May, 18 2021, 12:00am EDT
IEA's First 1.5degC-Aligned Scenario Bolsters Call for No New Fossil Fuel Extraction
IEA must now make it central to its flagship WEO and fix remaining model flaws.
WASHINGTON
Today, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released a special report, "Net Zero in 2050: A roadmap for the global energy system," that represents the agency's first ever effort to model a comprehensive energy pathway towards limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (degC). While concerns remain over some of the IEA's modelling choices, campaigners are welcoming the report as a milestone towards IEA reform.
Through the #FixTheWEO campaign, climate advocates, investors, businesses, and diplomats have been urging the IEA for years to align its influential annual World Energy Outlook (WEO) with the full ambition of the Paris Agreement goals. In a key win, IEA director Dr. Fatih Birol committed for the first time last week that the new 1.5degC-aligned scenario will be "integral" to WEO 2021 and made a permanent fixture of future WEOs.
Critically, the 1.5degC-aligned scenario finds "no need for investment in new fossil fuel supply." This represents a break from past IEA reports that boosted new oil and gas development by focusing on scenarios that steered the world towards catastrophic levels of warming.
As next steps towards reform, energy analysts are calling on the IEA to transform the WEO to focus on 1.5degC-aligned policies and investments and fix persistent modelling flaws. The new scenario continues to underestimate wind and solar while overselling riskier, more polluting alternatives.
In response to today's special report, Oil Change International experts released the following statements:
Kelly Trout, Interim Energy Transitions and Futures Program Director, said:
"It's huge to have the world's most influential energy modellers bolstering the global call to stop licensing and financing new fossil fuel extraction. Governments, banks, and Big Oil and Gas companies can no longer use the IEA as a shield to claim that their support for fossil fuel expansion is consistent with the Paris Agreement. The IEA's own modelling now shows new oil and gas fields are not compatible with limiting warming to 1.5 degrees.
"However, the IEA still has a ways to go to cast off its fossil fuel roots and prove itself a credible global advisor on climate. If the IEA is serious about steering the world towards a 1.5@C-aligned future, it must put 1.5@C at the heart of all its analysis and communications moving forward.
"Today's report should herald the end of any excuses for continued fossil fuel expansion. We should never see another IEA report that claims investment in new oil and gas supply is 'needed.'"
David Tong, Senior Campaigner, said:
"Today's report is a tremendous win for climate advocates who have been demanding that the IEA align its analysis and communications with the critical 1.5@C limit. While we applaud the IEA for taking this step, they can rest assured that advocates will continue pushing for the institution to complete the job.
"The IEA needs to fix the flaws in this report by prioritising truly clean technologies, and thrust that fixed scenario into the center of the 2021 World Energy Outlook. By continuing to underestimate wind and solar potential, the IEA is still encouraging dangerous levels of reliance on carbon capture and storage, fossil gas, and bioenergy, technologies favored by polluting industries but harmful for people.
"Gambling the climate on a 4,000 percent increase in carbon capture and storage by 2030 is extraordinarily risky and, the IEA's own analysis shows, not necessary. Instead of banking on a consistently underperforming and still polluting technology, the IEA should be accelerating the phase-out of fossil gas and coal by relying on proven wind and solar solutions.
"We need the IEA to be a beacon pointing the way to a truly clean, Paris-aligned future. With today's report, that light is starting to appear, but it is not yet shining as bright as it must."
Oil Change International is a research, communications, and advocacy organization focused on exposing the true costs of fossil fuels and facilitating the ongoing transition to clean energy.
(202) 518-9029LATEST NEWS
As Critics Condemn 'Murder, Plain and Simple,' Hegseth Backs Admiral Order to Kill Boat Attack Survivors
"Making Adm. Bradley the fall guy in the administration's 'Protect Pete' campaign is disgraceful and destructive," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal. "Hegseth must go—resign or be fired."
Dec 02, 2025
As journalists on Tuesday continued to demand answers about the "double-tap" strike that started an illegal US bombing campaign against alleged drug-smuggling boats, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth kept pointing the finger at Adm. Frank M. "Mitch" Bradley while still claiming to support the Navy leader who the Trump administration says ordered the military to take out two survivors of the initial attack.
Sitting beside President Donald Trump during a Cabinet meeting, Hegseth—who has denied the Washington Post and CNN's reporting that he gave a spoken directive to kill everybody on the boat before the September 2 bombing—told reporters that he left the room after the first strike, and Bradley ordered the second strike.
