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Fossil Fuels

Thursday: Day Of Action Targeting The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

February 17, 2021 Beyond Extreme Energy, Popular Resistance. , , , ,
Something new is happening this Thursday, February 18 at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).  A person will be chairing a FERC Commissioners meeting who has written publicly that he appreciates why some consider FERC to be a rubber-stamp agency. Richard Glick has done more than this in his three-plus years as a FERC Commissioner. He has openly opposed and written strong dissents, primarily but not only on climate grounds, to majority decisions approving new gas pipelines, LNG terminals and compressor stations. Those dissents likely helped lead the DC Court of Appeals to strike down last year, FERC’s “Kafkaesque” (their words) decades-long abuse of...

Lockdown To Keep It In The Ground: Line 3 Resistance

February 15, 2021 Alex Binder, Unicorn Riot. , , ,
Northern MN – Construction on the tar sands pipeline expansion project for Line 3 continues in Anishinaabe territory in below zero temperatures. Enbridge’s contracted companies, like Precision Pipeline, carve out the line’s pathway, fell any trees in the way, and lay the pipe in the ground. However because of the persistent resistance movement, work stoppages, or at least work interruptions, are common. On February 10, 2021, two people, including Dylan Bremner, locked down to a digger on a work site. Bremner told us that the digger they were on was successfully halted for three hours, however after thirty minutes into the lockdown, the foreman told the other workers they could continue.

Fossil Fuels Kill Nearly Nine Million Annually

February 14, 2021 Climate Nexus, EcoWatch. , ,
Burning fossil fuels kills nearly 9 million people worldwide and an estimated 350,000 in the U.S. every year, according to a new study by scientists from Harvard and three British universities. The staggering death toll is more than double the WHO's 2017 estimate of deaths caused by air pollution. "There's a perception in the United States that we have this under control, but that's a mistake," Joel Schwartz, a Harvard professor and one of the study's authors, told the Boston Globe. Based on data from 2018, the scientists found nearly one-in-five deaths that year — and nearly a third of deaths in eastern Asia — were caused by burning fossil fuels.

Opposition To Line 3 Mounts

February 3, 2021 Niko Georgiades, Unicorn Riot. , , ,
Saint Paul, MN – Around 600 people gathered in St. Paul, Minnesota, on January 29, calling on President Biden to revoke permits for the Line 3 tar sands oil pipeline project. The protest billed as ‘Protect the Water, Revoke the Permits‘ started at Kellogg Park and marched into downtown to the local Army Corps of Engineers’ office to demand federal water crossing permits be rescinded. Direct actions halting construction of the new pipeline continue to take place as opposition Line 3 grows. Friday morning in Northern Minnesota, two water protectors locked down to each other between three concrete barrels blocking the road to a Line 3 construction site.

A Thin Green Line

February 3, 2021 Robert McClure, Grist. , , ,
Seattle, WA - At the corner of Third and Union, amid a sea of downtown high-rises and just across from Macy’s, members of the Northern Cheyenne tribe in native regalia walked alongside Montana ranchers in cowboy hats. The ranchers’ forerunners occupied the same stretch of the Little Bighorn River where Lakota, Northern Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors crushed the infamous U.S. Army General George Custer. On this December morning in 2012, however, they made common cause. First the Cheyenne and ranchers set out together to find breakfast. Then they walked to Seattle’s Convention Center to square off against a modern-day enemy with global reach: coal firms proposing to move mile-long-plus trains through the Pacific Northwest to be loaded on ships bound for Asia.

Flint Activists Remember How Gina McCarthy Failed Their City

January 20, 2021 Naomi Lachance, Counterpunch. , , ,
Former EPA chief Gina McCarthy has reportedly been picked as Biden’s domestic climate policy chief. That concerns activists in Flint, Michigan, who say that she failed to address the Flint water crisis.  Karen Weaver, the former mayor of Flint, said that she was disappointed with the choice. “I hope she does better with climate control than she did with Flint,” she told MLive-The Flint Journal.  On Thursday, nine people, including former Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, were charged over the crisis. Nick Lyon, Snyder’s health director, and Dr. Eden Wells, Snyder’s chief medical executive, were charged with involuntary manslaughter. Snyder was charged with two misdemeanor counts of willful neglect of duty.

Water Protectors Chain Themselves Inside Enbridge Line 3 Pipe

January 16, 2021 Jessica Corbett, Commondreams. , , ,
Minnesota - Water protectors were arrested Thursday after halting construction at a Minnesota worksite for Enbridge's Line 3 project by locking themselves together inside a pipe segment. "After moving to Minnesota to attend college and study environmental science, I was excited to be in a place where people valued protecting the Earth and finding a viable future. What I found, however, was a state that had formed 'ambitious' climate goals yet endorsed one of the dirtiest fossil fuels, tar sands oil," water protector Abby Hornberger said in a statement. "I realized that Indigenous ways of knowing and practicing harmony with the environment are continuously ignored."

Hot Again: 2020 Sets Yet Another Global Temperature Record

January 16, 2021 Seth Borenstein, AP News. , , ,
Earth’s rising fever hit or neared record hot temperature levels in 2020, global weather groups reported Thursday. While NASA and a couple of other measurement groups said 2020 passed or essentially tied 2016 as the hottest year on record, more agencies, including the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, said last year came in a close second or third. The differences in rankings mostly turned on how scientists accounted for data gaps in the Arctic, which is warming faster than the rest of the globe. “It’s like the film ‘Groundhog Day.’ Another year, same story — record global warmth,” said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann, who wasn’t part of the measurement teams.

Extinction Rebellion Brought Love, Police Brought Rage

December 4, 2020 Petrina Harley, Green Left. , , ,
Extinction Rebellion WA (XR) hit the streets with a Festival of Love and Rage on November 28 with a message to the Western Australia Premier: act on the climate emergency like you dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic. Labor Premier Mark McGowan has ignored pressure to open WA’s borders, applying a strict quarantine policy. There have been no cases of community spread in several months. By contrast, the government’s response to the climate crisis has been lacking in science. Since lifting the state’s moratorium on fracking in 2018, McGowan has given the go-ahead to several huge shale and tight gas projects throughout the wheat belt in the iconic Kimberly region and offshore in the Browse Basin.

Lockdown To Stop The Keystone XL Pipeline

November 22, 2020 2KC Media, Facebook. , , ,
Live from Sovereign Oceti Sakowin Territory in so-called Haakon county, South Dakota at one of many active and illegal KXL Crude Oil Pipeline Pump Stations. Illegal Construction on Treaty Lands. Protectors have notified officials and filed a complaint about the unlawful construction and peace treaty violations.. but nothing has been done. The desecration & disrespect continues. So what do we do when our leaders don't act, don't protect us and sell us out? We stand up and speak up. Peaceful resistance is the only thing we have left.

World’s Public Banks Gathered At First-Ever Summit

November 16, 2020 Andrea Germanos, Commondreams. , , ,
"There is no excuse for the continued funding of billions of dollars in coal, gas, or oil projects. This must stop now," Sophie Richmond, a coordinator with Big Shift Global, said in a statement. The event in question was the four-day Finance in Common Summit, which ended Thursday. Hosted by France, the virtual summit was billed as a way "to stress the crucial role of Public Development Banks (PDBs) in reconciling short-term countercyclical responses with sustainable recovery measures that will have a long-term impact on the planet and societies."

Energy Transitions And Colonialism

November 11, 2020 Hamza Hamouchene, Africa Is A Country. , , ,
The year 2020 has seen an unprecedented oil price crash, causing a shock to the fossil fuel industry. The impact has been brutal among oil companies, especially in the high-cost US shale oil sector. As for oil-producing African countries, such as Angola, Algeria, Libya, and Nigeria, more economic strain has been added to their economies with mounting budget deficits and a hemorrhaging of their foreign exchange reserves. Against this backdrop, some analysts have rushed to speculate that the pandemic could kill the oil industry and help save the environment.

How Can We Comprehend The Climate Crisis?

November 7, 2020 Gero Rueter, EcoWatch. , , ,
The science is clear. If we continue to emit greenhouse gases at the same rate we have been doing for the past decades, 80 years from now, our planet will be at least four degrees warmer than pre-industrial levels. "And the warming won't stop there," climate researcher and oceanographer Stefan Rahmstorf told DW. "It will continue to rise to seven or eight degrees over the next 100 years. Human civilization won't survive that." Normally, we respond to danger quickly; we put out fires, run away when we feel at risk, and protect our children in every way we can.

Climate Litigation Spreads Across The United States

October 13, 2020 Kathy Mulvey, Union of Concerned Scientists. , , ,
With hurricanes in the Gulf South and wildfires in the West, the intensifying impacts of climate change have been inescapable as summer turns to fall. Summer 2020 also brought a wave of new climate lawsuits against the fossil fuel industry, including several firsts: the first suit in the South (Charleston, South Carolina); the first suits to name the American Petroleum Institute–the main US oil and gas industry lobby group–as a defendant (Minnesota, Delaware, and Hoboken, New Jersey); the first cases seeking disgorgement of corporate profits gained through illegal acts (Minnesota and Connecticut).

Big Oil Reality Check

September 25, 2020 Oil Change International. , , ,
As oil and gas companies claim to be part of the solution of the climate crisis, the reality couldn’t be more different. Our new discussion paper analyzes the current climate commitments of eight of the largest integrated oil and fossil gas companies, and reveals that none come close to aligning their actions with the urgent 1.5°C global warming limit as outlined by the Paris Agreement. This discussion paper measures oil and gas company climate plans against ten minimum criteria, focusing on the ambition, integrity, and ability necessary to implement a just transition and achieve a 1.5°C aligned managed decline of oil and fossil gas.
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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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