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Next month, investigative climate journalist Amy Westervelt, who hosts Drilled, the most-downloaded climate podcast, and Rigged, exposing the history of disinformation, will launch a new podcast: Damages.
Damages is a courtroom drama that follows the hundreds of climate lawsuits currently active all over the world. It’s a show about the quest for justice and a crime against humanity: the climate crisis. The show will cover a wide variety of cases, from fraud and liability suits against the oil companies to claims against governments all over the world for their failure to protect citizens’ rights to a healthy environment.
The first season, which begins February 17, explores “rights-of-nature” laws, which bring Indigenous approaches to nature into Western judicial systems by giving ecosystems the same rights that individuals have. If a corporation can be treated as a person, why can’t a lake? Westervelt uses original reporting and interviews to unpack a series of fascinating climate cases that could have major legal implications in the fight to save life on Earth, from wild rice suing the state of Minnesota over a pipeline permit to a cloud forest suing the government of Ecuador over mining.
Listen to the Damages trailer here or on any podcast app. Let me know if you’d like an advance listen to the first couple episodes.