Flaring is a way to get rid of gases such as methane that arise when pumping oil out of the ground. Photograph: Eremeychuk Leonid/Alamy
Rules to prevent ‘enormous waste’ of fuel are seen as weak and poorly enforced and firms have little incentive to stop
The fossil fuel industry pumped an extra 389m tonnes of carbon pollution into the atmosphere last year by needlessly flaring gas, a World Bank report has found, in an “enormous waste” of fuel that heats the planet by about as much as the country of France.
Flaring is a way to get rid of gases such as methane that arise when pumping oil out of the ground. While it can sometimes keep workers safe by relieving buildups of pressure, the practice is routine in many countries because it is often cheaper to burn gas than to capture, transport, process and sell it.
Global gas flaring rose for a second year in a row to reach its highest level since 2007, the report found, despite growing concerns about energy security and climate breakdown.
It found that 151bn cubic metres (bcm) of gas were burned during oil and gas production in 2024, up by 3bcm from the year before.
Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
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The UK’s broken justice system is locking young activists like me away – and we’ll all suffer the consequences
My name’s Ella. I am a fairly average 22-year-old from Birmingham, central England. I have friends, a supportive family, and hopes and dreams for after graduation. I’m also facing up to ten years in prison.
On 5 August last year, I was arrested along with three others on a side street in Gatley, near Manchester, just after 4am. We had been planning to enter Manchester Airport’s airfield – provided it was safe to do so – to block the taxiway by glueing our hands to the tarmac.
We didn’t get near the airport, but I have been held in HMP Styal, a women’s prison just outside Manchester, ever since. I was charged with conspiracy to cause a public nuisance and spent six months in prison awaiting trial. I was found guilty in February and will have served three months by the time I am sentenced at the end of this month.
So what drives a young person like me to take nonviolent action as drastic as this? You may have realised that I am a member of Just Stop Oil. At the time of my arrest, I was carrying boltcutters, glue, a hi-vis jacket, and a banner reading ‘sign the treaty’ in all caps.
It was the summer of 2024, the hottest year ever recorded. We were trying to send a message to the British government: it must sign the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty and make an immediate plan to transition away from oil, gas and coal to prevent further global heating, climate breakdown, and eventual societal collapse.
We wanted to go to an airport – a symbol of the carbon economy – to make clear that the UK’s ‘business as usual’ approach is sending humanity over a cliff edge into destruction, displacement, and massive loss of life.
Our protest may have seemed drastic, but as I tried to explain to the judge and the jury, it was proportionate to the scale of the crisis we are facing. We all stand to lose everything.
Until my arrest, I was a final-year environmental science student at the University of Leeds. As I told the court, the science is clear: burning and extracting fossil fuels is heating the planet and leading to mass crop failure, with food insecurity and starvation for large parts of the world and drastic price hikes on staples for the rest of us. Crop failure on this scale will kill millions and displace many more. A billion people could be on the move within 25 years. The impacts will be felt everywhere, by everyone.
I spoke about my university lecturers, who are prominent climate scientists and are fearful for their children’s lives. They feel they aren’t being listened to, that the government is implementing policies contrary to science. I said that the knowledge I had gained from studying gave me a responsibility to act.
Court trials like mine are remarkably technical – you must submit a legal defence if you want the judge to allow jurors to consider your motivation, or the context of your actions. I did not have a lawyer and, like my co-defendants, put forward a defence of ‘self-defence’ and ‘necessity’.
I argued that I acted not only to protect the lives of the millions already living on the frontline of climate breakdown, but in defence of myself and young people globally. I told the court how I am afraid for my own future, the future of my brother, my friends, my cousins, and all young people everywhere.
The judge dismissed this, saying the climate crisis does not pose an ‘immediate threat to life’. He told jurors to ignore the context around our actions and focus only on whether we had planned to commit a ‘crime’, saying that anything they’d heard about climate change during the hearing was irrelevant as it was a political or philosophical belief.
But the climate crisis is not a belief, it is science, and science doesn’t care about legal defences, judges’ rulings or prison sentences. It will continue to worsen and take more lives until governments work together to stop burning fossil fuels.
