Energy

Joe Biden just did the rarest thing in US politics: he stood up to the oil industry (2/7/2024) Bill McKibben in the Guardian

Everything about the relationship between nation states and the fossil fuel industry is perverse, stupid and self-destructive. For the sake of this dirty industry’s profits and dividends – overwhelmingly concentrated among a tiny number of the world’s people – governments commit us to catastrophe. George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 3rd November 2021
Fossil fuels … represent an enormous subsidy, not from a distant place, but from a distant time, the carboniferous era. They make it possible for billions on people to eat. Fossil fuels are the fertilizer of modern agriculture. They pump up groundwater and power tractors. They serve as the feed stocks for pesticides and herbicides. They make nitrogenous fertilizers practical. And they power the vehicles that move crops to kitchens. They sustain us.
Paraphrased from Questioning Collapse, Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire edited by Patricia A. McAnany & Norman Yoffee.

it’s been decades since Exxon’s own scientists concluded that its products would render the Earth uninhabitable by humans. And yet those decades were lost to us, in large part because Exxon lobbied governments and sowed doubt about the dangers of its products and did so with the cooperation of many public officials. When the survival of you and everyone you love is threatened by conspiracies, it’s not unreasonable to start questioning the things you think you know in an attempt to determine whether they, too, are the outcome of another conspiracy. Cory Doctorow
ExxonMobil, unlike Shell or BP, isn’t even pretending to get into green energy in a significant way. Its business model is burning up the earth, and by God, Darren Woods is going to burn it up bigger and better than ever before, to increase ExxonMobil’s profits. The earth be damned. The health of the American people be damned. How ExxonMobil’s plan to Surge its CO2 output is Like Trump’s plan to Deal with the Coronavirus (10/6/2020)
If Republicans had not blocked renewable energy and conservation efforts at every opportunity, the US would not still be tethered to a fossil fuel marketplace where the prices are outside of our control and set by countries hostile to us. Fred Giuffrida Tweet.

The Rising Cost of the Oil Industry’s Slow Death (2/22/2024)

New files shed light on ExxonMobil’s efforts to undermine climate science (9/14/2023)

Texas fracking billionaire brothers fuel rightwing media with millions of dollars (9/5/2023)

Science shows the severe Climate Consequences of new Oil, Gas and Coal Production (8/3/2023)

Fossil fuel firms owe climate reparations of $209bn a year, says study (5/19/2023)

Exxon’s predictions about the climate crisis may have increased its legal peril (1/20/2023)

Leaked: US power companies secretly spending millions to protect profits and fight clean energy (7/27/2022)

Putin’s war shows autocracies and fossil fuels go hand in hand. Here’s how to tackle both (4/11/2022) Bill McKibbon (Guardian)

Rightwing lobby group Alec driving laws to blacklist companies that boycott the oil industry (2/8/2022) Guardian

To end Fossil Fuels, take the Fight directly to the Corporations – That’s how Apartheid Fell (10/12/2021)

Fossil fuel companies paying top law firms millions to ‘dodge responsibility’ (10/9/2021)

2,185 scientists and academics call for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (9/20/2021)

Fact Sheet | Proposals to Reduce Fossil Fuel Subsidies (2021) (7/23/2021)

8 reasons why we need to phase out the fossil fuel industry

Fueling Failure: How Execs at Bankrupt U.S. Oil & Gas Companies Pocketed Nearly $200M In Payouts While Leaving more than 10,000 Workers Jobless and at Least $10B in Cleanup Costs (9/2021)

Right wing government has been in ascendance world-wide for a long time, propelled by fossil fuel States like Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Companies like Exxon.

Should fossil fuels be recognized for the danger that they are, alarms would go off, and massive unrecoverable assets would need to be left in the ground. Even though fossil corporations have long known the danger, to continue to profit they need to put climate science and its warnings in doubt, control media messaging, and suppress democracy, a job for far right wing government and the GOP.

Russia undermined 25 democracies since 2004: Baltic States, EU countries, Georgia, Ukraine, Brexit, successfully influenced US elections even surprising itself in helping Trump to the Presidency. Trump then elevated Rex Tillerson to Secretary of State, weakened NATO, denied assistance to Ukraine, and allowed Exxon to assist Russian arctic drilling. All of which benefited Russia. US domestic pipelines, leasing, drilling, fracking, were freed up too.

OPEC’s recent decision to limit output will likely raise gasoline prices at the pump and heating oil too. People feeling pain in the pocketbook could vote GOP.

The GOP does not acknowledge science warning of impending climate armageddon. CO2 is at record high levels which in deep history caused global warming, loss of polar ice, raised sea levels by many feet, flooded coastal areas. Expect mass migration, loss of food crops, drought, and disasters becoming routine: forest fires, severe storms, and extinctions. People are not nearly alarmed enough. The GOP doesn’t believe in elections any more, since any loss is unacceptable to them. If Republicans win control of the Congress, the US will likely join authoritarian petroleum States, part of a long Republican descent into fascism.

