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Claudia Sheinbaum De-Privatizes Two Major Oil And Energy Companies

On October 30, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum made a very clear anti-neoliberal gesture in her morning press conference: the de-privatization of two emblematic Mexican energy companies. Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex) and the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) will now be fully controlled by the federal government. The government also signed a decree for the Mexican State to regain full rights over passenger railroads. This was achieved through a constitutional reform approved by Congress, in which MORENA has a majority. Although Andrés Manuel López Obrador (Sheinbaum’s predecessor) sent the proposal several weeks ago, the current president takes the most important credit for having concluded the process.

Big Oil Rallies To Obstruct Accountability

In the face of mounting scrutiny from local, state, and federal officials, fossil fuel companies and their allies are deploying a range of tactics to obstruct ongoing lawsuits and investigations concerning evidence that the industry has misled the public about the harms it knew its products would cause to the climate, environment, and human health. Far-right industry allies with ties to Chevron have mounted an “unprecedented” pressure campaign calling on the Supreme Court to stop a potentially historic climate deception lawsuit against oil majors from going to trial. Republican attorneys general are separately urging the Supreme Court to throw out similar climate fraud lawsuits from five states.

Big Oil Is Pulling Out All The Stops To Block Lawsuits For Accountability

In the face of mounting scrutiny from local, state, and federal officials, fossil fuel companies and their allies are deploying a range of tactics to obstruct ongoing lawsuits and investigations concerning evidence that the industry has misled the public about the harms it knew its products would cause to the climate, environment, and human health. Far-right industry allies with ties to Chevron have mounted an “unprecedented” pressure campaign calling on the Supreme Court to stop a potentially historic climate deception lawsuit against oil majors from going to trial. Republican attorneys general are separately urging the Supreme Court to throw out similar climate fraud lawsuits from five states.

Campaign For A Safe And Healthy California Wins Victory Against Big Oil

Sacramento, CA– Today the Campaign for a Safe and Healthy California (CSHC) announced that despite opponents spending nearly $61 million on deceitful efforts to repeal a California law (SB 1137) that protects neighborhoods from toxic drilling, Big Oil has reversed course and forfeited their deceitful ballot measure from the November ballot in a stunning defeat.  “Big Oil spent tens of millions of dollars trying to fool voters, using the profits made at the expense of community health, but it was no match for the groundswell of people power and community support we were able to unite all across California,” said Darryl Molina Sarmiento, CSHC Steering Committee Member and Executive Director of Communities for a Better Environment.

Greenpeace Turns To Italy’s Highest Court In Lawsuit Against Oil Giant Eni

Italy’s Supreme Court will decide on a landmark lawsuit brought by Greenpeace Italy and advocacy group ReCommon against oil and gas company Eni, according to the two groups. Both nonprofits said on June 21 that their Supreme Court appeal was to expedite the trial, by showing that the Italian judiciary is the right jurisdiction to decide on climate lawsuit cases like this one. “The climate crisis fueled by fossil fuel companies is here. We have seen it with soaring temperatures, we see it with extreme weather events.” Simona Abbate of Greenpeace Italy said in a press briefing. “We want immediate action to be taken, and that is why we went to the Supreme Court.”

Inside Big Oil’s Business: Failure On Climate And Profits From War

Oil majors are not on track to hit Paris Agreement climate targets that limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C, a new report reveals. Eight fossil fuel giants – Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, TotalEnergies, BP, Eni, Equinor, and ConocoPhillips – are on course to use 30 percent of the world’s remaining carbon budget for that 1.5°C goal, according to the Big Oil Reality Check report by nonprofit Oil Change International (OCI). Combined, the oil and gas companies’ extraction plans are consistent with a temperature rise of over 2.4°C, the report found. That level of warming, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will reduce food security, risk irreversible loss of ecosystems, and increase heat waves, rainfall, and extreme weather events.

Big Oil Aims To Cash In On Hydrogen Tax Credits With Natural Gas

Less than two years after securing generous subsidies in President Joe Biden’s landmark climate legislation, some of America’s largest oil and gas companies are directing their advocacy toward shaping one of the law’s obscure but potentially lucrative provisions: a tax credit for hydrogen production. The hydrogen tax credit – known among advocates and industry players as “45V” for the section of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that created it – felt at times as if it were the sole focus of the Hydrogen Americas Summit, a two-day industry confab held June 11-12, that wrapped up yesterday in Washington, D.C.

