And the United States holds the key to our future, to everyone's future.
Why? Because the US is not only the biggest oil and gas producer globally, it's also the world’s dominant financial market. In fact, 64% of all capital investments in fossil fuel production throughout the world are made by US investors.
Individual actions such as driving less or buying less are good and necessary, but they are not sufficient.
The real change we need to make is SYSTEM CHANGE.
The head of the world's largest energy company on Monday urged the world to accept the "hard realities" that oil and natural gas will be around for a long time to come, and consumption of both sources of energy is likely to grow for at least the next decade or two.
In a speech at a Houston energy conference, Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser described the ambitious timetables of environmental groups as failing because the world continues to consume record amounts of fossil fuels every year.
"We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas and instead invest in them adequately reflecting realistic demand assumptions," he said.
Oil consumption will reach a new record of 104 million barrels per day this year, Nasser said, and could keep growing through 2045.
Capitalism must go. Because as long as profit is the only thing that matters, then Business As Usual will go on and on and on...
Big Oil's appetite for fossil fuels isn't showing any signs of receding.
This week Shell dialed back its target for carbon emissions. The decision comes amid an energy transition that is decades away from full implementation as countries and industries around the world aim to reach Net Zero by 2050.
On Thursday the British energy giant said it aims to reduce customer emissions from the use of its oil products by 15% to 20% by 2030, versus a prior target of 20%.
The company also dropped its 2035 target of a 45% reduction in net carbon intensity citing "uncertainty in the pace of change" in the energy transition.
The revised initiatives come on the heels of rapid-fire consolidation among the oil majors and insistence from shareholders that companies keep record profits flowing and stick to their core business. In November, the International Energy Agency, which advocates for green technologies, noted the oil and gas industry invested around $20 billion in clean energy in 2022, just 2.5% of its total capital spending.
The pressure from shareholders comes at a time when renewable energy technologies have struggled to accelerate amid high interest rates. Last month, Shell sold off partial ownership of two US-based green energy projects.
The problem for oil companies is renewable projects that exceed return-on-investment hurdles "have been hard to find," according to analysts.
Mark Kramer, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business who wrote a case study on ExxonMobil, says green advocates are losing the battle in their efforts to pressure the oil industry towards more aggressive energy transition initiatives.
"It's quite clear — it's not working," he told Yahoo Finance in February. "The profitability of oil and gas right now is so strong that it’s extremely hard for a company to walk away from that, or even to talk of walking away from it."
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the use of renewable energies will continue to grow in the United States through 2050, though at a comparatively slow pace. By mid-century, petroleum and natural gas will still be the most used fuels in the country.
Why do we see so many feel-good stories in the corporate media about the Green Transition? About nations and companies making bold pledges to reduce or “offset” their emissions? About all the ways that exciting new technologies can make your world better, cleaner, happier?
Why are we scolded not to be doomers, to focus on positive things instead, to talk about solutions instead of problems?
Why?
To keep you going to work every day. To encourage more shopping and buying and upgrading. To keep us actively engaged in the endless cycle of production and consumerism and economic growth.
If corporate media told everyone the truth about how bad our climate and environmental crises really are, if they were honest about all the greed and corruption behind Business As Usual, then their precious system would collapse because too many people would refuse to participate.
The system will collapse anyway, eventually, a victim of overshoot and unsustainable inertia. But until then, the owners of our society are determined to make as much money as they can, no matter the disastrous outcome.
If the plan is to maintain Business as Usual for as long as possible, a big part of that is controlling the media.
Thus, the major networks constantly reassure us that there is no emergency. Nothing at all to worry about. Just go on with your little lives...
HEADLINE: As World Saw Hottest Year on Record, Corporate News Cut Coverage
Last year featured not only what scientists worldwide confirmed was the hottest year in human history, but also a 25% drop in corporate broadcast networks' coverage of the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.
Looking at the "Big Three" of the television world — ABC, CBS, and NBC — climate coverage dropped 23% for morning news programs and 36% for nightly shows.
The main message is: Keep driving, keep flying, keep shopping, keep buying. We've got this, everything's fine!
Woo-hoo, this is it! 🎉 Let’s celebrate! 🥳 If you live in the USA, today is Earth Overshoot Day for 2024!!
