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For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails The Bank of England has announced an expansion of its emergency gilt-buying programme, launched after chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget sparked market turmoil which left the UK on the brink of a financial crisis. The Bank said […] More
The broken US economy breeds inequality and insecurity. Here’s how to fix itJames K GalbraithOn one side, oceans of wealth and power. On the other, precarity and powerlessness. But we have the tools for reform Rising interest rates, a falling stock market, a seesaw in the price of gas, a high dollar and chaos in world finance – we see in all this, once again, the folly of trying to run the world’s largest economy through a central bank. It’s time to rethink the basics: what has happened in America? And what should be done?Adam Smith wrote: “Wealth, as Mr Hobbes says, is power.” Today in the United States we find islands of wealth and power on one side and an ocean of precarity and powerlessness, alongside poverty, on the other. This is a structural development over 50 years, the effect of politics and policies, but also of industrial change, globalization and new technologies, with intense regional, social, demographic and political implications.US mortgage rates climb to 6.7%, highest for 15 yearsRead moreFrom the 1930s to the 1970s America had a middle-class economy centered in the heartland, feeding and supplying the world with machinery and goods while drawing labor from the impoverished south to the thriving midwest – an economy of powerful trade unions and world-dominant corporations. This has become a bicoastal economy dominated by globalized finance, insurance and high-end services on one coast, and by information technology, aerospace and entertainment on the other.Finance and technology do not create many jobs, and the conduct of business in those sectors is rapacious and predatory, shading often into fraud. Some years ago we calculated the rise of income inequality measured between counties during the 1990s boom years, and found that half the increase was due to income gains in just five counties: Manhattan, Silicon Valley, Seattle. There have been other big gainers since, but the fact remains: the largest income and wealth gains in America have become highly concentrated in a few very specific places, sectors – and people.Yet practically all new jobs created in the past 30 years have been in services, and most of those in “stagnant services” – the profusion of restaurants, retail shops, hospitals and clinics, offices and entertainment venues, fueled by household incomes (and borrowings) exceeding requirements for material goods. Pay in these jobs is mediocre and employment is unstable. Families compensated by having two or more earners, each sometimes holding two or more jobs, where 50 years ago the norm was one earner with a steady job paying a living wage. Then Covid blasted the sector.For better or worse, we can’t go back: globalization and the digital revolution are irreversible facts of life. The June 2021 White House Review on the supply chain made this very clear, using semiconductors, rare earths, batteries and pharmaceuticals as examples. Our advanced sectors need world markets – including the Chinese market – as much as they need access to the world’s resources. US consumers benefit from imported goods and from the efficiencies of the information age.The question is: what do we do now? We can adjust, and build a fair and secure middle-class society, free of poverty and of oligarchy alike, with tools that are broadly familiar. These tools include:Expand social insuranceSocial security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance and Snap already greatly reduce poverty, insecurity and hunger in America. They can be broadened and strengthened. If we can’t get Medicare for All, then drop the age of eligibility to 55 – that would cover a large part of the most vulnerable population and reduce in a stroke the burden of private health insurance on employers.Raise the minimum wageA federal minimum wage at $15 per hour would provide a raise to at least 20% of all working Americans. It would solve in a stroke the supposed problem of “labor shortage” – without hurting any employer relative to any other. Nor would it encourage immigration, since US workers would step up to take decently paid jobs.Implement a job guaranteeA federal job guarantee is well-prepared proposal that would eliminate involuntary unemployment, set a basic wage standard, and provide willing workers with continuous employment on useful projects, giving private employers a labor pool from which they can easily recruit the workers that they need.Stabilize energy prices and suppliesThe TVA and other agencies provide stable power under long-term contracts. Why should oil and gas be run by private equity on a boom-and-bust basis? Stabilize energy prices and supplies – with regulation, quotas, price controls (as in Germany right now), long-term contracts and public utilities – and many other problems would become much easier to solve.Build public services, infrastructure, and fight climate changeAnd do this while cutting military commitments and spending. The main job of infrastructure is to improve the quality of life, with clean water and air, good transport and communications, and – urgently – to change the resource mix so as to mitigate, so far as possible, global warming. We cannot meet these needs and at the same time devote our talents and resources to wars – the limits to that are clear after Afghanistan and Iraq. It is past time to end the illusion that the United States can or should run the world.Shift taxation toward land rentA great principle of classical economics was that taxes should encourage labor and enterprise while discouraging waste in both the public and private spheres. In the 1980s, taxes were shifted away from personal and corporate incomes and capital gains and toward payrolls and sales – and the unsurprising result was the rise of an oligarchy of hyper-wealthy persons. The remedy now is to tax these accumulations and the associated rents – land values, mineral rights, technology “quasi-rents” – so as to bring the new plutocrats back to earth. A stronger estate-and-gift tax can spur the transfer of great fortunes to foundations and non-profits, such as hospitals, universities and churches, while working to prevent the emergence of dynasties, financial and political.Reform banking before it’s too lateThe Glass-Steagall Act protected the middle class – the ordinary depositor at a commercial bank – from the speculative whims of the elites. Today big money is back in charge, despite the great financial crisis – and much of the American public as well as the larger world is sick of it. Perhaps the toughest, most necessary reform is to reduce debts including student debts, to shrink the banks, to restore effective regulation, to prosecute frauds, and to discipline finance to serve the public good. This will take the glamour out of being a banker – and the intoxicating power out of running the Federal Reserve.Is this program realistic? Perhaps not. But consider the path we’re on. What I propose is an alternative – to pitchforks, anarchy and civil war.