Fossil fuel moguls are, and have been, major contributors and senior members of Republican administration(s). They aim to convince you that climate change is not a concern, censor findings to the contrary, and spread large amounts of misinformation.

But it is clear that nature has laws that we may not break except at risk to our own existence. The physics are not complicated: Add CO2 to the atmosphere and the planet warms. Population pressure accelerates the process. Damage to the environment includes global warming, glacier loss, disappearing arctic ice, ocean acidification, desertification, forest fires, violent storms, rising sea level, dying coral reefs, collapsing fisheries, air pollution, mass extinction.

Deep history from ice cores and geologic formations tells us that CO2 levels are tightly correlated with sea level and atmospheric temperature. Arctic ice melt raises sea levels. At current CO2 levels, most coastal population of the world will be underwater within a generation or two.

James Hansen writes: “Venus had a runaway greenhouse effect...Can we confirm...Yes. “ Carbon in the crust was baked out into the atmosphere, oceans boiled away, temperatures are now around 450 degrees Centigrade.

Future generations are at profound risk for a runaway greenhouse. We can hope that a lawsuit about this is successful, but it's most likely that courts will be no help. It appears our politics is incapable of slowing, let alone stopping, this inexorable threat to human existence.

The forecast is bleak.

Where carbon emissions come from in each state (4/28/2022)

We Need To Stop The Fossil Fuel Industry's PR Machine (1/21/2021)

A Texas city had a bold new climate plan – until a gas company got involved (3/1/2021)

Texas, Land of Wind and Lies (2/18/2021)

No, Wind Farms Aren’t the Main Cause of the Texas Blackouts (2/17/2021)

Tim Garrett, physicist/professor of atmospheric sciences who hypothesised that civilization is effectively a heat engine whose power is expressed in the form of economic growth, admits that we will never decarbonize. (12/6/2020)

Renewables Increasingly Beat Even Cheapest Coal Competitors on Cost (6/2/2020)

Billions in Clean Energy Loans Go Unused as Coronavirus Ravages Economy (4/30/2020)

Coal used to be the cheapest form of energy, but now it is more expensive than gas, wind and solar, which explains why coal plants are closing right and left. Indeed, whole countries, such as Austria, have gone coal-free. Lowest Solar bid in World History for new Abu Dhabi Facility, as expensive Coal, backed by Trump, declines further Juan Cole (04/29/2020)

MIT’s Asegun Henry on “Grand Thermal Challenges” to Save Humanity From Extinction Due to Climate Change (8/16/2020)

U.S. solar industry to lose 62,000 jobs due to Trump tariffs - study (12/3/2019)

Study: U.S. Fossil Fuel Subsidies Exceed Pentagon Spending (5/8/2019)

A Future Without Fossil Fuels? Bill McKibben (NYRB 4/4/2019)

E.P.A. to Roll Back Regulations on Methane, a Potent Greenhouse Gas (8/29/2019)

Trump’s pursuit of ‘American energy dominance’ threatens the entire planet. (12/9/2018)

Game Over: Even Oil Giant BP is betting on Electric Car Boom (06/30/2018)

Earth, Wind and Liars (Paul Krugman) 4/16/2018

The Economics of Dirty Old Men (1/25/2018)

How Dangerous is Trump’s Move to Open Offshore Drilling? (1/5/2018)

As Trump Moves to Expand Offshore Drilling, He Proposes Shrinking Safety Protections. What Could Go Wrong? (1/5/2018)

The Politically Impossible Has Suddenly Become Possible (1/13/2018)

How and Why Big Oil Conquered the World (10/6/2017)

Why the Scariest Nuclear Threat May be Coming From Inside the White House (7/26/2017)

Building a Trump-free, fossil-free future (4/27/2017)

Fossil Fuel Industries Pumped Millions Into Trump's Inauguration (4/19/2017)

Trump orders revival of Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines (1/24/2017)

Brace for the oil, food and financial crash of 2018 (1/5/2017)

Moving to renewable energy would create millions of jobs, study finds (11/11/2015)

Civilization Collapse 3.0 (5/17/2015)

