The Petroleum Papers by Geoff Dembicki

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.Instead, they developed one of the biggest, most polluting oil sources in the world?the oil sands in Alberta, Canada. As investigative journalist Geoff Dembicki reveals in this explosive book, the decades-long conspiracy to keep the oil sands flowing into the U.S. would turn out to be one of the biggest reasons for the world?s failure to stop the climate crisis.

InThe Petroleum Papers, Dembicki draws from confidential oil industry documents to uncover for the first time how companies like Exxon, Koch Industries, and Shell built a global right-wing echo chamber to protect oil sands profits?a misinformation campaign that continues to this day. He also tells the high-stakes stories of people fighting back: a Seattle lawyer who brought down Big Tobacco and is now going after Big Oil, a Filipina activist whose family drowned in a climate disaster, and a former Exxon engineer pushed out for asking hard questions.

With experts now warning we have less than a decade to get global emissions under control,The Petroleum Papersprovides a step-by-step account of how we got to this precipice?and the politicians and companies who deserve our blame. (From Greystone Books)

• New book by Geoff Dembicki takes on the oil and gas industry's role in climate change
• Read an excerpt fromThe Petroleum Papers

The Petroleum Papers is afinalist for the 2022 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction.The winner will be announced on Nov. 2, 2022.

Weston Prize jury citation:"InThe Petroleum Papers, Geoff Dembecki shows us how the petroleum industry has known about the risks to the climate for more than sixty years. This is a book that connects the dots between the industry, politicians, lobbyists, fake grassroots groups, mediaand corrupted think tanks. Basing his arguments on grounded research and using clear, accessible prose, Dembicki explains the players and the game. The stakes are the planet itself."

This is a book that connects the dots between the industry, politicians, lobbyists, fake grassroots groups, mediaand corrupted think tanks.- 2022 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction jury

Geoff Dembicki is a climate change reporter fromAlberta who now lives in New York. He is also the author of the nonfiction workAre We Screwed?, which won the2018 Green Prize for Sustainable Literature.

Why Geoff Dembicki wrote The Petroleum Papers

"On the surface, this book can seem very depressing and demoralizing.Butit gave me a weird sense of hope. For so long we've had this story that we've been telling about climate change, which is that it isa result of billions of people's individual actions... and that makes us all equally responsible. But looking at hundredsof pages of documentsand realizing the extent to which people have been lied to about climate changemade me realize that at certain key moments, a small handful of companies and executives sabotaged solutions.

On the surface, this book can seem very depressing and demoralizing.Butit gave me a weird sense of hope.- Geoff Dembicki

"The solution isn't necessarilyto changethe behaviours of sevenbillion people around the planet. It's to begin looking at the huge role some of these companies have played inmakingsure that the solutions we need haven't happened."

Listen to the full interview with CBC Radio'sOn the Coast.

Interviews with Geoff Dembicki