Fossil fuels
Direct Air Capture and Big Oil
There’s something cagey going on with the world’s biggest corporations, over-weighted by oil producers, now feigning green.
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Planet of the Humans: Review by Richard Heinberg
The recent film, “Planet of the Humans,” has led to some serious controversy within the world of alternative energies. One of the world’s leading advocates for making the shift away from fossil fuels offers his perspective.
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U.N. Chief Says There’s a Bigger Threat Than Coronavirus
In Earth Day speech, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres challenges President Donald Trump on fossil fuel subsidies.
Read More America’s Great Greenwashing
Celebrating 50 years of Earth Day, Michael Moore, executive producer and the director Jeff Gibbs re-released their daunting and alarming documentary about the heart and soul of America’s Green Movement in a compelling film: Planet of the Humans (2019).
Read More 10 Things We’ve Learned a Decade After the Deepwater Horizon Disaster
We know a lot more now about the ecology of the Gulf of Mexico and the risks of deep-water drilling, but that doesn’t mean we’re any safer.
Read More The Coming Ecosystem Collapse Is Already Here for Coral
The Great Barrier Reef is in the midst of its third mass-bleaching event in the last five years. This year’s heat-induced bleaching—which occurs during the region’s summer season—is more severe than the previous two, with 25 percent of the reefs experiencing widespread bleaching.
Read More What Humans Are Really Doing to Our Planet, in 19 Jaw-Dropping Images
Ahead of a series of major events later this year, The Foundation for Deep Ecology and the Population Media Center released a collection that illustrates the devastating effects of out-of-control growth and waste, and it’s breathtaking.
Read More ‘The Saddest Thing Is That This Won’t Be Breaking News’: Concentration of CO2 Hits Record High of 416 ppm
“Emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation need to be reduced to ZERO to stop this trend!”
Read More When It Comes to Climate Hypocrisy, Canada’s Leaders Have Reached a New Low
A territory that has 0.5% of the Earth’s population plans to use up nearly a third of the planet’s remaining carbon budget.
Read More So The US Is Invading Iraq Again
Though It won’t be as exciting as last time. If the initial invasion of Iraq was a violent sexual assault by a stranger in a dark alley, this one is more like an abusive husband raping his wife and then making her cook him dinner. But it is just as much a violent violation of personal sovereignty in both instances.
Read More The Bushfire Crisis Is a Wake-Up Call We Can’t Afford to Ignore
A British MP described the Australian bushfire crisis as a “wake-up call for the world” on global warming, but the Australian government is still asleep at the wheel.
Read More The Five Corrupt Pillars of Climate Change Denial
The fossil fuel industry, political lobbyists, media moguls and individuals have spent the past 30 years sowing doubt about the reality of climate change – where none exists. The latest estimate is that the world’s five largest publicly-owned oil and gas companies spend about US$200 million a year on lobbying to control, delay or block binding climate policy.
Read More The New Climate Math: The Numbers Keep Getting More Frightening
Scientists keep raising ever-louder alarms about the urgency of tackling climate change, but the world’s governments aren’t listening. Yet the latest numbers don’t lie: Nations now plan to keep producing more coal, oil, and gas than the planet can endure.
Read More China’s Renewed Coal Boom
China’s failure to kick a long-standing addiction to coal has thrown a knockout punch to the Paris Agreement of 2015, including its 195 signatories. Suddenly, out of the blue, the world has turned upside down!
Read More The Age of Radical Evil
We live in an age of radical evil. The architects of this evil are despoiling the earth and driving the human species toward extinction.
Read More The Big Polluters’ Masterstroke Was to Blame the Climate Crisis on You and Me
While we are all participants in the first great extermination, our responsibility is not evenly shared. Even middle-class people in the rich world, whose effects are significant, are guided by a system of thought and action that is shaped in large part by corporations.
