 for every single segment. Listen to find out which one, and learn about some of their other contributions to the world of spin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the rest of the world is beginning to realize that fracking comes with more downsides than upsides, Australia is readying itself for a fracking boom, eyeing basins on Indigenous land. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Melissa Aronczyk, media studies scholar at Rutgers University, is one of my go-to sources on all things disinformation. In this episode, she walks us through the history of environmental PR and how it's shaped the broader disinformation system we're all grappling with today. This history is also the subject of Aronczyk's new book, with co-author Maria Espinoza, A Strategic Nature (https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-strategic-nature-9780190055356?cc=us&lang=en&) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Reporter Katie Worth has been researching climate education in the U.S. for years and that research forms the basis of her new book Miseducation. In this interview we delve into what she found. 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

Over the last five episodes we've tracked how long the fossil fuel industry has been investing in schools, why, and what impact it's had. In this episode, we look at what can be done, and who's trying to do it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Bringing you our entire interview with Stanford researcher Ben Franta on fossil fuel influence at universities because it was just too good not to share.Check out Degrees pod: https://link.chtbl.com/degrees?sid=podcast.SHOWNAME Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're wrapping up our series with Earther this week, with a look at how fossil fuel companies influence curricula and research at the university level. (Also working on a bonus episode on solutions to this problem, stay tuned for that!) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the third episode of our mini-series with Earther, we head to high school, where the fossil fuel industry's efforts to shape Americans' thinking on economics and policy really ramps up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Steven Donziger, the attorney who's been on house arrest for more than two years on a contempt charge that arose as a result of his work on the Chevron-Ecuador case, was sentenced Friday October 1st. Judge Loretta Preska handed down the maximum sentence, six months in jail. She also denied bail. Donziger's legal team is appealing both the conviction and the denial of bail, and he remains at home on house arrest pending those appeals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Since the 1920s, oil companies have been creating music, activities, coloring books, comic books, movies and more to shape how American kids think about society, the economy, and the environment. Today, we look at their efforts in elementary school. Read more: www.earther.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fossil fuel companies didn't start infiltrating schools when climate change appeared on the scene, they were there shaping the minds of future citizens for decades before then. The industry has been laying the groundwork for inaction on climate since long before this crisis reared its ugly head, limiting how Americans are allowed to think about the environment and the economy. In this first episode of our new miniseries with Earther, Dharna Noor and Amy Westervelt look at how Big Oil first got into the education game, and why it worked so well.Read more: https://gizmodo.com/the-abcs-of-big-oil-why-big-oil-infiltrated-schools-1847734544Pre-order Katie Worth's book Miseducation: https://globalreports.columbia.edu/books/miseducation/Check out the Frontline report on the Marshall Islands: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-last-generation/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this collaboration with Earther, we look at the fossil fuel industry's influence in school—not just in shaping our understanding of environmental problems, but also in narrowing the spectrum of solutions we're allowed to consider. Earther reporter Dharna Noor co-hosts, and we'll be bringing you a four-part series over the next several weeks. Subscribe so you won't miss it! And make sure to check out the Earther site for complementary posts and web bonuses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the final episode of part 1 in our Bridge to Nowhere season, we look at the chronic whack-a-mole problem in frontline communities. Just as one facility gets shut down or cleaned up, another is waiting to take its place. In a lot of ways, the plastic problem itself is a whack-a-mole issue catalyzed by progress in shifting away from fossil fuels in the transport and building sectors. How can policy makers and activists predict and prevent these sorts of problems? 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

The team at UnEarthed, an investigative journalism project funded by Greenpeace in the UK, went undercover and got ExxonMobil execs on tape talking through the company's climate playbook in detail. Today, an unpublished part of that report, in which a former Exxon lobbyist details the company's and the industry's plans on plastics.More from UnEarthed:Watch the ExxonMobil video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNFBjcrU5Pc&ab_channel=GreenpeaceUnearthedRead the story: https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2021/06/30/exxon-climate-change-undercover/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Just as the fossil fuel industry was starting to worry about demand for single use plastics, along comes a global pandemic that they could leverage to push more of the stuff. And they did! But was it enough to save them entirely? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Diane Wilson couldn't keep Formosa out of her town, but down the coast in Louisiana the community in St. James Parish, led by Sharon Lavigne, is fighting like hell to keep them out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This time we're doing something a little different: a season in three parts, all about the gas industry and how it's managed to embed itself into society. First up, Part 1 Plastic Pipelines: A look at how the fracking boom led to a plastics boom, through the story of one petrochemical company operating on the Gulf Coast, and the two women—one in Texas, the other in Louisiana—taking them on. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new season about the natural gas industry, presented in three parts. Coming soon, Part 1: Pipelines to Plastic about the direct connection between the fracking boom and the plastics boom, told through the story of Formosa Plastics, a company with an environmental record so bad it couldn't get permits in its own country so it searched the globe for a new home, with weaker environmental regulations, and found it in the American South. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Steven Donziger went to trial for the criminal contempt charge that's kept him on house arrest for 600 days and counting. Paul Paz Y Mino of Amazon Watch brings us an update on the trial Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new study from Harvard science historians Naomi Oreskes and Geoffrey Supran points to the use of language targeted specifically to downplay the reality of climate change and shift responsibility entirely onto consumers. Geoffrey Supran, the lead author on the study, joins to discuss.Study: https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(21)00233-5Read more: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/climate-change-exxonmobil-harvard-study-1169682/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new study out from Harvard University explores the health impacts of transitioning from coal to other combustible fuels. The findings are important for climate policy, particularly the fact that biomass is a huge contributor to air pollution despite representing only a small percentage of energy generation and that natural gas still contributes significantly to air pollution and its associated health impacts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's Earth Day 2021 and the first Congressional hearing of the day is focused on fossil fuel subsidies. Their elimination was written into Biden's infrastructure bill, and House Democrats want to make sure that provision stays in the bill. Today's hearing will detail what those subsidies are, why getting rid of them is critical to climate action, and how the government can pull it off without raising the cost of living for average Americans.Watch the hearing at 10am ET: https://oversight.house.gov/legislation/hearings/on-the-role-of-fossil-fuel-subsidies-in-preventing-action-on-the-climate-crisis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Steven Donziger, the American attorney we profiled in S5 is scheduled for trial May 10th, but his lawyers have filed another motion to dismiss, alleging vindictive prosecution. Karen Savage joins for an update on this story. 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

