Big Oil v the World S01E03 - Delay

How the 2010s became another lost decade in the fight against climate change – as the move to natural gas delayed a transition to more renewable sources of energy.

Engineer Tony Ingraffea explains how, in the 1980s, he helped develop a new technique for extracting gas and oil from shale rock, which ultimately became known as ‘fracking'. It was to unleash vast new reserves of fossil fuels and promoted as a cleaner energy source. But Ingraffea explains how he later came to regret his work, when he realised that gas could be even worse for climate change than coal and oil.

Dar Lon Chang, a former ExxonMobil engineer, speaks for the first time on camera alleging that as the company increased its natural gas operations, it was not sufficiently monitoring methane leaks that were contributing to climate change. Now, after a year of unprecedented wildfires, drought, and other climate-related disasters, multiple lawsuits are being brought in US courts in efforts to hold Big Oil legally accountable for the climate crisis.