Election emotions + how a former ExxonMobil employee confronted the climate disinformation machine

A conversation between journalist Matthew Green and former fossil fuel industry insider Lindsey Gulden

The re-election of Donald Trump is being carved into many environmentalists’ hearts as as a possible death knell for American climate action over these next 4 crucial years, when we’ll be designing the future temperature niche for humanity. But with COP29 right around the corner, we can’t let one country’s transition of power slow momentum or dampen the collective will for transformative action and harm reduction. If you’ve been feeling despair, remember that we have the power to get curious about that feeling rather than judgmental, so it can show up in ways where we don’t get hijacked by it. If our despair is validated and understood, it can loosen its vice grip and graciously move over to share its seat, making space for more generative co-occurring responses like creativity, love, courage, anger, and that unmistakable feeling of aliveness. If what you’re feeling is grief, well, I feel that too.

The promise of descent is that when we’re down, we build new foundations from which to rise up. So we thought that shining a spotlight this week on one woman’s story of moral clarity and courage would be a nice reminder of how we can always strengthen the parts of ourselves that are the living embodiment of a “culture of care”, that help us take responsibility in life, in order to act on behalf of life.

An industry insider turned whistleblower

This week we handed the reins to Matthew Green, global investigations editor at DeSmog and co-host of the Pocket Project’s Climate Consciousness Summit 2024 that’s happening November 15th-21st. The intention of this year's summit is to deepen the climate movement’s ability to process and integrate individual, intergenerational, and collective trauma. It’s a mission closely aligned with ours—acknowledging that reckoning with the climate crisis isn’t just an environmental challenge but a deeply psycho-social-spiritual one, requiring spaces that allow us to metabolize difficult emotions and build transformative resilience. 

For the summit, Matthew interviewed Lindsey Gulden, a climate scientist, who spent more than a decade working as a data scientist for ExxonMobil until she was fired in 2020 after internally reporting an alleged fraud. (ExxonMobil says her termination was unrelated). That experience prompted her to ask deeper questions about the oil and gas company’s assurances to staff that it is committed to playing a leading role in the energy transition. Her history at ExxonMobil has also left her with a sense of responsibility for speaking out about the dangers posed by fossil fuels, and the “false solutions” promoted by oil and gas companies, such as carbon capture and fossil-based hydrogen. 

Gulden is a native of a small town in the industrial Midwest and has aPh.D. in Climate Science from the University of Texas at Austin. More recently, she’s been employed as a data scientist working in climate-tech startups, while advocating for corporate accountability and true, equitable climate solutions. 

Gulden is suing ExxonMobil for unlawful termination. The company has rejected Gulden’s claims that fraud was committed at the company or that she was fired for reporting fraud. 

“Gulden’s termination had absolutely nothing to do with any complaint of fraud,” said Gentry Brann, ExxonMobil’s global head of communications, public and government affairs. “In fact, those involved in the decision to terminate Gulden had no knowledge she ever made such a complaint.”

Design by Gen Dread.

Here is Matthew Greene’s interview with Lindsey Gulden:

Why did you decide to take on the task of tackling oil industry disinformation?

It was after I was fired for reporting a garden variety fraud that I really sat back and thought about the implications for climate change. 

It occurred to me in pretty stark terms that if ExxonMobil is willing to lie about garden variety fraud – if they're willing to defraud investors and shareholders in a setting which is very well regulated and audited, and then they're willing to go ahead and violate a few more laws by firing the people who told them to stop violating laws, again in violation of of pretty clear statutes – that there was really nothing that would stop executives from lying about the energy transition, which is an existential threat to their traditional bottom line.

And I recognized that I had to stand up and confront the industry on that.

To have transitioned from working in a well-paid job in a big company to being a whistleblower can't have been easy?

When you look in my high school yearbook, the little tagline underneath my name is not ‘most likely to be fired by a Fortune 500 company.’ So it really wasn't in my life plan. That is true, but to be honest with you, I don't think of myself as an outsider. And at the time, and even when I was working at ExxonMobil, I thought of myself as a climate advocate.

Continuing to this day, I continue to be an energy industry insider. I continue to be a climate advocate. It's just that the situation has called on me to do something different than what I was expecting.

What has been the most challenging part?

The recognition of the depth of the problem. My skepticism about whether ExxonMobil was actually sincere in their desire to be part of the energy transition grew throughout my tenure there. I recognized that the upper level executives were willing to be fundamentally dishonest in pursuit of profit.

I started to look in more detail, and with a more questioning mind toward the company line on climate change. So I started to look at what they were saying about carbon capture and storage – which is a scam that will delay the energy transition and actually increase carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. What they were saying about hydrogen when it's produced from methane, is also a way to perpetuate fossil fuels.

I started to look at the scale of the disinformation campaign that is being waged by ExxonMobil and other oil and gas majors.

I mean, they have here in the U.S. $1 billion lobbying of the U.S. federal government, and they target state governments. They have massive PR campaigns that shift the public's perception. They fund universities, they fund national labs. The scale of the disinformation campaign is staggering and for me, the most challenging thing is to recognize the size of the problem, and the head-start that the oil industry has.

And I feel basically that now I just can't look away.

Did you feel complicit in the climate crisis, by virtue of having worked in the oil industry?

