Skip to content

Fossil Fuels

No Coal No Gas Builds On Recent Victory With Focus On Community

October 6, 2024 Siobhan Senier, Waging Nonviolence. , , , , ,
David Graeber once posited that “the biggest problem facing nonviolent direct action movements is that we don’t know how to handle victory.” He observed that, by the time activists recognize some of our initial successes, those gains tend to be obscured by infighting and/or repressive backlash. More to the point, he said, activists unsatisfied with anything short of a total revolution miss the steady gains that our movements make. A New England-based campaign to phase out fossil fuels provides a helpful counter-example. Activists with No Coal No Gas, or NCNG, have shown that we do know how to handle victory.

Citibank Is Bankrolling The Largest Offshore Oil Facility In The US

October 3, 2024 Sue Page, In These Times. , , , , ,
On an early morning this September, I stood in front of the headquarters of Citibank, chanting and singing as 31 activists were dragged away by police for blocking the building’s entrance. I’m a retired teacher and a grandmother living in Texas. How did I wind up helping lead this action in New York City? Over the past three months, organizers have engaged in the Summer of Heat on Wall Street, the largest sustained civil disobedience campaign in the climate movement’s history. For the past twelve weeks this summer, more than 5,000 people — from faith leaders to scientists, from students to grandparents — have taken to the streets, demanding that Wall Street banks end their funding of climate chaos. That’s how I ended up rallying at Citibank’s doorsteps.

EPA Found No Threat Of Air Pollution During An Oil Spill In Louisiana

September 28, 2024 Julie Dermansky and Sharon Kelly, DeSmog. , , , , , , ,
The pungent smell of oil woke Gerald and Janet Crappel on the morning of Saturday, July 27. Stepping outside their home on the banks of Bayou Lafourche in Raceland, Louisiana, they spotted the fumes’ source: crude oil from Crescent Midstream’s Raceland pump station was gushing into the picturesque waterway, sparsely lined with homes and fishing boats, via a stormwater canal directly across from their home. The oil’s fumes were thick that morning. “It choked you,” Gerald told DeSmog correspondent Julie Dermansky, who documented the incident as it unfolded. Before cleanup crews contained the spill, reportedly 34,000 gallons of crude oil, a slick stretched for eight miles, just past the area’s drinking water system.

From UK To Norway, Drillers Legally Dump Tons Of Waste Into The North Sea

September 23, 2024 Justin Nobel, DeSmog. , , ,
It was a stormy grey day in 1987 when a young environmental scientist found himself wearing a survival suit with a set of homemade sampling contraptions trailing in the ocean on an inflatable boat in the Baltic Sea. He was hunting a waste stream much of the world had never heard of: oilfield waste. Working at that time for the environmental group Greenpeace, Marco Kaltofen was racing after a stunning realisation: that in many offshore oil and gas settings, oilfield waste is simply being dumped right into the ocean. Fast-forward almost four decades, and an analysis by DeSmog shows that companies have been legally dumping toxic and radioactive oilfield waste into the North Sea — Europe’s arm of the North Atlantic — for decades, with largely unknown consequences for a sensitive and beloved marine environment.

Fossil Fuel Companies Are Hijacking Our Universities

September 21, 2024 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. , , ,
Elite universities in the United States — which conduct important climate research — are raking in millions from fossil fuel interests, potentially creating conflicts of interest. This is according to a collection of new reports compiled by student organizers and released by the student-led Campus Climate Network, as The Guardian reported. “Universities globally are often caught in a web of financial and research dependencies with the fossil fuel sector. These ties not only conflict with the ethics of academic independence but also hinder the progress of genuine climate research,” Campus Climate Network said on its website. One institution, Princeton University, seems to have actually owned an oil company — Petrotiger, named after its mascot — earning it millions of dollars, reported The Guardian.

Fall Of FERC Actions A Wild Success!

September 20, 2024 Beyond Extreme Energy, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Washington, DC - Beyond Extreme Energy folks kicked things off at 6:00 am on Thursday, September 19, by hanging large banners across from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. At 7:00 am, a crew of elders from Third Act DMV and Beyond Extreme Energy used rocking chairs to blockade the driveway to FERC’s garage. They held banners reading “The Fall of FERC” and “US Courts: FERC is a Climate Denier.” The Federal Protective Service of the Department of Homeland Security arrived and asked the blockaders to leave. At 9:00 am, dozens of adults and kids from Gulf Coast communities in Louisiana and Texas rallied with their supporters outside FERC, demanding that commissioners listen to their concerns about FERC continuing to greenlight LNG export terminals, which are hugely polluting for frontline communities and for the climate.

Deaths, Asthma, Climate Pollution Linked To Citi’s Funding Of Gas

September 18, 2024 Emily Pomilio, Fossil Free Citi. , , , , , ,
The lives and health of families in Texas and Louisiana are being directly impacted by Citi’s funding of nearby liquified methane gas projects (LNG), a new report released today shows. Over $36 million in health costs, two deaths, and more than 1,600 incidences of asthma symptoms per year in the region are linked to the $1.6 billion the bank has pumped into four LNG facilities in the Gulf South. The bank’s financed emissions related to these facilities is equivalent to over 6 coal plants or 6 million gasoline cars annually. The report, Citi: Funding Fossil-Fueled Environmental Racism in the Gulf South, quantifies the projected health impacts the facilities’ permitted air pollution could have on the region and highlights three communities in the area that are fighting back against fossil fuel development.

