Several Republican representatives have proposed amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act to try to stop the Pentagon’s electrification. The proposals sound so mind-bogglingly dumb that they look like they were written by 19th-century Luddites or the fossil fuel industry itself....
The oil companies knew about climate change in the 1970s. See article in the link.
Canada is burning. My daughter, newborn & husband fled with fire 400m from their home in a city.
Tinder dry forests fuel fire due to climate heating. And political idiots and greedy arsonist oil & gas friends say we have to "adapt".
The picture is their Kelowna, BC, Canada neighbourhood.
"Kenner documented dozens of examples of the oil industry pressuring governments to hold back support for renewable energy, restrict funding for the development of clean technologies and weaken environmental rules that favoured their uptake."
We really need to stop buying into the argument that #ClimateActivists are "radical" or "destructive". The opposite is true: the nature of the protests have been peaceful and, on the whole, pretty tame.
The idea that, say, sitting on a road is "radical", "extreme" and "criminal" came from a bunch of #FossilFuel aligned think tanks, parroted by the media.
Reject them.
The framing needs to be: Fossil fuel companies are radical, extreme, criminal.
"The [researchers] say the “report reveals how these East Coast #OffshoreWind opponents are not solely local – they are embedded in a network of seasoned #FossilFuel interests and #ClimateDenial think tanks that have perfected obstruction tactics for decades.”
One striking aspect of the anti-OSW network is the sharing of tactics and rhetoric, both in mainstream media and on social networks, said Slevin."
When you ask BP what would be the best incentive to get you to maximise your production, this is not in the pubic interest, this is serving the needs of BP to maximise their subsidy from the state.
Govt of Canada has "some of the most stringent regulations w/ ambitions to cut methane leaked and emitted by oil & gas production by up to 75%, from 2012 levels, by 2030"
MethaneSAT's mission: to fill "critical data gap" in identifying potent GHG. Able to identify, quantify and attribute #fossilfuel field emission for 80% of global production sites.
#Methane is:
🔺 "wildly underreported" by some provinces
🔺 80x more harmful than CO2
"Some argue that rapidly scaling back #FossilFuel production would leave billions of pounds of “stranded assets”, [and] would impoverish the public through a fall in the value of #savings and #PensionFunds.
The study found that in high-income countries two-thirds of the financial losses would be borne by the most affluent 10%.
Just 3.5% of financial losses from #StrandedAssets would affect the poorest half of Americans & could easily be compensated for by government."
Solar power is the fastest growing energy technology in history, and wind is not far behind.
This graph shows how rapidly different technologies expanded after reaching their first exajoule of energy production (logarithmic scale).
Fossil fuels provide ~78% of energy use today, but if challenges can be overcome (e.g. storage), then rapidly growing renewables will soon play a greatly expanded role in the human energy system.
When I hear climate inaction, I hear not making choices & actions in specific directions: e.g. stop subsidizing #fossilfuel industry, promote faster just energy transitions, get polluters to pay climate reparations, etc. Inaction is action in wrong direction. Just like people assume #capitalism is neutral, it’s not, it’s a choice of certain socioeconomic organization rooted in colonial ideologies & extractive discard culture. It’s the one got us into the #climatecrisis
When it comes to #climatechange, governments around the world are currently on quite a schizophrenic course - they claim leadership in #climateaction while maintaining #fossilfuel dependency.
The truth is ... this is physically incompatible.
Absolutely inexcusable - "‘Mind-boggling’ #methane#emissions from #Turkmenistan revealed - Leaks of potent greenhouse gas #GHG could be easily fixed, say experts, and would rapidly reduce global heating - Methane leaks alone from Turkmenistan’s two main fossil fuel fields caused more global heating in 2022 than the entire carbon emissions of the UK, satellite data has revealed.
Methane emissions have surged alarmingly since 2007 and this acceleration may be the biggest threat to keeping below 1.5C of global heating, according to scientists. It also seriously risks triggering catastrophic climate tipping points, researchers say.
