Amy Westervelt
Amy Westervelt is an award-winning investigative print and audio journalist. In 2015, she received a Rachel Carson award for women greening journalism for her role in creating a women-only climate…
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Amy Westervelt, Nina Lakhani and Alleen Brown on the world on fire, how the media is covering the climate crisis, what’s happening with the industry as a whole, and how it all relates to rising authoritarianism. The Spill is our new weekly show to bring you news, rants, and interviews in between narrative seasons.
Reading list from today’s show:
- Amy’s book: geni.us/broughttoyouby
- The Guardian on fossil fuel companies’ war profiteering: https://www.theguardian.com/business/ng-interactive/2026/aug/04/revealed-major-oil-firms-make-93bn-profits-amid-war-and-climate-crisis
- Nina’s past reporting on extreme heat deaths: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2025/oct/09/extreme-heat-deaths-autopsy
- Drilled coverage of criminal conduct in Venezuela: https://drilled.media/news/hopenhaym
- Drilled reporting on the U.S.-Venezuela-Guyana triangle: https://drilled.media/news/guyana-venezuela
- Alleen’s new series “The Propagandist”: https://drilled.media/podcasts/drilled/16/s16-ep01
Pushkin. Hello, welcome to Drilled.
00:22
Speaker 2
I'm Amy Westervelt, and this is a new segment we're doing hopefully every week in between narrative seasons called The Spill. Aline and Nina, introduce yourselves.
00:35
Speaker 3
Hi, I'm Nina Lakhani.
00:36
Speaker 4
I am the Global Climate Justice Reporter for Drilled and now The Spill.
00:41
Speaker 1
And I'm Aline Brown.
00:42
Speaker 5
I'm a Senior Editor at Drilled and really excited to be talking to The Spill today.
00:47
Speaker 4
Yay!
00:48
Speaker 2
Awesome. So yeah, we'll be talking amongst ourselves about current news, things that are happening in media, and then also using this As a place to interview other reporters, writers, experts, all the stuff that has been a bit of a hodgepodge of the bonus episodes of Drilled, now organized into weekly episodes in your feed. Okay, so let's talk about some of the current climate news. There's been a lot of stuff happening, not necessarily a lot of news covering it. What are the things that you guys are paying attention to on the climate beat right now? What's happening all around us at the moment?
01:27
Speaker 4
I mean, I think we're, you know, this year, like every year for the last few years has shown us that we are now full force in climate breakdown.
01:35
Speaker 3
You know, this isn't something that's going to happen. It's happening now.
01:38
Speaker 4
And it's happening at a really terrifying speed at a scale, which even, you know, the worst case scenario models were not forecasting to be happening so quickly, you know, so this catastrophic breaking of the glacier in the Himalayas, you know, which caused this unbelievable, I mean, like terrifying floods at the Nepal, Tibet border confirmed so far 1200 dead with 1000s more still missing. And I think this piece of this glacier broke off and the force at which it landed recorded at more than five on the Richter scale, on the earthquake Richter scale, you know. And, you know, this area of the Himalayas is really poorly studied, partly because it's hard to reach, but partly because, you know, the whole world hasn't taken responsibility of monitoring what's happening at all of these glaciers, right? But, you know, when I've been reading some of the coverage like this last week or so, you know, I mean, 75% of the glaciers in the Himalaya region could all be gone by the end of this century. And we're already seeing like far more glacier lakes, the lakes are bigger, they're deeper, you know, and all of this means what like much more catastrophic flooding, sea level rise, all the things that we're seeing in communities around the world, you know, from Mexico to India and Bangladesh to Australia. And so I think just The images of what's happened at the Nepal-Turret border have been like horrifying, you know.
03:01
Speaker 3
It's so scary.
03:02
Speaker 2
Yeah.
03:03
Speaker 3
Yeah. Terrifying.
03:04
Speaker 5
Yeah.
03:04
Speaker 4
And, you know, and like at the same time, you know, we're seeing record breaking profits from the fossil fuel companies.
03:11
Speaker 1
Right.
03:11
Speaker 4
And I think that we absolutely can't forget that, you know, that there is a clear line of responsibility here.
03:16
Speaker 5
Right.
03:17
Speaker 4
They're raking in billions of dollars right now. we've got these catastrophic floods.
03:21
Speaker 2
They're negotiating like how to drill more in the Arctic while we have these catastrophic floods.
03:27
Speaker 5
Well, And, you know, the war in Iran is directly contributing to those profits. You know, we're seeing the affordability of gas and daily essentials skyrocket while the oil and gas industry is seeing, again, record profits directly tied to the same war that is changing everyday people's ability to live. Yeah.
03:51
Speaker 1
Yeah.
03:52
Speaker 4
The Guardian, my former employer, did a really good analysis recently. And in the first three months after the illegal sort of invasion of Iran, eight of the biggest oil companies amassed profits of more than $ 90 billion.
04:06
Speaker 3
In three months, in three months, right?
04:08
Speaker 4
So as, you know, fuel prices rose spectacularly for like everybody, more than $ 90 billion in just the first three months after the, you know, the Iran invasion.
04:18
Speaker 2
Yeah.
