Yearly Archives: 2023

Al Gore to Fossil Fuel Industry: ‘Get Out of the Way’

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Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Image of Al Gore by JD Lasica Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Image of Al Gore by JD Lasica Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

At an event coinciding with the U.N. General Assembly in New York, Gore said he used to believe the sector sincerely wanted to be part of the solution to the climate crisis, but now he thinks it’s clear they are not.

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, a long-time climate activist, had harsh words for the fossil fuel industry on Thursday.

“Many of the largest companies have engaged in massive fraud,” he said at The New York Times’ Climate Forward event, as the Independent reported. “For some decades now, they’ve followed the playbook of the tobacco industry, using these very sophisticated, lavishly financed strategies for deceiving people.”

Gore, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, criticized the industry for using their influence to lobby against effective climate action.

“The climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis.”

“The fossil fuel companies, given their record today, are far more effective at capturing politicians than they are at capturing emissions,” he said.

Now, he warned, the sector had set its sights on the United Nations COP28 climate change conference in the United Arab Emirates with the appointment of the UAE’s state oil company CEO Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber to lead the talks.

“That’s just, like, taking the disguise off,” Gore said, as The New York Times reported. “They’ve been trying to capture this process for a long time.”

Gore’s remarks reflect a recent shift in the tone of his climate advocacy. In a TED Talk filmed in July and released in August, Gore made many of the same arguments about fossil fuel lobbying and Al Jaber’s appointment.

“The climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis,” he said. “The solutions are going to come from a discussion and collaboration about phasing out fossil fuels.”

After listening to the talk, journalist Emily Atkin wrote in her newsletter Heated:

With this new talk, it’s become clear that the man who made An Inconvenient Truth famous is no longer primarily focused on convincing people that the climate crisis is real or dangerous. He’s turned a corner, and is now focused on convincing people that if they truly care about solving the climate crisis, they must turn their ire toward the fossil fuel industry—and boot them from the negotiating table before it’s too late.

Gore acknowledged the shift in his thinking himself on Thursday.

“I was one of many who felt for a long time that the fossil fuel companies, or at least many of them, were sincere in saying that they wanted to be a meaningful part of bringing solutions to this crisis,” Gore said, as The Independent reported. “But I think that it’s now clear they are not. Fossil fuel industry speaks with forked tongue.”

While he acknowledged that it was not fair to expect the industry to solve a crisis its business model encouraged it to perpetuate, “it’s more than fair to ask them to get out of the way, and stop blocking the efforts of everybody else to solve this crisis,” he said. “I think it’s time to call them out.”

Gore’s remarks came as world leaders and climate activists and experts gathered in New York for the U.N. General Assembly and Secretary-General António Guterres’ Climate Ambition Summit, held the day before.

He is also not the only prominent mainstream climate voice to have turned on the fossil fuel sector.

Former Executive Secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change Christiana Figueres, who helped negotiate the Paris agreement, said that she did not think the industry should be invited to COP28.

“If they are going to be there only to be obstructors, and only to put spanners into the system, they should not be there,” she said at a conference Thursday organized by Covering Climate Now, as The Guardian reported.

Her remarks echoed an opinion piece she wrote for Al Jazeera in July, in which she said she was wrong to believe that the sector could be part of the solution.

“My patience ran out, and I say this with sadness,” she said Thursday.

Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

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Europe’s olive oil supply running out after drought – and the odd hailstorm

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/28/europes-local-olive-oil-supply-runs-almost-dry-after-summer-of-extreme-weather

Heatwaves around Mediterranean have damaged harvests and forced producers to import from South America

Olive grove
Olive oil groves by Birding In Spain, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Europe has almost run out of local olive oil supplies and is set for more shortages, after extreme weather damaged harvests for a second year.

The world’s largest producer has said it is having to import supplies from South America to keep up with demand.

“Today it is almost physically impossible to buy olive oil. It is sold out,” Walter Zanre, the chief executive of the UK arm of Filippo Berio, said.

Olive trees have been cultivated around the Mediterranean for thousands of years, with Spain alone producing half of the world’s supply of olive oil, but wildfires and soaring summer temperatures mean the future of this ancient industry is looking increasingly uncertain.

Global production is expected to fall to 2.4m tonnes according to the International Olive Council, less than last year’s harvest and well short of global demand of about 3m tonnes, after drought and heatwaves of more than 40 degrees hit production in Spain.

Extreme weather in other important growing regions including Greece, Italy and Portugal as well as Turkey and Morocco has added to the crisis.

…

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/sep/28/europes-local-olive-oil-supply-runs-almost-dry-after-summer-of-extreme-weather

Continue ReadingEurope’s olive oil supply running out after drought – and the odd hailstorm

‘Morally Obscene’: UK Approves Massive Undeveloped Oil and Gas Field in North Sea

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Campaigners take part in a Stop Rosebank emergency protest outside the U.K. Government building in Edinburgh, after the controversial Equinor Rosebank North Sea oil field was given the go-ahead Wednesday, September 27, 2023. (Photo: Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images)
Campaigners take part in a Stop Rosebank emergency protest outside the U.K. Government building in Edinburgh, after the controversial Equinor Rosebank North Sea oil field was given the go-ahead Wednesday, September 27, 2023. (Photo: Jane Barlow/PA Images via Getty Images)

Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

“The disgraceful decision to give Rosebank the green light shows the extent of the U.K. government’s climate denial,” one activist said.

