The Global Story - The oil lobbyist who tried to sink the first big climate deal
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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’.
Producers: Aron Keller and Cat Farnsworth
Eexecutive producer: James Shield
Mix: Travis Evans
Senior news editor: China Collins
Photo: Don Pearlman at the Kyoto summit / BBC.
Published on Wednesday, 19th November 2025.
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