04:19
Speaker 5
Right. And that was double what they brought in the year before, you know, so you can see that direct relationship and the way that profits are just going up. And, you know, this isn't something new, but I think it's something that's just getting so much less focus in the media and... you know, in conversations more broadly. But, you know, these catastrophes that we're talking about, we're talking about some of the largest scale ones like in Nepal, but like no matter where you live, you're being impacted directly by the actions of the fossil fuel industry. You know, there's the question of affordability, but also the You know, I was visiting family in Minneapolis this summer. And right as I was there, the Boundary Waters, this wilderness area in northern Minnesota was on fire. You know, there were these really catastrophic fires taking place. That's an area that's like beloved by so many people in the region. People go canoe there. And it's like a water area. It's a bunch of like interconnected waterways. And that was.
05:23
Speaker 5
In flames, because of a combination of, you know, past extractivism, loggers going in and totally changing the ecosystem there and kind of displacing indigenous people who had their own fire-based practices and ways of managing the land.
05:39
Speaker 1
And also, you know, the burning of fossil fuels. Yeah.
05:44
Speaker 2
One of our producers, Ray Pang, who did the slapped season, goes and does a canoe trip on the Boundary Waters every year and couldn't go this year because of the fire. So I was like, oh, I feel like everyone I've spoken to this past few months has had like some kind of personal life impact related to climate. But like, I don't know. I feel like there's been this You guys have both covered climate for a long time, as have I. I feel like there's been this assumption for a really long time that as that happens, that magically the political will to do something about it will appear. And in fact, we're seeing a total disconnect on that front. It's like it's never been more present. And the fossil fuel industry and the politicians in its pocket have never been working harder to stop climate.
06:33
Speaker 1
Anyone from acting on it. It's a weird moment.
06:38
Speaker 4
On a personal note, I was at home, you know, for all of July and August, you know.
06:42
Speaker 3
London, England, famously drizzly gray skies.
06:45
Speaker 2
Famously not hot, very steamy this summer.
06:48
Speaker 4
Yeah, I mean, yeah, the UK had five heat waves this year, like over 35 degrees Celsius.
06:54
Speaker 3
I'm sorry, I don't know what that is in Fahrenheit.
06:56
Speaker 2
It's like around 95 to 100. 95, 99, I think it got to.
06:58
Speaker 1
Yeah, five heat waves.
06:59
Speaker 4
And For the whole of July and the first three weeks of August, it did not rain once across Wales and in most of England. I mean, so when the solar eclipse hit London, I went to a park in North London to watch it with my niece. And it was 35 degrees at 6pm. But all the leaves of the park have fallen. They're all yellow. All of the leaves are down. And under your foot, it felt like autumn, right? Because of the crackling of the leaves. And the grass is all just like completely dead, you know.
07:34
Speaker 3
And yet it was like you're in the middle of the summer.
07:36
Speaker 4
It was like, it's really quite dystopian. And on your point, Amy, I think that climate catastrophe, the breakdown is now happening so fast and everywhere. that people have very quickly, it's become normalized, you know, it just become, you know, normalized. So, you know, yes, you have, you know, you have decent media coverage when these catastrophic floods happen, like this glacier breaks off.
08:00
Speaker 3
In the Himalayas. But every day these things are happening.
08:04
Speaker 4
People are dying from wildfires, from drought, you know, and it's just become normalized really, really quickly. And I think actually like heat deaths is a really good one because I think with floods and fires, it's very visual, right? You have the cameras there and like you can really see it. But, you know, drought and heat and the food insecurity that causes and the deaths it causes are, they sort of just happen, right? They're hard to photograph. They're hard to visualize, you know. But we know in Europe this year, in just, you know, Europe counts excess deaths. So they look at, say, over the last 20 years, how many people have died in a particular week, right, on average. And then when there's a heat wave, they look at how many people have died. And they calculate them to be excess deaths related to the heat. So these aren't deaths that, you know, a tiny number will be things from like heat stroke, for example. But the vast majority will be from, you know, an exacerbation of existing conditions, whether that be a heart condition or asthma or diabetes. And in Europe this year, just in May, June and July, in half of Europe, so this is not even counting like the other half, 35,000 excess deaths were reported from heat just in June and July, the May, June and July. And August was even hotter. But the thing is, this has happened like two or three times over the last five or six years, you know, and like the first time was meant to be the game changer. This is going to wake up everyone. It's going to be political action. But here we are again, you know, and it's sort of, yeah, and it's just that we're accepting the fact that tens of thousands of people died are dying before they needed to have died, right? Because every heat death is a preventable death. Nobody needs to die of heat. You know, public health experts will tell you that every single one is preventable. And yeah, but we seem to have just accepted that as, okay, well, that's what's going to happen now.
09:52
Speaker 5
Yeah. I think that's a good segue into talking about one of the, we wanted to talk a bit about how media is covering this moment. And NPR put out a big piece recently looking at the way heat deaths are undercounted in the U.S.
10:09
Speaker 1
So the CDC has.
10:11
Speaker 5
Tracked, I think, an average of around 1,700 heat deaths annually in NPR, partnering with Boston University, looked more closely at excess deaths and found up to 9,000 deaths annually in the U.S.
10:24
Speaker 1
That could be attributed to heat.
10:27
Speaker 5
So Nina, to your point, yeah, this is just being vastly undercounted. I know you've done a ton of reporting on this issue specifically.
10:35
Speaker 4
Yeah, you know, when I was working for The Guardian in the U.S., I spent three or four consecutive summers in Arizona specifically reporting on extreme heat in Maricopa County, where Phoenix, which is the US's fifth largest city and its hottest big city, as well as some of the surrounding counties, you know. And actually, Maricopa County is by far, you know, it's the gold standard when it comes to in the US. And because in the US, they don't count excess deaths, right? And they never have.
