Tag Archives: Environment

Gulf Oil Spill Shows ‘Danger of Banks Owning Energy Companies’

“The Federal Reserve must enforce the Bank Holding Company Act and disallow Wall Street banks from controlling energy infrastructure, as it poses systemic risks,” said a Public Citizen campaigner.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 11-23-2023 by Common Dreams

An aircrew detected oil in the Gulf of Mexico on November 16, 2023. (Photo: USCG Heartland/X)

Banking giant JPMorgan Chase has financial ties to a company that owns the pipeline suspected of leaking up to 1.1 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico—a situation that watchdogs say demonstrates the danger of such business relationships.

“JPMorgan’s control over a company involved in a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico clearly illustrates the danger of banks owning energy companies,” Tyson Slocum, director of consumer watchdog Public Citizen’s Energy Program, declared Wednesday.

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Climate Group Warns World Must Not Fall for Hydrogen ‘Hype’

“Rather than betting on unproven and inefficient hydrogen technologies, we need rich countries to put their money towards a just energy transition,” said a Friends of the Earth campaigner.

By Jessica Corbett Published 11-21-2023 by Common Dreams

Photo: Raymond Spekking (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Amid preparations for COP28, the United Nations climate summit kicking off next week, a leading green group warned Tuesday that “hydrogen is big polluters’ latest trick, and we can’t afford to fall for it.”

“Hydrogen is being promoted as a ‘clean’ alternative to the fossil fuels used for domestic heating, transport, and heavy industry,” explains the new Friend of the Earth International (FOEI) paper, Don’t Fall for the Hydrogen Hype, put out ahead of the global clilmate talks. “But it’s expensive to produce, inefficient, and far from a low-carbon solution. In fact, the majority of the global hydrogen supply is made from fossil fuels.”

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Companies Pushing Weak UN Plastics Treaty Dump Millions Into US Elections

“The only way to curb our catastrophic plastic pollution problem is to cut plastic production, but the industry is spending big to block action at every level to protect their profits,” said one campaigner.

By Brett Wilkins. Published 11-17-2023 by Common Dreams

Hundreds have marched in Nairobi, demanding action against plastic pollution Photo: Emeka Gift Official/X

Major multinational corporations attending negotiations for a global plastics treaty in an effort to weaken the agreement spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying and political contributions during the 2022 election cycle, revealed an analysis published Friday by the Center for Biological Diversity.

As Common Dreams reported this week, 143 fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists registered to attend the third session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-3) in Nairobi, Kenya, which is scheduled to run through Sunday. That’s more than the combined delegations from 70 nations, and far surpasses the 38 members of a scientists’ coalition participating in the negotiations.

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Texas Officials Reject Textbooks Over Climate Science

“The same bad actors who are calling for racist, homophobic, and transphobic book bans are also calling for climate denial in science textbooks,” said one critic.

By Brett Wilkins. Published 11-17-2023 by Common Dreams

Image: National Center for Science Education

Seven of 12 proposed science textbooks for Texas 8th graders were rejected Friday by the Republican-controlled state Board of Education because they propose solutions to the climate emergency or were published by a company with an environmental, social, and governance policy.

The Texas Tribune reported that the 15-member board, which for the first time was required to include climate education for 8th graders, approved five of 12 proposed science textbooks, but called on their publishers to remove content deemed false or presenting a negative portrayal of oil and gas in the nation’s biggest fossil fuel producer.

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Climate Groups Plan to Appeal as Judge Upholds Biden Approval of Willow Drilling Project

“Beyond the illegality of Willow’s approval, Interior’s decision to greenlight the project in the first place moved us in the opposite direction of our national climate goals in the face of the worsening climate crisis.”

By Jake Johnson. Published 11-10-2023 by Common Dreams

This map from the Bureau of Land Management shows the site of the Willow development on the North Slope of Alaska. Willow’s drill sites are marked by squares. (Bureau of Land Management image)

A federal judge in Anchorage ruled Thursday that ConocoPhillips’ $8 billion oil drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope can proceed, rejecting a pair of lawsuits arguing that the Biden administration failed to adequately consider the initiative’s impact on the climate, local communities, and wildlife before approving it earlier this year.

Willow is the largest proposed oil and gas drilling project on public lands in U.S. history, and it comes at a time when scientists are warning that any new fossil fuel extraction is incompatible with preventing catastrophic planetary warming.

