In this Aug. 17, 2021, file photo, embers light up hillsides as the Dixie Fire burns near Milford in Lassen County, Calif. (AP Photo/Noah Berger)
A total of 123 members of the House and Senate deny the scientific consensus that climate change is occurring as a result of human activity, according to an analysis from the liberal Center for American Progress.
In a new report, first shared with The Hill, analyzing public statements made by lawmakers, the think tank determined these climate deniers are all Republicans and include prominent members of House leadership.
It defined climate deniers as lawmakers who say any of the following: climate change is not real, it is not primarily caused by humans, the science is not settled on climate change, extreme weather is not caused by climate change, or climate change is actually beneficial.
The report does not consider lawmakers who acknowledge that climate change is real but oppose climate actions to be deniers.
Protest group have confirmed plan to disrupt airports this summer
Just Stop Oil activists plotting a summer of disruption at airports vowed to use all means “necessary”, the group said on Monday.
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“This is not a course of action undertaken lightly, however action from governments must be commensurate with the scale of the crisis faced by humanity.
“Until that is the case, it is on the conscience of every ordinary citizen to utilise whatever mechanism is available to us to non-violently pressure for necessary change.
“Just Stop Oil supporters are trained in nonviolence and will undertake all possible steps to ensure that the safety of those using airports, as well as those in the air, will not be compromised by our actions.
“This includes avoiding going on any active or inactive runways.”
Despite a focus on renewables, growth is not rapid enough. Credit: Ivan Soto Cobos/Shutterstock.com.
The annual growth rate of renewable energy needs to grow to 16.4% to meet global targets, 1.4% above its current level.
The world will fail to meet its goal to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 if capacity continues to grow at a sluggish rate, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).
According to the IRENA report, 473GW of renewable capacity was added last year, a 14% increase from the year before and the largest annual growth since 2000.
However, to meet the ambitious target, the world will have to add renewable capacity at a rate of 16.4% per year annually between now and 2030, according to IRENA. At the current 14% rate, the world will be 1.5TW short.
UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders under the Aarhus Convention Michel Forst attended the trial of five Just Stop Oil supporters at Southwark Crown Court. He attended as an observer because of his serious concerns.
Prosecution of five Just Stop Oil activists over M25 protest led to chaotic scenes in court and concerns about ‘judicial persecution’
As part of his role as UN rapporteur for environmental defenders, Michel Forst has been watching proceedings against climate activists at courts across Europe.
But he may not have seen anything like what unfolded at Southwark crown court in London over the past two and a half weeks, where five Just Stop Oil activists were convicted for conspiring to cause gridlock on the M25 in November 2022.
On the days Forst visited, he witnessed three of the five defendants being arrested in court and dragged to the cells, protesters outside attempting to warn jurors they were not hearing the full case and a judge desperately trying to maintain control over his courtroom.
The judge, Christopher Hehir, had ruled that information about climate breakdown could not be entered into evidence, and could only be referred to by defendants briefly as the “political and philosophical beliefs” that motivated them – which he would tell the jury were in any case irrelevant to their deliberations.
But the defendants had other plans. They sought to turn Hehir’s court into a “site of civil resistance”, causing as much disruption as necessary to ensure that if the jury could not see their evidence on climate breakdown, then the jurors could at least be in no doubt it was being kept from them.
By the time the jury retired to consider a verdict, police had been called into court no fewer than seven times, four of the five defendants had been remanded to prison and 11 others were facing contempt of court proceedings for protests outside the courtroom.
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By the end of the trial, Whittaker De Abreu, the only one who had not represented herself, was the only defendant left in court.
As a punishment for their “persistent disruption”, Hehir slashed the time given to each defendant from one hour to 20 minutes. He further prohibited any mention of the climate crisis, the legal defences he had disallowed or the principle of jury equity – the idea that jurors can acquit based on their conscience.
As Hallam, Shaw, Lancaster and Gethin gave their speeches from behind the reinforced glass screen of the dock, they each proceeded to flout Hehir’s prohibitions, arguing they had been denied a right to a fair trial.
Hallam told jurors: “It’s blindingly obvious to us here first that you have not been given all the evidence you need. You cannot be sure of our guilt if you are not sure that you have not been given the evidence … we have received no good reason why we are not allowed to tell you what is blindingly obvious, namely what I’m not allowed to speak about. If you are not allowed to hear the blindingly obvious then it’s not a fair trial is it?”
It took just a day’s deliberations for the jury to unanimously find them guilty.
Given the recent history of UK climate protest trials, in which defendants have been sentenced to jail for merely mentioning the words “climate change”, and notwithstanding the dramatic arrests in court, Forst said he was surprised the judge gave them an opportunity to mention climate breakdown at all.
“But the little latitude they had to mention climate change was in the meantime emptied of its very meaning by the fact that, overall, the jury was told to ignore most of it,” he added.
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.
“We will not issue new licences to explore new fields because they will not take a penny off bills, cannot make us energy secure, and will only accelerate the worsening climate crisis. In addition, we will not grant new coal licences and will ban fracking for good.”
UK Government Denies Claims Ed Miliband Has Banned New North Sea Oil Licences
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has denied reports that Ed Miliband has banned the North Sea oil regulator from issuing any outstanding drilling and exploration licences, calling them “a complete fabrication”.
Earlier today, The Telegraph claimed that the new energy security and net zero minister had overruled his officials to stop the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) from issuing new licences, even those that were in the final round of approval with the regulator.
But Miliband’s department hit back at the claims, telling City A.M.: “This piece is a complete fabrication – it invents meetings and decisions that have not taken place.
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Were Miliband to have withdrawn the licences, it could have left some North Sea oil firms millions of pounds out of pocket having prepared bids before the general election was called that were in the final throes of being approved.
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It would appear that they are incompatible positions: The manifesto says “We will not issue new licences to explore new fields … ” but yet it’s a complete fabication that Ed Miliband has banned the North Sea oil regulator from issuing any outstanding drilling and exploration licences and licences yet to be approved are going to be granted? So, which is it?
