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    Biden administration moves to restrict oil and gas leases on 13m acres in Alaska

    The Biden administration said on Friday it will restrict new oil and gas leasing on 13m acres (5.3m hectares) of a federal petroleum reserve in Alaska to help protect wildlife such as caribou and polar bears as the Arctic continues to warm.The decision – part of an ongoing, years-long fight over whether and how to develop the vast oil resources in the state – finalizes protections first proposed last year as the Biden administration prepared to approve the controversial Willow oil project.The approval of Willow drew fury from environmentalists, who said the large oil project violated Biden’s pledge to combat the climate crisis. Friday’s decision also cements an earlier plan that called for closing nearly half the reserve to oil and gas leasing.The rules announced on Friday would place restrictions on future leasing and industrial development in areas designated as special for their wildlife, subsistence or other values and call for the Bureau of Land Management to evaluate regularly whether to designate new special areas or bolster protections in those areas. The agency cited as a rationale the rapidly changing conditions in the Arctic due to the climate crisis, including melting permafrost and changes in plant life and wildlife corridors.Environmentalists were pleased. “This huge, wild place will be able to remain wild,” Ellen Montgomery of Environment America Research & Policy Center said.Jeremy Lieb, an attorney with Earthjustice, said the administration had taken an important step to protect the climate with the latest decision. Earthjustice is involved in litigation currently before a federal appeals court that seeks to overturn the Willow project’s approval. A decision in that case is pending.Earlier this week the Biden administration also finalized a new rule for public land management that is meant to put conservation on more equal footing with oil drilling, grazing and other extractive industries on vast government-owned properties.A group of Republican lawmakers, led by Alaska’s junior senator, Republican Dan Sullivan, commented ahead of Friday’s announcements about drilling limitations in the national petroleum reserve in Alaska even before it was publicly announced. Sullivan called it an “illegal” attack on the state’s economic lifeblood, and predicted lawsuits.“It’s more than a one-two punch to Alaska, because when you take off access to our resources, when you say you cannot drill, you cannot produce, you cannot explore, you cannot move it – this is the energy insecurity that we’re talking about,” Alaska’s senior senator, Republican Lisa Murkowski, said.The decision by the Department of the Interior does not change the terms of existing leases in the reserve or affect currently authorized operations, including the Willow project.The Biden administration also on Friday recommended the rejection of a state corporation’s application related to a proposed 210-mile (338km) road in the north-west part of the state to allow mining of critical mineral deposits, including copper, cobalt, zinc, silver and gold. There are no mining proposals or current mines in the area, however, and the proposed funding model for the Ambler Road project is speculative, the interior department said in a statement.Alaska’s political leaders have long accused the Biden administration of harming the state with decisions limiting the development of oil and gas, minerals and timber.“Joe Biden is fine with our adversaries producing energy and dominating the world’s critical minerals while shutting down our own in America, as long as the far-left radicals he feels are key to his re-election are satisfied,” Sullivan said on Thursday at a Capitol news conference with 10 other Republican senators.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBiden defended his decision regarding the petroleum reserve.Alaska’s “majestic and rugged lands and waters are among the most remarkable and healthy landscapes in the world”, are critical to Alaska Native communities and “demand our protection”, he said in a statement.Nagruk Harcharek, president of Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, a group whose members include leaders from across much of Alaska’s North Slope region, has been critical of the administration’s approach. The group’s board of directors previously passed a resolution opposing the administration’s plans for the reserve.The petroleum reserve – about 100 miles (161km) west of the Arctic national wildlife refuge – is home to caribou and polar bears and provides habitat for millions of migrating birds. It was set aside about a century ago as an emergency oil source for the US navy, but since the 1970s has been overseen by the interior department. There has been ongoing, longstanding debate over where development should occur.Most existing leases in the petroleum reserve are clustered in an area that is considered to have high development potential, according to the Bureau of Land Management, which falls under the interior department. The development potential in other parts of the reserve is lower, the agency said.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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    Climate activists block Federal Reserve bank, calling for end to fossil fuel funding

