This story was published in partnership with Gen Dread and a video version will be available online on November 16 as part of the Climate Consciousness Summit 2024, staged by the Pocket Project in partnership with DeSmog. 

Lindsey Gulden, a climate scientist, spent more than a decade working as a data scientist for ExxonMobil until she was fired in 2020 after internally reporting an allegedly fraudulent overvaluation of the company’s assets in the Permian Basin, an oil and gas-producing region spanning Texas and New Mexico. (ExxonMobil says her termination was unrelated and denies fraud took place).

That experience prompted her to ask deeper questions about the oil and gas company’s assurances to staff that it is committed to playing a leading role in the energy transition. Her history at ExxonMobil has also left her with a sense of responsibility for speaking out about the dangers posed by fossil fuels, and the “false solutions” promoted by oil and gas companies, such as carbon capture and fossil-based hydrogen. 

Gulden is a native of a small town in the industrial Midwest and has a Ph.D. in Climate Science from the University of Texas at Austin. More recently, she’s been employed as a data scientist working in climate-tech startups, while advocating for corporate accountability and true, equitable climate solutions. 

Gulden is suing ExxonMobil for unlawful termination. The company has rejected Gulden’s claims that fraud was committed at the company or that she was fired for reporting fraud. 

“Gulden’s termination had absolutely nothing to do with any complaint of fraud,” said Gentry Brann, ExxonMobil’s global head of communications, public and government affairs. “In fact, those involved in the decision to terminate Gulden had no knowledge she ever made such a complaint.”

Matthew Green: Why did you decide to take on the task of tackling oil industry disinformation?

Lindsey Gulden: It was after I was fired for reporting a garden variety fraud that I really sat back and thought about the implications for climate change. 

It occurred to me in pretty stark terms that if ExxonMobil is willing to lie about garden variety fraud — if they’re willing to defraud investors and shareholders in a setting which is very well regulated and audited, and then they’re willing to go ahead and violate a few more laws by firing the people who told them to stop violating laws, again in violation of pretty clear statutes — that there was really nothing that would stop executives from lying about the energy transition, which is an existential threat to their traditional bottom line.

And I recognized that I had to stand up and confront the industry on that.

Matthew Green: To have transitioned from working in a well-paid job in a big company to being a whistleblower can’t have been easy?

When you look in my high school yearbook, the tagline underneath my name is not ‘Most likely to be fired by a Fortune 500 company.’ That really wasn’t my life plan. That is true, but to be honest with you, I don’t think of myself as an outsider. And at the time, and even when I was working at ExxonMobil, I thought of myself as a climate advocate.

I continue to be an energy industry insider. I continue to be a climate advocate. It’s just that the situation has called on me to do something different than what I was expecting.

Matthew Green: What has been the most challenging part?

The recognition of the depth of the problem. My skepticism about whether ExxonMobil was actually sincere in their desire to be part of the energy transition grew throughout my tenure there. I recognized that the upper level executives were willing to be fundamentally dishonest in pursuit of profit.

I started to look in more detail, and with a more questioning mind, toward the company line on climate change. I started to look at what they were saying about carbon capture and storage, which is a scam that will delay the energy transition and that actually increases carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. What they were saying about hydrogen when it’s produced from methane, is also a way to perpetuate fossil fuels.

I started to look at the scale of the disinformation campaign that is being waged by ExxonMobil and other oil and gas majors.

Oil and gas companies spend billions lobbying the U.S. federal government, they also are targeting state governments. They have massive PR campaigns that shift the public’s perception. They fund universities; they fund national labs. The scale of the disinformation campaign is staggering and for me, the most challenging thing is to recognize the size of the problem and the head-start that the oil industry has.

I feel that now I just can’t look away.

Matthew Green: Did you feel complicit in the climate crisis, by virtue of having worked in the oil industry?

Here’s the thing: I, by definition, am complicit. I tell people I have a degree in climate science and I worked for ExxonMobil, and people just look at me with, “I’m sorry; I don’t understand.”

By definition, the fact that I was working to enable the oil industry means that I was working to enable what they are doing to society.

I am complicit. I am the perpetrator, and the perpetrator looks like me. 

