As climate change and environmental crisis continue to become more and more undeniably real and life-threatening, it emerged that despite record profits, BP lowered its emissions reductions goals.
The broad scientific consensus (and even US public opinion) has long held that public and private action to reverse, let alone stall, the destruction of the environment and transformation of earth’s climate has been grossly inadequate. Though it seems that ‘inadequate’ does not go far enough in describing the increasingly brazen abrogation of the few token (and mostly non-binding) promises governments and corporations have made; we are, effectively, lazily foisting all responsibility onto the private energy sector, whose analysts have known about the severity of emissions’ impacts for many decades yet intentionally misled the public, paying lip service to sustainability and redefining green energy to continue to reap record profits. This behavior continues:
The company's profits more than doubled to $27.7bn (£23bn) in 2022, as energy prices soared after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Other energy firms have seen similar rises, with Shell reporting record earnings of nearly $40bn last week.
It has led to calls for energy firms to pay more tax as people's bills soar.
BP boss Bernard Looney said the British company was "helping provide the energy the world needs" while investing the transition to green energy.
But it came as the firm scaled back plans to cut carbon emissions by reducing its oil and gas output.
The company - which was one of the first oil and gas giants to announce an ambition to cut emissions to net zero by 2050 - had previously promised that emissions would be 35-40% lower by the end of this decade.
However, on Tuesday it said it was now targeting a 20-30% cut, saying it needed to keep investing in oil and gas to meet current demands.
Climate campaign group Greenpeace, whose voice the BBC has included because of the impact of oil and gas production on the environment, said BP's new strategy "seems to have been strongly undermined by pressure from investors and governments to make even more dirty money out of oil and gas".
The author of an Ohio amendment that would classify natural gas as “green energy” said he hopes the legislation can help companies meet ESG investing standards.
ESG refers to environmental, social and governance practices. ESG investing generally limits financing choices to companies or funds that meet certain criteria for those categories. The practice has been around for decades but recently has become a political boogeyman for conservatives who denounce it as “woke capitalism.”
Ohio state Sen. Mark Romanchuck, a Republican from Ontario, told the Energy News Network he hopes having the “green energy” language in Ohio law might help large users of natural gas meet ESG standards.
“I don’t know if it will work,” Romanchuk added.
Romanchuk said he doesn’t think there is “anything magical” about using the word “green,” and there is uncertainty about its potential legal impact. Unlike an earlier version, the amendment to House Bill 507 specifically says it would not allow natural gas projects to qualify for renewable energy credits.
That hasn’t quelled criticism from climate and clean energy advocates, who say the vague legislation — approved by the state Senate last Wednesday without any public testimony — could have wider implications for the way natural gas is marketed and regulated in the state.
Anything, it seems, can be “green energy” (‘natural’ gas itself is a misnomer). Other climate setbacks are more brazen:
The Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management on Wednesday advancedthe controversial Willow oil drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope, releasing the final environmental impact statement before the project can be approved.
The ConocoPhillips proposed Willow drilling plan is a massive and decadeslong project that the state’s bipartisan Congressional delegation says will create much-needed jobs for Alaskans and boost domestic energy production in the US.
But environmental groups fear the impact of the planet-warming carbon pollution from the hundreds of millions of barrels of oil it would produce – and say it will deal a significant blow to President Joe Biden’s ambitious climate agenda.
The final environmental report from the Bureau of Land Management recommends a slightly smaller version of what ConocoPhillips originally proposed, putting the number of drilling sites at three instead of five. The Department of Interior is also recommending other measures to try to lower the pollution of the project, and recommending a smaller footprint of gravel roads and pipelines.
Gravel roads and pipelines. Here is one of many examples of the already-deadly impacts of climate transformation which the Biden administration hopes to mitigate with gravel roads in its new drilling programs:
Natural disasters worsened by a changing climate are displacing millions of people in the U.S.
