Biden Expected to Move Ahead on a Major Oil Project in Alaska – Lisa Friedman – The New York Times

By Lisa Friedman

March 10, 2023

5 MIN READ

“WASHINGTON — In one of the most consequential climate decisions of his administration, President Biden is planning to greenlight an enormous $8 billion oil drilling project in the North Slope of Alaska, according to a person familiar with the decision.

Alaska lawmakers and oil executives have put intense pressure on the White House to approve the project, citing President Biden’s own calls for the industry to increase production amid volatile gas prices stemming from Russia’s war against Ukraine.

But the proposal to drill for oil has also galvanized young voters and climate activists, many of whom helped elect Mr. Biden and who would view the decision as a betrayal of the president’s promise that he would pivot the nation away from fossil fuels.

The approval of the largest proposed oil project in the country would mark a turning point in the administration’s approach to fossil fuel development. The courts and Congress have forced Mr. Biden to back away from his campaign pledge of “no more drilling on federal lands, period” and sign off on some limited oil and gas leases. The Willow project would be one of the few oil developments that Mr. Biden has approved freely, without a court or a congressional mandate.”

David Lindsay Jr.

Hamden, CT     NYT comment:

This is a complex story, well presented. Thank you Lisa Friedman et al. It sounds like there might be a slow, compromise solution. I just read the extraordinary piece in the NYT in Saturday’s paper, “In Tower’s Basement, an Idea that Lock Pollution Away Forever,” by Frad Plumer, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/03/10/climate/buildings-carbon-dioxide-emissions-climate.html?smid=url-share which talks about sequestering CO2 from gas boilers in NYC and turning it into liquid CO2 and then putting it into cement blocks as calcium carbonate. So the Biden administration should create a new hurdle for this oil project, it has to be able to captured the C02 from the oil well project, and from the customers who might burn the oil. I’m not saying full no to it, but it can’t just add to our C02 problem, which is causing global warming, ocean acidification, and other serious life-threatening problems. I’m afraid it makes sense to leave this oil in the ground for now, since these carbon capture issues are not up to speed yet, and increases worldwide in the cost of oil only makes sustainable energy projects mored attractive to invest in. I would like to see a report on all the reasons the Biden Administration is not outright killing this project, what are their identified benefits. It will probably help Biden’s reelection, but does he need it.

David blogs at InconvenientNews.net, and is about to publish a book on climate change and the sixth extinction.

The New Soldiers in Propane’s Fight Against Climate Action: Television Stars – The New York Times

By Hiroko Tabuchi

Jan. 11, 2023Updated 9:31 a.m. ET

6 MIN READ

“For D.I.Y. enthusiasts, Matt Blashaw is a familiar face, judging bathroom remodels or planning surprise home makeovers on popular cable television shows.

Mr. Blashaw also has an unusually strong opinion about how Americans should heat their homes: by burning propane, or liquid petroleum gas.

“When I think of winter, I think of being inside. I think of cooking with the family, of being by a roaring fire — and with propane, that is all possible,” he said on a segment of the CBS affiliate WCIA, calling in from his bright kitchen. “That’s why we call it an energy source for everyone.”

Less well known is the fact that Mr. Blashaw is paid by a fossil fuel industry group that has been running a furtive campaign against government efforts to move heating away from oil and gas toward electricity made from wind, solar and other cleaner sources.”

Republican Drive to Tilt Courts Against Climate Action Reaches a Crucial Moment – Coral Davenport – The New York Times

By Coral Davenport

Published June 19, 2022Updated June 28, 2022

11 MIN READ

Supreme Court Coverage

“On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion after almost 50 years.

WASHINGTON — Within days, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court is expected to hand down a decision that could severely limit the federal government’s authority to reduce carbon dioxide from power plants — pollution that is dangerously heating the planet.

But it’s only a start.

The case, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, is the product of a coordinated, multiyear strategy by Republican attorneys general, conservative legal activists and their funders, several with ties to the oil and coal industries, to use the judicial system to rewrite environmental law, weakening the executive branch’s ability to tackle global warming.”

David Lindsay:  The West Virginia coalition of Republicans won 6-3 at the Supreme Court.

However, Wikipedia adds some filler since then.

“Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 in August following the West Virginia decision. Among other actions, the bill was written towards several of the points raised in the majority decision and possibly overturns it. The law’s language addresses the major questions doctrine by explicitly granting EPA new authorities to regulate greenhouse gases. The law clarified that carbon dioxide from the combustion of fossil fuels is indeed one of several greenhouse gases to be treated as pollutants covered by the 1970 Clean Air Act, codifying Massachusetts. Some legal experts believe this would allow the EPA to set “outside the fence” regulations on existing power plants as to promote clean energy.^[37][38] Other analysts say the law does not extend the EPA’s authority to alternative sources; Vermont Law School professor Patrick Parenteau said the Act does not include specific language towards generation shifting, leaving it as a potential major questions doctrine concern.^{[39]   “}

The Texas Public Policy Foundation’s National Crusade Against Climate Action – The New York Times

By David Gelles

Gelles is writing a series of articles about groups working to promote fossil fuels and block climate action.

Dec. 4, 2022

“When a lawsuit was filed to block the nation’s first major offshore wind farm off the Massachusetts coast, it appeared to be a straightforward clash between those who earn their living from the sea and others who would install turbines and underwater cables that could interfere with the harvesting of squid, fluke and other fish.

The fishing companies challenging federal permits for the Vineyard Wind project were from the Bay State as well as Rhode Island and New York, and a video made by the opponents featured a bearded fisherman with a distinct New England accent.

But the financial muscle behind the fight originated thousands of miles from the Atlantic Ocean, in dusty oil country. The group bankrolling the lawsuit filed last year was the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an Austin-based nonprofit organization backed by oil and gas companies and Republican donors.

With influence campaigns, legal action and model legislation, the group is promoting fossil fuels and trying to stall the American economy’s transition toward renewable energy. It is upfront about its opposition to Vineyard Wind and other renewable energy projects, making no apologies for its advocacy work.

At the same time, the Texas Public Policy Foundation has spread misinformation about climate science. With YouTube videos, regular appearances on Fox and Friends, and social media campaigns, the group’s executives have sought to convince lawmakers and the public that a transition away from oil, gas and coal would harm Americans.

They have frequently seized on current events to promote dubious narratives, pinning high gasoline prices on President Biden’s climate policies (economists say that’s not the driver) or claiming the 2021 winter blackout in Texas was the result of unreliable wind energy (it wasn’t).

Even after Democrats in Congress passed the biggest climate law in United States history this summer, the organization is undaunted, and its continued efforts highlight the myriad forces working to keep oil, gas and coal companies in business.

In Arizona, the Texas Public Policy Foundation campaigned to keep open one of the biggest coal-fired power plants in the West. In Colorado, it called for looser restrictions on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. And in Texas, the group crafted the first so-called “energy boycott” law to punish financial institutions that want to scale back their investments in fossil fuel projects, legislation adopted by four other states.

At the same time, the Texas Public Policy Foundation has spread misinformation about climate science. With YouTube videos, regular appearances on Fox and Friends, and social media campaigns, the group’s executives have sought to convince lawmakers and the public that a transition away from oil, gas and coal would harm Americans.

They have frequently seized on current events to promote dubious narratives, pinning high gasoline prices on President Biden’s climate policies (economists say that’s not the driver) or claiming the 2021 winter blackout in Texas was the result of unreliable wind energy (it wasn’t).” . . . .

Bret Stephens | Climate Change Is Real. Markets, Not Governments, Offer the Cure. – The New York Times

By Bret Stephens
Photographs by Damon WinterMr. Stephens is an Opinion columnist. Mr. Winter is a staff photographer on assignment in Opinion.

“ILULISSAT, GREENLAND — On a clear day in August, a helicopter set me and a few companions down on the northern end of the Jakobshavn Glacier in Western Greenland, about 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle. The ground under our feet seemed almost lunar: gray silt and dust, loose rocks and boulders, and, at the edge of the glacier’s face, mud so deep it nearly ate my boots. To the south, the calving front of the glacier known in Greenlandic as Sermeq Kujalleq periodically deposited enormous slabs of ice, some more than 100 feet high, into the open water.

I asked the pilot to give me a sense of how much the glacier had retreated since he had been flying the route. He pointed to a distant rocky island in the middle of the fjord.

“That’s where the glacier was in 2007,” he said.

Over the course of the 20th century, the Jakobshavn Glacier retreated about 10 to 15 kilometers. Over just the next eight years, it retreated about the same amount, according to the oceanographer Josh Willis of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Later the front advanced a little — a function of complex dynamics partly involving ocean currents — before resuming its retreat.

For anyone who has entertained doubts about the warming of the planet, a trip to Greenland serves as a bracing corrective. Flying low over the vast ice sheet that covers most of the island, I immediately noticed large ponds of cerulean meltwater and dozens of fast-flowing streams rushing through gullies of white ice and sometimes disappearing into vertical ice caverns thousands of feet deep. Such lakes, scientists report, have become far more common over the last two decades, occurring earlier in the year at higher elevations. Last year, it even rained at the highest point of the ice sheet, some 500 miles north of the Arctic Circle. That’s a first since record keeping began in the 1980s.”

