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Fossil Fuels

Alberta’s ‘Zero Tolerance’ Enforcement Strategy Doesn’t Apply To Polluters

January 26, 2025 Mitch Anderson, DeSmog. , , , , ,
“Alberta is taking a zero-tolerance approach to crime,” bragged Alberta Premier Danielle Smith in 2023 on social media after her government announced more enforcement, greater emphasis on public safety, and limited discretion of prosecutors to let offenders off the hook. “ “There is an increasing sense that the system is not holding criminals properly accountable and letting the public suffer the consequences,” chimed in Alberta Minister of Justice Mickey Amery during the announcement. “This is simply unacceptable.” If only the governing United Conservative Party applied those laudable principles to oil sands companies that repeatedly flout legal requirements not to pollute waterways, air and land.

New York Climate Activists Show A Powerful Path Forward

January 25, 2025 Nick Engelfried, Waging Nonviolence. , , , ,
On the evening of Dec. 10, 12 self-identified elder climate activists sat around the Christmas tree in the New York State Capitol, in Albany, singing carols as they waited to be arrested. The protesters, who were there to support New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act, had been told by police they would face criminal misdemeanor trespass charges if they stayed put. “Normally, for a protest like this, we’d expect to be written a citation rather than charged with a misdemeanor,” said Michael Richardson of Third Act Upstate New York, which helped plan the civil disobedience.

Mapped: Donald Trump’s Transatlantic Anti-Green Network

January 22, 2025 Adam Barnett, DeSmog. , , , , ,
As Donald Trump takes his oath of office to become the 47th president of the United States, his second term comes at an ever-more critical time for climate change. Climate scientists have warned that 2024 was the hottest year on record, and without dramatic action to cut greenhouse gas emissions, global pledges to limit warming to 1.5C and curb the worst effects of climate change are doomed. At the start of 2025, Trump’s “government efficiency” chief Elon Musk (who donated $250 million to Trump’s campaign), pushed grooming gangs to the top of the UK political agenda – with the help of Conservative and Reform UK politicians, and their allies in the media.

Climate Activists Protest Over Role Of Oil Firms At World Economic Forum

January 18, 2025 Al Jazeera. , , ,
Scores of climate activists have gathered in Davos to protest against the role of big oil companies at the World Economic Forum (WEF) and demand stronger action to tackle the climate crisis. The annual meeting of global business and political leaders in Switzerland starts on Monday. It will be attended by some 1,500 business leaders, including major energy firms like BP, Chevron and Saudi Aramco. “We are demanding concrete and real climate action,” said Nicolas Siegrist, the 26-year-old organiser of the protest, who also heads the Young Socialists party in Switzerland.

Climate Protesters Storm Phillips 66 Facility Over Recent Wildfires

January 17, 2025 Noah Haggerty, Los Angeles Times. , , , ,
Dozens of climate protesters with Sunrise Movement LA rallied outside Phillips 66’s Los Angeles Lubricant Terminal on Thursday morning, with 16 demonstrators storming the facility’s office building. As Los Angeles reels from what is projected to be one of the most costly natural disasters in U.S. history, the youth climate activist group says big oil companies are culpable, by emitting greenhouse gases while internally acknowledging the practice’s link to climate change, which, in turn, has worsened wildfires in California. Sunrise Movement LA is demanding big oil companies, including Phillips 66, “pay up” to support wildfire relief and aid the state’s transition to clean energy.

As The World Heats Up, FERC Cools Regulations

January 17, 2025 Phil Pasquini, IndyBay. , , ,
Washington, DC – For the past 10 years a group of resolute environmental activists from Beyond Extreme Energy, Third Act and others have been attending and protesting at the monthly public meetings of FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission). Each month the climate change activists stand vigilant outside the Commissions FERC headquarters building before each meeting, protesting, picketing and greeting attendees, calling their attention to concerns and informing passersby on how the commissions decisions exacerbate the global climate crisis.

Biden’s Offshore Drilling ‘Ban’ Won’t Protect Gulf of Mexico

January 10, 2025 Mike Ludwig, Truthout. , , , , ,
Democrats in Congress cheered as President Joe Biden moved on January 6 to withdraw 625 million acres federal ocean waters off United States coastlines from consideration for future offshore oil and gas drilling. Democratic lawmakers say the waters are “permanently” protected, although Republicans could use their majority in Congress to force the government to lease underwater drilling rights to the industry. However, Biden’s last-minute effort to secure his climate legacy before Donald Trump takes office does nothing to prevent offshore drilling in the central and western Gulf of Mexico, where intense fossil fuel exploitation already causes pollution and oil spills as climate change brings intensifying floods and storms to coastal communities.

