The Cost of Silence
Action Campaign

Bringing human health to the center of the fossil-fuel conversation

Problem

The Trump administration has released a 5-Year Offshore Oil Drilling Plan covering the coastlines of California, Alaska, the Arctic, and the East Coast of Florida. If implemented, it would lock the country into fossil-fuel production for decades while exposing coastal communities to chronic and deadly illnesses, harms that have long been concealed from the public.

Recent moves make the threat immediate. The administration has approved the Kaskida project, a British Petroleum drilling development deeper than the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and overridden state rulings in Santa Barbara, restarting offshore operations at the site of a recent disaster. Both decisions disregard serious environmental and health concerns, and with regulations and oversight agencies being dismantled, a repeat disaster along the Gulf or California coast could be catastrophic.

Solution

A self-reinforcing network of empowered communities engaged in sustained and measurable civic action, centered on public health and environmental protection. The Cost of Silence Campaign combines investigative documentary film, community film screenings and action forums, with a custom-built impact technology platform designed to amplify and sustain long-term civic engagement. The result is a unified national response focused on the health risks of offshore oil operations.

The Film

Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, The Cost of Silence is a decade-long investigative documentary made by an oil industry insider that exposes the long-term health impacts of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster and the systematic efforts to conceal them. This coordinated cover-up established a dangerous global precedent for all spill responses and paved the way for the Trump administration's 2025 proposal for the most extensive offshore leasing plan in decades. The film gives people the inspiration to act and the credible information they need to make informed decisions about protecting their environment, communities, and families.

Watch The Cost of Silence film trailer here.

Screenings and Forums

Campaign action forums and screening events bring together medical professionals, scientists, legal experts, and community leaders to focus on health risks, exposure pathways, and medical documentation strategies, creating a powerful community defense mechanism that increases the legal and economic accountability oil companies face for related illnesses. The campaign is currently being piloted on the ground in Santa Barbara, where engagement functions and participation models are being tested and refined for deployment across California, Alaska, Florida, and nationally.

The Engagement Technology Platform

Audiences are directed from events, screenings and online social campaigns to the engagement platform linking community members, cities and regions into shared engagement networks with local, regional, and national CTAs. Users have immediate access to timely, location-specific actions based on evolving conditions. Actions and information update as court rulings, federal decisions, comment periods, and frontline needs change.

Health Mapping Tools

ENGAGESTREAM also supports community reporting and health-related data collection tools that help surface heat maps of emerging exposure concerns and strengthen legal and economic accountability. These maps help frontline groups coordinate responses, draw policy attention, and give agency to communities and individuals fighting large corporate power.

Long-term Impact

The engagement infrastructure allows the campaign to sustain participation across a multi-year federal decision-making period. In addition to the national tour, the campaign generates a lasting civic engagement infrastructure that amplifies impact across films, issues, and NGOs. This scalable system remains in place, enabling filmmakers, communities, audiences, and partner organizations to stay connected, access real-time information, share knowledge, and collaborate on coordinated actions long after the campaign concludes.

Team

This project is led by ConceptionMedia, a mission-driven impact studio of award-winning filmmakers, media strategists, and social-impact specialists. ENGAGESTREAM, a media-to-action impact platform, will be contracted to provide impact-engagement technology. ConceptionMedia Team | ENGAGESTREAM Team

A detailed project overview is available on request.