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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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NAACP Report: Fossil Fuel Industry Uses Deception to Conceal Damage to BIPOC Communities - DeSmogBlog (Apr 02, 2021) |
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Apr 02, 2021 · The fossil fuel industry continues to use a long list of deceptive tactics to conceal environmental destruction that harms Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and low-income communities.
That’s the top finding of a newly released NAACP report titled “Fossil Fuel Foolery.” The report identifies 10 tactics that polluters, industry lobbyists, and politicians often deploy to deflect accountability for the impacts of fossil fuel production and pollution on the environment and human health.
This report updates material on fossil fuel industry influence tactics that the NAACP published in 2019.
Many of the industry’s tactics are familiar, such as obscuring or ... Read more ...
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UK Court Urged to Respect 1.5C Climate Limit - DeSmogBlog (Apr 01, 2021) |
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Apr 01, 2021 · In a significant challenge to the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court, several leading climate scientists have said a recent ruling it made on the expansion of London’s main airport, Heathrow, will cause serious damage to the global environment, urging it to rule that the government must respect the 1.5C limit internationally agreed to rein in global heating.
Almost 150 lawyers, academics and policy-makers from around the world have written to the court, urging it “to mitigate the profound harm” which they say will be caused by its judgement allowing the government to go ahead with its plans to expand Heathrow.
They add: “Recklessly ignoring the spirit and letter of the law ... | By Alex Kirby, Climate News Network Read more ...
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British Airways Nearly as Polluting as All Vans on UK Roads Combined, Data Shows - DeSmogBlog (Mar 30, 2021) |
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Mar 30, 2021 · British Airways flights emitted almost as much carbon dioxide in 2019 as all the vans on UK roads, according to newly released data obtained by non-profit group Transport & Environment (T&E).
The UK's flag carrier was the second highest-emitting airline in Europe before the Covid-19 pandemic hit the industry, the figures show, with 18.4 million tonnes (Mt) CO2 released in 2019, just short of the 19.4 Mt CO2 equivalent emitted by the UK’s vans in 2018.
Europe’s top aviation polluter is German national airline Lufthansa, which emitted 19.1 MtCO2 in 2019, with Air France in third place at 14.4 MtCO2.
Matt Finch, UK policy manager at T&E, said the scale of BA's ... Read more ...
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Feds Move Forward with New Mexico Drilling Plan Despite Community Outcry - DeSmogBlog (Mar 30, 2021) |
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Mar 30, 2021 · For nine years, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has wrangled through an update to oil and gas permitting procedures for the San Juan Basin in northwestern New Mexico. The update was sparked by decades old changes in drilling technology already used in an area that gained notoriety for having one of the largest methane hot spots on the planet - because of leaking oil and gas wells.
In February 2020, BLM and the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs together released a set of four update possibilities. All four have been roundly panned by government agencies, environmental groups, tribal governments, Native American organizations and the public at large. Even so, the two agencies ... | By Jerry Redfern, Capital and Main. This story originally appeared in Capital and Main and is republished here as part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. Read more ...
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Understanding the Fossil Fuel Industry's Legacy of White Supremacy - DeSmogBlog (Mar 29, 2021) |
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Mar 29, 2021 · In December, The New York Times published a story revealing how ExxonMobil and other oil companies had paid a public relations firm named FTI to build “news” and information websites falsely suggesting grassroots support for the fossil fuel industry and its initiatives. ExxonMobil, which didn’t speak with Times reporter (and my former coworker) Hiroko Tabuchi for the story, responded by trying to smear the messenger. “We refused to work with the author,” ExxonMobil tweeted, “because of her obvious bias against the oil and gas industry.”
The firm was alluding to an October tweet by Tabuchi that she’d “been thinking a lot about fossil fuels and white supremacy recently,” noting ... Read more ...
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Appalachian Fracking Faces Financial Risks, Report Warns. Hopes for Petrochemical Plastics Boom 'Unlikely.’ - DeSmogBlog (Mar 26, 2021) |
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Mar 26, 2021 · Developing new shale gas fields in Appalachia “may not end up being profitable” in the years ahead according to a new report. In addition, the associated petrochemical buildout that the region has pinned its hopes on as the future of natural gas is “unlikely,” the report states.
Natural gas drillers need prices to rise in order to turn a profit and continue expanding, a scenario that appears doubtful, according to the report published by the Stockholm Environment Institute’s US Center (SEI) and the Ohio River Valley Institute (ORVI), a Pennsylvania-based economic and sustainability think tank. Volatile market conditions for plastics are also putting the region’s plans for new ... Read more ...
