Government continues protecting Fossil Fuel Industry
Despite the fact that the burning of coal, oil, and natural gas is leading us towards a hothouse earth, the government continues to subsidize the fossil fuel industry, criminalize climate protests, and roll back environmental protections.
Read a roundup of the headlines:
“The climate crisis accelerates. Anti-protest laws proliferate. These developments are not unrelated.
You might have seen the new report by the World Meteorological Society, the one warning about humanity entering what UN secretary general António Guterres calls ‘“uncharted territory of destruction”. As emissions exceed pre-pandemic levels, the planet is now as likely as not to face temperatures more than 1.5C above pre-industrial measurements (the limit the UN COP26 summit pledged to avert) within the next five years.
A separate study in Science speculates that key ecological tipping points (including ice sheet collapses and the disruption of a major north Atlantic ocean current) may have already been passed.
Why, despite all the warnings, does the world keep hurtling towards destruction?
Well, the environmental economist Aviel Verbruggen estimates that the fossil fuel industry generated profits of US$2.8bn each and every day for the last 50 years.’”
The Guardian, As resistance grows to the fossil fuel regime, laws are springing up everywhere to suppress climate activists
“The Supreme Court is at it again.
Monday kicks off another term of cases that could fundamentally reshape environmental regulation in the U.S., with major consequences for the climate.
The court's six-justice conservative supermajority is newly emboldened after a series of decisions last term that upended abortion access, scaled back the federal government's response to the Covid-19 pandemic and limited the Environmental Protection Agency's power to curb planet-warming emissions.
The court's term opens Monday with arguments in a case called Sackett v. EPA. The gist: Chantell and Michael Sackett want to build a house near Idaho's Priest Lake, but EPA regulations are making that difficult. If they win, the court could restrict EPA's ability to protect wetlands, which act as carbon sinks, absorbing CO2 and filtering out chemicals, human waste and other pollutants.
The case also presents another opportunity for the court to handcuff agencies in a manner that could ripple far beyond environmental law...
The Supreme Court may also pick up a case that could help fossil fuel companies avoid paying for climate change damages. In Suncor Energy Inc. v. Boulder County, major oil companies are asking the court to throw a hurdle in the path of local governments demanding they foot the bill for the massive toll changing climate is taking.
The oil industry won a similar Supreme Court case in 2021, which delayed two dozen climate liability lawsuits that accuse the fossil fuel firms of deceiving the public and worsening the effects of global warming.”
Politico, Supreme Court not finished with climate
“Coal, oil, and natural gas received $5.9 trillion in subsidies in 2020 — or roughly $11 million every minute — according to a new analysis from the International Monetary Fund.
Explicit subsidies accounted for only 8 percent of the total. The remaining 92 percent were implicit subsidies, which took the form of tax breaks or, to a much larger degree, health and environmental damages that were not priced into the cost of fossil fuels, according to the analysis.
“Underpricing leads to overconsumption of fossil fuels, which accelerates global warming and exacerbates domestic environmental problems including losses to human life from local air pollution and excessive and road congestion and accidents,” authors wrote. “This has long been recognized, but globally countries are still a long way from getting energy prices right.”
Yale Environment 360, Fossil Fuels Received $5.9 Trillion In Subsidies in 2020, Report Finds
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Price of Oil, Fossil Fuel Subsidies Overview