That means we’ve used our entire carbon budget in this country for the full year. We have exceeded our Ecological Footprint.
So, as of today, no one will be driving ICE cars or flying on airplanes. All our fossil fuel power plants are shutting down until next January. No more single-use plastics for the rest of the year. Everything is getting delivered by bicycle or on foot, and —
— wait, what? It doesn’t mean that?
It means nothing changes at all? You mean we’ll still be polluting the atmosphere with greenhouse gases and poisoning our bodies with microplastics?
The nightmare story behind the explosive growth of single-use plastics and the petrochemical industry...
Fossil fuel companies are staring down a time when their signature product will no longer be so critical in our lives. As the world transitions slowly but surely away from fuel-guzzling cars, gas-powered buildings, and coal-fired power plants, industry execs must count on growth that comes from somewhere else — and they see their savior as plastics.
In the last decade, petrochemicals have moved from a sideshow for the oil and gas industry to a major profit machine, and the trend is expected to accelerate: The International Energy Agency predicts that plastics’ consumption of oil will outpace that of cars by 2050. In a recent report about its 20-year growth, ExxonMobil executives assured shareholders that the company could offset losses from the transition to electric cars with growth in petrochemicals.
There are climate impacts at every point of the lifecycle of plastics. The production process consumes fossil fuels both to make the plastics and maintain the high temperatures for refining and manufacturing. Methane, which is both a fuel and a potent greenhouse gas, tends to leak during drilling, transport, and refining, making it an underestimated source of pollution from the oil and gas industry.
The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) estimated that last year alone, plastic production contributed the equivalent emissions of 189 large coal plants. If plastics production continues apace, the sector is on track to reach the equivalent annual pollution of 295 large coal plants in the next 10 years, and double that by 2050, according to CIEL.
An International Energy Agency report from 2018 indicated that carbon pollution from the petrochemical sector will increase 30% by 2050 over the sector’s current rate.
The oil industry MUST keep producing more and more plastic. Given the steady shift toward renewable energy, it's their only sure way to keep making billions of dollars in profits. 💵 💵 💵
But who pays the price for all those profits?
Chemical pollution tied to fossil fuel operations poses serious risks to human health, warns a new analysis published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Citing data from dozens of studies, the report points to an alarming rise in neurodevelopmental issues, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease, and certain cancers in young people taking place amid what the paper’s author calls “explosive growth” in the petrochemical industry.
Between 1990 and 2019, rates of certain cancers in people under 50 increased dramatically. Meanwhile, fossil fuel use and petrochemical production have increased fifteen-fold since the 1950s, according to the report.
“One of the major factors driving climate change is also increasing our exposures to chemicals that are adversely impacting health,” said the report’s author, Tracey Woodruff, a professor at the University of California San Francisco. “Typically people say cancer is a disease of the aging, but now we’re seeing it increasing in people under 50.”
The report points to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), chemicals commonly found in plastics and other products that interfere with healthy hormonal function, as a key threat.
EDCs are found in several everyday materials, including pesticides, building materials and cosmetics, as well as in many fabrics and children’s toys, according to the new analysis.
These chemicals are part of a broader pollution burden that has become the leading cause of premature deaths around the world, according to the analysis. Chemical pollution is estimated to be responsible for at least 1.8 million deaths each year, the paper states.
Due in part to a boom in single-use plastics production, petrochemical production continues to climb despite growing use of renewable energy sources to power homes and vehicles.
Everywhere we go, everywhere we look, plastic confronts us and surrounds us. It's even in the food we eat, and now inside our bodies...
Plastics are just about everywhere — food packaging, tires, clothes, water pipes. And they shed microscopic particles that end up in the environment and can be ingested or inhaled by people.
Now data shows a link between these microplastics and human health. A study of more than 200 people undergoing surgery found that nearly 60% had microplastics or even smaller nanoplastics in a main artery. Those who did were four times more likely to experience a heart attack, a stroke, or death in the months after the surgery than were those whose arteries were plastic-free.
Scientists have found microplastics just about everywhere they’ve looked: in oceans; in shellfish; in breast milk; in drinking water; wafting in the air; and falling with rain.
Such contaminants are not only ubiquitous but also long-lasting, often requiring centuries to break down. As a result, cells responsible for removing waste products can’t readily degrade them, so microplastics accumulate in organisms.
