Damages

Greenpeace, which was only tangentially involved in the Standing Rock protests, has been slapped with a $666 million bill for damages...despite the fact that the Dakota Access Pipeline was built, and has been making Energy Transfer millions of dollars for years. How did we get here? Cody Hall, an Indigenous water protector who was a key figure during the Standing Rock protests and was initially also targeted in Energy Transfer's suit, walks us through how things went down back in 2016 and 2017, and where this suit began.

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This season on Drilled, an Indigenous nation fighting for its water, an international environmental movement finding its voice, and an industry attempting to crush its political opposition.

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A new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists compiles in one place all the documentary evidence on the role of fossil fuel companies in obstructing climate policy. We walk through the latest, and get an update on climate cases in the U.S.

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In November, a Dutch court ruled in Shell's favor on an appeal in a big international climate case. It got loads of headlines around the world, but it wasn't quite the win for Shell that a lot of media coverage has made it out to be. Although it walked back some things, the court reaffirmed a key component of the original ruling: that Shell is legally required to reduce its global emissions.

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In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts vs. EPA that when the U.S. Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970, climate science was “in its infancy,” implying that government officials could never have intended for the legislation to cover the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2022, SCOTUS doubled down on that idea, ruling in West Virginia v EPA that since the Clean Air Act didn't explicitly talk about climate change, the EPA cannot regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Now, new historical evidence unearthed by a team of Harvard University researchers led by Naomi Oreskes calls the court's understanding of the history of climate science into question, which could have major implications for the government's ability to regulate climate-changing emissions.

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In 2017, El Salvador became the first country in the world to pass an outright ban on mining. It was an effort to protect the country's water, and its people. Now, self-proclaimed "coolest dictator in the world" Nayib Bukele wants to bring mining back to boost the economy, which took a major hit thanks to his embrace of Bitcoin as the national currency in 2021. The activists who helped pass the ban are standing in his way. The solution? Accuse them of a decades-old unsolved murder. The activists go on trial this week. Reporter Sebastian Escalon brings us this story, narrated by Yessenia Funes.

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Public Citizen has been working with various prosecutors to explore the idea of using criminal law to hold oil companies accountable for climate change. In the wake of recent Supreme Court rulings, it seems smarter than ever to explore the remedies offered by criminal law, but is it really viable? The group's senior climate policy counsel, Aaron Regunburg, joins us to discuss.

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The backlash against ESG is continuing, with a string of lawsuits aimed at shutting down shareholder activism. We don't often talk about shareholder activism in the vein of protecting protest, but it's absolutely part of the story. Andrew Behar, CEO of shareholder advocacy group As You Sow, joins us to explain what's going on, and why anyone who cares about basic rights needs to be tuning into the ESG fight.

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Lots of news lately on stories we've been following, so in today's episode: an update! The landmark Carbon Majors report has been updated with some surprising new data, and the European Court of Human Rights has sent down an historic ruling that will shape how EU legislators look at energy and climate.

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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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