Read More Trump Moves to Open 1.5 Million Acres of Alaskan Refuge for Oil Drilling By End of the Year
The Trump administration has initialized the final steps to open up nearly 1.6 million acres of the protected Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge to allow oil and gas drilling.
Read More Saving the Planet Means Overthrowing the Ruling Elites
Friday’s climate strike by students across the globe will have no more impact than the mass mobilizations by women following the election of Donald Trump or the hundreds of thousands of protesters who took to the streets to denounce the Iraq War. This does not mean these protests should not have taken place. They should have. But such demonstrations need to be grounded in the bitter reality that in the corridors of power we do not count.
Read More Climate Catastrophe Comes for Europe
When most people think of climate change, what come to mind are the poles, Asia’s fast vanishing glaciers, or Australia, where punishing droughts are drying up the sub-continent’s longest river, the Murray. But climate change is an equal opportunity disrupter, and Europe is facing a one-two punch of too much water in the north and center and not enough in the south.
Read More Communities Know What’s Good for Them When It Comes to Transport
Designing transport projects to help free up traffic is a flawed approach if done in isolation or prioritisation to the safe and active movement of people.
Read More How the World’s Dirtiest Industries Have Learned to Pollute Our Politics
The tragedy of our times is that the gathering collapse of our life support systems has coincided with the age of public disservice. Just as we need to rise above self-interest and short-termism, governments around the world now represent the meanest and dirtiest of special interests.
Read More Drastic Changes to Food Production and Consumption Needed to Save Planet From Catastrophic Warming, IPCC Reveals
When some of the world’s top scientists conclude an international summit in Geneva next week, they are expected to call for a major shift to vegetarian diets around the world in order to keep the warming of the globe under 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
Read More Paul Hawken: ‘We Need to Be Fierce and Fearless’ to Reverse Climate Change
Social entrepreneur and author Paul Hawken is a leading voice in the environmental movement. His visionary ideas emphasize changing the relationship between business and the Earth. As humanity seeks to rise to the challenge of our time, Hawken provides a refreshingly positive and comprehensive approach to global warming solutions…Bioneers sat down with Paul Hawken to learn more about his work and his plan for helping build a more connected world.
Read More New Library of Fossil Fuel Industry Documents Provide Key Ingredient Against Climate Denial and Inaction
The University of California at San Francisco’s new fossil fuel industry documents library offers a tool to help the legal, political and public education fight against climate change and the companies responsible.
Read More Oil Leak Update: 1000x Worse Than Rig Owner Claimed, Still Going After 14 Years
The federal government is looking into the details from the longest running oil spill in U.S. history, and it’s looking far worse than the oil rig owner let on.
Read MoreUnited States Spend Ten Times More On Fossil Fuel Subsidies Than Education
Despite nations worldwide committing to a reduction in carbon emissions and implementing renewable energy through the Paris Agreement, the IMF’s findings expose how fossil fuels continue to receive huge amounts of taxpayer funding. The report explains that fossil fuels account for 85% of all global subsidies.
Read MoreBritain Becomes First Major Country to Commit to Legally Binding Zero Emissions Target
Theresa May will make the UK the first economy in the G7 to legislate for zero emissions. The CCC report also confirmed that even if other countries followed the UK by setting a zero emissions target, there was still just a 50/50 chance that the planet would remain below the recommended temperature of 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100. Anything above that guarantees a shift in climate that will threaten human life.
Read MoreIn the Fight Against Climate Change, Humans and Wildlife Are Allies
Climate change is accelerating at a breakneck pace, already affecting about half of all threatened mammal species and a quarter of threatened birds. And according to a study published in Science last year, if nothing is done to curb our carbon emissions, nearly 50 percent of the planet’s insects, which make up the foundation of food webs all over the globe, could disappear by the end of the century.
