How Climate Activists Successfully Fight Obstruction

How Climate Activists Successfully Fight Obstruction

Author: Pushkin Industries December 28, 2025 Duration: 56:51

Despite growing repression worldwide, climate activists continue to stick it to obstructionists and drive change. In this season's finale, Jennie Stephens (University of Ireland Maynooth) and Sharon Yadin (University of Haifa) share the effective strategies that activists can use to push back against the forces that block climate action.

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There’s a story behind the stalled progress on climate change that goes beyond melting ice and rising seas-it’s a story of deliberate deception. Drilled, from Pushkin Industries, approaches the climate crisis through the lens of investigative true crime. Led by veteran reporter Amy Westervelt and a team of award-winning climate journalists, this podcast meticulously traces how networks of corporate interests and political operatives constructed a decades-long campaign of denial and delay. Each season is a deep forensic examination, pulling on threads of new evidence to unravel systems of disinformation and hidden power. What you’ll hear isn’t just a recap of scientific reports, but a gripping narrative that follows the paper trail, the leaked memos, and the orchestrated efforts that have held meaningful action just out of reach. The result is a compelling and often unsettling listen that reframes our understanding of the past half-century. By treating climate inaction as a crime story, this podcast reveals the human architects and the calculated strategies that brought us here, making complex collusion startlingly clear. Tune in for a masterclass in accountability journalism.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 247

Drilled
Podcast Episodes
Disha Ravi on Becoming the Face of "Radical" Protest in India [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 31:38
At just 22 years old, climate activist Disha Ravi—co-founder of Fridays for Future India—was arrested, flown across the country, and jailed for her activism. She joins us to explain the night the police showed up at her…
The Corporate Push to Criminalize Speech [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 32:54
There's a lot of discourse happening about free speech in the context of "cancel culture", but precious little coverage of the global push to criminalize protest, particularly environmental and climate protest. We examin…
Coming Soon: The Real Free Speech Threat [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 3:21
Around the world, environmental protesters are facing escalating repression—from harsh laws with life-altering prison sentences to fines to protesters arreseted near "critical infrastructure" to violent attacks. Corporat…
The Next Citizens United Will Be a Climate Case [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 25:26
In more than 30 climate cases making their way through United States courts today, oil companies are using an argument they've been laying the legal groundwork for since the 1970s: that since everything they've ever said…
A Legal Strategy: How Mobil Oil Fought for Corporate Free Speech [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 29:18
Mobil Oil worried that its advertorial campaigns positioning Mobil as a personality in and of itself might be labeled "propaganda" by TV networks and deemed unfit to run. In response, Herb Schmertz, VP of Public Affairs…
The Panic: How Mobil Oil Changed Advertising Forever [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 33:13
In the 1970s, Mobil Oil invented the advertorial and was aggressively pursuing an entirely new type of marketing, branding the company as a person itself with a unique personality and opinions that demanded attention. Wh…
"Cancer Alley" Fiights Back [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 23:53
Louisiana's "Cancer Alley"—a stretch along the Mississippi River where petrochemical plants have created some of the worst air and water pollution America—has become a battleground. ExxonMobil, Chevron and other petroche…
The Anti-ESG Campaign Gets a Boost from RAGA [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 18:38
Ever since the Securities and Exchange Commission announced its intention to make Environmental Social and Governance metrics actually meaningful to investors, polluting industries have suddenly turned on ESG. Now that f…
Jake Bittle on the Complexities of Climate Migration [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 34:00
Jake Bittle's book The Great Displacement looks at how extreme weather events are likely to drive Americans to move from one part of the country (or their state) to another. He talks through the complex web of factors th…