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

June 20, 2024 Stella Levantesi, DeSmog. , , , ,
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.

A Jury Ignored A Judge And Stopped Climate Protesters Being Convicted

June 17, 2024 The Canary. , , , , ,
A jury at Snaresbrook Crown Court has resisted a judge’s invitation to convict six medical professionals, charged with ‘criminal damage’, after they broke windows at JP Morgan in July 2022, on the eve of the UK’s record-breaking climate crisis-induced heatwave. Despite more than two days of deliberations and the judge’s direction that they had no legal defence, the jury were unable to agree on a verdict. Just before lunch on Friday 14 June, the jury asked the judge whether a medical emergency could be a lawful excuse, by inference rejecting the prosecutor’s position that the action concerned not objective reality, but ‘political opinion and belief’. The judge told them that in this case it was no defence.

G7 Fail To Deliver On Fossil Fuel Promises At Italy Summit

June 15, 2024 Valentina Stackl, Oil Change International. , , , , ,
Today, G7 leaders released a joint communique, marking a significant failure to build on the momentum from last year’s UN COP28 decision to transition away from fossil fuels. New Oil Change International data shows that G7 nations are not leading on climate either at home or abroad. G7 countries represent 27% of global oil and gas production, and will be responsible for nearly 48% of CO2 pollution from planned oil and gas expansion – the equivalent lifetime emissions of nearly 600 coal plants. They are also major providers of taxpayer finance for international fossil fuel projects, providing USD $25.7 billion a year in international public finance for fossil fuels, compared to USD $10.3 billion for clean energy.

‘Power Lines—Building A Labor-Climate Justice Movement’

June 15, 2024 Steve Early, Convergence. , , ,
A familiar scene played out in the city council chambers of Richmond, California on May 22, 2024. For the last 20 years, since members of the anti-Chevron Richmond Progressive Alliance (RPA) first got elected to the council, any measure before that body affecting the city’s largest employer and business tax payer has been hotly debated. Local environmental justice organizations, like Communities for a Better Environment (CBE) and the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN) mobilize their working-class members to attend and sign up to speak during the time allotted for “public comment.” To rebut the resulting complaints about pollution and arguments for stronger health and safety protection, the $290-billion company that operates Richmond’s massive 122-year-old refinery deploys its own defenders.

‘Orca’ Activists Arrested In Front Of Wall Street Bank Over Fossil Fuels

June 14, 2024 Saul Elbein, The Hill. , , , ,
New York police arrested dozens of climate activists dressed as orcas Tuesday morning in front of the Citigroup headquarters as they protested the bank’s ongoing investment in fossil fuel expansion, according to group Climate Defenders. “Arrests continue at [Citibank] because wanting corporations to put planet over profit is a crime,” activists wrote Tuesday morning on the social platform X. That caption went out above a video of orca-clad protesters, their fins cuffed behind their backs, being escorted from in front of the bank’s glass-walled Manhattan office building. “Banks like Citi set the planet (and oceans to boil),” the group added in another post. “Now we’re bringing the heat to Wall Street.”

Climate Change Activists Gear Up For A Summer Of Dissent

June 10, 2024 Matthew Rozsa, Salon. , , , ,
"We have a series of many events," said Pumarol. "We are planning direct actions throughout the summer." For three months starting on June 10th, they plan on shutting down the headquarter of Citibank, a financial institution that helps fund fossil fuel exploration. They also plan on staging a protest where humans dress as orcas, the iconic cetaceans that have been targeting yachts at least since November. "I think it's been a source of inspiration for many activists. We're also going to have a day where scientists are going to get arrested in front of city headquarters, and we're going to have a day where elders are going to bring their rocking chairs into city headquarters and also plan to get arrested.

Activists Target The Heart Of EU ‘Democracy’

June 8, 2024 The Canary. , , , , ,
Just as the European elections were fully underway, on Friday 7 June activists blockaded the European Commission over the political bloc’s inaction over the climate crisis and fossil fuels – demanding that politicians take action when elected. European elections: degrowth or bust At 7.30am in Brussels, around twenty scientists and activists from Scientist Rebellion, Growth Kills, and Extinction Rebellion blocked the entrances to the European Commission, preventing employees from getting to work during the European elections. Some stuck their hands to the doors, others held up posters and banners with slogans such as ‘Green growth is a myth’, ‘Ban over-consumption’, ‘Measure well-being, not GDP’, and ‘Create citizens’ assemblies’.

The Next Great Human Migration: America’s Future Climate

June 8, 2024 Craig Thompson, EcoWatch. , , ,
A 2022 report from the International Panel on Climate Change observed that more than 3.3 billion people around the world are “highly vulnerable to climate change.” And more than one billion people could be exposed to “coastal-specific climate hazards by 2050.” Here in the U.S., the Census Bureau calculated that 3.2 million adults were displaced or evacuated due to natural disasters of all kinds in 2022. And while climate migration is not easily measurable, as there are multiple factors involved, it is no doubt happening.  Investigative reporter at Politico Abrahm Lustgarten delved into the topic of U.S. climate migration in his new book, On The Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America. 