David Lindsay:  Hallelujah. Thank you Bret, for this careful and honest essay.  One climate crisis denier starts to understand.  Here is a comment I especially liked, of many I endorsed.

Former American engineering professor

EuropeOct. 28

I have been waiting for this column. I liked it. Thank you for stating everything so carefully. Mostly I agree with what you have said, but as FunkyIrishman points out, we would not be in nearly as much of a bind if the earth had the same population it did in the 1950’s. “Grow and multiply until you fill the earth” doesn’t mean standing room only. The earth is “full” when population starts to stress the system in potentially dangerous or irreversible ways. I know conservatives hate regulation and I can relate, but consider the horrible photochemical smog that plagued Los Angeles in 1970. We had the ability to make it go away all along, but it did not start to go away until a regulation limited vehicle emissions. It is naïve to assume companies will consider the wellbeing of society. I am not saying companies are bad. Companies are certainly indispensable, but they exist to make a profit and nothing more. They are incredibly good at that. Once a clean-air level playing field was established in California, they made profits while improving air quality. Having said that, regulation needs to have the lightest touch possible to get the job done, and it needs to be straightforward. About having a lot of time to deal with it – the idea worries me because policy makers are so good at kicking the can down the road. I think you were a little unfair to climate scientists. They have tried to explain about the uncertainties, but the public have a hard time with that concept.

3 Replies 265 Recommended

David Lindsay: Most of the top comments were hyper critical, and they scored great points, without recognizing the strengths of Stephen’s piece. He overstates the case for letting markets solve the problem, and yet keeps mentioning regulations that were successful in guiding markets to sanity. It is as if, he hasn’t digested all that he has just learned. I reread the piece and marked most of the good or excellent and bad or terrible points, and the count came out, 42 good or excellent points, 17 bad or terrible points, so the score or grade was 42/59= .71 or 71%. Many of the comments discuss the 17 terrible points, without acknowledging all the many good points in the piece, which is typical of the carelessness of many commenters in this space.

I’m rereading the second half of the Fritjof Capra book, “The Hidden Connections, A Science for Sustainable Living,” which I recommend to Bret Stephens, for an introduction to the new economics of sustainability, which is not based on GDP, but bringing humans into balance with nature, and a healthy environment and ecosystems, in an economy that recycle everything and doesn’t pollute.

David Lindsay Jr  is the author of the Tay Son Rebellion about 18th century Vietnam, and blogs at InconvenientNews.Net. 

 

 

 

I

Ibrahim Buriro | My Elders in Pakistan Predicted Calamity. Now It’s Here. – The New York Times

By Ibrahim Buriro

Mr. Buriro is an organizer for the Awami Workers Party and a master’s student in development studies. He lives in Karachi, Pakistan.

KARACHI, Pakistan — On Aug. 24, I received a frantic call from my mother. She told me that Sabu Buriro, our village on the shore of Lake Hamal in northwest Sindh Province, was underwater after weeks of heavy rains. Just two months earlier, extreme heat had dried the lake. Now, after weeks of monsoon rains, the lake was so full that the dike protecting us from it was about to burst.

After 10 hours of travel from Karachi, where I am a student, I arrived in a village full of panic-stricken relatives and neighbors. A few army trucks came to evacuate some of the women and children while the rest of us did what we could to salvage our dried grains, our livestock and our homes. After the army trucks left, no more government help appeared. I called comrades from the city, who came with vans; for three frantic days we did what we could to help before the dike broke and floodwaters consumed the village.

My immediate family is among the millions of Pakistanis displaced by this year’s disastrous floods, which were primarily caused by record monsoon rains, made worse by global warming. But the magnitude of this disaster was made larger by Pakistan’s exploitation of nature in the name of “progress.” My country needs to abandon its excessively industrial approach to water infrastructure, lest our ecological and economic situation becomes even more tenuous.

Opinion | Brazil’s Bolsonaro Is Preparing for a Revolution – The New York Times

By Miguel Lago

Mr. Lago teaches at Columbia University and writes often about Brazil’s politics and society.

“RIO DE JANEIRO — It’s election season in Brazil, and the usual buzz of activity fills the air. The press is eagerly following the campaigns, running profiles of candidates and speculating about future coalitions. Supporters of the candidate in the lead, the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, are heatedly debating who the next cabinet ministers will be. And all involved are crisscrossing the country for rallies, in an energetic effort to get out the vote.