Midwest Wins Funding For A New Hydrogen Hub

January 3, 2025 Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco, DeSmog. , , , ,
The U.S. Department of Energy is rolling out the first installment of its $1 billion commitment to ramp up clean hydrogen production in the Midwest, part of a bid by the Biden administration to lock in a nationwide roadmap for decarbonization. The Midwest Hydrogen Hub, which is set to span Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, and Michigan, was awarded $22.2 million late last month as part of a billion-dollar federal cost-share grant through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The hub “aims to decarbonize a variety of industries such as manufacturing, steel and glass production, power generation, refining, and heavy-duty transportation through the use of clean hydrogen,” according to a Department of Energy factsheet.

Organizers Fight The Greenwashing Of Plastic Pollution

January 1, 2025 Derek Seidman, Truthout. , , ,
By now, it’s indisputable that we’re experiencing a global crisis of plastics production and plastics waste. There may be as much as 200 million tonnes of plastic in our oceans. Humans annually consume thousands of plastic particles and their harmful chemicals. The Global North dumps massive amounts of plastic waste on the Global South. Powerful corporate interests, especially in fossil fuels and petrochemicals, are driving the ongoing boom in plastics production. The plastics industry is pushing false solutions like chemical recycling, even as it’s clear that we can’t recycle our way out of this crisis.

Whistleblower Demands Governor Fix ‘Completely Unregulated’ Fracking Wastewater Network

December 23, 2024 Justin Nobel, DeSmog. , , , , , ,
A whistleblowing Pennsylvania oil and gas worker, together with the state’s former lead environmental regulator, are ringing the alarm bell on an unregulated and shadowy network of pipelines at least hundreds, and perhaps even thousands of miles long. The pipeline system was constructed over the past decade by oil and gas operators in Pennsylvania to transport toxic and radioactive fracking wastewater. “There is no oversight,” says Robert Green, who works in southwestern Pennsylvania as a hydrostatic tester, a niche job in the industry that involves assuring pipelines can appropriately handle the complex and often hazardous fuels and waste streams they contain.

DOE Study Finds LNG Exports Don’t Just Hurt The Climate

December 22, 2024 Sharon Kelly, DeSmog. , , ,
If you don’t live anywhere near an export terminal for liquified natural gas (LNG), you could still feel big impacts from the industry’s planned construction boom in the U.S. – and not just because the fossil fuel is rapidly worsening the climate crisis. That’s according to a new study on LNG export authorizations by the Department of Energy (DOE), which finds that the average U.S. household will pay an additional $122.54 a year in utility bills if LNG export expansions go forward unchecked. Some households could see rates go up by over $360 a year.

The ‘Black And Green’ Campaign

December 22, 2024 Cinnamon Janzer, Next City. , , ,
Since  the Paris Agreement went into effect in late 2016, 60 of the world’s largest private banks have funneled $6.9 trillion to the fossil fuel industry. Despite a wave of banks pledging to no longer finance the private prison industry between 2019 and 2021, many others are still funding the two largest U.S. private prison companies that have relied on bank loans to operate and expand. Tackling such global financial systems can seem impossible, but not when you talk to Stephone Coward, head of the Bank Black & Green campaign, an effort to funnel capital into Black-owned banks that commit to not funding the fossil fuel or mass incarceration industries.

COP29 Contradiction And The Climate

December 21, 2024 Krys Cerisier, Black Agenda Report. , , , ,
Climate activists are considering throwing in the COP towel after negotiations led to a poor budget deal, with activists walking away with only $300 billion of their $1 trillion goal after this year's dubbed 'finance’ COP. The 29th annual Conference Of Parties, or COP29 was created to facilitate international cooperation over ways to keep the global average temperature rise close to 1.5 degrees C. However, climate activists are now arguing that the process is instead a way for fossil fuel industries to protect their interests. While at COP, climate activist and five time COP attendee Xiye Bastida explained, “It's no mistake that the last three COPs have been in oil [rich] countries."

A History Of Success Drives The Ongoing Struggle To Clean Up Cancer Alley

December 17, 2024 Sue Inches, Waging Nonviolence. , , , ,
Two days after the election, I left on a research trip to Mississippi and Louisiana. I joined four others from my church in Yarmouth, Maine. Our purpose was to witness and learn about the struggle for civil and environmental rights in a region known as “Cancer Alley.” This 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi — between Baton Rouge and New Orleans — is home to 150 petrochemical plants, all along the river. It is also home to many working-class people, a majority of them Black. The first thing you notice are the huge refineries. Tall smokestacks spew toxic chemicals and methane flares light up the sky. The scale of industrialization is hard to imagine — there are miles and miles of factories and chemical plants.

University Of Toronto Students Score A Win For The Climate

December 14, 2024 Nick Engelfried, Waging Nonviolence. , , , , , ,
When the University of Toronto’s School of the Environment announced in October that it will no longer accept donations from the fossil fuel industry, the news sent waves through the growing movement to get coal, oil and gas companies off campuses. Among other things, that means banning fossil fuel corporations from financing academic research. “This victory shows students have the ability to enact institutional change,” said Erin Mackey, a leader of the group Climate Justice UofT, which pushed for the fossil fuel money ban. “That’s especially important when, at many universities, students who want to make change are having the door slammed in their faces.”
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