EnergyFossil Fuel Philanthropy (9/18/2024)Group of Republican attorneys general blocking climate laws funded by oil firms and dark money (8/21/2024)Trump pledges to scrap offshore wind projects on ‘day one’ of presidency (5/13/2024)If Republicans had not blocked renewable energy and conservation efforts at every opportunity, the US would not still be tethered to a fossil fuel marketplace where the prices are outside of our control and set by countries hostile to us. Fred Giuffrida Tweet. ExxonMobil, unlike Shell or BP, isn’t even pretending to get into green energy in a significant way. Its business model is burning up the earth, and by God, Darren Woods is going to burn it up bigger and better than ever before, to increase ExxonMobil’s profits. The earth be damned. The health of the American people be damned. How ExxonMobil’s plan to Surge its CO2 output is Like Trump’s plan to Deal with the Coronavirus (10/6/2020) Everything about the relationship between nation states and the fossil fuel industry is perverse, stupid and self-destructive. For the sake of this dirty industry’s profits and dividends – overwhelmingly concentrated among a tiny number of the world’s people – governments commit us to catastrophe. George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 3rd November 2021 Fossil fuels … represent an enormous subsidy, not from a distant place, but from a distant time, the carboniferous era. They make it possible for billions on people to eat. Fossil fuels are the fertilizer of modern agriculture. They pump up groundwater and power tractors. They serve as the feed stocks for pesticides and herbicides. They make nitrogenous fertilizers practical. And they power the vehicles that move crops to kitchens. They sustain us. it’s been decades since Exxon’s own scientists concluded that its products would render the Earth uninhabitable by humans. And yet those decades were lost to us, in large part because Exxon lobbied governments and sowed doubt about the dangers of its products and did so with the cooperation of many public officials. When the survival of you and everyone you love is threatened by conspiracies, it’s not unreasonable to start questioning the things you think you know in an attempt to determine whether they, too, are the outcome of another conspiracy. Cory Doctorow Right wing government has been in ascendance world-wide for a long time, propelled by fossil fuel States like Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Companies like Exxon. Should fossil fuels be recognized for the danger that they are, alarms would go off, and massive unrecoverable assets would need to be left in the ground. Even though fossil corporations have long known the danger, to continue to profit they need to put climate science and its warnings in doubt, control media messaging, and suppress democracy, a job for far right wing government and the GOP. Russia undermined 25 democracies since 2004: Baltic States, EU countries, Georgia, Ukraine, Brexit, successfully influenced US elections even surprising itself in helping Trump to the Presidency. Trump then elevated Rex Tillerson to Secretary of State, weakened NATO, denied assistance to Ukraine, and allowed Exxon to assist Russian arctic drilling. All of which benefited Russia. US domestic pipelines, leasing, drilling, fracking, were freed up too. OPEC’s recent decision to limit output will likely raise gasoline prices at the pump and heating oil too. People feeling pain in the pocketbook could vote GOP. The GOP does not acknowledge science warning of impending climate armageddon. CO2 is at record high levels which in deep history caused global warming, loss of polar ice, raised sea levels by many feet, flooded coastal areas. Expect mass migration, loss of food crops, drought, and disasters becoming routine: forest fires, severe storms, and extinctions. People are not nearly alarmed enough. The GOP doesn’t believe in elections any more, since any loss is unacceptable to them. If Republicans win control of the Congress, the US will likely join authoritarian petroleum States, part of a long Republican descent into fascism.
The Rising Cost of the Oil Industry’s Slow Death (2/22/2024)Joe Biden just did the rarest thing in US politics: he stood up to the oil industry (2/7/2024) Bill McKibben in the GuardianNew files shed light on ExxonMobil’s efforts to undermine climate science (9/14/2023)Texas fracking billionaire brothers fuel rightwing media with millions of dollars (9/5/2023)Science shows the severe Climate Consequences of new Oil, Gas and Coal Production (8/3/2023)Fossil fuel firms owe climate reparations of $209bn a year, says study (5/19/2023)Exxon’s predictions about the climate crisis may have increased its legal peril (1/20/2023)Leaked: US power companies secretly spending millions to protect profits and fight clean energy (7/27/2022)Putin’s war shows autocracies and fossil fuels go hand in hand. Here’s how to tackle both (4/11/2022) Bill McKibbon (Guardian)Rightwing lobby group Alec driving laws to blacklist companies that boycott the oil industry (2/8/2022) GuardianTo end Fossil Fuels, take the Fight directly to the Corporations – That’s how Apartheid Fell (10/12/2021)Fossil fuel companies paying top law firms millions to ‘dodge responsibility’ (10/9/2021)2,185 scientists and academics call for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (9/20/2021)Fact Sheet | Proposals to Reduce Fossil Fuel Subsidies (2021) (7/23/2021)8 reasons why we need to phase out the fossil fuel industryFueling Failure: How Execs at Bankrupt U.S. Oil & Gas Companies Pocketed Nearly $200M In Payouts While Leaving more than 10,000 Workers Jobless and at Least $10B in Cleanup Costs (9/2021)
Fossil fuel moguls are, and have been, major contributors and senior members of Republican administration(s). They aim to convince you that climate change is not a concern, censor findings to the contrary, and spread large amounts of misinformation. But it is clear that nature has laws that we may not break except at risk to our own existence. The physics are not complicated: Add CO2 to the atmosphere and the planet warms. Population pressure accelerates the process. Damage to the environment includes global warming, glacier loss, disappearing arctic ice, ocean acidification, desertification, forest fires, violent storms, rising sea level, dying coral reefs, collapsing fisheries, air pollution, mass extinction. Deep history from ice cores and geologic formations tells us that CO2 levels are tightly correlated with sea level and atmospheric temperature. Arctic ice melt raises sea levels. At current CO2 levels, most coastal population of the world will be underwater within a generation or two.
James Hansen Future generations are at profound risk for a runaway greenhouse. We can hope that a lawsuit about this is successful, but it's most likely that courts will be no help. It appears our politics is incapable of slowing, let alone stopping, this inexorable threat to human existence. The forecast is bleak. Where carbon emissions come from in each state (4/28/2022)We Need To Stop The Fossil Fuel Industry's PR Machine (1/21/2021)A Texas city had a bold new climate plan – until a gas company got involved (3/1/2021)Texas, Land of Wind and Lies (2/18/2021)No, Wind Farms Aren’t the Main Cause of the Texas Blackouts (2/17/2021)Tim Garrett, physicist/professor of atmospheric sciences who hypothesised that civilization is effectively a heat engine whose power is expressed in the form of economic growth, admits that we will never decarbonize. (12/6/2020)Renewables Increasingly Beat Even Cheapest Coal Competitors on Cost (6/2/2020)Billions in Clean Energy Loans Go Unused as Coronavirus Ravages Economy (4/30/2020)
Coal used to be the cheapest form of energy, but now it is more expensive than gas, wind and solar, which explains why coal plants are closing right and left. Indeed, whole countries, such as Austria, have gone coal-free. Lowest Solar bid in World History for new Abu Dhabi Facility, as expensive Coal, backed by Trump, declines further Juan Cole (04/29/2020) |
