Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
Almost a week after Hurricane Laura struck Louisiana’s coast, which is studded with oil and gas industry pipes, tanks, wells, and rigs, I photographed from the sky oil sheen along at least 20 miles of marsh and bayous that absorbed the full strength of the storm.
Already, 2020 is shaping up to be a record-breaking year for powerful storms and other impacts of the climate crisis.
The most important unknown element, when it comes to how bad things could get, scientists say, is what actions we take today to curb the worst effects of climate change down the road.
A Supreme Court of Canada ruling that bankrupt oil and gas companies must clean up their abandoned wells before paying creditors might sound like good news, but it doesn’t solve a growing crisis in Western Canada’s aging oil patch.
After two years in office, the president is still learning that politics—whether in the District of Columbia or Albian, Iowa—isn’t played like real estate or the casino business.
Last month, the Oregon Court of Appeals upheld Portland’s ban as constitutional, affirming the city’s power to regulate the safety and welfare of its residents and sending a powerful signal to cities that they too can take the lead to limit fossil fuel use.
From Standing Rock Reservation to the Florida Everglades, 2016 has been an unprecedented year in people’s resistance to the fossil fuel economy.
Entitled “The Sky’s Limit: Why the Paris Climate Goals Require a Managed Decline of Fossil Fuel Production,” the report says that just burning fossil fuels from projects presently in operation will produce enough greenhouse gas emissions to push the world well past 2°C of warming this century. Limiting warming to 1.5°C calls for even larger closures of existing operations.
Virtually every name in the financial pantheon has extended credit in some form to the Dakota pipeline project.
Cowboys and Indians are at it again.
By almost any of the conventional measures of cultural and economic influence, the clash over water security and heritage between a tiny North Dakota Native American tribe and a wealthy and well-connected Texas pipeline operator would appear hopelessly tilted one way.
At a time of widespread corruption of governments by powerful moneyed interests, we don’t need to give mega-corporations yet another tool to override the will of “we the people.”
Even as the global warming crisis makes it clear that coal, natural gas, and oil are yesterday’s energy, the momentum of two centuries of fossil fuel development means new projects keep emerging in a zombie-like fashion.
