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Fight Climate Emergency by Nationalizing US Fossil Fuel Industry, Says Top Economist

“If we are finally going to start taking the IPCC’s findings seriously, it follows that we must begin advancing far more aggressive climate stabilization solutions than anything that has been undertaken thus far,” writes Robert Pollin.

In the wake of a United Nations report that activists said showed the “bleak and brutal truth” about the climate emergency, a leading economist on Friday highlighted a step that supporters argue could be incredibly effective at combating the global crisis: nationalizing the U.S. fossil fuel industry.

“With at least ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips under public control, the necessary phaseout of fossil fuels as an energy source could advance in an orderly fashion.”

Writing for The American Prospect, Robert Pollin, an economics professor and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, noted the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and high gas prices exacerbated by Russia’s war on Ukraine.

“If we are finally going to start taking the IPCC’s findings seriously,” Pollin wrote, “it follows that we must begin advancing far more aggressive climate stabilization solutions than anything that has been undertaken thus far, both within the U.S. and globally. Within the U.S., such measures should include at least putting on the table the idea of nationalizing the U.S. fossil fuel industry.”

“With at least ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips under public control, the necessary phaseout of fossil fuels as an energy source could advance in an orderly fashion”

Asserting that “at least in the U.S., the private oil companies stand as the single greatest obstacle to successfully implementing” a viable climate stabilization program, Pollin made the case that fossil fuel giants should not make any more money from wrecking the planet, nationalization would not be an unprecedented move in the United States, and doing so could help build clean energy infrastructure at the pace that scientists warn is necessary.

The expert proposed starting with “the federal government purchasing controlling ownership of at least the three dominant U.S. oil and gas corporations: ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips.”

“They are far larger and more powerful than all the U.S. coal companies combined, as well as all of the smaller U.S. oil and gas companies,” he wrote. “The cost to the government to purchase majority ownership of these three oil giants would be about $420 billion at current stock market prices.

Emphasizing that the aim of private firms “is precisely to make profits from selling oil, coal, and natural gas, no matter the consequences for the planet and regardless of how the companies may present themselves in various high-gloss, soft-focus PR campaigns,” Pollin posited that “with at least ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips under public control, the necessary phaseout of fossil fuels as an energy source could advance in an orderly fashion.”

“The government could determine fossil fuel energy production levels and prices to reflect both the needs of consumers and the requirements of the clean-energy transition,” he explained. “This transition could also be structured to provide maximum support for the workers and communities that are presently dependent on fossil fuel companies for their well-being.”

Pollin pointed out that some members of Congress are pushing for a windfall profits tax on Big Oil companies using various global crises—from Russia’s war to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic—to price gouge working people at the gas pump. The proposal, he wrote, “raises a more basic question: Should the fossil fuel companies be permitted to profit at all through selling products that we know are destroying the planet? The logical answer has to be no. That is exactly why nationalizing at least the largest U.S. oil companies is the most appropriate action we can take now, in light of the climate emergency.”

The economist highlighted the long history of nationalizing in the United States, pointing out that “it was only 13 years ago, in the depths of the 2007–09 financial crisis and Great Recession, that the Obama administration nationalized two of the three U.S. auto companies.”

In addition to enabling the government to put the nationalized firms’ profits toward a just transition to renewables, Pollin wrote, “with nationalization, the political obstacles that fossil fuel companies now throw up against public financing for clean energy investments would be eliminated.”

Nationalization “is not a panacea,” Pollin acknowledged. Noting that “publicly owned companies already control approximately 90% of the world’s fossil fuel reserves,” he cautioned against assuming such a move in the U.S. “will provide favorable conditions for fighting climate change, any more than public ownership has done so already in Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, or Iran,” without an administration dedicated to tackling the global crisis.

Pollin is far from alone in proposing nationalization. Writing for Jacobin last month, People’s Policy Project founder Matt Bruenig argued that “an industry that is absolutely essential to maintain in the short term and absolutely essential to eliminate in the long term is an industry that really should be managed publicly.”

“Private owners and investors are not in the business of temporarily propping up dying industries, which means that they will either work to keep the industry from dying, which is bad for the climate, or that they will refuse to temporarily prop it up, which will cause economic chaos,” he wrote. “A public owner is best positioned to pursue managed decline in a responsible way.”

In a piece for The New Republic published in the early stage of the pandemic a few years ago, climate journalist Kate Aronoff—like Pollin on Friday—pointed out that nationalization “has a long and proud tradition of navigating America through times of crisis, from World War II to 9/11.”

As Aronoff—who interviewed New College of Florida economist Mark Paul—reported in March 2020:

In a way, nationalization would merely involve the government correcting for nearly a century of its own market intervention. All manner of government hands on the scales have kept money flowing into fossil fuels, including the roughly $26 billion worth of state and federal subsidies handed out to them each year. A holistic transition toward a low-carbon economy would reorient that array of market signals away from failing sectors and toward growing ones that can put millions to work right away retrofitting existing buildings to be energy efficient and building out a fleet of electric vehicles, for instance, including in the places that might otherwise be worst impacted by a fossil fuel bust and recession. Renewables have taken a serious hit amid the Covid-19 slowdown, too, as factories shut down in China. So besides direct government investments in green technology, additional policy directives from the federal level, Paul added, would be key to providing certainty for investors that renewables are worth their while: for example, low-hanging fruit like the extension of the renewable tax credits, now on track to be phased out by 2022.

While Pollin, Bruenig, and Aronoff’s writing focused on the United States, campaigners are also making similar cases around the world.

In a June 2021 opinion piece for The Guardian, Johanna Bozuwa, co-manager of the Climate & Energy Program at the Democracy Collaborative, and Georgetown University philosophy professor Olúfẹ́mi O Táíwò took aim at Royal Dutch Shell on the heels of a historic court ruling, declaring that “like all private oil companies, Shell should not exist.”

“Governments like the Netherlands could better follow through on mandates to reduce emissions if they held control over oil companies themselves,” the pair added. “It is time to nationalize Big Oil.”

JESSICA CORBETT April 8, 2022

Climate Solutions, News, Observation, Politics

Rising authoritarianism and worsening climate change share a fossil-fueled secret

Around the world, many countries are becoming less democratic. This backsliding on democracy and “creeping authoritarianism,” as the U.S. State Department puts it, is often supported by the same industries that are escalating climate change.

In my new book, “Global Burning: Rising Antidemocracy and the Climate Crisis,” I lay out connections between these industries and the politicians who are both stalling action on climate change and diminishing democracy.