11:09
Speaker 3
And so you've had.
11:09
Speaker 4
This like, unbelievably sort of underreporting of excess deaths. You know, for the years I was working there, sometimes the deaths that were counted in Maricopa County would be half of what the CDC was reporting was happening across the country, which obviously isn't true, right?
11:26
Speaker 1
It's just that they're counting it. Yeah.
11:28
Speaker 3
Yeah, they're counting it. But they count them in.
11:31
Speaker 4
And I think they don't do the excess deaths in part because of the way the health system is so.
11:36
Speaker 1
Disjointed, right?
11:37
Speaker 3
You know, like, you know, there is no public health system.
11:39
Speaker 4
So having that access to that data and data be collected in the same way is much more difficult.
11:44
Speaker 3
But I honestly also think there's just been a lack of will, right?
11:48
Speaker 4
I mean, there's a lot of clever scientists and public health officials in the US, right?
11:51
Speaker 3
I mean, it's possible, right? It's definitely possible. Yeah.
11:54
Speaker 4
And even in Maricopa County, which I like I say, you know, it's a gold standard, they have trained their forensic team, you know, to look for signs of possible heat contribution to a death and they do and they do investigations to the extent that in possible heat deaths, investigators will go to a person's house and see, and they know on the autopsy form, did the person have a cooling system, air conditioner?
12:19
Speaker 3
Yes or no? Was it turned on? Yes or no? They will ask, why not? You know, like, was it working or was it not working?
12:26
Speaker 4
Because one of the things I found is, you know, even when people had air conditioners, Sometimes they wouldn't have the money to run them or they didn't have the money to fix them if they were broken. But even in Maricopa County, I mean, last year I did an investigation looking at hundreds and hundreds of autopsy reports from the previous two years. And, you know, there were a whole number of deaths there. that were investigated as potential heat deaths, but then were not included. They were then included either as a death by substance misuse or a death of an unhoused person.
12:59
Speaker 3
And it made no sense.
13:01
Speaker 4
But these were people that, you know, heat had clearly contributed and there were other people with similar cases that had made the numbers. So there was even an undercount going on in Maricopa County, right? Yeah. And so, I mean, you know, it's great that NPR and BU have teamed up. My instinct would be being from Europe and seeing how they, you know, it seems improbable, but a country of 320 million, which has you.
13:23
Speaker 1
Yeah.
13:24
Speaker 3
Yeah.
13:25
Speaker 4
Which has the worst health system in like the, you know, the developed world would have less heat deaths.
13:29
Speaker 3
Than the UK. That seems improbable.
13:31
Speaker 1
Do you know what I mean?
13:32
Speaker 3
So, but at least it's a start.
13:34
Speaker 1
At least it's a start.
13:36
Speaker 4
Yeah.
13:48
Speaker 5
I wanted to just.
13:56
Speaker 2
Also mentioned that Venezuela is back in the news. Or should I say the U.S. fucking Venezuela over is back in the news.
14:06
Speaker 4
Unbelievable.
14:07
Speaker 1
It's unreal.
14:08
Speaker 2
I think I have a theory on this that like a lot of it. Well, we know a lot of it is Trump trying to to scramble to bring oil prices down and as his invasion of Iran is driving them up. He's like, oh, don't worry about it. We're going to solve the crisis with Venezuelan oil over here, which A, is not how that works. This idea that somehow these fields are going to produce more than they ever have and that it's all going to be fine and it's an easy plug-and-play operation is just not how those things work. But also... There's all kinds of nonsense going on with how he's approaching these oil fields and who's getting what oil and how it's moving around the world in general.
14:56
Speaker 1
Yeah.
14:57
Speaker 2
What have you guys been seeing on that front?
15:00
Speaker 5
I mean, to your point, this has nothing to do with affordability. Like these oil fields, if they end up producing more than they already are, it will take years.
15:10
Speaker 1
U.S.
15:11
Speaker 5
Refineries that process that kind of oil are already backed up. Yeah.
15:15
Speaker 1
Also, you know, this is.
15:18
Speaker 5
This is such like it's such a like retro tactic to just step in. I mean, I guess it's never stopped to some degree, but to just step in and and take oil.
15:29
Speaker 1
That's what's happening. The U.S.
15:30
Speaker 5
Government has overthrown. a government and stepped in and just blatantly taken the oil. At the same time, you know, the company that the U.S. is working with is run by a guy who has an arrest warrant out in Switzerland. You know, he's been investigated in the U.S. for money laundering, but he's friends with the Trump administration. So, you know, blatant corruption is at the core of all of this.
15:56
Speaker 4
Yeah. Yeah, and I think, you know, let's not forget that the illegal operation in Venezuela to abduct the sitting president happened in January, right? So way before the illegal invasion of the Iran war, right? And so it was always about getting access to the oil and it was always a big grift, right? And like you say, Aline, this, you know, this is to me, I would describe it as a smash and grab imperial invasion, right?
16:22
Speaker 5
Totally.
16:22
Speaker 2
Very big, like US and Latin America in the 50s vibes.
16:27
Speaker 4
Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, so, you know, like you're saying, the Pentagon has done a deal with with a Venezuelan national who has alleged, you know, money laundering and a huge bribery scandal and with a company that is registered in Barbados.