Because I am complicit, I have responsibility. And I have more responsibility, knowing what I do about the inside of the oil industry, knowing what I do about climate change, and the existential threat that it poses to us, to our children and to our grandchildren. I have much more responsibility than the average person to stand up and speak.

You can’t go backward. You can only go forward, and so I feel duty bound to do what I can to pivot our societal response to this huge challenge.

Matthew Green: It’s unusual to hear somebody describing themselves as a perpetrator, and I wonder how that identity as a perpetrator lives in you?

I am both a perpetrator and a moral human being. So the question is, what do I do with my knowledge? I made choices that I — in retrospect — would not have made. But I am here now. And I have an obligation. So that’s why I am working to hold ExxonMobil to account to abide by the law. 

It’s also why I feel that because of my insider status, I have to be louder about what I know in both my identity as a climate advocate and as an energy industry insider. I am obligated to point out to industry insiders and the public alike how oil executives are hoodwinking us all. That the public must stand up and demand that democratic institutions corral the oil industry, hold them to account, and take extremely strong action to get society to stop using fossil fuels as quickly as possible.

Matthew Green: Are there many others who are on the verge of walking away from oil companies and taking on the kind of advocacy role that you’ve adopted?

ExxonMobil, for instance, is a very nice place to work. You have all sorts of friendly colleagues, people you trust with your children. They’re people who are fun to work with: It’s not a bad place to be day-to-day. 

Rank-and-file employees are people who care — or at least a large fraction of them care — about the climate crisis, and, like me, adopted the belief that they are able to help combat the climate crisis from their position at ExxonMobil. They take the message given to them by the internal PR of the oil industry.

Matthew Green: It’s very powerful to hear you speaking about the internal PR in these companies. Is that compartmentalization — or that disavowal as it’s sometimes called — part of the story, do you think?

It’s ‘a banality of evil’ sort of situation. The internal narrative is something to the effect of, ‘Climate change is a big problem, and we know how to do big things. We’re an engineering company. We have undertaken massive capital projects. We understand the industry, we understand the issue, and we are up to the challenge of tackling climate change.’ 

It is reasonable to assume that even though it’s not your job, someone, somewhere in the company is doing something, but in this case that’s just not true.

Matthew Green: Was there a specific moment when you concluded that the narrative wasn’t true? 

A close contact of mine internally was a very strong voice toward ExxonMobil taking on a more honest role in the climate crisis. The moment that I realized ‘Oh, dear, I’m not working for the right side’ was when this close contact told me they’d been effectively forced to resign because of their outspokenness. Not because of their job performance, which was always excellent, but rather because they had dared to stand up and say, ‘What we are doing is wrong.’

A light bulb went off in my head. Suddenly, things were not as they seemed. It was a ‘I’ve really misjudged this’ moment, as if you’ve just been slapped in the face.

And so my understanding of the problem itself has not changed. My terror with respect to the prospect of providing my daughter with a world in which civil society collapses has not changed. What has changed is my understanding of what we are up against in the form of the massive energy industry-funded disinformation campaign, and the scale and the scope and the power of that industry, and the seeming inability of democratic governments to hold them to account.

Recognizing the scale of the problem is the thing that really changed, and that’s the thing that kind of keeps me up at night.

I believed — I truly, honestly believed — that because I was with good people, people that you trust your kids with, that everyone operating in ExxonMobil was working with the same concern for the environment, the same desire to tackle climate change.

I did not see the truth of what is actually going on: fossil fuel companies are massive disinformation propagators.

Matthew Green: Did you feel you reclaimed some more authentic part of yourself by becoming a climate advocate? Or did you feel happier before you made that leap?

I don’t know the answer. Ignorance is bliss, and being your authentic self is also worthwhile. What I do know is that when you see right and wrong, you have to walk the path you know is best. And once you’ve stopped fooling yourself, you can’t put the veil back on. So moving forward is the only thing we can do.

This interview has been lightedly edited for clarity.

To watch a video of their conversation (available on November 16), and for more conversations like this, register for free for the Climate Consciousness Summit 2024, which brings together leading climate justice advocates and practitioners working to heal individual, inter-generational and collective trauma. You can follow Matthew’s writing on the intersection between the climate crisis and collective trauma in his newsletter Resonant World.