It’s a dangerous shift, both for representative government and for the future climate.

Corporate capture of environmental politics

In democratic systems, elected leaders are expected to protect the public’s interests, including from exploitation by corporations. They do this primarily through policies designed to secure public goods, such as clean air and unpolluted water, or to protect human welfare, such as good working conditions and minimum wages. But in recent decades, this core democratic principle that prioritizes citizens over corporate profits has been aggressively undermined.

Today, it’s easy to find political leaders – on both the political right and left – working on behalf of corporations in energy, finance, agribusiness, technology, military and pharmaceutical sectors, and not always in the public interest. These multinational companies help fund their political careers and election campaigns to keep them in office.

In the U.S., this relationship was cemented by the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United. The decision allowed almost unlimited spending by corporations and wealthy donors to support the political candidates who best serve their interests. Data shows that candidates with the most outside funding usually win. This has led to increasing corporate influence on politicians and party policies.

When it comes to the political parties, it’s easy to find examples of campaign finance fueling political agendas.

In 1988, when NASA scientist James Hansen testified before a U.S. Senate committee about the greenhouse effect, both the Republican and Democratic parties took climate change seriously. But this attitude quickly diverged. Since the 1990s, the energy sector has heavily financed conservative candidates who have pushed its interests and helped to reduce regulations on the fossil fuel industry. This has enabled the expansion of fossil fuel production and escalated CO2 emissions to dangerous levels.

The industry’s power in shaping policy plays out in examples like the coalition of 19 Republican state attorneys general and coal companies suing to block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

At the same time that the energy sector has sought to influence policies on climate change, it has also worked to undermine the public’s understanding of climate science. For instance, records show ExxonMobil participated in a widespread climate-science denial campaign for years, spending more than US$30 million on lobbyists, think tanks and researchers to promote climate-science skepticism. These efforts continue today. A 2019 report found the five largest oil companies had spent over $1 billion on misleading climate-related lobbying and branding campaigns over the previous three years.

The energy industry has in effect captured the democratic political process and prevented enactment of effective climate policies.

Corporate interests have also fueled a surge in well-financed antidemocratic leaders who are willing to stall and even dismantle existing climate policies and regulations. These political leaders’ tactics have escalated public health crises, and in some cases, human rights abuses.

Brazil, Australia and the US

Many deeply antidemocratic governments are tied to oil, gas and other extractive industries that are driving climate change, including Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and China.

In “Global Burning,” I explore how three leaders of traditionally democratic countries – Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Scott Morrison of Australia and Donald Trump in the U.S. – came to power on anti-environment and nationalist platforms appealing to an extreme-right populist base and extractive corporations that are driving climate change. While the political landscape of each country is different, the three leaders have important commonalities.

Bolsonaro, Morrison and Trump all depend on extractive corporations to fund electoral campaigns and keep them in office or, in the case of Trump, get reelected.

For instance, Bolsonaro’s power depends on support from a powerful right-wing association of landowners and farmers called the União Democrática Ruralista, or UDR. This association reflects the interests of foreign investors and specifically the multibillion-dollar mining and agribusiness sectors. Bolsonaro promised that if elected in 2019, he would dismantle environmental protections and open, in the name of economic progress, industrial-scale soybean production and cattle grazing in the Amazon rainforest. Both contribute to climate change and deforestation in a fragile region considered crucial for keeping carbon out of the atmosphere.

Bolsonaro, Morrison and Trump are all openly skeptical of climate science. Not surprisingly, all have ignored, weakened or dismantled environmental protection regulations. In Brazil, that led to accelerated deforestation and large swaths of Amazon rainforest burning.

In Australia, Morrison’s government ignored widespread public and scientific opposition and opened the controversial Adani Carmichael mine, one of the largest coal mines in the world. The mine will impact public health and the climate and threatens the Great Barrier Reef as temperatures rise and ports are expanded along the coast.

Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement – a move opposed by a majority of Americans – rolled back over 100 laws meant to protect the environment and opened national parks to fossil fuel drilling and mining.

Notably, all three leaders have worked, sometimes together, against international efforts to stop climate change. At the United Nations climate talks in Spain in 2019, Costa Rica’s minister for environment and energy at the time, Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, blamed Brazil, Australia and the U.S. for blocking efforts to tackle climate injustice linked to global warming.

Brazil, Australia and the U.S. are not unique in these responses to climate change. Around the world, there have been similar convergences of antidemocratic leaders who are financed by extractive corporations and who implement anti-environment laws and policies that defend corporate profits. New to the current moment is that these leaders openly use state power against their own citizens to secure corporate land grabs to build dams, lay pipelines, dig mines and log forests.

For example, Trump supported the deployment of the National Guard to disperse Native Americans and environmental activists protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline, a project that he had personally been invested in. His administration also proposed harsher penalties for pipeline protesters that echoed legislation promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, whose members include lawmakers and lobbyists for the oil industry. Several Republican-led states enacted similar anti-protest laws.

Under Bolsonaro, Brazil has changed laws in ways that embolden land grabbers to push small farmers and Indigenous people off their land in the rainforest.

What can people do about it?

Fortunately, there is a lot that people can do to protect democracy and the climate.

Replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and reducing the destruction of forests can cut greenhouse gas emissions. The biggest obstacles, a recent U.N. climate report noted, are national leaders who are unwilling to regulate fossil fuel corporations, reduce greenhouse gas emissions or plan for renewable energy production.

The path forward, as I see it, involves voters pushing back on the global trend toward authoritarianism, as Slovenia did in April 2022, and pushing forward on replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy. People can reclaim their democratic rights and vote out anti-environment governments whose power depends on prioritizing extractive capitalism over the best interests of their citizens and our collective humanity.

Eve Darian-Smith, Professor of Global and International Studies, University of California, Irvine

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Climate Solutions, News, Observation

On top of drastic emissions cuts, IPCC finds large-scale CO₂ removal from air will be “essential” to meeting targets

A Climate Change Concept Image

Sam Wenger, University of Sydney and Deanna D’Alessandro, University of Sydney

Large-scale deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) methods is now “unavoidable” if the world is to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, according to this week’s report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The report, released on Monday, finds that in addition to rapid and deep reductions in greenhouse emissions, CO₂ removal is “an essential element of scenarios that limit warming to 1.5℃ or likely below 2℃ by 2100”.

CDR refers to a suite of activities that lower the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere. This is done by removing CO₂ molecules and storing the carbon in plants, trees, soil, geological reservoirs, ocean reservoirs or products derived from CO₂.

As the IPCC notes, each mechanism is complex, and has advantages and pitfalls. Much work is needed to ensure CDR projects are rolled out responsibly.

How does CDR work?

CDR is distinct from “carbon capture”, which involves catching CO₂ at the source, such as a coal-fired power plant or steel mill, before it reaches the atmosphere.

There are several ways to remove CO₂ from the air. They include:

  • terrestrial solutions, such as planting trees and adopting regenerative soil practices, such as low or no-till agriculture and cover cropping, which limit soil disturbances that can oxidise soil carbon and release CO₂.
  • geochemical approaches that store CO₂ as a solid mineral carbonate in rocks. In a process known as “enhanced mineral weathering”, rocks such as limestone and olivine can be finely ground to increase their surface area and enhance a naturally occurring process whereby minerals rich in calcium and magnesium react with CO₂ to form a stable mineral carbonate.
  • chemical solutions such as direct air capture that use engineered filters to remove CO₂ molecules from air. The captured CO₂ can then be injected deep underground into saline aquifers and basaltic rock formations for durable sequestration.
  • ocean-based solutions, such as enhanced alkalinity. This involves directly adding alkaline materials to the environment, or electrochemically processing seawater. But these methods need to be further researched before being deployed.

Where is it being used right now?

To date, US-based company Charm Industrial has delivered 5,000 tonnes of CDR, which is the the largest volume thus far. This is equivalent to the emissions produced by about 1,000 cars in a year.

There are also several plans for larger-scale direct air capture facilities. In September, 2021, Climeworks opened a facility in Iceland with a 4,000 tonne per annum capacity for CO₂ removal. And in the US, the Biden Administration has allocated US$3.5 billion to build four separate direct air capture hubs, each with the capacity to remove at least one million tonnes of CO₂ per year.

However, a previous IPCC report estimated that to limit global warming to 1.5℃, between 100 billion and one trillion tonnes of CO₂ must be removed from the atmosphere this century. So while these projects represent a massive scale-up, they are still a drop in the ocean compared with what is required.

In Australia, Southern Green Gas and Corporate Carbon are developing one of the country’s first direct air capture projects. This is being done in conjunction with University of Sydney researchers, ourselves included.

In this system, fans push atmospheric air over finely tuned filters made from molecular adsorbents, which can remove CO₂ molecules from the air. The captured CO₂ can then be injected deep underground, where it can remain for thousands of years.

Opportunities

It is important to stress CDR is not a replacement for emissions reductions. However, it can supplement these efforts. The IPCC has outlined three ways this might be done.

In the short term, CDR could help reduce net CO₂ emissions. This is crucial if we are to limit warming below critical temperature thresholds.

In the medium term, it could help balance out emissions from sectors such as agriculture, aviation, shipping and industrial manufacturing, where straightforward zero-emission alternatives don’t yet exist.

In the long term, CDR could potentially remove large amounts of historical emissions, stabilising atmospheric CO₂ and eventually bringing it back down to pre-industrial levels.

The IPCC’s latest report has estimated the technological readiness levels, costs, scale-up potential, risk and impacts, co-benefits and trade-offs for 12 different forms of CDR. This provides an updated perspective on several forms of CDR that were lesser explored in previous reports.

It estimates each tonne of CO₂ retrieved through direct air capture will cost US$84–386, and that there is the feasible potential to remove between 5 billion and 40 billion tonnes annually.

Concerns and challenges

Each CDR method is complex and unique, and no solution is perfect. As deployment grows, a number of concerns must be addressed.

First, the IPCC notes scaling up CDR must not detract from efforts to dramatically reduce emissions. They write that “CDR cannot serve as a substitute for deep emissions reductions but can fulfil multiple complementary roles”.

If not done properly, CDR projects could potentially compete with agriculture for land or introduce non-native plants and trees. As the IPCC notes, care must be taken to ensure the technology does not negatively affect biodiversity, land-use or food security.

The IPCC also notes some CDR methods are energy-intensive, or could consume renewable energy needed to decarbonise other activities.

It expressed concern CDR might also exacerbate water scarcity and make Earth reflect less sunlight, such as in cases of large-scale reforestation.

Given the portfolio of required solutions, each form of CDR might work best in different locations. So being thoughtful about placement can ensure crops and trees are planted where they won’t dramatically alter the Earth’s reflectivity, or use too much water.

Direct air capture systems can be placed in remote locations that have easy access to off-grid renewable energy, and where they won’t compete with agriculture or forests.

Finally, deploying long-duration CDR solutions can be quite expensive – far more so than short-duration solutions such as planting trees and altering soil. This has hampered CDR’s commercial viability thus far.

But costs are likely to decline, as they have for many other technologies including solar, wind and lithium-ion batteries. The trajectory at which CDR costs decline will vary between the technologies.

Future efforts

Looking forward, the IPCC recommends accelerated research, development and demonstration, and targeted incentives to increase the scale of CDR projects. It also emphasises the need for improved measurement, reporting and verification methods for carbon storage.

More work is needed to ensure CDR projects are deployed responsibly. CDR deployment must involve communities, policymakers, scientists and entrepreneurs to ensure it’s done in an environmentally, ethically and socially responsible way.

Sam Wenger, PhD Student, University of Sydney and Deanna D’Alessandro, Professor & ARC Future Fellow, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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News, Politics

Biden bets a million barrels a day will drive down soaring gas prices – what you need to know about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve

Several sites, such as one near Freeport, Texas, store the hundreds of million of barrels in the United States’ Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Department of Energy via AP

Scott L. Montgomery, University of Washington

The Biden administration on March 31, 2022, said it plans to release an unprecedented 180 million barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to combat the recent spike in gas and diesel prices. About a million barrels of oil will be released every day for up to six months.

If all the oil is released, it would represent almost one-third of the current volume of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It follows a release of 30 million barrels in early March, a large withdrawal until the latest one.

But what is the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, why was it created, and when has it been used? And does it still serve a purpose, given that the U.S. exports more oil and other petroleum products than it imports?

As an energy researcher, I believe considering the reserve’s history can help answer these questions.

Origins of the reserve

Congress created the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as part of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 in response to a global oil crisis.

Arab oil-exporting states led by Saudi Arabia had cut supply to the world market because of Western support for Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Oil prices quadrupled, resulting in major economic damage to the U.S. and other countries. This also shook the average American, who had grown used to cheap oil.

