The Carbon Gold Rush (bonus episode from "Drilled")
How We Survive
Marketplace
4.8 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 13 May 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, we’re sharing an episode of another podcast we like — from another journalist named Amy.
Award-winning climate journalist Amy Westervelt returns with a new season of Drilled, a true-crime podcast about the deception, disinformation, and power structures standing between us and real climate solutions.
This season is called “Carbon Cowboys,” and exposes how Republican corn ethanol mogul Bruce Rastetter sold his “sustainable aviation fuel” to world leaders, from North Dakota to Brazil.
The problem? His “clean energy” project does nothing to help climate change.
“Drilled: Carbon Cowboys” follows the land grabs, pipelines, and political power stopping real progress from being made.
Here’s episode one.
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.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, everyone, Amy here. This week, we're handing the feed over to another journalist named Amy. Amy Westervelt, whose show Drilled is a true crime podcast about the deception, disinformation, and power structures standing between us and real climate solutions. This season, her team has been reporting across the globe from the American |
| 0:22.4 | Midwest to Brazil. We think you'll enjoy it. |
| 0:30.5 | In early September 2025, a handful of Brazilian government officials headed to North Dakota on a mission. |
| 0:40.3 | It was a technical mission. They were there to see a shiny new green technology in action. |
| 0:47.3 | The idea behind this new technology was simple. When you turn corn into ethanol, it generates carbon dioxide. And that's a problem |
| 0:56.9 | if you're trying to be a green fuel. But now, people from Iowa to North Dakota were capturing |
| 1:03.6 | that carbon dioxide, storing it, and selling it. Never mind that they were selling it to people |
| 1:10.4 | who would inject it underground to get |
| 1:12.7 | more oil out. Some of it would surely still stay underground and if you tilted your head and |
| 1:18.9 | squinted a bit, that made it a climate solution. The American company selling the Brazilians on this |
| 1:26.6 | idea had a lot writing on these officials believing that carbon capture connected to ethanol was a great green success story. |
| 1:36.0 | Win-win for industry and the environment. |
| 1:38.5 | An American dream they could take home to Brazil. |
| 1:41.8 | But had the visiting bureaucrats scan the local newspapers, they might have found |
| 1:46.2 | a different story. If you live in Iowa, your land, your water, and your voice could all be at |
| 1:52.6 | risk thanks to a man named Bruce Rastetter. You know, essentially paying him to capture CO2 at ethanol plants and then shipping it across private land |
| 2:05.8 | and public land and then disposing of it somewhere many states away. |
| 2:12.4 | On September 2nd, the Brazilian contingent met with an Iowa company called Summit Carbon Solutions. |
| 2:19.0 | Summit has been trying for years to build a carbon capture pipeline to connect dozens of ethanol |
| 2:24.3 | plants from Iowa to North Dakota. It's called the Midwest Carbon Express Project. |
| 2:35.0 | Harold Hamm, who controls many of North Dakota's oil fields and is an energy advisor to |
| 2:41.0 | President Trump, is a major investor in the company. |
... |
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