Welcome to Carbon Cowboys | From Drilled

Award-winning climate journalist Amy Westervelt returns with a new season of Drilled, her podcast about the deception, disinformation, and power structures keeping real climate solutions out of reach. In September 2025, a group of Brazilian ministers trekked all the way to chilly North Dakota to see a presentation on a new type of clean energy project, one that promised to help them deliver Brazilian President Lula’s dream of turning Brazil into “the Saudi Arabia of sustainable aviation fuels.” It was the latest in a string of projects from Midwest Republican kingmaker and corn ethanol magnate Bruce Rastetter, whose investments in Brazil might just transform him into a global carbon czar, even as his Summit pipeline carbon project faces fierce opposition from Iowa to North Dakota. The problem? It requires a ton of land and does nothing for climate change.The Outlaw Ocean takes you into the murky, underreported systems at sea. Drilled’s ambitious reporting does something similar, tracking complex web of political influence and corporate power to see who benefits, who pays the costs, and whether climate solutions hold up under scrutiny.Here’s episode 1 of Drilled: Carbon Cowboys. Find Drilled wherever you get podcasts and hear episodes early and ad-free with a Pushkin+ subscription. Sign up on the Drilled show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm/plus.