The oil crisis caused the U.S., Japan and 15 other advanced countries to form the International Energy Agency in 1974 to recommend policies that would forestall such events in the future. One of the agency’s key ideas was to create emergency petroleum reserves that could be drawn on in case of a severe supply disruption.

The map shows the locations of the oil held in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Department of Energy

The Energy Policy and Conservation Act originally stipulated the reserve should hold up to 1 billion barrels of crude and refined petroleum products. Though it has never reached that size, the U.S. reserve is the largest in the world, with a maximum volume of 714 million barrels. The cap was previously set at 727 million barrels.

As of March 25, 2022, the reserve contained about 568 million barrels.

Oil in the reserve is stored underground in a series of large underground salt domes in four locations along the Gulf Coast of Texas and Louisiana, and is linked to major supply pipelines in the region.

Salt domes, formed when a mass of salt is forced upward, are a good choice for storage since salt is impermeable and has low solubility in crude oil. Most of the storage sites were acquired by the federal government in 1977 and became fully operational in the 1980s.

History of drawdowns

In the 1975 act, Congress specified that the reserve was intended to prevent “severe supply interruptions” – that is, actual oil shortages.

Over time, as the oil market has changed, Congress expanded the list of reasons for which the Strategic Petroleum Reserve could be tapped, such as domestic supply interruptions due to extreme weather.

Prior to March 2022, about 280 million barrels of crude oil had been released since the reserve’s creation, including a 50 million release that began in November 2021.

There have only been three emergency releases in the reserve’s history. The first was in 1991 after Iraq invaded Kuwait the year before, which resulted in a sharp drop in oil supply to the world market. The U.S. released 34 million barrels.

The second release, of 30 million barrels, came in 2005 after Hurricanes Rita and Katrina knocked out Gulf of Mexico production, which then comprised about 25% of U.S. domestic supply.

The third was a coordinated release by the International Energy Agency in 2011 as a result of supply disruptions from several oil-producing countries, including Libya, then facing civil unrest during the Arab Spring. In all, the agency coordinated a release of 60 million barrels of crude, half of which came from the U.S.

In addition, there have been 11 planned sales of oil from the reserve, mainly to generate federal revenue. One of these – the 1996-1997 sale to reduce the federal budget deficit – seemed to serve political ends rather than supply-related ones.

A better way to avoid pain at the pump

President Joe Biden’s November decision to tap the reserve was also seen as political by Republicans because there was no emergency shortage of supply at that time.

Similarly, the latest historic release of 180 million barrels could also be seen as serving a political purpose – in an election year, no less. But I believe it also seems perfectly legitimate in terms of fulfilling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve’s original purpose: reducing the negative impacts of a major oil price shock.

Though the U.S. is today a net petroleum exporter, it continues to import as much as 8.2 million barrels of crude oil every day.

[Over 150,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletters to understand the world. Sign up today.]

But in my view, the best way to avoid the pain of oil price shocks is to lower oil demand by reducing global carbon emissions – rather than mainly relying on releases from the reserve.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Nov. 24, 2021.

Scott L. Montgomery, Lecturer, Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Business, Climate Solutions, News, Politics

As Consumers Pay, Oil CEO’s Refuse to Testify to Congress About Soaring Prices

“While Americans struggle with high gas prices, these companies are doing victory laps, showering their already wealthy executives and shareholders with billions in stock buybacks and bonus compensation,” said one watchdog group. “They should be ashamed.”

As people across the United States face record-high gas prices—compounded by rising grocery bills and prices for other essentials—executives at three major oil companies are refusing to testify before Congress about what their firms could do to lessen the burden on U.S. households, leaving Democratic lawmakers and consumer advocates to condemn the companies for profiting amid lower and middle-class people’s financial pain.

Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, had invited the CEOs of EOG Resources Inc., Devon Energy Corp. and Occidental Petroleum Corp. to testify next week, only to be rebuffedTuesday by the executives, who have personally profited off gas prices which averaged $4.24 per gallon on Monday.

“I invited these companies to come before the committee and make their case, but apparently they don’t think it’s worth defending,” Grijalva said in a statement Tuesday. “Their silence tells us all we need to know—that cries for more drilling and looser regulations are nothing more than another age-old attempt to line their own pockets.

Since oil and gas prices began rising earlier this year as traveling and commuting increased, and went up further following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the fossil fuel industry has claimed the Biden administration should release more permits for drilling on public lands and accelerate approval of permits for building energy infrastructure, with the American Petroleum Institute pushing for what Grijalva called “a domestic drilling free-for-all” earlier this month.

Lawmakers including Grijalva have argued that the companies could easily stabilize gas prices immediately, considering the billions of dollars in profits EOG Resources, Devon Energy, and Occidental Petroleum raked in last year.

Instead, watchdog group Accountable.US said Tuesday, Occidental Petroleum planned to use $3 billion for stock buybacks in 2022, while Devon Energy gave nearly $2 billion in share buybacks and dividends to shareholders last year. EOG Resources gave CEO William R. Thomas a $150,000 raise in 2021, making his total compensation $9.8 million.

“We want to work with them to reduce gas prices, but it seems as though they’re too busy taking in record profits while refusing to pass savings on to consumers,” said Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.), a member of the Natural Resources Committee.

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) sarcastically expressed empathy for the “spineless” executives who refused to testify before Grijalva’s committee.

“It is hardly surprising that EOG Resources, Devon Energy, and Occidental Petroleum are dodging accountability by refusing to testify in Congress,” said Kyle Herrig, president of watchdog group Accountable.US. “While Americans struggle with high gas prices, these companies are doing victory laps, showering their already wealthy executives and shareholders with billions in stock buybacks and bonus compensation. They should be ashamed.”

Grijalva noted that while the industry has used the Russian invasion of Ukraine to call for even more freedom to drill for oil and gas, fossil fuel companies hold leases on 26 million acres of land.

“These same companies already have over 9,000 approved permits they can use whenever they want,” Grijalva told Public News Service on Tuesday. “And the very companies with thousands of acres of existing leases and hundreds of unused permits are the same ones shouting that they need more land for drilling.”

According to Accountable.US, the three companies refusing to speak to Grijalva’s committee “are among the top leaseholders of public lands oil and gas leases with 4,114 leases covering nearly 1.5 million acres.”

Companies including BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and Shell have also been invited to testify at upcoming hearings on their business practices and impacts on consumers. In February, board members from the four companies refused to testify about the firms’ climate pledges.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) noted last week that oil prices dropped in recent days, but no savings were passed onto consumers.

“The bewildering incongruity between falling oil prices and rising gas prices smacks of price gouging and is deeply damaging to working Americans,” Schumer said last week. “The Senate is going to get answers.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by JULIA CONLEY  and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Hot-Lynx

Kyiv: Zelenskyy to host Polish, Czech and Slovenian PMs

Three European Prime Ministers of NATO countries will meet in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmyhal

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša and Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala will represent the European Council. 

A statement reported by Reuters announced,  “The purpose of the visit is to confirm the unequivocal support of the entire European Union for the sovereignty and independence of Ukraine. The aim of this visit is also to present a broad package of support for Ukraine and Ukrainians.”

The visit from Polish, Czech and Slovenian PM comes while Kyiv continues to be bombarded by Russian troops. With civilian fatalities  reported early Tuesday morning after shelling hit buildings in a residential areas. 

Adviser to the Head of the Office of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a tweet “Negotiations are ongoing. Consultations on the main negotiation platform renewed. General regulation matters, ceasefire, withdrawal of troops from the territory of the country…”

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will also address Congress in a virtual speech, most likely to put additional pressure on President Biden to facilitate fighter jets to help with Russia’s continued offensive in Ukraine.  

Read More at:

Reuters
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Breaking News, Politics

Dems Introduce Windfall Tax on Big Oil So Companies ‘Pay a Price When They Price Gouge’

Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic / Adobe Stock

“This is a bill to reduce gas prices and hold Big Oil accountable,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, who led the measure in the U.S. House.

Congressional Democrats on Thursday introduced the bicameral Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax to target price gouging by profit-gorging fossil fuel companies amid Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We need to curb profiteering by Big Oil and provide relief to Americans at the gas pump—that starts with ensuring these corporations pay a price when they price gouge.”

“This is a bill to reduce gas prices and hold Big Oil accountable,” declared Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who’s leading the measure in the U.S. House.

“As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sends gas prices soaring,” said Khanna, “fossil fuel companies are raking in record profits. These companies have made billions and used the profits to enrich their own shareholders while average Americans are hurting at the pump.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) introduced the legislation in the upper chamber along with co-sponsors including Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

The proposal followed President Joe Biden’s announcement earlier this week of a ban on U.S. imports of Russian fuels and amid swelling accusations that Big Oil has been taking advantage of the crisis in Ukraine to “pad their bottom line with war-fueled profits.”

The Democrats’ proposal aims to get some relief for Americans, who are facing average gas prices of $4.31 a gallon.

Big oil companies, specifically those that produce or import at least 300,000 barrels of oil per day, are targeted under the measure. They would face a per-barrel tax—whether the oil is domestically produced or imported—equal to 50% of the difference between the current price of a barrel of oil and the average price per barrel between 2015 and 2019.

The measure exempts smaller companies, which, according to a statement from the lawmakers, account for roughly 70% of the domestic production. This approach is meant to deter the larger multinational producers from simply raising prices.

The tax imposed on the energy firms would be quarterly. Consumers would receive quarterly rebates, with the relief phasing out for single filers earning more than $75,000 annually and joint filers earning more than $150,000 annually. The lawmakers project the tax to raise $45 billion per year at $120 per barrel of oil, delivering to single filers $240 annually and joint filers $360 annually.

“While Putin’s war is causing gas prices to go up, Big Oil companies are raking in record profits,” Warren said in a statement. “We need to curb profiteering by Big Oil and provide relief to Americans at the gas pump—that starts with ensuring these corporations pay a price when they price gouge, and using the revenue to help American families,” she said.

A number of social justice and climate groups heaped praise on the legislative proposal.

According to Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, “The oil and gas industry got the world into this mess by lobbying and lying to keep us hooked on fossil fuels. Now they’re using the war in Ukraine to distract us from the fact that they are ripping off hard working Americans with high gas prices as they reap record earnings.”

“It’s time we stop allowing Big Oil to use its record profits, earned on the backs of hard-working American families, to reward wealthy shareholders and CEOs, and instead make them pay a fair share to lower the cost for consumers,” he added.

Collin Rees, U.S. program director at Oil Change International, welcomed the proposal as precisely the opposite of what the fossil fuel lobby has called for to counter Putin’s power, namely expanded domestic fossil fuel production.

“The so-called ‘solutions’ to the energy crisis being put forward by Big Oil companies and the American Petroleum Institute would do nothing but further line their own pockets and lock in a climate-wrecking, fossil-fueled future,” he said. “What’s needed now is immediate relief for American consumers, which is what this commonsense windfall profits tax bill would provide.”

The bill also drew plaudits from Lukas Ross, program manager at Friends of the Earth, which released an analysis Thursday along with BailoutWatch finding that Big Oil CEOs have “absolutely” used the spiked in fuel prices triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to “price-gouge and profiteer.”

In a statement responding to the new legislation, Ross said: “All-American oil oligarchs are profiteering off the war in Ukraine while sacrificing our communities and climate. The windfall profits tax will require Big Oil to pay their fair share while putting billions of dollars back into the pockets of taxpayers.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by ANDREA GERMANOS and republished under  a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

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Climate Solutions, News, Observation, Politics

Drill, Baby, Drill: Capitalism’s Only Plan for Climate Is Collapse

Photo by Zbynek Burival on Unsplash

If we continue not acting against the real cause of the climate crisis—the capitalist mode of production and the capitalist worldview—they will take it as a social license to carry on with collapse.

This past week’s flurry of announcements over “ambitious action” by governments during the COP26 in Glasgow has been justly received with scepticism by climate justice activists and the general public (and enthusiastic support by the media in general). During this same period important revelations of the massive gap in terms of necessary emission cuts and country’s plans emerged, as the broader rejection of greenwashing became pervasive. The narrative of false solutions and green capitalism doesn’t work. Yesterday, the revelation that over 800 oil & gas wells are being planned for drilling still this year and in 2022, in the report “Drill, Baby, Drill“, makes it clear that the proceedings of COP26 are mostly propaganda, as the only real, mandatory and contractualized plan global capitalism has for the climate crisis is collapse.

The reason why the climate crisis is not being solved is because it will lead to the biggest shift in power in the history of humanity, it will lead to the biggest transfer of wealth and loss of profit in history.