16:42
Speaker 3
I mean, I think when you.
16:43
Speaker 4
Say those words out loud, you're like, hang on, did I actually say that, right? You know, I mean, and, you know, when the invasion happened in January, you know, I mean, at Drilled, we did quite a lot of reporting.
16:54
Speaker 1
On this, right?
16:54
Speaker 4
So that was an, it was an illegal invasion under law every sense of the word, like all international law and the private corporations that are, you know, like rubbing their hands in glee and sort of hearing the cash register go are potentially breaking the law, right? To get involved in a deal that has, you know, that is illegal, right?
17:16
Speaker 3
And from its.
17:16
Speaker 4
Roots could potentially land these corporations and their executives up in court one day, right? And I know that the Trump and And the Israeli government are busy trying to dismantle international justice system. But these laws still exist. They are still the law and they are breaking them, right? You know, and I mean, I think one good example is just to connect, I guess, some of what we're talking about, you know, is that there are three massive oil commodity traders globally. And one of them, Vitol, is one of two traders that has been doing this sort of backroom deal with Trump to get access to this.
17:53
Speaker 3
Venezuelan oil company.
17:55
Speaker 4
And it's also one of two commodity traders that a new report published in the beginning of September by Oil Change International and SOMO, which is a Dutch organization investigating multinational corporations, have found was one of two traders responsible for selling 11% of the crude oil that Israel has bought since the start of the genocide. You know, so a company involved in trade to enable a state that has been found to be breaking international law be committing war crimes and has been accused of genocide, you know, is not OK.
18:30
Speaker 3
It is not legal for them to be doing that.
18:32
Speaker 4
And just because the Trump administration says it is fine doesn't make it legal.
18:36
Speaker 3
And it's not.
18:37
Speaker 4
Yeah.
18:37
Speaker 1
Yeah.
18:39
Speaker 2
Kind of coming back to the press coverage side of things, too. There's a thing going on that happens every time there's discussion, I think, in the media around price per barrel and then price at the pump and all of this stuff that the oil companies do a really good job of holding their hands up and saying like, it's not us that's driving the price of like, we don't have control over the.
18:59
Speaker 1
Price at the pump. Right.
19:00
Speaker 2
But like, Hey, They have a lot of control over foreign policy, domestic policy, you know, subsidies, all those things. But the other thing that's happening right now is like Trump for a moment there. I don't know if you guys caught this a couple of weeks ago. Like he was complaining about the oil companies having record profits and like the price at the pump and whatever, as though... Like he hasn't enabled all of that and they aren't his largest donors. And now he's turned it to focusing on the refining companies. And no one is pushing back on that framing and saying like, well, most of the refining companies are subsidiaries of the oil majors. These are not like separate companies. I mean, some of them are like there's a few, but for the most part, they are.
19:45
Speaker 1
In business together.
19:46
Speaker 2
Just yesterday, I saw multiple different headlines for large mainstream media organizations repeating this. Oh, Trump, you know, he had a meeting with the refiners. So it's like Trump to meet with refining executives over the price gouging and this and that, the other, as though this is like some different industry than the one that has, you know, propped him up and that he has like returned the favor too.
20:10
Speaker 5
Yeah. As if his presidency is not a huge win for the fossil fuel industry.
20:15
Speaker 1
That's wild. Yeah.
20:16
Speaker 3
I mean, I mean, his presidency is the fossil fuel industry.
20:19
Speaker 1
They're the same thing.
20:21
Speaker 3
They're the same thing.
20:22
Speaker 2
It's like, you know, yeah.
20:26
Speaker 4
I mean, and you know, this is, I think one of the most depressing things to watch and this is, you know, when, you know, We have got so many colleagues doing brilliant, brilliant work, you know, in all sorts of different platforms, you know. But for me, one of the most depressing things to watch in this Trump term has been to see, you know, journalists that have done great work over the years become a journalist that Trump can pick up the phone and say, hey, I'm doing this and I'm going to do this in Iran. And I've told Netanyahu that he's got to do this and they just print it. They just print the propaganda like verbatim and without any scrutiny at all. And, you know, good journalists, good good sort of media outlets and you just think what is going on you know and on top of that you have all these like extreme right sort of you know platforms as well but just he has now got this whole group of journalists that he can bring up at the drop of a hat and they print or you know broadcast whatever he says is like really, really depressing, you know?
21:28
Speaker 5
Yeah. Well, and like none of this is disconnected from what feels like the collapse of the media industry as it has existed, as problematic as it always has been. You know, we've been seeing wave after wave of mass layoffs for years and that, you know, fundamentally changes the way that these wars, the industry and the climate crisis is going to be covered. You know, multiple mainstream media outlets have cut their climate deaths. Washington Post, Reuters, NPR, CBS, you know, at the same time as these again, these newsrooms are shrinking more broadly, meaning that no one really like has capacity to cover climate crisis the way they might have years ago. You know, Grist had a story about this data from the University of Colorado that shows that since 2021, global news coverage of climate change has dropped 38%. You know, journalists and, you know, Some of the folks that are getting laid off are doing their best to keep doing good work.
22:35
Speaker 2
But fewer and fewer places to print it. I mean, even like we get pitches all the time.
22:43
Speaker 1
Yeah. The only reason we're turning it down is just bandwidth, right?
