Join booksellers The Tyee, Greystone Books and Upstart & Crow to celebrate Geoff Dembickis The Petroleum Papers, an “essential” and “living synopsis”. This is one of Kirkus Reviews’ most anticipated books for the fall season and is already acclaimed by critics and readers alike.
As experts now warn, we have less than a decade to get global emissions under control, The Petroleum Papers offers a step-by-step account of who pushed us to this abyss – the corporations and politicians in Canada and the US who, for over a century, knew of the looming catastrophe and chose to conspire to disinform and blunt an effective response. The cast of characters ranges from Newt Gingrich to Stephen Harper to the Koch brothers and lawyers, activists and scientists who have fought valiantly against the coordinated effort to rob us of our future.
Renowned climate writer and activist Bill McKibben calls The Petroleum Papers “A really needed compendium of Big Oil’s endless lies – Geoff Dembicki has done the world an enormous favor. Hopefully we will respond to that.”
Tyee’s Andrew Nikiforuk says, “Dembicki documents how oil industry executives willfully ignored the findings of their own scientists and then spent nearly 30 years sowing confusion in order to cripple public debate… Read this book about the power of lies and… Scream.”
The event takes place on Tuesday 20 September and is free of charge.
Expect to be attended by a number of well-known climate journalists, researchers and activists, including many members of the Tyee team.
Come by from 5:30 p.m. Meet Dembicki, who started out as an intern at The Tyee a decade ago and is now one of North America’s leading climate journalists. He will speak a little at 6pm followed by book signings. Enjoy food, drinks and good company until 10pm that evening.
More on ‘The Petroleum Papers’
The Petroleum Papers is published in cooperation with the David Suzuki Institute. Founded in 2010, the David Suzuki Institute is an evidence-based, nonprofit organization that inspires debate and action in Canada on critical natural and social justice issues, with a focus on climate and biodiversity crises and their solutions.
This explosive work of investigative reporting, drawing on hundreds of decades of confidential oil industry documents, exposes for the first time the far-right conspiracy that has prevented the world from preventing the climate crisis.
in the The Petroleum Papersinvestigative journalist Dembicki draws on American oil companies’ own archives to expose the fact that they ignored warnings of climate destruction as early as 1959. Others, sometimes in cahoots with the Canadian government, poured out money and lobbying to help prevent policy action in the US while launching ad campaigns claiming that climate change is not real and that alternatives to oil are an economic disaster.
These companies built a global right-wing echo chamber to ensure tar sands could continue to flow into the US, which helped elect Donald Trump and now leaves the Joe Biden administration and the rest of the world with widespread climate chaos.
Dembicki also shares the high-stakes stories of people fighting back: the Seattle attorney who brought Big Tobacco to its knees and is now prosecuting Big Oil, a young Filipino activist who saw her family drown in a climate catastrophe, and a former Exxon engineer who was fired for asking too many difficult questions.
The Tyee recently published an interview with Dembicki, as well as an excerpt from his book.
Dembicki is an investigative climate reporter from Alberta whose previous book Are we screwed? won the Green Prize for Sustainable Literature in 2018. Dembicki is a regular contributor to The Tyee and VICE, and has published widely, including in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and The Rolling Stone Party).
accessibility and logistics
Please respond on Eventbrite so we can get a feel for the numbers. This event is first come, first served. We therefore recommend arriving around 5:30 p.m. to secure a spot.
Container Brewing offers a selection of their locally brewed beers on tap and the Burdy Food Truck offers delicious hot sandwiches with chicken and aubergine fries. They serve salad, fries, and even Beeramisu, a tiramisu made with Container’s All Season Dry Stout. Non-alcoholic offerings are available at Not Too Sweet Craft Sodas. All refreshments are available for purchase.
This event will be held outside rain or shine on Container’s beautiful outdoor patio to be COVID-19 conscious. We recommend bringing weather-appropriate clothing and your own camp chair if you prefer a seat. Further information on accessibility can be found here. If you are unable to attend this date, you are in luck, because the next evening there will be a VPL lecture with Dembicki in the central library.
If you can attend, please register and see you tomorrow September 20th! ![[Tyee]](https://thetyee.ca/design-article.thetyee.ca/ui/img/yellowblob.png){kind=small}
