fossil fuel subsidies

Young Voters Tell Kamala Harris to ‘Fight for Our Future’

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

Vice President Kamala Harris arrives for an NCAA championship celebration on the South Lawn of the White House on July 22, 2024 in Washington, D.C.
 (Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

“This is your chance to energize young people and our communities to vote, mount one of the greatest political comebacks in decades, and deliver a resounding defeat to the far-right agenda of Trump and Vance.”

Four youth-led groups on Thursday urged Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, to “fight for our future” by pursuing a policy agenda the coalition unveiled in a March letter to U.S. President Joe Biden.

It’s been less than a week since Biden left the race and endorsed Harris, who is expected to face former Republican Donald Trump and his running mate, U.S. Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), in the November election. Since then, she’s racked up endorsements from Democratic members of Congress and progressive groups focused on issues including climate, labor, and reproductive rights.

March for Our Lives, which was launched after the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, honored Harris with the group’s first-ever endorsement on Wednesday, calling her “the right person to stand up for us and fight for the country we deserve.”

“To defeat Trump, you must rebuild support and enthusiasm among young voters.”

The gun violence prevention organization is part of the youth-led coalition behind the new letter, which also includes the climate-focused Sunrise Movement; Gen-Z for Change, which advocates on a range of issues; and the national immigrant network United We Dream Action.

“You have an urgent and important task. To defeat Trump, you must rebuild support and enthusiasm among young voters,” the coalition told Harris on Thursday, noting that she sought the Democratic nomination during the last cycle. “You should build on your 2020 campaign platform where you put forward a strong vision to make the economy work for everyday people and ensure a livable future for us all.”

The groups urged Harris to support the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, and the Reverse Mass Incarceration Act. They pushed her to expand pathways to citizenship, keep families together, end fossil fuel subsidies, and create good, union jobs. They also called on her to prioritize gun violence prevention and investments in public health solutions and green, affordable housing.

“Democrats are at a critical crossroads with young people,” the coalition wrote to Harris on Thursday. “Polls showed Biden and Trump neck-and-neck among young voters.”

ANew York Times/Siena College poll conducted July 22-24 shows Trump leading Harris 48% to 47% among likely voters and 48% to 46% among registered voters—differences that fall within the margin of error.

Forbes noted Thursday that “Democrats are far more enthusiastic about Harris than they were Biden, the Times/Siena survey found, with nearly 80% of voters who lean Democrat saying they would like Harris to be the nominee, compared to 48% of Democrats who said the same about Biden three weeks ago.”

The outlet also pointed to two other polls conducted by Morning Consult and Reuters/Ipsos since Biden dropped out, which both show Harris with a narrow lead over Trump.

“You have an opportunity to win the youth vote by turning the page and differentiating yourself from Biden policies that are deeply unpopular with us, such as approving new oil and gas projects, denying people their right to seek refuge and asylum, and funding the Israeli government’s killing of civilians in Gaza,” the youth coalition highlighted Thursday. “You must speak to the economic pain young people are facing from crushing student debt and skyrocketing housing and food prices.”

Looking beyond November, the groups told Harris—who could be the first Black woman and person of Asian descent elected to the country’s highest office—that “you could be a historic president. Not just because of who you are, but what you can accomplish.”

“Young people are energized and ready to organize against fascism and for the future we deserve,” they concluded. “This is your chance to energize young people and our communities to vote, mount one of the greatest political comebacks in decades, and deliver a resounding defeat to the far-right agenda of Trump and Vance.”

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

Continue ReadingYoung Voters Tell Kamala Harris to ‘Fight for Our Future’

Climate Emergency Causes Extreme Wildfires to Double in Frequency: Study

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

A firefighter walks toward flames as the Highland Fire burns in Aguana, California, on October 31, 2023. 
(Photo: David Swanson/AFP via Getty Images)

“Climate change is not something off in the future,” said one scientist. “It’s happening before our very eyes.”

