Twelve years of data scrutinized in a study conducted by researchers at Kyoto University and Tohoku University have shown a “mismatch” between what four major oil companies say about their climate-related promises and their actions. The researchers conclude “that no major is currently on the way to a clean energy transition.” That might be a surprise to people assaulted with the oh-we’re-so-green television commercials and other advertising that Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, and Shell have been putting together lately. Alone, the four companies account for 10% of global carbon emitted since 1965.
“Mismatch.” Such a bland word. Like “misspoke” first honed in the Nixon administration, “mismatch” in this case just means lying. So companies that for years funded lying individuals and lying think tanks to create doubt by challenging the whole concept of the climate being altered by human beings are still lying. Not that the researchers used “mismatch” protectively. Their study, published in the journal PLOS One on Wednesday, gives the companies no slack. Best to read the whole study for details, but if you’re short on time, the authors make the picture quite clear in their abstract:
The energy products of oil and gas majors have contributed significantly to global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and planetary warming over the past century. Decarbonizing the global economy by mid-century to avoid dangerous climate change thus cannot occur without a profound transformation of their fossil fuel-based business models. Recently, several majors are increasingly discussing clean energy and climate change, pledging decarbonization strategies, and investing in alternative energies. Some even claim to be transforming into clean energy companies. Given a history of obstructive climate actions and “greenwashing”, there is a need to objectively evaluate current and historical decarbonization efforts and investment behavior. This study focuses on two American (Chevron, ExxonMobil) and two European majors (BP, Shell). Using data collected over 2009–2020, we comparatively examine the extent of decarbonization and clean energy transition activity from three perspectives: (1) keyword use in annual reports (discourse); (2) business strategies (pledges and actions); and (3) production, expenditures and earnings for fossil fuels along with investments in clean energy (investments). We found a strong increase in discourse related to “climate”, “low-carbon” and “transition”, especially by BP and Shell. Similarly, we observed increasing tendencies toward strategies related to decarbonization and clean energy. But these are dominated by pledges rather than concrete actions. Moreover, the financial analysis reveals a continuing business model dependence on fossil fuels along with insignificant and opaque spending on clean energy. We thus conclude that the transition to clean energy business models is not occurring, since the magnitude of investments and actions does not match discourse. Until actions and investment behavior are brought into alignment with discourse, accusations of greenwashing appear well-founded.
For a hearing on Capitol Hill last week, board members from the same four companies were invited to testify to House Oversight and Reform. All said they had scheduling conflicts. But the hearing went on anyway, with climatologist Michael Mann and others testifying. Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from New York, described the companies’ climate goals as "empty promises." She succinctly assessed the situation: "These pledges rely on unproven technology, and they ignore the vast majority of greenhouse gas emissions created by fossil fuels. Moreover, the industry continues to pour money into new oil and gas fields, with no plans to stop extracting."
Meanwhile, a report released today by the B Team—a global nonprofit co-founded by Sir Richard Branson and Jochen Zeitz—shows that we’re financing our own destruction with subsidies of $1.8 trillion annually to the forces driving global warming and the extinction of wildlife. Of that, $640 billion goes to fossil fuels.
The authors point out:
Redirecting harmful subsidies can lead to many nature-positive outcomes. For example, it can free up substantial government resources to support social needs and local livelihoods, redirect capital towards ecological restoration including nature-based solutions and close the biodiversity finance gap by reducing environmental degradation and unlocking the funding needed to mitigate it.
Such redirection ought to be high on our priority list. Disruptive? Absolutely. But until political leaders planetwide scrape away those subsidies—which feed about 2% of annual GDP into exacerbating the climate emergency—what’s the point of complaining about mismatches between the truth and what these four oil giants and so many other companies are saying?
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California has 3,946 miles of irrigation canals, all of them open to the sky. A study released in 2021 concluded that covering them with solar panels would annually save the state 63 billion gallons of water now lost to evaporation. That’s enough to irrigate 50,000 acres of farmland or fulfill the residential needs of more than 2 million people. Covering the canals would improve water quality and reduce the need for maintenance by $40,000 a mile, the researchers calculated. Farmers could eliminate the diesel generators they now use to pump their share of water from the canals, and the project would add 13,000 megawatts of electricity-generating capacity, equal to about 15% of the state’s total existing capacity—enough to meet half of the state’s decarbonization 2030 goals.
