Repression of protest has ramped up in the U.S., but everything that's happening now began with the backlash to the Standing Rock protest back in 2016. In today's episode we look at the connections between fossil fascism, petromasculinity, and protest.

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Lots of people are talking about the similarities between Iraq and Iran, but in this episode we place the two in the context of another war—World War I—and the historical arc of fossil fascism.

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What is “artificial intelligence”? Is it a fancy technology? A management consulting buzzword? A PR effort to inflate corporate share prices? A political project designed to shape the world more to the liking of the billionaire class? A way to replace needy human workers with machines?

Perhaps it’s all of that—and more. In her groundbreaking book Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI, award-winning journalist Karen Hao argues that AI—and the profit-driven infrastructure that surrounds it—is a colonial project. What OpenAI boss Altman and his fellow ideologues in Silicon Valley are pursuing, Hao says, is not just corporate power but imperial power. They are building empires. And as history shows, empires are built on resource extraction, particularly the old-fashioned kind: of labor, energy, minerals, land, water.

Seemingly overnight, tech elites’ feel-good climate promises have evaporated, having been seamlessly swapped for slippery promises that so-called “artificial general intelligence” will save the planet for us. Never mind that AGI is a fantastical concept that has no agreed-upon definition, or that, more fundamentally, it appears nowhere close to existing. In Big Tech’s frenzied pursuit of the “hyperscale” AI dominance that evangelists claim will unlock AGI, as well as its expanding alliances with fossil fuel-backed petrostates and authoritarian political movements, the industry has become an increasingly central contributor to the climate crisis.

In an October conversation with Drilled, Hao discussed how Silicon Valley giants appear to be following the oil and gas industry’s playbook of disinformation and deceit; how Altman and OpenAI’s secrecy and disingenuous rhetoric transformed the field of AI research into corporate PR; and why the destructive trajectory of AI scale and commercialization is not inevitable—no matter what its power-hungry proponents would have you believe.

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This week marks the 10-year anniversary of the hired hit that took Berta Cáceres’s life and robbed both the Honduran and global environmental movements of a uniquely effective leader. Cáceres was targeted by a dam company, with an assist from the police, military, government officials and international banks because of her effective organizing on behalf of her people, the Lenca. Nina Lakhani literally wrote the book on Cáceres’s killing, and in this episode she walks us through what happened then, what’s happening now, the role the U.S. played in all of it, and what Americans can learn from the way Honduran activists continue to show up in the face of violent repression.

Read Nina’s story 

Read Nina’s book

Check out Berta’s organization, Copinh

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Fernanda Hopenhaym, member of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights walks Drilled senior global climate justice reporter Nina Lakhani through the many legal pitfalls companies getting involved in the United States seizure of the Venezuelan oil industry might be facing.

Check out the longer story on our website.

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It's easy to feel like climate "doesn't matter" as the United States descends into fascism, as if climate and democracy are somehow separate issues. Researcher Oscar Berglund and Amy Westervelt connect the dots between the global backlash to climate protest and the broader repression we're seeing in supposedly democratic countries around the world.

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In More and More and More, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz shows that the human history of energy is one of accumulation, not substitution. Here, he talks to reporter Adam Lowenstein about how the "energy transition" frame got so entrenched, why clean-energy innovation is not the same thing as decarbonization, how the fossil fuel industry helped launder pipe dreams of dysfunctional technologies into mainstream climate “solutions”, and much more (and more and more).

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When activists Jessica Reznicek and Ruby Montoya take drastic measures to halt construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, they have no idea that a shadowy private security contractor called TigerSwan has them in its sights. 

Special thanks to:

Alleen Brown and The Intercept (https://theintercept.com/2018/12/30/tigerswan-infiltrator-dakota-access-pipeline-standing-rock/)

You Strike A Match by Julia Shipley (https://grist.org/protest/dakota-access-pipeline-activists-property-destruction/)

Democracy Now (https://www.democracynow.org/)

Be the first to know about Wondery’s newest podcasts, curated recommendations, and more! Sign up now at https://wondery.fm/wonderynewsletter

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Wildfires are becoming more intense, frequent, and destructive as the climate heats up. Drilled reporter Royce Kurmelovs and Canadian author John Vallaint, author of Fire Weather, discuss the climate-fire nexus.

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In this bonus episode of The Black Thread, we examine a single legal case that distilles the Norwegian paradox perfectly: the planned electrification of the Melkøya gas processing plant. It's a key conflict site where Norway's net zero transformation clashes with its fossil fuel industry, Indigenous rights, youth climate activism, worker safety, and even criticism from the United Nation.

Additional resources:
Communicating Climate Change

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Despite growing repression worldwide, climate activists continue to stick it to obstructionists and drive change. In this season's finale, Jennie Stephens (University of Ireland Maynooth) and Sharon Yadin (University of Haifa) share the effective strategies that activists can use to push back against the forces that block climate action.

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It's bleak out there and while climate obstruction can feel overwhelming, there are efforts being made to fight back against it. One of them is litigation and holding corporations legally accountable. Joana Setzer (London School of Economics) speaks to how climate litigation is being used to challenge companies, enforce climate commitments, and push for climate action globally.

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More than a decade ago—when wind and solar power were far more expensive than they are today—Uruguay, long plagued by droughts and energy shortages, transitioned its entire economy such that 98% of its electricity now comes from renewable sources. They did it in just two years, and used the savings to slash the country's poverty rate from 40% into the single digits.

Natasha Hakimi Zapata covers Uruguay's transformation in her book, Another World Is Possible: Lessons for America from Around the Globe. Hakimi Zapata shares how activists and policymakers can learn from Uruguay's transformation and why progressive movements should confidently articulate the economic benefits of renewable energy.

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We're bringing you episode 5 of Dana R. Fisher's COP Out podcast, from the Center for Environment, Equity and Community at American University, featuring our own Amy Westervelt and legendary climate scientist Dr. Katharine Hayhoe talking about what happened at this year's COP, whether the process is fixable, and how to get the benefits of global convening without all the headaches. Check out the rest of Dana's series here.

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Working against regulations on emissions might protect the economic interests of those with money to lose, but why would anyone fight against adapting to survive climate disaster? In the negotiating rooms at COP 30, adaptation was one of the biggest debate areas. Laura Kuhl (Northeastern University) and Stacy-Ann Robinson (Emory University) explain why adaptation policies face scrutiny and opposition.

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Daniel Penny and Amy Westervelt return for the Carbon Bros mailbag episode, answering listener questions from around the world about masculinity, traditional male spaces, vocational therapy, solidarity, and the role of gender in engaging in climate action.

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After four decades of the United Nations climate conference COP, progress on global climate action remains slow. So what isn't working? How is it possible that so much fanfare, so many words, and so much work—much of it genuine and good-faith—has amounted to such little progress?

University of Toronto political science professor Jessica F. Green has some ideas. In Existential Politics: Why Global Climate Institutions Are Failing and How to Fix Them, the longtime observer of global climate negotiations and expert on carbon accounting argues that the COP embodies a “win-win” approach to a problem for which someone has to lose. The challenge is to make sure the right people (and planet) do the winning, while the “fossil asset owners,” as Green describes them, do the losing.

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The United Nations' climate processes were created to drive global climate action, but from the beginning they've faced organized efforts to delay progress. As COP 30 begins, Kari de Pryck (University of Geneva) and Eduardo Viola (Institute of International Relations, Brazil) join Amy to analyze how COP and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change get hijacked by those opposed to climate action, what it means for global climate policy, and what to expect at this year's COP in Brazil.

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We look ahead to Norway's future, exploring how the country might begin to loosen oil's grip on its politics and identity. Hear how different voices envision aligning the country's actions with its values, its reputation, and the realities of climate change. 

Additional resources:
Communicating Climate Change

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Local governments are a double-edged sword when it comes to climate policy, with the power to either do far more or far less than national governments. They can be an agent of change or an agent of obstruction. Rebecca Bromley-Trujillo (Christopher Newport University) and Joshua A. Basseches (Tulane University) walk us through how subnational governments, like states and municipalities, work and how they engage in climate obstruction.

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The United States is a global leader of climate obstruction, but it's not the only guilty country. M. Omar Faruque (Queen’s University, Canada) and Ruth E. McKie (De Montfort University) look at how and why climate obstruction occurs in the Global South, exploring the political, economic, and institutional factors that lead the countries most vulnerable to climate change, and least responsible for emissions, to participate in climate obstruction.

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Do the facts behind the narratives being told by Norway's fossil fuel industry, and government, add up? We hear experts critique some of the stories that keep Norwegian oil and gas pumping, while industry representatives explain the logic behind the rhetoric.

Additional resources:
Communicating Climate Change

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Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former Wall Street Journal publisher Karen Elliott House, author of The Man Who Would Be King: Mohammed bin Salman and the Transformation of Saudi Arabia, joins Adam Lowenstein to discuss how the crown prince has reshaped Saudi Arabia. They explore if MBS's gamble on economic and social freedoms alongside ciivil and political repression is politically, or environmentally, sustainable and examine how Saudi Arabia's oil and petrochemical industries serve its geopolitical interests. Karen and Adam also discuss the kingdom’s promises about transitioning away from fossil fuels and why it might be a bit less green than climate advocates would hope.

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In this extended conversation, climate policy expert Abdul El-Sayed explores the complexities of the climate crisis and the role of masculinity in shaping how men engage, or fail to engage, with climate solutions.

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A growing number of experts and commentators suggest "petroganda"—the pervasive phenomenon of oil industry manipulation—is at work in Norway, influencing the country's politics, culture, and support for the oli industry. We discuss how "petroganda" guides the information that the public receives, or doesn’t receive, about the relationship between oil and climate change and learn how the story of oil in Norway is told.

Additional resources:
Communicating Climate Change

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For decades, the meat and dairy industries avoided scrutiny for the planet-heating emissions they pump into the atmosphere. As governments began considering methane regulation, the animal agriculture sector starting working on efforts to resist such regulations. Siliva Secchi (University of Iowa) and Kathrin Lauber (University of Edinburgh) expound the concept of "agricultural exceptionalism" and the strategies the agriculture industry uses to keep climate policy at bay.

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The coal, utilities, and transportation industries have all played a major role in stopping governments from regulating emissions or transitioning to cleaner energy. Examining how those effort have taken shape around the world, Jen Schneider (Boise State University) and Gregory Trencher (Kyoto University) break down the strategies these industries use to influence policymakers, resist decarbonization, and slow climate action.

Additional resources:
Climate Obstruction: A Global Assessment

You can now download a FREE copy of the book Climate Obstruction: A Global Survey here! 

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Over the next few weeks, we're sharing a new mini-series, The Black Thread, about Norway's complicated relationship with its identity as both a progressive leader and oil state.

Social norms and cultural values shape Norwegian's identity as a good, caring, nature-loving people. What happens when those values come into conflict with the reality of Norway's outsized influence on climate change?

Additional resources:
Communicating Climate Change

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The climate crisis can feel overwhelming—to witness venture-capital-fueled AI domination, democracy’s steady drift toward authoritarianism, state-sanctioned genocide, and the collapse of one climate boundary after another is to encounter a profound sense of despair. But what if the path forward lies in accepting, rather than resisting, this despair?

In his new book, Learning to Live in the Dark: Essays in a Time of Catastrophe, climate activist and journalist Wen Stephenson argues that the only way to confront the crises of our time is to meet this despair head-on. He shares how he's faced his own climate despairs and offers insights for living in an era of climate, political, and social crisis while holding onto humanity.

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The fossil fuel industry has undoubtedly played a central role in obstructing climate action through lobbying, impacting political influence, and spreading disinformation. Academic Kristoffer Ekberg (Lund University), nonprofit researcher Kert Davis (Center for Climate Integrity), and DeSmog global managing editor Geoff Dembicki walk us through how fossil fuel industry strategies have undermined climate policy, delayed regulation, and furthered climate denial.

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Climate obstruction would not be nearly as effective as it is without the influence of the public relations industry and the willful ignorance of mainstream media. Melissa Aronczyk (Rutgers University) and Max Boycoff (University of Colorado) explain why getting a handle on the media's role in climate obstruction is critical to solving the problem. Melissa and Max examine how strategic communication and media systems have contributed to climate denial, spread misinformation, and delayed action.

Additional resources:
Climate Obstruction: A Global Assessment

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Why does misinformation spread like wildfire—and why is it so hard to correct? Climate communication researchers John Cook (University of Melbourne) and Dominik A. Stecula (Colorado State University) explain the psychology of misinformation, drawing on years of research around climate denial, political polarization, and media dynamics.

Additional resources:
Climate Obstruction: A Global Assessment 

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Jesse Bryant (Yale University) and Dieter Plehwe (University of Kassel) examine the growing connection between right-wing populism, climate change denial, and resistance to climate policy. They explore how rising authoritarian politics in the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe are reshaping public discourse and obstructing meaningful climate change.

Additional resources:
Climate Obstruction: A Global Assessment 

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Despite at least a decade of scientific certainty, proposed technological solutions, and policy measures, the world still hasn’t acted on the climate crisis. The problem is a lack of political will—and how it’s been intentionally obstructed at every turn.

As we gear up for the 30th UN Climate Change Conference (COP 30), Amy Westervelt digs into a new book, Climate Obstruction: A Global Assessment, to assess how powerful political, economic, and ideological forces have delayed global climate action. She’s joined by the leading climate and political scientists who wrote it, Timmons Roberts (Brown University), Jennifer Jacquet (University of Miami), Carlos Milani (Rio de Janeiro State University), and Christian Downie (Australian National University), to break down how climate politics reached this point, why resistance to climate policy has intensified, and what movements can realistically expect in the year ahead. You can check out and download the book here and check out the Climate Social Science Network here.

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Reporter Adam Lowenstein talks with Casey Michel, author of Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World about the influence of oil money on United States climate policy. Michel also recently wrote a fascinating piece in The Atlantic, applying what he learned in researching and writing the book to what he's seeing during the second Trump administration.

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Killing a nearly-completed offshore wind farm makes no sense, even for a climate denier who thinks windmills kill whales. Political economist Mark Blyth walks Drilled reporter Royce Kumerlovs through the Trump administration's "carbon dominance" strategy, a deliberate effort to protect fossil fuel power and block renewable energy.

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The bros of the manosphere love to talk about "integrating" a man's warrior and civilized selves, but what would it look like to integrate men, and new ideas of masculinity, into the climate movement? Who is already doing this work, how can new models of masculinity support climate action, and where are the real opportunities for repair and progress?

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Special guest Vivian Taylor, a researcher on both trans rights and climate policy, joins us to share the the shocking connections between fossil billionaires and anti-trans campaigns. Turns out, it’s easy to distract people with genital inspectors so you don’t have to deal with methane leakage inspectors. We break down the overlap between anti-trans, anti-climate, and other right-wing movements, the critical need for unity in tackling these pressing issues, and how culture-war politics distract from climate accountability.

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The verdict in Energy Transfer's lawsuit against Standing Rock activists and Greenpeace is announced, more than doubling the damages. At a time when repression of protest is accelerating in the United States, Energy Transfer's lawyers claim it's a victory for free speech. As the trial wraps up, we look at what this verdict means for Indigenous rights, climate activists, and the decline of individual free speech rights in the United States as corporate free speech rights expand.

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Stop listening to hysterical Swedish teenagers and start listening to reasonable men! Some dudes do have solutions to the climate crisis; they just don’t involve messy interpersonal stuff, changing their lifestyles, or reorganizing the global economy.

Gendered narratives, from doomerism to colonies on Mars, have shaped popular responses to the climate crisis but these "boy math" solutions promise easy fixes without actual change and have led to individualized, “masculine” approaches to solving it.

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One of the charges Energy Transfer has made against Greenpeace is that the organization "defamed" the company by claiming the Dakota Access Pipeline was disturbing sites the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe views as sacred. The Sioux Tribe stands behind this claim and shares why protecting sacred sites is central to Indigenous rights.

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“Energy dominance” became a defining slogan of the Trump administration—but who or what are they trying to dominate with all that oil and gas? Amy and Daniel trace how gender became so embedded in our collective understanding of nature. From the shift away from earth-centered spiritual traditions like worshipping Gaia and Indigenous earth-mother figures to the rise of extracting "natural resources" from private property and seeing gas-guzzling vehicles as a symbol of masculinity, we look at how energy became entwined with power.

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Manosphere influencers like Andrew Tate, Joe Rogan, and Jordan Peterson aren’t just shaping ideas about masculinity—they’re also blasting their followers with climate denial. The fossil fuel industry has known since at least the 1990s that certain types of men are more susceptible to climate disinformation than other segments of the public. Climate denial has now seeped into the manosphere, shaping men's views on climate change and having a big impact at the ballot box.

Carbon Bros is a collaboration between Drilled Media and Non-Toxic, written and co-hosted by Amy Westervelt and Daniel Penny.

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Energy Transfer has successfully kept key details out of the court, including the tribe's concerns about the Dakota Access Pipeline's impact on their water source. We uncover the pipeline spills, risks, and issues it has already caused.

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Where the law of the land ends, the story begins. Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Ian Urbina returns with a new season of his riveting podcast anthology, The Outlaw Ocean, which explores the most lawless place on earth — the vast unpoliceable ocean. 

In this episode, the Libyan Coast Guard is doing the European Union’s dirty work, capturing migrants as they attempt to cross the Mediterranean into Europe and throwing them in secretive prisons. There, they are extorted, abused and sometimes killed. An investigation into the death of Aliou Candé, a young farmer and father from Gineau-Bisseau, puts the Outlaw Ocean team in the cross-hairs of Libya’s violent and repressive regime. In this stunning three-part series, we take you inside the walls of one of the most dangerous prisons, in a lawless regime where the world’s forgotten migrants languish.

More episodes of The Outlaw Ocean are available here: https://link.mgln.ai/drilled

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In her new book Apocalyptic Authoritarianism: Climate Crisis, Media, and Power, University of Toronto media scholar Hanna E. Morris argues that some climate journalists, striving to preserve a self-determined “moderate center,” are deploying some of the same tropes and reinforcing some of the same narratives as the extreme right. Even as they see themselves defending democracy and confronting the climate crisis, these media elites might be contributing to a prize sought by both the MAGA right and the fossil fuel industry: Preventing the emergence of a hopeful, democratic, and class-defying movement against climate change.

Earlier this month, Morris spoke with Drilled about who gets to choose which climate solutions are “right” and which ones are “wrong,” what the media’s divergent treatment of the Green New Deal and the Inflation Reduction Act reveals about its entrenched biases, and why a sense of fatalism and inevitability seems to pervade so much mainstream climate coverage.

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You’ve heard it from cable news pundits, Democratic strategists, and your favorite YouTuber: young men swung the last United States election for Trump. Understanding what's driving the "manosphere" and how to reach the young men in its grips is on everyone's minds, but we're zooming into a speciific corner of it: the intersection of male grievance culture and climate denial. Why are American men less likely than women to believe in climate change, or take personal or political actions against it? What does their reluctance to deal with the climate crisis have to do with men’s shift to the right in general? And what can be done to reverse it?

Carbons Bros is a cross-over miniseries from Drilled and Non-Toxic.

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Energy Transfer has quietly dropped Cody Hall and Krystle Two Bulls, the other Indigenous activist originally named in their massive lawsuit, exclusively targeting Greenpeace. Allen breaks down the charges against Greenpeace, the evidence Energy Transfer is using, and the legal strategies behind the SLAPP suit.

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Alleen arrives in North Dakota for jury selection in the lawsuit targeting Standing Rock activists and is shocked watching it play out. Recording in the courtroom is prohibited and jurors who state their open bias against activists—or are even connected to the fossil fuel industry—are allowed to serve.

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Greenpeace, only tangentially involved in the Standing Rock protests, faces a staggering $666 million bill for damages...despite the fact that the Dakota Access Pipeline was built, and has been making Energy Transfer millions of dollars for years. Indigenous water protector Cody Hall, who was a key figure during the protests and initially targeted in the lawsuit, walks us through the 2016-2017 events and how the lawsuit began.

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