New findings about the rising frequency of extreme wildfires have “the fingerprints of climate change” all over them, according to an Australian scientist who led a study published on Monday.

Calum Cunningham, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Tasmania in Australia, told The Washington Post that he was driven to examine current trends in the frequency of wildfires after climate deniers suggested that because the global area being burned in blazes is declining, the idea of a growing wildfire crisis is being overblown by concerned scientists.

While the area destroyed by wildfires is indeed on the decline, analyses that include all fires—the majority of which are small and cause relatively little damage—obscured how the most extreme and destructive wildfires are rapidly growing more frequent.

Cunningham and his team analyzed data from National Aeronautics and Space Administration satellites, collecting four images of wildfires around the world per day over 21 years. They used the images to identify the 0.01% most extreme wildfires—those that release the most smoke and greenhouse gas emissions due to their size and uncontrollable nature.

Out of 30 million fires across the world over two decades, the researchers identified the 2,913 most extreme fire events and found that the frequency and intensity of such wildfires has more than doubled since 2003.

“Climate change is making fire weather more extreme and more frequent in a lot of the world.”

The problem is rapidly getting worse, the team found: The six years with the most extreme wildfires had all occurred since 2017.

Trends were particularly troubling in particular regions, like temperate conifer forests in the western United States and the Mediterranean, where the number of extreme fires rose by more than 10 times in 20 years.

In boreal forests in places like northern Europe and Canada, the frequency of the most intense and hard-to-control blazes increased by seven times.

“It’s absolutely in keeping with what climate change is doing to fire weather around the world,” Cunningham told the Post. “Climate change is making fire weather more extreme and more frequent in a lot of the world.”

The “fire weather” that’s driven the increase includes hotter and drier conditions, with temperatures staying high even overnight when they ordinarily would have have dropped in previous decades, giving firefighters a chance to make headway in putting out blazes.

“Rarely did we have 100,000-acre fires 20 years ago,” veteran firefighter Bobbie Scopa told the Post. “But now, it’s not uncommon.”

The researchers pointed to a “scary” feedback loop created as extreme wildfires create carbon emissions—leading to more planetary heating and even more fires.

“Climate change is not something off in the future,” Cunningham told the Post. “It’s happening before our very eyes. This is the manifestation of the reshaping of the climate we are doing.”

The study was published in Nature Ecology & Evolution days after wildfires scorched more than 14,000 acres in Southern California and more than 24,000 acres in New Mexico, where two people were killed. Last year, climate scientists were stunned by an unprecedented wildfire season in relatively damp Eastern Canada, where wildfires were made twice as likely by the climate emergency according to the World Weather Attribution.

Climate scientist and author Bill McGuire called the findings “terrifying, of course, but just not a surprise,” considering governments in the countries that produce the most fossil fuels are continuing to support and subsidize energy sources that heat the planet.

“This is certifiably insane,” McGuire said.

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

Continue ReadingClimate Emergency Causes Extreme Wildfires to Double in Frequency: Study

Stop Rosebank address Equinor CEO

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It’s not displaying properly for some reason but well worth trying to watch Stop Rosebank appearing at the Equinor AGM.

Watch Lauren’s powerful intervention

Rishi Sunak on stopping Rosebank says that any chancellor can stop his huge 91% subsidy to build Rosebank, that Keir Starmer is as bad as him for sucking up to Murdoch and other plutocrats and that we (the plebs) need to get organised to elect MPs that will stop Rosebank.
Rishi Sunak on stopping Rosebank says that any chancellor can stop his huge 91% subsidy to build Rosebank, that Keir Starmer is as bad as him for sucking up to Murdoch and other plutocrats and that we (the plebs) need to get organised to elect MPs that will stop Rosebank.
Continue ReadingStop Rosebank address Equinor CEO

Many links

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In ‘Grave Breach’ of International Law, Israel Orders More Evacuations in Rafah

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A Palestinian who died as a result of Israeli attacks is brought to Al Aqsa Martyr’s Hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza on May 12, 2024.
 (Photo: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)

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Just Stop Oil activists demonstrate in Parliament Square, Westminster, central London, to demand the government immediately halt all new oil, gas and coal projects in Britain, October 30, 2023
Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil's You May Find Yourself... art auction. Featuring Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch.
Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil’s You May Find Yourself… art auction. Featuring Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch.

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Auctions for the proposed sites are expected to occur before the end of 2024. Credit: ShutterDesigner/Shutterstock.com.
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Jacob Rees-Mogg gets schooled by green energy boss after fossil fuel subsidies clash

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Rees-Mogg claimed this was “nonsense” and that no fossil fuel subsidies were handed out. He argued that they were tax breaks not subsidies and that the two were “completely different”, before cutting off the interview telling Vince to “do your homework”. 

The energy boss did, and hit back with a video in which he explains how tax breaks are subsidies, as laid out in a piece of Brexit legislation passed when Rees-Mogg himself was Brexit Minister.

Vince refers to a piece of Brexit legislation, the Subsidy Control Act 2022, which replaced EU laws with new British legislation which he said lays out that tax breaks are in fact counted as subsidies. 

In the video Vince said: “It begs the question, Mr Mogg, were you not paying attention when you were Brexit Minister passing pieces of legislation, did you not know that it was EU rules that say that tax breaks are subsidies and UK rules as well, both inside and outside the EU? Have you not done your homework?”

The New Economics Foundation has estimated that oil and gas extractors could receive up to £18.5bn in tax relief between 2023 and 2026, while the UK government gave fossil fuel companies £20bn more in support than renewables from 2015 to 2023, research found.

Campaigners have said that owners of the Rosebank development, a massive new, controversial oilfield in the North Sea, are set to receive around £3bn in tax breaks from the UK government.

The british green energy industrialist was praised online for his comeback.

A professor of law wrote on X: “Indeed, and a tax break can also be a subsidy (provided that it is specific) under the rules of the blessed WTO, which Rees-Mogg used to praise so highly. It’s Rees-Mogg who did not do his homework here.”

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Greta Thunberg flashes victory sign after police detain her at Hague climate protest

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It looks like a hashtag to me. Isn’t a holding your finger is a V-shape a victory sign?

https://extinctionrebellion-nl.translate.goog/en/greta-thunberg-aanwezig-bij-a12-blokkade-van-6-april/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Spokesman Joost Thus: “The A12 blockades have ensured that the injustice of fossil subsidies is clear to everyone. 72% of Dutch people want to get rid of fossil subsidies [1] and more than three quarters of the Second Last October, the House voted in favor of a motion on phase-out plans. The success of the A12 blockades has set in motion an international movement. An international coalition of 25 movements from 14 countries will fight at EU level for an end to fossil subsidies. This week there are Stop Fossil Subsidies actions in 6 European countries. It will be announced on Saturday on the A12 how we will increase the international pressure on politics and the fossil industry in the near future.”

Phasing-out plans for the outgoing cabinet
The outgoing cabinet presented the phasing-out plans for fossil subsidies in February. The abolition of fossil subsidies is postponed again until 2030 or even 2035. Moreover, the outgoing government states that phasing out a large part of fossil subsidies is difficult due to international agreements. But this goes directly against the international agreements that the Netherlands made at the G20 in 2009 (!) to phase out fossil subsidies before 2020.

Need to abolish fossil subsidies
Fossil subsidies stimulate the large-scale consumption of fossil fuels. Companies such as Shell, Tata Steel and KLM receive huge discounts on the use of oil, gas and coal in the Netherlands. In total, this amounts to between 39.7 and 46.4 billion euros per year in the Netherlands alone. Globally, the IMF reserves an amount of $7 trillion for 2022 [2]. In this way, the use of energy sources whose emissions drive the climate and ecological crisis is supported and stimulated. While this crisis endangers the lives of millions of people, animals and ecosystems.

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Continue ReadingGreta Thunberg flashes victory sign after police detain her at Hague climate protest