#fossil fuel executives

[rjzimmerman]

Watch Senator Kennedy from Louisiana make an ass of himself as he questions one of the witnesses before the congressional heating described in the Grist story below.

Excerpt from this story from Grist:

A congressional hearing on the fossil fuel industry’s “evolving efforts to avoid accountability for climate change” turned into a spectacle on Wednesday morning as lawmakers in Washington, D.C., grilled a panel of experts on wide-ranging — and often irrelevant — topics. The thousands of internal oil company documents released before the hearing, however, contained some bombshell findings.

One of the biggest revelations is that BP executives understood that natural gas, which the company promoted as a “bridge” or “destination” fuel to a cleaner future as coal declined, was incompatible with the goals of the Paris Agreement signed in 2015. “[O]nce built, gas locks in future emissions above a level consistent with 2 degrees,” at least without widespread carbon capture technology, according to a comment on a draft outline for a speech by BP’s CEO in 2017.

“This is the first evidence I’ve seen of them acknowledging internally, at the highest levels, that they know this — natural gas is a climate disaster — and yet, they still promote it,” said Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, an environmental advocacy organization.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, invited expert witnesses to talk about the industry’s attempts to shape media coverage and academic research and allegations that they misled the public through deceptive advertising. But Republican lawmakers went off-script, asking questions about boreal forest fires and alleging that reducing fossil fuel production would result in Americans “having to sell blood in order to pay their electricity bill.” At one point, Senator John Kennedy from Louisiana read a list of old Twitter posts in an attempt to discredit Geoffrey Supran, a climate researcher who testified at the event, apparently without realizing that the posts were not written by Supran, although he did retweet one of them.

The hearing was the outcome of a three-year congressional investigation that sought to uncover new information about fossil fuel companies’ history of spreading disinformation about climate change. The first hearing, in October 2021, focused on an early chapter of that history, the 1970s, and drew testimony from executives of BP, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, and Shell, as well as two industry lobbying groups — the American Petroleum Institute and the Chamber of Commerce.

Now, lawmakers have turned their attention to recent history. Ahead of the hearing, they released some 4,500 subpoenaed documents dating back to 2015 that show how oil companies’ internal discussions about the Paris Agreement, methane emissions, and investigations into their own climate denial have diverged from their public statements. The new evidence, summarized in a 60-page report, could be critical for lawsuits alleging that oil companies lied to the public about climate change, since they provide evidence of ongoing deception.

[sinister-yet-satisfying]

For legal reasons I would never advocate murder

…But here is a list of the highest paid Oil & Gas executives in the world

Do with this what you will.

(Also here’s a breakdown of CO2 emissions these companies are directly responsible for)

[tomorrowusa]

Kamala is pro-climate. She won't be getting billion dollar donations from oil execs like the ones which Trump solicited.

This is the last paragraph from an article at Slate about how the presidential campaign has been shaken – not stirred.

How will Harris campaign on climate? Harris doesn’t like the oil industry, and she can prove it: As California’s attorney general, she sued several of the worst climate villains you know (Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP) and even tried to curb drilling and fracking off her state’s coast. Though she entered the 2020 Democratic primary as a climate hawk, Harris moderated on the issue as Biden’s running mate, and she hasn’t made it a key plank of her vice presidency. Still, as fossil-fuel executives shower Trump with checks and (allegedly) accept quid pro quo arrangements, you can expect Prosecutor Harris to make clear she can never be so corrupted by Big Bad Oil. (As for the rest of her climate agenda? Frankly, it’ll probably depend on whether her choice for veep hails from a fossil-fuel state.)

As for worry about VP choices being from fossil fuel states, I hear that the state of Minnesota has only a negligible amount of oil, coal, and gas. Gov. Tim Walz runs a state that's greener than most.

