There's More Climate Corruption to Uncover Than Ever

While some in the climate space are applauding the small steps forward taken at COP 28, I can't help but see it as too little, too late. While this year's COP agreement did finally, officially establish the loss and damage fund, developed countries are still failing to meet their financial commitments to it; while the agreement finally acknowledged that fossil fuels are the problem, it only vaguely committed countries to "reducing" dependency on them, and it opened up the door for oil companies and petrostates to continue positioning fossil gas as a "transitional fuel." And of course, surprising no one, it did nothing at all to slow announcements—from either Adnoc CEO and COP president Dr. Sultan Al Jaber or any of the investor-owned oil companies that sent a record number of lobbyists to the climate summit—of major oil and gas expansions. Meanwhile next' year's COP will, once again, be hosted by an authoritarian petrostate (this time, Azerbaijan, which has ramped up its gas production in a bid to become Europe's new Gazprom). It's depressing and infuriating.

It's also why we feel more committed than ever to the work we're doing at Drilled: investigating the key forces blocking or delaying action on climate and making it more difficult for those forces to be effective. This is our last newsletter of 2023, so please allow me a year-end tally of what we've been up to:

• Grown the Drilled team to a dozen international reporters, plus three new editors (Alleen Brown, Molly Taft, and my longtime work wife Mary Annaïse Heglar)
• Published our first cross-border investigation, focused on the global crackdown on climate protest (it's ongoing, and will run til at least April 2024).
• Uncovered a key way that this trend has spread so quickly around the world (something that would not have happened had we not been collaborating across borders).
• Co-published stories with: The Guardian, The Intercept, The New Republic, The Nation, Heated, and DeSmog (and had conversations with lots more co-publishers, which we expect to produce many more cool partnerships in 2024).
• Received two Covering Climate Now awards (one for best podcast, for S1 of Damages, about the global rights of nature movement; the other for Amy Westervelt as a CC Now "Journalist of the Year")
• Expanded our investigative reach to include: Canada, El Salvador, Brazil, Guyana, Suriname, Mozambique, India, Australia, the UK, France, Nigeria, and Uganda.
• Revealed the extent to which mainstream media is an enabler of climate denial and delay, and catalyzed a discussion within Covering Climate Now about whether outlets that host pro-drilling events should be allowed to tout their climate reporting cred.
• Added more than 250 new documents to our online archive
• Cultivated 10 new whistleblowers
• Produced two more seasons of the Drilled podcast, more than 50 episodes total, and consulted on & distributed another season of youth climate podcast Inherited.

A lot of that work was made possible by contributions from readers and listeners like you! Just a reminder that we offer paid subscriptions via Apple podcasts, Spotify, Patreon, and right here (via the button below) for access to ad-free episodes and bonus content.

This Week's Climate Must-Reads

• "The UN Climate Talks Hung Poorer Nations Out to Dry," - Whenever there are lots of different takes on things, trust Kate Aronoff at The New Republic to have the sharpest one. If you only read one COP28 recap, make it this one.
• "The COP that PR Firms Built" - I am so damned excited to have Molly Taft on the Drilled team and on the PR beat. Here she compiled the most comprehensive look I've seen of the many ways that global PR firms shaped this COP, and the millions they raked in doing it.
• "How Federal Reports about an Eco-terrorist Threat Fueled the Crackdown on Cop City Opponents" - And we get Alleen Brown too, are you kidding me?! Alleen's been investigating the crackdown on protest and the intersection between climate and policing for several years now and there's truly no one better on the beat. Here's her scoop (co-published with The Guardian) on DHS's role in whipping up fear about "eco terrorists," fueling a massive overreaction to the protests against "Cop City" in Atlanta. And today, a follow-up scoop, with even more evidence that DHS is pushing the idea to police forces across the country that environmentalists are a threat, and a call from civil liberties groups for Congress to step in and set them straight.
• "The latest youth climate lawsuit tries a novel argument: The unique environmental vulnerability of children" - For Grist, Katie Myers digs into a case in which 18 California kids argue that the EPA fails to recognize the unique physical and mental impacts climate change has on kids.
• "COP28: Article 6 failure avoids a worse outcome " - A little-discussed aspect of the COP28 negotiations was the failure to break the deadlock on carbon markets between countries demanding that Article 6 carbon markets be available with virtually no restrictions and countries insisting on upholding transparency, human rights, and climate ambition. No deal was better than a bad deal, but it's important to understand the impact, and why anyone should be thinking about carbon markets, period.
• ICYMI: "The Cybertruck Is the Dumbest Thing I've Ever Seen" - Sometimes we just need a rollicking, mean-as-hell dunk on Elon Musk. This one, from Ryan Cooper at The American Prospect, had me chuckling to myself all day.