To test feasibility, the Turlock Irrigation District (TID), together with its partners, is undertaking Project Nexus, a $20 million pilot project funded by a state grant to install solar panel canopies over some of the utility’s Ceres Main Canal. Energy storage will be included to support the local electric grid when the sun isn’t shining. Panels will be installed at three locations totaling 8,500 feet. They will have a 5-megawatt capacity initially. TID is partnering on the project with the state Department of Water Resources, Solar AquaGrid, and the University of California, Merced. Groundbreaking is slated for this fall, with completion targeted for 2024.
“In our 135-year history, we’ve always pursued innovative projects that benefit TID water and power customers,” said Michael Frantz, board president of TID. “There will always be reasons to say ‘no’ to projects like this, but as the first public irrigation district in California, we aren’t afraid to chart a new path with pilot projects that have potential to meet our water and energy sustainability goals.” Matt Simon at Wired reports:
An added social benefit could be that by situating the panels over canals, the state wouldn’t have to convert croplands or disrupt natural habitats to set up sprawling solar farms—a canal is already on long-disturbed land. Think about how you’d install a solar array in your own home. “I can put it on my roof, rather than mowing down the yard next to my house and putting panels there,” says Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at the UC Berkeley School of Law. “You're taking something that's already been altered by human activity and doubling up on the benefits it provides. That's the profound piece.”
Late last month, Vice President Kamala Harris was in Milwaukee doing what Democrats ought to be doing in every state, city, and congressional district in the nation from now until Election Day: talking up the administration’s program to reduce exposure to lead from water pipes and paint. Last Friday, Harris was in Newark talking up that city’s successful replacement of 24,000 residential lead pipes in three years instead of the 10 years it was supposed to take. A good model, she said.
It’s long been known that exposure to lead—a potent neurotoxin even at extremely low levels—can cause hearing and speech problems in children, slow physical development, and inflict irreparable brain damage. Adults don’t get a pass: Kidney failure, cardiovascular harm, and impotence can result from exposure. While exposure has been greatly reduced since the United States banned leaded gasoline 26 years ago, it wasn’t until September 2021 that Algeria became the last country in the world to implement its own ban. The U.N. calculates the global ban will prevent 1.2 million premature deaths and save $2.45 trillion a year.
Lead exposure nevertheless remains high in the U.S. It’s a problem in an estimated 400,000 schools and child care facilities nationwide. A study last year by Boston Children’s Hospital and Quest Diagnostics found that 50% of children under 6 had lead in their blood. Wisconsin officials estimate there are 176,000 lead pipes in the state. Nationwide? An estimated 10 million.
The administration’s $1.2 trillion bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) passed last year includes $15 billion for lead remediation, with $2.9 billion of that going out this year. More billions were proposed in the Build Back Better (BBB) bill, but Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema, plus all congressional Republicans, jammed a stick into the spokes of BBB from the moment it was wheeled out. In addition to the IIJA money, the administration has given states and cities the okay to fund lead remediation projects from their share of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan passed last year. Unsurprisingly, lead exposure is more common among people of color and low-income earners. Activists urge careful monitoring of how the remediation funds are spent.
When Democratic incumbents and challengers tout the lead remediation effort to voters, they should never fail to point out that the majority of congressional Republicans voted against the IIJA and none voted for the BBB bill, which means the GOP is perfectly okay with damaging the brains of America’s next generation. Harsh? Absolutely. Just like the consequences of their thumbs down on this investment in people’s well-being.
Federal District Judge Jeffrey White, a George W. Bush appointee, last Thursday struck down a 2020 Trump administration decision to remove gray wolves from the endangered species list. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland has 53 days left to decide whether to appeal the decision.
The ruling only applies to 44 of the Lower 48 states. Wolves were almost wiped out nationally by the end of the 1930s thanks to bounties and a fierce hatred of the animals by many people that’s still apparent in some circles today. Just a few score of wolves remained in Minnesota and Michigan by 1974 when they were listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). But after the success of wolf recovery programs begun in 1994 in Yellowstone National Park, Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, Congress delisted wolves in Montana and Idaho in 2011. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) delisted wolves in Wyoming in 2017. And wolves in New Mexico are considered a separate species and were never delisted.
White ruled that the USFWS erred in removing the species from federal protection because it failed to consider threats to the iconic creatures outside of the Great Lakes and Northern Rocky Mountains where they can now be found in significant numbers.