It's all around us, everywhere we go, everywhere we look. Many people might assume that it's always been like this. But it hasn't.
Plastic is truly everywhere. In just a few decades, it’s become an inescapable part of modern life, permeating nearly every aspect of our lives, from the food we eat (usually wrapped and bagged in plastic and often containing it) to the clothes we wear (60% of which are made from plastic) to the microplastics hiding just about everywhere, from clouds to human placentas to the Earth’s most remote corners.
“Plastic packaging is definitely a major source of plastic pollution, and it can seem totally overwhelming to folks when they go out to get food, especially since the great majority of our food is wrapped in plastic,” says Erica Cirino of the Plastic Pollution Coalition. “It’s estimated that more than 40% of all plastic produced is single-use plastic packaging, which is an astounding amount.”
Before the advent of plastic packaging, food was packed in a variety of materials, from natural substances such as gourds and leaves to, most recently, glass bottles and jars, metal cans and paper products. Today, plastic encases a large and growing percentage of our food: A recent survey of Canadian grocery stores found that 71% of all produce was packaged in plastic, and that baby food had the highest share of plastic packaging at 76%.
There are a few reasons why so much of our food is packaged in plastic. Perhaps most importantly, it’s cheaper to manufacture and transport than alternatives. And as the world grapples with an urgent energy transition, fossil fuel companies jittery about the prospect of decreasing demand for oil are looking to plastics as their next major profit driver — and are on track to triple global plastic production by 2060.
Read the rest of the article to get the whole story, including the huge amounts of plastic waste we're producing, and the myth of plastic recycling.
#Profit outweighs all other considerations. How else will #billionaires increase their personal wealth? They have expenses — ocean-going yachts, houses on every continent, etc.
They need the money they steal from the poor, in despite of the planet and its occupants...
The data is shocking. Scientists are terrified. Yet nothing changes.
And as long as billionaires can make money wrecking our planet, nothing will change.
Last month was the world's warmest February in modern times, the EU's climate service says, extending the run of monthly records to nine in a row.
Each month since June 2023 has seen new temperature highs for the time of year.
The world's sea surface is at its hottest on record, while Antarctic sea-ice has again reached extreme lows.
Temperatures are still being boosted by the Pacific's El Niño weather event, but human-caused climate change is by far the main driver of the warmth.
"Heat-trapping greenhouse gases are unequivocally the main culprit," stresses Prof Celeste Saulo, Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization.
Carbon dioxide concentrations are at their highest level for at least two million years, according to the UN's climate body, and increased by near-record levels again over the past year.
Those warming gases helped make February 2024 about 1.77C warmer than "pre-industrial" times, before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels.
In the face of an existential climate/environmental crisis, it is blatantly obvious that we need system change. But how likely is that to happen given the entrenched power of billionaire capitalists and the media and politicians they own?
Instead we have this…
Let’s hear it for another week of BUSINESS AS USUAL, a co-production of the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee, sponsored by Microsoft, the New York Times, and the US military-industrial complex.
A few excerpts from a terrific essay on "The Insanity of a Throwaway Culture"...
Americans use about 100 billion polyethylene bags a year — the kind of plastic bag you would bring your groceries home with if you forgot your tote. Even though Americans have a particular affinity for plastic bags, their consumption is nothing compared to global consumption, which was around five trillion in 2002 alone.
If the number of plastic bags being produced in just an hour were laid end to end, they would stretch around the world seven times. If you did nothing else but watch plastic bags be produced one after the other, it would take nearly two thousand lifetimes to observe only one year’s worth of plastic bag production.
That’s insane.
Toxic contaminants and bacteria accumulate on the surfaces of plastics floating in waterways (this even has its own name — the plastisphere) and can be transferred to humans through the consumption of seafood.
And of course, microplastics are now found virtually everywhere on earth, including Antarctica, and are a given in the food chain at this point. They’ve been found in drinking water, salt, beer, soil, in human breast milk, and in human placentas.
Activists are continuing to push for the adoption of a strong Global Plastics Treaty. They are opposed in that, of course, by Big Oil and by governments, such as the US, that support and sustain the fossil fuel industry.
This is from Hellen Kahaso Dena of Greenpeace Africa...
