If you trek over to Open Secrets, you’ll find that quite a number of politicians, including some Democrats, are fond of campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry. In fact, during his career, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin has been a recipient of $961,616 in oil and gas campaign cash. But even he never begged the industry for a million bucks to fund any of his reelection campaigns, much less a thousand times as much.
As The Washington Post reported two weeks ago, however, in April Donald Trump apparently did make such an ask—a billion dollars—of the nation’s Big Oil attendees at a Mar-a-Lago gathering in exchange for wrecking green transition policies, allowing more auctioning of drilling leases on federal land, and smashing environmental and other regulations that would impinge on the current record production and record profits of the oil and gas industry. A quid pro quo otherwise known as a bribe.
House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Ranking Member Jamie Raskin of Maryland was the first in Congress to initiate an investigation into the report. He sent letters to leaders of a trade group and companies whose executives appear to have attended the meeting.
On Thursday, Senate Budget Committee Chair Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden or Oregon launched their own investigation, sending letters to the American Petroleum Institute and the same eight companies as had Raskin: Cheniere Energy, Chesapeake Energy, Chevron, Continental Resources, EQT Corporation, ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum, and Venture Global LNG.
In addition, after releasing their three-years-in-the-making report last month excoriating Big Oil’s years of disinformation to mislead Americans about the climate impacts of extracting and burning fossil fuels, Whitehouse told reporters Thursday that he and Raskin “are making a formal referral to Attorney General [Merrick] Garland to commence a proper inquiry into whether charges should be brought and what charges should be brought.”
The senators are asking for a reply to their letters regarding Trump’s billion-dollar ask by June 6. Raskin wants his by Memorial Day. Whitehouse and Wyden wrote in their letters to industry leaders:
Mr. Trump’s blatant quid pro quo offer is particularly concerning in light of concurrent reporting by Politico that the oil and gas industry is drafting “ready-to-sign” executive orders aimed at rolling back environmental policies, to be signed by Mr. Trump if elected.
One industry lobbyist told Politico, “We’re going to have to write exactly what we want, actually spoon feeding the administration. There’s 27-page drafts moving around Washington.” Accordingly, by the fossil fuel industry’s own admission, there already exist specific policy proposals favorable to the industry, it is likely that the Trump campaign is aware of their substance, and Mr. Trump has now confirmed that he would deliver on them should the industry raise $1 billion to support his election. [...]
Time and time again, both Mr. Trump and the U.S. oil and gas industry have proved they are willing to sell out Americans to pad their own pockets. As Mr. Trump funnels campaign money into his businesses and uses it as a slush fund to pay his legal fees, Big Oil has been lobbying aggressively to protect and expand its profits at the expense of the American taxpayer. And now, emboldened by impunity, Mr. Trump and Big Oil are flaunting their indifference to U.S. citizens’ economic well-being for all to see, conferring on how to trade campaign cash for policy changes. Such potential abuses must be scrutinized.
Scrutiny certainly is warranted. However, given the overweening kowtowing to fossil fuel interests that so many politicians engage in, the problem with getting scrutiny that leads to accountability is proving that a campaign donation from a Big Oil source has been provided as a quid pro quo instead of just the usual general support for the candidate that would have been offered in any case. Plus, the Supreme Court has made it easier than easy to provide boatloads of dark money to SuperPACs without disclosing the source. So even if Trump were to report not a single dollar for his campaign was from Big Oil, hundreds of millions could come in through the back door the Supremes forced wide open.
Reining in and dismantling an industry so thoroughly embedded in the world economy is essential if we’re to have any chance of mitigating or preventing the worst impacts of the climate crisis. That’s obviously far easier to assert than achieve. But what we know for an absolute certainty is that who wins the White House, Senate, and House come November will determine whether the scrutiny Raskin, Whitehouse, and Wyden are pursuing will actually amount to anything.
—MB
RELATED:
ECO-VIDEO
GREEN BRIEF
A new report from BloombergNEF—New Energy Outlook 2024—says the window for reaching “net zero” carbon emissions by mid-century is “rapidly closing” and will require a threefold increase in renewable energy capacity by the end of this decade.
Doing that cannot be done without speeding up investment in clean energy, the researchers state. To reach the net zero goal, they say, $3 must be invested in low-carbon energy for every $1 now going into fossil fuel investment. A completely decarbonized global system would, the report estimates, cost a stunning $215 trillion by 2050. That compares with a solely economics-driven clean-energy transition scenario. The latter would cost $180 trillion, yet still see a rise in global average temperature of an estimated 2.6°C (4.7°F), well above the goals of the Paris Agreement, according to the report.