Conservative ministers loudly championed free speech – right up until they outlawed it. Now, we’re all at risk
Over the past six months in prison, this truth has become clearer and clearer. Climate breakdown is no longer something I read about in textbooks, study in lectures, or write about in exams. I’m seeing it through the bars of my cell window.
On New Year’s Day, a state of emergency was declared as Greater Manchester was hit by heavy rains. Over a thousand people were evacuated from flooded homes – HMP Styal’s prison officers among them – their possessions ruined, and huge disruption caused.
The rising waters cut off the roads leading to the prison, causing a staffing crisis that compromised our safety, with no one allowed to leave their wings or houses. The prison’s library and workplaces were flooded, ruining books and leaving some prisoners with no work or activities even after the regime returned to normal.
Such extreme weather is being seen everywhere. On the penultimate day of my hearing, 14 people were killed in floods in the US state of Kentucky, including a seven-year-old girl and her mother, who were washed away in their car. I used my closing speech to tell jurors about this, about how upset it made me. How many people will die before we open our eyes?
The judge ruled it irrelevant.
Having been barred from considering almost everything we’d said, the jury had little choice but to find us guilty. I am grateful to all twelve of them, though, for listening to what we had to say for three weeks and making the only decision they could within the constraints given.
Despite the guilty verdict, being in prison and my impending sentencing, I am at peace. I should have had my whole life ahead of me, and my future now hangs in the balance, but I know that I acted in line with my conscience and moral convictions and, above all, nonviolently: without violence and actively against violence.
Being on trial at a crown court in my early twenties was the scariest thing I’ve ever done. But what choice did I have? At university, I studied the truth, and now I have to act on it.
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The UK government is about to host a summit with the International Energy Agency (IEA) on the future of energy security. It does so as the world grapples with war, geopolitical realignments and trade barriers, against a backdrop of accelerating climate upheavals. One of the expected outcomes of this summit is a new, agreed definition of what constitutes energy security in the 21st century.
Common understandings of energy security have focused on making supplies reliable and affordable, with less attention paid to ensuring sources of energy are sustainable and less volatile over the medium- and long-term. This neglect compromises our collective security.
The IEA’s 31 member countries and 13 associates include most of the world’s most powerful states. Its influence means that this new definition of energy security will be used to inform government policies and investment decisions around the world. Given the cost of energy infrastructure, and the lengthy time it takes to build these projects, this definition is set to shape our future, economically and climatically.
But there is a very real risk that this definition will open the door to further investments into fossil fuel production under the guise of energy security.
International Energy Agency (IEA) member and ‘association member’ countries. IEA, CC BY-SA
After Russia invaded Ukraine, governments rushed to cut their reliance on Russian fossil fuels. This caused major disruptions as prices spiked and millions were pushed into energy poverty.
Europe alone spent an extra €517–€831 billion (£444–£713 billion) on energy in 2021 and 2022, even though some imports from Russia continued through so-called “shadow fleets”. Some argued that high fossil fuel prices only embolden leaders like Putin and help fund their conflicts.
Governments responded with “energy nativism”, as they sought to secure as much energy as possible for their citizens at whatever cost. This typically meant boosting renewables and bulk buying oil and gas. In the UK’s case, it also meant the previous government issuing hundreds of new licenses to drill for oil and gas to “increase energy security” – licenses the current government says it will honour).
Shipments of liquified natural gas (LNG) were also redirected from poorer countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh towards the highest bidders in Europe and Asia. This raises the question of who exactly is becoming more energy secure and at what cost.
Meanwhile, large fossil fuel exporters like Qatar, the US and Australia ramped up production. A US official even referred to its gas exports as “molecules of freedom”. Australia has exported so much natural gas it may have to buy its own gas back from Japan at market price.
The sheer volume of investment in new oil and gas infrastructure like offshore rigs or LNG terminals, combined with long build times, has locked in higher fossil fuel production and pushed emissions to record levels. This poses significant risks for both exporters and importers, especially as future demand is uncertain and energy markets remain volatile.
Fossil fuels remain dominant
More fundamentally, continued reliance on fossil fuels is making humanity less secure. The vast majority of emissions still come from burning coal, oil or gas. Preventing climate catastrophe therefore requires us to phase out fossil fuels as fast as possible – with wealthy nations leading the charge. In their place, we’ll have to generate energy from renewable sources that do not replicate the volatility of globally traded fossil fuels.
Yet despite some progressive policies, fossil fuels remain dominant across the global economy. Investment in oil and gas today is almost double the level it must fall below if the world is to reach net zero by 2050, according to the IEA’s own modelling.
The pursuit of energy security has boosted renewables, but adding additional clean energy isn’t enough – it must ultimately displace fossil fuels entirely. This will require a whole-economy shift. That means cutting production of fossil fuels while also reducing demand, stabilising prices and building out clean energy fast enough to support the electrification of transport, industry and heating.
But supply chains for batteries, solar panels and other key technologies are vulnerable. Delays and shortages could mean electricity prices spike, sparking social unrest. This is yet another risk of getting energy security wrong: if inflationary pressures drive the immiseration of the general public, governments and their energy plans will be short lived.
The definition of energy security that comes out of the IEA summit should reflect the fact we’re now in a world of constant crises. True energy security means charting a path towards a world that is more socially, economically and environmentally secure. This means developing a well-managed global plan to phase out fossil fuels.
Federal subsidies to the oil and gas sector totalled $74.6 billion over five years, Environmental Defence found. Credit: David Niddrie / Flickr (CC BY NC 2.0)
Amid trade war talk of expanding Canadian energy infrastructure, a new report reveals that direct Canadian subsidies to the fossil fuel and petrochemical sectors reached nearly $30 billion in 2024.
For comparison’s sake, Canada spent between $38 billion and $39 billion on defense in 2024.
“Oil and gas companies – emboldened by their influence over President Trump – are exploiting the current economic uncertainty to call on governments to double down on fossil fuels,” Julia Levin, associate director of national climate with nonprofit group Environmental Defence, which put out the report, said in a statement.
Levin notes that oil and gas companies have been vocal in their demand that politicians work to expand pipelines and related projects, and seek new export markets for Canadian fossil fuels. Meanwhile, Canadian taxpayers, who fund the companies’ subsidies, face the expensive consequences of climate change and related disasters.
In recent weeks, the chief executives of Canada’s major oil and gas companies — including Suncor, Cenovus, Enbridge, and Imperial — signed an open letter to the leaders of four of Canada’s major political parties. In it, they demand federal party leaders to eliminate regulations, emissions caps, tanker bans on the West Coast, and carbon levees on major emitters.
The open letter was endorsed by prominent Canadian conservatives, including Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre. Alberta Premier Danielle Smith recently repeated many of the same industry talking points in defending her taxpayer-funded trip to attend a controversial PragerU fundraiser where she shared a stage with far-right influencer Ben Shapiro.
Last month, Liberal leader Mark Carney indicated his interest in building new east-west pipelines, ostensibly to reduce dependence on foreign imports and develop new trade opportunities.
“This push ignores the fact that fossil fuels come at a high price — not just at the pump, but through rising costs of groceries, worsening health outcomes, damage to property and huge government handouts,” said Levin in the statement.
“It also ignores the rapid energy transition towards renewable energy that is happening globally.”
Among Environmental Defence’s principal findings is that the Canadian government spent $29.6 billion on the fossil fuel sector in 2024, which is nearly $6 billion more than what it would cost to build interprovincial grid connection infrastructure. Recent research from the International Institute for Sustainable Development suggests that a national electrical grid could lower electricity costs nationwide, create hundreds of thousands of new clean tech jobs, stabilize electricity costs, improve Canadians’ health, and provide Canada with the energy security currently threatened by the Trump trade war.
The Trans Mountain project has received $21 billion in government financing. Credit: Sally T. Buck / Flickr (CC BC NC ND 2.0)
Canada’s direct subsidies includes approximately $21 billion in financing for the Trans Mountain Pipeline, $7.5 billion from Export Development Canada (which included money for LNG and carbon capture, and financing for Canadian companies and companies and governments seeking to buy Canadian products), and another $700 million for LNG infrastructure.
Big Oil regularly promotes LNG and carbon capture as potential solutions for the climate crisis, though these arguments have been thoroughly debunked. LNG advocates in Canada often characterize it as a “bridge fuel” that could be used to help developing nations transition away from coal. Recent research indicates that the world’s two largest coal users — India and China — are in fact transitioning directly to renewable energy systems like solar and wind.
Moreover, LNG is a deadly fossil fuel that also happens to be resource intensive to produce, and often results in large volumes of methane emissions. Methane is estimated to be 80 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. As for carbon capture, recent research from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis poured cold water on Canada’s premier industry-driven carbon capture project — Pathways Alliance — determining that it is not financially viable and is unlikely to provide any environmental benefit. This determination is consistent with expert analyses of other carbon capture projects, both in Canada and globally.
Canada Has Given Away $74.6 Billion in Subsidies
Environmental Defence estimates Canada spent $2.4 billion on carbon capture projects in 2024, more than in previous years.
The group’s report also determined that federal subsidies to the oil and gas sector over the last five years amounted to $74.6 billion. Their analysis of what constitutes federal fossil fuel funding includes direct grants, tax breaks, loans, and loan guarantees from the government of Canada and some federal agencies (such as Export Development Canada).
Despite oil industry claims that fossil fuel companies are investing in climate solutions (claims that have led the federal government to introduce anti-greenwashing legislation), Environmental Defence found that none of Canada’s four largest industry companies reported investments in climate initiatives or emissions reductions as part of their capital spending.
The report has also reveals that pollution created by oil and gas companies reached an estimated $53 billion in 2024. This includes increased health costs, property damage from extreme weather events, as well as decreased agricultural productivity, a consequence of changing weather patterns.
“The calls for a new oil pipeline pose real risks to Canadian taxpayers,” said Levin in an email to DeSmog, noting not only that global demand for oil is set to peak in the next four years and then significantly decline, but that oil demand is already showing signs of plateauing in major energy markets like China.
“No company is willing to bet its own money on what is guaranteed to quickly become a massive stranded asset,” said Levin. “Instead, oil and gas companies want taxpayers to pay the price for new fossil fuel infrastructure as their wealthy shareholders reap the rewards.”
Levin is particularly critical of the under reported fact that federal subsidies to the fossil fuel sector have deepened Canada’s economic vulnerability.
“The Canadian public is already on the hook for the new Trans Mountain Pipeline — to the tune of somewhere around $30 to $40 billion and rising. And the project has done nothing to reduce our dependence on the United States, with nearly half its oil still flowing south of the border,” she said.
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers contractors in protective gear remove hazardous materials from a home destroyed in the Eaton Fire on March 26, 2025 in Altadena, California. (Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)
“We’ve got to work fast to end fossil fuel operations near our homes, schools, and hospitals and trade fossil fuel infrastructure for healthy, clean energy,” said one co-author.
“The evidence is clear that fossil fuels—and the fossil fuel industry and its enablers—are driving a multitude of interlinked crises that jeopardize the breadth and stability of life on Earth.”
That’s the first line of the abstract for an article published Monday by top scientists who reviewed “the vast scientific evidence showing that fossil fuels and the fossil fuel industry are the root cause of the climate crisis, harm public health, worsen environmental injustice, accelerate biodiversity extinction, and fuel the petrochemical pollution crisis.”
The new paper in the peer-reviewed journal Oxford Open Climate Change highlights the diverse impacts of “every stage of the fossil fuel life cycle” and stresses that the “industry has obscured and concealed this evidence through a decadeslong, multibillion-dollar disinformation campaign aimed at blocking action to phase out” its deadly products.
“The fossil fuel industry has spent decades misleading us about the harms of their products and working to prevent meaningful climate action,” said co-author Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard University, in a statement. “Perversely, our governments continue to give out hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to this damaging industry. It is past time that stops.”
“The most polluted communities should be prioritized for clean energy investments and removal and cleanup of dirty fossil fuel infrastructure.”
While the researchers focused on the United States, “as the world’s largest oil and gas producer and dominant contributor to these fossil fuel crises,” their review—including proposed “science-and-justice-based solutions” for an economywide effort to “forge a path forward to sustaining life on Earth”—applies to the whole world, which is quickly heating up due to emissions from coal, gas, and oil.
The article features sections on the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis, public health harms, environmental injustice, biodiversity loss and extinction, petrochemical pollution, and industry disinformation. Each section lays out the “problem” and “solutions.”
The climate emergency section includes details such as “the production and combustion of oil, gas, and coal are responsible for nearly 90% of human-caused carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and approximately 79% of total greenhouse gas emissions,” and “failures in political will to implement necessary climate action have made the 1.5°C benchmark nearly impossible to achieve without overshoot,” referring to a primary goal of the 2015 Paris agreement.
Although the current U.S. administration has demonstrated its alliance to the fossil fuel industry—including with President Donald Trump’s recent energy emergency declaration—the scientists still emphasized what’s possible in the country.
“In the USA, powerful policy levers are available to governments and civil society at the local, state, national, and international levels to phase out fossil fuels and transition to a clean, renewable energy economy,” they wrote. “These levers include regulation (e.g. applying and enforcing existing laws), legislation (e.g. polluters pay laws, fossil fuel subsidy reform, land use laws limiting drilling), and litigation (e.g. holding fossil fuel companies accountable, defending existing law).”
They also warned that “last-ditch efforts to prolong the fossil fuel industry are proliferating. These include counterproductive false solutions, like carbon capture and storage (CCS), which would perpetuate fossil fuel use while capturing only some of the resulting emissions, and hydrogen made from fossil fuels.”
The public health section notes that “air pollution from fossil fuel combustion accounts for 8.7 million (equaling 1 in 5) premature deaths per year worldwide and 350,000 premature deaths per year in the USA. In a single year, air pollution from oil and gas production in the USA resulted in 410,000 asthma exacerbations, 2,200 new cases of childhood asthma, and 7,500 premature deaths in 2016.”
Co-author David J.X. González, an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, said Monday that “we’ve got to work fast to end fossil fuel operations near our homes, schools and hospitals and trade fossil fuel infrastructure for healthy, clean energy.”
“Oil, gas, and coal will continue to condemn us to more deaths, wildlife extinctions, and extreme weather disasters unless we make dirty fossil fuels a thing of the past.”
The paper points out that “climate change is increasing incidence of physical and mental health impacts and mortality through multiple pathways: worsening extreme events including heatwaves, severe storms, floods, droughts, and wildfires; shifting ranges of disease vectors; threats to food security; and displacement and forced migration, which restrict access to healthcare and other basic services.”
“These harms, though broadly felt, also disproportionately impact marginalized communities which are already disproportionately burdened by other socioenvironmental hazards, as well as susceptible populations including young children, people with certain disabilities, people experiencing homelessness, pregnant people, people with chronic diseases, and older adults,” the publication continues.
University of Montana associate professor of environmental studies Robin Saha, another co-author, said that “decades of discriminatory policies, such as redlining, have concentrated fossil fuel development in Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor white communities, resulting in devastating consequences.”
“For far too long, these fenceline communities have been treated as sacrifice zones by greedy, callous industries,” Saha added. “The most polluted communities should be prioritized for clean energy investments and removal and cleanup of dirty fossil fuel infrastructure.”
The paper’s other co-authors are Robert Bullard of Texas Southern University, Boston University’s Jonathan J. Buonocore and Mary D. Willis, Trisia Farrelly of the Cawthron Institute, William Ripple of Oregon State University, and the Center for Biological Diversity’s Nathan Donley, John Fleming, and Shaye Wolf.
“The science can’t be any clearer that fossil fuels are killing us,” declared Wolf, the paper’s lead author and the center’s climate science director. “Oil, gas, and coal will continue to condemn us to more deaths, wildlife extinctions, and extreme weather disasters unless we make dirty fossil fuels a thing of the past. Clean, renewable energy is here, it’s affordable, and it will save millions of lives and trillions of dollars once we make it the centerpiece of our economy.”