22:47
Speaker 2
It's like there's just like only so much that any outlet can do. And then the ones that are still out there. have to constantly be fundraising as well. So it's like, yeah, it's not for lack of stories or for lack of good journalists that are more than competent to cover those stories.
23:06
Speaker 1
It's, yeah, it's the industry in general.
23:09
Speaker 2
And I think also like a lot of people are like, oh, well, social media and the influencer economy and da-da-da. That didn't happen like on accident, guys. That wasn't like, oh, whoops. The tech guys ruined the media ecosystem. They built an entire parallel information ecosystem that they could control entirely. They gave themselves all the benefits of publishers and none of the liability. They're very good at like wrapping any attempt to regulate them in the language of, you know, civil rights. as though they're not just another industry trying to avoid being taxed.
23:45
Speaker 1
It's incredible.
23:48
Speaker 5
There's not a system where politicians are required to disclose campaign funding to influencers.
23:55
Speaker 1
That just happens in the dark. Or podcasts.
23:58
Speaker 2
Actually, I mean, I know we're on a podcast right now, but podcasts are actually like this is why they're so popular with these guys is that they're not regulated by the FCC. They're regulated by the Federal Trade Commission, which is very different. If you hear a lie on a podcast, for example. You can file a complaint with the FTC, but they won't investigate it unless they get like 100 plus other complaints about the same lie. This is why Joe Rogan was able to lie his ass off forever. And it was only really actually other people in the podcast industry kind of kicking up a fuss about it that made Spotify be like, okay, we're going to fact check some of his stuff. There's almost no legal recourse.
24:41
Speaker 1
So... They can go hog.
24:43
Speaker 2
Wild, both in the content and in the ads.
24:46
Speaker 1
There's no regulation of the ads either. So like, yeah.
24:51
Speaker 3
I mean, so just for our non-US listeners, because I think we have some.
24:55
Speaker 1
Thank you, Nina. Thank you.
24:57
Speaker 4
These are American regulators that Amy's talking about. And, you know, the sort of, I guess, the panorama is quite different in different places. EU is certainly different. trying to do a better job but facing a lot of like a backlash and a lot of um you know pushback from big tech and all like you know all of these sort of you know industries that have something to lose from that but yeah i mean i think you know yeah you know they're also you know podcasts aren't regulated they're also just really popular right yeah and so you know politicians want to go and reach a lot of you know reach reach a lot of people on them that way i do think about mainstream media coverage though i don't think it's just a numbers game i don't think it's just that You know, I think it's a way that coverage has traditionally been organised, you know, and I see this as being quite different now in some of the excellent, like, small independent outlets that have launched in the last.
25:49
Speaker 3
Few years, right? And even some brilliant.
25:52
Speaker 4
Sort of investigative newsletters that are happening. I think the way that mainstream media has always been organised is across desks, right? And the climate crisis environment was a particular speciality, right?
26:04
Speaker 1
And so.
26:05
Speaker 4
Actually, the political coverage, you know, so this is like a simple example. When we have COP, no UK prime minister would have a climate environment journalist. with them they will just have someone from the politics teams right and so who are not special and who will just be like oh and the prime minister announced that he's going to do this you know and so um and so i think it's just sort of lack of connecting the dots and i think you know that's what we're trying to do i think that's what others are trying to do right i think okay every single beat is a climate beat right because climate impacts real estate it impacts your pensions, it impacts your health, it impacts sport, it impacts education, it impacts everything, right? And it absolutely should be the heart centre of all of our coverage. And it's just not organised like that at all, right? And I see some mainstream media trying to do more collaborative work, you know, across desk, across beat. But I think, you know, the climate is still considered to be like health. You know, it's something that you, you know, like it's a policy area, do.
27:05
Speaker 3
You know what I mean? Rather than being something.
27:07
Speaker 4
That is entwined And I think the lack of connecting the dots between, for example, what we're talking about, what's happening in Venezuela, the, you know, the massive grift going on in the Pentagon, Iran, you know, the glaciers sort of collapsing, the heat waves, all of that stuff. I mean, the corruption, the big tech money in politics, all of it's.
27:27
Speaker 3
Connected, right?
27:28
Speaker 4
You know, and I think that just the way mainstream media that has always been organized isn't set up to.
27:34
Speaker 3
Be thinking in that way.
27:35
Speaker 2
I know, I've always thought that like, um, The solution, or at least part of the solution to that, is having more climate people, for lack of a better way to put it, in the editorial decision-making structure of organizations as opposed to running the climate.
27:53
Speaker 1
Desk or running.
27:54
Speaker 2
You know what I mean? It's like you almost need to have someone who sits across all of it in a way to be able to be like, oh, that's this story.
28:02
Speaker 5
Or like.
28:03
Speaker 2
We mentioned Venezuela, and every time Venezuela comes up, I have to mention the huge Guyana-sized hole in the coverage of all the Venezuela stuff. Marco Rubio, the month before the U.S. started attacking boats off the coast of Venezuela, was in Guyana- He had been brought there by the government because the Venezuelan government has, ever since Exxon discovered oil in Guyana, been trying to claim the territory that that oil is in for itself. And they had just kind of upped that a bit by sending naval ships to the floating offshore platform that Exxon has off Guyana to say, hey, you're illegally drilling in Venezuelan waters. And the Exxon guys freaked out, and Marco Rubio shows up in Guyana saying, hey, Venezuela, you better watch out. We will do whatever it takes to protect Exxon. Specifically, that's what, like, he didn't say to protect Guyana. He didn't say to protect the U.S.