World’s Oceans Face ‘Triple Threat’, Study Finds

June 6, 2024 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. , , , ,
A new study has found that the planet’s oceans are experiencing a “triple threat” of oxygen loss, extreme heat and acidification. The researchers discovered that, as global heating has worsened, increasing stress has been placed on marine species, with as much as 20 percent of the world’s oceans affected by these threats. “The global ocean is becoming warmer, more acidic, and losing oxygen due to climate change. On top of this trend, sudden increases in temperature, or drops in pH or oxygen adversely affect marine organisms when they cannot quickly adapt to these extreme conditions,” the study said.

Electric Trains Are The Powerhouse Electric Vehicles

June 4, 2024 High Speed Rail Alliance. , , , , ,
Lawmakers and business leaders alike are touting electric cars as a game-changer for climate change. And it’s true that cutting carbon pollution from vehicles is critical. The transportation sector accounts for about 29 percent of greenhouse-gas pollution in the US. The on-road emissions in Texas alone account for nearly ½ of 1 percent of all carbon-dioxide pollution globally. But the hype around electric cars is misplaced. Electric trains are the true powerhouse EV in the fight against climate change. And it’s not even close. Data from the UK shows that the national rail system is about 25% more energy efficient than electric cars, and London’s subway system is about 40% more efficient.

Texas Needs Radical Solutions For Water Conservation

June 3, 2024 Martin Castro, Next City. , , , , ,
South Texas is facing a water crisis decades in the making. Much of the region’s growing population relies on the Rio Grande as its sole source of drinking water. Yet in recent years, as climate change has gripped Texas and caused hotter, drier summers, the river’s flow has diminished to a trickle in some areas. This year, months before summer has officially set in, major reservoirs on the Rio Grande are nearly empty after reaching historic lows last year. Falcon Reservoir is less than 15% full as of mid-April, and Amistad Reservoir hovers below one-third full. Last month, Hidalgo County issued a disaster declaration as a binational agreement with the Mexican government fails to deliver water from the Rio Grande, as it is obligated to do under the terms of a 1944 treaty. Farmers fear losing their crops.

Texas Has ‘The Most Aggressive’ Well-Plugging Program In The US

June 2, 2024 Elliot Woods, Scheer Post. , , , , ,
After a century and a half of oil and gas production in the United States, the nonprofit environmental watchdog Climate Tracker published a sobering report in 2020: Some 2.6 million unplugged onshore wells lay scattered across the country. Plugging all those derelict holes, from the rocky Appalachian hill country of western Pennsylvania to the dry plains of West Texas and the tundra of Alaska, and countless points between, might cost as much as $280 billion. And that figure from the report did not include undocumented wells — the ones that have vanished from the books, if they were ever recorded in the first place.

Brazil’s Flood Of Austerity And Climate Catastrophe

May 31, 2024 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , , ,
Meteorological agencies and officials predicted the events with eerie precision. A week into the flood, experts pointed to the extraordinary rainfall as the primary cause. Estael Sias, managing director of the weather forecaster MetSul, wrote that this was not ‘just an episode of extreme rain’, but ‘a meteorological event whose adjectives are all superlative, from extraordinary to exceptional’. The seemingly unending rain, she wrote, ‘is absurdly and bizarrely different from what is normal’. It will take a very long time for this region of Brazil to recover from the flood. Within the floodwaters are several encampments and settlements of Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement (MST), about which we published a dossier last month to commemorate the movement’s 40th anniversary.

The Climate Crisis Is Directly Related To Inequality

May 31, 2024 Diane Bernard, DeSmog. , , ,
In an interview with Rachel Donald of the podcast Planet: Critical, science historian Naomi Oreskes spoke about her new book, The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market, cowritten with Erik M. Conway. She explored why our climate is in crisis, detailing how institutions, lobbyists, and corporations continue to undermine democracy; and why a renewable world threatens the powers that be. Ultimately, Oreskes points out that the climate crisis is not a scientific problem, but a political, economic, and social issue. Oreskes is a professor at Harvard University who co-authored the bestselling book Merchants of Doubt, and has written nearly 200 scholarly papers and popular articles.

If You Want To See White ‘Supremacy’ At Work, Don’t Go To A Trump Rally

May 30, 2024 Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright, Black Agenda Report. , , , ,
Last week, Professor Jerel Ezell (University of California, Berkeley) penned a piece for the New York Times suggesting that Joe Biden and the Democrats greatly underestimate how salient an issue climate change is for the Black voters who will certainly have a marked impact on the outcome of the upcoming elections in November. In their piece, Ezell posits, “Democratic strategists seem to see climate change as a key political issue only for white liberal elites and assume that other groups, like Black voters, are either unaware or apathetic about it.” Unfortunately, this sentiment is held not only by, majority white and affluent, Democratic Party strategists, but has also long been held  by the environmental nonprofit apparatus as well as far too many liberal and conservative elements of the Black Misleadership Class who continue to transmit a feckless notion that environmentalism is a “white people’s thing.”
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