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Fossil Fuels

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.

Democrat’s Climate Change Lies

September 20, 2020 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
In recent weeks a combination of drought and record breaking heat have accelerated wildfire season to historic levels of devastation. More than 4.6 million acres have burned in the states of California, Oregon and Washington. Skies are colored orange and red, the air is unbreathable, lives have been lost and entire towns have been destroyed. The connection between heat waves, droughts, and human made climate change are clear and the solution is known to every school child. There must be a drastic reduction in the production of fossil fuels.

New Fossil Fuel Projects Meet Indigenous Resistance

September 19, 2020 Randall Hyman, Truthout. , ,
New Mexico - The spicy pungency of sagebrush filled the air in Greater Chaco, New Mexico, in late July this summer as I watched towering, rain-laden clouds gather across the endless horizon — a reminder that the midsummer monsoon season would soon turn the dirt roads that snake across the Navajo Nation reservation into quagmires. Locals are accustomed to these storms, but this region is now also being pummeled by two other tempests — the COVID-19 pandemic, which has hit the Navajo Nation hard, especially due to many residents’ difficulty in accessing clean water, and also the tumult of fracking, which has now been lashing the region for 10 years.

Senate Democrats’ New Climate Report Disappoints

August 30, 2020 By Marlee Kokotovic, Nation of Change.   , , ,
Senate Democrats released a climate action report earlier this week leaving green groups, environmental activists, and progressive campaigners disappointed. Critics of the report are saying there is not nearly enough action involved to fight the threat of global heating that is caused by human activity. “The report fails to address the vital need to end the extraction, processing, and burning of fossil fuels, and instead sees a future for fossil fuels tied to the false promise of carbon capture.”

How Much Will Earth Really Warm By? Here’s The Latest Research

August 24, 2020 By Ben McNeil, Science Alert. , , ,
A major new study has been published - one that gives much more certainty on the extent of future warming we might expect. Along with many other international climate scientists, it was led by my colleague, climate scientist Steven Sherwood from the University of New South Wales in Australia. So, I asked him a few questions about it, to drill down what this means for us and the future. We know Earth's climate warms as greenhouse gas concentrations like carbon dioxide rise in the atmosphere. From the 1950s, NASA temperature data show Earth has warmed ~0.8 °C up until the latest decade.The scale of future warming remains uncertain for a variety of reasons, the biggest unknown being how much carbon pollution humanity will emit over the coming decades. That is based on political and economic systems - hardly something we can predict over the coming months - let alone the coming decades! So, scientists have developed complex earth-system models to predict the future using a variety of future carbon pollution scenarios - ranging from the 'burn all the coal reserves' option to the 'shut down all coal-fired power plants tomorrow' option. But another important element of uncertainty is how sensitive Earth's climate is to carbon dioxide.

Climate Activists Are Closer Than Ever To Ending All Fossil Fuel Investments

August 19, 2020 By Nick Engelfried, Waging Nonviolence. , , ,
When New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli announced last month that the state would divest its over $200 billion Common Retirement Fund from more than 20 coal companies, it marked an important milestone for a grassroots campaign that has seen a recent burst of new momentum. In an op-ed published on July 12, DiNapoli stated, “After a thorough assessment, the fund has divested from 22 thermal coal mining companies that are not prepared to thrive, or even survive, in the low-carbon economy.” This victory is thanks to a near decade-long effort by activists who have been pressuring New York to divest from the companies most responsible for causing the climate crisis. A surge in youth-led activism has brought new energy to this campaign, putting pressure on both the comptroller’s office and state legislators. While New York still has not ended its investments in oil and gas companies, DiNapoli’s decision to divest from coal shows climate activists are having a real impact on one of the largest state pension funds in the United States.

COVID19 Lockdown Has Little Impact On Climate, Green Recovery Needed

August 9, 2020 Piers Forster, The Conversation. , , ,
Here in the UK, with traffic noise back to drowning out birdsong, and foreign holidays back on the cards, it is easy to forget the weeks of cleaner air. If we do not seize the opportunity to pause, reflect and plan transformative change, the COVID-19 years could end up being just a small and temporary blip in our overall climate trajectory. Earlier this year, during the lockdown, my daughter and I found ourselves with time on our hands. Her A-level (senior high school) exams had been cancelled and my colleagues had not yet discovered Zoom.

COVID-19, Climate Change, And Chaos

August 4, 2020 Mel Gurtov, Peace Voice. , ,
COVID-19 and the protests for racial justice have drawn attention away from the mostly bad news about the environment. Yes, the skies in most parts of the world are a lot clearer these days as people stay home and auto emissions decline. But as one study points out, even if lockdown measures continue for the next several months, global carbon emissions will only drop by between 4 to 8 percent from last year. That drop would not be enough to make a dent in overall warming trends—and as the US and other economies recover, it will be back to “normal.”

Trump’s Golden Era Of Energy Is Turning To Lead

August 1, 2020 Justin Mikulka, DeSmog Blog. , , ,
It was just over a year ago that President Trump announced, “The golden era of American energy is now underway,” saying that his policies focused on exploiting oil, gas, and coal were “unleashing energy dominance.”  What a difference a year makes. On July 10, the Financial Times ran an article with a headline that asked, “Is the party finally over for U.S. oil and gas?” And there is no doubt that it has been quite a party for the last decade. At least, for the fracking executives who have enriched themselves while losing hundreds of billions of dollars investors gave them to produce oil and gas.

How The Fossil Fuel Industry Funds The Police

July 28, 2020 Alexander C. Kaufman, Huff Post. , , ,
Black Americans are one and a half times more likely than white Americans to breathe air polluted by burning fossil fuels, three times more likely to die from the lung and heart diseases that such pollutants cause, and six times more likely to be killed by police.  Those figures have more in common than just the victims. Oil and gas companies, fossil fuel-burning utilities and the banks that fund drilling donate heavily to police departments’ charity foundations, according to a new report published Monday by the anti-corruption watchdog Public Accountability Initiative and the nonprofit research database LittleSis.

Virginia’s Energy Kingpin Could Finally Face A Reckoning Over Race

July 24, 2020 Alexander C. Kaufman, Huffington Post. , , ,
Anti-poverty activist Rev. William Barber II denounced the compressor station as environmental racism in 2019, Dominion started running Facebook ads featuring video from a high school essay contest on civil rights that it had sponsored. Farrell’s role should “certainly be questioned” in the wake of the pipeline project, said Barber, a towering figure of the current civil rights movement.  “A company that would attempt to do all this to communities and put its customers through this kind of fight should be challenged in so many ways,” he said. “Racism is not just about symbolism, it’s about substance.” Meanwhile, the company plowed ahead with plans to build the compressor station ― until a federal court intervened in early 2020, overturning the permit because Dominion had failed to resolve questions about how emissions would affect Union Hill.  It had taken Union Hill activists five years to get redress from the courts.

Climate Justice Advocates Celebrate Important Victories But Big Oil And Gas Aren’t Giving In

July 20, 2020 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. , , ,
Climate justice advocates are justifiably celebrating recent victories such as stopping three major pipelines, a new court decision regarding the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and national discussion of the Green New Deal, but does this mean we are winning? We speak with Steve Horn, a climate reporter and investigative journalist, about the future of the Atlantic Coast, Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, what it means that oil companies are going bankrupt and a proposal to create a North American version of OPEC. Steve describes how fossil fuel companies are working to preserve their future and what we must do to save ours.

Building On Victories For A Stronger Climate Justice Movement

July 19, 2020 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, Popular Resistance. , , , , , ,
While the climate justice movement has been winning important victories, stopping and slowing pipelines and other fossil fuel infrastructure, and putting the future of fossil fuels in doubt, the political system, long connected to the fossil fuel industry, is still fighting the urgently needed transition to clean sustainable energy. Both President Trump and former Vice President Biden put forward energy plans that do not challenge fossil fuels.  The only candidate with a serious climate plan is Green Party candidate Howie Hawkins. The movement needs to build momentum from these successes for more actions to stop fossil fuel infrastructure.

Frightening Numbers: Biosphere Heating Accelerates

July 7, 2020 Manuel Garcia Jr. from his blog. , , ,
At this time, the Biosphere is warming at a rate of 3.03×1015 Watts, which is equivalent to a temperature rate-of-rise of 0.0167°C/year. The warming rate has been increasing steadily since the 19th century when it was on average “zero” except for natural fluctuations (plus and minus) that were hundreds of times smaller than today’s warming rate. The total energy use by the United States in 2019 was 100 quadrillion BTU (British Thermal Units), which is equivalent to 1.055×1020 Joules. Averaged out over the 31,557,600 seconds in a year implies a use rate of 3.34×1012 Watts during 2019. From the above two observations, we can deduce that the current rate of Biosphere warming on a yearly basis is equivalent to the yearly energy use in 2019 of 907 United States of Americas.
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