Energy

Report Details Fossil Fuel Industry’s Deceptive ‘Net Zero’ Strategy

June 20, 2021 Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams. Educate! climate crisis, Energy, greenwashing, net zero

A new report published Wednesday by a trio of progressive advocacy groups lifts the veil on so-called "net zero" climate pledges, which are often touted by corporations and governments as solutions to the climate emergency, but which the paper's authors argue are merely a dangerous form of greenwashing that should be eschewed in favor of Real Zero policies based on meaningful, near-term commitments to reducing global greenhouse gas emissions. The report—titled "The Big Con: How Big Polluters Are Advancing a "Net Zero" Climate Agenda to Delay, Deceive, and Deny" (pdf)—was published by Corporate Accountability, the Global Forest Coalition, and Friends of the Earth International, and is endorsed by over 60 environmental organizations.

Venezuela’s Oil Production Bounces Back

June 12, 2021 Andreína Chávez Alava, Venezuelanalysis. Educate! Energy, Environment, Oil, Venezuela

Guayaquil, Ecuador – Venezuela’s crude output increased in May, recovering from the previous month’s fall. The latest Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) monthly report placed the Caribbean country’s May production at 531,000 oil barrels per day (bpd), a rebound from April’s 486,000 bpd, according to secondary sources. In contrast, state oil company PDVSA communicated a higher number of 582,000 bpd. The May figures are the highest in 12 months and put the nation back in the steady growth trend it has been experiencing since the beginning of the year after reaching historic lows in the second half of 2020.

Puerto Rican Workers: No Peace If Energy Is Privatized

June 8, 2021 By Worker's World. Resist! Energy, Labor Unions, Privatization, Puerto Rico, Strike

Union organizations today warned Governor Pedro Pierluisi and the Financial Oversight and Management Board that they will paralyze the country if the LUMA Energy contract — that increases rates, allows the consortium to leave Puerto Rico if a hurricane strikes and displaces thousands of workers — is not canceled. “We are warning the attorney for the Financial Oversight and Management Board, Gov. Pedro Pierluisi, that there will be no peace in Puerto Rico if the contract is not repealed and they listen to the people who demand, not only a public and more efficient PREPA, but also one free of fossil fuels. Right now there is a favorable atmosphere for paralyzing the country, and if the governor continues to be deaf to the people, we will do so.

Communities Of Color Want Wood Pellet Byproducts Out Of Their Neighborhoods

June 7, 2021 Caryl Espinoza Jaen, Indy Week. Resist! Energy, Environment, health, Wood Pellets

Belinda Joyner describes her home of Northampton County as a dumping ground for undesirable uses—hog farms, landfills. Northampton was also slated to host the Atlantic Coast Pipeline’s compressor station before the project was canceled. When Joyner stood at a podium in the North Carolina legislative building on Wednesday, she was most concerned about wood pellet facilities. “We have other states that have taken into consideration the cumulative impact, the health impact, on these communities and they’re saying no to these companies that are coming,” Joyner said. “You know what? North Carolina has become a cesspool, because everything that everyone else doesn’t want, we don’t have the laws to protect us.”

Puerto Rico Unions Close Ranks Against LUMA Energy

June 5, 2021 Wilmarilis Sánchez-Romeu and Edwin Ocasio Feliciano, Struggle La Lucha. Resist! Energy, Puerto Rico, Union Organizing, Worker Rights and Jobs

Union organizations today warned Gov. Pedro Pierluisi and the Financial Oversight and Management Board that they will paralyze the country if the LUMA Energy contract that increases rates, allows the consortium to leave Puerto Rico if a hurricane strikes, and displaces thousands of workers, is not canceled. “We are warning the attorney for the Financial Oversight and Management Board, Pedro Pierluisi, that there will be no peace in Puerto Rico if the contract is not repealed and they listen to the people who demand, not only a public and more efficient Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), but also one free of fossil fuels. “Right now there is a favorable atmosphere for paralyzing the country and if the governor continues to ignore the people, we will do so.

