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fossil fuels
Ahead of Biodiversity Summit, UN Chief Warns Countries Are 'Subsidizing Suicide' by Backing Fossil Fuels
"I urge governments everywhere to end these handouts once and for all, and to use the savings for people and planet instead," said António Guterres.
Oct 16, 2026
"The food we eat, the water we drink, the very air we breathe—all are the gifts of biodiversity. Yet every day, humankind saws another branch off the tree of life," outgoing United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres declared Friday, before a key global summit in Armenia.
"Climate chaos. Invasive species. Overgrazing and overfishing. Excessive fertilizers, pesticides, plastics, and heavy metals. All these and more are driving the triple planetary crisis of pollution, biodiversity loss, and climate chaos," he warned. "Over 1 million species now face the risk of extinction, edging us ever closer towards an uninhabitable world."
Guterres advocated for both government and financial leadership, calling out funding for "agribusiness that strips the land" as well as the leading driver of the worsening climate emergency: fossil fuels. According to him, "Subsidizing fossil fuels is subsidizing suicide."
"They are boiling our planet, and are the scourge of biodiversity," said the secretary-general—who has often argued for not only phasing out fossil fuels but also making polluters pay for their damage. "I urge governments everywhere to end these handouts once and for all, and to use the savings for people and planet instead."
Four years ago, at the 15th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, world leaders agreed to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework—which critics called "weak" and "an open invitation to greenwash." With COP17 kicking off in the Armenian capital on Monday, the UN chief said that "Yerevan is our moment of accountability."
The "good news" is that the framework "has inspired action across the globe," with nearly 90% of parties to the convention establishing national biodiversity targets, Guterres said. The "bad news" is that "progress is uneven, and far too slow. Even if current national commitments are met, only 26% of terrestrial, and 12% of marine ecosystems would be protected by 2030."
"That is well short of the promise made in Montreal to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030. Major gaps also remain in targets linked to economic systems, including those focused on reducing harmful incentives," he noted. "And many of the critical elements of progress—including finance, capacity, cooperation and data—are still largely missing in action."
The figures come from the United Nations Environment Program's "State of Biodiversity Action" report, released in preparation for next week's conference. That followed the September publication of the UNEP's "Limiting Overshoot" report, which warns that the world will at least temporarily surpass the Paris Agreement's temperature target for this century: 1.5°C beyond preindustrial levels.
In response to the overshoot report, Stephanie Roe, global climate and energy lead scientist at the international nonprofit WWF, said last month that "overshooting 1.5°C is not a cliff edge, but neither is it harmless. Every fraction of a degree of warming increases risks for people and nature, while every fraction avoided reduces harm."
"What matters now is how far temperatures rise above 1.5°C and how long they stay there," Roe continued. "The science shows that lower and shorter overshoot means fewer impacts on ecosystems, communities, and economies. Limiting peak warming and returning temperatures to safer levels as quickly as possible can help reduce risks, avoid irreversible losses, and improve resilience for the future."
Roe's organization has also released a series of relevant reports in the weeks before the summit, including a Wednesday analysis it commissioned from the Global Cooperation Institute that lays out "major barriers countries face in delivering the Global Biodiversity Framework and what could help unblock it," and urges "decisive action in Yerevan."
WWF International director general Kirsten Schuijt said that that "COP17 must move countries towards action and implementation. The benefits of collective action for nature are clear: stronger ecological resilience, more secure food and water systems, and reduced economic vulnerability. WWF's latest 'Living Planet Report' shows that nature can recover when the right actions are taken."
Released last month, that report found a 73% decline in the average size of monitored wildlife populations over a 52-year period—with an 85% decline in freshwater ecosystems, followed by 69% in terrestrial, and 59% in marine.
"Lasting progress," said Schuijt, "depends on transforming the systems driving nature loss and shifting decision-making from short-term fixes to long-term solutions. For COP17, this requires governments, businesses, Indigenous peoples, local communities, women, youth, and wider society to all participate actively in decision-making that moves agreements into urgent implementation, to shape and deliver nature-positive solutions."
The political declaration released Friday by heads of state in Yerevan for a leaders' summit preceding the conference already has some advocates, like WWF International president Adil Najam, issuing warnings. Najam explained from the Armenian capital that "leaders came together to discuss the promise made in Montreal in 2022 to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. The declaration acknowledges that progress is insufficient and that implementation must accelerate. It also recognizes that our economies, communities, and peace depend on nature. But recognition alone will not fulfill that promise."
"The declaration lacks explicit commitments to align economic and financial decisions with nature goals, including reforming subsidies that harm nature," he said. "Governments must make these choices if they are serious about delivering on their commitments. At COP17, they must turn the global review into clear implementation pathways backed by finance on the scale needed. The declaration signals a commitment to action across government; the real test is whether it changes decisions back home."
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Trump Rule Change Allows for ‘Unintentional’ Killing of Polar Bears by Fossil Fuel Companies
The US Fish and Wildlife Service finalized the polar bear-killing rule despite a near universal negative reception from more than 85,000 public comments.
Oct 16, 2026
Oil and gas companies will now be permitted to kill polar bears and Pacific walruses off the northern coast of Alaska so long as such killings are "unintentional," according to a new Trump administration rule.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) on Friday finalized a rule change that would shield fossil fuel companies from legal liability if they engage in the "incidental, unintentional" killing of the animals "during year-round oil and gas industry activities in the Beaufort Sea... and adjacent northern coast of Alaska."
Under the rule change, which is scheduled to last through 2031, the FWS "will issue letters of authorization" that sign off on the incidental killing of wildlife upon request by oil and gas companies.