"I watched that first strike live. As you can imagine, at the Department of War, we got a lot of things to do, so I didn't stick around for the hour, and two hours, whatever, where all the sensitive site exploitation digitally occurs," Hegseth said, using Trump's preferred term for his department.
"So I moved on to my next meeting," the Fox News host-turned-Pentagon chief said. "Couple of hours later, I learned that that commander had made the—which he had the complete authority to do, and by the way—Adm. Bradley made the correct decision, to ultimately sink the boat and eliminate the threat... And it was the right call. We have his back."
Asked whether he saw the survivors after that first strike, Hegseth said: "I did not personally see survivors... The thing was on fire."
"This is called the fog of war," he added. "This is what you in the press don't understand. You sit in your air-conditioned offices or up on Capitol Hill, and you nitpick, and you plant fake stories in the Washington Post about 'kill everybody' phases on anonymous sources not based in anything, not based in any truth at all, and then you want to throw out really irresponsible terms about American heroes."
On Sunday, US Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said during an ABC News appearance that the second strike on September 2 was either "plain murder," or a war crime—if you accept the Trump administration's contested argument that the United States is "in armed conflict, at war... with the drug gangs," which many lawmakers and experts reject.
Responding to Hegseth's Tuesday remarks on the social media platform X, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee member said that "Secretary Talk Show Host may have been experiencing the 'fog of war,' but that doesn't change the fact that this was an extrajudicial killing amounting to murder or a war crime. One thing is clear: Pete Hegseth is unfit to serve. He must resign."
Calls for Hegseth's resignation or firing have mounted since Friday's reporting, exacerbated by his Monday X post in which the defense secretary said Bradley "has my 100% support" and "I stand by him and the combat decisions he has made—on the September 2 mission and all others since."
Replying to that post, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said that "making Adm. Bradley the fall guy in the administration's 'Protect Pete' campaign is disgraceful and destructive. It signals to military professionals down the ranks they'll be thrown under the bus for lawbreaking by Hegseth and other political leaders."
Despite recent bipartisan vows of "vigorous oversight" for the September 2 attack, Blumenthal said that "Republicans have shown no clear sign they'll buck the administration's blame gaming and begin a prompt investigation with subpoenas, witness depositions, hearings, and more. One immediate imperative: Demand that evidence be preserved—like all videos, emails, correspondence."
"Hegseth must go—resign or be fired," the senator added. "No question that murders or war crimes were committed on his watch. His criminal culpability may be contested, but no question that he's ultimately accountable. He directed the strikes be lethal and total. The buck stops with him."
Blumenthal is on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which, alongside the relevant House panel, is set to hold a classified briefing on Thursday with testimony from Bradley. Critics in Congress, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), have also called on Hegseth to testify under oath about the 22 boat bombings in the Caribbean and Pacific—which have killed at least 83 people—and potential US attacks within Venezuela, which the defense secretary and Trump teased again on Tuesday.
Ryan Goodman, a former Pentagon special counsel who’s now a New York University law professor and Just Security coeditor-in-chief, offered some potential questions lawmakers could ask based on Hegseth and Trump's Cabinet meeting comments.
The first: "Mr. Secretary, do you hereby testify—under penalty of perjury—that all your public statements about your involvement in the Sept. 2 strike are true? We provided you a copy of all your statements before this hearing."
Noting Trump's claim that "Pete didn't know about [the] second attack having to do with two people," Goodman suggested that lawmakers inquire: "Oh. Well then, when did Pete know about it, and what did he do about it? When he found out about it, did he know the second attack was in order to kill the shipwrecked?"
Goodman and other experts argued in a Monday analysis for Just Security that "the United States is not in an armed conflict with any drug trafficking cartel or criminal gang anywhere in the Western Hemisphere," so "the individuals involved have not committed war crimes," but "the alleged Hegseth order and special forces' lethal operation amounted to unlawful 'extrajudicial killing' under human rights law," and "the federal murder statute would also apply."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Republicans Suddenly Care About US Airstrike Massacres—But Only Obama's
House Speaker Mike Johnson falsely claimed that "nobody ever questioned" Obama's hundreds of drone strikes, while defending the Trump administration's high seas murder spree.
Dec 02, 2025
Republicans on Tuesday invoked drone strikes during then-President Barack Obama's tenure in a dubious effort to justify what experts say is the Trump administration's illegal boat bombing campaign against alleged drug traffickers, while falsely claiming that Democrats and the media ignored airstrikes ordered by the former president.
