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Private Security Firm Accused of Working Illegally to Protect Oil and Gas Pipelines in Five States - DeSmogBlog (Apr 16, 2021) |
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Apr 16, 2021 · Leighton Security Services, a private security company accused of working without a license during construction of the controversial Dakota Access pipeline, is facing similar allegations in Virginia.
The complaint against Leighton is one of two recently filed against private companies providing security for the Mountain Valley pipeline, a planned 300-mile pipeline that would carry fracked gas from northwestern West Virginia, through pristine mountain streams and Appalachian forests, to the Transcontinental Gas Pipeline Company’s (Transco) compressor station in southern Virginia.
The complaints were filed anonymously in January with the state’s Department of Criminal ... Read more ...
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Oil Industry 'Net-Zero’ Pledges are an Attempt to Delay Climate Action, New Paper Warns - DeSmogBlog (Apr 15, 2021) |
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Apr 15, 2021 · A growing number of oil companies in the past year have announced targets to achieve “net-zero emissions” by mid-century, seemingly signaling a monumental shift in the history of the oil business towards low-carbon solutions. But a new report argues that not only is the oil industry unlikely to be a leader on carbon reductions, but the sudden flurry of net-zero pledges is instead a cynical effort to bolster corporate images in a calculated attempt to buy time to extract more oil and gas.
The oil industry is structured to prevent real climate action, with business models and oil executives’ compensation packages dependent on amassing oil reserves and growing production. There ... Read more ...
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European Court Opens Itself up to Climate-Related Human Rights Challenges - DeSmogBlog (Apr 13, 2021) |
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Apr 13, 2021 · The European Court of Human Rights has begun considering whether states have violated their citizens’ human rights by failing to do enough to cut emissions.
The court, which is responsible for interpreting the European Convention on Human Rights, recently accepted two climate lawsuits with similar human rights arguments but brought by very different groups of people. Both cases argue that inaction by governments when it comes to limiting dangerous global warming risks basic rights such as health and life.
Experts say this shift in accepting these types of cases signals that judges are becoming more aware that climate change is a threat to human rights. And if the ... Read more ...
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Methane Emissions Spiked in 2020. Scientists Fear Feedback Loops - DeSmogBlog (Apr 12, 2021) |
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Apr 12, 2021 · Preliminary data shows that methane emissions jumped in 2020 by the largest amount since systematic record-keeping began decades ago. And despite a dip in polluting activities due to the pandemic, concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose to its highest level in 3.6 million years.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said that global methane concentrations shot up by 14.67 parts per billion (ppb) in 2020, the largest annual increase ever recorded, and a sharp increase from the 9.74 ppb rise in 2019. The data is an ominous sign that the world is badly off track in terms of reaching its climate goals.
“Human activity is driving climate ... Read more ...
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Indigenous Communities March For Justice A Year On From Devastating Amazon Oil Spill - DeSmogBlog (Apr 09, 2021) |
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Apr 09, 2021 · Hundreds of Indigenous activists took to the streets in Ecuador this week to demand justice on the one-year anniversary of the country’s worst oil spill in 15 years.
Demonstrators marched through the Amazonian city of Coca to call on authorities to take responsibility for the 16,000 barrels of crude oil that poured into the Coca and Napo rivers when two pipelines ruptured last year.
Around 27,000 Kichwa people were impacted by the spill, and are reportedly still unable to use the contaminated water for drinking, bathing, and fishing. The Kichwa have also raised concerns over health issues arising from contact with the oil-contaminated water, including skin rashes and ... Read more ...
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Global Coal Use is Falling But Not Fast Enough to Tackle Climate Change - DeSmogBlog (Apr 08, 2021) |
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Apr 08, 2021 · Despite drops in energy usage during the pandemic, coal power use only declined by four percent in 2020, according to a new report.
While coal used for power generation dropped 20 percent in both the U.S. and the European Union last year, the same is not happening in China.
Boom and Bust: Tracking the Global Coal Plant Pipeline, a new report from Global Energy Monitor, found that “China commissioned 76 percent of the world’s new coal plants in 2020, up from 64 percent in 2019, driving a 12.5 GW (gigawatt) increase in the global coal fleet in 2020.”
Global coal power use, however, must drop by 14 percent per year to achieve the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate ... Read more ...
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How U.S. 'Risk-Takers' Took a Gamble on Somalia's Oil - Then Vanished - DeSmogBlog (Apr 08, 2021) |
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Apr 08, 2021 · A few days into the New Year, armed Somali intelligence officials were seen escorting guests into three bullet-proof cars at Mogadishu’s Aden Adde International airport. An unusual quiet stretched through the capital’s normally busy main streets as the convoy snaked through cordoned-off roads towards Somalia’s presidential palace.