James K Galbraith holds the Lloyd M Bentsen Jr chair in government/business relations at the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. In the 1970s, he drafted the monetary policy oversight provisions of the original version of the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act
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The American EV boom is about to begin. Does the US have the power to charge it? States have plans to ban gas-powered cars and the White House wants chargers along highways, but implementation is a challengeSpeaking in front of a line of the latest electric vehicles (EVs) at this month’s North American International Auto Show, President Joe Biden declared: “The great American road trip is going to be fully electrified.”Most vehicles on the road are still gas guzzlers, but Washington is betting big on change, hoping that major federal investment will help reach a target set by the White House for 50% of new cars to be electric by 2030. But there are roadblocks – specifically when it comes to charging them all. “Range anxiety,” or how far one can travel before needing to charge, is still cited as a major deterrent for potential EV buyers.The auto industry recently passed the 5% mark of EV market share – a watershed moment, analysts say, before rapid growth. New policies at the state and local level could very well spur that growth: the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed this summer, offers tax credits of $4,000 to purchase a used EV and up to $7,500 for certain new ones. In August, California, the nation’s largest state and economy, announced rules that would ban all new gas-powered cars by 2035. New York plans to follow.So now, the race is on to provide chargers to power all those new EVs.The administration’s target of 500,000 public charging units by 2030 is a far cry from the current count of nearly 50,000, according to the Department of Energy’s estimate. And those new chargers will have to be fast – what’s known as Level 2 or 3 charging – and functional in order to create a truly reliable system. Today, many are not.Last week, the White House approved plans for all 50 states, along with Washington DC, and Puerto Rico, to set up chargers along highways, unlocking $1.5bn in federal funding to that end. The money comes from the landmark infrastructure bill passed last year, which invests $7.5bn for EV charging in total.Electric vehicle charging stations get green light across USRead moreBut how much of that money is spent is largely going to be determined at the local level. “It’s a difference between policy and practice,” said Drew Lipsher, the chief development officer at Volta, an EV charging provider. “Now that the federal government has these policies, the question becomes, OK, how does this actually get implemented?” The practice, he said, is up to states and municipalities.As EV demand spikes, a growing number of cities are adopting policies for EV charging construction. In July, the city of Columbus passed an “EV readiness” ordinance, which will require new parking structures to host charging stations proportionate to the number of total parking spots, with at least one that is ADA-accessible. Honolulu and Atlanta have passed similar measures.One major challenge is creating a distribution model that can meet a diversity of needs.At the moment, most EV owners charge their cars at home with a built-in unit, which governments can help subsidize. But for apartment dwellers or those living in multi-family homes, that’s less feasible. “When we’re thinking about the largest pieces of the population, that’s where we need to really be focusing our attention. This is a major equity issue,” said Alexia Melendez Martineau, the policy manager at Plug-In America, an EV consumer advocacy group.Bringing power to people is one such solution. In Hoboken, New Jersey, Volta is working with the city to create a streetside charging network. “The network will be within a five-minute walk of every resident,” said Lipsher. “Hopefully this is a way for us to really import it to cities who believe public EV charging infrastructure on the street is important.” Similarly, in parts of Los Angeles – as in Berlin and London – drivers can get a charge from a street lamp.And there may be new technologies that could help, exciting experts and EV enthusiasts alike. That could include the roads themselves charging EVs through a magnetizable concrete technology being piloted in Indiana and Detroit. And bidirectional charging, where, similar to solar panels, drivers can put their electricity back into the grid – or perhaps even to another EV, through what’s known as electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE). Nissan approved the technology for their Leaf model this month.Prochazka said he imagined a future where cities rely on excess EV charge when energy demand spikes, rather than polluting peaker plants that are currently turned on to boost supply. “We haven’t even scratched the surface on the opportunities that are gonna exist once we get bidirectional happening,” said Prochazka.Experts hope these advances will help bridge the gap in historically disconnected areas, such as rural communities and communities of color. But first, planners have to listen: although extensive community engagement trials have been praised in states such as Arizona, the local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) chapter in Indiana accused the state’s draft plan of excluding Black communities.