Published May 21, the report presents two updated climate scenarios, the Net Zero Scenario (NZS) and a base case Economic Transition Scenario (ETS).
The researchers predict that demand for fossil fuels will peak and sharply decline starting next year, with various sectors in transportation, industry, buildings, and power production transitioning at different speeds depending on the technology. They say the NZS is “consistent with a 67% chance of holding global warming to 1.75 degrees Celsius [3.2 degrees Fahrenheit] and sees demand for oil, gas and coal reach an immediate peak and fall into a steep decline starting from the year 2025.”
Said David Hostert, head of economics and modeling at BNEF and the lead author of the report.“The path to staying well below two degrees is narrowing. In the 18 months since we last updated our global scenarios, the energy transition has certainly accelerated—but not nearly enough. This report should serve as a wake-up call: we need a rapid decline in emissions starting from now—not in five years’ time—if net zero by mid-century is to remain a possibility.”
Here’s an excerpt from the report:
The halfway point has now been reached in a make-or-break decade. Aligning with a net-zero trajectory will require an immediate peaking of emissions and fossil-fuel use across the global energy system—spanning the power, transport, industrial and buildings sectors.
Cleaner power generation can drive the bulk of the aggressive emissions cuts needed this side of 2030, enabling more time to tackle “hard-to-abate” areas like steelmaking and aviation, where cost-competitive low-carbon solutions have yet to scale. A net-zero pathway hinges on renewables capacity tripling between now and the end of the decade.
Regardless of whether the world heads for net zero or it ultimately proves a stretch too far, the era of fossil fuels’ dominance is coming to an end. Even if the transition is propelled by economics alone, with no further policy drivers to help, renewables could still cross a 50% share of electricity generation at the end of this decade.
—MB
RELATED: Net Zero by 2050: A Roadmap for the Global Energy Sector (International Energy Agency—2021)
RESOURCES & ACTION
HALF A DOZEN OTHER THINGS TO READ (OR LISTEN TO)
Gen Z and millennials are trying to save the planet (and ease their climate anxiety) by quitting jobs that aren’t eco-friendly by Orianna Rosa Royle at Fortune.T he era of “global boiling” is here, sending shivers down young worker’s spines. But instead of sitting with their anxiety, Gen Z and millennials are trying to save the planet by quitting jobs that aren’t eco-friendly. In fact, new research from Deloitte shows that around 45% of the two youngest generations of workers have already left a job, or plan to, over climate concerns. The consultancy giant surveyed more than 22,800 Gen Z and millennials in 44 countries across most continents and found that climate change is anxiety-inducing for the majority of respondents: 62% of Gen Zs and 59% of millennials reported feeling anxious about the state of the planet in the past month alone. However, instead of waiting for government leaders to step in and act, they are taking matters into their own hands by refusing to work for employers who don't prioritize the planet's health.
What’s the difference between Indigenous nations co-managing or co-stewarding their land? A lot, by Taylar Dawn Stagner at Grist. Now that Berryessa National Monument includes Molok Luyuk—sacred to Indigenous tribes—the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management are in talks to enter into a co-stewardship agreement with the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation, Kletsel DeHe Wintun Nation, and the Cachil DeHe Band of Wintun Indians of the Colusa Rancheria. The details are still being hashed out, but the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation is excited to bring traditional knowledge to the management of Molok Luyuk. Melissa Hovey is the manager at Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument, and said, “Co-management means decision-making authority. Co-stewardship means one entity still has the decision-making authority.” To understate either requires congressional approval. You would think that “co-stewardship” and “co-management” would be simple terms to define, but there are numerous federal documents that have used the two terms interchangeably over the years. Co-stewardship is a broad term that describes agreements made between federal agencies and tribal nations to hash out shared interests in the management of federal lands. Co-management refers to a stronger tribal presence and decision-making power. The Biden administration has been pushing co-stewardship as a model for how federal agencies can build relationships with Indigenous nations.
