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As Peace Protests Are Violently Suppressed, CNN Paints Them as Hate Rallies

Original article by JULIE HOLLAR republished from FAIR under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

As peace activists occupied common spaces on campuses across the country, some in corporate media very clearly took sides, portraying student protesters as violent, hateful and/or stupid. CNN offered some of the most striking of these characterizations.

CNN‘s Dana Bash (Inside Politics, 5/1/24) blames the peace movement for “destruction, violence and hate on college campuses across the country.” 

Dana Bash (Inside Politics, 5/1/24) stared gravely into the camera and launched into a segment on “destruction, violence and hate on college campuses across the country.” Her voice dripping with hostility toward the protests, she reported:

Many of these protests started peacefully with legitimate questions about the war, but in many cases, they lost the plot. They’re calling for a ceasefire. Well, there was a ceasefire on October 6, the day before Hamas terrorists brutally murdered more than a thousand people inside Israel and took hundreds more as hostages. This hour, I’ll speak to an American Israeli family whose son is still held captive by Hamas since that horrifying day, that brought us to this moment. You don’t hear the pro-Palestinian protesters talking about that. We will.

By Bash’s logic, once a ceasefire is broken, no one can ever call for it to be reinstated—even as the death toll in Gaza nears 35,000. But her claim that there was a ceasefire until Hamas broke it on October 7 is little more than Israeli propaganda: Hundreds of Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and settlers in the year preceding October 7 (FAIR.org, 7/6/23).

‘Hearkening back to 1930s Europe’

“They didn’t let me get to class using the main entrance!” complains Eli Tsives in one of several videos he posted of confrontations with anti-war demonstrators. “Instead they forced me to walk around. Shame on these people!”

Bash continued:

Now protesting the way the Israeli government, the Israeli prime minister, is prosecuting the retaliatory war against Hamas is one thing. Making Jewish students feel unsafe at their own schools is unacceptable, and it is happening way too much right now.

As evidence of this lack of safety, Bash pointed to UCLA student Eli Tsives, who posted a video of himself confronting motionless antiwar protesters physically standing in his way on campus. “This is our school, and they’re not letting me walk in,” he claims in the clip. Bash ominously described this as “hearkening back to the 1930s in Europe.”

Bash was presumably referring to the rise of the Nazis and their increasing restrictions on Jews prior to World War II. But while Tsives’ clip suggests protesters are keeping him off UCLA campus, they’re in fact blocking him from their encampment—where many Jewish students were present. (Jewish Voice for Peace is one of its lead groups.)

So it’s clearly not Tsives’ Jewishness that the protesters object to. But Tsives was not just any Jewish student; a UCLA drama student and former intern at the pro-Israel group Stand With Us, he had been a visible face of the counter-protests, repeatedly posting videos of himself confronting peaceful antiwar protesters. He has shown up to the encampment wearing a holster of pepper spray.

One earlier video he made showing himself being denied entry to the encampment included text on screen claiming misleadingly that protestors objected to his Jewishness: “They prevented us, Jewish students, from entering public land!” (“You can kiss your jobs goodbye, this is going to go viral on social media,” he tells the protesters.) He also proudly posted his multiple interviews on Fox News, which was as eager as Bash to help him promote his false narrative of antisemitism.

‘Attacking each other’

“Security and [campus police] both retreated as pro-Israel counter-protesters and other groups attacked protesters in the encampment,” UCLA’s student paper (Daily Bruin, 5/1/24) reported.

UCLA protesters had good reason to keep counter-protesters out of their encampment, as those counter-protesters had become increasingly hostile (Forward, 5/1/24; New York Times, 4/30/24). This aggression culminated in a violent attack on the encampment on April 30 (Daily Bruin, 5/1/24).

Late that night, a pro-Israel mob of at least 200 tried to storm the student encampment, punching, kicking, throwing bricks and other objects, spraying pepper spray and mace, trying to tear down plywood barricades and launching fireworks into the crowd. As many as 25 injuries have been reported, including four student journalists for the university newspaper who were assaulted by goons as they attempted to leave the scene (Forward, 5/2/24; Democracy Now!, 5/2/24).

Campus security stood by as the attacks went on; when the university finally called in police support, the officers who arrived waited over an hour to intervene (LA Times, 5/1/24).