Read MoreGreenpeace Campaigners Stop BP Rig Bound for North Sea, Stalling Fossil Fuel Giant’s Plan to Extract 30 Million Barrels of Oil
Three Greenpeace campaigners halted a British Petroleum oil rig off the coast of Scotland on Sunday as it prepared to leave for the North Sea to drill oil wells. Carrying enough provisions to last several days aboard the rig, the climate action advocates pulled up to the 27,000-ton vessel in small boats as it attempted to leave Cromarty Firth, bound for the Vorlich oil field where BP plans to access up to 30 million barrels of oil.
Read More‘Blatant Attempt to Intimidate’: Trump Administration Proposal Threatens Pipeline Protesters With Up to 20 Years in Prison
Building on efforts by multiple states to crack down on those fighting the construction of climate-destroying fossil fuel infrastructure, the Trump administration unveiled a proposal on Monday that would criminalize pipeline protests at the federal level and hit demonstrators with up to 20 years in prison.
Read MoreClimate Plan
The Climate Plan advocates measures that can be taken in efforts to improve the situation regarding the climate, as well as regarding the health, prospects and wellbeing of people and life in general. These measures can and should be implemented immediately, in line with the current climate crisis.
Read MoreEcological Importance and Human Rights Be Damned, Trump Admin Says Fossil Fuel Pillaging in Arctic Refuge Coming Soon
Interior Dept. statement that “lease sale will happen in 2019” comes as oil companies face heat over possible extraction on previously protected public land. Environmental and indigenous activists are hoping to make sure the Trump administration’s promise to soon sell oil leases in the previously protected Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is never fulfilled.
Read More Rise of the Extinction Deniers
Just like climate deniers, they’re out to obfuscate and debase the scientists and conservationists trying to save the world — and maybe get rid of a few pesky species in the process.
Read MoreLet’s Be Clear, Says Mexico Environment Minister, ‘Parasitic and Predatory Neoliberalism’ to Blame for Climate Crisis
In a scathing rebuke to the elite capitalists and politicians who largely control the global economic and energy systems, Mexico’s newly-appointed environment secretary on Wednesday pointed a stern finger at the “parasitic and predatory neoliberals” for being the key culprits behind the planetary climate crisis.
Read MoreThere’s a Climate Crisis – but Trump’s Cabinet Continues to Backtrack on Science
With Donald Trump at their helm, Republicans will keep denying climate change because it represents a dire threat to their fossil fuel donors’ bottom lines. Democratic leadership would do well to follow the lead of their party’s insurgent progressive wing, and take the climate threat as seriously.
Read MoreGlobal Warming: Human Activity Is the Cause
Fresh studies have again confirmed a vital fact about global warming: human activity is its cause. Science questions its own findings, which is why we should trust it.
Read MoreWhy Carbon Credits For Forest Preservation May Be Worse Than Nothing
For the airline industry and industrialized nations in the Paris climate accord, offsets could be a cheap alternative to actually reducing fossil fuel use. But the desperate hunger for these carbon credit plans appears to have blinded many of their advocates to the mounting pile of evidence that they haven’t — and won’t — deliver the climate benefit they promise.
Read MoreNoam Chomsky: We Must Stop War with Iran Before It’s Too Late
Led by John Bolton, the Trump administration is pursuing catastrophe to protect U.S. dominance. Assuming that rationality prevails and that Bolton and co. can be contained, the U.S. will continue with the successful program of crushing Iran’s economy and punishing its population.
Read More The Zero Carbon Bill Through the Eyes of an Everyday Activist
The Zero Carbon Bill was released by the New Zealand Government on the 8th May, 2019 and everyone has an opinion on it. Will it be any good for us, the biodiversity we cherish and the planet? The jury is definitely out on that one as scientists, academics, economists, politicians and everyday activists like me try to figure out what it will mean. Its intention is to get New Zealand on a pathway of no more than 1.5C warming, in a way which includes all sectors.