Regulators in the United Kingdom on Wednesday greenlit the Rosebank oilfield in the North Sea, which campaigners warn contains enough oil and gas to match the yearly emissions of 28 low-income countries.

The U.K. government said it welcomed the approval, in a statement that comes one week after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced he was delaying some elements of the country’s net-zero plan.

“By approving Rosebank, Rishi Sunak has confirmed he couldn’t care less about climate change,” climate lawyer and executive director of the advocacy group Uplift Tessa Khan said in a statement. “As we’ve heard repeatedly, our world can no longer sustain new oil and gas drilling. And when we’re witnessing scorching temperatures, wildfires, devastating flooding, and heatwaves in our seas, it could not be clearer that this is a decision by the prime minister to add more fuel to the fire.”

Rosebank, which is located off the northwest coast of the Shetland Islands, is the largest currently undeveloped oil field in the U.K., CNBCreported. Equinor, Norway’s state-owned oil company, has an 80% share in the project, with British company Ithaca Energy holding the remaining 20%.

Equinor said it expected development to begin in 2026-2027 and for the field to produce more than 300 million barrels of oil overall, while Friends of the Earth Scotland said it contained 500 million barrels.

The approval comes despite the fact that the International Energy Agency concluded in 2021 that no new fossil fuel projects should be launched if world leaders wanted to limit global heating to 1.5°C. It also comes on the heels of a government report finding that a record number of people in England died of heat-related causes in 2022.

“This decision is nothing but carte blanche to fossil fuel companies to ruin the climate, punish bill payers, and siphon off obscene profits.”

Green Member of Parliament Caroline Lucas called the approval “the greatest act of environmental vandalism in my lifetime” in a statement posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“This is morally obscene,” she added in a second post. “It won’t improve energy security or lower bills—but it will shatter our climate commitments and demolish global leadership. Govt is complicit in this climate crime—as is Labour unless they pledge to do all possible to revoke it.”

Sunak, a conservative, promised to approve hundreds of oil and gas drilling licenses in the North Sea in July, arguing it was necessary for energy security. The opposition Labour Party says it will prioritize renewable energy if it takes power, but will respect any licenses or approvals already in place, according to Reuters.

“The disgraceful decision to give Rosebank the green light shows the extent of the U.K. government’s climate denial,” Friends of the Earth Scotland’s oil and gas campaigner Freya Aitchison said in a statement. “Fossil fuels are driving both climate breakdown and the cost of living crisis yet the U.K. Government is slamming its foot down on the accelerator.”

Aitchison also called on the Scottish government specifically to oppose the project.

“Delivering a fair and fast transition away from fossil fuels is one of the defining challenges of Humza Yousaf’s term as First Minister,” Aitchison said. “This must start with unequivocally condemning Rosebank and opposing the U.K. government’s decision to go ahead with a project that deliberately prioritizes the interests of Equinor while bringing little or no benefit to Scottish people.”

Campaigners also questioned who would benefit from the project. While the government argued that it would inject cash into the economy and create almost 1,600 jobs, activists pointed out that Equinor made £62 billion in pre-tax profits last year and would get more than £3.75 billion in tax breaks for its work on Rosebank, meaning the U.K. would ultimately lose £750 million in tax money from the field’s development.

“The ugly truth is that Sunak is pandering to vested interests, demonstrating the stranglehold the fossil fuel lobby has on government decision-making. And it’s bill payers and the climate that will suffer because of it,” Greenpeace U.K. climate campaigner Philip Evans said in a statement. “Why else would he make such a reckless decision?

“This decision is nothing but carte blanche to fossil fuel companies to ruin the climate, punish bill payers, and siphon off obscene profits,” Evans added.

Opponents of the project have promised to take legal action to stop it.

“There are strong grounds to believe that the way this government has come to this decision is unlawful,” Khan said in a statement. “We shouldn’t have to fight this government for cheap, clean energy, and a liveable climate, but we will.”

Original article by OLIVIA ROSANE republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

Continue Reading‘Morally Obscene’: UK Approves Massive Undeveloped Oil and Gas Field in North Sea

Starmer breaks another promise: elite schools to retain ‘charity’ status and tax breaks

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Original article republished from the Skwawkbox

One more for the endless list of betrayals to please the obscenely rich

Yet another of Keith Starmer's pledges discarded. Image thanks to the Skwawkbox
Yet another of Keith Starmer’s pledges discarded. Image thanks to the Skwawkbox

It’s hard to imagine there were any promises left that Keir Starmer hadn’t already broken, but today he has added another to the list: the pledge to end the tax-perk ‘charitable’ status of elite private schools.

Starmer and his Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves have announced that the schools will now keep their charity status – allowing them and their donors/fee-payers more tax breaks – though as a sop Starmer says he will still charge them VAT if he becomes PM. As if anyone can believe that either.

Every day, Starmer and his toxic cronies show themselves more and more the creatures of the rich – and to be unhesitating in betraying and lying to ordinary people to please billionaires and corporations..

Original article republished from the Skwawkbox

Continue ReadingStarmer breaks another promise: elite schools to retain ‘charity’ status and tax breaks

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I will be suggesting that the appropriate response to UK government’s progressing with the Rosebank oil field is to refuse, block and frustrate it using all means and to campaign against any and all political parties – clearly including the Labour party – that support it. I suggest that it is correct to regard Rishi Sunak’s Conservative party to be indistinguishable to the fossil fuel industry. The Labour party should be regarded similarly. We have to make progress to net zero, that’s clearly not done by pursuing more fossil fuels.

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