Energy is primary. It underlies everything that we do and everything that happens around us. ... This may seem self-evident, but it is surprising how small a role, if any the generalized concept of energy plays in the conceptual thinking of economists and social scientists. Scale, The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies by Geoffrey West.
Fossil fuels ... represent an enormous subsidy, not from a distant place, but from a distant time, the carboniferous era. They make it possible for 6.5 billion people to eat. Fossil fuels provide the fertilizer for modern agriculture. They pump up groundwater and power tractors. They serve as the feedstocks for pesticides and herbicides. They make nitrogeous fertilizers practical. And they power the vehicles that move crops to kitchens. They sustain us. But they also make us unsustainable. J.R. McNeill in Questioning Collapse, Human resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the aftermath of Empire.
"Most of the oil that can be reached through drilling from traditional rigs is depleted. In response, the fossil fuel industry has developed new technologies to go after dirtier, less efficient forms of energy. These technologies bring with them a dramatically heightened cost fo ecosystems. They accelerate the warming of the planet and contaminate vital water sources. Deepwater Arctic drilling, tar sand extraction, hydraulic fracturing (or hydrofracking), and drilling horizontally, given the cost of extraction and the effects on the environment, amount to ecological suicide." Chris Hedges, Wages of Rebellion pg 208
"one hundred and nine countries have enacted some form of policy regarding renewable power, and 118 countries have set targets for renewable energy. In contrast, the United States has not adopted any consistent and stable set of policies at the national level to foster the use of renewable energy" Kelly Sims Gallagher
... if you scan the planet for conflict, what you’ll find from Syria and Iraq to the South China Sea are a series of energy wars -- fossil-fuel conflicts to be exact. At present, despite some hopeful signs, this crazed planet of ours is still a ravenous beast that only fossil fuels can sate. No question that conflicts and wars are terrible things. Just consider the million new refugees just generated by the disintegration of Iraq in a blaze of warfare and sectarian killings. But oil wars add a grim twist to the mix, because when they’re settled, however miserably or bloodily, the winners take to the oil rigs and the refineries and pump out yet more of the stuff that puts carbon dioxide and methane, both greenhouse gases, into the atmosphere and, as in the Middle East today, creates the basis for yet more conflict. Michael Klare TomDispatch (7/8/2014)
The American track record of using the U.S. military to protect oil markets is "lousy" and often makes the problems worse, In fact, using the military is unnecessary because the market compensates for disruptions. America needs to stop using the military for this purpose, which would Americans safer and ensure a reliable oil supply. Eugene Gholz, an associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame.
After members of the FERC were appointed with Mr. Lay's personal review and approval, Enron went on to bilk the electric ratepayers of California and other states without the inconvenience of federal regulators trying to protect citizens from the company's criminal behavior. From Al Gore's Assault on Reason.
An anti-science real estate mogul is about to be our next president. Exxon’s CEO (and Putin’s BFF) is slated to run the State Department. The man named to lead the Department of…oh yes, Energy – wants to dismantle it. And the incoming head of the EPA has sued it so often he doesn’t even recognize the agency’s name without “DEFENDANT” stamped in front of it. Price of Oil.org (12/20/2016)

Dumb and Dumber: Coal-Loving Wyoming Legislators Are Pushing a Bill to Outlaw Wind and Solar (1/15/2017)

Trump and the Republican Party are doing Big Oil's bidding (9/14/2016)

Donald Trump Promises to ‘Cancel’ Paris Climate Deal (5/26/2016)

Oil and gas industry has pumped millions into Republican campaigns (3/1/2016)

US blocks India’s solar power plan (2/26/2016)

Fracking Goes on Trial for Human Rights Violations (11/14/2015)

Exxon's climate lie: 'No corporation has ever done anything this big or bad' Bill McKibben

Denmark's wind power just exceeded their energy demand (7/10/2015)

sCIENTISTS uRGE cANADA TO sTOP tAR sANDS eXPANSION (6/10/2015)

Fossil fuel subsidies are $5.3 TRILLION ($10 million/minute), more than all healthcare (5/19/2015)

How correct were Colin Campbell and Jean Laherrère when they published “The End of Cheap Oil” in 1998? (2/26/2015)

Why GOP Arguments for the Keystone XL Pipeline Are a Sick Joke(1/12/2015)

Grain.org

Which fossil fuels must remain in the ground to limit global warming?(1/7/2015)

Between China and Keystone XL (11/20/2014)

Paul Krugman’s Errors and Omissions (9/22/2014)

Lobbyists advice to oil and gas: play "ugly" if you want to keep drilling.(10/30/2014)

After the Lights Go Out...What Then ? (7/1/2014)

The Devastating Social and Environmental Impacts of The Keystone TransCanada Tar Sands Pipeline (6/19/2014)

Let them eat Carbon (5/27/2014)

World Bank Energy Lending Still Veering in Wrong Direction (4/11/2014)

Koch Brothers Stand to Make $100 Billion from Keystone XL (10/23/2013)

How Big Oil Uses the Republican Party (5/10/2013)

Peak Oil as Seen through the Eyes of Arab Oil Producers (4/11/2013)

Protest the fossil fuel interests blocking obama (1/6/2013)

A Thermonuclear Energy Bomb in Christmas Wrapping: Michael Klare (11/27/2012)

Neither Party Wants to Offend the Fossil Fuel Industry: James Hanson (11/1/2012)

Romney's energy policy a liability...among republicans (8/27/2012)

Senate Republicans Defeat Proposal to End Subsidies For Oil Companies (3/29/12)

The Energy Landscape of 2041 (6/25/2011) Michael Klare.

