Antonia Juhasz
  • Author
  • Investigative Journalist
  • Analyst

About

Antonia Juhasz is a leading energy and climate author and investigative journalist. She is the Senior Researcher on Fossil Fuels in the Environment and Human Rights Division of Human Rights Watch. An award-winning writer, her bylines include Rolling Stone, Harper’s Magazine, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, CNN.com, The Nation, Ms., The Advocate, The Guardian, and many more. Antonia is the author of three books: Black Tide (2011), The Tyranny of Oil (2008), and The Bush Agenda (2006).

Antonia was an adjunct lecturer at Tulane University in New Orleans where she received the Monroe Fellowship from the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South to conduct research and writing for a forthcoming book. She is a 2020-2021 Bertha Fellow in Investigative Journalism. She joined a team of international journalists investigating climate change, fossil fuels, and corporate power.

Antonia is a 2019/2020 Ted Scripps Fellow at the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder.  She is a 2017 Yale University Poynter Fellow in Journalism and a 2013 Investigative Journalism Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. She holds a Masters Degree in Public Policy from Georgetown University and a Bachelors Degree in Public Policy from Brown University. Antonia founded and runs the (Un)Covering Oil Investigative Reporting Program with fiscal sponsor, the Society of Environmental Journalists.

Antonia’s investigations follow the trail of oil as it seeps into virtually every corner of human existence from climate change to the environment, politics to economics, public health to human rights, and from war to peace. Reporting from the frontlines of fossil fuels and the climate crisis, her investigations have taken her a mile below the ocean surface in the Gulf of Mexico to the rainforests of the Ecuadoran Amazon, from the deserts of Afghanistan to the fracking fields of North Dakota, from the Alaskan Arctic to the oiled beaches of Santa Barbara, and many more places in between. Her writing highlights women and girls of color, as their stories are least often told. Antonia’s photographs regularly accompany her articles.

A sought-after public speaker, her recent appearances include the New York Museum of Modern Art, TED.COM, Yale University, the Women’s Assembly for Climate Justice of the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network International, the Peoples’ Tribunal on Hurricane Harvey Recovery in Houston, and The Nobel Women’s Initiative 2017 International Conference, “A Global Feminist Resistance” in Germany.

In 2020, with a grant from the Society of Environmental Journalists, Antonia launched a special series, (Un)Covering Oil with Antonia Juhasz, which aired monthly on KGNU radio in Colorado.

Her 15-month investigation, “Death on the Dakota Access,” ran as a 12-page print feature in Pacific Standard Magazine and was named to its list of The Best Stories of 2018, it was part of a series of articles reporting from Standing Rock on the Dakota Access Pipeline. She completed a series of six articles for Newsweek on the UN Paris climate talks, reporting from Alaska, North Dakota and Paris.

She has written several magazine cover articles and her work has appeared in numerous publications, including: Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, CNN.com, The Nation, Ms. Magazine, The Advocate, New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, Petroleum Review Magazine, Washington Post, Roll Call, The Daily Mirror – Zimbabwe, The Star – Johannesburg, Grist, Pacific Standard Magazine, Cambridge University Review of International Relations Journal, Tikkun, LeftTurn, and more.

Her Harper’s Magazine feature article, “30 Million Gallons Under the Sea,” was a finalist for the 2015 Reed Environmental Writing Award and appears in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2016 Anthology and the The Gulf South: An Anthology of Environmental Writing by The University Press of Florida. Antonia contributed the essay, “Oil and Water” to Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas, Rebecca Solnit & Rebecca Snedaker, editors.

Her Advocate Magazine cover article,“What’s Wrong with Exxon?” was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award, Outstanding Magazine Article 2013.

Antonia was a 2012-2013 Investigative Journalism Fellow at the Investigative Reporting Program, a working news room at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. She traveled to Afghanistan and Tajikistan, investigating the role of oil and natural gas in the Afghanistan war reporting for The Atlantic and Harper’s Magazine.

In 2012, she received funding from The Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute to conduct two on-the-ground investigations into the ongoing impacts of the BP Gulf oil spill.