Inside The International Uprising Disrupting Air Travel

September 16, 2024 Alexandria Shaner, Waging Nonviolence. , , , ,
A new international coalition is disrupting airports to make one demand: the adoption of a treaty to end fossil fuels by 2030. Under the banner Oil Kills, small groups of activists have occupied airport departure lounges, plane cabins, terminals, tarmacs and roads across three continents — and they aren’t done yet. Here are the numbers so far: 500 people, 31 airports, 22 groups, 166 arrests, 42 people on remand in prison — all in support of their one demand. The coalition formed when members of Extinction Rebellion, the A22 Network and Stay Grounded began reaching out to other groups globally. What resulted was an unprecedented alliance of civil resistance groups focused on the sustained disruption of airports — a key pillar of the fossil fuel economy.

Violations Discovered At Nation’s First Carbon Capture And Storage Project

September 14, 2024 Sharon Kelly, DeSmog. , , ,
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found multiple Safe Drinking Water Act violations at the nation’s first carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) storage project, PoliticoPro’s E&E News reported today. The Decatur, IL, project, run by Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM), violated rules meant to protect against leaks of captured carbon, the EPA wrote in a notice of violation issued on August 14th. The EPA said it had inspected three ADM wells in mid-June — one used for storing captured carbon dioxide and two used to monitor for leaks and other problems. ADM told E&E News that the violations relate to corrosion in one of the two monitoring wells — a problem that ADM said it had discovered back in March.

Climate Lawsuits Against Fossil Fuel Companies Have Nearly Tripled

September 13, 2024 Oil Change International. , , , ,
Washington, DC – 86 climate lawsuits have been filed against the world’s largest oil, gas, and coal producing corporations – including BP, Chevron, Eni, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies – with two in five cases involving claims for compensation for climate change damages linked to fossil fuels. The number of cases filed against fossil fuel companies each year has nearly tripled since the Paris Agreement was reached in 2015, according to a new report, titled Big Oil in Court – The latest trends in climate litigation against fossil fuel companies by Oil Change International and Zero Carbon Analytics. The analysis reveals the intensifying legal pressure on fossil fuel corporations responsible for 69% of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions, the main driver of the climate crisis.

US Leads Way In Public Spending On False Climate Solutions

August 31, 2024 Julia Conley, DeSmog. , , ,
Among the world’s wealthiest countries, the U.S. leads the way in spending public money on so-called climate “solutions” that have been proven to “consistently fail, overspend, or underperform,” according to an analysis released Thursday by the research and advocacy group Oil Change International. The group’s report, titled Funding Failure, focuses on international spending on carbon capture and fossil-based hydrogen subsidies, which continues despite ample data showing that the technological fixes have “failed to make a dent in carbon emissions” after 50 years of research and development.

Canada’s First ‘Prisoner Of Conscience’ Is An Indigenous Land Defender

August 23, 2024 Taylar Dawn Stagner, Grist. , , , , ,
In 2019, construction began on a natural gas pipeline that would cut through the unceded homelands of the Wet’suwet’en Nation in western Canada. Wet’suwet’en land and water protectors were forbidden from coming near the construction area operated by Coastal Gaslink, owned by TC Energy. However, the project was met almost immediately with resistance and gained international attention due to the tribe’s use of traditional law. Under Wet’suwet’en law, the pipeline trespassed on Wet’suwet’en land. With no treaty signed with Canada or Britain, Wet’suwet’en argue that their laws are still applicable — a political status recognized by the Canadian supreme court — and they have the right to evict Coastal Gaslink, and its pipeline, from its homelands. 

How US Governments Could Crack Down On Greenwashing

August 22, 2024 Emily Sanders, DeSmog. , , ,
“Experts agree: [carbon capture and storage] is one of the most important low-carbon technologies required to achieve societal climate goals.”  So says ExxonMobil, in a Facebook ad targeting hundreds of thousands of people across the United States. The ad, which launched last October and ran most recently this month, leads viewers to a 30-second video with computer-generated models and captions describing a seemingly idyllic process. “The CO2 is safely and permanently stored beneath impermeable rock,” one says. Exxon has pledged to invest billions of dollars in CCS, a technology aimed at capturing and sequestering carbon emissions (much of which is used to recover more oil).

What Would A Real Renewable Energy Transition Look Like?

August 22, 2024 Richard Heinberg, Resilience. , , ,
Humanity’s transition from relying overwhelmingly on fossil fuels to instead using alternative low-carbon energy sources is sometimes said to be unstoppable and exponential. A boosterish attitude on the part of many renewable energy advocates is understandable: overcoming people’s climate despair and sowing confidence could help muster the needed groundswell of motivation to end our collective fossil fuel dependency. But occasionally a reality check is in order. The reality is that energy transitions are a big deal, and they typically take centuries to unfold. Historically, they’ve been transformative for societies—whether we’re speaking of humanity’s taming of fire hundreds of thousands of years ago, the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago, or our adoption of fossil fuels starting roughly 200 years ago.

Climate Disaster Survivors Call For Investigation Into Fossil Fuel Industry

August 16, 2024 Michael Riojas, EcoWatch. , , ,
More than 10,000 survivors and loved ones of survivors of “climate-driven disasters” have signed an open letter to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) urging an investigation into fossil fuel companies for “climate-related crimes.” Of the signatories, more than 1,000 were survivors of these disasters and more than 9,000 were loved ones. Public Citizen said they, along with Chesapeake Climate Action Network, delivered the letter to the DOJ. The letter comes at a time of increased public pressure against the fossil fuel industry and during which climate-related civil lawsuits have increased at an unprecedented pace, and have been mostly successful.
«12345678910»
Sign Up To Our Daily Digest

Independent media outlets are being suppressed and dropped by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our daily email digest before it’s too late so you don’t miss the latest movement news.