Minnesota gets 30.70% of its energy from renewable sources. That compares with 0.90% for Kentucky, 2.20% for Pennsylvania, 2.30% for Louisiana, 8.30% for Arizona, and 12.50% for Indiana. (source)

No president is going to be perfect because no human is perfect. But Kamala Harris is the the most climate friendly president we could reasonably expect this decade.

[notwiselybuttoowell]

Within hours of taking office, President Trump declared a national energy emergency as part of his plan to push for more oil and gas drilling and to heavily boost fossil fuels. He also started a process to reverse much of what the Biden administration did on greener energy. Geoff Bennett discussed more with Scott Waldman of Politico's E&E News.

Pretty standard intro that doesn't illuminate how good of a perspective this gives... I recommend clicking through to read the whole transcript or watch the video (there's also an audio option)

[heckaroniandcheese]

every trump official pick gets worse and worse jesus fuckening christ

[assassinregrets]

lol i thought it was bad enough that it was 75 degrees out today but tomorrow will be 80

[neonpigeons]

happy October 😵‍💫

[nando161mando]

[summeroffire]

[teanderthalrex]

It's hilarious how badly the U.S. is losing the green energy race to China. We're actively losing. Green energy is the future and the U.S. is just looking longingly at the past.

[e-the-village-cryptid]

A brief bullet-point list of the executive orders Trump signed yesterday. The tiktok thing is a distraction. If you are in the US, please read this. It will take less than 5 minutes. Gift article so no paywall

Some of the items on that list:

Freeze federal hiring except for military and immigration enforcement.

Bar asylum for people newly arriving at the southern border; declare migrant crossings at the southern border to be a national emergency; suspend the entire Refugee Admissions Program.

Terminate DEI initiatives across the federal government.

Recognize only two sexes; remove protections for transgender people in federal prisons.

Withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, the pact among almost all nations to fight climate change.

Declare a national energy emergency, a first in U.S. history, which could unlock new powers to suspend certain environmental rules or expedite permitting of certain mining projects.

Try to undo Biden’s ban on offshore drilling for 625 million acres of federal waters; undo Biden-era tailpipe pollution regulations and other energy-efficiency, fossil fuel, and pollution regulations.

Open the Alaska wilderness to more oil and gas drilling.

Eliminate environmental justice programs across the government, which are aimed at protecting poor communities from excess pollution.

Withdraw from the World Health Organization.

Ensure that states carrying out the death penalty have a “sufficient supply” of lethal injection drugs.

Create the Department of Government Efficiency with Elon Musk in charge.

[afloweroutofstone]

Currently looking at the spreadsheet that OMB sent around listing all of the programs which are likely to be affected by the government-wide freeze on loans and grants that goes into effect this afternoon. By my count it lists about 2,630 programs which are likely to be affected.

For each program, it asks government employees to answer the following about it:

Does it provide funding to NGOs that support, directly or indirectly, to “removable or illegal aliens”?

Is it a foreign assistance program?

Is it part of the US International Climate Finance Plan?

Does it impede on the development of “domestic energy resources” (which means fossil fuels)?

Does it have anything to do with DEI, DEIA, “environmental justice,” or “‘equity-related’ grants”?

Does it “promote gender ideology”?

Does it “promote or support in any way abortion”?

Does it in any way conflict with Trump’s executive orders?

[reasonsforhope]

The European Union’s greenhouse gas emissions fell 8.3% in 2023 as a surge in renewable energy installations helped displace coal.

This means the bloc’s emissions have declined 37% since 1990, while its economy has grown 68% over the same period.

The divergence indicates “the continued decoupling of emissions and economic growth,” the European Commission said in an update, adding that the region is on track to reach its target of reducing emissions by at least 55% by 2030.

According to an analysis by the European Environment Agency, based only on existing climate measures and planned actions, the EU will reduce its emissions by 49% by 2030.

Electricity and heating lead the way

Emissions from electricity production and heating under the region’s emissions trading system (ETS) dropped 24% in 2023, compared to the previous year, per the Commission.

