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, an investigative podcast produced by Critical Frequency

鈥淲E HAVE unleashed a revolution in American energy. The United States is now the number one producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world,鈥� said President Donald Trump in his State of the Union address last month.

So begins a recent episode of the podcast Drilled. Perhaps it is no surprise that many US oil firms are increasing production despite a global consensus about the need to drastically reduce our use of fossil fuels to avoid catastrophic climate change.

The host is journalist Amy Westervelt, who aims to tell the story behind how such climate change inaction and denial emerged in the US over several decades, involving many plot twists. The show is now in its second season, with 12 episodes released so far. Most run at less than 20 minutes, which feels short, and many lack a strong narrative. But as a whole, the podcast gives a compelling, if chilling, overview of the rise and spread of climate change denial.

Although the show doesn鈥檛 reveal anything dramatically new, there will be surprises for any of us who haven鈥檛 devoted hundreds of hours to the field. For example, climate change is clearly highly politicised in the US, but there was a time when the subject was widely respected as an objective science.

The podcast begins by rewinding to the late 1970s, when Exxon was developing a research centre, hiring scientists to measure carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and oceans, and to create climate models. The firm was interested in developing alternative sources of fuel and in being a wide-ranging energy company rather than just relying on oil and gas.

That forward thinking didn鈥檛 last. Exxon sold its research arm a few years later, when oil revenue began to shrink. And the government鈥檚 position on renewable energy was changing too. When Ronald Reagan was elected president, he abolished the subsidies for people switching over to solar energy put in place by President Jimmy Carter.

It is frustrating, as we now run out of time, to think that we could have started to curb global warming decades ago. The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change calls for a near 50 per cent reduction in carbon emissions over the next 12 years to keep warming at a manageable, but still dangerous, level.

The Drilled podcast delves into the climate disinformation campaign that has been steadily infiltrating public consciousness in the US over recent decades. Oil companies, for instance, ran advertorials in major newspapers that often didn鈥檛 contain a complete denial of climate change but rather attempted to delay action by claiming that it wasn鈥檛 that bad and was a global problem. The campaigns were so good that they landed oil companies in court,which is the subject of recent episodes. The firms now face the same type of scrutiny as tobacco companies, which continued to sell and market products whose dangers weren鈥檛 made clear to the public.

鈥淚n the US, climate change is getting harder to ignore. Deaths in California鈥檚 wildfires were linked to it鈥�

But even in the US, climate change is getting harder to ignore. Deaths have now been linked to global warming, for example, during the recent wildfires in California.

And in a new court case, crab fishers on the Pacific coast are suing fossil fuel companies for economic damage. The warming oceans have created huge algal blooms that, in turn, produce a neurotoxin called domoic acid. This accumulates in crabs and makes them poisonous to eat. In 2015, the toxin鈥檚 presence delayed the crabbing season by five months, affecting the livelihoods of many crab fishers.

There are still many obstacles to acting on climate change, which will be investigated in the podcast鈥檚 upcoming episodes, along with solutions. Take towns like Richmond, California, where communities have been affected by oil companies that set up shop. Chevron is a big contributor to the town鈥檚 economy, but its refinery produces a lot of air pollution.

However, with proposed initiatives such as the Green New Deal, with its 10-year plan to transition to renewable energy, there is hope that the US may be able to put the past behind it.