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As Europe Reels From Flood Damage, Calls Grow for Big Oil to Pay for Climate Destruction

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

Firefighters in a boat make their way past a car submerged by the floods in Rust im Tullnerfeld, Austria, on September 16, 2024. (Photo: Helmut Fohringer/APA/AFP via Getty Images)

“We are deeply worried such events will get worse until oil and gas giants like Shell, Total, Equinor, Exxon, OMV, and ENI are forced to stop drilling for fossil fuels driving climate change,” said one campaigner.

The international climate group Greenpeace on Friday called on European leaders to “reciprocate” the courage shown by first responders in several countries over the weekend by forcing fossil fuel giants to pay for climate damages.

Calling out leaders including Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, and Romania Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, Greenpeace campaigner Ian Duff said Central and Eastern European countries should end their “support for fossil fuels and [make] climate polluters pay for this disaster,” as emergency workers rescued people from catastrophic flooding.

The death toll on Monday rose to at least 16, with many more people missing and hundreds of thousands of people displaced in countries including Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia after the low-pressure system Storm Boris dumped torrential rains on the region for days starting late last week.

Two men, aged 70 and 80, drowned in their homes in northeastern Lower Austria after being trapped by rising floodwater, and confirmed deaths in Poland rose to six.

About 70% of Litovel, about 140 miles east of the Czech capital of Prague, was underwater Monday, while a power plant servicing the country’s third-largest city was forced to shut down and leave residents without heat and hot water.

“Greenpeace is horrified by damages brought by floods across Central and Eastern Europe, claiming lives, leaving homes without power and farmers with ruined fields, after being already ravaged by drought,” said Duff, head of Greenpeace’s Stop Drilling Start Paying campaign. “We are deeply worried such events will get worse until oil and gas giants like Shell, Total, Equinor, Exxon, OMV, and ENI are forced to stop drilling for fossil fuels driving climate change.”

In the U.S., the notion of big polluters being required to pay for damages caused by the climate crisis has recently gained traction, with lawmakers introducing a bill in Congress last week.

In Europe, a “polluter pays” principle is followed for many kinds of pollution, but advocates have called for it to be applied to planet-heating greenhouse gas emissions.

The flooding in Europe comes, as London-based meteorologist Scott Duncan explained on the social media platform X, after “an exceptional summer for the Mediterranean Sea,” with heat records broken—just as scientists have warned this year that record heat in the North Atlantic and other oceans around the globe would mean “a busy hurricane season.”

“Warmer sea surface temperatures allow more moisture to evaporate, like fuel for a storm. The warmer the water, the greater the evaporation,” said Duncan.

Liz Stephens, science lead for the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center, noted that in Central and Eastern Europe, “climate change is known to be playing a role in increasing the risk of flooding,” with the World Weather Attribution saying in 2021 that disastrous flooding that hit Germany and Belgium was tied to “a rapidly warming climate.”

Reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Stephens added, “have indicated that we have already observed an upward trend in heavy rainfall, surface water, and river flooding, and climate models show high confidence of further increases into the future.”

“The flooding looks set to be the worst in the region since 2002,” she said. “Lessons will have been learned from previous big European floods, but forecasts for some locations are for flooding of unprecedented magnitude, and history tells us that people are often surprised by the seemingly unimaginable consequences of such events.”

Journalist and climate advocate George Monbiot pointed out on Al Jazeera that storms previously described as “once-in-1,000-year occurrences [are] happening several times now in the past decade. We’re seeing a massive acceleration and intensification of extreme weather events, and unfortunately this is exactly what climate scientists were predicting.”

Climate action group Friends of the Earth echoed Greenpeace’s demand to “leave fossil fuels in the ground and instead invest in a green future,” and Duff emphasized that communities across Central and Eastern Europe are far from the only ones “reeling from deadly floods and torrential rains,” with Typhoon Yagi causing flooding and landslides that killed at least 250 people in Southeast Asia in recent days and heavy rains across West and Central Africa leading to floods that killed more than 1,000 people.

“The fossil fuel industry,” said Duff, “is worsening weather extremes everywhere.”

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

Continue ReadingAs Europe Reels From Flood Damage, Calls Grow for Big Oil to Pay for Climate Destruction

Oceana UK files legal challenge, calling recent oil & gas licences ‘unlawful’

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Oceana UK has moved forward with its legal challenge over fossil fuel exploration licences in UK waters, filing its case at the High Court. In response to the initial threat to take the government to court over the harm to UK seas, ahead of the election, the previous government stated that it would defend the decision.

Oceana and other members of the Ocean Alliance Against Offshore Drilling have now written to Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, urging the new government to accelerate the UK’s move away from fossil fuels and concede Oceana’s case.

Oceana UK, who is represented by law firm Leigh Day, say the previous government’s decision to issue 31 new oil and gas licences in May 2024 was unlawful because it failed to consider the extreme impact of oil spills on marine life, as well as on several other grounds.

The letter – signed by Greenpeace UK, Friends of the Earth Scotland, Rewilding Britain, Oceana and others – highlights Oceana UK’s legal challenge to the new oil and gas licences, and asks that the Secretary of State ‘brings an end’ to the licences which overlap with several areas designated for wildlife.

It invites the government to concede the claim, which has now been lodged with the High Court, and signal a ‘clear departure’ from the reliance on fossil fuels, which it argues had been the case under the previous government.

Naomi Tilley, Campaign Lead at Oceana UK, said:

“These licences were issued with a shocking disregard for expert advice, as well as our seas, climate and future. With its commitment to end oil and gas licences, the new government has started down a world-leading path, and now it has a crucial opportunity to honour the spirit of that ambition, by calling time once and for all on these licences and the destruction and degradation caused by Big Oil running roughshod over our ocean.” 

Leigh Day’s Rowan Smith, who represents Oceana UK along with Carol Day, said:

“Our client is legitimately frustrated that advice from expert bodies set up to conserve the marine environment was effectively ignored; advice which condemns the plans for further licensing due to the damage drilling would cause to marine wildlife and the knock-on climate effects from the greenhouse gases generated when the extracted fossil fuels are used. We are prepared to argue, on behalf of Oceana UK, that the assessments on protected sites failed to properly acknowledge these issues. However, our client hopes that its letter to the Secretary of State, drawing attention to this case, will ultimately persuade the government to revoke these licences.”

Richard Benwell, Chief Executive of Wildlife and Countryside Link, who signed the letter, said: 

“New oil and gas licensing in and around Marine Protected Areas poses serious and even irreversible risks to marine wildlife and habitats and is utterly at odds with any common sense understanding of a protected area. It also means directly ignoring warnings from government scientific advisors who have strongly advised against fossil fuel developments in these sensitive sites. The government should withdraw licensing areas that overlap with Marine Protected Areas and regulate to end all damaging industrial activities in these critical areas for wildlife, including overfishing and fossil fuel industries.”

The claim will challenge the ‘Appropriate Assessments’ made by the former Secretary of State under the Conservative administration, arguing they largely ignored advice from independent government experts about the potential effects on sensitive Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).  

These bodies – the Joint Nature Conservation Committee and Natural England – advised that they could not conclude that the drilling will have no adverse effect on the designated sites. More than a third of the licences overlap with MPAs, which were established to protect habitats and species that are essential for ocean health.

Oceana UK also argues that the assessments were flawed in several other ways, such as ignoring the impact of potential oil spills and overlooking the significant impact of the climate crisis on both the marine wildlife and the wider climate.

The grounds of the claim argue that the then Secretary of State:

  • Failed to consider the impact of oil and gas industry accidents (including oil spills and discharges) on MPAs and their conservation features. 
  • Failed to consider the ongoing impact of the climate crisis on the marine environments set to be impacted by these licenses, and failed to consider the full climate impact of the licensed activity, including scope 3 emissions (indirect emissions, such as from the use of the extracted oil and gas).
  • Relied on a flawed assumption that only 50% of licensed drilling will actually take place.
  • Failed adequately to assess the cumulative impacts of the licensed activity on the relevant sites.
  • Failed to pay due regard to the advice of the JNCC and Natural England in relation to the matters raised by several of the grounds above.
Continue ReadingOceana UK files legal challenge, calling recent oil & gas licences ‘unlawful’

UK’s methane hotspots include landfills and last coalmine

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https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/sep/03/uk-methane-hotspots-landfills-last-coalmine

The Drax power station in Selby, England. The site was one of the UK’s worst methane hotposts. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Greenpeace urges Labour to ‘fulfil international obligations’ as critics question accuracy of official data

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The Guardian and Watershed Investigations analysed official methane emissions data from the National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory (NAEI) along with information on the Watershed pollution map to identify Britain’s methane hotspots.