The scenario is the most dire ever. Not only the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is at its highest for millions of years, temperatures keep pushing closer to 1.5ºC and emissions are rising once again after the Covid hiatus. The IPCC scientists have leaked the second draft of Group II’s report, which states that “estimates of committed CO2 emissions from current fossil energy infrastructure are 658 GtCO2 […] nearly the double the remaining carbon budget,” revealing that “others [scientists] stress that climate change is caused by industrial development and more specifically the character of social and economic development produced by the nature of the capitalist society, which they therefore view as ultimately unsustainable.” In a few months, we will understand the level of political and business editing in the final report that finally comes out.

Yet, current infrastructure is not enough for global capitalism. In the “Drill, Baby, Drill” report, made public by the Glasgow Agreement at the COP26 Coalition’s People Summit, a still bigger measure of incoherence appears. There are 816 new oil & gas wells being planned and drilled until the end of the year and in 2022. These are located in 76 countries all around the world, countries whose governments are currently sitting in the halls of the COP26 in Glasgow, to “negotiate” a solution for the climate crisis.

The host UK appears close to the top of desired new wells, with 36, mostly offshore, in the basins of Central Graben, Moray Firth, the North Sea and Shetland. It is very likely that while Boris Johnson was doing his James Bond gag on stage, at least some four wells were being drilled to add to British fossil fuel reserves, making him a sort of meta-Bond villain. The top of the ranking for most wells planned goes to Australia and Russia, with 80 wells each, closely followed by Mexico with 78. Australia, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia, USA, Norway, UK, Brazil and Myanmar plan to drill over 500 oil & gas wells between now and the end of 2022. The report points out that this is very likely an underestimation. The companies most involved in drilling these wells are the gallery of the usual suspects: ENI, Petronas, Shell, Equinor, Total, Pemex, BP, Pertamina, Chevron and ExxonMobil. There are at least 67 wells planned above the Arctic Polar Circle. Total and ExxonMobil are in a contest to drill the deepest well ever in the ocean (Total is going for 3628m deep in Angola, and ExxonMobil is going for 3800m deep in Brazil). Many of these companies are spending millions every year on propaganda for carbon neutrality and other false solutions, blocking real action and expanding their operations.

The report also includes a sample of wells drilled in 2021 so far, with China on top, followed by Turkey, Russia, Norway, Indonesia, Mexico, Pakistan, Australia and Egypt, the host for the next COP.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. It is the way this system operates: just enough propaganda of “ambition” and technofixes to keep fossils flowing as ever, while the climate collapses. The information does provide us with a question: if the on climate change debate is framed by companies and governments around the terms of net-zero, carbon credits, carbon taxes and offsettings, rather than stopping emissions, when will it ever come to the real problem of the climate crisis? Well, never. And that is the purpose.

Governments and companies are actively engaged in not cutting emissions, but also in effectively increasing them. Each and every one of these wells is a public crime against Humanity and all species on this planet, advertised in advance. It is good that we know them, though, for it is better to know fossil capitalism’s plans to collapse us beforehand and in as much detail as possible. That is why the call on the report does not go out to governments and fossil companies to suddenly act after over three decades of expanding fossil use. The call goes out to the climate justice movement and civil society: spread this information far and wide, act on it, campaign on it, block, stop and detain all of these projects. Other millions of fossil and fossil-based projects compose the menu of collapse daily confirmed by governments and companies. They are the legally binding commitment for our collapse and need to be stopped.

The overwhelming agreement on the reason why the climate crisis is not being fixed is becoming as high as the overwhelming scientific agreement on the cause of the climate crisis. The reason why the climate crisis is not being solved is because it will lead to the biggest shift in power in the history of humanity, it will lead to the biggest transfer of wealth and loss of profit in history. That means very little to the majority of the human population, as we will be the beneficiaries of this shift, of this transfer, of this redistribution. If we solve this crisis, we will have the chance to heal our battered planet. That is why their plan means collapse: they refuse to abdicate an inch of their brutal privilege and power. If we continue not acting against the real cause of the climate crisis—the capitalist mode of production and the capitalist worldview—they will take it as a social license to carry on with collapse. Even without social license, their plan will always lead to collapse. It’s not circumstantial, it is the core of this system. We need to collapse them.

Originally published on Common Dreams by JOÃO CAMARGO and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

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Business, Climate Solutions, News, Observation, Politics

Climate Movement Hails ‘Mind-Blowing’ $40 Trillion in Fossil Fuel Divestment Pledges

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“Institutions around the world must step up now and commit to joining the divest-invest movement before it is too late—for them, for the economy, and for the world.”

Over the past decade, nearly 1,500 investors and institutions controlling almost $40 trillion in assets have committed to divesting from fossil fuels—a remarkable achievement that climate campaigners applauded Tuesday, while warning that further commitments and action remain crucial.

“Divestment has helped rub much of the shine off what was once the planet’s dominant industry. If money talks, $40 trillion makes a lot of noise.”

“Amidst a depressing era in the race against climate change—with killer fires and titanic storms, political stalemate, and corporate greenwashing—the fossil fuel divestment movement is a source for tremendous optimism,” states a new report—entitled Invest-Divest 2021: A Decade of Progress Toward a Just Climate Future—published Tuesday.

“Ten years in, the divestment movement has grown to become a major global influence on energy policy,” the publication continues. “There are now 1,485 institutions publicly committed to at least some form of fossil fuel divestment, representing an enormous $39.2 trillion of assets under management. That’s as if the two biggest economies in the world, the United States and China, combined, chose to divest from fossil fuels.”

The paper—a joint effort between the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, Stand.earth, C40, and the Wallace Global Fund—comes on the eve of the United Nations Climate Conference in Glasgow, and notes that the divestment movement “has grown so large that it is now helping hold fossil fuel companies accountable for the true cost of their unregulated carbon pollution.”

The report continues:

Since the movement’s first summary report in 2014, the amount of total assets publicly committed to divestment has grown by over 75,000%. The number of institutional commitments to divestment has grown by 720% in that time, including a 49% increase in just the three years since the movement’s most recent report. The true amount of money being pulled out from fossil fuels is almost certainly larger since not all divestment commitments are made public.

The movement has now expanded far beyond its origins as a student-driven effort on college campuses. Divestment campaigners now target cities, states, foundations, banks, investment firms, and any player who participates in the global investment pool.

“Major new divestment commitments from iconic institutions have arrived in a rush over just a few months in late 2021,” the report notes, “including Harvard University, Dutch and Canadian pension fund giants PME and CDPQ, French public bank La Banque Postale, the U.S. city of Baltimore, and the Ford and MacArthur Foundations.”

Underscoring the paper’s assertion, ABP, Europe’s largest pension fund announced Tuesday that it would stop investing in fossil fuel producers.