That’s according to a new Census Bureau report, which found that more than 3 million adults were forced to evacuate their homes in the past year because of hurricanes, floods and other events, writes POLITICO’s E&E News reporter Thomas Frank. That amounted to 1.4 percent of the U.S. adult population — and included 11 percent of adults in Louisiana.
The tally marks a rare federal effort to assess the uprooting caused by the climate emergency. The Census Bureau estimate far exceeds other counts of U.S. evacuees, suggesting that previous data and reporting on internally displaced persons underestimate this ongoing crisis.
For example, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, which tracks people displaced within their own country for any reason, estimated that disasters displaced an average of 800,000 U.S. residents a year from 2008 through 2021.
That includes the center’s estimate that 1.7 million were displaced in 2017 — the year of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, three of the most destructive storms in U.S. history.
While most displacements documented by the Census Bureau were short-term, roughly 16 percent of the displaced adults never returned home, and 12 percent were out of their homes for more than six months. Evacuation rates were highest for the poorest households, those earning less than $25,000 a year.
Globally, 20 million people are displaced every year by climate-fueled events, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. And that number is only expected to grow.
Note that this figure is likely a significant underestimate. Why are we undercounting these lives and livelihoods? One potential answer:
A major reason the EPA's new social cost of carbon is higher is because this is the first time the federal government has added to its calculations the cost of climate-related deaths outside America, including in developing and low-lying countries that are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.
But the EPA didn't assign the same dollar value to every life. Instead, a life lost in a lower-income country due to climate change is worth less than a life lost in a higher-income country.
The upshot is that the value of a climate-related death in the United States is equal to about 9 deaths in India, or 5 deaths in Ukraine or 55 deaths in Somalia. It also suggests that the life of a person in Qatar is worth almost twice as much as the life of an American.
"It's inherently inequitable to use this kind of approach," says Vaibhav Chaturvedi, a fellow at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water in New Delhi, India and a leading expert on global climate economics. "All lives are equally valuable."
Covid has demonstrated that the normalization of valuing some lives over others (especially the immunocompromised, who may as well not exist) will become increasingly common as mitigating total disaster impacts powerful companies’ bottom lines. Even China, which was previously a success story, is now suffering its own holocaust due to the unsustainability of maintaining its protective measures in a world which had long since declared victory and “moved on.”
It is already known that human encroachment into wild habitats increases the likelihood of novel human-animal interactions, which increases the likelihood of novel infections—the Covid pandemic itself was made more likely due to climate change. It recently emerged that Covid will not be unique in this regard:
Roughly 5 million deaths worldwide were associated with antimicrobial resistance in 2019, and the annual toll is expected to increase to 10 million by 2050 if steps aren’t taken to stop the spread of antimicrobial resistance, according to the report.
In the US, there are nearly 3 million antimicrobial-resistant infections each year, and more than 35,000 people die as a result, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says.
Antimicrobials are commonly used in cleaning products, plant pesticides and medications to kill and prevent the spread of germs among people, animals and crops.
Drug resistance can develop naturally, but experts say the overuse of antimicrobials in people, animals and food production has accelerated the process. The microorganisms that survive these chemicals are stronger and more powerful, and they can spread their drug-resistant genes to germs that have never been exposed to antimicrobials.
Thefocus so far has largely been on excessive antimicrobial use, but experts say there is growing evidence that environmentalfactors play a significant role in the development, transmission and spread of antimicrobial resistance.
“Climate change, pollution, changes in our weather patterns, more rainfall, more closely packed, dense cities and urban areas – all of this facilitates the spread of antibiotic resistance. And I am certain that this is only going to go up with time unless we take relatively drastic measures to curb this,” said Dr. Scott Roberts, an infectious diseases specialist at Yale School of Medicine, who was not involved with the new UN report.
The lives lost to these infections will be deemed less worthy to justify inaction. As will these lives:
Following the discovery of 55,000 dead birds in eight protected coastal areas, rangers found the bird flu that killed them had also claimed 585 sea lions in seven protected marine areas, the Sernanp natural areas protection agency said.
The dead birds included pelicans, various types of gulls, and penguins, the Sernanp said in a statement.
Laboratory tests also confirmed the presence of H5N1 in the dead sea lions, prompting the authorities to announce a "biological vigilance protocol."
For its part, Peru's National Forest and Wildlife Service (SERFOR) urged people and their pets to avoid contact with sea lions and sea birds on the beach.
“If you combine the reduction of natural habitat with the expansion and spreading of human settlements, it’s almost normal that the encounters between large carnivores and humans become more frequent,” Penteriani said. “It’s just a question of probability.”
Climate change that brings wildlife closer to humans may be another aggravating factor in human-wildlife conflicts, said Briana Abrahms, an assistant professor and wildlife ecologist at the University of Washington who did not work on the study.
Most carnivore attacks in high-income countries occurred during recreational activities such as hiking or camping. In low-income countries, carnivore attacks occurred more commonly among people engaging in livelihood activities such as hunting or farming. Globally, 32% of all attacks were fatal, according to the study.
Abrahms said that it is important to recognize all variables that affect human-wildlife interactions and that climate change is often missing from the discourse.
In other arenas too recent developments have been typically alarming:
The University of California, Irvine Earth system scientists have found that the Atlantic and Southern oceans’ deep circulation patterns are slowing down due to climate-driven heating of seawater. If this continues, the ocean’s ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will be greatly hindered, intensifying the effects of global warming.
A recent study published in Nature Climate Change by these researchers found that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and the Southern Meridional overturning Circulation may slow by up to 42% by 2100. The worst-case scenario of the simulations even suggests that the SMOC could completely stop by 2300.
“Analysis of the projections from 36 Earth system models over a range of climate scenarios shows that unchecked global warming could lead to a shutdown of the ocean deep circulation,” said co-author J. Keith Moore, UCI professor of Earth system science. “This would be a climate disaster similar in magnitude to the complete melting of the ice sheets on land.”
Where they once denied climate science outright, companies now engage in “discourses of delay,” publicly accepting the science but working to stall climate policy by redirecting blame, pushing non-transformative solutions, and emphasizing the downsides of taking action.
But the Heartland Institute, the infamous, free-market think tank that has operated at the center of climate misinformation for decades, is still hanging onto the old ways as it pushes on with its attempt to discredit established climate science.
This week, the organization sent copies of its book “Climate at a Glance” to 8,000 middle and high school teachers across the country, in order to provide them, it says, with “the data to show the earth is not experiencing a climate crisis.”
H. Sterling Burnett, who directs Climate and Environmental Policy for the Heartland Institute and edited “Climate at a Glance,” said he hoped the book would reach educators who are teaching climate change, “not to replace the material they have, but to supplement it.”
The research team used maps from satellites to study above-ground biomass in the tropics of South America, Africa, and Asia. To make predictions about the future, researchers leveraged historical data reaching back to 1950 to build empirical statistical and machine learning models. They found a strong relationship between above-ground biomass and spatial climate variability.
Due to the empirical relationship between above-ground biomass and climate, factors such as fire, drought, and interactions with the soil are implicit in the model, the researchers note.
The researchers found that if greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are higher, losses of stored carbon could nearly double by 2100.
Published in Frontiers in Marine Science, the study sought to determine the expected annual costs and number of people impacted by episodic coastal flooding across the globe as sea levels rise, rating the impact of flooding for every country across specified scenarios. The study found flooding would disproportionately affect developing nations, given their reduced capacity to pay for improved coastal defenses and their geographic vulnerability.
Led by University of Melbourne Dr. Ebru Kirezci and Professor of Engineering Ian Young, the study found many developing nations would experience expected annual damage costing over five percent of their national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) if no coastal defense adaptation measures are taken to mitigate extreme coastal flooding impact.