(The police were less reticent in clearing out the encampment a day later at UCLA’s request. Reporters on the scene described police in riot gear firing rubber bullets at close range and “several instances of protesters being injured”—LA Times, 5/3/24.)

The mob attacks at UCLA, along with police use of force at that campus and elsewhere, clearly represent the most “destruction, violence and hate” at the encampments, which have been overwhelmingly peaceful. But Bash’s description of the UCLA violence rewrote the narrative to fit her own agenda: “Pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups were attacking each other, hurling all kinds of objects, a wood pallet, fireworks, parking cones, even a scooter.”

When CNN correspondent Stephanie Elam reported, later in the same segment, that the UCLA violence came from counter-protesters, Bash’s response was not to correct her own earlier misrepresentation, but to disparage antiwar protesters: Bash commended the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles for saying the violence does not represent the Jewish community, and snidely commented: “Be nice to see that on all sides of this.”

“For me, never again is never again for anyone,” says a Jewish participant in the UCLA encampment (Instagram, 5/2/24).

‘Violence erupted’

Bash wasn’t the only one at CNN framing antiwar protesters as the violent ones, against all evidence. Correspondent Camila Bernal (5/2/24) reported on the UCLA encampment:

The mostly peaceful encampment was set up a week ago, but violence erupted during counter protest on Sunday, and even more tense moments overnight Tuesday, leaving at least 15 injured. Last night, protesters attempted to stand their ground, linking arms, using flashlights on officers’ faces, shouting and even throwing items at officers. But despite what CHP described as a dangerous operation, an almost one-to-one ratio officers to protesters gave authorities the upper hand.

Who was injured? Who was violent? Bernal left that to viewers’ imagination. She did mention that officers used “what appeared to be rubber bullets,” but the only participant given camera time was a police officer accusing antiwar students of throwing things at police.

Earlier CNN reporting (5/1/24) from UCLA referred to “dueling protests between pro-Palestinian demonstrators and those supporting Jewish students.” It’s a false dichotomy, as many of the antiwar protesters are themselves Jewish, and eyewitness reports suggested that many in the mob were not students and not representative of the Jewish community (Times of Israel, 5/2/24).

CNN likewise highlighted the law and order perspective after Columbia’s president called in the NYPD to respond to the student takeover of Hamilton Hall. CNN Newsroom (5/1/24) brought on a retired FBI agent to analyze the police operation. His praise was unsurprising:

It was impressive. It was surprisingly smooth…. The beauty of America is that we can say things, we can protest, we can do this publicly, even when it’s offensive language. But you can’t trespass and keep people from being able to go to class and going to their graduations. We draw a line between that and, you know, civil control.

CNN host Jake Tapper (4/29/24) criticized the Columbia president’s approach to the protests—for being too lenient: “I mean, a college president’s not a diplomat. A college president’s an authoritarian, really.” (More than a week earlier, president Minouche Shafik had had more than a hundred students arrested for camping overnight on a lawn—FAIR.org, 4/19/24.)

‘Taking room from my show’

**** MISSING IMAGE (difficult for WordPress to copy) **** captioned “The majority of news since the war began…has been skewed by a systemic and institutional bias within the network toward Israel,” a CNN staffer told the Guardian (2/4/24).

Tapper did little to hide his utter contempt for the protesters. He complained:

This is taking room from my show that I would normally be spending covering what is going on in Gaza, or what is going on with the International Criminal Court, talking about maybe bringing charges. We were talking about the ceasefire deal. I mean, this—so I don’t know that the protesters, just from a media perspective, are accomplishing what they want to accomplish, because I’m actually covering the issue and the pain of the Palestinians and the pain of the Israelis—not that they’re protesting for that—less because of this.

It’s Tapper and CNN, of course, who decide what stories are most important and deserve coverage—not campus protesters. Some might say that that a break from CNN‘s regular coverage the Israel’s assault on Gaza would not altogether be a bad thing, as CNN staffers have complained of “regurgitation of Israeli propaganda and the censoring of Palestinian perspectives in the network’s coverage of the war in Gaza” (Guardian, 2/4/24)

The next day, Tapper’s framing of the protests made clear whose grievances he thought were the most worthy (4/30/24): “CNN continues to following the breaking news on college campuses where anti-Israel protests have disrupted academic life and learning across the United States.”

