Skip to content

Fossil Fuels

Climate Movement Wins ‘Transition Away From Fossil Fuels’ Language

Thanks largely to the work of climate and environmental justice leaders from around the world, we won the inclusion of ‘transition away from fossil fuels’ language in the final agreement. The inclusion is a big win in a COP held in an oil state, overseen by an oil executive, and where we witnessed the largest number of oil and gas lobbyists in attendance ever. However, we must be clear that this language does not meet the full, rapid, fair, and funded fossil fuel phase out without abatement technology that civil society demanded. It also falls immensely short because net zero is not an adequate solution to the climate crisis we find ourselves in. Instead, the agreement excludes oil and gas from phase down language, and uplifts false, unproven solutions– techno fixes like Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), hydrogen, and language on transition fuels which yet again leaves the door open for the expansion of the gas sector across the world.

The Method Behind Just Stop Oil’s Madness

Not a lot of people like Just Stop Oil. Its own members would admit to being annoying. Journalists and politicians spend a lot of time denouncing and criminalizing the group’s chosen forms of protest. Even those who sympathize with the cause are inclined to criticize the group’s brand of civil disobedience as unreasonable or counterproductive. The most common thing I am asked as someone who researches Just Stop Oil, or JSO, is why they disrupt the daily lives of the general public. Wouldn’t it make more sense to disrupt the flow of oil directly? Whatever the answer, it is rare that JSO members are given a platform to properly answer these questions.

Latest COP28 Draft Does Not Mention Fossil Fuel Phaseout

As the United Nations COP28 climate talks entered the final stretch, the most recent draft of a climate deal left out the crucial “phase out” language regarding fossil fuels, the main demand expressed by many developing countries, particularly those vulnerable to climate change, as well as the European Union. The draft deal is the precursor to a final round of negotiations over whether or how long fossil fuels will continue to be a part of the transition to a renewable energy future. COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber encouraged those present at the summit to finalize a deal before the conference ends on Tuesday, reported Reuters.

Give Climate Change The Name It Deserves: Fossil-Fueled Destruction

There’s always a lag between a rupture of the status quo and settling on a word for it. The planet is heating at a life-threatening pace. And yet the two words we use to describe this rupture — “climate” and “change” — are beginning to seem too stiff and one-dimensional for conveying the violence to life-sustaining ecosystems that threaten the world as we have known it. As delegates from 196 countries attempt, for the 28th time, to reach a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gases, it is time for a new language. The violence of the atmospheric shifts, their deeply uneven impacts and the implications of mass extinctions that are expected at current emission levels, add up to much more than “climate change.”

COP28 Has Failed; New App Helps Public Take Matters Into Their Own Hands

As COP28 draws to a close – mired in inaction and controversy – a new app is launching to let the public take matters into their own hands. “Earthize” will allow people to avoid any companies that greenwash, invest in fossil fuels, or damage the environment. That is, you can now stop using corporations that fuel the climate and biodiversity crises. At the end of COP28 on Tuesday 12 December, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) promised to try again to strike a deal as the Dubai climate summit passed its deadline. At-risk nations and Western powers rejected a proposal that stopped short of phasing out fossil fuels.

At COP28, Road To Climate Action Is Paved With Big Oil Loopholes

The European Union has clearly laid out its position: Climate neutrality, the Council of the EU stated last month, will require “a global phase-out of unabated fossil fuels and a peak in their consumption in this decade.” Then, in its second letter to parties, the president of COP28, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, underscored the need to “work towards a future energy system that is free of unabated fossil fuels by mid-century.” From having the CEO of an oil company preside over global climate negotiations, to getting a consulting firm to push the interests of its Big Oil and gas clients, it doesn’t look like a great start for the conference, set to begin on November 30th in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.

What’s At Stake At COP28?

The next United Nations Climate Change Conference, otherwise known as COP28, begins Thursday in the United Arab Emirates. The conference, which lasts through December 12, comes at a critical moment in global efforts to contain the climate crisis. The latest UN Emissions Gap Report, released ahead of the talks, found that nations’ current emissions reduction pledges, called nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris agreement, would put the world on track for 2.9 degrees Celsius of warming beyond pre-industrial levels by 2100. Yet 2023, at an average 1.1 degrees Celsius of warming, is already shattering records with the hottest temperatures in 125,000 years, which have fueled deadly heat waves, floods and wildfires.

Leak: UAE Planned To Use COP28 To Strike Fossil Fuel Deals

The United Arab Emirates, the host of this year’s UN climate conference COP28, has covertly conspired to use the global gathering as a place to strike fossil fuel deals with other countries and lobby for oil and gas, a damning investigation finds. According to reporting by the Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR) and BBC, Sultan al-Jaber — who is both the president of COP28 and CEO of the UAE’s state-owned oil company, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) — sought to use the conference as an opportunity to increase ADNOC’s oil and gas exports. Al-Jaber has spent the last months meeting with global and business leaders, with at least one country allegedly following up on a discussion on business related to ADNOC.

Indigenous Community Bears The Toxic Effects Of Canada’s Oil Boom

In Northern Alberta, Canada, sit the Athabasca tar sands—the world’s largest known reservoir of crude bitumen, and a major driver of Canada’s economy. The vast majority of Canadian oil production comes from extracting and processing the crude bitumen found in the tar sands. But while Canada prospers off the tar sands industry, Indigenous communities downstream are in the grips of its toxic impact. It is well documented that the people of Fort Chipewyan, in northern Alberta, have been struck by disproportionately high rates of cancer, and their proximity to the tar sands has long been the suspected dominant factor contributing to their sickness.

Confronting DC’s Gas Problem

From Oct. 24-26, a coalition of ecoactivist groups, including Extinction Rebellion Northeast, Extinction Rebellion DC, or XRDC, Scientist Rebellion, and Climate Defiance, engaged in three days of nonviolent actions against the gas industry in Washington, D.C. They disrupted the industry’s biggest annual event in North America, temporarily shut down construction on a major pipeline project, and built bridges of inter-movement solidarity by joining in protests for a ceasefire in Gaza.  The week of action began by disrupting the North American Gas Forum to demand an end to the gas industry’s lies that are accelerating climate chaos and endangering billions of lives around the globe.

APEC Summit In San Francisco Met With Mass Protests

10,000 people took to the streets on Sunday, November 12 to protest the start of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Leaders Meetings taking place in San Francisco this week. The APEC summit will run from November 11 to 17. The protest took place following a 1,000-person APEC counter-summit on November 11. The mobilizations have been organized by the No to APEC Coalition, which represents almost 150 organizations across the United States. “APEC is the epitome of all that is wicked and corrupt in our society today,” said Simon Ma, a family doctor and member of the anti-imperialist Korean-American organization Nodutdol. He described APEC as a “cabal of billionaires and politicians scheming behind closed doors, trying to come up with new and innovative ways to further exploit the working class of our planet.”

Pipeline Fighter Grandfather Arrested After Blocking Drilling At Elk Crossing

Webster County, WV — Early Friday morning 11/3/23, pipeline fighter Jerome locked himself to a Mountain Valley Pipeline drill at the Elk River crossing in Webster County, WV. Jerome prevented construction for over 3 hours, at which time he was extracted by law enforcement and arrested. He was charged with 4 misdemeanors, and has been released from jail. A banner at the site of Jerome's blockade read "Doom to the pipeline!" "I am the father of 3 daughters and the grandfather—soon—of 5 grandsons," Jerome stated. "I am horrified by what climate change is already doing to all life here on Earth. And I'm even more horrified that we still envision and construct projects like MVP which will only worsen the warming and deepen the chaos.

Protests Against Line 5 Continue In Wisconsin And The Courtrooms

“We need to avert an oil disaster in Lake Superior. We need to save our water and our future.” That was water protector Gina Peltier’s message this summer. Peltier is one of many water protectors in the Midwest organizing against Line 5 tar sands oil pipeline in a growing movement against Canadian energy corporation Enbridge, which runs the largest oil export pipeline network in the world. On August 5, 2023, water protectors coordinated a rally and flotilla at the Fish Creek Landing in Ashland, Wisconsin at the site of one of the original Anishinaabe camps on Lake Superior.

131 Companies Push For Timeline To Ditch Fossil Fuels Ahead Of COP28

A letter from 131 companies, including Volvo, Heineken and IKEA, urges world leaders to agree on a timeline to stop using fossil fuels at the COP28 United Nations Climate Change Conference next month in Dubai. The letter was coordinated by nonprofit We Mean Business, which advocates for better global climate action. “Our businesses are feeling the impacts and cost of increasing extreme weather events resulting from climate change… To decarbonise the global energy system, we need to ramp up clean energy as fast as we phase out the use and production of fossil fuels.

Activists Decry FERC Rush To Construct Liquefied Gas Terminal

On my latest flight surveying fossil fuel industry sites in southwest Louisiana at the end of September, I photographed liquified natural gas (LNG) export facilities, signs of drought, fire-scarred stretches of marsh, and a salt dome site at risk of collapsing. The visuals illustrate issues climate advocates publicized this week related to impacts fossil fuel industry sites are having on the environment. First, on October 19, the Louisiana Bucket Brigade called out the Federal Energy Regulatory Committee (FERC) for granting Venture Global’s request to construct its Plaquemines LNG gas export terminal on a 24/7 construction schedule.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 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.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

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.

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.