Description
Celebrating Geoff Dembicki’s anticipated new book, The Petroleum Papers: Inside the Far-Right Conspiracy to Cover Up Climate Change.
Join Greystone Books, The David Suzuki Institute, The Tyee and Upstart & Crow to celebrate Geoff Dembicki’s The Petroleum Papers, called “essential”, a “vivid expose”, and “a truly needed compendium of Big Oil’s endless lies.” This is one of Kirkus Reviews’ most anticipated books of the year, and is already receiving acclaim from critics and readers alike.
With experts now warning we have less than a decade to get global emissions under control, The Petroleum Papers provides a step-by-step account of how we got to this precipice—and the politicians and companies who deserve our blame.
As Andrew Nikiforuk explains, “Dembicki documents how oil industry executives willfully ignored the findings of their own scientists, then spent nearly thirty years sowing confusion in order to paralyze public debate… Read this book on the power of lies and scream.”
The Petroleum Papers is published in partnership with the David Suzuki Institute.
Free. Stop by from 5.30pm onwards. Light remarks at 6pm, followed by book signings.
Enjoy food, drinks and good company until 10pm that evening.
MORE ABOUT THE PETROLEUM PAPERS
Drawing from hundreds of confidential oil industry documents spanning decades, this explosive work of investigative reporting reveals for the first time the far-right conspiracy that’s stopped the world from preventing the climate crisis.
In The Petroleum Papers, investigative journalist Geoff Dembicki tells the story of how the American oil companies that founded the tar sands in Alberta, Canada—home to the third-biggest oil reserves on the planet—ignored warnings about climate devastation as early as 1959. Instead of alerting the world to act on this impending global disaster, Exxon, Koch Industries, Shell and others created ad campaigns saying climate change isn’t real and that alternatives to oil are an economic disaster. These companies built a global right-wing echo chamber to ensure tar sands could keep flowing into the U.S., which helped elect Donald Trump and now leaves the Joe Biden administration with a sprawling climate mess.
But Dembicki also tells the high-stakes stories of people fighting back: the Seattle lawyer who brought Big Tobacco to its knees and is now going after Big Oil, a young Filipino activist who saw her family drown in a climate disaster, and a former engineer at Exxon who was pushed out for asking too many hard questions. With experts now warning we have less than a decade to get global emissions under control, The Petroleum Papers provides a step-by-step account of how we got to this precipice and the politicians and companies who deserve our blame.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Geoff Dembicki is an investigative climate change reporter from Alberta, Canada, home of the largest tar sand deposits in the world. His book Are We Screwed? won the 2018 Green Prize for Sustainable Literature. He is a regular contributor to the Tyee and VICE. He lives in Brooklyn.
ACCESSIBILITY AND LOGISTICS
Please RSVP here, on Eventbrite, so we have a sense of numbers. This event is first come, first served so we recommend arriving around 5.30pm to secure your spot.
This event will be hosted outside rain or shine in order to be Covid safer. You go inside to order beer and non-alcoholic drinks and can order food from the food truck outside. If the weather is cooler, do wear layers. We support wearing masks and maintaining distance when possible.
Washrooms are inside as well. There is a ramp into the building and an accessible washroom on the main floor that includes a baby change table. There is a small upstairs lounge with about 20 stairs and a handrail and another washroom that is not wheelchair accessible.
For noise sensitivity, this is a reasonably quiet area, with busier streets about a block away.
There are several six-person picnic tables with umbrellas for seating. If you require seating, we advise you to bring your own camping chair as there will be more guests than seats.
Container Brewing is located in ‘Yeast Van’ a block or so away from the intersection of Hastings and Clark Dr. There is street parking in this quiet warehouse district and the area is serviced by transit that runs down Hastings and Cordova/Powell Street including the 04, 07, R5, 14 and 20 busses.
Excited about the food and drink menu available for purchase or checking for food sensitivity? Find Container’s website here (https://www.drinkcontainer.beer/our-beers) and the food truck Burdy’s menu here (https://www.eatburdy.ca/). Non-alcoholic offerings available from Not Too Sweet Craft Sodas.
If you require other accessibility that is not listed here, please email ecooper@thetyee.ca and Em will respond to see if we can meet your needs.
If you are unable to attend on this date, you are in luck as there is a VPL talk featuring Geoff the next evening at the central library.
This event is based in what is commonly known as Vancouver, British Columbia, on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and Sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh) nations.