Significant Environmental and Climate Impacts Are Impinging on Human Rights in Every Country, a New Report Finds by Katie Surma at Inside Climate News. Climate change and environmental destruction are becoming increasingly central to the human rights movement. Droughts, toxic pollution, water shortages, desertification, severe storms and related events touched the lives of millions of people around the world last year, according to Amnesty International’s annual “State of the World’s Human Rights” report covering 2023. [...] Amnesty International’s report, historically has focused on acts by despotic regimes, armed conflict and poverty. But the report released last month scrutinized for the first time countries’ records on upholding the right to a healthy environment, which the U.N. General Assembly unanimously recognized in July 2022. That recognition is part of a larger trend toward the understanding that environmental issues and human rights are entwined—human health, access to food and water, the ability to make a living and have a family all depend on a healthy environment. Marta Schaaf, Amnesty International’s director of climate, economic and social justice, and corporate accountability program, said the report’s findings show that significant environmental and climate impacts are affecting people in every country and disproportionately harming marginalized groups.
Cities are buying EVs in bulk for government fleets by Mike Lee at Climate Wire. City governments are adopting electric vehicles faster than individual car buyers. While the results vary by region, and often differ widely among U.S. cities in the same state, most large cities have adopted some kind of climate goal, and some of them are buying EVs for their municipal fleets at a faster rate than the general public. And that progress could speed up as more EVs enter the market and as cities get educated about grant funding and tax incentives that were passed over the last four years.Nationwide, cities operate about 4 million cars, trucks and buses. That’s far bigger than the federal fleet, but still only a little more than 1 percent of the 283 million vehicles on America's roads. But cities can punch above their weight by helping demonstrate that EVs are viable, both for businesses and private owners, said Ian Seamans, who works with city governments at Environment Texas. “A large part of the effect is modeling this behavior for the public,” he said. City policies are particularly important in Republican-led states such as Texas, where there are few state incentives for clean vehicles, Seamans said. Cities also are warming up to EVs because of their lower costs for maintenance and fuel. A lot of cities are under pressure, too —both from residents and federal regulators — to cut ozone and other localized air pollution caused by vehicles.
Half of Pasture Lands on Earth Degraded by Climate Change and Overuse, Threatening Food Supply of Billions: UN Report by Cristen Hemingway Jaynes at Ecowatch. The U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) has found that as much as half of the natural pasture land on Earth has been degraded by the impacts of climate change and overexploitation, putting a sixth of the planet’s food supplies at risk. The report — “Global Land Outlook Thematic Report on Rangelands and Pastoralists” — emphasizes the importance of rangelands and points to ways to better manage and restore them while protecting pastoralism. “Degradation of Earth’s extensive, often immense natural pastures and other rangelands due to overuse, misuse, climate change and biodiversity loss poses a severe threat to humanity’s food supply and the wellbeing or survival of billions of people,” according to UNCCD. Most pastures are lost or compromised by conversion to cropland and other changes due to urban expansion and population growth and their accompanying rise in food and fuel demands; excessive grazing; policies that incentivize overexploitation; and the abandonment of land by pastoralists. These land use changes lead to diminished soil nutrients and fertility, salinization, alkalinization, erosion and soil compaction, which inhibits plant growth. These effects all contribute to fluctuations in precipitation, drought, and biodiversity loss on the surface of the land and below ground.
Can the rising cost of chocolate help cocoa producers go green? by Adam Wentworth at Climate Home News. Chocolate isn’t just a sweet treat—it’s a global industry worth over $100 billion per year and a crucial lifeline for millions of farmers in developing countries who grow its main ingredient: cocoa beans. But recent price spikes mean the commodity has become a flashpoint for wider concerns about the impact of climate change on agriculture and the need to shift to more sustainable farming. [..] “Smallholder cocoa farmers in West Africa are the backbone of the chocolate industry, yet they remain at the losing end of the supply chain,” said Ghana-based Kwame Osei, senior director for global programmes at the Rainforest Alliance, an international nonprofit that works to protect forests through responsible business. To shift the cocoa industry in a greener direction, the Rainforest Alliance recommends taxing chemical fertilisers and pesticides, and ending monocropping practices which can harm soil health and biodiversity. It says subsidies should instead be provided for practices that improve soil conditions and local ecosystems, including growing cover crops that maintain soil nutrition over the winter months, and shade trees to protect seedlings from harsh weather. “Better farming techniques, like regenerative agriculture, can help farmers improve soil health and productivity while also expanding their sources of income – ultimately making them more resilient to the impacts of climate change,” said Kerry Daroci, cocoa sector lead at the Rainforest Alliance.
