Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
As the oil and gas industry achieves success in pushing the world towards widespread adoption of methane-based blue hydrogen, some unexpected voices are calling out the industry on its deception of selling blue hydrogen as an affordable and clean source of energy.
When advocates support NZ2050 they are tacitly supporting a dangerous agenda leading up to COP 26 in Glasgow that will codify an unsustainable pathway with continuing high fossil fuel use, dangerous “offset” trade-offs, and unacceptable risks of unstoppable climate warming.
It might seem odd to find supporters of climate action debating the merits of a concept that science shows to be essential for halting climate change, and which is accordingly embedded at the heart of the defining global agreement.
Fossil fuel companies could face legal challenges over their misleading advertising, after a DeSmog investigation uncovered the extent of their “greenwashing”.
If someone is making money from oil, coal or gas but tries to persuade us that they are on our side on the climate crisis, and they’ve got a way to tackle it without stopping burning fossil fuels – that is greenwash.
The promotion of ‘junk agroecology’ initiatives opens up the possibility of greater greenwashing of socially and environmentally destructive forms of production, and more deeply entrenches the unjust dynamics which have led to the current crises.
There is an obvious comfort in believing that life can continue as normal despite the climate emergency. This is likely the reason that studies of the remarkable carbon capturing potential of trees have received an outsized amount of public attention in recent years.
Learning to live without the myth that we can keep sailing forever may be daunting, but it’s the only way to keep from drowning. In the end, it may not be so bad to live in a world that is more than the sum of its parts.
Emergencies tend to reveal our true priorities. When our house is burning down or the storm waters are flooding in, we hold on to what we value most, and leave the rest behind.
If you’ve ever seen an ad featuring ExxonMobil scientists handling beakers of green goo, the algae that will supposedly fuel the future, you’ve been the target of an oil company’s advertisement. Exxon isn’t trying to sell you a product, exactly — but it is hoping to sell you on the idea that it’s committed to a greener future.
There are more possibilities than a marginally less-bad business-as-usual future. Effectively and justly achieving deep emissions cuts requires fundamentally changing the system, not merely modifying it or slapping its beneficiaries’ wrists. Real change requires state programs and regulations as well as trying out new forms of ownership and governance.
It is in this joyous and self-congratulatory atmosphere [of the first Earth Day] that a curmudgeonly I.F. Stone, by now a full-fledged icon on the left, takes the stage. And he unapologetically rains on the parade, accusing Earth Day of providing cover for escalating war and calling for a movement willing to demand “enormous changes—psychological, military, and bureaucratic—to end the existing world system, a system of hatred, of anarchy, of murder, of war and pollution.”