By contrast, almost all developed nations would experience expected annual damage of less than three percent of national GDP because of their capacity to undertake coastal defense adaptation measures.
With average temperatures rising around the world in recent decades, a number of these lakes high above population centers in South America and Asia have become swollen and unstable as the reserves of snow and ice that feed them melt ever quicker.
For the first time, an international team of researchers has quantified this threat. It reports in a study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications that 15 million people are in the path of potential floods from these bloated bodies of water. More than half of that total live in just four countries: Peru, India, Pakistan and China.
"Understanding which areas face the greatest danger from glacial flooding will allow for more targeted and effective risk management actions, which in turn will help minimize loss of life and damage to infrastructure downstream," co-author Rachel Carr, head of physical geography at Newcastle University, said in a statement.
In 2013, a glacial lake outburst flood, or GLOF, brought on by rainfall killed thousands in the Indian state of Uttarakhand. A number of other high-risk sites have been identified around the world.
As with hurricanes, Pacific typhoons and the mid-latitude storms that periodically batter the UK and Europe are forecast to follow a similar pattern in an anthropogenically warmed world. Storm numbers may not rise, but there is likely to be an escalation in the frequency of the bigger storm systems, which tend to be the most destructive. An additional concern is that mid-latitude storms may become clustered, bringing the prospect of extended periods of damaging and disruptive winds. The jury is out on whether climate change will drive up the number of smaller, but potentially ruinous vortices of solid wind that make up tornadoes, although an apparent trend in the US towards more powerful storms has been blamed by some on a warming atmosphere.
Tornadoes, typhoons, hurricanes and mid-latitude storms – along with heatwaves and floods – are widely regarded as climate change’s shock troops; forecast to accelerate the destruction, loss of life and financial pain as planet Earth continues to heat up. It would be wrong to imagine, however, that climate change and the extreme events it drives are all about higher temperatures and a bit more wind and rain.
The atmosphere is far from isolated and interacts with other elements of the so-called “Earth system”, such as the oceans, ice caps and even the ground beneath our feet, in complex and often unexpected ways capable of making our world more dangerous. We are pretty familiar with the idea that the oceans swell as a consequence of the plunging atmospheric pressure at the heart of powerful storms, building surges driven onshore by high winds that can be massively destructive. Similarly, it does not stretch the imagination to appreciate that a warmer atmosphere promotes greater melting of the polar ice caps, thereby raising sea levels and increasing the risk of coastal flooding. But, more extraordinarily, the thin layer of gases that hosts the weather and fosters global warming really does interact with the solid Earth – the so-called geosphere — in such a way as to make climate change an even bigger threat.
Meanwhile disproportionate crackdowns on peaceful protestors also continues.
An environmental activist has been jailed for eight weeks after disobeying a judge’s instruction not to mention the climate crisis as his motivation during his trial for taking part in a road-blocking protest.
David Nixon, 36, a care worker from Barnsley, was sentenced at Inner London crown court on Tuesday after admitting contempt of court the day before by using his closing address to begin telling a jury about his reasons for protesting.
He and three others had been on trial for causing a public nuisance by blocking a busy junction in the City of London on 25 October 2021 as part of the Insulate Britain climate campaign. They were found guilty and will be sentenced on 24 March.
A new phrase might be necessary to describe the collective climate and environmental dissembling and regression, because the word ‘inaction’ does not adequately cover this willful movement in the wrong direction while simultaneously claiming movement in the correct one (misaction?). Fascism is an accurate descriptor, but this too is more than fascism, more than ignorance, more than shortsightedness, though it is all those things. This is our civilization’s happy, delusional collective suicide—for no reason other than inertia and the decades-long capture of the government and the public consciousness by the most greedy, the most lucky, and the most adept cheaters. And we are going to watch as it happens, lowering our expectations and standards right alongside our bodies into the earth.