We talked about rights of nature a bit in the Ecuador-Chevron season, the Latin American country was the first in the world to integrate the concept of rights of nature in its Constitution. Now the Constitutional Court is reviewing its first rights of nature case. U.S. communities are pursuing the idea as well, and the fossil fuel industry is trying to block rights of nature laws from ever passing. Josh Boaz Pribanic and Melissa Troutman, co-founders of Public Herald join to talk about their new documentary on the rights of nature, Invisible Hand.Check out Invisible Hand: https://www.invisiblehandfilm.com/premiere/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Biden Administration has rolled out its Build Back Better plan and it includes a lot of progressive wishlist items, but the left is still pushing for more scale. The THRIVE Act, reintroduced by Sen Markey and Rep Dingell last month is what they're pushing towards and Peoples Action Climate Justice director Kaniela Ing joins to walk us through the asks, and what he's hearing from folks on the ground.Learn more:https://www.thriveagenda.com/https://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/senator-markey-rep-dingell-reintroduce-thrive-resolution-to-build-back-economy-following-coronavirus-pandemichttps://peoplesaction.org/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Local activists and legislators have been fighting the Enbridge natural gas compressor in Weymouth for years. It's too close to residents and businesses, and poses too many health risks to a community that's already borne the burden of too much pollution, they say. The project was approved by FERC in 2019, built and became operational in 2020. Then it had an emergency shutdown. And another. Now FERC is considering the unprecedented move of re-thinking its permit, a decision that could have broad ramifications.Check out Miriam Wasser's ongoing reporting on this at WBUR: https://www.wbur.org/earthwhile/2021/03/19/weymouth-compressor-ferc-precedent-enbridge-natural-gas Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fossil fuel-backed anti-protest laws have been passed in 14 states and are making their way through statehouses in several more states, including six different bills in Minnesota, the only state with a big pipeline fight this year: Line 3. Researcher Connor Gibson joins to talk us through how this all started and where it's at.Read more:https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pipeline-protest-laws-coronavirus_n_5e7e7570c5b6256a7a2aab41https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fossil-fuel-protest_n_602c1ff6c5b6c95056f3f6afhttps://montanafreepress.org/2021/02/24/increasing-penalties-for-damaging-energy-infrastructure/https://grassrootbeer.substack.com/p/a-refinery-lobbyist-told-kansas-legislatorshttps://grassrootbeer.substack.com/p/a-refinery-lobbyist-told-kansas-legislators Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When a report makes oil and gas companies—and the politicians they help elect—this mad, you know the author is on to something. Researcher Sean O'Leary, with the Ohio River Valley Institute, joins us to talk about his new report, which found that the local economic benefit of fracking to communities in the Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia gas corridor was slim to none. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Stanford researcher Ben Franta joins to talk about a bombshell new discovery: the American Petroleum Institute not only knew about climate change back in the 70s, it started pushing climate denial as early as 1980.Read Ben's article: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09644016.2020.1863703 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donziger is still on house arrest and disbarred, the settlement seems impossible to collect, now what? In this episode we look at what this case says about accountability and the power of oil companies, and what options remain for the Ecuadorians seeking justice.Support our work: Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chevron makes good on its promise to fight the Ecuadorian judgement until hell freezes over ... and then fight it out on the ice. Donziger loses his appeal of the RICO judgement, then finds himself facing contempt charges and disbarment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Corruption charges against both the Ecuadorian judge and the American judge fly as the RICO gets underway.Support our work: patreon.com/Drilled 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

Chevron's legal team shocks the Ecuadorian plaintiffs with a massive racketeering claim in the U.S. alleging fraud, witness tampering, and even bribery.Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Drilled Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Chevron's attorneys go after Joe Berlinger, the filmmaker behind the documentary about the case, Crude. They subpoena his outtakes, kicking off a years-long First Amendment battle.Support our work: https://www.patreon.com/Drilled Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new report from Carbon Tracker finds that the fossil fuel industry is pinning its hopes on a plastic boom—and try as it might to spur that demand, it's just not materializing. Report author Kingsmill Bond joins us to discuss.Read the full report here: https://carbontracker.org/reports/the-futures-not-in-plastics/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New York District Court Judge Loretta Preska has denied repeated requests to delay Donziger's criminal contempt trial until at least one of his lawyers can be present. Barring any last-minute changes, he'll stand trial Monday, November 9th, after which he could be sent to jail for six months. In this ep, reporter Karen Savage brings us the latest and we hear from attorneys Lauren Regan and Ronald Kuby about what sort of precedent this sets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The case takes a bizarre turn with a sting operation, U.S. subpoenas, accusations of fraud and bribery, and finally a verdict in Ecuador. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices