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Fossil Fuels

Controversial Study Says 1.5°C Warming Target Already Breached

February 7, 2024 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. , , ,
A new study using marine sponges collected off the coast of Puerto Rico has found that the planet has already warmed more than 1.5 degrees Celsius. Researchers analyzed ocean temperature records from sea sponges going back 300 years, a press release from The University of Western Australia (UWA) said. They concluded that global heating had actually increased by 0.5 degrees Celsius more than earlier estimates. “So rather than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimate of average global temperatures having increased by 1.2 degrees by 2020, temperatures were in fact already 1.7 degrees above pre-industrial levels,” said lead author of the study Malcolm McCulloch.

Actions Against Mountain Valley Pipeline During Days Of Solidarity

February 5, 2024 Appalachians Against Pipelines, Popular Resistance. , , , , ,
Beginning on January 29, people across Turtle Island rose up to oppose and fight back against the Mountain Valley Pipeline and its funders, investors, contractors, and collaborators. Folks around the country took autonomous action, organized in their communities, and showed solidarity with pipeline resistance, as well as with comrades facing state repression in Atlanta, and with the people of Palestine.  In the days that followed, organizers stood in solidarity with MVP resistance from hundreds of miles away, rallying outside of the offices of EQT and PNC bank in Pittsburgh, outside of Washington Gas (WGL) in D.C., and outside of Bank of America in Charlotte, and Wells Fargo in San Francisco, Blacksburg, Richmond, and other locations.

Don’t Be Fooled By Biden’s Gas U-Turn

February 3, 2024 Rachel Donald, Resilience. , , ,
Last week, the Biden administration announced it is pausing export approvals for Liquified Natural Gas (LNG). LNG, which has been branded a “transition fuel” by Western governments and fossil fuel companies, has an enormous impact on both local environments and global heating, with some researching suggesting its emissions are just as filthy as coal. The USA has, in the past 10 years, become the biggest producer and exporter of LNG; it was recently estimated we have 125 years left of LNG in our reserves. Biden’s Department of Energy framed the decision as the administration’s commitment to being “pro-climate”

Calgary-Based Subsidiary Partners In Building US’ Mountain Valley Pipeline

December 20, 2023 Brent Patterson, Peace Brigades International-Canada. , , , , ,
The Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) is a 482 kilometre (300 mile) pipeline being built across West Virigina and Virginia to transport fracked gas. WGL Midstream, a subsidiary of Calgary-based AltaGas, owns 10 per cent of this USD $6.6 billion pipeline. The Natural Resources Defense Council says: “It has been estimated that the full life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (excluding construction emissions) generated by the MVP mainline alone would be almost 90 million metric tons annually. This is equivalent to the emissions from 23 average U.S. coal plants.”

False Transitions And Global Stocktakes: The Failure Of COP28

December 19, 2023 Binoy Kampmark, Counter Punch. , , ,
The time has come to treat the sequence of UN Climate Change Conferences, the latest concluding in Dubai, as a series of the failed and the abysmally rotten.  It shows how a worthless activity, caked (oiled?) with appropriately chosen words, can actually provide assurance that something worthwhile was done.  Along the way, there are always the same beneficiaries: fossil fuel magnates and satirists. COP28, which featured 97,000 participants, including the weighty presence of 2,456 fossil fuel lobbyists, was even more of a shambles than its predecessor.  Its location – in an oil rich state – was head scratching. 

Climate Movement Wins ‘Transition Away From Fossil Fuels’ Language

December 15, 2023 Climate Justice Alliance. , , ,
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

December 13, 2023 Sam Light, Waging Nonviolence. , , , , ,
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

December 12, 2023 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. , , ,
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

December 12, 2023 Mark Shapiro, DeSmog. , , ,
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

December 12, 2023 Steve Topple, The Canary. , , ,
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

December 1, 2023 Stella Levantesi, DeSmog. , , , ,
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?

December 1, 2023 Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch. , , , ,
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

November 29, 2023 Sharon Zhang, Truthout. , , ,
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

November 20, 2023 Brandi Morin and Geordie Day, The Real News. , , , , ,
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

November 14, 2023 Alexandria Shaner, Waging Nonviolence. , , , ,
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.
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