Activist Investors Score Surprise Win With ExxonMobil Board Seats

May 31, 2021 Kenny Stancil, Commondreams. Resist! Climate Change, Energy, Environment, ExxonMobil

During Exxon's annual shareholder meeting, an activist hedge fund called Engine No. 1—which "owns only about 0.02%" of the oil company's stock, according to climate reporter Emily Atkin—ran four of its own director candidates in opposition to the fossil fuel corporation's hand-picked board members. At least two of Engine No. 1's candidates won, with the races for additional boardroom seats too close to call as of this writing.

Lithium, Cobalt, And Rare Earths

May 20, 2021 Michael Klare, Tom Dispatch. Educate! climate crisis, Energy, Environment, Extraction

Thanks to its very name — renewable energy — we can picture a time in the not-too-distant future when our need for non-renewable fuels like oil, natural gas, and coal will vanish. Indeed, the Biden administration has announced a breakthrough target of 2035 for fully eliminating U.S. reliance on those non-renewable fuels for the generation of electricity. That would be accomplished by “deploying carbon-pollution-free electricity-generating resources,” primarily the everlasting power of the wind and sun. With other nations moving in a similar direction, it’s tempting to conclude that the days when competition over finite supplies of energy was a recurring source of conflict will soon draw to a close. Unfortunately, think again: while the sun and wind are indeed infinitely renewable, the materials needed to convert those resources into electricity — minerals like cobalt, copper, lithium, nickel, and the rare-earth elements, or REEs — are anything but.

President of Mexico Andrés Manuel López Obrador

Foreign Capital Is Trying To Crush AMLO’s Energy Reform

May 20, 2021 Kawsachun News. Educate! AMLO, Energy, Foreign Relations, Mexico

Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) has vowed to push on in his quest to properly regulate the country’s hydrocarbons industry, despite the obstacles placed by foreign capitalists and the notoriously corrupt Mexican justice system. President AMLO today rejected the move by two judges, Rodrigo de la Peza López Figueroa and Juan Pablo Gómez Fierro, who struck down his government’s reform to the Hydrocarbons Law, which was passed by the legislature and signed into law on May 4th. This reform seeks to expand public control over the nation’s own natural resources and roll back the neoliberal energy reform of 2013 that saw the state’s downstream monopoly largely handed over to foreign capitalists. Transforming energy policy was a key plank of AMLO’s campaign program.

New IEA Roadmap is flawed

May 19, 2021 Luisa Colasimone, Environmental Paper Network Educate! climate crisis, Energy, Environment, International Energy Agency

The International Energy Agency (IEA)’s roadmap released today fails to acknowledge the science that burning huge volumes of wood to substitute for burning coal is at least as emissive and climate damaging as coal in the short time frame to 2050, according to the global Environmental Paper Network (EPN).

What Would A Deep Green New Deal Look Like?

May 2, 2021 Don Fitz, Popular Resistance. Create! Energy, Extraction, Fossil Fuels, Green New Deal

The Green New Deal has attracted perhaps the greatest attention of any proposal for decades. It would guarantee Medicare-for-All, Housing-for-All, student loan forgiveness and propose the largest economic growth in human history to address unemployment and climate change. But the last of these hits a stumbling block. Creation of all forms of energy contributes to the destruction of nature and human life. It is possible to increase the global quality of life at the same time as we reduce the use of fossil fuels and other sources of energy. Therefore, a “deep” GND would focus on energy reduction, otherwise known as energy conservation. Decreasing total energy use is a prerequisite for securing human existence.