Republican Nonsense Is Sending Billions in Green Energy Investments to China, Europe Instead of US (8/17/2010)

Guy McPherson


Fossil fuels created deep pocketed oligarchs, like the Koch brothers, who lobby to assure that nothing is done about the climate threat.

It is clear now that we need to leave fossil fuel in the ground and mount a massive program of energy from renewables. We are killing nature and destroying the habitability of the planet. See environment.

Another example of Republicans inability to govern:

Here's the forecast.

The US Needs a New Energy Policy...Now (7/16/2010)

Is Net Energy Peaking ? Kurt Cobb (7/5/2010)

Demand for oil will hit record levels and threaten recovery, says energy agency (4/14/2010)

After Peak Oil, Are We Headed For Social Collapse ? (4/16/2010)

Mike Ruppert (video)

A Petrocollapse Timeline (November 2009)

Price Of Oil

Clean Energy Common Sense

WeCanSolveIt.org

Energy Reality (Jim Kunstler's Blog)

no agrofuels

Hubbert's Peak

Paul Robert's Blog

Al Gore's Challenge (video of the speech is here.)

Republicans Have Handed Democrats a Winning Election Issue (8/20/2008)

Peak Oil Crash Course

Wilderness Society

The Reality Blog

ENERGETIC LIMITS TO GROWTH

Naomi Klein on Fox News

Picken's Plan

Blame Bush for High Oil Prices

Global warming, urban sprawl, traffic deaths, huge trade deficits, war in Iraq, huge military budgets, world ill will, and an epidemic of obesity can all be attributed to profligate use of oil. Since we are at a peak in oil production (and consumption), policy makers need to start taking a hard look at the consequences of oil dependence and come up with an energy policy that conserves. global_warming.htm

We are reaching peak oil even while demand from the rest of the world is rapidly increasing, so the US lifestyle is going to change. Michael Klare wrote this "Beyond the Age of Petroleum" for the Nation.

Reality Bites Again

PriceOfOil.org

The real scoop on biofuels.

FTW Exclusive Interview Colin Campbell on Oil

Connecticut Clean Energy Options.

Steep decline in oil production brings risk of war and unrest, says new study --Output peaked in 2006 and will fall 7% a year --Decline in gas, coal and uranium also predicted 22 Oct 2007 World oil production has already peaked and will fall by half as soon as 2030, according to a report which also warns that extreme shortages of fossil fuels will lead to wars and social breakdown. The German-based Energy Watch Group will release its study in London today saying that global oil production peaked in 2006 - much earlier than most experts had expected.

India to produce an air powered car.

Video

Wiebo's War

The End Of Suburbia: Watch Free Documentary On-Line.

GasLand 2010 movie :that showed home owners in the Marcellus shale region of Pennsylvania who had so much methane coming out of their faucets they were able to ignite a jet of flame.

Bibliography

BOTTLED LIGHTNING, Superbatteries, Electric Cars, and the New Lithium Economy By Seth Fletcher

Blowout, Corrupted Democracy, Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most Destructive Industry on Earth: Rachel Maddow

Merchants of Doubt: Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway

A BRIGHT FUTURE, How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow By Joshua S. Goldstein and Staffan A. Qvist

The Race For What's Left: Michael Klare

Dark Money: Jane Mayer

The Party's Over, Oil War and the Fate of Industrial Societies: Richard Heinberg

Too Much Magic, Wishful thinking, technology, and the fate of the nation: James Howard Kunstler

Poison Tea, How Big Oil and Big Tobacco Invented the Tea Party and Captured the GOP: Jeff Nesbit

Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: Michael Klare

Crossing the Rubicon: Michael Ruppert

The Petroleum Triangle: Steve A. Yetiv

The Long Emergency: James Howard Kunstler

The end of Oil: Paul Roberts. http://the-end-of-oil.com/

IPS visiting scholar Antonia Juhasz documents the virtually unparalleled global power and political influence of the U.S. oil industry and exposes the truth behind $150-a-barrel oil, $4.50-a-gallon gasoline, and the highest profits in corporate history. Following her blockbuster book Bush Agenda - Invading the World One Economy at a Time, Juhasz has produced an equally powerful expose of how Big Oil gets what it wants - through money, influence, and lies. The Tyranny of Oil, published by William Morrow (an imprint of HarperCollins), offers both a new take on problems and a new set of solutions as Juhasz puts forward an immediate call to action - a formula for reining in the industry, its governmental lobbying power, environmental destruction, and violence while reducing global dependence on oil.