Original article by JULIE HOLLAR republished from FAIR under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Continue ReadingAs Peace Protests Are Violently Suppressed, CNN Paints Them as Hate Rallies

77% of Top Climate Scientists Think 2.5°C of Warming Is Coming—And They’re Horrified

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

Scientists engage in civil disobedience on the steps of the Congress of Deputies in Madrid, Spain on April 6, 2022. 
(Photo: Scientist Rebellion)

“I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the Global South,” one expert said.

Nearly 80% of top-level climate scientists expect that global temperatures will rise by at least 2.5°C by 2100, while only 6% thought the world would succeed in limiting global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, a survey published Wednesday by The Guardian revealed.

Nearly three-quarters blamed world leaders’ insufficient action on a lack of political will, while 60% said that corporate interests such as fossil fuel companies were interfering with progress.

“I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the Global South,” one South African scientist told The Guardian. “The world’s response to date is reprehensible—we live in an age of fools.”

“What blew me away was the level of personal anguish among the experts who have dedicated their lives to climate research.”

The survey was conducted by The Guardian‘s Damian Carrington, who reached out to every expert who had served as a senior author on an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report since 2018. Out of 843 scientists whose contact information was available, 383 responded.

He then asked them how high they thought temperatures would rise by 2100: 77% predicted at least 2.5°C and nearly half predicted 3°C or more.

“What blew me away was the level of personal anguish among the experts who have dedicated their lives to climate research,” Carrington wrote on social media. “Many used words like hopeless, broken, infuriated, scared, overwhelmed.”

The 1.5°C target was agreed to as the most ambitious goal of the Paris agreement of 2015, in which world leaders pledged to keep warming to “well below” 2°C. However, policies currently in place would put the world on track for 3°C, and unconditional commitments under the Paris agreement for 2.9°C.

The survey comes on the heels of the hottest year on record, which already saw a record-breaking Canadian wildfire season as well as extreme, widespread heatwaves and deadly floods. The first four months of 2024 have also been the hottest of their respective months on record, and the year has already seen the fourth global bleaching event for coral reefs.

“They can say they don’t care, but they can’t say they didn’t know.”

“I think we are headed for major societal disruption within the next five years,” Gretta Pecl of the University of Tasmania told The Guardian. “[Authorities] will be overwhelmed by extreme event after extreme event, food production will be disrupted. I could not feel greater despair over the future.”

Scientists said that governments and companies that profit from the burning of fossil fuels had prevented action. Many also blamed global inequality and the refusal of the wealthy world to step up, both in terms of reducing their own emissions and helping climate vulnerable nations adapt.

“The tacit calculus of decision-makers, particularly in the Anglosphere—U.S., Canada, U.K., Australia—but also Russia and the major fossil fuel producers in the Middle East, is driving us into a world in which the vulnerable will suffer, while the well-heeled will hope to stay safe above the waterline,” Stephen Humphreys at the London School of Economics said.

Despite their grim predictions, many of the scientists remained committed to researching and speaking out.

“We keep doing it because we have to do it, so [the powerful] cannot say that they didn’t know,” Ruth Cerezo-Mota, who works on climate modeling at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, told The Guardian. “We know what we’re talking about. They can say they don’t care, but they can’t say they didn’t know.”

Others found hope in the climate activism and awareness of younger generations, and in the finding that each extra tenth of a degree of warming avoided protects 140 million people from extreme temperatures.

“I regularly face moments of despair and guilt of not managing to make things change more rapidly, and these feelings have become even stronger since I became a father,” said Henri Waisman of France’s Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations. “But, in these moments, two things help me: remembering how much progress has happened since I started to work on the topic in 2005 and that every tenth of a degree matters a lot—this means it is still useful to continue the fight.”

Peter Cox of the University of Exeter added: “Climate change will not suddenly become dangerous at 1.5°C—it already is. And it will not be ‘game over’ if we pass 2°C, which we might well do.”

“I’m not despairing, I’m not giving up. I’m pissed off and more determined to fight for a better world.”

