Given the past week of pure heat, many of us – perhaps more than ever before – have the state of the world’s climate on our minds.

While it’s been nice to bask in the sun for the past few days, the heatwaves we’re experiencing are at an all-time high, and with news that this could very well be the coldest summer for the rest of our lives, climate change is a topic we’re discussing now more than ever.

So, it’s especially pertinent that, as part of its This World series, the BBC has brought us a new documentary all about the big oil industry and its impact on the climate. Big Oil Vs The World extends across three episodes and, after the first episode aired last night (Thursday 21 July), viewers were quick to hail it as one of the most important watches of the year.

Each episode homes in on how the oil industry created a sense of doubt around the science of climate change that led to the devastating consequences we’re living through today. The episodes are aptly entitled Denial, Doubt and Delay. 

The three-part documentary features never-before-seen documents, exclusive interviews with those in the industry and testimony from leading scientists, politicians and CEOs.

Part one is based on a year of investigative research and, according to the BBC, it tells the story of what the fossil fuel industry knew about climate change more than four decades ago, unveiling a complex campaign of media spin and political lobbying to spread scepticism around climate change.

In the film, scientists who worked for Exxon, the biggest oil company in the world, reveal the warnings they sounded in the 70s and early 80s about how fossil fuels would cause climate change – with potentially catastrophic effects. 

In the second episode, as well as uncovering a lot about how the oil industry continued to block action to tackle climate change, we also hear from George W Bush’s former environment chief, Christine Todd Whitman, about how the industry successfully lobbied President Bush to reverse course on his campaign promise to regulate carbon emissions.

We hear about the blocking of climate change legislation plans, the Obama leadership and how climate change denial became a main driving force in the US Republican party.

In the third and final episode, the information becomes all the more vital as the timeline creeps closer to where we’re at now. As the synopsis states, it explores “how the 2010s became another lost decade in the fight against climate change”. Fracking is explored and how the original engineer that developed the technique came to regret his work once he realised that gas could be even worse for climate change than oil or coal. 

Ultimately, we come to learn how these big oil companies are being held to account and the multiple lawsuits that are being brought against them in US courts.

The documentary may be an informative one, but there’s no denying that it’s hard to watch at times, not least because we’re in the midst of a summer that is a direct result of the climate chaos around us. As the synopsis for the documentary outlines: “2022 is set to be a year of unprecedented climate chaos across the planet” but it’s more important than ever to understand just how we got here – something that Big Oil Vs The World does very well at outlining for viewers.

Big Oil Vs The World is available to watch on BBC iPlayer, with the second episode airing next Thursday 28 July on BBC Two at 9pm. 

Images: BBC