From Drilled: The Carbon Gold Rush

About this episode

This episode features Amy Westervelt discussing her podcast Drilled and its exploration of climate policy and corporate corruption.

We usually bring you failures of the past, but today we're sharing an episode from someone who uncovers failures as they happen. Amy Westervelt is an award-winning investigative climate journalist and the host of Drilled, a true-crime climate change podcast exposing how corporate corruption and political operatives built decades of climate denial and delay. Each season unravels new evidence of deception, disinformation, and the power structures keeping real climate solutions out of reach. Drilled's latest season, Carbon Cowboys, examines a group of people who've turned climate policy into a profit engine. In September 2025, a group of Brazilian government ministers flew to North Dakota to watch a presentation on a new type of clean energy project, one that promised to help them deliver Brazilian President Lula’s dream of turning Brazil into “the Saudi Arabia of sustainable aviation fuels.” It was the latest in a string of projects from Midwest Republican kingmaker and corn ethanol magnate Bruce Rastetter, whose investments in Brazil might just transform him into a global carbon czar, even as his Summit pipeline carbon project faces fierce opposition from Iowa to…

People in this episode

Host: Tim Harford

Guest: Amy Westervelt

Topics covered

• climate change
• investigative journalism
• corporate corruption
• climate policy
• sustainable energy

Keywords

• climate denial
• disinformation
• carbon project
• sustainable aviation fuels
• true-crime podcast

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Drilled, Pushkin Industries

Books & works: Carbon Cowboys

Places: Brazil, North Dakota, Iowa

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