Many of the scientists who still saw a hope of keeping 1.5°C alive pinned it on the speeding rollout and falling prices of climate-friendly technologies like renewable energy and electric vehicles. Also on Wednesday, energy think thank Ember reported that 30% of global electricity came from renewables in 2023 and predicted that the year would be the “pivot” after which power sector emissions would start to fall. Experts also said that abandoning fossil fuels has many side benefits such as cleaner air and better public health. Though even the more optimistic scientists were wary about the unpredictable nature of the climate crisis.

“I am convinced that we have all the solutions needed for a 1.5°C path and that we will implement them in the coming 20 years,” Henry Neufeldt of the United Nations’ Copenhagen Climate Center told The Guardian. “But I fear that our actions might come too late and we cross one or several tipping points.”

Several scientists gave recommendations for things that people could do to move the needle on climate. Humphreys suggested “civil disobedience” while one French scientist said people should “fight for a fairer world.”

“All of humanity needs to come together and cooperate—this is a monumental opportunity to put differences aside and work together,” Louis Verchot, based at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia, told The Guardian. “Unfortunately climate change has become a political wedge issue… I wonder how deep the crisis needs to become before we all start rowing in the same direction.”

The publication of The Guardian‘s survey prompted other climate scientists to share their thoughts.

“As many of the scientists pointed out, the uncertainty in future temperature change is not a physical science question: It is a question of the decisions people choose to make,” Texas Tech University climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe wrote on social media. “We are not experts in that; And we have little reason to feel positive about those, since we have been warning of the risks for decades.”

Aaron Thierry, a graduate researcher at the Cardiff School of Social Sciences, pointed out that The Guardian‘s results were consistent with other surveys of scientific opinion, such as one published in Nature in the lead-up to COP26, in which 60% of IPCC scientists said they expected 3°C of warming or more by 2100.

James Dyke of the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute argued that there was room for scientists to share more negative thoughts without succumbing to or encouraging defeatism.

“I hear the argument that we must temper these messages because we don’t want people to despair and give up. But I’m not despairing, I’m not giving up. I’m pissed off and more determined to fight for a better world,” Dyke said on social media.

NASA climate scientist Peter Kalmus shared the article with a plea to “please start listening.”

“Elected and corporate ‘leaders’ continue to prioritize their personal power and wealth at the cost of irreversible loss of essentially everything, even as this irreversible loss comes more and more into focus. I see this as literally a form of insanity,” Kalmus wrote, adding that “capitalism tends to elevate the worst among us into the seats of power.”

However, he took issue with the idea that a future of unchecked climate change would be only “semi-dystopian.”

“We’re also at risk of losing any gradual bending toward progress, and equity, and compassion, and love,” Kalmus said. “All social and cultural struggles must recognize this deep intersection with the climate struggle.”

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

[dizzy: It is generally accepted by knowledgeable parties that 2.5C is “locked-in” in the sense that emissions already made will cause it. We need immediate reduction in climate heating gases by abandoning fossil fuels. Politicians worldwide are neglecting this necessary action and are indeed creating a worse situation by promoting fossil fuels through widespread and generous subsidies.]

14/5/24 I’m trying to verify the “locked-in” claim that I make above. It’s not particularly supported by this report.

14/5/24 8.30 pm BST

Fact-Check: is more than 1.5°C of global warming already locked in?

…

If greenhouse gas emissions stopped but greenhouse gases stayed at a fixed level then there’d be another ~0.5-0.6°C of slow warming in the pipeline, but in reality CO₂ would fall due to natural carbon sinks once emissions stop and largely cancel out this warming.

Aerosols mask ~0.6°C of warming, but even in the unlikely scenario of their sudden elimination models show only ~0.2-0.4°C of extra warming by 2100 as a result. A gradual partial phase-out of aerosol emissions could limit this unmasking effect to ~0.1-0.2°C spread over time, and cuts in non-CO₂ greenhouse gases like methanes could entirely counteract aerosol removal, minimising its impact.

Overall this likely reduces “locked-in” warming from the climate lag and aerosols to a negligible amount on top of the current (2021) warming of ~1.2°C – in contrast to the extra ~1.4°C sometimes claimed – and any short-term warming from aerosol reductions can be reduced and compensated for by reducing other short-lived greenhouse gases like methane.

…

All of this is quite academic of course – politicians do not intend to address global warming and instead intend to continue trashing the planet.