Top of the list was a site near Glynneath in Wales, home to the Aberpergwm colliery, the UK’s last coalmine. Next was Selby, the location of industry including Drax power station, as well as a number of old landfills and farmland. The top 10 also includes power stations, oilwells and Slough trading estate, home to a wide range of industry.

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Greenpeace’s chief scientist and policy director, Dr Doug Parr, said: “These alarming findings highlight that, despite the UK joining a global pledge to reduce methane emissions by nearly a third by 2030, a proper British action plan has yet to materialise.

“Given its potency, and the fact that it is in fact a short-lived greenhouse gas, reducing methane emissions could help rapidly slow the warming that is creating the climate crisis.

“The new government must fulfil the UK’s international promises, and has the opportunity to come up with an exemplary, internationally leading plan for tackling methane from both the energy and farming sectors.”

…

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/sep/03/uk-methane-hotspots-landfills-last-coalmine

Continue ReadingUK’s methane hotspots include landfills and last coalmine

‘Big Win’: UK Won’t Defend Fossil Fuel Projects in North Sea

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Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

Activists hold a white sign reading “Rosebank will kill us” on September, 27, 2023 in London, United Kingdom. (Photo: Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images)

Oceana U.K.’s leader called the decision “a massive win for campaigners and another step towards… a cleaner, greener future for our seas, planet, and climate.”

Climate campaigners celebrated Thursday after the United Kingdom’s new Labour government announced it will not legally defend decisions to allow controversial offshore drilling in a pair of areas in the North Sea.

The two sites are Shell’s Jackdaw gas field and the Rosebank oil field, owned by Equinor and Ithaca Energy. Both projects have been loudly criticized by international green groups as well as U.K. opponents.

“This is amazing news and a BIG WIN for the climate. The government must now properly support affected workers and prioritize investment in green jobs,” declared Greenpeace U.K., which along with the group Uplift had demanded judicial reviews.

The approvals for both North Sea sites occurred under Conservative rule—in 2022 for Jackdaw and last year for Rosebank, the country’s biggest untapped oil field. Voters handed control of the government back to the Labour Party in May.

Then, as The Guardian detailed, “in June, the cases against the oil and gas fields received a boost when the Supreme Court ruled in a separate case that ‘scope 3’ emissions—that is, the burning of fossil fuels rather than just the building of the infrastructure to do so—should be taken into account when approving projects.”

“Now we need to see a just transition plan for workers and communities across the U.K. and an end extraction in the North Sea for good!”

The U.K. Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, led by Secretary Ed Miliband, cited the “landmark” Supreme Court ruling in a Thursday statement that highlighted the government’s decision not to defend the approvals “will save the taxpayer money” and “this litigation does not mean the licences for Jackdaw and Rosebank have been withdrawn.”

“Oil and gas production in the North Sea will be a key component of the U.K. energy landscape for decades to come as it transitions to our clean energy future in a way that protects jobs,” the department claimed, while also pledging to “consult later this year on the implementation of its manifesto position not to issue new oil and gas licenses to explore new fields.”

Welcoming the U.K. government’s acceptance of the recent high court ruling, Uplift founder and executive director Tessa Khan said on social media that “the immediate consequence… is that the Scottish Court of Session is very likely to quash the decision approving Rosebank, although we’re likely to have to wait a while before that’s confirmed.”

“If Equinor and Ithaca Energy decide they still want to press ahead with developing the field,” Khan explained, “then the next step will be for them to submit a new environmental statement to the [government] and regulator… that includes the scope 3 emissions from the field.”

“If you need reminding, those emissions are massive: the same as 56 coal-fired power plants running for a year or the annual emissions of the world’s 28 poorest countries,” she added. “If Equinor and Ithaca try to push Rosebank through again, the U.K. [government] must reject it.”

Greenpeace similarly stressed that “Rosebank and Jackdaw would generate a vast amount of emissions while doing nothing to lower energy bills,” and “the only real winners from giving them the greenlight would be greedy oil giants Shell and Equinor.”

“To lower bills, improve people’s health, upgrade our economy,” the group argued, the government must: increase renewable energy; better insulate homes; and boost support for green jobs.

Celebrations over the government’s decision and calls for further action weren’t limited to the groups behind the legal challenges.

Oceana U.K. executive director praised the “incredible work” by Greenpeace and Uplift, and called the government dropping its defense “a massive win for campaigners and another step towards… a cleaner, greener future for our seas, planet, and climate.”

Oil Change International also applauded the government’s “incredibly important and correct decision.”

“There is no defending more fossil fuel extraction,” the organization said. “Now we need to see a just transition plan for workers and communities across the U.K. and an end extraction in the North Sea for good!”

Global Witness similarly celebrated the government’s move, declaring on social media that “this is brilliant news!”

“New oilfields are an act of climate vandalism,” the group added. “Governments must prioritize people, not polluters’ profit.”

Original article by Jessica Corbett republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

Continue Reading‘Big Win’: UK Won’t Defend Fossil Fuel Projects in North Sea

Outrage Brewing Over Starbucks CEO’s Private Jet ‘Supercommute’

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Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

Brian Niccol, seen here in a 2015 photo, is Starbucks’ new CEO. (Photo: Robin Marchant/Getty Images)

“These jets are a stark symbol of social and climate injustice, where a privileged few indulge in the most environmentally damaging form of travel for mere convenience,” said one Greenpeace campaigner.

Green groups’ anger percolated this week after it was revealed that Brian Niccol, Starbucks’ new CEO, will “supercommute” approximately 1,000 miles between one of his homes in California and the coffee giant’s Seattle headquarters three times a week.

A Starbucks spokesperson said earlier this week that “while Brian will have an office in Southern California, his primary office and a majority of his time will be spent in our Seattle Support Center.”

“When he is not traveling for work, he will be in our Seattle office at least three days a week, in alignment with our hybrid work policies,” the spokesperson added. “He will also have a home in Seattle.”

“A private jet flight causes about 10 times more CO2 emissions than a regular flight per flight per person.”

Greenpeace—which for years has been running a campaign to ban private jets and regularly stages protests against them at airports around the world—led condemnation of Niccol’s harmful commute.

“As the world faces unprecedented heatwaves, droughts, floods, and other dire consequences of an accelerating climate crisis, it is unjustifiable for companies to offer company aircraft as employee perks,” Greenpeace campaigner Clara Thompson told The Washington Post on Thursday.

“These jets are a stark symbol of social and climate injustice, where a privileged few indulge in the most environmentally damaging form of travel for mere convenience,” Thompson added.

As Greenpeace notes:

A private jet flight causes about 10 times more CO2 emissions than a regular flight per flight per person, and 50 times more than the average train ride. Eighty percent of the world’s population have never flown, yet they’re the ones most impacted by the climate crisis. In just one hour, a single private jet can emit two tons of CO2. The global average energy-related carbon footprint is around 4.7 tons of CO2 per person per year.

While private jets account for a tiny fraction of global greenhouse emissions, the world’s richest 1% produce more than double the emissions of the poorest 50%, and a single billionaire produces a million times more emissions than an average person, according to a 2022 Oxfam study.

Some critics accused Starbucks—which in 2020 set a goal of reducing carbon emissions by 50% this decade—of hypocrisy, with one social media user contrasting Niccol’s private jet commute with the company’s introduction of widely despised and environmentally dubious paper straws. Another eagle-eyed observer spotted a book titled How to Avoid a Climate Disaster on display in Niccol’s office in a Wall Street Journal article photo.

“I’m sure that private jet will use sustainable aviation fuel,” climate scientist David Ho quipped on social media.

Original article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under a CC licence.

Continue ReadingOutrage Brewing Over Starbucks CEO’s Private Jet ‘Supercommute’