Read MoreThis Month in Climate Science: Warming-driven Economic Inequality, Disappearing Alps and Plummeting Penguin Populations
Every month, climate scientists make new discoveries that advance our understanding of climate change’s causes and impacts. The research gives a clearer picture of the threats we already face and explores what’s to come if we don’t reduce emissions at a quicker pace. A snapshot of the month’s significant scientific literature, compiled from some of the leading peer-reviewed journals.
Read MoreA Major Coal Company Went Bust. Its Bankruptcy Filing Shows That It Was Funding Climate Change Denialism.
The bankruptcy of one of the largest domestic coal producers in the country has revealed that the company maintains financial ties to many of the leading groups that have sowed doubt over the human causes of global warming.
Read More Reminder: Climate Change Was No Accident
As far back as 1982, fossil fuel executives knew they were trading a few decades of profits for the entire future of the planet.
Read MoreCosta Rica Set To Become The Worlds First Plastic-Free And Carbon-Free Country By 2021
Costa Rica is in the top 5 of countries that are leading the way into renewable resources. It might seem small but it has a really big environmental impact. Since 2014 the country’s energy has been coming from 99% renewable sources, and it has been running on 100% renewable energy for over two months twice in the last two years.
Read MoreCanada Just Banned Ocean Drilling and Mining to Protect Marine Life
Canada has banned ocean drilling and mining in marine protected areas along the coast. According to Fisheries and Oceans Canada, the new marine protected areas will function like national parks of the sea. Drilling, mining, dumping, and bottom trawling — an industrial fishing method where a large net with heavy weights is dragged along the seabed — will all be prohibited.
Read MoreThe Last Time There Was This Much CO2, Trees Grew at the South Pole
The signs of our overheated planet abound, and another collection of recent reports and studies shows things are only continuing to accelerate as human-caused climate disruption progresses.
Read More Big Win! Washington Passes Clean Energy Bill!
New Mexico, Maryland, California, and Hawaii have all set 100 percent clean energy deadlines. The latest state to join this list, with the most impressive legislature of them all, is Washington.
Read MoreSaving Ecosystems to Protect the Climate, and Vice Versa: a Global Deal for Nature
A new study explores how to prevent a sixth great extinction and stop climate change at the same time. Forests, tundra and other ecosystems play critical roles.
Read MoreSaying Goodbye to Planet Earth
Chris Hedges argues that “the human-induced change to the ecosystem, at least for many thousands of years, will probably make the biosphere inhospitable to most forms of life [without] halting our consumption of fossil fuels, converting to a plant-based diet and dismantling the animal agriculture industry as well as greening deserts and restoring rainforests.”
Read MoreNorway Refuses to Drill for Billions of Barrels of Oil in Arctic, Leaving ‘Whole Industry Surprised and Disappointed’
The largest party in Norway’s parliament has delivered a significant blow to the country’s huge oil industry after withdrawing support for explorative drilling off the Lofoten islands in the Arctic, which are considered a natural wonder.
Read MoreThe (Other) Economic Madness of the Green New Deal
A green new deal that creates new jobs and stimulates economic growth amounts to little more than a final blow-out binge before our once-and-done global economy comes crashing down around our ears. The only means of mitigating the environmental catastrophe that is gathering pace around us is to engage in a managed process of de-growth to create far smaller, localised and less consumptive economies than we have had for many decades.
Read MoreWhat If…We Reduced Carbon Emissions to Zero by 2025?
In October 2018 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a stark warning: enact urgent measures to limit global warming within the next 12 years or irrevocably deplete the ecosystems that sustain human life on Earth. Hazel Healy sketches out a radical scenario of carbon cold-turkey.
Read More9 States Sue ‘Flat-Out Wrong’ Trump Administration Over Seismic Blasting in Atlantic
During these seismic surveys, ships fire blasts of air to the bottom of the sea every 10 to 12 seconds for weeks or months at a time to map the contours of the ocean floor in search of oil and gas deposits. The loud, continuous and far-reaching noise can damage the hearing and potentially disorientate and kill marine life, displace fish, devastate zooplankton and cause whales to beach.
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