Western Environmental Law Center attorney Kelly Nokes told E&E News, “We are hopeful that the service will take the decision as an opportunity to reassess its recovery strategy for gray wolves,” adding that the USFWS should “ensure they are truly recovered across the vast, and suitable, historic habitats where they remain missing, before attempting to once more thwart the recovery mandates of the ESA.” That’s the general view among environmentalists who argue that a national recovery program is necessary since there are many areas in the wolf’s ancestral range throughout the nation where there are still zero wolves. See Sylvia Fallon here.
That view is anathema to government officials and many ranchers in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, where relaxed laws have spurred more hunting of wolves. About a third of Idaho’s wolves were killed last year under a new law that promotes killing 90% of the state’s wolf population. Ranchers complain about predation on livestock even though they are compensated for any verifiably killed by wolves.
Haaland herself took to the op-ed pages last week to decry the killing of Yellowstone wolves this season. Twenty-four of the Yellowstone wolves have been killed so far, the most in 25 years. Protected when roaming the park, they are fair game outside its boundaries, especially since Montana relaxed its law last year about hunting adjacent to the park. Referencing her own Indigenous background as a citizen of the Laguna Pueblo, Haaland said that wolves have for many Native tribes “represented the virtues of healing, strength, and familial protection.” She acknowledged the need to reduce wolf conflicts with ranchers, but added, “Because of the gray wolf’s recovery, individual states are responsible for its welfare and sustaining that recovery. Nevertheless, if necessary, we will reinstate federal protections under the ESA for the northern Rocky Mountains’ gray wolf.”
Assisted by lawyers at the Climate Defense Project, students at Yale, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, and Vanderbilt argue in their Feb. 16 filing that their universities’ investments in fossil fuel companies are illegal. They assert that such investments violate the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act. This mandates that universities invest in a manner consistent with their “charitable purposes.” Fossil fuel investments aren’t consistent, they say, because burning these fuels damages the health of people and the planet. They also argue that it is careless and illegal for these universities to ignore the financial risks of fossil fuel investments because of the industries’ volatility and the coming changes being dictated by the climate crisis.
The complaints were filed after the failure of student-led efforts to get the universities to divest fossil fuels from their investment portfolios. Hannah Reynolds, an anthropology student and co-coordinator of Divest Princeton, told The Guardian, “There’s been nine years of fossil fuel divestment organizing at Princeton and no commitment or action by Princeton. We’ve exercised every option, we’ve made every argument that we can, and Princeton hasn’t taken it seriously.”
“In the face of the overwhelming nature of the climate crisis, we look for levers of power and change to which we have access. Our universities are amongst the world’s wealthiest and most prestigious institutions of higher education, and their investments in the fossil fuel industry — an industry whose actions place the health and future of students and the entire planet at risk — amount to nothing less than complicity in the climate crisis. Thus, our campaigns are coming together and collectively calling for an end to fossil fuel investments in higher education and the world at large,” said Anna Liebowitz, Princeton ‘09.
ECOPINION
Never Believe a Bank’s Net-Zero Pledge, by Kate Aronoff at The New Republic. A new report finds that climate-friendly financial institutions have been funding fossil fuel projects to the tune of $38 billion.
The Fossil Fuel Industry Doesn't Create Nearly as Many Jobs as it Says It Does, by Wenonah Hauter at In These Times. The industry is wildly fudging the numbers to make itself look like a major job creator. We shouldn’t be fooled. “Some of the most common jobs estimates are produced by the American Petroleum Institute (API), the powerful oil and gas trade association. Over the years, API has released reports claiming that the domestic fracking industry creates somewhere between 2.5 million to 11 million jobs, both directly and indirectly. These numbers — or versions of them — are floated in political debates and in the media, but they are significantly out of step with other estimates, including the federal government’s labor reports.”
What Should Farmers Grow in the Desert? By Stephen Robert Miller at Mother Jones. As the Colorado River withers, a Japanese rubber company tries to persuade Arizona farmers to grow a latex-producing crop that’s adapted to arid conditions.
