One senator, one statement,
hitting two stories of Big Oil corruption I tooted about before:
price gouging and the $ 1 billion quid pro quo of #Trump.
A double tap to big oil.
"Sen. Whitehouse Slams Big Oil's Corruption, Rampant Profiteering, and Disinformation Campaigns" [3:03 min]
by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Quote by SSW:
"23 mei 2024
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, attends a press conference in front of the Senate to discuss Big Oil’s rampant profiteering – including recent revelations about an industry leader’s efforts to collude with OPEC to artificially hike prices at the pump – and the brazen “deal” former President Trump offered fossil fuel CEOs, vowing to give them carte blanche and steamroll cost-saving clean energy wins if they spend $1 billion to propel him back to the White House."
#Senate#Democrats opened an investigation on Thurs into #Trump’s meeting w/ #oil & #gas execs last month to determine whether Trump offered a “policies-for-money transaction” [#bribe ] when he asked for $1B for his 2024 campaign so he could retake the White House & delete #POTUS#Biden’s #climate#regulations.
Key Findings of Oil Change International's "Big #Oil Reality Check" - Oil majors fail to align with international agreements to phase out #FossilFuels and to limit global temperature rise to 1.5ºC ... Combined, 8 ('oil majors') companies’ current oil and #gas extraction plans are consistent with more than 2.4°C of global temperature rise, likely leading to global devastation."
...
Every company is “Grossly Insufficient” or “Insufficient” on a majority of criteria.
Three companies (Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and ExxonMobil) are “Grossly Insufficient” — our lowest rating — on all criteria.
These 8 companies alone are on track to use 30% of our remaining carbon budget to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C.
Of the 8 analyzed companies, 6 have explicit goals to increase oil and gas production. Even those without such plans are advancing new #FossilFuel projects and selling polluting assets rather than shutting them down, masking their actions as contributing to an energy transition while perpetuating #climate pollution.
Integrity: None of the companies we analyzed have set comprehensive targets to ensure their total emissions decline rapidly and consistently, starting now. Every company intends to rely on carbon capture and storage (CCS), offsets, and/or other methods that delay and distract from ending fossil fuels, and prolong the health and community safety impacts of dirty energy.
People-Centered Transitions: All companies fail to meet basic criteria for just transition plans for workers and communities where they operate. All companies fail to meet basic criteria on upholding human rights."
The man, Bill McKibben, got 'the news' almost the same time as #BigOil did.
But he reacted quite differently.
Besides an historical overview of #ClimateChange and his #ClimateAction
he has a #DireWarning about the warming and a clear #CallToAction
"Bill McKibben on Climate Crisis: How we got here and what we can do now" [9:39 min]
by Brief But Spectacular
Quote by BBS:
"22 apr 2024
Over forty years ago, the publication of ‘The End of Nature’ popularized a topic that was then largely unfamiliar to the general public.
The book’s author, Bill McKibben, brought the subject of global warming to light and has advocated for climate solutions ever since. In this #EarthDay special on environmental protection, he talks about the oil industry's PR campaign, how renewable energies can not only help the planet but also curb power abuse, and why global warming is an urgent matter that can only be solved if all generations work together.
To take action today, go to ThirdAct.org "
in other words, same old same old #capitalism and business as usual -
"The world’s #FosssilFuel producers are on track to nearly quadruple the amount of extracted #oil and #gas from newly approved projects by the end of this decade, with the #US leading the way in a surge of activity that threatens to blow apart agreed #climate goals, a new report has found ..."
Fun fact - (sarcasm) - "The US, which has produced more crude oil than any country has ever done in history for the past six years in a row, led the way in new oil and gas projects in 2022 and 2023, the report found. Guyana was second, with countries in the Americas accounting for 40% of all new oil sanctioned in the past two years.
...
Last year, at least 20 oil and gas fields were readied and approved for #extraction following discovery, sanctioning the removal of 8bn barrels of oil equivalent. By the end of this decade, the report found, the fossil-fuel industry aims to sanction nearly four times this amount – 31bn barrels of oil equivalent – across 64 additional new oil and gas fields."
“The oil industry has fought against government support for clean technologies for more than half a century, the Guardian can reveal, even as vast subsidies have propped up its polluting business model.” #bigoil#gaslighting#climate#climatechange
If you care about the planet, please make sure you sit down before you start reading this post about ExxonMobil.
So.
The CEO of ExxonMobil just said this in an interview: "We’ve waited too long to open the aperture on the solution sets in terms of what we need, as a society, to start reducing emissions."
Who's the most influential voice on climate change? Who's to blame for inaction on climate change?
According to the CEO of ExxonMobil, it's environmental activists.
No, really:
"Frankly, society, and the activist—the dominant voice in this discussion—has tried to exclude the industry that has the most capacity and the highest potential for helping with some of the technologies."
Oh, and the CEO of ExxonMobil also apparently thinks consumers are to blame for climate inaction:
"Today we have opportunities to make fuels with lower carbon, but people aren’t willing to spend the money to do that."
Gets better.
He thinks unnamed 'people who generate emissions' should pay for it. (Rather than, say, major transnational oil companies.)
"People who are generating the emissions need to be aware of [it] and pay the price. That’s ultimately how you solve the problem."
So, remind me again. Who knew about climate change before most of the public?
"Exxon was aware of climate change, as early as 1977, 11 years before it became a public issue... This knowledge did not prevent the company (now ExxonMobil and the world’s largest oil and gas company) from spending decades refusing to publicly acknowledge climate change and even promoting climate misinformation."
And just who, exactly, stood in the way reducing emissions all these years?
"ExxonMobil executives privately sought to undermine climate science even after the oil and gas giant publicly acknowledged the link between fossil fuel emissions and climate change, according to previously unreported documents...
"The new revelations are based on previously unreported documents subpoenaed by New York’s attorney general as part of an investigation into the company announced in 2015. They add to a slew of documents that record a decades-long misinformation campaign waged by Exxon, which are cited in a growing number of state and municipal lawsuits against big oil."
@voracitude I think the biggest subsidy of all is the hidden one.
Burning fossil fuels leads to more frequent and severe floods, droughts, bushfires, heatwaves, and hurricanes.
The costs of rebuilding and recovering from those disasters are a cost of using fossil fuels.
If the fossil fuel companies aren't paying that cost, they're receiving a subsidy. And it's already a massive one.
Also.
I didn't include it in the post above, but apparently the CEO of ExxonMobil is also totally against subsidies...
For climate action:
"The way that the government is incentivized and trying to catalyze investments in this space is through subsidies. Driving significant investments at a scale that even gets close to moving the needle is going to cost a lot of money.
...
"But I would tell you building a business on government subsidy is not a long-term sustainable strategy—we don’t support that."
#Tory MPs continue to lie using copy and paste statements from Number 10 to write back to constituents to tell them new fossil fuel licenses in North Sea are about energy security and reducing bills.
It’s complete BS when 80% of ‘our’ North Sea oil is exported overseas. But in any case the licensing to foreign companies means it’s not the UK that would ever benefit, just the #BigOil execs.