“Divestment remains a critical strategy for the climate movement,” the publication states. “It must be combined with an accelerated push for investment in a just transition to a clean, renewable energy future if the world is to avoid a future of worsening human injustice and irreversible ecological damage. Financial arguments against divest-invest no longer hold water.”

Bill McKibben, co-founder of the climate action group 350.org, wrote in a Tuesday New York Times op-ed that “divestment has helped rub much of the shine off what was once the planet’s dominant industry. If money talks, $40 trillion makes a lot of noise.”

“This movement will keep growing, and keep depriving Big Oil of both its social license and its access to easy capital,” McKibben said in a separate statement introducing the new report.

The report’s authors contend that institutional investors must agree to three principles “if they want to be on the right side of history and humanity”:

  • Immediately and publicly commit to fully divesting from and stopping all financing of coal, oil, and gas companies and assets;
  • Immediately invest at least 5% of their assets in climate solutions, doubling to 10% by 2030—including investments in renewable energy systems, universal energy access, and a just transition for communities and workers—while holding companies accountable to respecting Indigenous and other human rights and environmental standards; and
  • Adopting net-zero plans that both immediately cut investments in fossil fuels and ensure that all other assets in their portfolio develop transition plans that reduce absolute emissions by 50% before 2030.

“Institutional investors everywhere are beginning to come to terms with the danger that fossil fuels pose to their investment portfolios, their communities, and their constituencies,” the report states. “This realization is important but it is not enough. Institutions around the world must step up now and commit to joining the divest-invest movement before it is too late—for them, for the economy, and for the world.”

“Societies, economies, and the climate are all changing,” the paper concludes. “The financial world will have to change with them.” 

Rev. Lennox Yearwood Jr., president and CEO of Hip Hop Caucus, said in a statement that “the climate crisis is here, and so are climate solutions. We know communities of color are disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis here in the U.S. and across the world. In order to create a just future, we must divest from fossil fuels and invest in communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis.”

“It is not enough to divest from only some fossil fuels or with only some of your portfolio—all investors must immediately divest all fossil fuels from all of their portfolio, while investing in climate solutions.”

Yearwood added that “over 10 years the divest-invest movement has become one of the most powerful global forces in a just transition to a clean energy future.”

Ellen Dorsey, executive director of the Wallace Global Fund, said that “the activist-driven divestment movement has yielded unprecedented and historic results in moving tens of trillions of dollars out of the industry driving the climate crises and exposing its failing business model.”

“But investors need to do more,” she argued. “It is not enough to divest from only some fossil fuels or with only some of your portfolio—all investors must immediately divest all fossil fuels from all of their portfolio, while investing in climate solutions with at least 5% of their portfolios, scaling to 10% rapidly.”

“Mission investors have a unique role to play to ensure the energy transition is a just one and that all people have access to safe, clean and affordable energy by 2030,” Dorsey added. “To do anything less does not address the scale or pace of this climate crisis.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by BRETT WILKINS and republished under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

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Climate Solutions, Observation

Dems Call Fossil Fuel CEOs, Lobbyists to Testify About Climate Disinformation

“Oil and gas executives have lied to the American people for decades about their industry’s role in causing climate change. It’s time they were held accountable.” 

Democratic leaders on the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee sent letters Thursday inviting the heads of key fossil fuel companies and lobbying groups to testify before the panel about the industry’s contributions to climate disinformation in recent decades.

Applauded by advocates of holding polluters and their business partners accountable for fueling the worsening climate emergency, the letters come amid concerns about how corporate lobbyists may influence a bipartisan infrastructure bill and the Build Back Better package—especially in the wake of a damning exposé on ExxonMobil earlier this summer.

Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who respectively chair the House panel and its Environment Subcommittee, wrote that “we are deeply concerned that the fossil fuel industry has reaped massive profits for decades while contributing to climate change that is devastating American communities, costing taxpayers billions of dollars, and ravaging the natural world.”

“We are also concerned that to protect those profits, the industry has reportedly led a coordinated effort to spread disinformation to mislead the public and prevent crucial action to address climate change,” the pair continued.

They also expressed concern that such “strategies of obfuscation and distraction continue today,” noting that “fossil fuel companies increasingly outsource lobbying to trade groups, obscuring their own roles in disinformation efforts.”

“One of Congress’s top legislative priorities is combating the increasingly urgent crisis of a changing climate,” the lawmakers added. “To do this, Congress must address pollution caused by the fossil fuel industry and curb troubling business practices that lead to disinformation on these issues.”

ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods, BP America CEO David Lawler, Chevron CEO Michael Wirth, Shell president Gretchen Watkins, American Petroleum Institute (API) president Mike Sommers, and U.S. Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Suzanne Clark (pdfs) now have a week to inform Democrats if they plan to willingly testify at the panel’s October 28 hearing.

Pointing to industry leaders’ past behavior, Accountable.US president Kyle Herrig said that “these polluters have long proven they’re more concerned with boosting their executives’ bottom lines than with protecting the climate. The only question is: will they defend their harmful actions before Congress? Or will they again refuse to answer to the American people?”

The Democrats also requested information from the firms, including internal communications and memos about climate science and related marketing as well as plans to reduce planet-heating emissions across the industry. If the letter recipients refuse to participate or turn over those materials, the panel’s leaders may issue subpoenas.

Richard Wiles, executive director of the Center for Climate Integrity, celebrated the letters in a statement that acknowledged other efforts to hold the industry accountable, including more than two dozen lawsuits filed by state and local governments in recent years.

“We applaud Chairs Maloney and Khanna for demanding that these executives answer for their history of climate deception,” he said. “Oil and gas executives have lied to the American people for decades about their industry’s role in causing climate change. It’s time they were held accountable. If the executives refuse to testify voluntarily, they should be subpoenaed.”

In a video released earlier this month, Khanna vowed that the panel’s probe of the fossil fuel industry’s role in climate disinformation “will be like the Big Tobacco hearings” of the 1990s.

Harvard University researcher Geoffrey Supran—whose academic publications include the first peer-reviewed analysis of ExxonMobil’s 40-year history of climate communications—said at the time that “it’s no surprise that Big Oil and Big Tobacco have used the same propaganda playbook to confuse the public and undermine political action, because they rely on many of the same PR firms and advertising agencies to do their dirty work.”

Ad and PR agencies are under mounting pressure to ditch fossil fuel clients for good, thanks in part to the Clean Creatives campaign supported by Fossil Free Media, both of which welcomed the letters.

