When we first started reporting this story, people unfamiliar with it would suggest talking to local environmental groups. Surely they would have something to say about a massive new polluting industry springing up in the country! But every group we could find operating in Guyana had taken money from Exxon or one of its partners. Several have made promotional videos praising the project. They argue that oil money is no dirtier than any other source of funding, and if it’s there, they may as well take it to do good conservation projects.

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The tension between addressing global poverty and acting on the climate crisis is one the fossil fuel industry, and those who carry water for it, have been increasingly leaning on in recent years. We asked Dr. Narasimha Rao to join us this week to get into the details of that conversation, where there are and aren't tradeoffs, and what his Decent Living Energy Project at Yale can tell us about how to solve both global crises at once.

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Melinda Janki has filed seven separate cases aimed at blocking oil drilling in Guyana, but only one of them explicitly names climate change as a problem the project is guaranteed to exacerbate. It’s a constitutional case that invokes Guyana’s constitutional right to a healthy environment—an amendment Janki herself helped to write. Plaintiffs Dr. Troy Thomas and Quedad DeFreitas argue that the government’s choice to fast-track permits and oil production threatens their right to a healthy environment, and the rights of future generations too. The government of Guyana argues that, ironically, it needs oil money to adapt to climate change.

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One person in Guyana knows both the inner workings of oil companies and the intricacies of Guyanese environmental law better than most. Melinda Janki grew up in Guyana, but went to university at Oxford and then worked as in-house counsel for oil giant BP before returning home. Decades ago she started to help strengthen the country’s environmental laws. In 2018 she started filing suits against the government to block offshore drilling. Her latest suit demands that ExxonMobil be liable for any environmental damage caused to Guyana in case of an offshore catastrophe. 

Read more in Antonia Juhasz's Wired story on Guyana: https://www.wired.com/story/the-quest-to-defuse-carbon-bomb-guyana/

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After a year’s worth of pressure from local press and civil society groups, the Guyanese government released its contract with ExxonMobil to the public in December 2017. The IMF calls it an unfair deal for Guyana. Some local leaders start calling on government officials to try to renegotiate the contract, but others say that’s a fool’s errand and the only place to fight the contract is in court.

Read more in Antonia Juhasz's Wired story on Guyana: https://www.wired.com/story/the-quest-to-defuse-carbon-bomb-guyana/

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Five years ago, Kiana Wilburg was a new reporter when ExxonMobil executives and Guyanese government officials announced they had found oil 40 miles offshore. Wilburg and her newsroom had to quickly learn about the industry and this company that was suddenly so influential in their country and were left with just one question: exactly what kind of a deal had the country signed onto?

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A new peer-reviewed study in the journal Science shows exactly how accurate oil company scientists' climate models were back in the 1970s and 80s. Alongside this special re-broadcast of Season 1 of Drilled, all about the origins of climate denial, we speak with the study's lead author Geoffrey Supran about its importance.

In this final episode, a look at what it might take to finally act on climate.

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A new peer-reviewed study in the journal Science shows exactly how accurate oil company scientists' climate models were back in the 1970s and 80s. Alongside this special re-broadcast of Season 1 of Drilled, all about the origins of climate denial, we speak with the study's lead author Geoffrey Supran about its importance.

In this episode, a look at how successful the fossil fuel industry's decades-long information war was at convincing the public there was nothing to worry about, and how that success led to dozens of lawsuits filed over the past five years.

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On paper, the small South American country of Guyana is the fastest-growing economy in the world, thanks to its oil boom. The country started shipping barrels of oil in 2019. Hotels are popping up all over its capital city. Historic homes are being turned into condos for visiting oil execs. But average citizens say they aren’t benefiting from the boom like they thought they would. And one lawyer is trying everything she can to stop her homeland from being changed from a carbon sink into a carbon bomb. In this special crossover season of Drilled and Damages, a look at 21st century oil colonialism, amid the climate crisis.

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A new peer-reviewed study in the journal Science shows that not only did Exxon scientists suspect climate change driven by the burning of fossil fuels was a growing problem that would lead to crisis if nothing changed, but they were terrifyingly accurate in their modeling and predictions. Alongside this special re-broadcast of Season 1 of Drilled, all about the origins of climate denial, we speak with the study's lead author Geoffrey Supran about its importance.

In this episode, we look at how fossil fuel companies have shaped the research agenda on climate, from the preferred technical solutions to policy frameworks, via strategic investments in research centers at elite universities.

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