USDA May Allow Genetically Modified Trees To Be Released Into The Wild

April 23, 2021 Anne Peterman, Truthout. Educate! Chestnut, Energy, GE Trees, Genetically Engineered, Trees

On August 18, 2020, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) published a petition by researchers at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) seeking federal approval to release their genetically engineered (GE) Darling 58 (D58) American chestnut tree into U.S. forests. Researchers claim the transgenic D58 tree will resist the fungal blight that, coupled with rampant overlogging, decimated the American chestnut population in the early 20th century. In fact, the GE American chestnut is a Trojan horse meant to open the doors to commercial GE trees designed for industrial plantations. The D58 would be the first GE forest tree approved in the U.S. and the first GMO intended to spread in the wild. (GE canola plants were discovered in the wild in 2010 but that was unplanned.)

Europe: A Backlash Is Growing Over Incinerating Garbage

April 5, 2021 Beth Gardiner, Yale 360. Resist! climate crisis, Energy, European Union (EU), Incinerators

For decades, Europe has poured millions of tons of its trash into incinerators each year, often under the green-sounding label “waste to energy.” Now, concerns about incineration’s outsized carbon footprint and fears it may undermine recycling are prompting European Union officials to ease their long-standing embrace of a technology that once seemed like an appealing way to make waste disappear. The EU is in the process of cutting off funding for new incinerators, but there’s little sign most existing ones —currently consuming 27 percent of the bloc’s municipal waste — will close any time soon. And, even without EU financial support, new plants are in the works, many in southern and eastern European countries that have historically incinerated less than long-standing waste-to-energy proponents such as Germany, the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian nations.

The US Is Starving Venezuelans In the Name Of Democracy

March 9, 2021 Daniel Larison, Medium. Educate! economic war, Energy, US Sanctions, Venezuela

The Biden administration granted Temporary Protected Status to refugees from Venezuela, which will permit them to live and work in the United States. This is the right thing to do, and it is a break with the previous administration, but there need to be more significant changes to U.S. policy towards Venezuela. The TPS decision is treating the symptom of Venezuela’s deepening crisis while U.S. sanctions intensify it. As long as our government’s broad sanctions remain in place, they will exacerbate the economic and humanitarian crises in the country. The U.S. will succeed only in making conditions for ordinary Venezuelans worse while Maduro and his allies become more firmly entrenched. Trump’s pursuit of regime change in Venezuela was one of his worst policies, and it has deepened the misery of the Venezuelan people. It is maddening that the complete failure of this policy hasn’t prompted more demands for abandoning it.

This Obscure Energy Treaty Is The Greatest Threat To The Planet

March 6, 2021 Fabian Flues, Cecilia Olivet and Pia Eberhardt, Open Democracy. Educate! climate crisis, Corporate polluter, Energy, Legal System

On 4 February the German energy giant RWE announced it was suing the government of the Netherlands. The crime? Proposing to phase out coal from the country’s electricity mix. The company, which is Europe’s biggest emitter of carbon, is demanding €1.4bn in ‘compensation’ from the country for loss of potential earnings, because the Dutch government has banned the burning of coal for electricity from 2030. If this sounds unreasonable, then you might be surprised to learn that this kind of legal action is perfectly normal – and likely to become far more commonplace in the coming years. RWE is suing under the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), a little-known international agreement signed without much public debate in 1994. The treaty binds more than 50 countries, and allows foreign investors in the energy sector to sue governments for decisions that might negatively impact their profits – including climate policies.

Half Of Texas Without Clean Water

February 22, 2021 Chase Lawrence, WSWS. Educate! Energy, Extreme weather, Texas, Water

More than 14.6 million Texans, about half of the population of the state, remained under a boil-water advisory Friday, according to Texas Commission on Environmental Quality spokeswoman Tiffany Young. This encompasses more than 1,225 water supply systems and 63 percent of Texas counties following the record winter storm which hit the state last weekend. In a press conference Austin Water Director Greg Meszaros stated that “we know that there are tens of thousands of leaks,” and that the Austin Fire Department responded to “thousands upon thousands of burst pipes.” In Houston, the fire department received almost 5,000 reports of burst pipes. Texas Republican officials are currently in the process of trying to pin the blame on each other for the disaster. Governor Greg Abbott blamed the state’s grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), claiming that it told state officials five days before the blackouts that everything would be under control.

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