Shell announced in late 2023 that it would be shutting down all of its onshore activities in Nigeria and concentrating its efforts offshore. It leaves behind poisoned water, multiple political and economic crises, and a country that is measurably worse off today than when its oil industry began. Meanwhile the government continues to target environmental activists.
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Nearly 30 Years After the Ogoni 9 Tragedy, Nigerians Are Still Resisting Oil Colonialism

Mary Annaïse Heglar's first book is out today, The World Is Ours to Cherish— children's book about climate change. It's the first of *three* climate books Mary has coming out in the near future (the other two are a novel, called Troubled Waters, and an essay collection of Black writers on climate). She has been busy writing up a storm since we wrapped up Hot Take (and we've roped her into editing stories for Drilled, too). In this episode we talk about her books, what's happening in climate media in general, and the question Amy gets asked all the time and can't answer very well: How do you talk to kids about climate change.
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Messy Conversations: How to Talk to Kids about Climate Change, with Mary Annaïse Heglar — a Mini Hot Take Reunion!

Last year, headlines all over the world proclaimed victory for the environment: finally, after more than a decade of promises, there would be no more drilling in Yasuní National Park, a large swath of the Ecuadorian Amazon. But as Macy Lipkin reports, all wasn't what it seemed.
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What Ecuador's Yasuní Referendum Really Means for Oil, in Yasuní and Beyond

Check out the limited-run series Hazard NYC from The City, all about how climate change intersects with Superfund sites in New York City. Start with episode one here: https://www.thecity.nyc/2024/02/14/newtown-creek-superfund-pollution-hazardnyc-faqnyc-podcast/
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Introducing: Hazard NYC

In her new book Saving Ourselves, Dana R. Fisher compiles years worth of research on protest in general and climate protest in particular for a comprehensive look at tactics, what "works," what a protest "working" even means, where the movement is likely to go next and where it needs to go to achieve real climate action.
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Dana R. Fisher on the Past, Present and Future of Climate Protest

Rhiana Gunn-Wright was one of the architects of the Green New Deal, and today works as the climate policy director for the Roosevelt Institute. In this episode we get into the nuances of the IRA, how to handle climate being a "culture war" issue, what's going on with anti-renewables, and what the climate movement loses when it turns its back on justice issues and particularly when it turns its back on the Black community.
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Messy Conversations: Rhiana Gunn-Wright on What the Climate Movement Loses When It Excludes Environmental Justice

The U.S. government's definition of what constitutes an "ecoterrorist" has long driven backlash against environmental activists and in recent years that definition has only broadened. Investigative reporter and Drilled senior editor Alleen Brown dug into this recently and found that the Department of Homeland Security had been warning officials in Atlanta about the threat posed by "Defend the Atlanta Forest" for months before police raided the forest, ultimately killing one protestor, and charging dozens more with domestic terrorism and racketeering. It was such an overreaction that even mainstream media covered it.
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Department of Homeland Security, the Manufactured "EcoTerrorist" Panic, and Cop City

In June 2022, Michel Forst became the first UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders. In that role he has spent the past year visiting various countries and speaking out about the increasingly onerous laws and aggressive tactics being used against climate protestors. Today he released a statement on the UK, saying he is "extremely worried" about "the increasingly severe crackdowns on environmental defenders in the United Kingdom, including in relation to the exercise of the right to peaceful protest."
In this episode, our France reporter Anna Pujol-Mazzini talks to Forst about his new position, what it means, and what power he has to do something about the creeping crackdown on climate protest.
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Meet the UN's First Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders

About a decade after UK courts made history with the first "climate necessity" ruling in history, the UK government has passed new laws that not only restrict what protesters can do, but also how protesters are allowed to defend themselves in court. Some judges don't apply the new laws so strictly, but others have held people in contempt for just trying to explain themselves.
In some courtrooms, the climate necessity defense has been effectively outlawed. How did that happen? And how did it happen so quickly? That's our story today.
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How UK Courts Became the New Climate Protest Battleground

While protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline at the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation garnered international news coverage, at the southern end of the pipeline, cops moonlighting as pipeline security were suppressing free speech with impunity. In this episode, reporter Karen Savage tells us what happened at Bayou Bridge, and what lessons the story holds for the climate movement and for anyone who believes in the importance of democracy.
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What Happened At Bayou Bridge? The Other End of the Dakota Access Pipeline

This month, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers closes the comment period on its draft Environmental Impact Statement for the Dakota Access Pipeline, a 1,172-mile pipeline that’s been pumping 500,000 barrels of oil per day since May 2017.
The pipeline runs from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota to southern Illinois, crossing the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers. Over the past six years, every court in the country has ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers did not study the pipeline’s environmental impact closely enough before approving the pipeline’s route. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe has maintained all along that the project poses a serious threat to its drinking water. From April 2016 to February 2017 thousands of water protectors from all over the country (and beyond) joined them in protests and direct actions. The resistance at Standing Rock is often cited by the fossil fuel industry, police and politicians as the reason states need new anti-protest laws, while the backlash to that resistance is often cited by water protectors as the reason for PTSD, asthma, and in some cases lost eyes and limbs.
Now, the Army Corps of Engineers says that removing the pipeline would be too damaging to the Missouri River and its surrounding ecosystems. The removal actions it describes in its EIS are the same actions taken to install the pipeline in the first place. The Army Corps suggests that removing the pipeline would be more environmentally harmful than allowing the oil to continue pumping under one of Standing Rock's primary drinking water sources. Nonetheless, this report—seven years late—represents one of the few pathways left to stop the pipeline.
The Standing Rock Sioux tribe is advocating to seal the pipeline off, while some water protectors are advocating for the pipeline to be removed entirely. The public comment period closes Dec 13, 2023.
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Seven Years Later, an Environmental Impact Statement for the Dakota Access Pipeline

With everyone arguing—again—about what science tells us the COP28 negotiations should be aiming for if we want to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, it's a great time to bring you this episode of Vox's Unexplainable, on which Drilled host, reporter Amy Westervelt, walks through how the fossil fuel industry weaponized the most fundamental aspect of scientific research: uncertainty.
For show transcripts, go to bit.ly/unx-transcripts
For more, go to http://vox.com/unexplainable
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Weaponizing Uncertainty, with Vox's Unexplainable

As we resume our season focused on the global criminalization of climate protest, reporter Martha Troian brings us to Canada, where the Wet'suwet'en people have been fighting for years against a gas pipeline they never authorized on their territory.
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Modern-Day Bead Trading: The Fossil Fuel Industry Meets Indigenous Protest with "Redwashing" and Repression in Canada

Bloomberg's Akshat Rathi joins us to make the case that capitalism can be harnessed in service of addressing the climate crisis.
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Messy Conversations: Akshat Rathi on Climate Capitalism

Abeer Butmeh, coordinator of the Palestinian NGOs Network, one of the most important Palestinian environmental organizations, spoke to senior editor Alleen Brown about battling for short-term and long-term survival when your identity itself is criminalized.
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Abeer Butmeh: Living on the Front Lines of a War and the Climate Crisis, in Palestine

We're bringing you an episode of the CBC's Podcast Playlist today, featuring Drilled! In this episode, host Leah-Simone Brown talks to hosts of three shows (including this one) about why folks should listen to their show. Podcast Playlist is the longest-running podcast curation show, a great place to find your next favorite podcast. Check it out wherever you get your podcasts. 
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CBC Podcast Playlist: Straight to the Source

We'll be back with the rest of our anti-protest season soon, but in the meantime, welcome to a new Drilled miniseries we're calling "Messy Conversations," getting into all the complicated nuance that unfortunately gets cut out of a lot of climate conversations. This week, Magatte Wade, who runs the Center for African Prosperity at the Atlas Network. She wasn't too happy with our recent coverage of Atlas, so we talked about that, the idea that solving poverty and addressing the climate crisis are mutually exclusive, where free speech ends and property rights begin for libertarians, and a whole lot more.
Links: 

Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC): https://www.arcforum.com/

DeSmog profile of ARC: https://www.desmog.com/alliance-for-responsible-citizenship-arc/

DeSmog coverage of ARC 2023 forum: https://www.desmog.com/2023/10/26/gop-climate-denier-vivek-ramaswamy-headlining-jordan-peterson-arc-conference/

Narasimha Rao's Decent Living Energy Project: https://www.decentlivingenergy.org/

Our Guyana season: https://drilled.media/podcasts/drilled#season-8

Center for African Prosperity: https://www.atlasnetwork.org/partners/center-for-african-prosperity


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Messy Conversations: Magatte Wade, Atlas Network's Center for African Prosperity

Globally, climate activism has shifted over the past few years. It’s more constant now and includes more direct action than ever before. Some of that action has critics, including climate scientists and climate advocates, clutching their pearls and worrying that protest will turn the public away from the urgent need to act on the climate crisis. But social science researchers who study structural change and protest say there’s no historical evidence to back that up; that in fact the only time social movements have ever affected change is when they’ve been wildly disruptive, and a whole lot of the people who love to quote MLK are missing a significant part of his approach to social change. In this week's ep we hear from social scientists on how radical or not climate protests really are, and what factors make direct action work or fail.
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The Tomato Soup "Controversy"

Welcome to Outrage + Optimism, where they examine issues at the forefront of the climate crisis, interview change-makers, and transform anger into productive dialogue for building a sustainable future.
In this episode, the hosts discuss the slow progress made at the negotiations in Bonn and how the perceived lack of direction has led many in the climate community to feel anxious about how successful talks will be in Dubai later in the year. 
Christiana also touches on the New World Bank report, Detox Development: Repurposing Environmentally Harmful Subsidies, highlighting the trillions of dollars wasted on subsidies for agriculture, fishing and fossil fuels that could be used to help address climate change instead of harming people and the planet.
With Tom off to the Global Citizen Power Our Planet Live event on Thursday, the hosts discuss their hopes for a more positive outcome from The Summit for a New Global Financing Pact also happening in Paris this week. Look out for the anticipated momentum to gather pace on Mia Mottley’s Bridgetown Agenda for the much needed reform of international finance.
Their special interview this episode is with the brilliant communications expert John Marshall, CEO of Potential Energy Coalition, to discuss climate change’s marketing problem and how we can solve it. Essential listening and the team here all agree we could learn a lot from John’s insights! For anyone wanting to learn more about the important work of Potential Energy, click here.
Music this week comes from Hazel Mei and her song Golden Chains, another finalist from this year's Environmental Music Prize. Check out her links below.
Thanks to Airaphon who mixed and sound edited the podcast this week. Please don’t forget to let us know what you think here, and / or by contacting us on our social media channels or via the website.

NOTES AND RESOURCES
SUBSCRIBE TO OUTRAGE + OPTIMISM HERE
John Marshall, Chairman and CEO of Potential Energy Coalition
LinkedIn | TED Bio
Potential Energy Coalition
Website | LinkedIn | Instagram
Hazel Mei, Environmental Music Prize Finalist 
Instagram | Facebook | YouTube 
For anyone wanting to watch the absurd Fox news interview with Power the Future founder, Daniel Turner, here is the link. 
Learn more about the Paris Agreement.
It’s official, we’re a TED Audio Collective Podcast - Proof!
Check out more podcasts from The TED Audio Collective
Please follow us on social media!
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Drilled Recommends: Outrage + Optimism — ‘How to talk about climate change so people will listen’ with John Marshall

From Ecuador to North Dakota, British Columbia to New Zealand, the backlash against Indigenous-led environmental protest is always particularly harsh, infused with colonialist entitlement to land, water, and other resources. Historian Nick Estes walks us through what that looks like in the U.S., and the great team behind the documentary The Territory brings us a recent example from Brazil. Check out the film here. 
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