I’ve fought over 350 BC coastal wildfires from 1981-93 and I’ve never seen anything like what’s happening now in our country with the current wildfire behaviour, prevalence, areas covered and consistency.
Canada is burning. #globalwarming#travel#canada#fossilfuels#science
Phasing out fossil fuels is the only way to prevent dangerous climate change.
This is scientific consensus established upon decades of groundwork. Yet, it takes just one oil company CEO and science denial is making headlines again.
"If you google the term carbon capture, the first thing you'll see are sponsored results from fossil fuel companies promoting it, and that should tell you all you need to know."
In cased you missed this chart, it shows the predicted increase of #CO2 and #temperature in the #atmosphere (black lines) compared to current observations (red & blue lines).
The prediction was made back in 1982 by ExxonMobil in private documents.
They knew since 1970s that #FossilFuels would lead to #ClimateChange with "dramatic environmental effects before the year 2050.”
"Back in 1979, #Exxon had privately studied options for avoiding #GlobalWarming. It found that with immediate action, if the industry moved away from #FossilFuels and instead focused on #renewable energy, fossil fuel pollution could start to decline in the 1990s and a major #ClimateCrisis could be avoided.
"But the industry didn't pursue that path. Instead, colleagues and I recently found that in the late 1980s, Exxon and other oil companies coordinated a global effort to dispute #ClimateScience, block fossil fuel controls and keep their products flowing.
"We know about it through internal documents and the words of industry insiders, who are now beginning to share what they saw with the public. We also know that in 1989, the fossil fuel industry created something called the Global Climate Coalition—but it wasn't an environmental group like the name suggests; instead, it worked to sow doubt about climate change and lobbied lawmakers to block clean energy legislation and climate treaties throughout the 1990s.
"For example, in 1997, the Global Climate Coalition's chairman, William O'Keefe, who was also an executive vice president for the American Petroleum Institute, wrote in the Washington Post that 'Climate scientists don't say that burning oil, gas and coal is steadily warming the earth,' contradicting what the industry had known for decades. The fossil fuel industry also funded think tanks and biased studies that helped slow progress to a crawl."
Today, I heard that Danske Bank has completely divested from the #Adani coal corporation. This is a victory, but the fight continues: Danske Bank continues financing climate collapse, via billion-dollar investments in another fossil corporation: #Equinor.
We need more activism, we need you! Contact us: srdenmark@proton.me
So while you & I might think its necessary to speed up the Green Transition & enhance/accelerate measures to reduce emissions, Shell's shareholders disagree.
The firm has just sought & obtained agreement from investors to slow down its measures to mitigate its environmental impact & reduce progress towards its own (already weak) climate targets.
More reason(s) the fossil fuels sector cannot really be central to climate response(s).
What a shock: Shell, having realised that it's only on track to make a profit of a meagre £30bn this year, has cancelled its plan to reduce fossil fuel production, and scrapped a bunch of renewables projects.
Here's an idea: liquidate the company, distribute its infrastructure to the relevant governments and use its reserves to build publicly owned renewables instead.
After the #fossilfuels friendly #COP28 was engineered to be short on firm commitments & long on pious #oil industry-friendly 'aspirations'... the news that #COP29 in #Baku will be chaired by (another) oil industry veteran, should finally put paid to the idea that we can expect a radical & accelerated #greentransition through this process.
Time ran out a while back to follow the oil industry's gradualism - our political generation is just fiddling while the planet burns!
This farewell article from the FT's energy editor is a realistic and honest assessment of where we need to go with #FossilFuels, including the following hard but obvious truths:
Rich governments need to finance developing world transition
Big oil has no role - transition depends on their demise
Shareholders like #BlackRock aren't going to vote for what's needed
Russia's war did more to increase global dependence on fossil fuels than reduce it
You already know that plastics aren't being recycled, not to any significant extent. But there are some good details in this MIT article. It talks about some promising options for increasing reuse and recycling, talks about bioplastics, and notes the emergence of a company called "Perpetual" that's trying to stand up whole new circular systems for food packaging in 3 (soon to be 4) USA cities. Ultimately though, the tide of plastics can't be stemmed until polymer manufacturers, most of which are also oil extractors like Exxon, are forced to pay for the costs of pollution.
When the world is facing several simultaneous climate catastrophes fueled by emissions from oil, coal & gas, the hugely profitable fossil fuel corporations got more subsidies they don’t need nor deserve - up to a staggering US$7 Trillion!
The ferry I am currently on has just passed the #PenguinsFPSO a floating storage and production operations vessel that, #Shell assures us here, "is an attractive opportunity with a competitive forward looking price".
"The world’s five largest listed oil companies are expected to reward their investors with record payouts of more than $100bn (£79bn) for 2023 against a backdrop of growing public outrage at fossil fuel profits."
If you wanted a good argument for why #FossilFuels firms cannot be at the centre of our response to #climatechange, then this might be it:
“There is overwhelming evidence the oil & gas industry has been misleading the public & regulators around the climate risks of their product for 70 years. Trusting them to be part of the solutions is foolhardy...”!
No wonder they are now seeking to disrupt the COP meetings....
Rapid reductions in fossil fuel production and use are essential to limit global warming to 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial levels. Our new research shows most of the world's major coal, oil and gas companies are yet to make meaningful reductions.
Nearly two-thirds of the top fossil fuel producers in Australia and the world aren't on track for 1.5°C climate target (phys.org)
Rapid reductions in fossil fuel production and use are essential to limit global warming to 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial levels. Our new research shows most of the world's major coal, oil and gas companies are yet to make meaningful reductions.