“The more the community has input on where these chargers go, how they’re used and how they’re designed,” said Melendez Martineau, “the better they’re going to serve the community.”Still, the US seems significantly more poised to electrify now than it did six months ago, says Dale Hall, a senior researcher who focuses on EVs at the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT).He says that the private sector, which is behind much of the charging infrastructure, is moving ahead with clear signals of support from the public sector. Stronger local policies or cutting-edge technology will only help dictate the speed of that transition, Hall added.He thinks the Biden administration’s goal for chargers is achievable. “The business case is just going to keep getting better.”TopicsElectric, hybrid and low-emission carsBiden administrationUS politicsClimate crisisAutomotive industrynewsReuse this content More
‘Slavery by any name is wrong’: the push to end unpaid labor in prisonsA nationwide movement hopes to close the ‘slavery loophole’ that enables the exploitation of 800,000 prisoners in the US When prison reformer Johnny Perez was incarcerated he made sheets, underwear and pillowcases working for Corcraft, a manufacturing division of New York State Correctional Services that uses prisoners to manufacture products for state and local agencies. His pay ranged between 17 cents and 36 cents an hour.“We have a system that forces people to work and not only forces them to work but does not give them an adequate living wage,” said Perez. “Slavery by any name is wrong. Slavery in any shape or form is wrong.”Perez is now part of a nationwide movement that hopes to reform what some have called the “slavery loophole” that allows incarcerated people to be paid tiny sums for jobs that – if they refuse to do them – can have dire consequences.The 13th amendment of the US constitution, ratified in 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude. But it contained an exception for “a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted”.This exception clause has been used to exploit prisoners in the US as workers, paying them nothing to a few dollars a day to perform jobs ranging from prison services to manufacturing or working for private employers where the majority of their pay is deducted for room and board and other expenses by the jurisdictions where they are incarcerated.A report published by the American Civil Liberties Union in June 2022 found about 800,000 prisoners out of the 1.2 million in state and federal prisons are forced to work, generating a conservative estimate of $11bn annually in goods and services while average wages range from 13 cents to 52 cents per hour. Five states – Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas – force prisoners to work without pay. The report concluded that the labor conditions of US prisoners violate fundamental human rights to life and dignity.A campaign to amend the constitution at the federal level and end the exception of the 13th amendment is being promoted by the US representative Nikema Williams and the senator Jeff Merkley. The bill has 175 co-sponsors in the House, 170 Democrats and 5 Republicans, and 14 co-sponsors in the US Senate, but has yet to leave committee for a floor vote in either the House or Senate.In the meantime the #EndTheException coalition, consisting of more than 80 national organizations, including criminal justice reform, civil rights and labor groups, is leading efforts to pass the abolition amendment at the federal level and through ballot initiatives at the state level.In November voters will decide on whether to remove exception clauses from their state constitutions in Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont. An abolition amendment passed in the California assembly, but failed to receive a Senate vote this year so that it could be on the ballot for voters this November.“The reality is that it is 2022 and in the United States, slavery is still legal,” said Bianca Tylek, founder and executive director of the non-profit Worth Rises. “These five states would join Colorado, Utah and Nebraska, states that have already ended the exception of their state’s constitutions. And so that would be exciting, that would bring that number to eight, with five out the eight being red states and I think that bodes well for where the campaign can go at the federal level.”It is time for change, said Johnny Perez. He emphasized that in prison, individuals aren’t provided adequate basic necessities such as food, toiletries, clothing and office supplies, and that the measly wages paid by these jobs don’t cover these extra expenses.Refusing a work assignment can also have adverse consequences, he said, ranging from being placed in solitary confinement to having any work issues placed on your record which affects parole and status within a prison that determines what privileges you receive. Workers in prison do not get any paid time off and are often forced to work even when sick unless an infirmary affirms they are not able to work.Despite having five years’ full-time experience manufacturing textiles while in prison, that experience isn’t included on Perez’s résumé; incarcerated people, rather than have educational programs available to better support them upon release, are forced to do arduous manual labor jobs and often aren’t able to find work in the same industry when they are released.“It’s still continuing to happen and it disproportionately impacts Black, brown and Indigenous people in this country,” said Perez. “So long as the exception clause exists, we will always have an underclass in this society that is going to be the dumping ground for our problems and our shortcomings.”This month the #EndTheException coalition launched the Except For Me digital campaign to raise awareness of the issues, ending with the delivery of a petition to Congress in support of the abolition amendment and an art installation in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.“This exception is about people and it’s about people for whom the 13th amendment doesn’t apply,” added Tylek. “We really want people to see those people and see the people that society has successfully otherwise hidden away.”Among those featured in the campaign is Britt White, who worked at a Burger King franchise in Alabama while in community status until 2014; about 60% of her wages were taken by the state of Alabama to cover fees, room and board or restitution.“Prison itself is expensive,” said White. “I can only speak for the state of Alabama where I was incarcerated, so providing hygiene, trying to supplement the lack of nourishment is very expensive, and my family had their own bills and financial responsibilities they had to take care of. I still had more support than most people did and it was still very difficult to survive in prison because everything has a cost associated with it.”White explained there were medical fees associated with received medical care and sometimes the food provided was not fit for human consumption.“I just can’t emphasize enough the lack of agency that you have,” added White. “If we are going to allow people who are incarcerated to work jobs, we need to pay them a livable wage and we need to center their dignity. We don’t need to place them in positions where there are hostile environments where they can be retaliated against and lose their agency.”Her experience in the Alabama department of corrections drove her to work as an organizer in criminal justice reform to address the corruption and despair she witnessed and experienced in the prison system.“We cannot condemn people, and then say that you deserve to be put away or you can’t come back to society, you’re not trustworthy enough to live in the community with other people, but you are still good enough for us to make a profit. That is unforgivable,” White said. “And that is the part that is still very reminiscent of slavery that my ancestors went through is that they were not good enough to be viewed as 100% as human beings, but they weren’t substantial enough to make a profit off of. That is the exception that has to be ended in our communities.”TopicsUS prisonsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More
For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails The pound has plummeted to its lowest level against the dollar in history, falling more than 4 per cent, as the markets responded to the announcement of Britain’s […] More
Democrats will struggle to keep control of Congress in midterms, expert saysRay Fair’s latest analysis suggests Democrats will get 46.7% of the national vote – and he usually comes within 3% of the final tally Since 1978 Ray Fair, professor of Economics at Yale University, has been using economic data to predict US election outcomes. His bare-boned, strictly by the numbers approach has a fairly impressive record, usually coming within 3% of the final tally.Sadly for Democrats – if Fair’s on track again this time – the Biden administration will struggle to keep control of Congress in November’s crucial midterm elections.Elections are noisy events and this year’s is no different. Recent polling suggests Joe Biden is on a roll, reclaiming some of the ground he lost earlier in his presidency. The Democrats have passed major legislation. There has been a surge in women registering to vote after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade. Abortion rights drove voters to the polls in deep-red Kansas. Gas prices, if not overall inflation, are falling. In the meantime, Donald Trump and the candidates he has backed are dominating the headlines and helping Democrats’ poll numbers.But if Fair is right, we can largely set aside the personalities and the issues: the economy is the signal behind the noise and Biden is still in trouble.Using data going back to 1916 Fair’s latest analysis suggests that Democrats will get 46.7% of the national vote in November – down from the 51.3% in 2020 when Biden defeated Donald Trump and took control of the House and a slim majority in the Senate.Fair’s model looks at the national picture, he doesn’t dig down to state battles and won’t be drawn into more granular prognostications. But given the gloomy economic picture in recent months, his prediction is unlikely to improve before November and suggests a loss in the House and a very tough fight to keep control of the Senate.When Fair’s last prediction was published in July, the Democrats’ share of the vote had fallen from 48.99% in October “due to two fewer strong growth quarters and slightly higher inflation”. The economic malaise has only deepened since then.“This prediction is based on business as usual,” said Fair. “It’s based on estimations back to 1918, a 100-plus years of data. In that period what seems to matter, election after election, is inflation, output, growth and the penalty you get for being the incumbent party in the White House.”Fair will update his model before the election and given its economic focus, Biden’s percentages are unlikely to improve. Inflation remains close to a 40-year high – soaring prices are now costing the average American household an extra $717 a month. The US economy has shrunk for two consecutive quarters, a sign taken by many as a harbinger of recession. Interest rates are rising at their sharpest pace since the 1990s as the Federal Reserve fights to tamp down price rises.The strength of the economic headwinds Biden faces are apparent even in his improving poll numbers. About 69% of Americans think the nation’s economy is getting worse – the highest percentage since 2008 – according to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll.Fair doesn’t think elections are only about the economy. “This is not a perfect story, there’s room for other stories in each election,” he said. Given the equations narrow, economic focus he said it was “reasonable” that people were now looking at what other factors might impact the Democratic vote share in the midterms.One factor that may have skewed his results in the past, and could do again, is Donald Trump. In 2016 Fair’s model predicted Hillary Clinton would beat Trump. She did win 2.9m more votes than Trump, securing 48.2% of the vote to Trump’s 46.1%. But she lost in the electoral college.This time too Trump could be a factor, although he is difficult to measure. “There are many reasons why the Democrats may do better. Certainly Trump could be one of them,” said Fair.But history – or at least the history that Fair measures – suggests for all the recent positive polling, the Democrats face an uphill struggle this November.“How large is the error I make on average? It’s about 3 percentage points. If the prediction is 47 that would get you up to 50. So it’s a long shot that the Democrats would get more than half,” he said.TopicsUS politicsUS economyEconomicsJoe BidenDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More
Fed raises interest rate by 0.75 percentage points as US seeks to rein in inflationThird outsized rate increase in a row as central bank struggles to fight runaway inflation, increasing the cost of everything The Federal Reserve announced another sharp hike in interest rates on Wednesday as the central bank struggles to rein in runaway inflation.The Fed raised its benchmark interest rate by 0.75 percentage points, the third such outsized rate increase in a row, bringing the Fed rate to 3%-3.25% and increasing the cost of everything from credit card debt and mortgages to company financing.The central bank signaled more raises to come, predicting rates would reach 4.4% by the end of the year and not start coming down until 2024. The Fed expects the rate rises to hit the job market – raising unemployment from 3.7% to 4.4% next year – housing prices and to lower economic growth.“We have got to get inflation behind us. I wish there were a painless way to do that. There isn’t,” the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, said. “We have always understood that restoring price stability while achieving a relatively modest increase in unemployment and a soft landing would be very challenging. And we don’t know. No one knows whether this process will lead to a recession or if so, how significant that recession would be.”Central bankers around the world are raising rates sharply as they too attempt to tackle the cost of living crisis. This week the Bank of England is expected to announce its largest rate rise in 25 years. The European Central Bank raised interest rates across the eurozone by a record margin earlier this month.The Fed initially dismissed rising inflation, arguing it was a “transitory” phase triggered by the pandemic and supply chain issues. But as prices escalated the Fed announced a series of aggressive moves in the hopes of bringing prices back under control.Until recently Powell had said he hoped that the economy could achieve what he called a “soft landing” – a slowdown that would bring costs down but not lead to a spike in unemployment and a recession.Speaking at a congressional hearing on Wednesday, some of the US’s top bankers said it was too early to tell how rate rises would impact the economy. “I think there’s a chance, not a big change, a small chance, of a soft landing,” said Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase.“There’s a chance of a mild recession, a chance of a hard recession. And because of the war in Ukraine and the uncertainty in global energy and food supply, there’s a chance that it could be worse. I think policymakers should be prepared for the worst, so we take the right actions if and when that happens,” he said.Raising rates makes borrowing more expensive which should reduce spending and lower prices. But the policy is a blunt instrument and rate rises take time to filter through to the wider economy. So far the Fed’s rate rises have not had a significant impact.The US jobs market remains robust, with unemployment still close to a 50-year low, consumer spending rose last month and inflation remained stubbornly high in August, 8.3% higher than a year ago.There are, however, some signs of a slowdown. Existing home sales fell in August for the seventh consecutive month, according to the National Association of Realtors. Sales were 19.9% lower than in August 2021 and are now at their lowest level since they briefly stalled during the height of the pandemic in 2020. And large employers including BestBuy, Ford and Walmart have announced layoffs or hiring freezes.TopicsFederal ReserveUS economyBank of EnglandInflationEconomicsEuropean Central BankUS politicsnewsReuse this content More
Criticism intensifies after big oil admits ‘gaslighting’ public over green aimsFury as ‘explosive’ files reveal largest oil companies contradicted public statements and wished bedbugs upon critical activists Criticism in the US of the oil industry’s obfuscation over the climate crisis is intensifying after internal documents showed companies attempted to distance themselves from agreed climate goals, admitted “gaslighting” the public over purported efforts to go green, and even wished critical activists be infested by bedbugs.The communications were unveiled as part of a congressional hearing held in Washington DC, where an investigation into the role of fossil fuels in driving the climate crisis produced documents obtained from the oil giants ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP.“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they wish bedbugs on you, then you win,” said Varshini Prakash, executive director of Sunrise. The organization accused Shell of a “legacy of violence and of ignoring the wellbeing of communities across the globe”.Pakistan floods ‘made up to 50% worse by global heating’Read moreThe revelations are part of the third hearing held by the House committee on oversight and reform on how the fossil-fuel industry sought to hamper the effort to address the climate crisis. Democrats, who lead the committee, called top executives from the oil companies to testify last year, in which they denied they had misled the public.The new documents are “the latest evidence that oil giants keep lying about their commitments to help solve the climate crisis and should never be trusted by policymakers”, said Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity.“If there is one thing consistent about the oil and gas majors’ position on climate, it’s their utter inability to tell the truth,” Wiles added.Ro Khanna, co-chair of the committee, said the new documents are “explosive” and show a “culture of intense disrespect” to climate activists. The oil giants’ “climate pledges rely on unproven technology, accounting gimmicks and misleading language to hide the reality,” he added. “Big oil executives are laughing at the people trying to protect our planet while they knowingly work to destroy it.”Several of the emails and memos within the released trove of documents appear to show executives, staffers and lobbyists internally contradicting public pronouncements by their companies to act on lowering planet-heating emissions.Exxon, which recently announced profits of $17.9bn for the three months until June, more than three times what it earned in the same quarter a year ago, has publicly said it is “committed” to the Paris climate agreement to curb global heating.However, the documents released by the Democratic-led House committee include an August 2019 memo by an executive to Darren Woods, Exxon’s chief executive, on the need to “remove reference to Paris agreement” from an announcement by an industry lobby group that Exxon is a member of.Such a statement “could create a potential commitment to advocate on the Paris agreement goals”, the executive warned. A separate note on a 2018 Exxon presentation also admitted that biofuels derived from algae was still “decades away from the scale we need”, despite the company long promoting it as a way to lower emissions.Shell, meanwhile, has committed to becoming a “net zero” emissions business by 2050, and yet the documents show a private 2020 communication in which employees are urged to never “imply, suggest, or leave it open for possible misinterpretation that (net zero) is a Shell goal or target”. Shell has “no immediate plans to move to a net-zero emissions portfolio” over the next 10 to 20 years, it added.A Shell tweet posted in 2020 asking others what they could do to reduce emissions resulted in a torrent of ridicule from Twitter users. A communications executive for the company wrote privately that criticism that the tweet was “gaslighting” the public was “not totally without merit” and that the tweet was “pretty tone deaf”. He added: “We are, after all, in a tweet like this implying others need to sacrifice without focusing on ourselves.”The UK-headquartered oil company, which in July announced a record $11.5bn quarterly profit, also poured scorn on climate activists, with a communications specialist at the company emailing in 2019 that he wished “bedbugs” upon the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led US climate group.Previous releases of internal documents have shown that the oil industry knew of the devastating impact of climate change but chose instead to downplay and even deny these findings publicly in order to maintain their business model.The hearings have been attacked by Republicans as a method to “wage war on America’s energy producers” and the oil companies involved have complained that the documents don’t show the full picture of their stance on the climate crisis.Exxon supports the 2015 Paris climate deal, a spokesman said, claiming that the “selective publication of dated emails, without context, is a deliberate attempt to generate a narrative that does not reflect the commitment of ExxonMobil and its employees, to address climate change and play a leading role in the transition to a net-zero future.”A Shell spokesman, meanwhile, said the committee chose to highlight only a small handful of the nearly half a million pages it provided to the body on its “extensive efforts” to take part in the energy transition.“Within that pursuit are challenging internal and external discussions that signal Shell’s intent to form partnerships and share pathways we deem critical to becoming a net-zero energy business,” he said.TopicsClimate crisisUS politicsFossil fuelsOilnewsReuse this content More