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Campaigners Urge UK Government To 'Lock Out' Polluters From COP26 - DeSmogBlog (Mar 25, 2021) |
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Mar 25, 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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Why Companies’ 'Net-Zero’ Emissions Pledges Should Trigger a Healthy Dose of Skepticism - DeSmogBlog (Mar 25, 2021) |
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Mar 25, 2021 · Originally published in The Conversation
Hundreds of companies, including major emitters like United Airlines, BP and Shell, have pledged to reduce their impact on climate change and reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. These plans sound ambitious, but what does it actually take to reach net-zero and, more importantly, will it be enough to slow climate change?
As environmental policy and economics researchers, we study how companies make these net-zero pledges. Though the pledges make great press releases, net-zero is more complicated and potentially problematic than it may seem.
The gold standard for reaching net-zero emissions looks like this: A company ... | By Oliver Miltenberger, The University of Melbourne and Matthew D. Potts, University of California, Berkeley Read more ...
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New Poll Shows Overwhelming Support for Climate Action as Congress Weighs Big Infrastructure Bill - DeSmogBlog (Mar 24, 2021) |
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Mar 24, 2021 · Americans support the steps taken by the Biden administration thus far to tackle climate change by large margins, according to a new poll. The widespread support comes as the White House and the U.S. Congress gear up for a major push on a roughly $3 trillion infrastructure proposal, which could potentially mark the most ambitious push on climate action ever attempted in the U.S.
The new poll finds that in significant numbers Americans view climate change as an immediate threat, and by a two-to-one margin (60 percent agree versus 29 percent disagree), Americans say that “climate change is already having a serious impact on my part of the country.”
The poll surveyed 1,010 ... Read more ...
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Experts Urge World Leaders to 'Put Marine Ecosystems at the Heart of Climate Policy' - DeSmogBlog (Mar 22, 2021) |
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Mar 22, 2021 · As global weather experts warned Monday that the world's oceans are “under threat like never before,” more than 3,000 scientists, politicians, and other public figures had endorsed an open letter urging national governments to “recognize the critical importance of our ocean and blue carbon in the fight against the climate emergency.”
Led by the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) and backed by 66 partner groups, the letter (pdf) calling on world leaders to “put marine ecosystems at the heart of climate policy” is now open to public signature and will be presented to governments before November's United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in ... | By Jessica Corbett, Common Dreams Read more ...
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Nudging Social Media Users to Think Critically Helps Slow the Spread of Fake News, Study Finds - DeSmogBlog (Mar 19, 2021) |
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Mar 19, 2021 · Many people who share fake news online do so because they aren’t paying close attention to what they’re sharing, according to a new study. The research found that simply prompting people to think about the accuracy of their news content helps curtail the spread of falsehoods.
“When deciding what to share on social media, people are often distracted from considering the accuracy of the content,” the authors, from the Hill/Levene Schools of Business at the University of Regina and the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), wrote in the new paper published in Nature.
While the spread of inaccurate or false information and conspiracy ... Read more ...
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Whistleblower Claims Dangerous Defects in Pipeline for Shell’s Pennsylvania Plastics Plant - DeSmogBlog (Mar 18, 2021) |
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Mar 18, 2021 · A whistleblower has alleged that the Falcon pipeline - a 98-mile-long fossil fuel pipeline that will soon feed Shell’s massive plastics manufacturing site under construction in western Pennsylvania - was built with defective protection against corrosion. That's according to public records obtained by the nonprofit FracTracker Alliance and which reveal that state regulators complained last year that federal authorities had failed to adequately investigate the reports of defects.
In that letter, dated February 26, 2020, obtained by FracTracker via a right-to-know request, Patrick McDonnell, secretary of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, wrote to the ... Read more ...
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Green Groups File 'First-of-Its-Kind' FTC Complaint Against Chevron for Climate Lies - DeSmogBlog (Mar 17, 2021) |
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Mar 17, 2021 · Three environmental justice and corporate accountability groups filed a “first-of-its-kind” complaint with the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday accusing oil giant Chevron of deceiving the public by overstating its investment in renewable energy sources and commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions while continuing to extract fossil fuels that put vulnerable communities in harm's way.
“Chevron is trying to appeal to consumers that care about the climate, the planet, and racial justice - while doubling down on climate-wrecking fossil fuels that pollute our communities and destabilize the global climate, as our complaint shows,” Julieta Biegner, U.S. communications and ... | By Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams. Read more ...
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Argentina’s Illegal Oil and Gas Waste Dumps Show 'Dark Side’ of Vaca Muerta Drilling, Says Criminal Complaint - DeSmogBlog (Mar 15, 2021) |
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Mar 15, 2021 · On December 21, 2020, environmental crimes investigators in the western Argentine province of Neuquén carried out a raid against a company that handles fracking waste in the heart of the Vaca Muerta shale basin, a booming oil and gas field in northern Patagonia. They seized a cache of documents, and opened an investigation into the potential illegal handling of massive volumes of fracking waste.