    One day after the largest climate march since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, hundreds of climate activists blockaded the Federal Reserve Bank in New York to call for an end to funding for coal, oil and gas, with police making scores of arrests.“Fossil fuel companies … wouldn’t be able to operate without money, and that money is coming primarily from Wall Street,” Alicé Nascimento, environmental campaigns director at New York Communities for Change, said hours before she was arrested.The action came as world leaders began arriving in New York for the United National general assembly (UNGA) gathering and followed Sunday’s 75,000-person March to End Fossil Fuels, which focused on pushing Biden to urgently phase out fossil fuels. Monday’s civil disobedience had a different but compatible goal, said Renata Pumarol, an organizer with the campaign group Climate Defenders.“Today we want to make sure people know banks, big banks, are responsible for climate change, too,” she said. “And while marches are important, we think civil disobedience is, too, because it shows we’re willing to do whatever it takes to end fossil fuels, including putting ourselves on the line.”Monday’s action was organized by a coalition of local organizations including New York Communities for Change and Extinction Rebellion NYC, alongside national groups such as Climate Organizing Hub and 350.org. Demonstrators first gathered in New York’s Zuccotti Park, in the financial district in lower Manhattan, which is partially owned by fossil fuel investor Goldman Sachs.The small concrete urban space was the base for the original Occupy Wall Street protests 12 years ago.On Monday, demonstrators then marched in the rain to the nearby New York Federal Reserve building, the largest of the network of 12 federal banks dotted around the country that make up the central bank of the United States.Protesters blockaded multiple entrances into the bank while singing, beating drums and holding up signs. Over 100 people were arrested, according to the New York City Office of the Deputy Commissioner for Public Information, with organizers estimating that roughly 150 arrests were made.“If you arrest one of us, one hundred more will come,” activists chanted.The protesters called attention to both public and private fossil fuel financing. Globally, government subsidies for coal, oil and gas reached a record high of $13m per minute in 2022 last year – equivalent to 7% of global GDP and almost double what the world spends on education – according to the International Monetary Fund.Last year, the US also ranked 16th among the G20 countries on a scorecard by the independent economic research group Green Central Banking, which the researchers say indicates US financial regulators are falling behind their international peers on climate risk mitigation.Meanwhile, since the signing of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, major private banks have provided some $3.2tn to the fossil fuel industry to expand operations, far outstripping the amount that global north governments have collectively spent on international climate finance, an analysis from ActionAid, the Washington DC-based non-profit, found this month. Another recent analysis from the Sierra Club environmental group found that major global banks have announced climate pledges but nonetheless financed coal energy across the US.Monday’s action came after a slew of global protests last week, some of which targeted financial institutions. In New York, dozens rallied outside of the headquarters for asset manager BlackRock and Citibank on Wednesday and Thursday respectively, to call attention to both firms’ investments in fossil fuels. And on Friday, protesters targeted the Museum of Modern Art over its relationship to fossil fuel investor KKR.Another protest is planned for Tuesday at New York City’s Bank of America offices, with additional actions throughout the week as the United Nations hosts its Climate Ambition Summit as part of the UNGA. More

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    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tells climate marchers to be ‘too big and too radical to ignore’ – live

    From 1h agoThe crowd cried out in cheers for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who thanked them for showing up and highlighting the urgency of the climate crisis.“This issue is the issue, one of the most important issues of our time,” she said, adding: “We must be too big and too radical to ignore.”Climate action requires a democratic restructuring of the economy, she said.“What we’re not gonna do is go from oil barons to solar barons,” she told the crowd.The Climate Reality Project, a non-profit global network comprising 3.5 million climate activists, was one of the many organizations present at the march in New York City today.
    We are mobilizing around the summit to leverage national and international pressure to demand leaders change course.
    This is a critical moment for mass mobilization on fossil fuels that could ignite bigger and bolder climate action.
    Here is a tweet by Oil Change International of the various climate change marches that were staged around the world this week, including today’s rally in New York City.
    This is a big, beautiful climate movement & we’re calling on world leaders to #EndFossilFuels NOW. No more talk, we need action!
    Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues, announced that she is working on a musical about the climate crisis.She and three cast members previewed a song from the show called Panic. “We want you to panic / We want you to act / You stole our future / And we want it, we want it back.”“Don’t let the cynics win. The cynics want us to think that this isn’t worth it. The cynics want us to believe that we can’t win. The cynics want us to believe that organizing doesn’t matter, that our political system doesn’t matter, that our economy doesn’t matter,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told a crowd of cheering protestors.“We’re here to say that we organize out of hope, we organize out of commitment, we organize out of love, we organize out of the beauty of our future. We will not give up! We will not let go! We will not allow cynicism to to prevail! We will not allow our vision of a collaborative economy, of dignity for working people, of honoring the Black, brown, Indigenous, white working class! We will not give up and that is what we are here to do today!” she added.“The United States continues to be approving record number of fossil fuel leases and we must send a message, right here today – that has got to end!”Earlier this month, AOC spoke to the Guardian and said that “there’s a very real danger here,” in reference to the presidential 2024 elections and the climate crisis.The crowd cried out in cheers for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who thanked them for showing up and highlighting the urgency of the climate crisis.“This issue is the issue, one of the most important issues of our time,” she said, adding: “We must be too big and too radical to ignore.”Climate action requires a democratic restructuring of the economy, she said.“What we’re not gonna do is go from oil barons to solar barons,” she told the crowd.Here are more images coming through the newswires from the march:World leaders have ‘forgotten’ responsibility to Mother EarthVeteran Indigenous organizer Tom Goldtooth, who is executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, attended the march. “I’m here at the request of spiritual authorities within our Indigenous network,” he said.“They said that this United Nations secretary general’s summit on climate ambition has no spiritual soul to it – that the world leaders have forgotten what the responsibility is to understand the sacredness of Mother Earth.”He decried world leaders’ focus on technological solutions like geoengineering, as well as carbon offset markets, which studies show often do not result in lowered emissions.“We’re here to renew not only our relationship but humanity’s relationship to building sustainable communities based upon regenerative economy, living economy, not a fossil fuel economy,” he said.“The fight for the planet is not a personal issue, it’s a collective issue,” said Grant Miner, a graduate student representing the labor contingent with the Student Workers of Columbia University. “The economy that we have now is structured around killing the planet for profit.”“We’re asking Biden to divest fossil fuels,” said Sincere Cheong, who marched alongside thousands of other people. “The world is being destroyed and if we don’t cut back right now we won’t be able to limit the global warming to 1.5 degrees.”Tens of thousands of people in New York City have kicked off a week of demonstrations seeking to end the use of coal, oil and natural gas blamed for climate change.“This is an incredible moment,” said Jean Su of Center for Biological Diversity, who helped organize the mobilization.
    Tens of thousands of people are marching in the streets of New York because they want climate action, and they understand Biden’s expansion of fossil fuels is squandering our last chance to avoid climate catastrophe.
    Su said the action was the largest climate protest in the US since the start of the pandemic, with organizers estimating around 75,000 protestors taking to the streets in New York City.She added:
    This also shows the tremendous grit and fight of the people, especially youth and communities living at the frontlines of fossil fuel violence, to fight back and demand change for the future they have every right to lead.
    In addition to celebrities and lawmakers, kids from across the country as well as elderly people showed up at the protests, waving climate signs and chanting alongside event organizers.New York’s Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who previously championed the Green New Deal alongside Senator Bernie Sanders, is also expected to address the crowd later this afternoon.Sunday’s demonstration comes ahead of the the United Nations Climate Ambition Summit, which the UN secretary general, António Guterres, says will focus on on bold new climate pledges.In its citations for its climate journalists of the year, Covering Climate Now said:
    Manka Behl of the Times of India was praised by judges for reports “from the frontlines of the crisis in one of the world’s most climate-important countries” and for her interviews with leaders.

    Damian Carrington of the Guardian was credited for science-based reporting that “explains that politics and corporate power, not a lack of green technologies, are what block climate progress”, and cited for leading a reporting team on investigating “carbon bombs” and super-emitting methane leaks.

    Amy Westervelt was described as a prolific, multiplatform reporter for Critical Frequency whose work exposes how fossil fuel companies continue to mislead the public and policymakers alike.
    “Every news outlet on earth can learn from the engaged, hard-hitting journalism that Manka, Damian and Amy bring to the climate story,” said Mark Hertsgaard, the executive director of Covering Climate Now. “It’s reporting like this that arms the public with the power that knowledge gives.”The awards also recognized six Special Honors winners for “rigorous investigative reports, eye-opening exposes of climate injustice, and much-needed analyses of climate solutions”:Covering Climate Now, the global journalism collaboration, is announcing its media awards this week at a time when audiences need to know how and why “the planet is on fire” and what can be done, judges said.CCN’s three climate journalists of the year for 2023 are Damian Carrington of the Guardian, Manka Behl of the Times of India and Amy Westervelt, the founder of the Critical Frequency podcast network.Naomi Klein, the international bestselling author, won in the commentary category, while Ishan Kukreti of the Indian non-profit Scroll.in won for long-form writing.Covering Climate Now is a global collaboration involving some 600 news outlets with a reach of more than 2 billion people, and its media awards program was launched three years ago to spread standards of excellence in climate journalism.This year’s winners were selected from a list of finalists from more than 1,100 entries from 29 countries, and chosen by more than 100 journalists.Children showed up in droves for the march to end fossil fuels.“We’re here today because our planet deserves a future,” Ida, 12, said.Gus, a six-year-old, travelled from Boston for the march with his mother, Laura. “We’re here to end fossil fuels … so we can stop climate change,” he said.Aviva, a seven-year-old Brooklynite who attended the march with her mom and sister, spoke into the megaphone. “Hey hey, ho,” she shouted, as the crowd responded: “Fossil fuels have got to go!”As the climate rally in New York City continues, climate activists in Germany sprayed orange paint on to Berlin’s popular Brandenburg Gate on Sunday in attempts to call on the German government to stop using fossil fuels.“The protest makes it clear: it is time for a political change,” the climate activist group the Last Generation said in a statement, the Associated Press reports.“Away from fossil fuels – towards fairness,” it added.The Associated Press reports that police have blocked the area around the historic gate and confirmed that they have detained 14 activists that are affiliated with the Last Generation.Mentions of gas stoves are emerging as a theme among the many signs protesters are holding up at the march to end fossil fuels.This April, New York became the first US state to ban gas stoves in new residential building construction as research emerged about its dangers for human health.At the march, the Rev Lennox Yearwood, head of the Hip Hop Caucus, likened today’s climate movement to the US fight for racial justice.“We’re at our lunch counter moment for the 21st century,” he said.A native of Louisiana, he said he was excited to see demonstrators support environmental justice activists’ fight to end petrochemical buildout in the south-west US.“We need to end fossil fuels in all forms,” he said.Protesters chanted: “We are unstoppable, another world is possible.”Others sang Leonard Cohen’s Anthem: “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”Here is video by the Guardian’s visual reporter Aliya Uteuova on the fossil fuels march in New York City this afternoon.The activists will be marching to the United Nations ahead of the UN Climate Ambition Summit that is set to take place in a few days.Veteran environmental activist Bill McKibben travelled to New York City to attend the march.“I think it’s a real restart moment after the pandemic for the big in-the-streets climate movement,” he said. “It’s good to see people get back out there.”The crowd, he said, reflected the diversity of New York City.“I’m glad to see there’s a lot of old people like me here,” said McKibben, who founded Third Act, an activist group aimed at elders. “We’ll be marching in the back because we’re slow!”Climate scientist Peter Kalmus at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab also spoke at the press conference, saying that he has two kids in high school and that he’s “terrified for their future”.“I’m terrified for my future right now,” he added.“We are so clearly in a fucking climate emergency. Why won’t Biden declare it?” he said. More

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    Senate examines role of ‘dark money’ in delaying climate action

    The Senate budget committee held a hearing on Wednesday morning to scrutinize the role of oil- and gas-linked “dark money” in delaying climate action – and tearing through local and federal budgets.The hearing was led by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, who has held 10 climate crisis-focused hearings since he took the helm of the budget committee this past February.It follows an inquiry launched by House Democrats in 2021, which focused on big oil’s alleged efforts to mislead the public about the climate crisis.“I am shining a light on the massive, well-documented economic risks of climate change,” said Whitehouse, who has also given nearly 300 speeches about the climate crisis on the Senate floor. “These are risks that have the potential to cascade across our entire economy and trigger widespread financial hardship and calamity.”In his opening remarks, Whitehouse described the well-documented misinformation campaign that fossil fuel interests have waged on the American public.“Beginning as early as the 1950s, industry scientists became aware of climate change, measuring and predicting it decades before it became a public issue,” he said. “But industry management and CEOs spent decades promoting climate misinformation.”Ranking member Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, said the hearing was a “missed opportunity to work together on a responsible budget”. He also claimed Democrats obtain “much more secret or dark money than Republicans”.Committee Democrats invited three witnesses. First to the stand was the Harvard history of science professor Naomi Oreskes. “Climate change is a market failure, and market failures require government action to address,” she testified.Fossil fuel interests’ efforts to disrupt climate policy had come at great expense to the US, including not only financial costs, but also human suffering and lives lost, said Oreskes, who has written several books on oil industry misinformation.Christine Arena, former public relations executive at the firm Edelman who now works in social impact film-making, and who was also invited by Senate Democrats, drew comparisons between the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long misinformation campaign and how the tobacco industry tried to cover up the harms of smoking.“Just like the tobacco executives before them, [fossil fuel executives] characterize peer-reviewed science and investigative journalism that illustrates the extent of their deceptions as biased or inconclusive,” said Arena, who is now the founder of Generous Films.Richard Painter, professor of corporate law at the University of Minnesota Law School who was chief White House ethics lawyer under George W Bush, was third to testify. A political independent, Painter said Americans should get on board with the push to end climate misinformation no matter where they fall on the political spectrum.“This is not a partisan issue,” said Painter, who was also invited by Whitehouse. “This is about caring, and doing something about a grave threat to the human race.”The last two witnesses were invited by Republican senators. First up was Dr Roger Pielke Jr, professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who said he believed climate change was real, human-caused and dangerous, but that the Democrats’ concerns were overblown.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLast to testify was Scott Walker, president of the conservative non-profit Capital Research Center who served in the George W Bush administration as special assistant to the president for domestic policy. “To say that a group uses dark money is like saying the group uses telephones. It’s a universal technology,” he said.He insisted that dark money was not a major problem in American politics. Insofar as it was a problem, he said, the political left took more money than the right.In an interview after the hearing, Oreskes said she suspected the evidence that Democrats take more dark money than Republicans may be based on “cherry-picked” data. “Cherry-picking is a tactic we know climate deniers and skeptics have used for decades,” she said.While being questioned by Whitehouse, Oreskes explained that in the mid-2000s, she and others who wrote about the scientific consensus on the human-caused climate crisis received hate mail and were the targets of official complaints and other attacks.“That experience of being attacked led me to try to understand what these attacks were, who was funding them, who was behind them, and why they were doing it,” she said.Later, Grassley asked Pielke to talk more about the influence dark money has on Democrats. “I can’t explain exactly why your colleagues aren’t willing to look at the dark money ties of their own witnesses,” said Pielke.Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, a Democrat, addressed these allegations, offering a solution for his Republican colleagues who are concerned about dark money’s influence on Democrats. The Disclose Act, introduced by Whitehouse in the Senate this year, would expose the sources of these clandestine funds for Democrats and Republicans alike, he said. “I would invite my colleagues across the aisle to join us in ending dark money on both sides,” said Merkley. More

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    Alarm at rightwing push to reverse clean-energy success in Texas and beyond

    In the scramble before the end of Texas’s legislative session last week, a must-pass bill was amended to impose new costs upon renewable energy. This came amid a barrage of anti-solar and wind power measures pushed forward by Republicans to reshape a state that has become the US’s powerhouse of clean energy.But the conservative lawmakers had help.Sections of the bill that impose new burdens upon clean energy providers were directly crafted and edited by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (or TPPF), a conservative group that has led the backlash to renewables and to make what it calls “the moral case for fossil fuels”, according to a copy of the draft language seen by the Guardian.Several dozen edits were made to the bill’s amendments by Brent Bennett, a TPPF policy staffer, the document shows, and Texas lawmakers subsequently passed parts of this language along with the key TPPF desires – to impose new transmission costs on renewables and require them to source fossil fuel “backup” power when the sun isn’t shining or wind isn’t blowing.The passage of the bill, which funds the ongoing operation of the Public Utility Commission of Texas, was the flagship victory for TPPF even as a raft of other Republican bills that would have “shut down the renewable energy industry in Texas”, as energy analyst Doug Lewin put it, faltered.The burgeoning influence of TPPF, an organization substantially funded by fossil fuel interests and publicly lauded by Greg Abbott, Texas’s Republican governor, is the catalyst to a rightwing attempt to crimp the stunning progress of renewable energy in the state, which now produces more than a quarter of all wind-powered electricity in the US.The group’s agenda is now extending far beyond Texas, bankrolling efforts to halt offshore wind turbines in Massachusetts and to prop up coal power on native American land in Arizona while spearheading efforts to crack down on sustainable finance in energy-producing states like West Virginia.“We are very influential, we are meeting with policymakers to share recommendations and we’re having success around the country,” said Jason Isaac, a former state representative and now director of TPPF’s energy initiatives. Isaac said that TPFF regularly helped craft “certain aspects” of bills in Texas related to the state’s electricity grid or environmental, social, and corporate governance (or ESG) issues.“I think conservatives are slowly but surely moving away from variable generation and towards reliable generation,” he said of the group’s quest against renewables. Isaac claimed renewables have been unfairly propped up by a “cult-like fascination” among politicians who have pursued what he called a “dangerous and deadly” agenda to reduce planet-heating emissions.The aggressive push against renewables in Texas has alarmed environmentalists who fret it will undermine the state’s nation-leading wind industry and threaten the revenues solar and wind generates for local communities and farmers. More broadly, the template used by TPPF in Texas could hobble efforts by Joe Biden’s administration to tackle the climate crisis.“We are seeing a rush of these bills attempting to wind the clock back on renewables and TPPF really are at the point of the spear on this,” said Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas. “They are transparent advocates for the fossil fuel industry and I think they pose an incredible threat to renewables. TPPF have gained incredible traction, they really are shifting the narrative in Texas.“They’ve won over the top politicians in the state, which is very dangerous. Texas is going to be critical if the US going to get to net zero emissions, so we should take this threat seriously.”TPPF’s impact can now be found thousands of miles from its base in Austin, Texas, with the group filing a lawsuit in 2021 on behalf of six east coast fishing businesses – collectively called Nantucket Residents Against Turbines – targeting a major windfarm currently under construction off the coast of Massachusetts. Slated to come online by the end of the year, Vineyard Wind will be the first major offshore wind project to be built off the US east coast.The lawsuit claimed federal agencies did not sufficiently analyze how the project, which is set to deliver enough electricity to power 400,000 homes, would affect wildlife – specifically the endangered North Atlantic right whale – and thereby violated the Endangered Species Act and slew of other environmental policies.Meghan Lapp, a seafood dealer and longtime offshore wind critic who was a plaintiff in the suit, told Reuters in 2021 that TPPF got involved in the suit at her request. As it announced its involvement in the case, the thinktank also took the unusual step of releasing a trailer called “A Heavy Wind”.The case was ultimately unsuccessful after a federal judge dismissed it last month, but the idea that wind turbines kill whales has been seized upon by conservatives, especially since December, when dozens of whales began washing up on the Atlantic coast in what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) calls an “unusual mortality event”.Noaa has said there is no evidence that offshore wind power is killing off whales, with fishing practices, boat strikes and the climate crisis among the primary dangers to marine mammals, but congressional Republicans have called on the White House to pause offshore wind development, while Tucker Carlson, then of Fox News, aired a critical series of segments called “The Biden Whale Extinction”.The assault on renewables by TPPF and its Republican allies has stunned conservatives who remain supportive of the longstanding bipartisan enthusiasm for clean energy.The reversal has been particularly stark for Texas which, blessed with the capacious, flat terrain and amenable climate for abundant wind and solar energy, was championed as a bastion for renewables by previous Republican governors George W Bush and Rick Perry, even as they embraced the ubiquitous oil industry.More than 40% of Texas’s electricity came from carbon-free sources last year, with the state now producing more wind and solar than the next three states – California, Iowa and Oklahoma – combined. This imperious status now seems uncertain.“I don’t recognize the state sometimes any more from our elected leaders. It’s like we are in a twilight zone where up is down and day is night,” said Matt Welch, state director of Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation.“I fear we’re losing our lead in the nation and the world as the source for clean energy advancement. It’s just amazing we’ve rolled up the welcome mat and told wind and solar operators they’re just not welcome here any more.”The Texas Public Policy Foundation was founded in 1989 by James R Leininger, a San Antonio-based physician who made his fortune selling hospital beds, and initially focused on the issue of charter schools before branching out into other topics such as energy. The thinktank is a member of the State Policy Network, a network of far-right non-profits across the country that fight climate-focused legislation.In 2021, the most recent year for which records are available, donations for the thinktank totaled $25.6m. Publicly available data shows that – like many State Policy Network affiliates – its largest known funder is Charles Koch, the billionaire industrialist who made his fortune from fossil fuels. Entities tied to Koch have contributed at least $8.8m to the group since 2012, according to an analysis by researcher Connor Gibson.Tax filings show that the group has received donations from fossil fuel companies including ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron, but, as a non-profit, the full extent of TPPF’s fossil fuel funding is unknown.Issac said, however, it has been “many years” since large oil firms such as Exxon have donated to TPPF as these companies now ostensibly support decarbonization and environmentally responsible corporate governance, which conflicts with the foundation. He insisted that the foundation is committed to “free enterprise and individual liberty” and the eradication of “market distorting” subsidies, not just for renewables but also fossil fuels.But Welch said that Republican lawmakers, backed by TPPF, have ditched any ideological consistency by heaping onerous restrictions on renewable energy development on private property, in some cases attempting to impose requirements absent from oil and gas drilling, and trying to slash subsidies for the industry at the same time as offering state support for the buildout of new gas plants.One proposed bill that didn’t get sufficient backing in the latest Texas legislative session would have placed stringent new rules for wind and solar projects, including written permissions from neighboring property owners and setbacks of up to half a mile from the edge of a property for wind turbines. Another would have cut all subsidies for renewable energy.“On a Tuesday these lawmakers will be adamantly for private property rights, but on a Thursday they will want to stop the growth of renewable energy even though it’s on somebody’s private land,” Welch said, adding that TPPF was once full of “mini Milton Friedmans for years until recently, and now all of a sudden they throw that out the window.“It’s been a shocker. It’s so hypocritical,” he said. “I used to be an acolyte of TPPF but they are now driven by oil and gas billionaires who want to stop alternative forms of energy to benefit their own bottom line. They’ve sold their soul to the almighty dollar.”Renewable energy remains broadly popular with the Texas public for delivering cheap, clean power along with an injection of cash for entities such as school districts, but affection has somewhat curdled among some of the state’s Republican leadership. A devastating winter storm in 2021, which left millions of Texans without power and led to several hundred deaths, was a major accelerant of this trend.In the days following the crippling event, known as winter storm Uri, Abbott and other leading Republicans pushed the blame for the power blackouts upon renewable energy, with misleading pictures of frozen wind turbines from Europe quickly circulating social media as the supposed cause of the grid’s breakdown.Subsequent studies have made clear the primary cause of the blackouts were frozen gas pipelines and a lack of infrastructure resiliency to extreme weather, rather than renewables per se, but the perception of faulty wind and solar has stuck, eagerly fanned by TPPF.“I still believe [renewables] deserve a lot of the blame,” said Isaac. “The storm was helpful in educating people who just assumed when they flip a switch the lights come on that there are issues with grid reliability, that solar panels covered in snow don’t produce electricity.”Isaac said the foundation accepts that the climate is changing but disputes that this is harmful to people, claiming that the benefits of burning of fossil fuels “far outweighs” any negatives, including deadly air pollution, which he asserts isn’t an issue for the US and its “near natural” air quality. Scientists have, in fact, found that the climate crisis poses huge and growing risks to humanity, with airborne pollutants from burning coal, oil and gas linked to an array of different health problems.While the most severe of the anti-renewables bills pushed forward in Texas didn’t pass the legislature this year, Isaac said that TPPF remains undaunted and will continue to agitate against what he called “the false panacea of variable power”. Supporters of clean energy said they expect further battles ahead to prevent Texas’s progress in solar and wind from being unwound.“With the growth trajectory of renewable energy, TPPF can either get on the train or lay down in front of the tracks,” said Welch. “I suspect they won’t rest on their laurels. They’re going to come for renewables again and again and again.” More

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    ‘Stop the dirty deal’: activists decry Schumer and Manchin over pipeline plan

    Climate activists have stepped up protests over the inclusion of a provision to speed up a controversial gas pipeline’s completion in the deal to raise the debt ceiling as Congress prepares to vote on Wednesday, aiming criticism at Democrats Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin.The pipeline project has long been championed by Manchin, the West Virginia senator who was the top recipient of fossil fuel industry contributions during the 2022 election cycle.Activists, led by the advocacy group Climate Defiance and supported by Food and Water Watch, Climate Families NYC, Center for Popular Democracy, Sunrise Movement NYC and others, rallied outside the Senate majority leader home in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood on Tuesday evening, chanting “Schumer, stop the dirty deal” and demanding the $6.6bn Mountain Valley Pipeline be stripped from the legislation.Schumer has also received donations from one of the companies behind the pipeline.The protests came hours after nearly 200 groups sent a letter to Schumer and members of Congress remove the pipeline from the deal.“The unscrupulous brinkmanship on display in Washington is endangering our very future,” Eric Weltman, senior New York organizer at the environmental advocacy group Food and Water Watch, said in a statement. “Our climate and communities are not for sale – any deal that holds the economy and climate hostage for the profit of dirty energy donors is a betrayal.”Last year, Manchin failed to make the approval of the pipeline part of the Inflation Reduction Act. But in exchange for his crucial vote for the legislation, he secured a commitment from Schumer to pass a separate bill to expedite the pipeline’s construction and help fast-track the construction of other energy infrastructure. The permitting legislation failed at the hands of Senate Republicans who were unhappy with the compromise.NextEra Energy, one company behind the Mountain Valley pipeline, is a major contributor to Manchin and Schumer. In the 2022 cycle, the company’s employees and political action committees gave $60,000 to Manchin and a stunning $302,000 to Schumer, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.Food and Water Watch is also doing daily phone banks and has set up a dedicated hotline to Schumer’s office. Meanwhile, Appalachian Voices is holding three rallies at Senator Mark Warner’s Virginia office pushing for a debt deal that does not include the pipeline.“President Biden made a colossal error in negotiating a deal that sacrifices the climate and working families,” said Jean Su, energy justice program director at the national environmental organization Center for Biological Diversity.House and Senate lawmakers from both parties have also filed amendments to strip the Mountain Valley pipeline from the debt ceiling deal. A group of House Democrats from Virginia have led the push to cut the provision.Democratic senator Tim Kaine plans to file a similar Senate amendment.“Senator Kaine is extremely disappointed by the provision of the bill to greenlight the controversial Mountain Valley pipeline in Virginia, bypassing the normal judicial and administrative review process every other energy project has to go through,” a Kaine spokesperson said in a statement. “This provision is completely unrelated to the debt ceiling matter.”Environmentalists have spent a decade fighting the construction of the $6.6bn Mountain Valley pipeline, which is intended to carry natural gas 300 miles from the Marcellus shale fields in West Virginia to Virginia, crossing nearly 1,000 streams and wetlands. A report from Oil Change International last year found the project would result in the emission of 89m metric tons of planet-heating pollution annually, or the equivalent of building 26 new coal power plants.The pipeline has long faced scrutiny in courts. Since construction began in 2018, the Mountain Valley pipeline has been cited for hundreds of violations in West Virginia and Virginia. Last month, a US court of appeals struck down certain permits for the project on the grounds they would violate the Clean Water Act.The Biden administration has in recent months signed off on several necessary federal permits for the Mountain Valley pipeline. But the debt ceiling legislation would go even further by shielding the project from future litigation.“Singling out the Mountain Valley pipeline for approval in a vote about our nation’s credit limit is an egregious act,” said Peter Anderson, Virginia policy director with Appalachian Voices, an activist group which has fought the project for years.“By attempting to suspend the rules for a pipeline company that has repeatedly polluted communities’ water and flouted the conditions in its permits, the president and Congress would deny basic legal protections, procedural fairness and environmental justice to communities along the pipeline’s path.”Climate groups, led by the Virginia and West Virginia organization Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights are also planning to rally in front of the White House next week. More

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    Biden approves Alaska gas exports as critics condemn another ‘carbon bomb’

    The Biden administration on Thursday approved exports of liquefied natural gas from the Alaska liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, a document showed, prompting criticism from environmental groups over the approval of another “carbon bomb”.The US energy department approved Alaska Gasline Development Corp’s (AGDC) project to export LNG to countries with which the United States does not have a free trade agreement, mainly in Asia. Backers of the roughly $39bn project expect it to be operational by 2030 if it receives the required permits.The project, for which exports were first approved by the administration of Donald Trump, has been strongly opposed by environmental groups.“Joe Biden’s climate presidency is flying off the rails,” said Lukas Ross of Friends of the Earth. Ross pointed out this was the second US approval of a “fossil-fuel mega-project” in as many months.The Biden administration last month approved the ConocoPhillips $7bn Willow oil and gas drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope, prompting criticism of Biden’s record on the climate crisis.Alaska LNG includes a liquefaction facility on the Kenai peninsula in southern Alaska and a proposed 807-mile (1,300-km) pipeline to move gas stranded in northern Alaska across the state.Frank Richards, the president of Alaska-owned AGDC, said the company will review the 51-page decision as it develops the project, which he said will “provide Alaskans and US allies with a significant source of low-emissions, responsibly produced energy consistent with international environmental priorities”.The Biden administration undertook an environmental review of Alaska LNG, concluding it has economic and international security benefits and that opponents had failed to show the exports were not in the “public interest”.The Biden administration modified the previous approval to prohibit venting of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide associated with the project into the atmosphere.Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, said the approval of the project cleared the way for additional lawsuits seeking to stop the project.The Biden administration is trying to approve more US LNG exports as it competes with Russia, traditionally one of the world’s largest energy exporters. Critics say the Ukraine conflict is a “false justification” for a rush to natural gas.An expansion of LNG terminals on the Gulf coast would double or even triple current capacity to deliver natural gas, which a report by Climate Action Tracker researchers said would keep carbon emissions above levels needed for net zero.Russia is under pressure from western sanctions for its invasion of Ukraine, and the US has boosted LNG exports to Europe after Moscow cut gas pipeline shipments to the continent.Reuters contributed to this report More

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    Biden administration sides with climate lawsuit against fossil fuel companies

    The US Department of Justice filed a legal brief Thursday in support of local governments in Colorado that are part of a growing wave of local and state governments pursuing climate litigation against fossil fuel companies.In the brief, the DoJ argued that the Colorado case against the Canadian energy giant Suncor should be heard in state court, which is considered more favourable than federal court for plaintiffs who are suing oil companies over climate change. ExxonMobile is also a defendant in the case.Experts say the DoJ brief is an action by the administration in support of climate litigation, fulfilling a campaign promise by President Joe Biden. “They’ve definitely come out on the side that the climate advocates wanted,” said Dan Farber, law professor at the University of California, Berkeley.State and local governments across the country have filed lawsuits in recent years alleging that energy giants, including Exxon, Chevron, Shell and BP, failed to warn the public about the harms of fossil fuels and engaged in deception or misrepresentation about their products, resulting in devastating climate emergencies in those jurisdictions. In court filings, fossil fuel companies have argued that media coverage of climate change extends back to the 1950s but local governments continued to promote and encourage production and use of oil and gas.Supporters of the wave of climate lawsuits have compared them to cases against Big Tobacco in the 1990s that resulted in settlements of more than $200bn against cigarette companies. If the lawsuits are successful, they could change how firms do business, compel companies to pay for climate adaptation, and reinforce banking industry concerns that fossil fuels are a risky investment.Since the first lawsuits were filed in California in 2017, oil companies have removed them to federal court, which they see as friendlier to their arguments. But the plaintiffs have maintained that the cases belong in state court.In 2018, local governments in Colorado sued fossil fuel companies seeking damages for the companies’ role in causing climate change. The local governments said they incurred heavy costs from worsening heat waves, wildfires, droughts and floods, and that ExxonMobil Corporation and Suncor Energy Inc. According to the US Energy Information Administration, Colorado has abundant fossil fuel reserves, and two operating petroleum refineries located in Denver – one of them operated by Suncor.The lawsuit claims the companies “knowingly and substantially contributed to the climate crisis by producing, promoting and selling a substantial portion of the fossil fuels that are causing and exacerbating climate change, while concealing and misrepresenting the dangers associated with their intended use.”The case made it up to the tenth circuit appeals court, which agreed with the plaintiffs that the case should be heard in state court. The supreme court, now dominated by conservative judges, will weigh in on that issue.To aid in that decision, the supreme court invited Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar to file a brief expressing the views of the United States government on whether the case belongs in federal court. Prelogar had the option to support the state court argument by the Colorado counties, which she did in a filing on Thursday.Asked whether a Colorado case should be removed to federal court, Prelogar argued that the petition should be denied. “Respondents brought this suit in state court, alleging only state-law claims,” she wrote. “Under the well-pleaded complaint rule, respondents’ claims do not present a federal question, and petitioners have identified no sound basis for recharacterizing those claims.”The attorney for Suncor Energy did not immediately respond to request for comment.Farber said the brief is “laser-focused” on the question of whether the cases should be in federal court, and does not make any broader arguments about the climate litigation.The sSupreme Court now has two options – it can either decline to hear the case, or it can take up the case. If it declines to hear the case, then the lower court decision stands, and the lawsuit goes back to state court – a win for the plaintiffs that would have a ripple effect on other climate litigation, and all the cases would be heard in state court, Farber said.If the supreme court decides to hear the case, oral arguments could happen in the fall and the court could issue a decision in 2024. In that scenario, all the climate cases before the courts would be on pause until the decision comes down, he said.“There could be some complicated issues about how to handle some of the individual cases, but I think basically the result would be that things would more or less stand still until the court either decides to hear this case or decides not to hear it,” Farber said.Richard Wiles, president for the Center for Climate Integrity, was delighted by the federal government’s brief. “We’re obviously very pleased with this decision,” he said over the phone. “The DoJ came down on the side of every other federal judge that has looked at this.” He said there is consensus in the courts and the legal community is that the cases belong in state court.As for the Biden administration, he said, “You can definitely say they made good on their promise to strategically support these cases.” More