Antonia is the author of BLACK TIDE: the Devastating Impact of the Gulf Oil Spill (Wiley 2011), a searing look at the human face of BP’s disaster the Gulf. An in-depth investigation into the causes and consequences of the largest offshore drilling oil spill in world history. It uncovers the public policy choices that enabled the disaster to take place and the obstacles that have prevented the best policy responses from occurring. Black Tide includes first-hand interviews with key actors in government, industry, and advocacy organizations. Juhasz reports from the front lines where she was embedded in those communities most impacted by the disaster.

“It’s hard to imagine a better person to turn loose on this epochal disaster than Antonia Juhasz, with her compassionate heart, vivid prose, and rich expertise in both oil and economic policy… It’s not just a book about disaster: it’s a series of encounters with real people, from oceanographers to oyster shuckers, striving to make things right. Black Tide is riveting, infuriating, and incredibly important to understand the places, politics, and people who survived the Gulf oil disaster.” –Rebecca Solnit.

These remarkable stories—of loss, heroism, and culpability—are a vivid reminder that this catastrophe will be with us for decades.” -Naomi Klein.

Masterfully reported.” -Ms. Magazine.

Both engaging and informative.” -Mother Jones.

Antonia is the author of THE TYRANNY OF OIL: the World’s Most Powerful Industry–And What We Must Do To Stop It (HarperCollins 2008), for which she received the 2009 San Francisco Library Laureate Award. Described as “A worthy successor to ‘The Prize’… A riveting read with a bold blueprint for ending the madness,” by former California EPA Secretary, Terry Tamminen, Tyranny provides the hardest-hitting exposé of the oil industry in decades, answering today’s most pressing energy questions. Juhasz blends history, original investigative research and reporting, candid interviews with key insiders, and a unique focus on activism with a host of real-world policy solutions. Juhasz “reminds us that those who don’t learn the lessons of history are fated to repeat its mistakes.” – USA Today. “Part homage to 150 years of anti-monopoly muckraking and trust-busting and part signpost to where the leading edge of the environmental and social activist movements are headed.” – The Toronto Star. “A brave, groundbreaking case study…. A good first step toward true energy independence is to read this insightful book.” – The Christian Science Monitor. “Well-written…. presciently criticizes the weak oversight of the oil futures market.” – The Washington Post.

Antonia is also author of THE BUSH AGENDA: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time (HarperCollins 2006). The Bush Agenda exposes the Bush administration’s use of corporate globalization policy as a weapon of war. Juhasz uncovers the history and key role of U.S. corporations in the creation of the Bush agenda, focusing on Bechtel, Lockheed Martin, Chevron, and Halliburton. Presenting the Iraq War as the most brutal application of the Bush agenda, Juhasz reveals the “oil time-line” driving the war, and the costs and consequences of the administration’s attempt to fundamentally transform Iraq’s economy. Juhasz concludes with specific achievable alternatives for a more peaceful and sustainable course.”A meticulous expose of corporate America’s intentions in the Gulf.” – The Organizer-India. “One of the crispest, most insightful books yet to expose the Bush regime.” – The Georgia Straight, Canada. “Lucid, fact-filled and non-rhetorical.” – The North Bay Bohemian. “Spine tingling.” – The Ecologist Magazine.

Juhasz has contributed chapters and essays to nine additional books, including, “Defeating the Fossil Fuel Industry,” in Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua’s Not Too Late:Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility; “Spill” in Fueling Culture: Energy, History, Politics; “Oil and Water,” in Rebecca Solnit and Rebecca Snedeker’s Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas; “Global Water Wars” in Paradigm Wars: Indigenous Peoples’ Resistance to Globalization; and as a coauthor of Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World is Possible.

Juhasz is a frequent media commentator. She is a “Big Thinker” featured in the second season of National Geographic’s hit TV series, MARS, executive produced by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer and was featured in the CNBC documentary, “The Hunt for Black Gold.” She has appeared on TV programs, including NBC Today, BBC Breakfast and World News, Fox Business Hour, C-Span Book-TV and Washington Journal, TVOntario Allen Gregg in Conversation, CBC The Hour, as a regular guest on Democracy Now! and regional, state, and local television news programs for ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC, among others.

