March, 25 2022, 01:04pm EDT
Biden Sides with Big Oil Barons and Wall Street in EU Gas Deal
Exporting U.S. LNG Bad for Consumers and Climate
WASHINGTON
President Biden today announced a short-sighted deal to supply the European Union with U.S. liquified methane gas exports, potentially locking in decades of climate pollution and failing to alleviate the crisis in Ukraine.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, in a closed door meeting at the White House with other oil and gas barons, lobbied for expanded methane gas production, export capacity, and import capacity in Europe as part of a new fossil fuel 'Marshall Plan.' Under Dimon, the bank has been Russia's number one fossil fuel financier, providing over $3.5 billion in loans and underwriting to the Russian fossil fuel sector.
Kate DeAngelis, international finance program manager at Friends of the Earth, said this:
President Biden is going to regret siding with Big Oil and Wall Street over communities and the climate. Betting on liquified methane gas is akin to driving on a bridge to nowhere. The window is rapidly closing to end our addiction to climate-changing fossil fuel resources, yet President Biden is propping up the industry that caused this mess. We need a Marshall Plan for renewable energy, not more of the same.
LNG exports from the U.S. compete with domestic use of gas, significantly increasing prices paid for by businesses and families, of which the hardest hit are low income and BIPOC communities. Although the U.S. recently became the largest exporter of LNG, there are 16 more export terminals that have been approved but not yet constructed. President Biden's announcement recklessly opens the door to finance these facilities potentially from public sources like the U.S. Export-Import Bank and other export credit agencies.
Background:
- Lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions from LNG development, liquefaction, and export would make the proposal among the most carbon intensive development deals in the world in recent history. In addition to methane releases, massive energy is required to liquefy methane gas for export, rivaling only coal in its emissions intensity over its lifecycle.
- LNG export terminals typically take up to at least 3 to 4 years to complete and sometimes longer, meaning there would be no short term solution to the current shortages European consumers are facing. Additionally, European regasification import terminals are already near or at capacity. Renewable energy systems, particularly distributed ones, are far more dispatchable in the short run and new renewable energy sources are already reducing gas demand in Europe and, as a result, providing consumers greater price predictability. In fact, a new study found that renewables can supplant the majority of Europe's current Russian gas imports by 2025.
- Gas exports are a significant contributor to increased gas heating bills facing U.S. households, with bills forecasted to be 30% higher this winter (and 54% higher for households using propane and 43% more for heating oil).
Friends of the Earth fights for a more healthy and just world. Together we speak truth to power and expose those who endanger the health of people and the planet for corporate profit. We organize to build long-term political power and campaign to change the rules of our economic and political systems that create injustice and destroy nature.
(202) 783-7400LATEST NEWS
'It Had to Be Done': Luigi Mangione Manifesto Revealed
"A reminder: the U.S. has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy," the 26-year-old accused of assassinating a health insurance CEO reportedly wrote.
Dec 10, 2024
This is a breaking story… Please check back for possible updates...
A day after Luigi Mangione was arrested and charged as the alleged killer of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson, independent journalist Ken Klippenstien on Tuesday published what he said was the 26-year-old's highly reported on manifesto.
The existence of the handwritten document found on Mangione when he was taken into custody in Pennsylvania on Monday was confirmed by the New York Police Department, and major media outlets have quoted from it, but none had released it in full.
"My queries to The New York Times, CNN, and ABC to explain their rationale for withholding the manifesto, while gladly quoting from it selectively, have not been answered," Klippenstein explained on his Substack.
According to Klippenstein—who previously published dossiers on Vice President-elect JD Vance and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the nominee for U.S. secretary of state—Mangione's manifesto reads:
To the Feds, I'll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.
Common Dreams has not independently verified its authenticity.
Klippenstein
said on social media that the manifesto he published is "the real one, not the fake one circulating online."
NBC News deputy technology editor Ben Goggin noted that language shared by Klippenstein "matches what NBC has reported here as real."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Pesticide Scorecard Exposes Which Food Retailers Are Failing Bees
"Under the incoming Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency will likely do even less to mitigate the damage of pesticides, putting even more onus on companies to address the escalating risks," said one climate advocate.
Dec 10, 2024
A report released Tuesday from the environmental group Friends of the Earth finds that the U.S. food retail sector's use of pesticides on just four crops—almonds, apples, soy, and corn—could result in over $200 billion worth of financial, climate, and biodiversity risks for the industry between 2024 and 2050. Pollinators, including bees, form a crucial link between pesticide use and these risks.
The report was released in tandem with the group's annual retailer scorecard, which ranks the largest U.S. grocery stores on the "steps they are taking to address the use of toxic pesticides in their supply chains and to support the expansion of organic agriculture and other ecological solutions."
While it highlights some industry leadership on this issue, the authors of the scorecard say that, on the whole, retailer action to curb the impact of pesticides falls short. The following retailers received an "F" grade from Friends of the Earth: Wakefern, Publix, Dollar General, 7-Eleven Inc., Hy-Vee, Walgreens, H-E-B, BJ's, Amazon, and Wegmans.
Although its owner, Amazon, received an F grade, the grocery store Whole Foods was the only retailer that was given an A grade.
A handful of the companies, including Whole Foods, have made time bound pledges to address pesticide use by requiring fresh produce suppliers to adopt ecological farming methods and to confirm their practices through third-party verifications. Eight companies have created policies that encourage suppliers to reduce the use of "pesticides of concern—including neonicotinoids, organophosphates, and glyphosate—and to shift to least-toxic approaches," according to the scorecard.