Continue Reading77% of Top Climate Scientists Think 2.5°C of Warming Is Coming—And They’re Horrified

BP Was Warned Gas-Driven Climate Change Could Cause ‘Unprecedented Famine’

Original article by Geoff Dembicki republished from DeSmog.

Yet the oil and gas major led a campaign to present gas as a climate solution, new ‘confidential’ documents released by a U.S. Congressional investigation reveal.

Democrat Jamie Raskin appeared before a Senate hearing examining Big Oil’s efforts to avoid climate accountability. Credit: US Senate

BP was warned by Princeton University researchers in 2016 that climate change accelerated in part by new global supplies of shale gas could lead to catastrophic events such as “mass extinctions and unprecedented famine.” 

Yet despite acknowledging internally the concern that “gas doesn’t support climate goals,” the UK-headquartered oil and gas major embarked on a marketing campaign to “advance and protect the role of gas—and BP—in the energy transition.” 

That’s been accompanied by large new investments in gas, including a recent agreement to take nearly two million tonnes per year of liquefied natural gas shipments from a $5.1 billion export facility called Woodfibre LNG proposed for the west coast of British Columbia. 

Revelations concerning BP’s private knowledge about the dangers of gas expansion were contained in a trove of documents—some labelled “confidential”—released by Democrats in early May as part of a joint House and Senate investigation into the oil and gas industry’s climate obstruction. 

“The fossil fuel industry evolved from denying climate science to spreading disinformation and perpetuating doublespeak about the safety of natural gas and its commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” the Joint Staff Report argues.  

BP didn’t respond to questions from DeSmog related to the report. 

Documents contained in the report, which were obtained via federal subpoenas, suggest that the highest levels of BP leadership have been privately made aware of potential climate disruption caused by natural gas. Comments on a draft outline for a 2017 speech by BP’s then-CEO Robert Dudley articulate that fear explicitly.

“You don’t say anything about concerns about so-called lock-in, the idea that, once built, gas locks in future emissions above a level consistent with 2 degrees, at least without CCUS,” the comments read, referring to expensive and frequently underperforming carbon capture utilization and storage technologies. 

A confidential 2018 presentation from BP notes that while gas may release less emissions when burned than coal, those climate gains can be erased by leakages of the “potent” greenhouse gas methane. “Methane (CH₄) accounts for 20% of GHGs [greenhouse gas emissions],” a slide from the presentation notes. “Oil and gas accounts for nearly a quarter of this 20%.”

The presentation acknowledges the concern, widely reported in the media by that point, that “gas doesn’t support climate goals when you take methane emissions into account.” BP appears to have seen such worries as an “opportunity” for the company, however. 

The company intended to launch a communications campaign that could “position BP as [a] strong gas player” in part by “demonstrating leadership on methane challenge,” the slide reads.

Yet the oil and gas producer had been warned that a failure to limit global temperature rise to below 2 degrees could be catastrophic for humankind and the planet. During a 2016 town hall event for BP in Houston, Princeton researchers noted “innovation in the energy sector has been dramatically affected by the arrival of shale gas and oil and low energy prices.” 

One result, they noted, is that “fossil fuels are so abundant that, for even a weak climate target, attractive fossil fuel will be left in the ground.” But if the world fails to limit warming below 2 degrees, “the climate monsters begin to come into the room,” they noted. 

As warming approaches 3 degrees, their presentation explained, “we expect a rogue’s gallery, from the loss of all of our coastal cities because of >10 m of sea level rise, to cessation of the ocean’s circulation.”

Yet the company continues to publicly portray the fossil fuel as a climate solution. “As the world seeks secure, affordable and lower carbon energy, global demand for LNG is expected to continue to grow,” a BP executive said last year upon the company signing its latest off-take agreement with Woodfibre LNG in Canada. 

This is part of a years-long global campaign to spread “disinformation” about the role of gas “as a bridge fuel to a fossil-free future,” the Congressional report argues. “It is long past time to hold Big Oil accountable for its deception campaign and to take action to undo the harms it has perpetrated.”

Original article by Geoff Dembicki republished from DeSmog.