ECO-QUOTE
“Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.” —Gary Snyder
ECOPINION
Memo to Joe: Fight a Climate Election by Bill McKibben at his substack The Crucial Years. It seems entirely possible that the upcoming presidential election will be decided mostly on feelings, or what we now call vibes. In a poll released this week, for instance, almost exactly half of voters said American unemployment was at a fifty-year high, which is odd since it’s actually near a fifty-year low. Given data like that, I imagine it’s hard for Biden’s team to figure out how to make the case for a second term. So far they’ve focused on abortion rights and on protecting democracy, both of which are not just right but savvy: they focus on places where Trump has weaknesses that most people recognize. (Most people—somehow a fifth of voters blame Biden for the repeal of Roe). If it were up to me, I’d open a third of these fronts: climate change. There’s three reasons for that. One, it’s popular. [...] Two, it gets way more popular when you explain it. [...] And three, people hate Trump’s positions on the issue. The highest profile climate action he took in term one was withdrawing America from the Paris accords, and less than a third of voters approved. And this time around he’s doing everything he can to cement his reputation as the corrupt candidate of fossil fuel.
The Chopped Steak Eaters by Emily Atkin at Heated. There’s a detail I keep coming back to from Donald Trump’s recent fundraising dinner with oil executives, during which he reportedly asked them for $1 billion in campaign donations in exchange for repealing all of the Biden administration’s climate policies. Surrounded by opulence, wearing fancy suits and discussing a Thanos-level mass extinction plan, the oil executives were eating… chopped steak. Chopped steak is literally just breadcrumb-less meatloaf. It is, as I understand it, a shaped mound of ground sirloin usually topped with brown gravy. I don’t mean to knock the dish in general; I’m sure it can be good. I just feel like, if I were proposing a literal billion dollar “deal” in exchange for my aid in destroying a livable climate for all future generations, I’d at least serve an aged rib eye or something. But I digress, because in the end, the chopped steak isn’t really very important, nor is the person who chose to serve it. It’s the chopped steak eaters who deserve our scrutiny: the relatively anonymous oilmen and oilwomen fueling Trump’s probably ketchup-based gravy train, as well as countless other campaigns to reverse climate progress.
We're Taking Civil Disobedience to End Fossil Fuels. Will You Join Us? by Alice Hu & Alec Connon at Common Dreams. This summer, we are asking thousands of people to join us in engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience. Our actions will be designed to cause as much disruption as possible for the Wall Street banks, insurers, and investors bankrolling new coal, oil, and gas projects.
Asking people to engage in civil disobedience isn’t something we do lightly. We understand that we’re asking people to do something that might feel big and scary, and might involve people taking real risks and making real sacrifices. But in our bones, we believe that this is not only the right thing to do, it’s something we must do. In 2021, the International Energy Agency released a landmark report outlining what we need to do to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement and give ourselves a fighting chance to lead rich, dignified lives on a safe, stable planet. To stave off the worst of climate catastrophe, the IEA concluded, there must be no new fossil fuel expansion. That means that Wall Street giants like Citibank ― the world's top funder, since 2016, of new coal, oil and gas ― bear major responsibility for the floods, food shortages, and forced climate migration already upending millions of lives. We know that to end fossil fuel expansion, we need to end the flow of money from Wall Street to Big Oil. That’s why we’re launching the Summer of Heat on Wall Street, a sustained campaign of disruptive, nonviolent civil disobedience targeting the companies financing coal, oil, and gas. We know that to end fossil fuel expansion, we need to end the flow of money from Wall Street to Big Oil.
RELATED: Campus protests are part of an enduring legacy of civil disobedience improving American democracy.
For a Green Transition, Decommodify Electricity by Matt Huber at Jacobin. In the heady days of 2018–2020, climate politics underwent a marked shift. With Donald Trump in office, and after the failures of carbon-pricing technocracy under Obama, a movement coalesced around the idea of a public sector–led jobs and investment program called a Green New Deal. The historical reference to the New Deal was no accident: this is the period where the US government took a central role in the economy because capitalists largely refused to invest. Free-market ideas were thoroughly discredited in the wake of economic depression and mass unemployment. Crucial to the ensuing period of social democratic capitalism was the role of the government as an investor. The state had both the fiscal capacity and long-term outlook to engage in what historian Robert D. Leighninger calls “long-range public investment.” Given that the world is still around 80 percent reliant on fossil fuels, the question of decarbonization is very much one of long-range investment and infrastructure. It seemed obvious that public sector investment would have to drive a green transition. Yet here we are in 2024, and it seems many have forgotten this basic premise of the Green New Deal. Upon taking office, the Biden administration claimed it wanted to take a “whole-of-government” approach to the climate crisis. But under the leadership of BlackRock alumnus Brian Deese, the approach has centered the private sector rather than the public sector in the investment challenge. This approach culminated with the Inflation Reduction Act. For all the bloviating by administration officials and liberal pundits about industrial policy, the IRA largely rests on the premise that the private sector, with lavish tax credits, can be trusted to provide investment on the world-historical scale needed for the green transition. While some might label the IRA “post-neoliberal,” it retains the neoliberal faith that private actors — either environmentally conscious consumers or green-energy investors — will make the right choices if given proper incentives; no coercion or public planning required.
Big Oil needs a hydrogen reality check by Tim McDonell at Semafor. As renewables, batteries, carbon capture, and other climate tech get cheaper, BNEF’s head of energy economics Matthias Kimmel said, the need for hydrogen is diminishing. If BNEF is right, legacy energy companies betting that they’ll be able to pivot much of their existing natural gas business to hydrogen could be in jeopardy. A world that needs a lot of hydrogen — one where it’s a low-carbon “Swiss Army knife” that can replace fossil fuels in everything from semi-trucks and airplanes to apartment buildings and steel factories — is good for the oil and gas industry, which is already in the business of producing and transporting molecules. [...] Conversely, a world that doesn’t actually want much hydrogen is one with less need for today’s oil and gas companies, and one where strict tax credit guidelines are more justified. Data indicates that that’s the world we’re headed for. Whereas the Hydrogen Council trade group envisions hydrogen providing 22% of total global energy in 2050, BNEF projects it will be just 9%. A separate study by U.S. energy researchers concluded the share could be as low as 3%. This month, the U.K. government scrapped a pilot project to use hydrogen for home heating because it was more expensive compared to heat pumps. And a review last year by former BNEF head Michael Liebreich — a vocal critic of bullish hydrogen forecasts — downgraded the likely viability of hydrogen for power exports, mining trucks, utility-scale batteries, and other sectors, concluding that “in the majority of cases there are cheaper, safer, and more convenient zero-carbon alternatives” to hydrogen.
The Silent Tragedy of Local Restrictions on Renewable Energy by James Goodwin at The Revelator. Communities across the United States may soon find themselves facing a grim scenario. By adopted local ordinances that obstruct the development of new renewable energy resources within their borders, they have put themselves at risk of missing out on the next big technology-driven economic revolution: the clean energy transition. As you read this, rapidly advancing renewable energy technology is transforming how we power the U.S. economy in the 21st century, bringing with it new economic opportunities and social and environmental benefits. Yet the communities that have enacted or are considering anti-renewable energy ordinances may be left watching as the better jobs, cheaper electricity, and cleaner environment that come with this transition pass them by. Many of these communities already face high unemployment and poverty rates, among other economic and social challenges, making the consequences of their legislation even more tragic. The press and energy policy researchers have focused on these policies’ potential impact on achieving our nation’s broader decarbonization goals, but to date they’ve overlooked these broader consequences of anti-renewable energy ordinances.
OTHER GREEN STUFF
Climate Solutions for the Future of Coffee • Brazil’s flooded south sees first deaths from disease, as experts warn of coming surge in fatalities • Duke Energy’s plans for new gas in N.C. on a collision course with new Biden power plant rules • Highly pathogenic avian influenza spreading among commercial and backyard birds • Burning Trees: As the Biomass Industry Grows, Its Carbon Emissions Go Uncounted • Can Beef Be ‘Low Carbon’? The USDA Thinks So • The misleading, wasteful way we measure gas mileage, explained • Toxic Gaslighting: How 3M Executives Convinced a Scientist the Forever Chemicals She Found in Human Blood Were Safe • As New York’s Offshore Wind Work Begins, an Environmental Justice Community Is Waiting to See the Benefits • How much clean energy does it take to make green steel? • One Year After Key Supreme Court Decision, Almost Half of States Leave Many Wetlands Unprotected • These Teens Adopted an Orphaned Oil Well. Their Goal: Shut It Down • Report ranks 60+ ideas, including geoengineering, to save the Arctic