“Burning fossil fuels will cause catastrophic global warming.” This is what top American oil executives were told by scientists in 1959. But they ignored that warning.
In his latest book, The Petroleum Papers, investigative journalist Geoff Dembicki tells the damning story of oil companies who not only failed to alert consumers about the dangers of their product, but created ad campaigns saying climate change isn't real and that alternatives to oil are an economic disaster. But Dembicki also tells the high-stakes stories of people fighting back: the Seattle lawyer who brought Big Tobacco to its knees and is now going after Big Oil, a young Filipino activist who saw her family drown in a climate disaster, and a former engineer at Exxon who was pushed out for asking too many hard questions.
Geoff Dembicki is an investigative climate change reporter, whose work can be seen in VICE, The Guardian and The Tyee. His book Are We Screwed? won the 2018 Green Prize for Sustainable Literature and The Petroleum Papers was named a Washington Post Best Book of 2022.