Continue ReadingBP Was Warned Gas-Driven Climate Change Could Cause ‘Unprecedented Famine’

Canceled Canadian CCS Project Deemed ‘Not Economically Feasible’

Original article by Taylor Noakes republished from DeSmog.

https://www.desmog.com/2024/05/06/capital-power-generation-genesee-power-plant-canceled-canadian-ccs-project-not-economically-feasible/

Capital Power Generation pulled the plug on a $2.4 billion carbon capture and storage project at the Genesee Generating Station. Credit: Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Repeal accompanies a new report that confirms existing carbon capture projects continue to underperform.

Capital Power Generation has canceled a $2.4 billion carbon capture and storage (CCS) project at their Genesee Generating Station, claiming it is “technically viable but not economically feasible.”

The project aimed to capture and sequester up to 3 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions from the Genesee Power Plant, located southwest of Edmonton, Alberta, a plant that’s in the process of being converted from coal to natural gas.

Julia Levin, associate director of National Climate with Environmental Defence, characterized the cancellation as yet another failure for carbon capture.

“This decision is just the latest failure in carbon capture’s terrible track record,” Levin said in a statement. “It should serve as a lesson for governments on how reckless it is to be using taxpayer dollars to subsidize these projects.”

She indicated that the project had already received $5 million from the Government of Alberta, and was further eligible for additional tax breaks from both the federal and provincial governments.

“Carbon capture has not been successfully used in the power sector,” said Levin. 

“Most projects never make it off the ground,” she added. “The few that do, like the Boundary Dam coal plant, capture a fraction of the promised rate.” Levin also noted that equipping power plants with carbon capture makes fossil fuel-generated power even more expensive, while the cost of renewable energy has plummeted.

The Boundary Dam carbon capture and storage facility in Saskatchewan never met the 90 percent capture rate originally promised. Credit: SaskPower/Flickr

The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) recently released new research that shows the failures of carbon capture in the Boundary Dam coal facility. After nine years and $1 billion spent retrofitting the plant with CCS equipment, the facility never met the 90 percent capture rate owner-operator SaskPower originally promised. 

Moreover, all the carbon that Boundary Dam captured was used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR), a process where carbon dioxide is pumped into old wells to extract otherwise unobtainable oil. The IEEFA study further reveals that the Boundary Dam facility’s carbon capture rate is below 60 percent in total over nine years of operation.

“Canadians should not be proud of the money and resources wasted on carbon capture, and they should be especially concerned about the billions of dollars now earmarked for additional carbon capture investments,” said the IEEFA report’s authors, David Schlissel, director of resource planning analysis at the organization, and Mark Kalegha, an IEEFA energy finance analyst, in a statement. 

“Carbon capture is not a solution to the world’s climate crisis, especially when coupled with enhanced oil recovery,” they said. 

Part of a Decarbonization Plan

Capital Power Generation is an independent power company based in Edmonton, Alberta’s capital city. The company has described the Genesee plant’s conversion from coal to natural gas as part of its decarbonization effort. The company set a goal to decarbonize by 2045. The conversion is also in line with the coal phase-out goals of the Canadian government.

Despite claims by politicians and industry that natural gas is a bridge fuel, or that it is cleaner than coal, the reality is that natural gas is not a carbon-neutral energy source, nor a viable method of decarbonizing the energy grid. Rather, natural gas is a destructive fossil fuel. Research from Robert W. Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University, shows that methane emissions from natural gas is on par with coal’s.  

Natural gas is not considered a viable method of decarbonizing the energy grid. Credit: Felton Davis/Flickr

Emissions Reduction Alberta, a government funded group, previously claimed that the Genesee repowering and carbon capture projects could potentially remove about 6.4 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, with CCS projects handling about half that amount.

Though Capital Power Generation justified its decision to cancel the project by stating it wasn’t financially feasible, news reports show the company was holding out for additional financial support from various levels of government. As Global News reported, Altius Royalty Corp., owner of the coal mine that feeds the Genesee plant, had demanded $190 million in compensation from the federal and provincial governments to phase out coal. It argued that government efforts to terminate coal production for health and environmental reasons was equivalent to expropriation.

Altius filed the claim in 2018, and it was rejected by the Court of Appeal of Alberta in April.