Friends of the Earth's report on risks associated with pesticide use explains why scrutiny around retailers' use of pesticides is warranted, and why retailers themselves ought to be motivated to reduce these risks.
For one thing, "under the incoming Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency will likely do even less to mitigate the damage of pesticides, putting even more onus on companies to address the escalating risks," according to Kendra Klein, deputy director of science at Friends of the Earth.
"Food retailers must urgently reduce their use of pesticides and advance organic and other ecologically regenerative approaches. They have the opportunity to lead in the fight against biodiversity collapse and climate change, helping to ensure Americans have continued access to healthy food," she said in a statement.
An estimated one-third of world crops rely on pollination, and a little less than three-fourths of fruit and vegetable crops require pollination from insects and other creatures, according to the report. Pollinators are often studied as an indicator for biodiversity risk and general environmental health—and experts cite pesticides as among the reasons that pollinators are in decline. Research also shows that pesticides poise a threat to healthy soil ecosystems.
According to the report, an estimated one-third of world crops rely on pollination, and a little less than three-fourths of fruit and vegetable crops require pollination from insects and other creatures. Pollinators are often studied as an indicator for biodiversity risk and general environmental health—and experts cite pesticides as among the reasons that pollinators are in decline, per the report. Research also shows that pesticides poise a threat to healthy soil ecosystems, the report states.
The report states that 89% of the almond crop area, 72% of apples, 100% of corn, and 40% of soy receives more than one "lethal dose" of an insecticide that is considered toxic to bees. This "quantification of the risk of pesticides to pollinators" for the four crops "provides the values to conduct the financial analysis in this study."
The document details how the food retail industry's use of pesticides creates direct costs for the industry—for example, the money spent purchasing and applying the pesticides, the CO2 emissions associated with using or producing pesticides, and the impact on crop yields, as well as indirect costs.
When it comes to climate damage costs, the report estimates that U.S. food retailer sales for products that include soy, corn, apples, and almonds will suffer $4.5 billion over the period of 2024-50. Biodiversity risk stemming from using pollinator-harming pesticides on those four crops is valued much higher, at $34.3 billion, over the same time period.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Arctic Tundra Has Turned From 'Carbon Sink to Carbon Source' in Dangerous Flip: NOAA
"This is yet one more sign, predicted by scientists, of the consequences of inadequately reducing fossil fuel pollution," said one scientist.
Dec 10, 2024
Permafrost in the Arctic has stored carbon dioxide for millennia, but the annual Arctic Report Card released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a concerning shift linked to planetary heating and a rising number of wildfires in the icy region: The tundra is now emitting more carbon than it is storing.
The report card revealed that over the last year, the tundra's temperature rose to its second-highest level on record, causing the frozen soil to melt.
The melting of the permafrost activates microbes in the soil which decompose the trapped carbon, causing it to be released into the atmosphere as planet-heating carbon dioxide and methane.
The release of fossil fuels from the permafrost is also being caused by increased Arctic wildfires, which have emitted an average of 207 million tons of carbon per year since 2003.
"Our observations now show that the Arctic tundra, which is experiencing warming and increased wildfire, is now emitting more carbon than it stores, which will worsen climate change impacts," said Rick Spinrad, administrator of NOAA. "This is yet one more sign, predicted by scientists, of the consequences of inadequately reducing fossil fuel pollution."
Sue Natali, a scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts and one of 97 international scientists who contributed to the Arctic Report Card, told NPR that 1.5 trillion tons of carbon are still being stored in the tundra—suggesting that the continued warming of the permafrost could make it a huge source of planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions.
Along with the "Arctic tundra transformation from carbon sink to carbon source," NOAA reported declines in caribou herds and increasing winter precipitation.
The report card showed that the autumn of 2023 and summer of 2024 saw the second- and third-warmest temperatures on record across the Arctic, and a heatwave in August 2024 set an all-time record for daily temperatures in several communities in northern Alaska and Canada.
The last nine years have been the nine warmest on record in the Arctic region.
"Many of the Arctic's vital signs that we track are either setting or flirting with record-high or record-low values nearly every year," said Gerald (J.J.) Frost, a senior scientist with Alaska Biological Research, Inc. and a veteran Arctic Report Card author. "This is an indication that recent extreme years are the result of long-term, persistent changes, and not the result of variability in the climate system."
Brenda Ekwurzel, a climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, emphasized that the continuous release of fossil fuel emissions from oil and gas extraction and other pollution has caused the Arctic to warm at a faster rate than the Earth as a whole over the past 11 years.
"These combined changes are contributing to worsening wildfires and thawing permafrost to an extent so historic that it caused the Arctic to be a net carbon source after millennia serving as a net carbon storage region," said Ekwurzel. "If this becomes a consistent trend, it will further increase climate change globally."
The Arctic Report Card was released weeks before President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office. Trump has pledged to slash climate regulations introduced by the Biden administration and to increase oil and gas production. He has mused that sea-level rise will create "more oceanfront property" and has called the climate crisis a "hoax," while his nominee for energy secretary, Chris Wright, the CEO of the fracking company Liberty Energy, has claimed that climate warming is good for the planet.
"These sobering impacts in the Arctic are one more manifestation of how policymakers in the United States and around the world are continuing to prioritize the profits of fossil fuel polluters over the well-being of people and the planet and putting the goals of the Paris climate agreement in peril," said Ekwurzel. "All countries, but especially wealthy, high-emitting nations, need to drastically reduce heat-trapping emissions at a rapid pace in accord with the latest science and aid in efforts of climate-vulnerable communities to prepare for what's to come and help lower-resourced countries working to decrease emissions too."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular