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    Trump’s $1bn pitch to oil bosses ‘the definition of corruption’, top Democrat says

    Donald Trump’s brazen pitch to 20 fossil-fuel heads for $1bn to aid his presidential campaign in return for promises of lucrative tax and regulatory favors is the “definition of corruption”, a top Democrat investigating the issue has said.“It certainly meets the definition of corruption as the founding fathers would have used the term,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said in an interview about Trump’s audacious $1bn request for big checks to top fossil-fuel executives that took place in April at his Mar-a-Lago club.Whitehouse added: “The quid pro quo – so called – is so very evident … I can’t think of anything that matches this either in terms of the size of the bribe requested, or the brazenness of the linkages.”Whitehouse and his fellow Democrat Ron Wyden have launched a joint inquiry, as chairs of the Senate budget and finance panels respectively, into Trump’s quid-pro-quo-style fundraising, which already seems to have helped spur tens of millions in checks for a Trump Super Pac from oil and gas leaders at a 22 May Houston event.The two senators have written to eight big-oil chief executives and the head of the industry’s lobbying group seeking details about the Mar-a- Lago meeting, as has representative Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the oversight and accountability committee, who has begun a parallel investigation into the pay-to-play schemes that Trump touted to big oil leaders.Amplifying those concerns, former Federal Election Commission general counsel Larry Noble said that Trump’s unusually aggressive money pitch “violates the letter and spirit” of campaign-finance laws, and a veteran Republican consultant called it “blatant pay to play”.In a separate fossil-fuel inquiry, Raskin and Whitehouse released a joint report in April into long-running big-oil disinformation campaigns to undercut the enormous threats posed by global warming, which Trump has falsely labelled a “hoax”, and last week urged the justice department to investigate big-oil tactics to deceive the public.Trump boasts a lengthy record of rejecting scientific evidence about the links between fossil-fuel usage and climate change: he has pushed a litany of bogus climate claims, including that windmills cause cancer and that electric cars are “bad” for the environment, while promising to end tax breaks for EVs if he wins this fall.Further, in a major rebuke to environmental advocates and international efforts to curb global warming, Trump in 2017 announced the US was pulling out of the Paris agreement to limit climate change, a much-criticized move that Joe Biden reversed.Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” mantra and his deep animosity toward alternative energy sources have been part of his fundraising pitches to oil and gas moguls, triggering alarm about the dangers of another Trump presidency.“The totality of … Trump, the fossil-fuel industry and a [conservative thinktank] Heritage Foundation blueprint advocate will put a dagger through efforts to avoid catastrophic warming,” said Joe Romm, a senior research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media.“Trump promises to undo every constraint on global warming. Trump has pushed more lies and disinformation about climate change than anyone ever has.”Other climate scholars say Trump’s climate denialism is the culmination of years of fossil-fuel propaganda.“Trump is an apotheosis of decades of denial, not only on the part of the fossil-fuel industry, but also by other industry allies, including now-certain billionaires, to deny the reality of the harms of unregulated, or very poorly regulated, capitalism,” said Naomi Oreskes, the co-author of Merchants of Doubt and a Harvard historian of science. “Donald Trump is the reductio ad absurdum of this rewriting of history, culminating in the big lie that he won the 2020 election.”Trump’s strong embrace of climate-change denialism and his pro-big-oil policies were underscored by his aggressive $1bn pitch at Mar-a-Lago, which drew CEOs from giants such as Chevron and ExxonMobil, and the fracking multibillionaire Harold Hamm, the founder of Continental Resources, as the Washington Post first reported.Hamm, an early Trump backer in 2016 and 2020 who took months before helping Trump’s current presidential bid, joined with two other industry CEOs to host a Super Pac bash in Houston that reportedly raised $40m on 22 May from attendees who paid at least $250,000 each to hear Trump promise more fracking and more pipelines if he wins.Trump’s full-court press for fossil-fuel funds and political backing was palpable at an industry conference in North Dakota earlier in May, where Hamm surprised attendees by announcing Trump would join them via a video which featured bogus claims about the health of energy companies and the economy.“Under ‘Crooked Joe Biden’, the American energy industry is under siege, it’s under crisis. [Biden] has made clear that he wants to abolish your industry and, with it, destroy our economy and send us into a new dark age of blackouts, poverty and de-industrialization,” said Trump.View image in fullscreenThe spotlight on Trump’s ardent pursuit of oil and gas donations comes after Biden championed major new regulatory, tax and spending measures to reduce global warming in a sharp break with Trump policies past and present.Ironically, even as Biden succeeded in accelerating spending for green energy, and imposed new regulations on fracking on US lands and a moratorium on natural gas exports, oil and gas production in the US reached new highs in 2023 and major companies notched healthy profits.Still, the oil and gas industry has been ponying up funds for Trump’s campaign faster than it did in 2020, according to the nonpartisan OpenSecrets group, which tracks money in politics.The oil and gas industry has donated $7.3m to Trump’s campaign thus far, or more than three times the amount it gave at this point in 2020, OpenSecrets data shows.Further, some industry titans have donated six- and seven-figure checks to a Trump Super Pac. Texas oilman and multibillionaire Tim Dunn gave $5m to Trump’s Make America Great Again Pac this year, and Hamm kicked in at least $200,000 last fall.Campaign-finance watchdogs and some Republican veterans are dismayed by Trump’s fundraising tactics.“Trump views everything as a transaction, so I’m not surprised,” said ex-GOP representative Dave Trott. “Any other politician who made these statements would be deemed dead on arrival because they’d be viewed as corrupt.”Campaign-finance experts see other dangers in Trump’s heavy-handed fundraising appeals, which he links to favors.“When wealthy special interests, like the oil and gas industry, have special access to candidates, and mechanisms to give them enough money to control their policy choices, everyday voters suffer,” said Shanna Ports, the Campaign Legal Center’s senior legal counsel for campaign finance.“Trump’s request to oil executives is a troubling illustration of the quid pro quo corruption and pay-to-play-style politics that federal campaign laws are meant to prevent. Federal law includes strict contribution limits and bans corporate contributions precisely so candidates do not trade policy favors for campaign cash.”Ports stressed that “candidates are forbidden from soliciting contributions that would break these laws – a prohibition that Trump may have violated”.Likewise, Noble, the former Federal Election Commission general counsel, said Trump’s appeals for massive donations from oil and gas bigwigs [are] “pretty blatantly offering policy favors in exchange for large contributions”.Little wonder, then, that top Senate and House Democrats are inquiring into whether Trump’s bald $1bn ask of big oil moguls broke campaign finance laws, as well as big oil’s long track record of spreading disinformation about global warming.In Whitehouse and Raskin’s joint letter to the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, urging the DoJ to investigate big oil’s history of climate change disinformation, they drew parallels with the tobacco industry’s years of disinformation about the dangers smoking poses to human health.“The DoJ is well situated to pursue further investigation and take any appropriate legal action, as it has in similar cases involving the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries,” they wrote.Looking ahead to the November election, climate change experts predict another Trump presidency would decimate efforts to curb global warming.“If Trump is elected and does what he has been saying and the fossil fuel industry wants, that would be the ruin of the United States and the world,” Romm, of the University of Pennsylvania, warned.“Trump wants to roll back” the ambitious climate change steps and spending that the Biden administration has initiated, Romm added, saying: “We have dawdled a very long time on climate change. We need very sharp reductions. We can’t afford four years focused on raising emissions.” More

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    Senate Democrats to investigate Trump’s reported big oil ‘deal’

    Powerful Senate Democrats have launched an investigation into an alleged quid pro quo offer from Donald Trump to fossil fuel executives.At a meeting at his Mar-a-Lago home and club last month, the former president reportedly told oil bosses he would immediately roll back dozens of environmental regulations if elected, and requested $1bn in contributions to his presidential campaign. It would be a “deal” for the executives because of the costs they would avoid under him, he reportedly said.On Thursday morning, the chairmen of two Senate committees each sent letters to eight oil companies and top fossil fuel trade group the American Petroleum Institute.The letters from Sheldon Whitehouse, the Senate budget committee chairman, and Ron Wyden, the Senate finance committee chair, accused the companies of engaging in a quid pro quo with Trump and requested additional details about the meeting.“As Mr Trump funnels campaign money into his businesses and uses it as a slush fund to pay his legal fees, Big Oil has been lobbying aggressively to protect and expand its profits at the expense of the American taxpayer,” wrote the senators. “And now, emboldened by impunity, Mr Trump and Big Oil are flaunting their indifference to US citizens’ economic well-being for all to see.”Reached for comment, Andrea Woods, a spokeswoman for the American Petroleum Institute, said the investigation is an “election-year stunt to distract from America’s need for more energy, including more oil and natural gas, to power our economy and combat persistent inflation”.She added: “API meets with candidates and policymakers to discuss the need for sound energy policies, and this meeting was no different.”Last week, Jamie Raskin, who chairs the House oversight committee, also launched a House oversight investigation into the companies about the reported offer. But unlike Whitehouse and Wyden, Raskin does not have the power to subpoena companies if they do not reply to his inquiry, because Republicans control the House of Representatives.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump has continued to ask oil companies for campaign funding amid scrutiny of his relationship with the fossil fuel industry. On Wednesday he attended a fundraiser luncheon hosted by three oil bosses at a five-star hotel in Houston, including two from companies reportedly represented at the Mar-a-Lago meeting. More

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    Trump attends Houston lunch to ask oil bosses for more campaign cash

    Donald Trump was continuing to ask fossil-fuel executives to fund his presidential campaign on Wednesday, despite scrutiny of his relationship with the industry.The former president attended a fundraising luncheon at Houston’s Post Oak hotel hosted by three big oil executives.The invitation-only meeting comes a day after the defense rested its case in Trump’s criminal hush-money trial, and a week after Houston was battered by deadly storms. The climate crisis, caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, has created the conditions for more frequent and severe rainfall and flooding, including in Texas.“Houstonians are staring at Trump in disbelief as he flies in to beg big oil for funds just days after the city’s climate disaster,” said Alex Glass, communications director at the climate advocacy organization Climate Power, and a former Houston resident.It also follows a fundraising dinner at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club last month, where the former president reportedly asked more than 20 oil executives for $1bn in campaign donations from their industry and promising, if elected, to remove barriers to drilling, scrap a pause on gas exports, and reverse new rules aimed at cutting car pollution.“Donald Trump is telling us who he is, again,” said Pete Maysmith, a senior vice-president at the environmental nonprofit the League of Conservation Voters. “He has already asked oil executives for a billion dollars for his campaign, [and] we can only assume this week’s meeting is to haggle over exactly what they will get in return.”Executives from two of the companies reportedly represented at the Mar-a-Lago meeting were among the hosts of Trump’s Wednesday’s fundraiser.Harold Hamm, the executive chairman and founder of Continental Resources and one of the Wednesday luncheon organizers, is a longtime Trump supporter and was reportedly also at the April dinner.Hamm, a multibillionaire, was a major player in the rush to extract oil from the Bakken shale formation, which stretches across the US midwest and Canada.During Trump’s first presidential campaign, Hamm was also reportedly one of the seven top donors to receive special seats at Trump’s inauguration. The oil magnate was briefly under consideration to be energy secretary during the former president’s first term but reportedly turned down the position. He turned away from Trump after his 2020 loss, choosing to donate to his opponents, but then donated to Trump’s primary campaign in August.One of Hamm’s Wednesday co-hosts was Vicki Hollub, chief executive of Occidental Petroleum, which was also represented at the Mar-a-Lago fundraiser. Hollub has been criticized by climate activists for investing in carbon-capture technology in an effort to continue extracting oil and gas, despite warnings that fossil fuels must be phased out to avoid the worst effects of climate change.Congressional Democrats launched an investigation into Occidental Petroleum on Wednesday after the Federal Trade Commission last month accused the company and six others of illegal collusion with the oil production cartel Opec+ to keep fuel prices high.The third co-host of Wednesday’s meeting, Kelcy Warren, is the executive chairman of Energy Transfer Partners – a company with whom Trump has close financial ties.Throughout the 2024 campaign cycle, Warren has donated more than $800,000 to Trump’s campaign. In the 2020 election cycle, he held at least one fundraiser for the former president in 2020 and donated $10m to a pro-Trump Super Pac.During his first presidential run in 2016, Trump invested in the company while also receiving more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from Warren, the Guardian found.Warren appears to have benefited from Trump’s first term: within days of taking office in 2017, Trump approved construction of his company’s highly controversial Dakota Access pipeline, triggering outrage from climate advocates, conservationists and nearby Indigenous tribal organizations.Last year, the Texas Tribune found that Energy Transfer Partners profited to the tune of $2.4bn as gas demand soared during Texas’s deadly winter freeze and the ensuing collapse of the state’s energy grid.The fossil-fuel industry has funneled $7.3mto Trump’s 2024 campaign and associated groups, making it his fifth-largest industry donor this election cycle.The $1bn “deal” that Trump allegedly offered to oil executives last month could save the industry $110bn in tax breaks if he returns to the White House, an analysis last week found.Last week, Raskin launched a House oversight investigation into nine oil companies after Trump reportedly offered to dismantle Biden’s environmental rules for their benefit, and requested $1bn in contributions to his presidential campaign.Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has also expressed interest in formally investigating the Mar-a-Lago meeting. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, the powerful Washington watchdog, also told the Guardian it is investigating. More

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    Trump promised to scrap climate laws if US oil bosses donated $1bn – report

    Donald Trump dangled a brazen “deal” in front of some of the top US oil bosses last month, proposing that they give him $1bn for his White House re-election campaign and vowing that once back in office he would instantly tear up Joe Biden’s environmental regulations and prevent any new ones, according to a bombshell new report.According to the Washington Post, the former US president made his jaw-dropping pitch, which the paper described as “remarkably blunt and transactional”, at a dinner at his Mar-a-Lago home and club.In front of more than 20 executives, including from Chevron, Exxon and Occidental Petroleum, he promised to increase oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, remove hurdles to drilling in the Alaskan Arctic, and reverse new rules designed to cut car pollution. He would also overturn the Biden administration’s decision in January to pause new natural gas export permits which have been denounced as “climate bombs”.“You’ll get it on the first day,” Trump said, according to the Post, citing an unnamed dinner attendee.Trump’s exhortation to the oil executives that they were wealthy enough to pour $1bn into his campaign war-chest, at the same time pledging a U-turn on Biden’s efforts to combat the climate crisis, was immediately denounced on Wednesday by environmental groups.“$1bn for Trump, a devastating climate future for the rest of us,” said Pete Maysmith of the League of Conservation Voters (LCV).Christina Polizzi of Climate Power told the Guardian that Trump was “putting the future of the planet up for sale”.“He is in the pocket of big oil – he gave them $25bn in tax breaks in his first term – and now it’s clear he is willing to do whatever big oil wants in a potential second term.”The former president’s exchange with fossil fuel giants also engaged the concern of groups monitoring the influence of money in politics. Jordan Libowitz of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (Crew), a non-partisan government watchdog, said the conversation, as reported by the Post, “certainly looks a lot like quid pro quo”.Libowitz said the encounter was “about as blatant as I’ve ever seen. Politicians often give a nudge and a wink, they don’t say raise a billion dollars for me and I’ll get rid of the regulations that you want.”He added that Crew’s legal team were looking into whether this rises to the high legal standard of bribery.Trump’s close relations to the oil industry, and his hostility to federal regulations designed to reduce emissions that exacerbate the climate crisis, are well-known and longstanding. With six months to go until the presidential election, however, he is stepping up his efforts to attract campaign donations from the sector.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTrump is also performing strongly in the polls. Having all but certainly secured the Republican nomination, Trump is often narrowly ahead of Joe Biden in surveys of the presidential race, including performing strongly in the key swing states that are vital to any candidate’s chances of victory. Trump’s solid performance comes despite a swath of legal woes, including currently being on trial in New York over an alleged hush-money payment to the adult film star Stormy Daniels.For their part, executives in big oil companies have been preparing for a possible Trump second term by drafting executive orders designed to be ready to sign as soon as he returns to office. Politico reported this week that the executives have clubbed together to produce off-the-shelf policies on increasing natural gas exports, supercharging drilling and extending offshore oil leases.The interplay between Trump and the oil giants as the election approaches underlines the vast gulf between the former president and the current occupant of the White House. According to an analysis by a group of environmental groups including the Sierra Club and LCV, the Biden administration has taken more than 300 actions towards greater public health and clean energy, more than any other administration in US history.Those measures included the first major climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, which has propelled record investment in clean energy including solar and wind and increased sales of electric vehicles. US energy emissions are slowly declining, by some 3% this year.Even so, the US is extracting more oil and gas than ever, reaching almost 13m barrels of crude oil a day – more than double the production levels a decade ago. More

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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