Local and international media reported that two foreign companies were arriving in Mogadishu to sign a “secret” historic oil deal with the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS), the first agreement of this kind since civil war erupted in the country in 1991. Opposition politicians wrote a letter to the president that warned against the “dangerous ... Read more ...
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A New Chapter and New Look for DeSmog - DeSmogBlog (Apr 07, 2021) |
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Apr 07, 2021 · Today, the team at DeSmog is excited to reveal our new global mission and website dedicated to fearless investigations and comprehensive resources to combat the ongoing crisis of climate solutions denial and social injustices.
We’re celebrating DeSmog’s 15th anniversary of clearing the PR pollution that clouds climate science, and expanding our mission to expose the powerful forces behind the disinformation campaigns responsible for delaying climate and energy solutions. These industry-funded propaganda and polarization tactics have had a corrosive impact on democracies worldwide, resulting in a dangerously ineffective response to climate change. And the climate crisis, in ... Read more ...
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Campaigners Urge UK Government To 'Lock Out' Polluters From COP26 - DeSmogBlog (Apr 07, 2021) |
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Apr 07, 2021 · Campaigners are calling for polluters to be denied access to this year’s pivotal COP26 summit and locked out of all future UN climate talks.
A letter published today and signed by over 170 grassroots groups urged the government to “kick out” polluters from sponsoring or even visiting the summit, claiming their presence is “poisoning” the climate debate.
The letter by campaign group Glasgow Calls Out Polluters reads: “To protect vulnerable communities we urgently need a just transition to a fossil-free world but many polluters, whose profits depend on inaction, won’t let this happen,”
“The UK Government must take a firm stance and kick climate polluters out of the ... Read more ...
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Campaigners Urge UK Government To 'Lock Out' Polluters From COP26 - DeSmogBlog (Apr 07, 2021) |
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Apr 07, 2021 · Campaigners are calling for polluters to be denied access to this year’s pivotal COP26 summit and locked out of all future UN climate talks.
A letter published today and signed by over 170 grassroots groups urged the government to “kick out” polluters from sponsoring or even visiting the summit, claiming their presence is “poisoning” the climate debate.
The letter by campaign group Glasgow Calls Out Polluters reads: “To protect vulnerable communities we urgently need a just transition to a fossil-free world but many polluters, whose profits depend on inaction, won’t let this happen,”
“The UK Government must take a firm stance and kick climate polluters out of the ... Read more ...
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Revealed: The Climate-Conflicted Directors Leading the World’s Top Banks - DeSmogBlog (Apr 07, 2021) |
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Apr 07, 2021 · The majority of directors at the world’s biggest banks have affiliations to polluting companies and organisations, a DeSmog investigation shows. The findings raise concerns over a systemic conflict of interest at a time when the international financial sector is under increasing pressure to stop funding fossil fuels.
DeSmog’s analysis found 65 percent of directors from 39 banks had 940 past or current connections to industries that could be considered climate-conflicted.
Directors with affiliations to companies involved in extracting oil, gas and coal – the world’s most polluting energy sources – were well-represented across bank boardrooms, with 16 percent of all board ... Read more ...
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The Life and Death of a Pioneering Environmental Justice Lawyer - DeSmogBlog (Apr 07, 2021) |
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Apr 07, 2021 · Each storm season brings increased stress and fear for the people of Kivalina, a tiny Native village of some 400 Inupiaq people that sits on a small barrier island on the shore of the Chukchi Sea in Alaska. For decades, there was no reliable way of evacuating people in the event of a severe storm; the only way on or off the island was by small plane or boat, neither of which are available or safe during high winds, storm surges, and inundation. A bridge to the mainland was only recently completed. Meanwhile, the island is rapidly eroding out from under the village.
When fierce storms appear on the horizon, the children get especially anxious and the elderly worry, which has ... Read more ...
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Climate Deniers Backed Violence and Spread Pro-Insurrection Messages Before, During, and After January 6 - DeSmogBlog (Apr 06, 2021) |
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Apr 06, 2021 · On the evening of January 6, 2021, the day of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, former coal mining executive Don Blankenship, who ran against Donald Trump as a third-party candidate in the 2020 election, began an all-caps Twitter thread.
“Why is it that American politicians and the American media support citizen uprisings in China, Poland, South Africa, and throughout the world, but when an American citizen is killed during an uprising against a corrupt American government the citizens are at fault?” @DonBlankenship posted on Twitter.
“Members of the media and the government are all saying what we saw today doesn’t work - but that is only because they don’t want it ... Read more ...
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Environmental Activists in Louisiana Call on Senator Cassidy to 'Do No Harm’ - DeSmogBlog (Apr 06, 2021) |
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Apr 06, 2021 · “It took courage for Senator Cassidy to vote against Trump,” Sharon Lavigne, the founder of the faith-based grassroots organization RISE St. James, said about the Louisiana Republican after the impeachment hearing of the former president. “He voted with his conscience, not his party. Now he has to find the courage to honor his oath as a doctor and stop more petrochemical plants from being built in fenceline communities.”