National radio programs include: Bloomberg Radio News, BBC programs, including World News, Wake up to Money, News Hour, and Today Programme; National Public Radio programs, including Fresh Air with Terry Gross, Here’s the Thing with Alec Baldwin, Market Place, The Diane Rehm Show, and Talk of the Nation; regular guest on Democracy Now!; SiriusXM Radio Stand Up! with Pete Dominick and The Power; CBC As It Happens; among others.

Regional and local radio programs include a wide variety of local CBS, ABC, NPR, BBC, and Canadian stations, including CBS’s WZLX Common Ground and KHOW The Peter Boyles Show, ABC’s WOR The John Gambling Show and KGO’s Ronn Owens and Pat Thurston Shows; local NPR shows include WBEZ World View, WNYC The Brian Lehrer and The Lenny Lopate Shows, WNPR The Faith Middleton Show; KQED Forum with Michael Krasny; KUOW Weekday with Steven Scher; KALW Your Call with Rose Aguilar; KCRW To the Point with Warren Olney; WBUR On Point with Tom Ashbrook, KNPR State of Nevada, KPCW Midday Utah, WPR At Issue with Ben Merens and Conversations with Joy Cardin, and WYPR Marc Steiner Show, among others. I am a frequent guest on a wide variety of Pacifica and community radio stations across the U.S., including KPFA’s UpFront with Brian Edwards-Tiekert and KPFK’s Rising Up with Sonali Kolhatkar.

Juhasz regularly provides talks and lectures at colleges, universities, book stores, and other public fora across the U.S. and around the world on a wide range of topics including investigative and environmental journalism, climate change, and an array of oil and energy topics. For example, since 2013, she has provided a twice-yearly lecture on “The Political Economy of Oil” to the International Honors Program, School for International Training Abroad Climate Change Program.

Antonia is a Board Member of Amazon Watch, a non-profit organization devoted to preserving the Amazon Rainforest and advocating for the rights of the Indigenous peoples who live in the Amazon Basin. Amazon Watch works to partner with Indigenous and environmental organizations to campaign for “human rights, corporate accountability, and the preservation of the Amazon’s ecological systems.”

Juhasz served on the National Advisory Committee of Iraq Veterans Against the War and was on the Board of Directors of Coffee Strong. Juhasz was an associate fellow with the Institute for Policy Studies and was a senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy In Focus. She founded the Energy Program at Global Exchange, a human rights non-profit organization, and directed the program from 2009 to 2011. She was the Project Director of the International Forum on Globalization, called “One of the most serious and respected groups of experts dedicated to analyzing and generating alternative proposals to the prevailing economic model promoted by international financial agencies,” by La Jornada of Mexico.

Juhasz worked as a Legislative Assistant in Washington, D.C. for two U.S. Members of Congress – John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) and Elijah E. Cummings (D-MD).

Antonia was proud to provide testimony at the Iraq Veterans Against the War–Winter Soldier:Iraq & Afghanistan in Silver Spring, Maryland in March 2008; at the Citizens Hearing on the Legality of U.S. Actions in Iraq in support of Lt. Ehren Watada in Tacoma, Washington in January 2007; and to the New York Session of the World Tribunal on Iraq in May 2004 on the economic invasion of Iraq by the United States.

In 2008, New Jersey Peace Action awarded Juhasz the Lou Kousin Award for “Dedication to Peace.” Peace Action named Juhasz to the Women Peacemakers Honor Roll, “For women who have made a unique and lasting contribution to work for peace and justice in the world” in 2007. She won a 2004 Project Censored award for her article, “Ambitions of Empire: the Radical Reconstruction of Iraq’s Economy,” in LeftTurn magazine. In 2004, she was awarded “The Sentinel” by the Nevada Alliance for Workers Rights, “For those who have engaged in a lifelong activism.”