In recent years, the world has faced three pressing environmental issues – namely climate change, pollution, and biodiversity loss – simply referred to as the triple planetary crisis.
All three crises have different causes and effects, and often overlap, but they have one thing in common: plastics.
Plastic production continues to wreak havoc as 99% of plastics begin as fossil fuel. Greenhouse gases are emitted at each stage of the plastic lifecycle, further driving the climate crisis.
If no measures are taken, plastic production is set to quadruple by 2050. The growing plastic production is a major problem for communities in Africa that are experiencing some of the most damaging impacts of the climate crisis: flooding, sea level rise, and more extreme weather events like hurricanes. A plethora of human health impacts are associated with plastics exposure.
Unfortunately, oil producing countries are actively derailing the Global Plastics Treaty negotiations with the aim of watering down the ambition and focusing on downstream measures as opposed to cutting down plastic production.
A plastic-free future is possible if African governments stand up against the corporate capture by international oil companies that make massive profits out of plastics at the expense of the well-being of people and the planet.
To keep the global temperature rise below 1.5°C, it is critical that the treaty must cut plastic production by at least 75% by 2040. This should be followed by a phase-down in the production and use of plastic. This means accelerating the end of our fossil fuel addiction. Ending the corporate addiction to single-use plastic is an important part of moving away from fossil fuels, combating climate change, pollution, and protecting communities.
African governments need to demand a treaty that will keep oil and gas in the ground and stop big brands and big oil from producing more and more plastic. A treaty that does not stop runaway plastic production will fail.
Assuming our rulers stay on their present course, following the mantra of economic growth at any cost, then the climate and environmental crises will surely continue to worsen with increasingly disastrous results.
What will be their response? Certainly not to end capitalism or even slow things down. That’s unthinkable.
Instead they will almost certainly opt for geoengineering at some point, using technology to alter Earth’s ecosphere in an attempt to allay the damage caused by technology altering Earth’s ecosphere.
That’s senseless and stupid. But that’s what they’ll do.
It may turn out, unfortunately, that some form of geoengineering will in fact be a necessity if we are to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of global heating.
But — and this is a very big but — that prospect should NOT be used as an excuse to continue with Business As Usual. It should not be seen as a way to prolong capitalism’s reign over us. We need #Degrowth now.
We can all see how destructive to the climate and environment our current system is, along with how unfair it is to people who are less privileged, especially in the Global South. Ultimately, this seemingly insane demand for endless economic growth threatens the very survival of our civilization.
So why is "Business As Usual" still allowed to continue? Why does this sordid show go on, week after week after week?
Because the people in charge, our owners, LOVE the way things are going. The billionaires who control the politicians are getting richer every day, and they see no need for change.
Democrats are better than Republicans for the climate, right?
Yes, of course. Obviously.
Democrats are good for the climate, right?
Nope, that's not true. Although Democrats are better than Republicans on climate issues, they are still taking us in the wrong direction, eager to support Business As Usual.
HEADLINE: "US spends billions on roads rather than public transport in climate time bomb"
Roads, roads and more roads. The US is continuing to spend billions of dollars on expanding enormous highways rather than fund public transport, with a landmark infrastructure bill lauded by Joe Biden only further accelerating the dominance of cars at the expense, critics say, of communities and the climate.
Since the passage of the enormous $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law in 2021, hailed by Biden as a generational effort to upgrade the US’s crumbling bridges, roads, ports, and public transit, money has overwhelmingly poured into the maintenance and widening of roads rather than improving the threadbare network of bus, rail, and cycling options available to Americans, a new analysis has found.
This spending is a “climate time bomb”, according to the new Transportation for America analysis, which calculates that more than 178 million tons of greenhouse gases will be emitted due to planned highway expansions by 2040.
“Nothing is fundamentally changing in terms of modes of transport," said Corrigan Salerno, policy associate at Transportation for America. "This much money going into highway expansion is, for one, a liability into the future, and two, it just doesn’t work. We’ve been expanding highways for decades on decades, and everyone consistently finds themselves stuck in traffic.”
The result is that the US will generate more emissions from transport — already its largest source of planet-heating gases — as a result of the infrastructure bill than if it hadn’t passed, according to Salerno. “You have to essentially walk down this giant cliff of emissions that we’re creating into the future because once these highways are built, there’s not really an easy way back from that,” he said.