Intempéries

World’s fossil-fuel producers on track to nearly quadruple output from newly approved projects by decade’s end, report finds

At a time when we need to shift our collective climate action up a gear, the influence of the fossil fuels lobby is succeeding in slowing down ambition both at COP27 and in the EU.

New path to transition away from fossil fuels marred by lack of finance and loopholes COP28 in Dubai sends an important signal on the end of fossil fuels but leaves more questions than answers on how to ensure a fair and funded transition that is based on science and equity

Oil cartel warns ‘pressure may reach a tipping point’ and that ‘politically motivated campaigns put our prosperity’ at risk

Exclusive: UAE’s Sultan Al Jaber says phase-out of coal, oil and gas would take world ‘back into caves’

After yet another summer of increased extreme weather events caused by the burning of fossil fuels, some of the world’s richest oil and gas companies are investing in artificial intelligence (AI) to speed up their extraction of new oil and gas. 

But the decline in oil, gas and coal will not be steep enough to limit global warming to 1.5C

Forecast downturn still ‘nowhere near steep enough’ to limit temperature rise to 1.5C, says watchdog

Bernie Sanders represents Vermont in the U.S. Senate.

More than a century of research shows that burning fossil fuels warms the climate – that’s exactly why granting new North Sea oil and gas licenses is a bad idea.

A new climate case was filed this week. Multnomah County, the Oregon county that includes Portland, filed suit against several oil majors for their role in exacerbating the climate change that led to the county's "heat dome" in June 2021, which killed 69 people. But the case doesn't just place

Major fossil fuel entities and trade associations including Koch Industries, the American Petroleum Institute, and the Western States Petroleum Association, as well as consulting behemoth McKinsey & Company, were slapped with the latest climate liability lawsuit today with the filing of a complaint in the Oregon Circuit Court in Multnomah County, Oregon.

Research allays fears that rapid scaling back of production would hit people’s savings and pensions hard

World Bank says subsidies costing as much as $23m a minute must be repurposed to fight climate crisis...

Hundreds of students and graduates vow not to work for ‘climate wreckers that insure those responsible for the climate crisis’

Pie-in-the-sky fantasies of carbon capture and geoengineering are a way for decision-makers to delay taking real action

Governments are ignoring calls to stop fossil fuel expansion—despite there being little time left to avoid the worst effects of global warming.

The sharp rise in fossil fuel subsidies is just one example of why activists say climate treaties are so often meaningless.

Claimants ClientEarth say the oil company’s plan puts the company at financial risk as the world transitions to clean energy, The directors of oil major Shell are being personally sued over their climate strategy, which the claimants say is inadequate to meet climate targets and puts the company at risk as the world switches to clean energy.

The fallout when the industry fails to act is still smaller than the rewards for pumping out more pollution

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres made clear Monday that securing a livable planet depends on stopping the "bottomless greed of the fossil fuel industry and its enablers."

It beggars belief that the UN thought it a good idea to allow an authoritarian petro-state to host the already compromised summit, says Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of climate hazards

Group says forcing polluters to store carbon dioxide underground is needed to help world reach net zero

New research shows the company’s scientists were as “skillful” as independent experts in predicting how the burning of fossil fuels would warm the planet and bring about climate change.

Shane White from www.worldenergydata.org has put together three very useful charts breaking down coal, oil and gas extraction by nation. 

The sediments preserved in these cliffs in Devon were laid down in the early Triassic period, just after the greatest mass extinction in the history of multicellular life that brought the Permian period to an end 252m years ago. Around 90% of species died, and fish and four-footed animals were more or less exterminated between 30 degrees north of the equator and 40 degrees south.

Semafor launched last week with the goal of “reinventing the news story.” The news story needs reinventing, they say, because people can no longer tell the difference between unbiased fact and opinion. According to the Observer, Semafor has already raised more than $25 million, the majority of which is coming from eight corporate sponsors who want to help the news outlet address distrust in media. One of those sponsors appears to be Chevron, the second biggest climate-polluting company in the world.

Fossil fuel companies that want a free pass to keep pumping oil and gas are making wildly unrealistic promises about 'capturing' their emissions at sites of pollution, or removing them from the atmosphere at later date. But the science says drastic emission cuts are needed now if we are to stay within 1.5ºC warming. Thus ‘net zero’ policies are in reality 'not zero', and effectively guarantee that we’ll overshoot 1.5ºC, triggering catastrophic climate impacts which we have no reason to believe can be reversed by speculative and unproven ‘carbon removal’ technologies.

A commercial plane photoshopped with the tail of a shark, hashtags that misleadingly evoke sustainability, tokenistic use of minorities to distract and to signal virtue: a Harvard report published Tuesday highlights rampant greenwashing by leading companies on social media.

The European Union is embarking on an experiment that will expand its climate policies to imports for the first time. It’s called a carbon border adjustment, and it aims to level the playing field for the EU’s domestic producers by taxing energy-intensive imports like steel and cement that are high in greenhouse gas emissions but aren’t already covered by climate policies in their home countries.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and almost 200 other health associations have made an unprecedented call for a global fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty. A call to action published on Wednesday, urges governments to agree a legally binding plan to phase out fossil fuel exploration and production, similar to the framework convention on tobacco, which was negotiated under the WHO’s auspices in 2003. “The modern addiction to fossil fuels is not just an act of environmental vandalism. From the health perspective, it is an act of self-sabotage,” said the WHO president, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Global public subsidies for fossil fuels almost doubled to $700bn in 2021, analysis has shown, representing a “roadblock” to tackling the climate crisis. Despite the huge profits of fossil fuel companies, the subsidies soared as governments sought to shield citizens from surging energy prices as the global economy rebounded from the Covid-19 pandemic.

US and UK financial institutions have been among the leading investors in Russian “carbon bomb” fossil fuel projects, according to a new database of holdings from recent years.

Pennsylvania children living near fracking sites at birth are two to three times more likely to be diagnosed with leukemia during early childhood than those who did not live near such facilities, a new study has found.

Thirty years ago, a bold plan was cooked up to spread doubt and persuade the public that climate change was not a problem. The little-known meeting - between some of America's biggest industrial players and a PR genius - forged a devastatingly successful strategy that endured for years, and the consequences of which are all around us.

Nuclear energy is too expensive to be considered an option to help Australia reduce its carbon emissions, at least in the next decade, according to the latest report by the CSIRO.

António Guterres compares climate inaction to tobacco firms dismissing links between smoking and cancer

Strong climate action could wipe $756bn from individuals’ pension funds and other investments in rich countries

Coal plants will be reactivated if Russian President Vladimir Putin threatens a gas cutoff, a government official said. That would trigger the second of a three-stage Germany’s gas emergency plan.

Exclusive: Nearly half existing facilities will need to close prematurely to limit heating to 1.5C, scientists say

The world’s leading energy economist has warned against investing in large new oil and gas developments, which would have little impact on the current energy crisis and soaring fuel prices but spell devastation to the planet.

When people talk about ways to slow climate change, they often mention trees, and for good reason. Forests take up a large amount of the planet-warming carbon dioxide that people put into the atmosphere when they burn fossil fuels. But will trees keep up that pace as global temperatures rise? With companies increasingly investing in forests as offsets, saying it cancels out their continuing greenhouse gas emissions, that’s a multibillion-dollar question.

Oil and gas majors are planning scores of vast projects that threaten to shatter the 1.5C climate goal. If governments do not act, these firms will continue to cash in as the world burns

Countries should move from coal to renewable energy without shifting to gas as a “transition” fuel to save money, as high gas prices and market volatility have made the fossil fuel an expensive option, analysis has found. Natural gas has long been touted as a “transition” fuel for economies dependent on coal for their power needs, as it has lower carbon dioxide emissions than coal but requires similar centralised infrastructure, and gas-fired power stations take only a couple of years to build. Earlier this year, before Russia invaded Ukraine, the European Commission angered green campaigners by including gas as a “bridge” to clean energy in its guidebook for green investment.

If not slowed, climate change over the next few centuries could lead to marine losses unlike anything Earth has seen in 252 million years, says a new study.

Russia has nearly doubled its revenues from selling fossil fuels to the EU during the two months of war in Ukraine, benefiting from soaring prices even as volumes have been reduced.

Strong measures by Europe could quickly deprive Russia of oil and gas income worth billions, experts say

That same day, oil giant ExxonMobil made an announcement of its own: a $10 billion final investment decision for an oil and gas development project in the South American nation of Guyana that the company said would allow it to add a quarter of a million barrels of oil a day to its production in 2025.

Our new research suggests that temporary nature-based carbon storage can help achieve our climate goals. However, the most tangible effect — a decrease in peak warming — would only occur if we also eliminate fossil fuel emissions.

To this day, the demand for metals has kept increasing. The energy transition necessary to meet climate objectives will add to that demand during the upcoming decades, for low-carbon energy technologies require larger metal quantities than their fossil-fuel based counterparts. This frequently raises concerns over the actual capacity of geological stocks to meet demand at scale, which we investigate in the present analysis.

Oil companies love to tell the world about the super cool technologies that have that will allow us to keep burning fossil fuels without cooking the climate. But those technologies are largely bullshit.

The Government needs to make immediate hard choices such as rationing fossil fuels, stopping forest and peat harvesting, cutting the national herd and restricting car traffic into cities if it wants to meet its own targets on emissions reductions, climate change experts have told an Oireachtas committee.

The fossil fuel production gap — the difference between global fossil fuel production projected by governments’ plans (red line) and those consistent with 1.5°C- and 2°C-warming pathways (blue and green lines), as expressed in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions released when the extracted fuels are burned — remains large.

If someone has planted a time bomb in your home, you are entitled to dismantle it. The same applies to our planet

After two weeks of talks in Glasgow, diplomats from almost 200 countries have agreed to ramp up their carbon-cutting commitments, phase out some fossil fuels and increase aid to poor countries on the front lines of climate change.

8th November, London/ Glasgow - At least 503 fossil fuel lobbyists, affiliated with some of the world's biggest polluting oil and gas giants, have been granted access to COP26, flooding the Glasgow conference with corporate influence. 

Humanity injects an almost incomprehensible 42 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) into the atmosphere every year. The majority of this comes from burning fossil fuels, but a substantial portion, about 16%, arises from how we use the land. Most of these land-use emissions are caused by deforestation, particularly in the tropics.

How Big Polluters are using “net zero” to block meaningful action at COP26

Fresh emissions targets from Saudi Arabia and Australia – two of the world’s largest fossil-fuel producers – are due to arrive just in time for global climate talks in Glasgow. These would commit the two countries to reducing domestic emissions to net zero by around mid-century – though both are expected to continue exporting fossil fuels for decades to come.

ome problems are so big, you can't really see them. Climate change is the perfect example. The basics are simple: the climate is heating up due to fossil fuel use. But the nitty gritty is so vast and complicated that our understanding of it is always evolving. Evolving so rapidly, in fact, that it's basically impossible for humans to keep up.

The fossil fuel industry benefits from subsidies of $11m every minute, according to analysis by the International Monetary Fund.

Une initiative internationale pour l'abandon des combustibles fossiles et le soutien à une transition juste

The research found 90% of coal and 60% of oil and gas reserves could not be extracted if there was to be even a 50% chance of keeping global heating below 1.5C, the temperature beyond which the worst climate impacts hit.

The industry has been pushing through policies devoting billions of dollars to the technology, and much more is likely to come with legislation pending before Congress.

Dangerous climate change has arrived and at this point it’s simply a matter of how bad we’re willing to let it get. But you don’t need to give yourself a guilt trip about it. Save that for the fossil fuel executives.

The sixth assessment report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is no ordinary publication. Its 4,000 pages were written by hundreds of independent scientists from 66 countries.

As the world battles historic droughts, landscape-altering wildfires and deadly floods, a landmark report from global scientists says the window is rapidly closing to cut our reliance on fossil fuels and avoid catastrophic changes that would transform life as we know it. The state-of-the-science report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the world has rapidly warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels, and is now careening toward 1.5 degrees — a critical threshold that world leaders agreed warming should remain below to avoid worsening impacts.

It seems abundantly clear that something any man, woman or child with a reasonable understanding of the scientific method will agree on is that we need to stop burning fossil fuels if we are to avoid the breakdown of ecosystems and runaway global warming.

The effects of ‘weird weather’ were already being felt in the 1960s, but scientists linking fossil fuels with climate change were dismissed as prophets of doom

Fossil fuel companies lied for decades about climate change, and humanity is paying the price. Shouldn’t those lies be central to the public narrative?

After a century of wielding extraordinary economic and political power, America’s petroleum giants face a reckoning for driving the greatest existential threat of our lifetimes. An unprecedented wave of lawsuits, filed by cities and states across the US, aim to hold the oil and gas industry to account for the environmental devastation caused by fossil fuels – and covering up what they knew along the way.

Maine just became the first state to require the divestment of its state pension system from the fossil fuel industry by 2026. Though several other states and cities have taken measures towards divestment in recent years, Maine is the first state to require divestment by law.

A new report, published on 14 March, 2021 in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ journal Ambio, points out that humanity is hurtling towards destruction unless we have the collective wisdom to change course quickly.

This report analyzes fossil fuel financing from the world’s 60 largest commercial and investment banks — aggregating their leading roles in lending and underwriting of debt and equity issuances — and finds that these banks poured a total of $3.8 trillion into fossil fuels from 2016–2020.

Failing, heavily subsidized private oil companies enjoy the profits of oil extraction while the rest of us pay in tax dollars, human rights abuses, and an unlivable climate. Oil and gas companies are a political structure: they possess private, authoritarian dominion over the pace and volume of oil and gas production, and thus of important determinants of global emissions. These emissions and their consequences do not respect any sort of public/private distinction, nor borders, nor the rights to clean air or clean water.

The world’s coal producers are currently planning as many as 432 new mine projects with 2.28 billion tonnes of annual output capacity, research published on Thursday showed, putting targets for slowing global climate change at risk. China, Australia, India and Russia account for more than three quarters of the new projects,

The nations that make up the G7 have pumped billions of dollars more into fossil fuels than they have into clean energy since the COVID-19 pandemic, despite their promises of a green recovery. A new analysis reveals that the countries attending committed $189 billion to support oil, coal, and gas between January 2020 and March 2021. In comparison, the same countries spent $147 billion on clean forms of energy. The support for fossil fuels from seven of the world’s richest nations included measures to remove or downgrade environmental regulations as well as direct funding of oil, gas and coal.

Governments must close gap between net zero rhetoric and reality, says International Energy Agency head

Fossil fuels, cattle and rotting waste produce greenhouse gas responsible for 30% of global heating

Lucrative pay and share options have created an incentive for oil company executives to resist climate action, according to a study that casts doubt on recent net-zero commitments by BP and Shell. Compensation packages for CEOs, often in excess of $10m (£7.2m), are linked to continued extraction of fossil fuels, exploration of new fields and the promotion of strong market demand through advertising, lobbying and government subsidies, the report says.