29:02
Speaker 1
Or U.S. interests. He said to protect Exxon.
29:05
Speaker 6
It would be a very bad day for the Venezuelan regime if they were to attack Guyana or attack ExxonMobil or anything like, it would be a very bad day, a very bad week for them. And it would not end well for them. I'm not going to get into details of what we'll do. We're not big on those kinds of threats.
29:22
Speaker 1
I think everybody understands.
29:25
Speaker 2
So, like, it's not even, you know, an insinuation that, like, the government is acting on behalf of the oil majors.
29:34
Speaker 1
They're just straight up saying it.
29:37
Speaker 2
And, if you don't have someone in your newsroom who can point that out when the Venezuela stuff comes up or when Iran comes up or whatever, then.
29:46
Speaker 1
Yeah, it just becomes.
29:48
Speaker 2
Like a foreign policy story or a politics story.
29:52
Speaker 5
Right.
29:52
Speaker 1
Yeah.
29:52
Speaker 5
I mean, we really need climate journalism to step out of the realm of simply like science and.
30:01
Speaker 1
The realm of the natural world. I mean, that's really important.
30:04
Speaker 5
But, you know, I think rising authoritarianism around the world is one of the most important climate stories that we're seeing now.
30:12
Speaker 1
You know, we're seeing a retraction or even collapse.
30:16
Speaker 5
Just like with journalism, we're seeing a retraction of civil society, both in the U.S.
30:20
Speaker 1
And globally. I specialize more in the U.S.
30:23
Speaker 5
And so just here, you know, thinking about big climate nonprofits. 350.org basically shut down its U.S. operation because they lacked funding last year. The Sierra Club has shrunk pretty dramatically. Greenpeace is on its heels because of this lawsuit that we covered in the series Slapped filed by Energy Transfer Group. has just decimated their ability. Which is like famously youth climate activism in the U.S. has shifted its focus to authoritarianism because they say that that's, you know, we have to fight authoritarianism if we're going to address the climate crisis seriously.
31:03
Speaker 2
Yes, that these two things go hand in hand.
31:07
Speaker 1
Yeah.
31:08
Speaker 4
So as Friends of the Earth England, actually, which is now being led by Asad Rahman, who was once the director of War on One, And exactly for what you're saying, you know, it's like, actually, if you want to tackle the climate crisis, you have to be tackling the rise of the far right, authoritarianism, misinformation, all of those things, right?
31:27
Speaker 3
And so it's sort of, you can't do one of these without the other.
31:30
Speaker 1
Yeah.
31:32
Speaker 6
Yeah.
31:34
Speaker 2
That's a good segue into talking about some of the stuff that we're all working on, because actually every single thing we just talked about Totally plays into the stuff that we're.
31:43
Speaker 1
Working on right now.
31:45
Speaker 2
Aline, since your project is actually the most recent one, do you want to talk a little bit about The Propagandist and what you unearthed there?
31:53
Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely.
31:55
Speaker 5
So Drill just put out this podcast that I hosted and reported called The Propagandist. It's based on over 100 pages of public records from this private security company that was hired by the parent company of the Dakota Access Pipeline. So that company is Energy Transfer. And you'll remember in 2016 and 2017, indigenous people from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe led a movement to stop that pipeline's construction, largely on the grounds of wanting to protect their water. Also, they were concerned about sacred sites, treaty rights, and this global movement kind of mobilized behind the tribe, also on the grounds of slowing the climate crisis. Um, so this company, the, the pipeline company hired, um, this mercenary private security company that got its start in the wake of the global war on terror. It was founded by an ex-commander of the special forces unit Delta Force. And they basically brought their, I guess, war on terror tactics to the homeland and aimed them at indigenous people. So this story focuses specifically on that company's propaganda efforts. They hired this guy, This tech guy, really, he was like a virtual reality enthusiast, and he created a lot of Facebook content designed to divide people within the movement against each other and also to divide the movement and the surrounding communities, which were mostly online.
33:29
Speaker 1
White rural people.
33:30
Speaker 5
So, you know, spread this information on Facebook without disclosing who was behind the pages. And it really influenced the way people thought about what was happening on the ground. And, you know, I found that those divisions in those communities persist 10 years later. You know, I think the story is important because This is a type of strategy that happens all around the world. It's rare that we have such a close look. The stories are based on WhatsApp chats, emails. You know, in one case, the propaganda guy is chatting with someone who was someone working for TigerSwan who's going undercover into the protest spaces, pretending to be a friend. And they're really explicitly talking about how to divide people, how to divide. break relationships, really, or potential relationships. You know, I think this stuff really helps explain the polarization that we see today and the tearing of the social fabric that we see in mining communities around the world, places where extraction happens. This is not just in this one place. And now it's sort of on overdrive with the rise of influencers, the collapse of journalism ecosystems and.
34:48
Speaker 1
And the growth of AI too. Yeah, exactly.
34:51
Speaker 4
Yeah. My.
34:53
Speaker 2
favorite detail about the that guy is that he used like a cute dog to to like weasel his way into the protest camps yeah.
35:03
Speaker 1
Oh, my God.
35:03
Speaker 3
I'd have fallen for it immediately. Yeah, I know. I'm a sucker for cute dogs. I mean, that's I.
