The Petroleum Papers: Interview with author Geoff Dembicki

Climate journalist Geoff Dembicki discusses his latest book, “The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far-Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change.”

Drawing from internal oil industry documents spanning decades, The Petroleum Papers examines how major players in Alberta’s oil industry suppressed their own research about the climate crisis and created the playbook to spread climate change denialism in Canada and the US.

Tune in to hear more about the role the Alberta government and oil industry insiders played in stopping climate policies in the US.

Highlights from the podcast:

Dembicki explains the history of how major players in the Alberta oilsands, Imperial Oil and Koch Industries in particular, began investing in the spread of climate change denialism, creating networks of disinformation to suppress climate science:

“The vast fortune that this helped create for Charles and David Koch allowed them to spend 10s of millions of dollars over the years on think tanks that appeared regularly in the media telling people climate change isn’t real environmental regulations are a horrible idea.”

This effort, Dembicki says, led oil and gas insiders to create fake grassroots campaigns that would work to suppress climate policy in Canada and the US:

“To someone looking from the outside, it might appear that there was a big, concerned movement of citizens protesting these standards, when in reality, it was being directed by two oil and gas insiders, the Alberta government with some support from Canada’s federal government, as well, and this campaign was incredibly effective. It led to lots of low carbon fuel standards at the state level being blocked.”