Yet Jair Bolsonaro, the country’s far-right president, stands apart. While his challengers have spent months looking forward to the election, he has sought to preemptively discredit it. He has questioned the role of the Supreme Court and cast doubt, volubly and often, on the electoral process. He speaks as if the election is an encumbrance, an irritation. He says he will not accept any result that is not a victory.

To some, this looks like the groundwork for a coup. In this view, Mr. Bolsonaro intends to refuse any election result that does not please him and, with the help of the military, install himself as president permanently. The reading is half right: Mr. Bolsonaro doesn’t intend to leave office, regardless of the election results. But it’s not a coup, with its need for elite consensus and eschewal of mass mobilization, he’s after. It’s a revolution.”

Mexico Sees Its , Not Renewables – The New York Times

By Oscar Lopez

Aug. 17, 2022, 5:00 a.m. ET

Leer en español

“MEXICO CITY — On a recent scorching afternoon in his home state of Tabasco, the president of Mexico celebrated his government’s latest triumph: a new oil refinery.

Though not yet operational, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador hailed the refinery as a centerpiece in his grand campaign to secure Mexico’s energy independence.

“We ignored the sirens’ song, the voices that predicted, in good faith, perhaps, the end of the oil age and the massive arrival of electric cars and renewable energies,” he told the cheering crowd.”

David Lindsay Jr.

Hamden, CT | NYT comment:

If the US can get its own house in order, it will be able to put pressure on Mexico to get on the clean energy band wagon, with carbon tax tariffs on dirty goods, goods made with a large carbon footprint. We are all in a pickle. It is not clear at all that we can slow our carbon footprint fast enough to stop cascading events from dozens of existing feedback loops, that can, if allowed to grow, become unstoppable.

David blogs at InconvenientNews.net

How Republicans Are ‘Weaponizing’ Public Office Against Climate Action – The New York Times

By David Gelles

Gelles reviewed more than 10,000 pages of documents and emails while reporting for this article.

Aug. 5, 2022Updated 10:58 a.m. ET

“Nearly two dozen Republican state treasurers around the country are working to thwart climate action on state and federal levels, fighting regulations that would make clear the economic risks posed by a warming world, lobbying against climate-minded nominees to key federal posts and using the tax dollars they control to punish companies that want to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Over the past year, treasurers in nearly half the United States have been coordinating tactics and talking points, meeting in private and cheering each other in public as part of a well-funded campaign to protect the fossil fuel companies that bolster their local economies.

Last week, Riley Moore, the treasurer of West Virginia, announced that several major banks — including Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Wells Fargo — would be barred from government contracts with his state because they are reducing their investments in coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel.”

David Lindsay Jr.

Hamden, CT | NYT Comment:

My partner Kathleen Schomaker and I think that the insurance companies should be all over this. What exactly should they do? We have no idea. What could the insurance industry do to protect itself from anti-science, climate crisis deniers? It is time for all the corporations of America to divest themselves from Republicans who deny science and the climate crisis. It has not escaped our notice that the oil gas and coal companies, which say they are into the green transition in their annual reports, are playing hard ball under the table.

David blogs at InconvenientNews.net

Paul Krugman | Another Step Toward Climate Apocalypse – The New York Times

By Paul Krugman    Opinion Columnist

“We’re having a heat wave, a tropical heat wave. Also a temperate heat wave and an Arctic heat wave, with temperatures reaching the high 80s in northern Norway. The megadrought in the Western United States has reduced Lake Mead to a small fraction of its former size, and it now threatens to become a “dead pool” that can no longer supply water to major cities. Climate change is already doing immense damage, and it’s probably only a matter of time before we experience huge catastrophes that take thousands of lives.

And the Republican majority on the Supreme Court just voted to limit the Biden administration’s ability to do anything about it.

It says something about the state of U.S. politics that a number of environmental experts I follow were actually relieved by the ruling, which was less sweeping than they feared and still left the administration with some possible paths for climate action. I guess, given where we are, objectively bad decisions must be graded on a curve.

And for what it’s worth, I have a suspicion that at least some of the Republican justices understood the enormity of what they were doing and tried to do as little as possible while maintaining their party fealty.

For party fealty is, of course, what this is all about. Anyone who believes that the recent series of blockbuster court rulings reflects any consistent legal theory is being willfully naïve: Clearly, the way this court interprets the law is almost entirely determined by what serves Republican interests. If states want to ban abortion, well, that’s their prerogative. If New York has a law restricting the concealed carrying of firearms, well, that’s unconstitutional.”