US House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was asked during a Tuesday press conference about a so-called "double-tap" airstrike—military parlance for follow-up strikes on survivors and first responders after initial bombings—that killed two men who survived a September 2 attack on a boat in the southern Caribbean Sea.
Although US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has denied it, he reportedly gave a spoken order to “kill everybody” in the boat, which was supposedly interpreted by Adm. Frank M. “Mitch” Bradley as a green light for launching a second strike after the discovery that two of the 11 men aboard the vessel were alive and clinging to its burning wreckage.
Responding to the question concerning the strike's legality, Johnson pointed to upcoming congressional consultations on the matter and said that such attacks are "not an unprecedented thing."
“Secondary strikes are not unusual,” he noted. “It has to happen if a mission is going to be completed.”
“It’s something Congress will look at, and we’ll do that in the regular process and order," Johnson continued, referring to a classified briefing with Bradley and some lawmakers scheduled for Thursday. "I think it’s very important for everybody to reserve judgment and not leap to conclusions until you have all the facts."
“One of the things I was reminded of this morning is that under Barack Obama... I think there were 550 drone strikes on people who were targeted as enemies of the country, and nobody ever questioned it," he said.
RAJU: If defenseless survivors were killed, would that constitute a violation of the laws of war?
MIKE JOHNSON: I'm not going to prejudge any of that. I was pretty busy yesterday. I didn't follow a lot of the news. pic.twitter.com/v38JWhNx0k
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 2, 2025
The lack of attention to Obama's strikes claimed by Johnson is belied by congressional hearings, lawsuits, and copious coverage—and condemnation—of such attacks in media outlets including Common Dreams.
Progressive lawmakers and Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky were among the numerous US officials who criticized Obama-era drone strikes.
Trump administration officials have reportedly cited the Obama administration's legal rationale for bombing Libya to justify the boat strikes to members of Congress.
Other Republican lawmakers and right-wing media figures noted on Tuesday that Obama—who bombed more countries than his predecessor, former President George W. Bush and was called the "drone warrior-in-chief"—ordered strikes that resulted in massacres of civilians at events including funerals and at least one wedding.
At least hundreds of civilians were killed in such strikes, including 16-year-old US citizen Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who according to an Obama administration official was in the wrong place at the wrong time when he was slain in Yemen in 2011. This, after al-Awlaki's father—an accused terrorist who was also American—was assassinated by a drone strike ordered by Obama.
Asked by a reporter about the legality of assassinating US citizens without charge or trial, then-White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs infamously asserted in October 2012 that Abdulrahman al-Awlaki should have had "a far more responsible father."
Buried deep in a New York Times article published earlier that year was the revelation that Obama's secret "kill list" authorized the assassination of US citizens, and that his administration was counting all military-age males in a strike zone as "combatants" regardless of their actual status in an effort to artificially lower the reported number of civilian casualties.
“Turns out I’m really good at killing people,” Obama once boasted, according to the 2013 Mark Halperin and John Heilemann book Double Down. “Didn’t know that was gonna be a strong suit of mine.”
A third member of the al-Awlaki family, 8-year-old Nawar al-Awlaki—also an American citizen—was killed in a US commando raid in Yemen ordered by President Donald Trump in early 2017.
Tens of thousands of civilians were killed by US airstrikes in Afghanistan, Iran, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen during the Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations as part of the decadeslong so-called Global War on Terror, in which more than 900,000 people were slain, according to the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
At least thousands of civilians have been killed or wounded by US bombs and bullets in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen during Trump's first and second terms, during which rules of engagement aimed at protecting noncombatants have been loosened.
At least 83 people have been killed in 21 strikes on alleged drug-running boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean since early September, according to Trump administration figures. Officials in Venezuela and Colombia, as well as relatives of victims, claim that some of them were civilians uninvolved in narcotrafficking.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump DOJ Sides With Roundup Manufacturer Over Cancer Victims in Supreme Court Case
An attorney at Food & Water Watch said the DOJ sent a "clear message... to sick Americans harmed by toxic pesticides: Trump has Bayer’s back, not theirs."
Dec 02, 2025
The Trump administration is pushing for the US Supreme Court to shield the manufacturer of Roundup from thousands of state lawsuits alleging that its widely used herbicide product causes cancer.
On Monday, US Solicitor General D. John Sauer recommended that the high court agree to hear a challenge to a Missouri jury's verdict in 2023 that awarded $1.25 million to a man named John Durnell, who claimed that the product caused him to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Bayer, the agribusiness giant that purchased the manufacturer of Roundup, the agribusiness giant Monsanto, in 2018, immediately challenged the verdict.