As noted by a report in Bloomberg Law, the proposed rule change "drew more than 85,500 public comments, nearly all in opposition," before the FWS ultimately signed off on it.
The rule change was a major priority for the Alaska Oil and Gas Association, which represents fossil fuel giants and requested the revision in September 2025.
Allowing for the incidental killing of polar bears isn't the only controversial rollback of environmental regulations made by the Trump administration in recent weeks.
In September, The New York Times reported that FWS had gutted a key provision in the Endangered Species Act by arguing that only the intentional killing or wounding of protected species counts as illegal "harm."
Last week, it was revealed that the US Department of the Interior is moving ahead with a plan to let fossil fuel companies conduct specific wintertime operations at the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska without undergoing reviews mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act.
Even though the Trump administration has prioritized the development of domestic fossil fuel production by gutting environmental standards, these policies have not translated into the promised cheaper oil and gas prices, which have spiked over the last half year thanks to the president's illegal war with Iran.
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75% of Likely US Voters Oppose Giving Big Oil Immunity From Climate Lawsuits
Even 67% of Republican voters think states should be allowed to sue oil companies for climate damage. But Trump and GOP lawmakers are pushing to kill these suits for good.
Oct 15, 2026
President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress have sought to stop state-level lawsuits aimed at holding oil and gas companies responsible for climate-related damage. But most voters don't think they should be immune from accountability.
In a poll released last week by Data for Progress, 75% of likely voters said they would oppose legislation that would give fossil fuel companies "legal immunity from having to pay for the damages they have caused by worsening climate change."
Just 20% said they would either "somewhat" or "strongly" support such legislation. Meanwhile, more than half (53%) said they would "strongly" oppose it.
Opposition was strong across political affiliations: 83% of Democrats and 76% of independents said they opposed giving oil companies immunity from lawsuits, but so did 67% of Republicans.
(Graphic by Data for Progress)
In recent years, states and municipalities have sued fossil fuel companies over their well-documented history of misleading the public about their products' role in warming the planet. These lawsuits have sought compensation for damages from worsening floods, wildfires, droughts, and other climate-related disasters.
Eleven US states—California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont—as well as the District of Columbia, have active lawsuits, as do at least two tribal governments and dozens of municipalities around the country, according to a tracker by the Center for Climate Integrity.
The new poll suggests voters are even more opposed to shielding oil companies from these lawsuits than they were five months ago. Another Data for Progress poll in May showed just 65% opposed legislation to shield oil companies, compared with 75% now.
"Big Oil is desperate to secure legal immunity and escape accountability for its role in the climate crisis—and the billions of dollars of damages that have followed," said Iyla Shornstein, the political director at the Center for Climate Integrity. "These poll results show that Americans across the political spectrum are opposed to putting Big Oil above the law.”
Protesters hold a banner outside the US Supreme Court as it considers the Suncor v. Boulder case in Washington, DC, on October 5, 2026. (Photo by Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
The oil industry's lobbying arm, the American Petroleum Institute, has described stopping state climate lawsuits as a top priority for 2026. Their Republican allies have pushed at all levels of government to advance that goal.
In April, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and several GOP cosponsors joined Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) to introduce legislation that would shield fossil fuel companies from any climate-related lawsuits, dismiss pending cases, and overturn state "superfund" laws requiring the industry to pay for climate damages.
That bill failed to pass out of the House Judiciary Committee last month but could be brought forth again during the "lame-duck" session after the midterm elections in November.
ProPublica has identified at least 15 bills across 11 states that have either been enacted or proposed to shield companies, either by granting them broad immunity from liability for greenhouse gas emissions or restricting the ability of communities to sue over climate-related damages. Groups linked to Leonard Leo, the co-chair of the right-wing Federalist Society, have coordinated many of these efforts.
Republican attorneys general in 16 states have proposed creating a "liability shield" for fossil fuel companies modeled on the one that protects gun manufacturers from liability for the misuse of their products. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a leading conservative policy shop, approved a model bill in August aiming to establish this shield in state legislatures nationwide.
The oil industry has also pushed for the right-wing Supreme Court to step in to block these lawsuits. Earlier this month, during oral arguments, oil giants ExxonMobil and Suncor urged the court to block a lawsuit brought by Boulder, Colorado, that accused oil companies of deceiving the public about climate change and sought to hold them financially responsible.
If the court blocks the Boulder suit before it gets to trial, it could set a precedent that derails dozens of similar lawsuits around the country.
Meanwhile, Trump, who pledged to help Big Oil executives in exchange for their donations to his presidential campaign, signed an executive order last year directing the Department of Justice (DOJ) to identify and challenge state lawsuits that seek to impose financial penalties on fossil fuel companies.
His DOJ has weighed in on the Suncor v. Boulder case on the side of the oil industry and has sued at least five states that have sought to hold fossil fuel companies accountable.
The question about climate lawsuits was part of a broader set of questions Data for Progress asked voters about rising insurance costs and corporate accountability in partnership with the Insurance Fairness Project. Other results showed that many Americans want legal recourse against insurers and other companies that impose costs on consumers.
"As rising home insurance costs directly threaten housing affordability for the majority of Americans, voters are tired of their prices rising while insurance companies, energy providers, and the oil and gas industry go unchecked," said Grace Adcox, senior climate strategist for the Insurance Fairness Project. "There is a strong appetite for holding corporations accountable, both for their role in driving up costs and their role in contributing to the climate crisis."
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Goddamn Trump Doing His Damnedest to Take Us All Down With Him
Honestly, you couldn’t make most of this up, could you?
Oct 15, 2026
Here’s the truth of it: after all these years, today I don’t know what to write about.
I mean, in this ever-stranger world of ours, where even to start?
Oh, wait, give me a second and I’ll be right back! I don’t want to miss the latest ads featuring our president, paid for with millions of our tax dollars. It’s obviously important to check them out since, as he told us recently, “I’m not promoting myself because I’m not running for office. I’m promoting the country.” And who wouldn’t want him to reassure us about the state of this fair land of ours?
As he put it in one of those ads, “America will never be a communist country.” Whew! Who among us wasn’t worried about that!
Oops, and here I am again! It certainly seems as if my country (though, in truth, it doesn’t exactly feel like mine anymore) is now, to use a classic phrase, distinctly up shit’s creek without a paddle -- unless you consider Donald Trump a paddle. If so, there’s little question, of course, that he’s paddling us all to hell and back. And mind you, as I was writing this, the latest polls of voters for the upcoming November elections suggested that I wasn’t alone in thinking such thoughts. A surprising number of Americans, even ones who once voted for him (yes, him!), are now clearly worried that “our” president has put us on that very pathway to hell and, worse yet, the “and back” in that phrase (”to hell and back”) might no longer apply to this all-American world of ours.
Even more strikingly, we are evidently on a planet that, in terms of habitability -- from the historic (or do I mean ahistorical?) El Niño now developing in the Pacific Ocean to heat, drought, fire, you name it -- seems to be going down, down, down, again without a paddle in sight. We are, of course, living in an ever-hotter new world (and not faintly in the ancient all-American sense that the phrase “new world” once had). After all, with record seasonal heat from Europe to North America and distinctly beyond, we humans (not to speak of alligators, elephants, penguins, and turtles) are clearly living on a different planet in a fashion that should seem all too devastating to so many more of us than it evidently yet does.
Just consider it good luck that you and I aren’t polar bears living in a distinctly (yes, that word again!) heating Arctic -- its sea ice having “shrunk by nearly half a million square kilometers per decade since 1979, equivalent to losing an area the size of Spain every 10 years.” In fact, congratulate yourself if you’re not living in the Swiss Alps, where glaciers have lost nearly one-fifth of their volume over -- no, not the past half-century but the last five years! -- and between July and September of this year alone, around an additional 2.2 trillion liters of water. Oh, and it’s not just on land either. After all, “more than 90% of emperor penguin colonies could be near extinction by 2100 if sea ice loss persists at its current rate.”
Of course, in such a world, it won’t necessarily just be animals potentially going extinct but, perhaps somewhere down the line, we humans, too. (Okay, you’re right! We are indeed “animals.” I certainly didn’t mean to argue with you about that!)
Donald Trump Is Doing His Damnedest to Take Us All Down with Him
Although all of what I cited above represents the latest news and figures I could find, none of it should really surprise us. After all, it shouldn’t have been hard to learn that such a world was on the way, with one record year of heat succeeding another, and that far worse is clearly still to come. And yet, imagine that, somehow, in 2024, in a world already setting heat records globally, the American people elected a president -- for the second time, no less -- who refuses even to admit that anything whatsoever climate-related is happening on this planet. (I was tempted to write “of ours,” but it really isn’t anymore, is it?). He, of course, made it all too clear during that election campaign and thereafter that he considered climate change a “con job.” (Someday, he himself will undoubtedly be known as the con-job president.)
We’re talking about an 80-year-old guy who’s clearly starting to lose it (and given that I’m referring to Donald J. Trump, who even knows quite what that “it” means). In the process, he’s quite literally doing his -- yes, what an appropriate world under the circumstances! -- damnedest to take us all down with him.
Worse yet, in the midst of what should be the greatest crisis in human history, we -- in particular Donald Trump (Iran), Vladimir Putin (Ukraine), and Benjamin Netanyahu (Gaza and Southern Lebanon, not to speak of Iran, too), and of course local leaders from Myanmar to Sudan to Somalia (again with a helping hand from Donald Trump) -- seem to be doing our damnedest to make things so much worse, since war pours fossil fuels into the atmosphere in a stunning fashion.
And keep in mind that Vladimir Putin, the climate-change-averse leader of Russia, has now begun threatening to turn to that other method of global destruction humanity possesses for the first time since my country dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 to end World War II. I’m thinking about nuclear weapons, of course, to salvage (or do I mean savage?) his war in Ukraine. (Oh, and he seems to be planning, however indirectly, to harm Ukraine’s nuclear power plants as well.)
Honestly, you couldn’t make most of this up, could you? And who even knows what I’ve left out. As for the future, however uninventive we may be when it comes to lending this planet a hand, give us full credit, since we continue to be all too inventive when it comes to making war on each other and increasingly on the planet itself.
In early October, as I was writing this, the weather in my town, New York City, breached 80 degrees, and they’re predicting warmer-than-usual weather all fall here. (What a shock!) Of course, no one should be faintly surprised by that or any other news like it. Across the planet, an increasing heat hell seems to be causing violent avalanches in the Himalayas and wiping out glaciers in the Alps. In fact, you name it and it’s probably already happening on this ever more disturbed planet of ours.
And worse yet, count on this: unless we act with reasonable focus and speed, everything I’ve mentioned is likely to grow so much worse in the years to come. Yes, in terms of green energy, we increasingly have the means to put a brake on all of this. But perhaps it tells you everything you need to know that China, the greatest producer of green energy (and the equipment to make it) on this planet right now, also remains the greatest user of fossil fuels.
And don’t even get me started on that giant user of fossil fuels, AI!
All in all, tell me that we’re not indeed up shit’s creek without a paddle.
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A Constitutional Right For The Fossil Fuel Industry? Defeat Colorado's Amendment 82!
Something unprecedented is happening in Colorado: A dark money group is working to change the state Constitution to recognize a legal right to buy and sell natural gas.
Oct 15, 2026
This November, the Colorado voters will decide on a ballot initiative called Amendment 82. Despite its anodyne name, this initiative would radically change state policy for the worse. Amendment 82 would enshrine into the state Constitution the enforceable and perpetual right to buy and sell natural gas in Colorado, representing the wholesale capture of a state constitution by one industry.
The initiative is backed by Advance Colorado, a dark money group, backed by anonymous donors, that seeks to manipulate Colorado’s ballot initiatives to advance corporate and billionaire interests.
Amendment 82 is one such effort, and it’s breathtaking in its audacity. No other state carves out such special treatment for a single industry in its constitution. No other state constitution intervenes so forcefully to grant an industry the perpetual right to sell its products in order to make a profit. It would be the first time that US voters in any state enshrined such a blatant giveaway to an industry into its constitution.
If the industry succeeds with their effort in Colorado, they will not stop there—other states will clearly become targets for the next constitutional giveaway to the industry.
Amendment 82 invents a solution to a problem that simply does not exist. Buying and selling natural gas remains legal in Colorado—and is something that a majority of Coloradans do every day. Nothing on the horizon seeks to change that.
What Amendment 82 will do, however, is make sensible, reasonable, and necessary regulation protecting our air, water, and environment from the impacts of this industry nearly impossible.
Efforts to stop gas companies from fracking near homes and schools are at risk of being rolled back, because the industry will argue these rules infringe on their right to sell natural gas.
Regulations to limit the amount of toxins that the oil and gas industry can dump into a community’s air and water become impotent for fear that enforcement will infringe on the right to sell natural gas.
A town’s ordinance that regulates the use of methane camp stoves in times of high fire risk could now be overturned because it arguably infringes on the right to buy natural gas.
Amendment 82 will lock into Colorado’s constitution the ability of oil and gas industries to increase their profits at the expense of the health and safety of Colorado’s people. It gives the industry the right—affirmative and enforceable—to force communities to accept the dangers, risks, and pollution that come with oil and gas infrastructure.
Moreover, the deceptively simple language of Amendment 82 gives these special interests a powerful new tool to block common-sense environmental regulations—far beyond the scope of the oil and gas industry.
If passed, Amendment 82 will lock in fossil fuel extraction as official state policy, and quickly overwhelm pro-environment laws, regulations, policies, programs, innovation, and decision-making in Colorado. It will pose a credible—and likely successful—challenge to any government action that seeks to regulate or limit natural gas extraction, transportation, or pollution outputs, and to any government efforts that seek to reduce the state’s dependence on fossil fuels by advancing clean energy policies and projects.
Amendment 82 is a crisis moment for Colorado’s communities, environment, and the future generations who will be burdened by its impact. But it should also be a wake-up call for the rest of us. If the industry succeeds with their effort in Colorado, they will not stop there—other states will clearly become targets for the next constitutional giveaway to the industry.
Constitutions in the US belong to We the People, not corporations. We give these constitutions—both state and federal—power because they are the means by which we protect ourselves and our inalienable rights from powerful special interests that seek to infringe upon them.
Efforts like Amendment 82 seek to misappropriate that power and give industry titans new ways to infringe on the basic and essential rights of everyday people in the name of profit and exploitation. It cannot be allowed to succeed.
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Clean Power Funding Surpasses Fossil Fuels, But Rich Nations Keep Bankrolling Dirty Energy: Report
"Laggards, including the United States and Japan, are continuing to prop up the fossil fuel industry."
Oct 14, 2026
For the first time on record, major international public financial institutions are providing more financing for clean energy around the world than for fossil fuels. But wealthy nations, including the United States, continue to pour billions into oil and gas, hampering the global energy transition, according to a new report.
On Wednesday, two environmental advocacy groups—Oil Change International and Friends of the Earth US—published an analysis of new data on public financing from Group of 20 (G20) nations and multilateral development banks for clean energy projects, such as wind and solar, and planet-warming fossil fuels, including oil, gas, and coal.
They found that from 2023-25, public financing for clean energy averaged at least $52.7 billion annually, compared with just $36.3 billion for fossil fuels. The report attributes the shift mostly to multilateral development banks, while G20 nations' own development and export financing continued to favor fossil fuels.
“This new dataset represents a tipping point. Clean energy financing overtaking fossil fuel financing for the first time is an important milestone," said Claire O'Manique, public finance researcher at Oil Change International. "But it doesn't mean we can sit back and count our wins.”
The level of clean energy financing, the group said, is still far below what is needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, a threshold beyond which the risks of devastating climate impacts increase.
That's largely thanks to four main culprits. Canada, Japan, the United States, and Italy accounted for around 75% of fossil fuel financing from G20 countries during this period.
Canada provided an annual average of $12.5 billion in fossil fuel financing—mostly for domestic projects. Japan averaged about $4.5 billion annually despite a G7 commitment to end public support for new international fossil fuel projects by 2022. Italy likewise averaged $3.8 billion annually, breaking a pledge to end international fossil fuel financing.
Over the same period, the US provided an annual average of about $3.6 billion in fossil fuel financing, mostly through its Export-Import Bank, compared with just $1.5 billion for clean energy.
The data from 2025, the first year of President Donald Trump's second term, is particularly striking. That year, the US provided nearly $8 billion in financing for fossil fuel projects compared with just $2.5 million for clean energy—roughly 3,200 times as much.
This included a loan of up to $4.7 billion for a liquefied natural gas project in Mozambique, despite allegations that soldiers guarding the project committed war crimes. British and Dutch backing has since been withdrawn from the project.
"Important progress is being made to move the world’s largest economies away from supporting fossil fuels and shift that financing toward renewable energy projects," said Kate DeAngelis, economic policy deputy director at Friends of the Earth US. "Unfortunately, laggards, including the United States and Japan, are continuing to prop up the fossil fuel industry instead of helping countries transition to sustainable economies.”
The report also found that less than 2% of the clean energy financing tracked reached low-income countries, despite their unmet energy needs. Meanwhile, nearly half of the funds went toward projects in the highest-income countries, according to World Bank classifications.
The five largest recipients of clean energy financing were all high- or middle-income countries: France, Poland, and Spain fall into the former category, while Brazil and India fall into the latter.
"A just transition will not happen at the scale required without governments actively steering it through redirecting and mobilizing public finance," O’Manique said. "Wealthy governments must move first and fastest to phase out fossil fuels at home and meet their climate finance obligations."
"We are running out of time," she said. "Without a fossil fuel phaseout and public finance being redirected to drive a just energy transition, we will continue to see escalating climate disasters that come at a huge human and economic cost, such as the deadly glacial flood disaster in Nepal.”
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Green Groups Fume as Trump Gives Big Oil 'Another Free Pass to Exploit' the Arctic
"The Trump administration is putting corporate profits ahead of people and the planet, and the Western Arctic will pay the price."
Oct 08, 2026
Just over a week after a leading US Senate Democrat described President Donald Trump's relationship with fossil fuel giants as "old-fashioned corruption, by a thuggish government and a desperate industry," his administration on Thursday announced yet another giveaway to climate polluters who want to exploit the Arctic.
The US Department of the Interior is moving forward with a plan to allow oil and gas companies to conduct certain wintertime activities at the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska without reviews generally required by the National Environmental Policy Act—a landmark law long targeted by Trump's Republican Party.
"In issuing this categorical exclusion, this administration is seeking to fast-track large-scale oil drilling and seismic exploration without any further environmental analysis or public input," warned Earthjustice attorney Janet Bering. "It is cutting the public out of this decision and future decisions."
"The administration finalized this new approach with zero public input," Bering noted. "Combined with a similar proposal that rubber-stamps new oil production, this is a one-two punch. It's bad policy, and it is unlawful."
The 60-day public comment period is ongoing for the earlier proposal she cited, which is designed to streamline decision-making for construction and operation of oil and gas production sites in the same 23-million-acre Alaska reserve.
When the Interior Department unveiled that policy in early September, Earthjustice Attorney Erik Grafe declared that "what we're seeing here is a concerted attack by the Trump administration to greenlight oil and gas drilling in the Western Arctic while ignoring the harm it will cause to these irreplaceable public lands and also the government's obligation to protect these lands for wildlife and future generations."
"These are large-scale, industrial activities that cause permanent damage to sensitive Arctic ecosystems, nearby communities, and the climate," Grafe stressed. "The administration's proposal flaunts basic environmental laws meant to protect land, wildlife, and people and allow for fully informed decision-making."
Earthjustice is far from alone in blasting Trump's recent attacks on the Arctic. Dan Ritzman, director of Sierra Club's conservation campaign, condemned last month's proposal as "another piece of the administration’s relentless effort to expand drilling across Alaska's public lands."
"The Western Arctic is home to caribou, migratory birds, and countless other wildlife, and decisions about its future deserve careful scrutiny—not a permitting process designed around the demands of the oil and gas industry," Ritzman said at the time.
His colleague Mike Scott, Sierra Club's national oil and gas campaign manager, was similarly critical of Thursday's announcement.
"The Trump administration is handing Big Oil another free pass to exploit America’s public lands, this time by gutting environmental oversight in one of the most fragile ecosystems on the planet," said Scott. "Oil companies have already shown the risks they pose to the Western Arctic, and now this administration wants to make it even easier for them to drill without scrutiny."
"This isn't about lowering energy costs or helping Alaskans," he continued—as the president drives up fuel costs with an illegal war on Iran. "It's about doing the fossil fuel industry's bidding at the expense of wildlife, Alaska Native communities, and our public lands. The Trump administration is putting corporate profits ahead of people and the planet, and the Western Arctic will pay the price."
Trump campaigned for a second term on a pledge to serve fossil fuel interests—even telling industry executives that he'd roll back climate policies if they poured $1 billion into his campaign. Last week, US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Committee on Environment and Public Works Ranking Member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) released a report detailing how the president has delivered on that promise since returning to power last year.
"The fossil fuel industry and their allies bought their way into the Trump White House with hundreds of millions of dollars in political donations, after Trump promised fossil fuel bigwigs at a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser that he'd do anything and everything they wanted, for the right price," Whitehouse said. "Now, their minions run the government from the inside, driving up energy bills to deliver payouts to the donors that put Trump back in office."
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Trump 'Environmental Destruction Agency Continues Its Rampage' With Methane Pollution Rollback
"This giveaway to fossil fuel executives is foolish and shortshsighted, and reveals who the Trump administration really works for—its political donors," said one campaigner.
Oct 07, 2026
The US Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday announced plans to further weaken federal protections against methane pollution from oil and gas operations, prompting environmental advocates to accuse the Trump administration of once again putting fossil fuel interests ahead of public health and the climate.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin made the announcement during the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association’s annual meeting in Santa Fe. The EPA said it will propose changes to the Biden administration's 2024 oil and gas rules in the coming days, claiming the proposed rollback will save $45 billion in regulatory costs.
The proposal's changes include rescinding the Biden-era Super Emitter Program, which allows third parties to identify major methane leaks and require companies to address them.
“The Trump EPA is days, not weeks, away from announcing our proposal for the second part of the oil and gas reconsideration," Zeldin said in a statement. "Americans must be able to afford to heat their homes in the winter and fill up their car and drive to work. They can’t do that when the people producing the energy are weighed down by unnecessary burdens."
The biggest factor driving high US gasoline prices right now is the global oil supply shock caused by President Donald Trump's illegal war of choice on Iran.
Environmental and climate groups disputed Zeldin's framing.
"Trump’s Environmental Destruction Agency continues its rampage by torching limits on superheating methane, some of the last remaining protections against climate-heating pollution,” said Maggie Coulter, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute.
“This move will compound the climate chaos we see mounting all around us in deadly heatwaves, floods, and storms," she added. "Vulnerable communities will be exposed to worse smog and intensified respiratory pollution, increasing kids’ asthma and other health harms. We’ll fight this disastrous rollback with everything we’ve got.”
Today, EPA Admin. Zeldin announced a rollback of federal rules that ensure oil and gas operators don't pollute our air. This decision clearly shows that Trump is putting polluters first over the wellbeing of the American people. #Methane
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— Conservation Voters New Mexico (@protectnm.bsky.social) October 7, 2026 at 10:01 AM
Dr. Rev. Jessica Moerman, president and CEO of the Evangelical Environmental Network, said that “families in oil and gas country should not have to wonder what is leaking from the wells and equipment near their homes, churches, and schools."
"The plan to weaken methane pollution protections means this worry remains a reality," she added. "Leaking methane is not only a wasted product. The same leaks can carry benzene and other harmful pollutants linked to cancer and birth defects into the air that children and seniors breathe."
Methane—which has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide during its first two decades in the atmosphere—is emitted during the production and transportation of oil, gas, and coal, as well as from municipal landfills and livestock.
"Any proposed rollback to the federal methane rule is a slap in the face to families who are exposed to oil and gas pollution where they live, work, and play,” Celerah Hewes, senior manager for state field campaigns at Moms Clean Air Force, said in a statement.
Hewes continued:
For over a decade, Moms Clean Air Force has been fighting for methane protections for our families—and we were making progress. Today’s announcement from EPA is a massive blow to the efforts to safeguard our children’s health and our climate. Over 900,000 comments were submitted to the Federal Register in support of the commonsense methane pollution protections that EPA finalized in 2024, including many from the moms, dads, and caregivers with Moms Clean Air Force.
"Now communities across the country will once again have to show up and demand EPA provide strong federal methane pollution standards that protect families from this known public health threat and climate super pollutant," she added. "It is outrageous that we have to fight so hard just for our children's right to breathe clean air."
Lauren Pagel, senior policy director at Earthworks, alleged that "by rolling back commonsense methane standards, the Trump administration has once again chosen polluters over people, sacrificing the health of communities living next to extraction and our climate to make even more money for fossil fuel billionaires."
“While families struggle with the high cost of living, everything Trump and his oil and gas company cronies do makes life harder for everyday people—including making the air we breathe dirtier," she continued.
“The Trump administration is delivering dirtier air, more pollution, and greater risks for communities in order to boost Big Oil’s profits," Pagel added. "It’s time for states to step up and do what the White House won’t: Put people first, hold polluters accountable, and cut methane pollution to protect health and climate.”
While running for reelection on a “drill, baby, drill” energy platform, Trump reportedly promised Big Oil executives that he would eviscerate climate regulations enacted by the Biden administration if they gave $1 billion to his campaign. Fossil fuel interests spent nearly $450 million during the 2024 election cycle on campaign contributions, lobbying, and efforts supporting Republican causes and candidates, including Trump.
EPA signaled it is going to propose weakened #methane regulations for oil and gas, including for low-producing wells, which are responsible for almost half of the sector’s methane emissions despite producing less than 5% of the country’s oil and gas.www.catf.us/2026/10/epa-...
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— Clean Air Task Force (@cleanaircatf.bsky.social) October 7, 2026 at 1:59 PM
Environmental Defense Fund associate vice president of energy transition Jon Goldstein said: "At a time when Americans are facing high energy costs, EPA should not give oil and gas companies more room to waste a domestic resource... Rolling back these safeguards would mean more wasted energy, more methane pollution, and greater health risks for communities living near oil and gas operations.”
Natural Resources Defense Council senior strategist David Doniger accused the EPA of "trying to give a free pass to the worst actors in the oil and gas industry."
"Many companies had already complied with these rules, but a few rogue actors refuse to check for leaks or monitor their equipment adequately," he explained. "Those deadbeats would get bailed out by this action."
“Methane leaks are the dumbest kind of pollution because the industry is losing the very product it is selling," Doniger continued. "That’s what made the standards so cost-effective: Checking for leaks means the industry has more gas to sell."
“These leaks are not just bad for the climate, they result in more smog and cancer-causing pollution for nearby communities," he added. "But with his announcement today, Lee Zeldin made clear that oil companies come first, while protecting families from toxic pollution and the ravages of extreme weather is not on this administration’s agenda.”
Mahyar Sorour, who heads Sierra Club's Beyond Fossil Fuels Policy program, noted that “it took many years and carefully considered input from health experts, community advocates, and even the oil and gas industry itself to craft the achievable, commonsense methane standards."
"Yet, the Trump administration, with pockets lined by the biggest polluters, has unceremoniously worked to roll back this and other standards meant to protect our health and safety," Sorour added. "This giveaway to fossil fuel executives is foolish and shortsighted, and reveals who the Trump administration really works for—its political donors.”
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Trump's Iran War Has Proved We Need to Get Off Fossil Fuels
Starting a stupid and criminal war is probably the dumbest way to wake the world up to the need to kick their and our collective oil and gas addiction, but here we are.
Oct 03, 2026
The price of oil has come down marginally this past week, largely because the Iranians are letting oil tankers transit the Gulf of Hormuz (presumably in an effort to work out a peace deal with President Donald Trump).
Meanwhile, though, the big lesson the world seems to have learned because of Trump’s fiasco—other than that our military is under the control of an irresponsible alcoholic and a narcissist and unreliable wannabe king—is that it’s high time to get off fossil fuels.
Starting a stupid and criminal war is probably the dumbest way to wake the world up to the need to kick their and our collective addiction, but here we are: The war has done more to encourage conservation and the transition to renewables than any other single effort by anybody anywhere in recent memory.
Instead of subsidizing fossil fuels to jack the profits of the companies that fund the GOP, we should be taxing them the way Europe does and using that money to turn every American roof into a power plant.
A new report from the International Energy Agency found that global demand for oil has fallen 2.5% this year, the equivalent of taking 42 million gas-burning cars off the road.
I’ve been watching all this from an odd vantage point. Three years ago we put solar panels and batteries on our all-electric house, where our winter electric bills had been running as high as $200 a month.
Now, the only time we buy electricity at all is in the dead of winter, and even then it costs a fraction of what it used to because I can download power at night when it’s cheapest. Between that and having an electric car I charge off my rooftop, energy prices exploding because of Trump’s and Bibi’s war haven’t much affected us directly.
But such benefits shouldn’t be limited to people who can afford to put solar panels on their roofs and live in blue states with huge solar subsidies. Every American should have such an option.
I first understood how this could work for an entire country back in September of 2009, when I was invited to join German Member of Parliament Hermann Scheer as a keynote speaker at a conference at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona.
Almost a decade earlier, Scheer had shepherded his “100,000 Rooftops” program through the German Parliament and was eager to talk about how it worked and how it could work in Spain. As he laid out the concept to me over lunch, it was simple and elegant.
Banks would loan people the money to put rooftop solar on their houses at a super-low interest rate, with defaults backstopped by the government so there was no risk to the bank and they could make money on a super-low-interest loan. Power utilities would buy surplus power from those homes at a “feed-in tariff” rate that was higher than the retail price of electricity until the bank loans were paid off, typically in five to ten years.
The rates were set so that if the monthly loan payments on your rooftop system were $100, the local utility would be paying you around the same $100 a month. When the loan was paid off you’d own a solar system that would last for decades, and you’d have gotten it for free.
The extra expense to the utilities for those payments to consumers would still cost less than building a new power plant. The system let the Germans decommission a few and avoid building any new nuclear plants.
Politics intervened, of course, and the program wasn’t implemented as cleanly as Scheer described it to me, but it got a long way there, even though he died the following year at just 66. Today well over a million German homes have both solar panels and battery storage, and solar covers around 14% of the country’s electricity, all of it in the cloudiest country in Europe at the same latitude as Calgary, Canada.
And the rest of the world is following following at a faster and faster rate. The IEA now expects electric vehicles to make up a record 29% of all the cars sold on Earth this year, with sales records set in 50 countries last quarter as fuel prices from Trump’s war pushed drivers away from gasoline and diesel.
In the European Union overall, EVs are now more than 30% of sales and over 50% in China; they’re nearly 100% of sales in some countries like Norway. Here in America they’re just a pathetic 5.8% this year.
What explains the growing enthusiasm for electric cars around the world and here in America is, in large part, the price of fuel.
For a century in America the price of oil and its refined products has left out most of what they truly cost us. It doesn’t include the cancers and the asthma, the wildfires and the floods, or the wars we fight to keep tankers moving through places like the Strait of Hormuz.
Economists call these externalities, and the International Monetary Fund puts the worldwide total at $7 trillion a year in costs—subsidies, really—that the fossil fuel industry hands off to the rest of us. As I laid out in The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, we’ve been burning through millions of years of stored sunlight as if it were free of any real costs or externalities.
We figured out how to handle this problem of paying for externalities and discouraging destructive behavior long ago with alcohol and tobacco, which we tax heavily both to discourage their use and to pay for some of the damage they do to our individual health and to our society.
Europe has taxed fuel that way for decades. Germans pay upwards of $3 a gallon in fuel taxes, while our federal gas tax has been stuck at 18.4 cents since 1993.
And you can see the results in any European town: People drive smaller cars and fewer miles, they take the train, and because driving is expensive they walk to the bakery and the hardware store down the street, which also has the added benefit of boosting Europeans’ health while keeping their money circulating in the local economy.
A high price cuts consumption whether it comes from a war or from a tax, but what separates the two is where the money ends up.
- When a war drives up the price of oil, the extra dollars flow to fossil fuel companies and dictatorial petrostates as windfall profits.
- When a tax does it, the money belongs to us. It can go right back to working families as a rebate check or EV subsidy, and it can pay for the kind of loan guarantees that put solar on all those German roofs.
Europe is now extending the principle to trade with a carbon charge at its border, which is the closest the world has yet come to the international price on carbon we need to make it reflect the very real damage it’s doing to our lives and environment.
None of this is happening here in the United States, however, because of the Republican Party’s Faustian bargain with the fossil fuel industry.
Ronald Reagan took Jimmy Carter’s solar panels off the White House roof to make his oil industry donors happy, and every Republican administration since has handed our public lands and resources to the industry at giveaway prices while the industry pours money into gifts, trips, and Republicans’ campaigns.
Trump made the deal explicit at Mar-a-Lago in 2024 when he asked oil executives for a billion dollars and promised to gut our climate rules in return, a promise he’s kept by killing the wind, solar, and EV incentives that would’ve let millions of American families do what we did with our house and car (both bought and installed with credits from the Obama administration and our enlightened Oregon state government).
So when the price of gas and diesel begins to fall back and Trump and the GOP start taking credit, remember what this year proved: Instead of subsidizing fossil fuels to jack the profits of the companies that fund the GOP, we should be taxing them the way Europe does and using that money to turn every American roof into a power plant.
Call your members of Congress through the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and tell them you want fossil fuels priced at what they really cost us and rooftop solar financed the way Germany did it.
And if you found this useful, please share it with your friends and family and consider subscribing to and supporting The Hartmann Report, because reader-supported media is how ideas like these get past the industry’s wall of money.
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Big Oil Fears the Evidence of Its Climate Lies
Fossil fuel companies are desperate to escape trial in climate deception lawsuits. The Supreme Court should not shield them from accountability.
Oct 02, 2026
No one knows how the US Supreme Court will rule in Suncor v. Boulder, the case that will kick off the court’s fall term next week and will likely decide whether the city and county of Boulder, Colorado, will be able to put oil giants ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy on trial for deceiving the public for decades about the climate harms of fossil fuels.
But one thing that can be said with certainty is that Big Oil and the fossil fuel industry are absolutely terrified of facing cases like Boulder’s at trial, where state and local governments will be able to present evidence of Big Oil’s decades-long climate deception to a jury. Big Oil’s own lawyers have admitted that the companies face “massive monetary liability” from the dozens of climate deception cases against them, and that stopping communities from having their day in court is a “big priority… for the entire industry.”
That’s because the evidence of Big Oil’s climate lies is overwhelming—and the discovery process in climate deception lawsuits could produce even more damaging proof that companies like Exxon have knowingly fueled climate chaos for decades while concealing the harm, undermining the science, and obstructing every effort to address the problem. As the Supreme Court prepares to hear Exxon’s pleas to escape trial in just one of the dozens of climate deception lawsuits, the Center for Climate Integrity has released a newly updated collection of 101 internal industry documents and other pieces of evidence that the fossil fuel industry is desperate to stop a jury of Americans from seeing.
All Boulder and other communities are asking Big Oil to do is to stop lying and pay for the harm their lies have caused. It speaks volumes about Big Oil companies that they’re going to such lengths to avoid telling the truth and paying to clean up the mess they’ve made.
Climate Fraud 101: Big Oil's Climate Deception Explained in 101 Documents, 1957-2026 shows how fossil fuel companies helped shape the emerging field of climate science beginning in the 1950s. By the late 1970s and early 80s, Exxon scientists were warning of “catastrophic” climate impacts if the world did not shift away from fossil fuels. Over the course of the 1980s, the oil giant and others came to understand that climate change posed two profound existential risks: one to “civilisation” itself, and the second to their business model, because the only way to “avoid the problem” was by “sharply curtailing the use of fossil fuels.”
Big Oil then chose their own interests over humanity’s and launched the most consequential corporate deception campaign in history to “emphasize the uncertainty” in climate science before measurable impacts became detectable and undeniable. By the 1990s, the oil and gas majors responded to increased public awareness of climate change by publicly contradicting what their own scientists had been telling them for decades, casting doubt on well-established climate science and obstructing efforts to mitigate the impacts of global warming. Then, once the problem became undeniable, Big Oil and the fossil fuel industry shifted to lie about the solutions—undermining the urgently needed transition to renewables while claiming they could make dirty fossil fuels more climate friendly through false solutions like natural gas and carbon capture and storage (CCS).
Throughout these decades, the impacts of the climate crisis became worse and worse for communities across the globe, with wildfires, floods, droughts, extreme heat, and other climate damages becoming more deadly and destructive as a result of the industry’s obstruction.
On October 5, Exxon and Suncor will beg the Supreme Court to shield them from having to face the evidence of their wrongdoing in a Colorado court. But the fossil fuel industry’s quest to escape accountability is much larger. They’re desperately lobbying Congress and state legislatures to give them outright immunity from climate lawsuits and place them above the law entirely. They’re attacking climate science and efforts to educate judges through a vast network of fossil-funded front groups. They’re enlisting the Trump administration to sue states that dare bring legal action against oil companies. And they’re flooding right-wing echo chambers with ridiculous fear mongering arguments that it's not our continued reliance on fossil fuels but climate deception lawsuits—which have not even gone to trial yet—that are blame for high gas prices and threats to our national security.
All Boulder and other communities are asking Big Oil to do is to stop lying and pay for the harm their lies have caused. It speaks volumes about Big Oil companies that they’re going to such lengths to avoid telling the truth and paying to clean up the mess they’ve made. Conservative and progressive legal scholars alike have explained why Exxon and Suncor’s arguments to escape Boulder’s lawsuit at this early stage should fail.
The Supreme Court should not shield these companies from having to face the evidence of their wrongdoing. We should all agree that we are still a nation of laws—of, by, and for the people—not a nation beholden to the interests of oil executives.
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