Journalist Royce Kurmelovs has written several business-focused books, including a well-received account of the end of Australia’s iconic Holden cars (The Death of Holden, 2016) and a partly personal analysis of the social costs of ubiquitous indebtedness (Just Money, 2020).

In Slick, Kurmelovs focuses on how, in the pursuit of personal enrichment, the leaders of Australia’s oil and gas businesses have put profits ahead of the environment, along with all the things the environment supports: personal well-being; the non-oil parts of the economy; and society as a whole. The ‘oilmen’ did this in full knowledge of the climatic dangers of burning petrol and gas. The science of the greenhouse effect was well understood as early as the nineteenth century, and there were a series of warnings right through the twentieth century.