Excerpt: How the PR Industry Has Helped Big Oil Transform the Way We Think About the Environment: DeSmog

"Powered by fossil fuel funding, PR agents have used astroturfing, “manufactured consent,” and other techniques to furtively shape public perceptions in favor of their polluting clients."

 

"Since 2008, the American Petroleum Institute (API), which is the U.S.’s largest oil and gas trade group, has paid the world’s largest PR firm, Edelman, $439.7 million. API isn’t the only group in the oil and gas sector to have paid a PR firm for its services. And Edelman isn’t the only PR firm to have received money from the oil and gas sector. 

For decades, fossil fuel companies have been using PR firms to polish, reinvent, and fabricate their image; protect their reputation; and greenwash their activities, in ways that we are still trying to fully understand."

 

Go to original DeSmog article

Excerpt: 10 cities most affected by rising sea levels, Two Indian cities in the list

 "Ground Report | New Delhi: 10 cities most affected by rising sea levels; Climate change has numerous consequences on the daily lives of many people, but few are as palpable as rising sea levels. Many coastal communities around the world already live with the permanent threat of floods, which, driven by the melting of glaciers and polar ice caps, drown entire neighborhoods, putting people’s lives at risk and causing economic havoc. And what is worse, if the world does not meet the objectives of the Paris Agreement and limits the increase in the global average temperature to 1.5 ° C by 2050, many of the cities of the planet will see this extraordinary threat multiplied.

In just three decades, more than 570 coastal cities will face a projected rise in sea level of at least 0.5 meters, putting more than 800 million people at risk, according to data collected by the C40, which brings together a network of cities in the world committed to ecological transition. Especially since, as that water level rises, the storms will become increasingly virulent. In fact, the increase in extreme weather events such as hurricanes or cyclones is a reality that breaks records every year and has a significant social and economic impact.

According to the UCCRN, a research network that brings together climate scientists from around the world, the economic costs to cities from rising sea levels and flooding could reach a trillion dollars each year by mid-century, the equivalent to the annual Spanish GDP. An estimate that they also estimate conservative, since, for example, Hurricane Sandy in 2012 alone damaged 90,000 buildings in New York, causing 19,000 million dollars in repairs."

Go to original GR article

Excerpt: What the Exxon Tapes Reveal About the American Petroleum Institute’s Lobbying Tactics on Oil Trains

 

Senior ExxonMobil lobbyists were recently exposed by undercover reporting from UnEarthed, an investigative journalism project of Greenpeace, which captured footage of the employees explaining how the oil giant influences policy makers using trade associations like the American Petroleum Institute (API).

The undercover footage revealed Exxon lobbyists boasting about wins for the company under the Trump administration and admitting to continued efforts to sow doubt about climate change and undermine action to tackle the crisis. 

 

— By Justin Mikulka (6 min. read) —

 

 

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Lack of a carbon price exposes our industries: Letter to The Age

"Now that the US and the European Union are contemplating carbon adjustment duties on goods involving high carbon emissions in their production when no carbon price is imposed by the source nation, the lack of an Australian carbon price exposes energy-intensive industries, including those which could, but are not yet, taking best advantage of clean energy.

Faced with a changing geopolitical climate, the Morrison government’s response is to direct yet more public funds to a higher-polluting regime than we can afford at this time, including a gas power station that will operate for only a short period of the year at inflated cost (“Gas projects to receive a $40m boost in budget”, The Age, 7/5).

This is a reckless, unsustainable form of intervention demonstrating an alarming propensity for ideological expediency and favouritism.

The correct path is, of course, a carbon price. Instead, we see “clean energy” discourse deconstructed and appropriated by those who spend tax revenue on pet projects in the name of “technology not taxes”.

Jim Allen, Panorama, SA" 

The Age: Letters, 10-5-21

Alan Kohler: Scott Morrison, the Murdochs and the crime of the century (excerpt)

 "It’s not entirely Scott Morrison’s fault that he managed to look like a dissembling idiot at President Joe Biden’s leader’s summit on climate change last week.

He probably hasn’t read a word of the science about global warming and the grim future that awaits his children and grandchildren.

That’s not an excuse, but it tells us the scientists and bureaucrats who advise him and other politicians have been falling down badly on their jobs.

Those people who actually know what’s going on have allowed themselves to be intimidated by Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch and their bullies, who in turn have been collaborators in the crime of the century.

That the fossil fuel industry managed to turn global warming into a political issue – Left saying it’s happening, Right saying it’s not – might have been tactically brilliant, but it was also a vast global crime.

A looming catastrophe verified by scientists was turned into just another political debate to protect the profits of oil, gas and coal companies."

 

Go to original story in The New Daily

Opinion: No gas-led recovery thanks, we need clean energy : Excerpt from BCS

 "The Morrison-McCormack government is planning a massive expansion of the gas industry as a way to recover from COVID-19. However, a gas-led recovery is not the way to go. It's the way to lock Australia into a climate-destroying, fossil-fueled disaster.

A recovery should, if the science is respected as it is with COVID, transition Australia to 100 per cent clean energy, create thousands of clean jobs, boost the economy, and bring Australia's emissions down. A recovery that would make Australia a renewable energy superpower.

Despite the scientific, economic and health evidence that we must decarbonise rapidly, the government is planning a vast increase in fossil fuels. They have no plan to transition away from coal, and no plan to close down coal-fired power stations, although they will anyway because they are getting old.

There are a staggering 22 new gas projects, starting with three vast areas - the Beetaloo Basin in the Territory, and the North Bowen and Galilee Basins in Queensland. In NSW, there are plans for enormous volumes of gas to be extracted just off the coastline between Newcastle and Sydney."

Read the complete Bellingen Courier Sun Opinion piece by Harry Creamer.

Coalition quietly adds fossil fuel industry leaders to emissions reduction panel (excerpts): The Guardian

"The Morrison government has quietly appointed fossil fuel industry leaders and a controversial economist to a committee responsible for ensuring the integrity of projects that get climate funding.

Critics have raised concerns about whether some appointees to the Emissions Reduction Assurance Committee may have a potential conflict of interest that could leave its decisions open to legal challenge.

The overhaul of the committee follows the government indicating it plans to expand the industries that can access its $2.5bn emissions reduction fund, including opening it to carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects by oil and gas companies."

........

 "Bill Hare, the chief executive and senior scientist with Climate Analytics, said it appeared the government had appointed “mostly people concerned with the status quo” rather than aiming for a rapid shift towards zero emissions.

He said he was concerned the government planned to allow fossil fuel companies to receive climate funding for merely reducing emissions below inflated estimates of what their CO2 output otherwise might be."

............

"The emissions reduction fund has so far operated with limited success in reducing national emissions. The government has paid $740m for emissions cuts and signed contracts for another $1.66bn. Despite this, national emissions had dipped only slightly since the Coalition was elected in 2013 prior to the Covid-19 shutdown.

Government data shows the small reduction was overwhelmingly due to the rise of solar and wind energy, which are not supported through the fund." 

 To go to the original The Guardian article