The raid on the Argentine waste company Comarsa by the office of Environmental Crimes and Special Laws, a unit under Neuquén’s chief prosecutor, was prompted by a lengthy criminal complaint filed to the office just a few days earlier by a group of environmental lawyers. Within the ... Read more ...
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Analysis: Canceled Keystone XL Pipeline Driving Major Safety Changes in Canadian Oil-by-Rail - DeSmogBlog (Mar 12, 2021) |
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Mar 12, 2021 · The Biden administration’s cancelation of the Keystone XL (KXL) pipeline in January appears to be driving a revolutionary improvement in Canadian oil-by-rail safety that could protect the public from what have become known as “bomb trains.”
Without the KXL pipeline to help transport tar sands bitumen from Alberta to refineries in the United States, Canadian oil producers are turning to trains. And using a new technology to help make it more affordable - and less flammable.
When tar sands bitumen is mined and processed, it results in a thick, tarry substance which industry material safety data sheets note is a “low fire hazard” and “must be heated before ignition will ... Read more ...
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I’m a Climate Scientist - Here Are 3 Key Things I Have Learned Over a Year of COVID - DeSmogBlog (Mar 11, 2021) |
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Mar 11, 2021 · The planet had already warmed by around 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times when the World Health Organization officially declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020. This began a sudden and unprecedented drop in human activity, as much of the world went into lockdown and factories stopped operating, cars kept their engines off and planes were grounded.
There have been many monumental changes since then, but for those of us who work as climate scientists this period has also brought some entirely new and sometimes unexpected insights.
Here are three things we have learned:
The pandemic made us think on our feet about how to get around ... | By Piers Forster, University of Leeds Read more ...
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More Than Half a Million People Exposed to Flaring, Increased Health Risks, Says UCLA Study - DeSmogBlog (Mar 11, 2021) |
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Mar 11, 2021 · A new study by the University of California, Los Angeles reveals that more than half a million U.S. residents live within close proximity of oil and gas flaring events, exposing them to potentially significant health risks. Those impacts are disproportionately felt by communities of color in North Dakota, Texas, and New Mexico.
“There is growing evidence linking residence near unconventional oil and gas operations with negative health impacts for nearby residents, including impacts on fetal growth and preterm birth,” said one of the study’s authors, Lara Cushing, an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles Fielding ... Read more ...
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$1 Million Nurdle Spill Settlement Shines Light on Plastic Pollution During Shipping - DeSmogBlog (Mar 09, 2021) |
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Mar 09, 2021 · You won’t find an ethane cracker or industrial plastics manufacturing equipment on tiny Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina. The tiny 2.5 mile-long barrier island along the Atlantic coast near Charleston claimed a spot in history for its role in the Revolutionary War, though it’s perhaps better known among vacationers and tourists in recent years for its sandy beachfronts and blue waters.
But, in July 2019, Charleston environmental lawyer Andrew Wunderley arrived on the beach after getting a tip from a dog walker who’d noticed something strange in the sands along Sullivan’s Island. Wunderley arrived to discover an extraordinary number of tiny white bits, so dense and widespread ... Read more ...
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Analysis: Some Fracking Companies Are Admitting Shale Was a Bad Bet - Others Are Not - DeSmogBlog (Mar 05, 2021) |
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Mar 05, 2021 · Energy companies are increasingly having to face the unprofitable reality of fracking, and some executives are now starting to admit that publicly. But the question is whether the industry will listen - or continue to gamble with shale gas and oil.
In February, Equinor CEO Anders Opedal had a brutally honest assessment of the Norwegian energy company’s foray into U.S. shale. “We should not have made these investments,” Opedal told Bloomberg. After losing billions of dollars, Equinor announced last month that it’s cutting its losses and walking away from its major shale investments in the Bakken region of North Dakota.
Meanwhile, at CERAweek, the oil and gas industry’s ... Read more ...
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Pennsylvania Families Exposed to Unusually High Levels of Oil and Gas Industry Chemicals, Report Finds - DeSmogBlog (Mar 03, 2021) |
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Mar 03, 2021 · A groundbreaking four-part report by Environmental Health News (EHN) offers new scientific evidence that living near oil and gas development can expose people to a wide array of hazardous and carcinogenic chemicals - not just those living near shale drilling and fracking, but also those living near older conventional oil and gas wells.
The two-year EHN investigation sought to fill in a gap in the scientific understanding of fracking and chemical exposures by undertaking some research themselves, under the guidance of scientific advisors and with approval from an Independent Review Board. They collected air, water, and urine samples from five Pennsylvania families and sent the ... Read more ...
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