In 2015, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, as "probably carcinogenic to humans" based on "limited evidence."
That evidence became less limited in 2019, when a prominent meta-analysis by a team of environmental health researchers found that people exposed to glyphosate at the highest levels had a 41% higher risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma than those who weren't.
There are nearly 4,500 Roundup claims currently pending in federal court, and at least 24 cases have gone to trial since October 2023. They make up just a fraction of the more than 170,000 claims filed.
According to Bloomberg, Bayer has already been forced to pay out more than $10 billion in verdicts and settlements over the product, which has caused a massive drain on the company's stock price.
In what it said was an effort to “manage litigation risk and not because of any safety concerns,” Bayer removed glyphosate-based herbicides from the residential market in 2023, switching to formulas that “rely on alternative active ingredients.”
That didn't stop the lawsuits from coming. Durnell's victory was the first successful case brought against Bayer outside California, the only state that labels the product as carcinogenic. That in Missouri opened the floodgates in other states, and plaintiffs subsequently won sizable payouts in Georgia and Pennsylvania.
But now the Trump administration is trying to help the company skirt further accountability. Sauer, who is tasked with arguing for the government in nearly every Supreme Court case, filed a 24-page brief stating that there is a lack of clarity on whether states have the authority to determine whether Bayer and Monsanto violated the law by failing to warn customers about potential cancer risks from Roundup.
Bayer argues that these cases are preempted by the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), which forbids states from enacting labeling requirements more stringent than those recommended by the federal government.
Sauer agreed with Bayer, stating in the brief that the US Environmental Protection Agency "has repeatedly determined that glyphosate is not likely to be carcinogenic in humans, and the agency has repeatedly approved Roundup labels that did not contain cancer warnings."
In 2016 and again in 2020, the EPA indeed classified glyphosate as "not likely to be carcinogenic to humans" following agency assessments. However, in 2022, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals voided this assessment, finding that the agency applied “inconsistent reasoning” in its review of the science.
Among the justifications for the ruling were that the EPA relied heavily on unpublished, non-peer-reviewed studies submitted to regulators by Monsanto and other companies that manufacture glyphosate. The agency also largely disregarded findings from animal studies included by the IARC, which showed a strong link between glyphosate and cancer.
"The World Health Organization has recognized glyphosate as a probable carcinogen while the EPA continues to twist itself into pretzels to come to the opposite conclusion," Lori Ann Burd, a staff attorney and director of the Center for Biological Diversity's environmental health program, told Common Dreams.
Notably, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. built his national profile campaigning against the dangers of pesticides and railing against regulatory capture by big business.
Kennedy served as an attorney for Dewayne Johnson, the first plaintiff to win damages against Monsanto in 2018, where a jury determined that Roundup had contributed to his cancer.
"If my life were a Superman comic, Monsanto would be my Lex Luthor," Kennedy said in a 2020 Facebook post. "I've seen this company as the enemy of every admirable American value."
During Kennedy's 2024 presidential run, he pledged to "ban the worst agricultural chemicals already banned in other countries."
But after he was sworn in as President Donald Trump's HHS Secretary, he began to sing a different tune. As Investigate Midwest noted, his "Make America Healthy Again" commission's introductory report made no mention of glyphosate.
Meanwhile, he reassured the pesticide industry that it had nothing to worry about: "There’s a million farmers who rely on glyphosate. 100% of corn in this country relies on glyphosate. We are not going to do anything to jeopardize that business model," he said during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing.
The Trump EPA has deregulated toxic chemicals across the board over the past year. It rolled back protections against per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), often referred to as "forever chemicals," in drinking water, which have many documented health risks. It has also declined to ban the widely used insecticide chlorpyrifos, which has been linked to neurodevelopmental disorders in children.
Elizabeth Kucinich, the former director of policy at the Center for Food Safety, described the US Department of Justice's effort to shield Bayer as another "betrayal of MAHA health promises." Her husband, the two-time Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, worked as the campaign manager for RFK Jr.'s 2024 presidential bid.
“This is regulatory capture, not public protection,” she said. “This action shields chemical manufacturers from accountability by elevating a captured federal regulatory process over the lived harm of real people. That is anti-life, and it is exactly what millions of MAHA voters believed they were voting against.”
Food & Water Watch staff attorney Dani Replogle said the DOJ filing "encourages the Supreme Court to slam judiciary doors in the faces of cancer patients across the country."
"No political posturing can undo the clear message this brief sends to sick Americans harmed by toxic pesticides," she continued. "Trump has Bayer’s back, not theirs."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular