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Fossil Fuels

Demanding Divestment, Protesters Remained In Mass. Hall

February 13, 2015 Mariel A. Klein and Theodore R. Delwich, www.thecrimson.com , ,
Roughly 20 students remained in Massachusetts Hall, home to the office of University President Drew G. Faust, late Thursday night after a group of more than 30 stormed and occupied the building that morning, demanding that Harvard divest its $35.9 billion endowment from fossil fuels. Though the group, Divest Harvard, detailed plans on Thursday night for a Friday afternoon rally outside of Mass. Hall, co-coordinator Talia K. Rothstein '17 said that the remaining protesters had no immediate plans to leave the building. The occupation began Thursday morning at about 10 a.m. when more than 30 members of Divest, many dressed in orange, entered the building and followed an administrator through a door that would otherwise have been locked.

First Country In The World Divests From Fossil Fuels

February 9, 2015 Cole Mellino, www.ecowatch.com , , , ,
Back in 2012, Bill McKibben with fellow activists including Naomi Klein, Winona LaDuke, Josh Fox and Reverend Lennox Yearwood began a nationwide tour to promotefossil fuel divestment—that is, selling off your shares in fossil fuel companies–in an effort to combat climate change. With action in Congress impossible, McKibben saw college campuses—known for being laboratories of democracy—as ground zero in the campaign for divestment. With his ‘Do the Math’ campaign in sold-out concert halls across America, McKibben and others were able to launch Fossil Free, an international network of divestment campaigns. It’s a project of the larger organization 350.org. Flash forward three years and the movement has made impressive strides.

Anti-Fracking Warriors Steingraber And Boland Released From Jail

November 26, 2014 Stefanie Spear, www.ecowatch.com , , , ,
Steingraber and Boland are among the first wave arrests as part of a sustained, ongoing, non-violent civil disobedience campaign against the storage of fracked gas along the shores of Seneca Lake, a source of drinking water for 100,000 people. There have been 73 arrests so far. Calling themselves “We Are Seneca Lake,” those risking arrest—and their supporters—wear blue during blockades. Sandra Steingraber: "We can’t find the path to victory; we have to CREATE it. That’s going to require a lot of work from all of us over a sustained period of time. What Colleen and I just did is only a tiny part of the struggle. So, please don’t thank us. Tell us what YOU are going to do."

Oil-Price Plunge Gives New Ammo To Divestment Activists

October 30, 2014 Elizabeth Douglass, www.insideclimatenews.org , , , ,
The recent dive in oil prices is undermining oil company earnings, projects and stock prices—at least for now—giving new ammunition to climate action groups pushing pensions, universities and others to purge their fossil fuel holdings. By themselves, the lower oil prices aren't likely to convince institutions to divest from fossil fuels, especially since price swings are common in oil markets. But the unexpected dip could help the cause by casting doubt on the investment case for keeping them, according to Jamie Henn, communications director at 350.org, a leader in the growing divestment campaign. "The primary reason to divest remains the moral and political one—that if it's wrong to wreck the planet, then it's wrong to profit from that wreckage," said Henn.

Fossil Fuel Protesters Arrested At Minerals Council Office

October 23, 2014 Clare Colley, www.canberratimes.com.au , , ,
Police arrested 10 climate change activists who refused to leave the Minerals Council office in Forrest on Tuesday morning. The protesters were part of a 15-strong group of Canberrans and Pacific Climate Warriors from Vanuatu, Tuvalu and Fiji who "peacefully" occupied the office in an attempt to meet with the industry body's director Brendan Pearson, the group's spokesman Josh Creaser said. He said the group had hoped to tell the Minerals Council how fossil fuels were negatively affecting the lives of people across the Pacific region and were surprised at the reaction.

Michael Klare, Oil Rush In America

September 5, 2014 Michael T. Klare, www.tomdispatch.com , , ,
Whatever you may imagine, “peak oil” has not been discredited as a concept, a statement no less true for “peak fossil fuels.” Think of them instead as postponed. We are, after all, on a finite planet that, by definition, holds a finite amount of oil, natural gas, and coal. Sooner or later, as such deposits get used up (no matter the new techniques that might be invented to extract more of the ever tougher stuff from the earth), we will reach a “peak” of production from which it will be all downhill. That’s a simple fact to which, as it happens, there’s a catch. Here, according to the New York Times, is the key finding from the latest leaked 127-page draft report of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which manages to use the word “risk” 351 times, “vulnerable” or “vulnerability” 61 times, and “irreversible” 48 times: “The report found that companies and governments had identified reserves of these [fossil] fuels at least four times larger than could safely be burned if global warming is to be kept to a tolerable level.”

The Time For Burning Coal Has Passed

August 28, 2014 Claudia Ciobanu and Silvia Giannelli, www.ipsnews.net , , , ,
“People have gathered here to tell their politicians that the way in which we used energy and our environment in the 19th and 20th centuries is now over,” says Radek Gawlik, one of Poland’s most experienced environmental activists. “The time for burning coal has passed and the sooner we understand this, the better it is for us.” Gawlik was one of over 7,500 people who joined an 8-kilometre-long human chain at the weekend linking the German village of Kerkwitz with the Polish village of Grabice to oppose plans to expand lignite mining on both sides of the German-Polish border. “It's high time to plan the coal phase-out now and show the people in the region a future beyond the inevitable end of dirty fossil fuels" – Anike Peters, Greenpeace Germany They were inhabitants of local villages whose houses would be destroyed if the plans go ahead, activists from Poland and Germany, and even visitors from other countries who wanted to lend a hand to the anti-coal cause. The human chain – which was organised by Greenpeace and other European environmental NGOs – passed through the Niesse river which marks the border between the two countries, and included people of all ages, from young children to local elders who brought along folding chairs. At least 6,000 people in the German part of Lusatia region and another 3,000 across the border in south-western Poland stand to be relocated if the expansion plans in the two areas go ahead.

Judge Denies Cove Point Permit, Will Feds Step In?

August 27, 2014 Steve Horn, www.firedoglake.com ,
An August 6 court decision handed down by Calvert County Circuit Court Judge James Salmon could put Dominion Resources’ timeline for its proposed Cove Point liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility in jeopardy. Salmon ruled that an ordinance exempting the Lusby, Md.-based LNGproject from local zoning laws — Ordinance 46-13 — violated both a section of a state Land Use law, as well as Maryland’s constitution. The facility will be fueled by gas obtained via hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”). In the ruling, Judge Salmon described the zoning exemption as “a very unusual situation.” In 2013, the Calvert County Board of County Commissioners and the Calvert County Planning Commission carved out both LNG export and import facilities from zoning laws. “To my knowledge no other municipality or county in Maryland has attempted to do what the Calvert County Board of County Commissioners has attempted to do, i.e. completely exempt two uses from being covered by zoning regulations while requiring everyone else in the County to abide by those regulations,” wrote Salmon.

Solar Power Gets Hot, Hot, Hot

August 16, 2014 Emily Schwartz Greco and William A Collins, www.truth-out.org , , ,
With so many homeowners and businesses making greener energy choices, private utilities - along with big oil, gas, coal, and nuclear companies - see the writing on the wall. Unlike some other denizens of the fossil-fueled set, this gang isn’t beating oil wells into solar panels, retiring nuclear reactors, or embracing wind and geothermal power. Instead, these guys are trying to coax lawmakers into rigging the rules against increasingly competitive new energy alternatives. You see, the bulwarks of conventional energy are good at math. And the math is increasingly not in their favor. Solar panels are growing so affordable, accessible, and popular that sun-powered energy accounted for 74 percent of the nation’s new electric generation capacity in the first three months of this year. Wind power comprised another 20 percent, geothermal 1 percent, and natural gas plus other sources accounted for the final 5 percent. Coal didn’t even register. OK, so that first-quarter surge was kind of an anomaly because it included the inauguration of the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, the world’s largest solar-concentrating power plant. Through a vast array of seven-by-ten-foot mirrors located on federal land along the California-Nevada border, this remarkable site produces enough energy to power 140,000 homes. Another vast utility-scale project aptly called “Genesis Solar” ramped up too.

Boom-or-Doom Riddle For Nuclear Industry

July 29, 2014 Paul Brown, www.climatenewsnetwork.net , ,
The nuclear industry remains remarkably optimistic about its future, despite evidence that it is a shrinking source of power as renewables increasingly compete to fill the energy gap. LONDON, 26 July, 2014 − The headline figures for 2014 from the nuclear industry describe a worldwide boom in progress, with 73 reactors presently being built and another 481 new ones either planned or approved. The World Nuclear Association (WNA) official website paints a rosy picture of an industry expected to expand dramatically by 2030. It says that over the period 1996 to 2013 the world retired 66 reactors, and 71 started operation. Between now and 2030, the industry expects another 74 reactors to close, but 272 new ones to come on line. This represents a much larger net increase in nuclear electricity production than the basic figures suggest because most of the newer power stations have a bigger capacity than those closing down. Pipe dream Detractors of the industry say that these projections are a pipe dream and that nuclear power will not expand at that pace, if at all, and that solar and wind power will grow much faster to fill the energy gap.

More Than $20 Billion Annually In Government Subsidies For Oil

July 14, 2014 Shakuntala Makhijani, www.priceofoil.org , , ,
Today, Oil Change International released a comprehensive report on fossil fuel exploration and production subsidies in the U.S. – Cashing in on All of the Above: U.S. Fossil Fuel Production Subsidies under Obama – which demonstrates that at a time when we need urgent action on climate change more than ever, the U.S. government is channeling huge and growing amounts of money to increasing discovery and production of oil, gas, and coal. These federal and state subsidies totaled $21.6 billion in 2013. Subsidies that promote fossil fuel exploration are particularly harmful and hypocritical. The world’s preeminent scientific institutions working on climate and energy have determined that the majority of the world’s existing fossil fuel reserves need to be left in the ground in order to avoid catastrophic climate impacts. In 2012, the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned that “no more than one-third of proven reserves of fossil fuels can be consumed prior to 2050 if the world is to achieve the 2°C goal.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reached a similar conclusion in its 2013 climate assessment.

Oil Divestment Must Focus On Private Investors

July 8, 2014 Matthew Cunningham-Cook, www.america.aljazeera.com , ,
Fossil fuel divestment would target only major corporations that are listed on the stock market. But pension funds and endowments, the entities largely targeted by the 350.org campaign, invest hundreds of billions of dollars in privately traded securities, such as hedge funds and private equity — vehicles that are invested at all levels of the fossil fuel economy. (In particular, hedge funds and private equity have been found to be the key financial backers of the fracking boom.) Were the Massachusetts divestment bill to pass, state pension funds would invariably still be invested in the fossil fuel economy. The divestment campaign argues that 200 publicly traded fossil fuel companies dominate the fossil fuel exploration market. But they ignore that such companies frequently depend on private equity and hedge funds for financing new investments when large banks are uninterested in taking on further risk. The public can rarely (if ever) verify that these types of arrangements take place, even if it is a teacher attempting to verify what her pension fund is doing with her money. Pension funds and endowments have not always invested in the private market. In the 1980s and before, in fact, they were almost exclusively invested in publicly traded securities. Laws such as the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and the Investment Company Act of 1940 allowed the public to verify how the companies in which pension funds and endowments were investing used their funds and provided transparency to investors in order to prevent fraudulent activity.

Unitarians Vote To Divest From Carbon Fuels

June 30, 2014 Unitarian Universalist Association, www.uua.org , ,
Delegates at the 2014 General Assembly (GA) of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) meeting in Providence, RI, today passed a resolution calling for divestment from fossil fuel companies in the UUA Common Endowment Fund (UUCEF). The resolution requires the UUA to: Cease purchasing securities of CT200 companies as UUCEF investments immediately Continue to divest its UUCEF holdings of directly held securities of CT 200 companies, reaching full divestment of these companies within five years Work with its current and prospective pooled-asset managers for the purpose of creating more fossil fuel-free investment opportunities, with the objective of full divestment of UUCEF indirect holdings in CT200 companies within five years Invest an appropriate share of UUCEF holdings in securities that will support a swift transition to a clean energy economy, such as renewable energy and energy efficiency-related securities Report, via the UUA President and the Treasurer, to each General Assembly from 2015 through 2019 on our Association’s progress on the above resolutions Following the vote, UUA President Peter Morales said, “The UUA has a long-standing history of fighting for our environment. I am proud that we are going to put our money where our values are on this issue.”

Green Groups Endorse Empty EPA Carbon Emissions Regulation

June 18, 2014 Ken Ward, www.truth-out.org , , , ,
For environmentalists, it turns out, climate truth is not merely inconvenient, it is incomprehensible. How else to explain the fawning response of major green groups to President Obama's cynical carbon emissions scheme? The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) proposed coal plant emissions regulations are a trifecta of terrible: near to useless as emissions policy, effective in distracting attention from the administration's overarching pro-fossil fuel plan, and a tragic obfuscation of the latest, deadly climate science reports. The facts are not in dispute. Climate is in free fall, with recent definitive evidence that the first major geophysical system (the West Antarctic ice shelf) has passed its tipping point, guaranteeing 10 feet of sea level rise and providing irrefutable evidence that the entire, fragile system which has permitted civilization to develop is collapsing. The internationally agreed objective of limiting global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius is clearly way off base and all climate policy and strategy based on that target, which assumes a timeframe allowing for incremental response, is miscalculated.
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