“This is a landmark day in the climate fight,” said Fossil Free Media director Jamie Henn, noting the impact of the tobacco hearings. “For decades, the fossil fuel industry has polluted our political process along with polluting our atmosphere. Exposing the industry’s disinformation is a critical step in holding it accountable for the damage it has done and clearing the way for meaningful change.”

Clean Creatives campaign director Duncan Meisel suggested that “this investigation is the beginning of the end of misleading fossil fuel advertising and PR in the United States.”

“For too long, this industry has used fake front groups, advanced greenwashing, and straight up deception to delay climate action, every time with the willing help of some of the biggest ad and PR firms in the world,” he said. “Reps. Khanna and Maloney are following in the footsteps of congressional investigations that devastated the reputations of tobacco companies and their advertisers. Fossil fuel companies and their agencies are now on notice that they are next.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by JESSICA CORBETT and republished under Creative Commons

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Climate Solutions, News, Observation

To Avert ‘Uncontrollable Climate Chaos,’ Scientists Tell Biden to Stop Backing Fossil Fuels

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“When scientists across the U.S. are imploring the president to get the country off fossil fuels, it’s time to listen.”

With an open letter expressing “the utmost alarm about the state of our climate system,” over 330 scientists on Thursday urged President Joe Biden to declare a climate emergency and swiftly put an end to a fossil fuel-based energy system.

“When scientists across the U.S. are imploring the president to get the country off fossil fuels,” said Dr. Shaye Wolf, climate science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, “it’s time to listen.”

The letter—an effort organized by biologist Dr. Sandra Steingraber and climate scientist Dr. Peter Kalmus along with advocacy groups Center for Biological Diversity and Food & Water Watch—frames the current moment as a “time of peril” that must be met with “emergency action.”

Other initial signatories include Dr. Robert Bullard, known as the father of environmental justice, and climate scientist Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University.

A three-step action plan is presented in the letter, beginning with a full ban on any new fossil fuel leasing and extraction on public lands and waters; no future permits for related infrastructure; and ending fossil fuel exports and subsidies.

Biden must also declare a climate emergency, the letter says, through which a chunk of the nation’s vast military spending would instead be directed to fund renewable energy projects and the crude oil export ban would be reinstated.

As a third key step, the president needs to reject fossil fuel industry schemes, such as carbon capture and storage, that the scientists frame as “delay tactics” that ultimately “impede the rapid transition to renewable energy.”

The first two in the trio of demands mirror those set out by the People Vs. Fossil Fuels mobilization, which is set to kick off next week.

“U.S. scientists are done speaking calmly in the face of inaction,” Steingraber said in a statement in which she expressed solidarity with the upcoming mobilization.

She also urged the president to follow through on a key campaign vow that his support for pipelines like the Dakota Access and Line 3 has betrayed.

“President Biden,” said Steingraber, “listening to science means acting on science. It means stopping new fossil fuel projects, opposing industry delay tactics, and declaring a national climate emergency.”

The scientists warned that “our chances for avoiding irreversible and uncontrollable climate chaos diminish daily.”

“We implore you, on behalf of and for the love of all life on Earth,” they added, “to respond to the greatest threat ever to face our species and lead the transition away from fossil fuels that humanity desperately needs.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by ANDREA GERMANOS and republished under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Business, Climate Solutions, Earth and Ecology, News, Observation, Politics

Six-Month Sentence for Lawyer Who Took on Chevron Denounced as ‘International Outrage’

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Conviction of Steven Donziger, said one critic, “perfectly encapsulates how corporate power has twisted the U.S. justice system to protect corporate interests and punish their enemies.”

Environmental justice advocates and other progressives on Friday condemned a federal judge’s decision Friday to sentence human rights lawyer Steven Donziger to six months in prison—following more than two years of house arrest related to a lawsuit he filed decades ago against oil giant Chevron.

The sentence, delivered by U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska in New York City, represents “an international outrage,” tweeted journalist Emma Vigeland following its announcement.

Donziger’s sentence came a day after the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said it was “appalled” by the U.S. legal system’s treatment of the former environmental lawyer and demanded the U.S. government “remedy the situation of Mr. Steven Donziger without delay and bring it in conformity with the relevant international norms” by immediately releasing him.

Donziger represented a group of farmers and Indigenous people in the Lago Agrio region of Ecuador in the 1990s in a lawsuit against Texaco—since acquired by Chevron—in which the company was accused of contaminating soil and water with its “deliberate dumping of billions of gallons of cancer-causing waste into the Amazon.”

An Ecuadorian court awarded the plaintiffs a $9.5 billion judgment in 2011—a decision upheld by multiple courts in Ecuador—only to have a U.S. judge reject the ruling, accusing Donziger of bribery and evidence tampering. Chevron also countersued Donziger in 2011. 

In 2019, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the Southern District of New York—a former corporate lawyer with investments in Chevron—held Donziger in contempt of court after he refused to disclose privileged information about his clients to the fossil fuel industry. Kaplan placed Donziger under house arrest, where he has remained under strict court monitoring for 787 days.

In addition to Kaplan’s own connections to Chevron, the judge appointed private attorneys to prosecute the case, including one who had worked for a firm that represented the oil giant.

Preska, who found Donziger guilty of the contempt charges in July, is a leader of the right-wing Federalist Society, which counts Chevron among its financial backers.

“As I face sentencing on Day 787 of house arrest, never forget what this case is really about,” tweeted Donziger on Friday morning, as he awaited the sentencing. “Chevron caused a mass industrial poisoning in the Amazon that crushed the lives of Indigenous peoples. Six courts and 28 appellate judges found the company guilty.”

https://twitter.com/SDonziger/status/1443900016859430916?s=20

Donziger indicated Friday afternoon that he plans to appeal the sentence.

“Stay strong,” he tweeted along with a photo from a rally attended by his supporters Friday.

350.org co-founder and author Bill McKibben said on social media that Donziger “deserves our thanks and support” for “daring to point out that Big Oil had poisoned the rainforest.”Rick Claypool, research director for Public Citizen, tweeted that Donziger’s case “perfectly encapsulates how corporate power has twisted the U.S. justice system to protect corporate interests and punish their enemies”—noting that as Donziger is ordered to prison for six months, members of the Sackler family recently won immunity from opioid lawsuits targeting their private company, Purdue Pharma.

“This ruling was done to deter ANYONE from crossing corporate special interests,” said progressive former congressional candidate Jen Perelman.

Originally published on Common Dreams by JULIA CONLEY and republished under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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