Long before outright climate denial, the fossil fuel industry relied on sophisticated PR and advertising campaigns to shape how the public understood the economy, the environment, and energy itself. In this Climate Week 2024 episode, we revisit The Mad Men of Big Oil—our 2020 investigative season on the public relations industry’s role in fueling climate disaster. The series helped inspire campaigns to clean up the PR industry and has only grown more relevant, with UN Secretary-General António Guterres now calling out the “Mad Men fueling climate disaster” by name. This is a live recording from Climate Week.

 

Long before outright climate denial, the fossil fuel industry relied on sophisticated PR and advertising campaigns to shape how the public understood the economy, the environment, and energy itself. In this Climate Week 2024 episode, we revisit The Mad Men of Big Oil&mdash;our 2020 investigative season on the public relations industry&rsquo;s role in fueling climate disaster. The series helped inspire campaigns to clean up the PR industry and has only grown more relevant, with UN Secretary-General Ant&oacute;nio Guterres now calling out the &ldquo;Mad Men fueling climate disaster&rdquo; by name. This is a live recording from Climate Week.
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Drilled is a true-crime climate change podcast exposing how corporate corruption and political operatives built decades of climate denial and delay. Hosted and reported by award-winning investigative climate journalists and led by Amy Westervelt, each season unravels new evidence of deception, disinformation, and the power structures keeping real climate solutions out of reach.

Season 15 coming April 2026.

Drilled is a true-crime climate change podcast exposing how corporate corruption and political operatives built decades of climate denial and delay. Hosted and reported by award-winning investigative climate journalists and led by Amy Westervelt, each season unravels new evidence of deception, disinformation, and the power structures keeping real climate solutions out of reach.
Season 15 coming April 2026.

A true-crime podcast about climate change, hosted and reported by award-winning investigative journalist Amy Westervelt.

Drilled

Climate Week 2024: Taking on the Mad Men of Big Oil 

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/clips/7fa1e7f0-9ec3-4978-875a-b3ec00ee2eda/transcript

What is “artificial intelligence”? Is it a fancy technology? A management consulting buzzword? A PR effort to inflate corporate share prices? A political project designed to shape the world more to the liking of the billionaire class? A way to replace needy human workers with machines?

Perhaps it’s all of that—and more. In her groundbreaking bookEmpire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI, award-winning journalist Karen Hao argues that AI—and the profit-driven infrastructure that surrounds it—is a colonial project. What OpenAI boss Altman and his fellow ideologues in Silicon Valley are pursuing, Hao says, is not just corporate power but imperial power. They are building empires. And as history shows, empires are built on resource extraction, particularly the old-fashioned kind: of labor, energy, minerals, land, water.

Seemingly overnight, tech elites’ feel-good climate promises have evaporated, having been seamlessly swapped for slippery promises that so-called “artificial general intelligence” will save the planet for us. Never mind that AGI is a fantastical concept that has no agreed-upon definition, or that, more fundamentally, it appears nowhere close to existing. In Big Tech’s frenzied pursuit of the “hyperscale” AI dominance that evangelists claim will unlock AGI, as well as its expanding alliances with fossil fuel-backed petrostates and authoritarian political movements, the industry has become an increasingly central contributor to the climate crisis.

In an October conversation with Drilled, Hao discussed how Silicon Valley giants appear to be following the oil and gas industry’s playbook of disinformation and deceit; how Altman and OpenAI’s secrecy and disingenuous rhetoric transformed the field of AI research into corporate PR; and why the destructive trajectory of AI scale and commercialization is not inevitable—no matter what its power-hungry proponents would have you believe.

What is &ldquo;artificial intelligence&rdquo;? Is it a fancy technology? A management consulting buzzword? A PR effort to inflate corporate share prices? A political project designed to shape the world more to the liking of the billionaire class? A way to replace needy human workers with machines?
Perhaps it&rsquo;s all of that&mdash;and more. In her groundbreaking book<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/743569/empire-of-ai-by-karen-hao/"> Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman&rsquo;s OpenAI</a>, award-winning journalist Karen Hao argues that AI&mdash;and the profit-driven infrastructure that surrounds it&mdash;is a colonial project. What OpenAI boss Altman and his fellow<a href="https://drilled.media/news/network-state"> ideologues</a> in Silicon Valley are pursuing, Hao says, is not just corporate power but imperial power. They are building empires. And as history shows, empires are built on resource extraction, particularly the old-fashioned kind: of labor, energy, minerals, land, water.
Seemingly overnight, tech elites&rsquo; feel-good climate promises have<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/05/climate/tech-companies-climate-goals.html"> evaporated</a>, having been seamlessly swapped for slippery promises that so-called &ldquo;artificial general intelligence&rdquo; will save the planet for us. Never mind that<a href="https://prospect.org/2025/12/09/artifice-age-of-artificial-intelligence-silverman-morris-review/"> AGI is a fantastical concept that has no agreed-upon definition</a>, or that, more fundamentally, it appears nowhere close to existing. In Big Tech&rsquo;s frenzied pursuit of the &ldquo;hyperscale&rdquo; AI dominance that evangelists claim will unlock AGI, as well as its<a href="https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/microsoft-nvidia-uae-ai-chips-cf8491b6"> expanding</a><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/technology/saudi-arabia-ai-exporter.html"> alliances</a> with fossil fuel-backed petrostates and authoritarian political movements, the industry has become an increasingly<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/29/gas-power-ai-climate"> central</a><a href="https://www.citizen.org/article/reining-in-big-tech-policy-solutions-to-address-the-data-center-buildout/"> contributor</a> to the climate crisis.
In an October conversation with Drilled, Hao discussed how Silicon Valley giants appear to be following the oil and gas industry&rsquo;s playbook of disinformation and deceit; how Altman and OpenAI&rsquo;s secrecy and disingenuous rhetoric transformed the field of AI research into corporate PR; and why the destructive trajectory of AI scale and commercialization is not inevitable&mdash;no matter what its power-hungry proponents would have you believe.

Drilling Deep: Karen Hao on How Big AI Is Gambling with the Planet’s Chips

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/clips/913634fb-c579-425a-b0ee-b4100000d457/transcript

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This week marks the 10-year anniversary of the hired hit that took Berta Cáceres’s life and robbed both the Honduran and global environmental movements of a uniquely effective leader. Cáceres was targeted by a dam company, with an assist from the police, military, government officials and international banks because of her effective organizing on behalf of her people, the Lenca. Nina Lakhani literally wrote the book on Cáceres’s killing, and in this episode she walks us through what happened then, what’s happening now, the role the U.S. played in all of it, and what Americans can learn from the way Honduran activists continue to show up in the face of violent repression.

Read Nina’s story 

Read Nina’s book

Check out Berta’s organization, Copinh 

This week marks the 10-year anniversary of the hired hit that took Berta C&aacute;ceres&rsquo;s life and robbed both the Honduran and global environmental movements of a uniquely effective leader. C&aacute;ceres was targeted by a dam company, with an assist from the police, military, government officials and international banks because of her effective organizing on behalf of her people, the Lenca. Nina Lakhani literally wrote the book on C&aacute;ceres&rsquo;s killing, and in this episode she walks us through what happened then, what&rsquo;s happening now, the role the U.S. played in all of it, and what Americans can learn from the way Honduran activists continue to show up in the face of violent repression.
<a href="https://drilled.media/news/berta">Read Nina&rsquo;s story</a>&nbsp;
<a href="https://www.versobooks.com/products/790-who-killed-berta-caceres?srsltid=AfmBOorpFiSw1Fs5YU0TZy70o_w6SYPMlKfbReDbyQpDTWSGZ_0CZhTU">Read Nina&rsquo;s book</a>
Check out Berta&rsquo;s organization, <a href="https://copinh.org/en/">Copinh </a>

10 Years After Berta Cáceres’s Murder, Why Is Honduras Still So Dangerous for Environmentalists?

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/clips/299ca3a9-3ec2-488a-b3ce-b402010f8446/transcript

Fernanda Hopenhaym, member of the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights walks Drilled senior global climate justice reporter Nina Lakhani through the many legal pitfalls companies getting involved in the United States seizure of the Venezuelan oil industry might be facing.

Check out the longer story on our website.

 

Fernanda Hopenhaym, member of the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/wg-business/members#:~:text=Ms.%20Fernanda%20Hopenhaym%20is%20Co%2DExecutive,America%20dedicated%20to%20corporate%20accountability.">UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights&nbsp;</a>walks Drilled senior global climate justice reporter Nina Lakhani through the many legal pitfalls companies getting involved in the United States seizure of the Venezuelan oil industry might be facing.
Check out the longer story on our <a href="https://drilled.media/news/hopenhaym">website.</a>
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Just Because the U.S. Says It's Legal Doesn't Make It So: Companies Trading in Illegally Seized Venezuelan Oil Face Legal Risk

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/clips/c1d160ec-3ffe-474f-aaf5-b3ec00ead01e/transcript

Climate Week 2024: Taking on the Mad Men of Big Oil

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