In March, the Globe and Mail reported that Capital Power was considering shelving the Genesee CCS project because it couldn’t come to an agreement with the government to provide revenue certainty. The Canada Growth Fund (CGF), a $15 billion federal financing agency, is tasked with guaranteeing a minimum value for emissions-reduction credits earned under Canada’s industrial carbon-pricing system. The March news report claims that representatives from Capital Power argued that negotiations with the CGF had not produced a structure or price that would allow them to proceed with the project. A CGF representative countered that such frameworks and prices had already been negotiated with other companies.

Regardless of what specifics led Capital Power to cancel the Genesee CCS project, the fact remains that CCS is expensive, is often used for EOR, and has a long, well-documented history of under-delivering on the crucial issue of capturing carbon dioxide. Critics say the considerable amount of financial resources already dedicated to CCS have effectively been wasted, particularly when the means to cheaply decarbonize the grid – such as solar panels or wind turbines – are already available.

“The most effective way to deal with carbon dioxide emissions is to prevent them from ever being created,” said Levin with Environmental Defence, “rather than trying to pluck them from the air or smokestacks and inject them underground.”

Original article by Taylor Noakes republished from DeSmog.

Continue ReadingCanceled Canadian CCS Project Deemed ‘Not Economically Feasible’

DeSmog Launches Investigation Into Food and Farming Misinformation Ahead of EU Elections

Original article by Clare Carlile republished from DeSmog.

Credit: Alberto Perinot/X

The far right is set to piggyback on agricultural discontent to capture votes in June.

A large blue billboard stands outside a park in the town of Conegliano in northern Italy. On the left, a man pops a vast cricket into his mouth. On the right, are the words, “Let’s Change Europe before it changes us” – and the dates of the upcoming elections.  

The poster – an advert for the country’s radical right party Lega per Salvini Premier – refers to a conspiracy theory that has swept across Italy in the last 18 months. Elites in Brussels are planning to replace meat with bugs and are using environmental regulations to do so, or so the theory goes.

As millions of voters across the EU prepare to head to the polls from 6-9 June, conspiracy theories and misinformation on food and farming could pull voters towards the far right and parties opposing climate-friendly laws.

In the face of this onslaught of misinformation, DeSmog is launching a new series that investigates misleading claims and their impact on climate policy in the farming sector. 

Over the next two months DeSmog will monitor the spread of misinformation across the continent, working in seven different languages. We will look to identify false claims and uncover who is spreading these narratives online.

Agriculture accounts for 11 percent of carbon emissions in the EU, and has contributed to plummeting bird and bee numbers. But tackling the sector’s harms has become one of the most divisive issues on the continent, with tractors blocking highways across Europe during demonstrations this year. 

The protests – attended by thousands of farmers in several countries – reflected a wide range of concerns, from unfair food prices to calls for protection from increasingly extreme weather. Yet this complexity was barely represented in the media where demonstrations were cast as opposition to environmental measures. 

Far-right groups also weaponised the protests. In January, Jordan Bardella, lead EU candidate for France’s National Rally (formerly National Front), accused the country’s President Emmanuel Macron of pursuing “the death of agriculture” while Santiago Abascal, leader of Spain’s far-right party Vox, wrote to Macron demanding an end to “aggressions” against Spanish producers, who he described as “victims” of EU policy.

In the eyes of its critics, green reforms agreed in the last EU term would destroy farming. Plans to cut chemical use and make farmers protect natural habitats would lead to monumental job losses, they claim. The same arguments are used by agricultural corporations that stand to lose out if green reforms are enacted.

The most extreme opponents, including radical right think tanks and hardline farming groups, see green reforms as part of a plan by Brussels bureaucrats to control the industry and “grab land”. 

These claims, however, contradict the facts: last year, more than 6,000 scientists said that such nature-friendly measures were “the cornerstone of food security and human health”. 

The policies that are currently being attacked aim to tackle climate breakdown – the biggest threat to producers across the EU, who are already feeling the effects of global heating. A “staggering portion” of the continent has been exposed to high drought risk in recent years, according to the European Drought Observatory, leading to widespread crop losses.

Right-wing and far-right groups stand to make massive gains from stoking these tensions. A recent study by the EU’s Committee of the Regions showed that discontented rural areas could be a major source of votes.  

This series will shine a light on those candidates that are weaponising false claims for electoral gain.

Original article by Clare Carlile republished from DeSmog.

Continue ReadingDeSmog Launches Investigation Into Food and Farming Misinformation Ahead of EU Elections