But Senator Bill Cassidy voting with the Democrats to convict Trump doesn’t represent a change in his patrician support of the fossil fuel industry.
Cassidy proved this point ahead of the impeachment hearing by condemning President’s Biden use of the ... Read more ...
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From Pollution to the Pandemic, Racial Equity Eludes Louisiana’s Cancer Alley Community - DeSmogBlog (Apr 06, 2021) |
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Apr 06, 2021 · Mary Hampton, president of the Concerned Citizens of St. John the Baptist Parish, a community group in Louisiana fighting for clean air, opted to do everything in her power to avoid getting the coronavirus after Robert Taylor, the group’s founder, was hospitalized with COVID-19 earlier this year. So she got vaccinated as soon as she could. “Either the vaccine is going to make me sick,” Hampton reasoned, “or the virus is going to kill me.”
Like many African Americans, Hampton’s hesitation around vaccination stems from hearing about the way Black men were left to suffer during the Tuskegee syphilis study, an experiment between 1932 and 1972 which withheld lifesaving treatment, ... Read more ...
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UN Human Rights Experts Condemn Expanding Petrochemical Industry in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley as 'Environmental Racism' - DeSmogBlog (Apr 06, 2021) |
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Apr 06, 2021 · Human rights experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council issued a statement on March 2 raising concerns about the further industrialization of Louisiana’s “Cancer Alley.” This largely Black-populated stretch of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is lined with more than a hundred refineries and petrochemical plants. The experts said additional petrochemical development in this region, which U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data shows has some of the country’s highest cancer risks from air pollution, constitutes “environmental racism” that “must end.”
“This form of environmental racism poses serious and disproportionate threats ... Read more ...
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Exclusive: 2020’s Hurricane Zeta Nearly Caused 'Another Deepwater Horizon Catastrophe' in Gulf of Mexico - DeSmogBlog (Apr 05, 2021) |
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Apr 05, 2021 · It was Thursday, October 22, 2020, when the crew aboard the Transocean Deepwater Asgard, an ultra-deepwater rig in the Gulf of Mexico, started monitoring a weather disturbance in the nearby Caribbean Sea that bore the tell-tale signs of a forming hurricane.
But the Asgard, which was drilling an oil well in the waters about 225 miles south of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, had other pressing matters to deal with. That same day, the oil well it was drilling more than a mile below the water’s surface experienced a kick - an eruption of oil, gas, or other fluids from deep underground up the drill pipe. If not properly controlled, this type of incident can sometimes lead to a ... Read more ...
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Indigenous Youth Rally Calls on Biden to Cancel Line 3 and Dakota Access Pipelines - DeSmogBlog (Apr 05, 2021) |
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Apr 05, 2021 · On March 31, President Joe Biden unveiled the blueprint for a $2.25 trillion infrastructure package, which would include enormous investments in renewable energy, electric vehicles, and public transit, along with roads, bridges, and water infrastructure. The White House is billing it as a “generational investment” that will lead to “transformational progress in our ability to tackle climate change.”
But a day later, Indigenous youth and organizers opposing the Line 3 and Dakota Access pipelines rallied in front of the White House against the two fossil fuel pipelines. They also delivered a petition with 400,000 signatures to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, calling for the ... Read more ...
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Analysis: Fossil Fuel Tax Programs to Cut Emissions Lead to Lots of Industry Profit, Little Climate Action - DeSmogBlog (Apr 04, 2021) |
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Apr 04, 2021 · The fossil fuel industry and its investors have financially benefited from tax policies and subsidies designed to reduce the emissions from oil, gas, and coal - sometimes without taking the action required to tackle climate change.
Recently, claims have been surfacing of companies taking the taxpayer money offered to incentivize these actions but not following through on reducing their emissions. In March, for example, Reuters reported that Congress has opened an investigation into problems with the government’s “clean coal” tax credit. This is after Reuters revealed that financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs, were making huge profits off the program, despite it not ... Read more ...
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Father of Teen Killed in Oil Tank Explosion Pushing for New Louisiana Safety Measures - DeSmogBlog (Apr 02, 2021) |
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Apr 02, 2021 · Maxwell Smith is on a mission to make sure no one loses a child the way he lost his 14-year-old daughter, Zalee Gail Day-Smith. Zalee, a vivacious high school freshman who loved singing, died on February 28 when oil tanks exploded near her home in Beauregard, Louisiana. “Her body was thrown 200 feet in the air,” Smith told me when I went to visit the family a month after the accident. Zalee's body was found across the street from the site of the blast in the Bear Field oil field, just north of Lake Charles. It was located alongside one of the oil tanks that had been blown off its foundation. Smith says that his daughter’s body was mutilated to such a degree that the family was never ... Read more ...
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