Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
I live in South Louisiana on the front lines of the climate crisis and cover the fossil fuel industry and impacts related to the warming planet, so facing gaslighting is a regular occurrence for me.
The UK government’s legislative crackdown on protest in England and Wales was dreamed up by a secretive right-wing think tank that had been funded by US oil giant ExxonMobil, openDemocracy can reveal.
Nearly every major oil and gas company now claims that they accept the science and that they support sensible climate policies. But their actions speak louder than words.
So the risk managers of last resort will not be governments, but the community, acting in concert with the non-fossil fuel businesses, finance and investment sectors who now stand to be destroyed if the stranglehold of the fossil fuel industry is not rapidly broken.
In the famous 12-steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and associated programmes, the first step is to recognise that you are indeed addicted. That you are bound to a substance over which you do not have control, such that this substance has become your ‘higher power’, its material qualities and structures of access determining one’s activities and choices in the world.
Today, the shale boom of the 2010’s is officially bust, battered not only by the ’s outsized failure to control COVID-19 outbreaks and an oil price war in which foreign producers proved their ability to steer oil prices, but also a wave of multi-billion dollar write-downs by oil giants
The oil, gas, and petrochemical industries have taken a massive financial blow from the COVID-19 pandemic, but its financial troubles preexisted the emergence of the novel coronavirus and are likely to extend far into the future, past the end to measures aimed at curbing the spread of the disease.
Real conservatives know that energy corridors don’t make jobs or support freedom.
When China built a pipeline to access natural gas in western Burma, there were reports of forced labour, relocated villages and corruption.
Those kinds of things are inherent in energy corridors, which enrich the powerful at the expense of the weak.
From Brazil to India to the United States, extractive industries have aligned themselves with authoritarian governments waging war on minority populations.
Although ExxonMobil now claim to support climate action, they continue to misrepresent scientific work in order to protect profits and protect themselves from liability or responsibility.
The fossil fuel industry regularly deploys manipulative and dishonest tactics when engaging with communities of color, often working to co-opt the respect and authority of minority-led groups to serve corporate goals.
These communities—South Deering, Pilsen, and Little Village—all keep fighting back. The support of groups like the Sierra Club and Pilsen Alliance, standing in solidarity with them, makes them even stronger. As Cheryl Johnson said to me, it is important to “follow what you believe is wrong to try and make it right.” And that’s just what these communities are doing.
