The Global Story: The oil lobbyist who tried to sink the first big climate deal
Global News Podcast
BBC
4.2 • 7.8K Ratings
🗓️ 23 November 2025
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The American lawyer, oil lobbyist and master strategist Don Pearlman is said to have chain-smoked his way through almost every UN climate gathering from the early 1990s until his death in 2005. Some of those who saw Pearlman operate in Kyoto, where the first legally binding international agreement on climate change was agreed in 1997, say he created the playbook for stalling climate talks. The Kyoto protocol was never ratified by the United States, and Pearlman is now the subject of a major play, Kyoto, which has just transferred from London to the Lincoln Center in New York. As the COP30 climate summit takes place in Brazil, we speak to BBC climate journalist Jordan Dunbar, who’s been trying to piece together the true story of the man once nicknamed ‘the high priest of the carbon club’.
With Asma Khalid in DC, Tristan Redman in London, and the backing of the BBC’s international newsroom, The Global Story brings clarity to politics, business and foreign policy in a time of connection and disruption. For more episodes, just search 'The Global Story' wherever you get your BBC Podcasts.
Producers: Aron Keller and Cat Farnsworth Executive producer: James Shield Mix: Travis Evans Senior news editor: China Collins Photo: Don Pearlman at the Kyoto summit / BBC.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:05.7 | Hey there, I'm Asma Khalid. |
| 0:07.9 | And I'm Tristan Redmond, and we're here with a bonus episode for you from the Global Story podcast. |
| 0:13.1 | The world order is shifting. Old alliances are fraying and new ones are emerging. Some of this |
| 0:19.7 | turbulence can be traced to decisions made in the United States. |
| 0:23.4 | But the U.S. isn't just a cause of the upheaval. |
| 0:26.7 | Its politics are also a symptom of it. |
| 0:29.8 | Every day we focus on one story, looking at how America and the world shape each other. |
| 0:35.0 | So we hope you enjoy this episode. |
| 0:37.1 | And to find more of our show, just search for the global story wherever you get your BBC podcasts. |
| 0:46.9 | The big annual climate conference known as COP is happening in Brazil right now. |
| 0:52.0 | And what you might not know about these talks is that everybody has to agree to everything. |
| 0:56.4 | They run on complete consensus, which frankly does not seem that simple when I think of how |
| 1:01.5 | my family can't even agree on what to eat for dinner. |
| 1:05.8 | But what happens if someone around the table doesn't want there to be an agreement at all? |
| 1:11.8 | Someone who's at the table precisely to be a spoiler. That's what happened right at the beginning of these |
| 1:17.9 | climate meetings back in the 90s. And it set the tone for the summits that followed. It's why |
| 1:24.0 | you might roll your eyes when you hear about a climate summit these days and assume that nothing will be agreed. |
| 1:30.2 | From the BBC, I'm Tristan Redmond in London. |
| 1:33.4 | And I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. |
| 1:35.6 | And today on the global story, |
| 1:37.7 | how an American oil lobbyist invented the playbook |
... |
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