Pacific Northwest court case endangers tribal rights nationwide, by Robert de los Angeles at Indian Country Today. “In August 2021, a Ninth Circuit decision gave federal judges powers over tribes they do not have under the Constitution—the unilateral right to ignore tribal treaty signatories and judicially nullify the reserved hunting and gathering rights of a tribe’s citizens in perpetuity. This is one of the most dangerous federal cases involving tribal rights in decades, yet the vast majority of tribes are unaware.”
Why Every Job Is a Climate Job, by Sarah Lavarovic at Yes! “Have you seen the phrase ‘whole-of-government approach to climate’ tossed around? It’s a clunky way of saying climate must be factored into every decision, across departments and ministries and boardroom tables covered in mediocre muffins. Joe Biden committed to as much in his first days in office, and Justin Trudeau’s most recent mandate letters show that climate goes well beyond Environment and Climate Change Canada to find purchase on almost every ministry’s to-do list. This is great, because climate is an everything issue that must be addressed as such. But just as climate needs a whole-of-government approach, it also needs a whole-of-work approach.”
Daily Climate Damage Should Feel More Like a Disaster, by Gernot Wagner at Bloomberg. “The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico a dozen years ago was a human and environmental tragedy. It killed 11 people, dumped millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf, and cost BP Plc more than $65 billion in cleanup costs and damage payments. But had all that oil instead been sold and used, it would have been even deadlier and more devastating to the environment.”
ECO-TWEET
HALF A DOZEN OTHER THINGS TO READ
The minerals used by clean-energy technologies. From aluminum to zinc, by David Roberts at Volts. “[T]here is enormous uncertainty about the pace and scale of demand growth for specific minerals and minerals generally. Much depends on unpredictable developments in technology, policy, and politics. Epistemic humility is called for, along with policy focused on resilience ... One fact that is certain: the more ambitious the world’s decarbonization efforts, the higher mineral demand will rise.”
Biden’s Biggest Idea on Climate Change Is Remarkably Cheap, by Robinson Meyers at The Atlantic. It’s one of the most cost-effective climate policies the U.S. has ever considered, according to a new analysis. ”Biden’s clean-energy tax credits—a set of incentives that would push the United States to generate more electricity through wind, solar, and other zero-carbon resources—would be one of the most cost-effective climate policies in American history, according to the analysis. The researchers’ study, which has not been peer-reviewed, finds that the policy’s benefits will be three to four times larger than its costs, creating as much as projected $1.5 trillion in economic surplus while eliminating more than 5 billion tons of planet-warming carbon pollution through 2050.”
Master Falconer Gives Birds Second Chances, by Mary Jo DiLonardo. One of just 30 Black master falconers in the U.S., Rodney Stotts feels a connection to raptors with their independence and power. “In his new book, Bird Brother: A Falconer's Journey and the Healing Power of Wildlife, Stotts talks about the first river cleanup job that got him off the streets and his life-changing encounter with a Eurasian eagle-owl named Mr. Hoots. An interview.”
High squid numbers in the Pacific Northwest linked to climate change, by Oceangraphic. Researchers have measured a 39-fold increase in the number of squid (Doryteuthis opalescens) in the Pacific Northwest that can be directly tied to ocean heatwaves. The species is usually found in the warmer waters off Baja, California. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced last month that southeast Alaska is seeing more individuals of the species than previously, and also linked the increase to climate change.
What is the ‘social cost of carbon’? 2 energy experts explain after court ruling blocks Biden’s changes, by Jim Crane and Mark Finley at The Conversation. “A Trump-appointed federal judge in Louisiana issued an injunction on Feb. 11, 2022, blocking Biden’s interim increase in the social cost. Even so, federal agencies are still required to consider the climate impacts of their regulatory decisions. What social cost means for you: One of Joe Biden’s first actions as president was to reverse the Trump administration’s bargain-basement accounting of the ‘social cost.’ The Biden administration returned it to the Obama-era level, adjusted for inflation, by setting an interim social cost at $51 per metric ton of carbon dioxide that would rise over time.”
World's Rivers Awash in Pharmaceuticals, Historic Study Reveals, by Jessica Corbett at Common Dreams. Researchers who examined water samples from over 1,000 locations warn that "pharmaceutical pollution poses a global threat to environmental and human health.” The analysis, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examined surface water samples from 1,052 sites in 104 countries across all continents for 61 different active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs). Sample sites ranged from an Indigenous community in Venezuela where modern medicine is not used to highly populated urban areas such as Delhi, London, and New York City.
ECOBITS