Vermont Could Become First State To Make Emitters Pay For Climate Damages

Vermont’s House of Representatives has passed S.259, a state bill aimed at collecting recovery costs for climate-related damages from the biggest emitters, such as fossil fuel companies. The bill, called the Climate Superfund Act, was introduced to create a Climate Superfund Cost Recovery Program, in which fossil fuel businesses would undergo an assessment to determine their share of costs for fossil fuel extraction or refinement actions that led to increased greenhouse gases and related costs in the state. As reported by NBC News, the agency would measure extreme weather linked to climate change in the state and the cost of damages from extreme weather events through attribution science.

New Evidence Of Big Oil’s Decades-Long Campaign To Deny Climate Science

Oil and gas companies and their top trade groups were aware for decades that carbon emissions contribute to climate change, according to a scathing new report from congressional investigators. Moreover, industry giants knew that many of the technologies they presented publicly as solutions to the climate crisis – such as algae-based biofuels and carbon capture and storage (CCS) – were neither as green nor as feasible as they promised, the study reveals. The Senate Budget Committee and Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability published the report and related documents on April 30

Climate-Science Deniers Are Plotting Against The Clean Energy Transition

Last July, a small group of rabble-rousers boarded a trio of powerboats, banners and bullhorns in hand. They were headed for the massive floating construction site of an offshore wind farm 35 miles from the eastern tip of Long Island, New York. As the boats motored through the swells, the self-styled activists broke into a chorus of pleas for the wind farm construction to cease—chants likely intended less for the still-faraway workers than for the camera there to capture footage. “Hear this message: We’re here to save the whales!” called out a man in a black polo shirt.

Report Exposes The Oil Giants ‘Fueling Israel’s War Machine’

A report published Thursday shows that major fossil fuel companies such as Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP are playing a key role in propelling Israel's devastating military assault on Gaza, facilitating the country's supply of energy that powers Israeli jets and tanks as they bomb and shell civilians. The new research, conducted by Data Desk and commissioned by the advocacy group Oil Change International, examines the sources of Israeli jet fuel and crude imports in an effort to shine light on the web of countries and corporations implicated in the war on the Gaza Strip.

California Towns Are Banning New Gas Stations; Big Oil Is Watching

When oil and gas companies attack a climate campaign, activists usually focus on the obvious negative: One of the world’s biggest industries, with its wealth of resources, is trying to quash their efforts to, for instance, ban natural gas in buildings. But in Northern California, where grassroots activists have succeeded in getting towns across Napa and Sonoma counties to prohibit new gas stations, some consider the emerging backlash a sign of validation. The news of Big Oil’s opposition came to Jim Wilson in late January. The longtime climate activist in Napa County found a flyer in his mailbox one day with a picture of a gas nozzle next to an empty wallet, along with the message “Banning gas stations = higher gas prices.”

‘Fire Weather’: Big Oil’s Climate Conflagration

Few places illustrate the destructive cycle of fossil fuel-driven climate change as well as Alberta, Canada. Home to the tar sands boom, the province’s remote north has also become a site of some of the worst climate disasters in recorded history—like the 2016 Fort McMurray Fire, which swallowed up 1.5 million acres and burned for three months. John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World, joins The Chris Hedges Report to discuss the Fort McMurray Fire, the tar sands industry responsible for the conditions that produced it, and the tinderbox world Big Oil has made in its all-consuming pursuit of profit.

Climate Cases Against Big Oil Are Merging Into One Super Suit

Several California municipalities are merging their climate deception litigation with the state’s climate case, to jointly pursue a super-sized lawsuit against the fossil fuel industry, according to recent court filings. This development comes as Chicago joins the growing list of U.S. municipalities suing the fossil fuel industry. On February 5, Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Charles S. Treat approved California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s petition to link the state’s climate accountability case with lawsuits brought by the counties of Marin, San Mateo, and Santa Cruz, and the cities of Imperial Beach, Richmond, and Santa Cruz.

Colombian Farmers Take Back Land Stolen By Big Oil

The story of multinational corporations taking land and resources from working people can be found all over the world. In Colombia, farming families have joined forces to reclaim their stolen land and defend it from local security forces acting on behalf of the Occidental Petroleum Corporation. The Real News reports from Arauquita, Colombia, on the frontlines of a land defenders’ campaign that stretches back decades.  In Arauquita, Northeast Colombia, 150 farming families were displaced from this land 20 years ago. It’s been exploited by the Occidental Petroleum Corporation ever since. However, the farmers returned to reclaim their land.

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Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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