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Day After Texas Fire, Report Reveals US Hazardous Chemical Incidents Occur Almost Daily

“Hazardous facilities must be required to do more to protect workers and communities,” said Coming Clean’s federal policy director.

By Jessica Corbett. Published 11-9-2023 by Common Dreams

The Sound Resource Solutions facility made solvents for glue and paint remover.. Photo: @JamaalBowmanNY/X

A shelter-in-place order has been lifted in two Texas counties after a chemical plant fire on Wednesday, which came on the eve of a report showing just how frequent such incidents are across the United States, particularly at sites tied to the fossil fuel industry.

There have been at least 287 hazardous chemical incidents—including explosions, fires, and toxic releases—this year alone, and over 825 since the beginning of 2021, according to the Coalition to Prevent Chemical Disasters’ online database.

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60% of US Oil and Gas Infrastructure Now Protected by Anti-Protest Laws: Greenpeace

Fossil fuel companies have contributed millions of dollars to legislators who sponsored such laws, according to a new report.

By Olivia Rosane. Published 10-25-2023 by Common Dreams

Photo: Joe Brusky/Overpass Light Brigade/flickr/cc

In the seven years since the massive protests against the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock, the fossil fuel industry and their allies in politics and law enforcement have been hard at work to prevent a repeat: Around 60% of oil and gas infrastructure in the U.S. is now shielded by anti-protest laws that make direct action much riskier for activists and frontline communities who want to protect their local and global home from dangerous pollution, a new Greenpeace report has found.

The report, Dollars vs. Democracy 2023: Inside the Fossil Fuel Industry’s Playbook to Suppress Protest and Dissent in the United States, reveals that fossil fuel companies made up nine of the 10 most determined lobbyists for anti-protest measures since 2017 and that 25 oil, gas, coal, and energy companies contributed more than $5 million to legislators who sponsored these laws.

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‘Very Bad News’: Human Activities Increased Extinction Rate of Species Groups by 35 Times

“What we’re losing are our only known living companions in the entire universe,” one study author said.

By Olivia Rosane. Published 9-19-2023 by Common Dreams

Passenger pigeon at the Boston Science Museum, in Boston, MA. The genus went extinct in 1914. Photo: Curious Expeditions/flickr/CC

In what researchers call a “biological annihilation,” human activities are driving entire groupings of vertebrate species to extinction at a rate 35 times what it would have been without human interference.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Monday, found that 73 genera—the next thickest branch from species on tree of life—had been lost since A.D. 1500. Without the mass exploitation of the natural world that took off around that date with European colonization, the number lost in the past 500 years would have been only two, and it would have taken 18,000 years to reach 73 extinctions.

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Carbon markets that benefit the West will not solve Africa’s climate crisis

Western interests dominated the Africa Climate Summit. Time for African nations to put themselves first

-By Claire Nasike and Peter Osogo Published 9-15-2023 by openDemocracy

The First Africa Climate Summit was held at the Kenyatta International Convention Center in Nairobi, Kenya on September 6 2023. Photo: Paul Kagame/flickr/CC

The Africa Climate Summit 2023 in Kenya last week united African leaders for a discussion on the climate crisis, with a specific focus on Africa and its policy stance ahead of COP28 in Dubai.

One would have expected African leaders to propose sovereign solutions to the challenges faced by their countries. These include recurrent hunger, flooding, drought, resource exploitation, water and soil pollution, and control of food systems by Western corporations.

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‘Furious’ at Army Corps, Tribe Calls for Public Support to Shut Down Dakota Access Pipeline

“The Corps’ covering for the pipeline company’s outrageous safety record and the reviewer’s serious conflict of interest have now resulted in a failed effort,” said Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairwoman Janet Alkire. “They need to start over with adult supervision.”

By Jon Queally. Published 9-10-2023 by Common Dreams

Opponents of the Dakota Access Pipeline hold a protest in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Oct. 25, 2016. (Photo: Fibonacci Blue/flickr/cc)

Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Chairwoman Janet Alkire is leading a fresh demand that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers throw out an ongoing environmental review process of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline and start again from scratch alongside a superseding call for the pipeline to be shuttered completely.

Following Friday’s release of a revised Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), ordered by a federal court, the tribe said the document reveals the entire process has been a failure and that the pipeline—currently operating across their land without consent in what they consider an “illegal” manner by the Energy Transfer company—should be shut down once and for all.

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