Emissions of the potent greenhouse gas from the oil- and gas-rich country are “mind-boggling”, and an “infuriating” problem that should be easy to fix, experts have told the Guardian.
The data produced by Kayrros for the #Guardian found that the western fossil fuel field in Turkmenistan, on the #Caspian coast, leaked 2.6m tonnes of methane in 2022. The eastern field emitted 1.8m tonnes. Together, the two fields released emissions equivalent to 366m tonnes of #CO2, more than the UK’s annual emissions, which are the 17th-biggest in the world."
The problem with #RishiSunak's argument that expanding the exploration & exploitation of #NorthSea#oil fields enhances the UK's #energysecurity is that, the proportion of this oil that is actually exported has grown from 60% to 80% in two decades.
It looks like either a fallacious argument (in which case Sunak is ill-infgomed) or a misdirection to support global #fossilfuel sector profits... take your pick (could be both!)
"Days ago, voters in Ecuador approved a total ban on oil drilling in protected land in the #Amazon, a 2.5m-acre tract in the #Yasuní national park that might be the world’s most important #biodiversity hotspot. The area is a Unesco-designated biosphere reserve and home to two non-contacted #Indigenous groups. This could be a major step forward for the entire global climate justice movement in ways that are not yet apparent.
"This vote is important not only for Ecuador and for the Indigenous peoples in the Yasuní, who now have hope of living in peace in perpetuity. It is also a potential model for how we can use the democratic process around the world to help slow or even stop the expansion of fossil fuels to the benefit of billions of people.
"The Yasuní referendum proves that real democracy that respects the popular will can be a powerful tool for transitioning to a sustainable future. Ecuador’s state oil company, #Petroecuador, had been producing nearly 60,000 barrels a day in the Yasuní. It now must figure out how to dismantle its entire operation and go home. When in history has a popular vote ever forced an oil company to cease active drilling? Never.
"The Yasuní vote was not the result of a business decision made in a boardroom or government office. It was the product of two decades of #grassroots organizing by citizens and #activists like you and me. I know because I have been to Ecuador more than 250 times to work on a historic pollution case against #Chevron on behalf of the Indigenous people there. Many of the same Indigenous leaders and activists who helped fight Chevron organized the Yasuní vote.
"At the same time, the vote underscores how important it is to protect our increasingly fragile democracy. Without a robust democracy that allows citizens to place issues of critical importance on the ballot without the intermediation of elites, the Yasuní referendum never would have happened.
"The flipside is that powerful #OilAndGas companies understand the threat a real citizen-based democracy poses to their power. They fear a society where citizens can put referendums on the ballot without the approval of business leaders. Those of us in the climate movement often can’t even stop to focus on the connection between democracy and climate justice because we’re so focused on dealing with the immediate crises taking place before our eyes, such as the Maui fire.
"In the United States, it is not broadly known that the #FossilFuel industry quietly funds a national lobbying campaign that has introduced draconian #antiprotest bills in at least 18 states. These laws threaten anyone #protesting at an oil or gas facility with huge fines and serious prison sentences; some states even impose criminal liabilities on non-profit advocacy groups that support the protesters. These are really laws of intimidation designed to stop protest before it happens. And they are also manifesting in other countries including #Australia, the #UnitedKingdom and #Germany.
"As a result, many Americans who have committed #peaceful acts of non-violent #CivilDisobedience – central to the birth of our country and a cornerstone of our political tradition – now face decades in prison. In Atlanta, #Georgia, 42 people have been charged by prosecutors with 'domestic terrorism' for trying to save the city’s last green canopy in the #WeelauneeForest. Local police are trying to raze part of the forest to build a military-style police training academy, colloquially called “#CopCity”, that already resulted in the first police killing of a climate activist in US history. (The police have said that the activist, Manuel Paez #Terán, was used a weapon; activists dispute that claim.)
"The Atlanta cases represent a frightening escalation of attacks on #FreeSpeech and protest in the US. None of those charged – whom authorities accused mainly of vandalism and arson – committed a direct act of violence against another person. Nobody was injured other than the activist shot and killed by police while sitting in the forest.
"That this is happening in a city considered to be one of the cradles of the American civil rights movement shows just how entwined corporate and police power have become in their efforts to erode democratic rights.
"The prosecutions in Georgia are also occurring in a broader context where the right to vote has been seriously impaired. Voter suppression is now a regular feature in many US states, with ludicrous laws being passed to throw out votes. In this short century, two presidents have taken office in the US who did not win the popular vote. Votes are constantly thrown out for the thinnest of reasons, as journalists such as Greg Palast have meticulously documented.
On top of these threats to democracy at the state level, the US #supremecourt and its unelected, mostly #FarRight justices are weakening both our democracy and its ability to regulate the fossil fuel industry. The court has consistently approved measures like voter ID laws and felon disenfranchisement that make it more difficult for historically marginalized groups to vote. It has also, of late, decided its role is to strike down popular legislation, so who knows what they’d do to a popularly won ban on oil drilling.
"I am an #EnvironmentalJustice and #HumanRights lawyer, but one reason I spend significant time focused on issues of democracy is because I simply cannot do my work if our political system does not allow the political space to advocate freely. After I helped Indigenous peoples win a major pollution case in Ecuador, I was detained for almost three years in the US after being targeted with the nation’s first-ever corporate prosecution. My own case is a reminder that the normal rules of democracy can easily be suspended when entrenched economic interests face a serious enough threat to their bottom line.
"As I write this, a heat dome in the US sits over the entire midwest and is affecting 100 million people. Fires have destroyed millions of acres of land. A tropical storm just smacked southern California for the first time, and the historic town of Lahaina in Hawaii burned to the ground with hundreds of people still unaccounted for. In the meantime, the oil industry is reporting record profits, creating enormous incentives for a small group of powerful shareholders to maintain their power by shrinking our democratic space.
What the referendum in Ecuador teaches us is that democratic processes when coupled with strong grassroots organizing can produce startlingly effective results. Taking a cue from our friends in that brave country, the next major move for the climate justice movement could be to launch a national campaign to put the simple question presented in Ecuador before the American people in every state that allows citizens to place their own questions on the ballot. The question is whether we can vote to end the destruction of our planet by the burning of fossil fuels.
"It is clear we cannot trust either of the two major US political parties – both of which mostly support fossil fuel expansion – to adequately address this crisis. We simply cannot save the planet without first protecting and strengthening our democracy."
Can we just be clear: ONE of the co-authors who suggested this was Dutch, the other was swedish and the proposal was made to highlight the stupidity of trying to solve the problem of sea level rise via geoengineering rather than reducing #FossilFuel use to prevent #ClimateChange - and I know this because I asked them.
For anyone thinking #ClimateChange is too large a problem to solve, it should come as good news that 80 percent of recent CO2 emissions are generated by a mere 57 companies.
If/when we raise the collective will to solve this problem (which is no easy task, to say the least) we can acheive dramatic reductions by targeting a handful of #FossilFuel companies.
I'm genuinely not sure if we'll solve our #ClimateCrisis, but I know that we can.
"Many governments, companies and communities are taking action to reduce their use of fossil fuels. The petroleum industry is responding to this threat by ramping up their campaigns to manipulate public opinion. People like to believe they aren’t susceptible to the dark art of marketing, but Canadian advertisers...."
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How federal tax dollars meant to fight #ClimateChange could end up boosting #Louisiana’s fossil fuel production
"On the surface, these projects seem beneficial. Keeping carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere prevents the greenhouse gas from fueling climate change. In practice, however, this may lead to a net increase in #FossilFuel production and more emissions.
Louisiana has taken advantage of disasters to boost the fossil fuel industry before."
Republicans try to stop military’s electrification with mind-bogglingly dumb proposals (electrek.co)
Several Republican representatives have proposed amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act to try to stop the Pentagon’s electrification. The proposals sound so mind-bogglingly dumb that they look like they were written by 19th-century Luddites or the fossil fuel industry itself....