How did the United States become the world's largest oil producer?

This is Climate One, changing the conversation about energy, economy, and the environment.

Climate One conversations with oil companies and environmentalists, Republicans and Democrats,

are recorded before a live audience and hosted by Greg Dalton.

I'm Devin Strolovich.

Production of oil and gas in the United States has surged to levels unthinkable a decade ago

due to the revolution in hydraulic fracturing.

One of the humbling things from me in working on this book

was realizing that anybody who has ever attempted to predict anything

about the future of energy has usually been dead wrong.

Bethany McLean is a writer for Vanity Fair and author of the new book,

Saudi America, The Truth About Fracking and How It's Changing the World.

She's also author of The Smartest Guys in the Room,

a chronicle of the Enron debacle that was made into a documentary film.

In Saudi America, McLean asks what's next for fossil fuels in America and beyond?

The most fundamental issue here is that this is oil and gas that we can't afford to burn.

Cassie Siegel is Senior Counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity, where she advances campaigns

for the reduction of greenhouse gas pollution and the protection of plants and animals threatened

by global warming.

Segal says that new development of fossil fuels is simply incompatible with the math of the

Paris Climate Accord, which aims to limit warming to 1.5 degrees.

Going out to the world and saying we need to immediately stop producing fossil fuels

...