35:12
Speaker 5
Do think that the fossil fuel industry is really good at like identifying people's fears and desires and and playing with those in serious ways. You know, I think we talk a lot about, oh, you know, people aren't saying the word climate crisis as much these days. And I think I agree that that's bad, but But also, you know, I do think sometimes the environmental movement could do better at meeting people where they're at.
35:39
Speaker 1
You know, I'm in New York.
35:41
Speaker 5
We have a mayor who's talking all the time about affordability and it makes a big difference.
35:46
Speaker 1
Yeah. Totally.
35:49
Speaker 3
It's amazing you've got all this detail.
35:50
Speaker 4
I mean, like we've all reported on the violence and criminalization of defenders across the world.
35:57
Speaker 6
Right.
35:57
Speaker 4
And these sort of, you know, these old school divide and conquer tactics that go back as far as colonialism goes back. But then also all the counterinsurgency manuals, sort of all those sort of tactics that, you know, which have sort of just been tweaked and changed a little bit to meet that, you know, meet the sort of environment of today. And that's what we see. That's what you, you know, you found. And we've seen that happen. We see it happening in community after community and they do it because it's effective.
36:24
Speaker 1
Yeah.
36:24
Speaker 3
I mean, it works.
36:26
Speaker 4
Yeah. Yeah.
36:26
Speaker 5
Yeah. And I mean, the heart of this company explicitly talked about their work as counterinsurgency strategy. And, you know, a really important part of counterinsurgency is basically getting the local population to take on your priorities. You know, you want the local people to be the ones kind of advancing.
36:47
Speaker 1
In Afghanistan, it would be U.S. interests.
36:50
Speaker 5
You know, it's the same thing is replicated in these sites of extraction.
36:56
Speaker 2
You know, I've have this like long running obsession with the PR industry in general and like the history of that. But the history of that is also like almost all of the big leaders in that industry, the people who really like innovated new tactics, they were all trained in military intelligence first.
37:15
Speaker 1
All like learned how to.
37:17
Speaker 2
Do psyops in the military and then came home and like had the skill set that they put to work on behalf of companies against the American public. It's like been going on for at least a century plus.
37:31
Speaker 4
Yeah.
37:31
Speaker 1
Amy, tell us about your book.
37:34
Speaker 5
This is like directly related to Big News You Have.
37:40
Speaker 2
Yes, I've written a book. I have a book coming out this month. It's called Brought to You By, and it is all about this kind of information warfare thing. Each chapter is sort of like a different layer of the information ecosystem that's been warped by these kinds of practices and walks people through how it works. A lot of the examples are climate and or oil related, but not all because I really wanted people to sort of see how these tactics work for all kinds of companies. So any company that's trying to circumvent democracy is going to use some combination of these tactics, if not all. And I think also it's important to understand, and I was thinking about this while you were talking about this private security company too and what they did at Standing Rock.
38:30
Speaker 1
These things that companies.
38:32
Speaker 2
Do one time as a project to avoid, they want to avoid bad press on a refinery project or they want a pipeline to go through or whatever. So they'll do all this stuff that really messes with the information ecosystem and And then they get their thing that they want and they leave, but the pollution is still there and it spreads to other things, you know, like we see it over and over again. It's like they, I mean, this community that you reported on, it's been 10 years and that tension that they inflamed is still like that, you know, and how many things have happened as a result of that, just because like they wanted to, you know, just like throw a turd in the punch bowl and walk away.
39:18
Speaker 1
Right.
39:19
Speaker 5
And these are people's lives, you know, like it's not I mean, it is these big things like our ability to confront the climate crisis in a serious way. But it's also like people in a town's ability to have a relationship with their neighbor and these are like really intimate things that are being disrupted yeah.
39:38
Speaker 2
Yeah um Nina, let's talk a little bit about Displaced. This is a new season that's coming soon that Nina's been working on all year. And it's fascinating. Every time I mention it to people, they're like, ooh, that sounds good. I want to listen to it. So yeah, tell us what you've been working on.
39:57
Speaker 3
So this is a series, Displaced.
39:58
Speaker 4
It's in the reportings from three different communities in Latin America where communities have been displaced or are facing displacement because of some sort of climate disaster, including coastal erosion, sea level rise, drought, extreme heat. And the series is about how these communities are confronting this, you know, and how they're trying to get their governments to do the right thing and to, you know, to give them what they need. And that sort of depends on the community, what they're looking for. Some are fighting for the right to be resettled. Others are fighting for the right to remain. And I mean, so there's lots and lots of, you know, great, you know, characters from the communities that I spent a lot of time in. But also, you know, I think in talking about coming back to connecting the dots, you know, what we're trying to do with this series is really connect what's happening on the ground to things that are quite sort of like wonky and difficult to get people interested in, like climate finance, like loss and damage, adaptation, national adaptation policies, who's responsible, you know, who's accountable for what's happening, how communities can access accountability and justice.
41:05
Speaker 3
Yeah, so that will be.
41:07
Speaker 4
Coming, I think, hopefully, yeah, the end of November, maybe beginning of December, something like that.
41:12
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.
41:13
Speaker 2
I think, too, like the thing that keeps jumping out to me, I get to listen to it along the way. And the thing that keeps jumping out to me is the really nuanced and detailed questions around what does adaptation look like and who gets to decide how we adapt, how these communities adapt, even when.