Set up in 2005, the ETS is widely viewed as a key driver of the bloc’s decarbonisation. In 2023, it generated revenues of €43.6 billion in 2023 for climate action investments.

However, some sectors are still moving in the wrong direction. For instance, aviation emissions grew 9.5% last year as the sector continued to rebound in the wake of the pandemic.

More to be done

“The EU is leading the way in the clean transition, with another year of strong greenhouse gas emission reductions in 2023,” said Wopke Hoekstra, commissioner for climate action.

“As we head off soon to COP29, we once again demonstrate to our international partners that it is possible to take climate action and invest in growing our economy at the same time,” Hoekstra added. “Sadly, the report also shows that our work must continue, at home and abroad, as we are seeing the harm that climate change is causing our citizens.”

In a separate statement, Leena Ylä-Mononen, executive director of the European Environment Agency, said climate change impacts were “accelerating”, meaning the bloc needed to become more resilient to extreme weather while also slashing emissions.

In the second quarter of 2024, renewables accounted for 52% of all electricity generated in the EU, a 6 percentage point increase in a year. Nuclear generation was up slightly and comprised 24% of the mix, meaning clean sources made up 76% of the region’s total electrical output.

-via The Progress Playbook, November 1, 2024

[hope-for-the-planet]

If you get caught up in the mindset of "we are doomed because most humans are too dumb and selfish to solve climate change" I really encourage you to watch the first 12 minutes of this video.

I've also done my best to condense the most relevant quotes below.

"The biggest reason why we have a problem, is love. It's that we want to have children, we want them to survive, and so now there are 8 billion of us. And now that there are 8 billion of us, we want all 8 billion of those people to have pretty good lives." "[P]eople are so caught up in [...] the current moment, that you can't see how hard all of our ancestors worked to provide us with a world that has plenty of food [...], climate controlled shelter, and pretty easy transportation to anywhere within [...] 400 miles." "Humans are remarkable. We are very powerful. Give any species this level of power and they will provide opportunities for thriving for themselves and for their children. They will try and prevent their children from dying.[...] For the most part they will walk through fire to make sure that their children don't die. They will destroy the Earth to make sure their children won't die." "I don't want my son growing up thinking that the species that he's a part of is in some way evil. I feel like that's the root of a lot of [...] arm chair environmentalism. I want him thinking, humans are problem-solvers and solving problems creates new problems." "When we solve the global warming problem, we will have created new problems. And we're doing it right now. Renewable technologies use way more land [...], they impact the environment by being there [...]. And I think in the future we will uninstall a bunch of those things because we'll have other technologies that are better [...]. And the people in the future will be mad at us for the work that we did and that's fine. Just like we're kinda mad at all the people who made the world a better place by burning a bunch of coal so that we could have refrigerators [...]."

You can't hate yourself and your fellow humans into saving the world--and if you believe that all other humans are short sighted and selfish and doomed by their very nature then you are far more vulnerable to doomerism and hopelessness and giving up.

As Hank says in the video, the only reason we even know that climate change is a problem at all is because a lot of very intelligent humans were concerned about the possible impacts of fossil fuels on the future and did a whole lot of modeling and research so they could warn future humans about the risks. And we are primarily in this climate change situation in the first place because our ancestors wanted to use the readily available energy from fossil fuels to give their children and their communities better, safer, healthier lives.

Now we are trying to use brains that evolved primarily to deal with relatively little, immediate, tangible problems in small communities to solve a very large, long-term, largely intangible problem on a global scale. As frustrated as I am that we aren't solving this problem faster (and that there is small number of greedy fossil fuel executives trying to stop us from solving it for personal gain), most people are doing their best under very challenging circumstances.

Humans are driven to solve problems for the love of other humans--themselves, their families, their communities, humanity as a whole. We shouldn't base the drive to solve our current problems on disdain for ourselves and our fellow humans.

[summeroffire]

I'm gonna die mad about the fact that I will now have to regularly consider air quality for something as casual as going out for a walk.