Here's the thing: I, by definition, am complicit. I tell people I have a degree in climate science, and I worked for ExxonMobil, and people just look at me with: “I'm sorry I don't understand.”

And so, by definition, the fact that I was working to enable the oil industry means that I was working to enable what they are doing to society.

I am complicit. I am the perpetrator, and the perpetrator looks like me. 

I feel like because I am complicit, I have responsibility. And I have more responsibility, knowing what I do about the inside of the oil industry, knowing what I do about climate change, and the existential threat that it poses to us, to our children and to our grandchildren. I have much more responsibility than the average person to stand up and speak.

You can't go backward. You can only go forward, and so I feel duty bound to do what I can to pivot our societal response to this huge challenge.

It's unusual to hear somebody describing themselves as a perpetrator, and I wonder how that identity as a perpetrator lives in you?

I am both a perpetrator and a moral human being. So the question is, what do I do with my knowledge? I made choices that I – in retrospect – would not have made. But I am here now. And I have an obligation. So that's why I am working to hold ExxonMobil to account to abide by the basic rule of law. 

It's actually also why I feel that because of my insider status, I have to be louder about what I know in both my identity as a climate advocate and an energy industry insider. I am obligated to point out to industry insiders and the public alike how oil executives are hoodwinking us all. That the public must stand up and demand that democratic institutions corral the oil industry, hold them to account, and take extremely strong action to get society to stop using fossil fuels as quickly as possible.

Are there many others who are on the verge of walking away from oil companies and taking on the kind of advocacy role that you've adopted?

ExxonMobil, for instance, is a very nice place to work. You have all sorts of friendly colleagues, people you trust with your children. They're people who are fun to work with: not a bad place to be. 

They're the people who care – or at least a large fraction of them care – about the climate crisis, and, like me, have adopted the belief that they are able to help combat the climate crisis from their position at ExxonMobil. And so they sort of take the message that is given to them by the internal PR of the oil industry.

And the fact that I was fired has a chilling effect on people who internally recognize: ‘Hey, wait a minute – we're actually damaging our community, we're damaging the common good.’ 

They can stand up and say ‘we should stop this’. But at the moment, there's not a whole lot of support for that.

It's very powerful to hear you speaking about the internal PR in these companies. Is that compartmentalization – or that disavowal as it's sometimes called – part of the story, do you think?

It's ‘a banality of evil’ sort of situation. The internal narrative is something to the effect of ‘climate change is a big problem, and we know how to do big things. We’re an engineering company. We have undertaken massive capital projects. We understand the industry, we understand the issue, and we are up to the challenge of tackling climate change.’ 

It is reasonable to assume that even though it's not your job the company is doing something, and that's just not true.

Was there a specific moment when you concluded that the narrative wasn’t true? 

A close contact of mine internally was a very strong voice toward ExxonMobil taking on a more honest role in the climate crisis. And the moment that I realized ‘oh, dear, I'm not working for the right side’ was when this close contact told me they'd been effectively forced to resign because of their outspokenness. Not because of their job performance, which was always excellent, but rather because they had dared to stand up and say, ‘what we are doing is wrong.’

A light bulb went off in my head. Suddenly, things were not as they seemed. It was one of those, ‘Oh, I've really misjudged this,’ as if you've just been slapped in the face like: ‘Whoa, okay, what was that?’

And so my understanding of the problem itself has not changed. My terror with respect to the prospect of providing my daughter with a world in which civil society collapses has not changed. What has changed is my understanding of what we are up against in the form of the massive energy industry-funded disinformation campaign, and the scale and the scope and the power of that industry, and the seeming inability of democratic governments to hold them to account.

That's the thing that really changed, and that's the thing that kind of keeps me up at night.

I believed – I truly, honestly believed – that because I was with good people, people that you trust your kids with, I kind of assumed that everyone operating in ExxonMobil was working with the same concern for the environment, the same desire to tackle climate change.

So I did not see the truth of what is actually going on: fossil fuel companies becoming massive disinformation propagators.

Did you feel you reclaimed some more authentic part of yourself by becoming a climate advocate? Or did you feel happier before you made that leap?

I mean, ignorance is bliss, and being your authentic self is also worthwhile. I'm very much an in-the-present person. And so, knowing what I know now, I can't suddenly claim ignorance.

If you know, and you see right and wrong, you have to walk the path you know is best. And once you've stopped fooling yourself, you can't put the veil back on. So moving forward is the only thing we can do.

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We’d like to offer a heartfelt thanks to both Matthew and Lindsey for sharing this powerful story, and for their commitment to exposing the truth. Their voices amplify the urgent need to dismantle fossil fuel propaganda and mobilize collective action against climate disinformation. To watch a video of their conversation, and for more insightful conversations like this, check out the Climate Consciousness Summit 2024, where leaders, thinkers, and advocates will gather to envision a resilient future. You can follow Matthew’s writing on the intersection between the climate crisis and collective trauma in his newsletter Resonant World.

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A note about Making Waves

For several years now, we’ve offered our Making Waves section as a bulletin board to share other people’s projects in the climate psychology space that are aligned with our values. Due to limited bandwidth, this isn’t sustainable for us any longer. Moving forward we will focus on news and updates about projects we’re working on and ways for you to become involved in what we’re building. We’re grateful for your understanding. More on that to come!

‘Till next time,

<3 Britt + Gen Dread