41:33
Speaker 2
You know, the thing works and like you get the government to do the resettlement and everything. Like there's so many other things along the way that need to happen in order to kind of keep a community whole. And these questions of what are these communities owed and how do you deal with, yeah, moving like a community that's a fishing ocean-based community further inland and without losing the fabric of that community. There's just a lot more to it than just giving someone a new place to live.
42:07
Speaker 5
These are communities that are de facto criminalized by the fact that they are brown people that are being displaced by the climate crisis. And we're living in a world where migration is increasingly criminalized. These are the same people that would be snatched off the streets in Minneapolis or New York or anywhere else in the United States and potentially deported to countries in Africa that they have no relationship to. So I think it's so rare that we see in-depth coverage of these communities.
42:41
Speaker 1
And I'm really excited to listen to that.
42:44
Speaker 2
In fact, like that is a cycle for like one of the communities, right? That like there are people who have left a community because climate change has made it less viable in terms of farming, finding a job, all of that stuff and been criminalized in the U.S. and sent back only to face more of the same. The way that those two things are connected to, I think, is super interesting.
43:11
Speaker 4
I mean, I think, though, as well, what this reporting and what a lot of the reporting, you know, that I do shows is like communities are not waiting for their governments to come and save them.
43:19
Speaker 2
Or for like an international NGO to come and save them.
43:23
Speaker 3
No, they're not.
43:24
Speaker 4
And actually where the solutions lie are with these communities. And so when we're talking about climate finance and we're talking about adaptation plans, What we need to do is be able to sit and listen to what people are telling us, like what their priorities are, what the solutions for them would look like, right? And make sure the funding gets to them, right? Because these are communities, you know, like we started off talking about Nepal, where Nepal has contributed less than 0.01% of global greenhouse gases historically, right? These communities have contributed absolutely nothing to the climate crisis. Many of them still do not have access to electricity.
44:03
Speaker 3
And light and water.
44:04
Speaker 6
Right.
44:05
Speaker 4
And so now and now even, you know, what they're coming up with solutions, ways to adapt and ways to, you know, to to live dignified lives. And the money that is available isn't getting to them. And so I think it's sort of about, you know, not only have they not contributed to the climate crisis, they're being excluded from the climate solutions that are on the table. Yeah.
44:25
Speaker 5
Yeah.
44:26
Speaker 2
Yeah. Okay, I'm just going to put in two plugs for other projects coming down the line. One is that we will be doing some kind of coverage from COP, and that happens in November. COP is the annual UN conference. climate negotiations meeting. It's being held in Turkey this year, but it's co-hosted by Australia. There's actually quite a bit of talk about the Pacific Island nations trying to push Australia to push for some mention of fossil fuel phase-out. Amazing to me that this is still even an argument that needs to be had.
44:59
Speaker 1
So we'll have some reporting from there.
45:02
Speaker 2
And then also, we're actually working on a project looking at the tech guys and their push to stop the regulation of disinformation in Europe. There's a huge push from them to stop that. There's a huge influx of like MAGA groups in Europe that are also working to stop it and pushing this idea that, you know, oh, Europe is trying to censor the U.S. I just saw the other day, I'm scooping myself now, but whatever. I just saw a notice on the State Department website that the U.S. has a call for proposals for for organizations that will help to preserve the rule of law and fight against censorship in Europe and preserve Western values.
45:49
Speaker 1
So, excuse me.
45:52
Speaker 3
Amazing.
45:57
Speaker 5
Yeah.
45:57
Speaker 2
So we're looking at all of that stuff too. And that project will come out late in the year, early next too. So lots of stuff we're trying to, you know, Keep soldiering on over here and we'll have more episodes soon. So we'll be running some interviews, some conversations with other Drilled reporters, other reporters in general, authors, all of that stuff coming up. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss that. And yeah, we'll have more narrative season soon too.
46:28
Speaker 1
Exciting.
46:29
Speaker 4
Yeah, we've got a bunch of great interviews already lined up. We've got human rights experts. We've got a climate justice expert. leader from a football club in Dublin, Ireland, that is doing amazing work.
46:41
Speaker 3
We've got, yeah, we've got a whole bunch of really interesting people. So, yeah.
46:45
Speaker 1
Yeah.
46:46
Speaker 3
Sign up.
46:47
Speaker 5
I'm super excited to see what we'll do.
46:49
Speaker 1
I think it's going to be great.
46:52
Speaker 2
Thanks, Eileen.
46:53
Speaker 3
Well, we're great, so it will be great.
46:55
Speaker 1
Perfect.
47:02
Speaker 2
The Spill is a regularly recurring segment of the Drilled podcast. It comes out every Friday when we're not in the middle of a narrative season. If you have ideas for folks you'd like to see us interview on here, let us know.
47:15
Speaker 1
We're at Drilled Media on all social.
47:17
Speaker 2
Media platforms, or you can email me at amy at drilled.media. Links to all the stories we mentioned and to pre-order my book are in the show notes. The Spill is produced by Peter Duff.
47:31
Speaker 1
Our theme song is Bird in the Hand by Fournone. Artwork by Matthew Fleming. Our First Amendment attorney is James Wheaton of the First Amendment Project.
47:41
Speaker 2
You can find transcripts of The Spill online at drilled.media. Like the rest of Drilled, The Spill is distributed by Pushkin Industries. The team there is Eric Sandler, Grace Ross, Morgan Ratner, Owen Miller, Kira Posey, Jordan McMillan, Brian Shreberneck, and Jake Flanagan.
The Host
