Articles include: Michigan flooding & sea walls; forest destruction accelerated in 2020; rivers as a climate change solution; Kerry to India and UAE; Climate change, Canada, and hurricanes (report in the ScienceBrief Review website); thaw-driven landslides; wind energy; Scottish wind farm success; UAE, automakers and EV’s; keeping the planet habitable; DOJ holding oil companies accountable.
Tag: Department of Justice (DOJ)
Major pipelines take hit, but oil networks keep growing
Politico discusses how major pipelines have taken a hit, but oil networks keep growing. Despite recent high-profile courtroom losses, the oil and gas industry has succeeded in putting tens of thousands of miles of new steel in the ground.
“One thing for sure is there is a lot going on in the pipeline world outside of the public attention on shiny objects like Keystone XL, DAPL or Atlantic Coast,” said John Stoody, vice president of government and public relations at trade group Association of Oil Pipe Lines, pointing to government records showing about 10,000 miles of oil pipelines were built since 2015. “While the many have been focused on debating the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, we’ve actually built and have newly operating over the last five years the mileage equivalent of over 18 Atlantic Coast Pipelines.”
Emails Reveal U.S. Justice Dept. Working Closely with Oil Industry to Oppose Climate Lawsuits
This Inside Climate News article discusses emails that reveal how the U.S. Justice Department is working closely with the O&G industry to oppose climate lawsuits. DOJ attorneys describe working with industry lawyers as a ‘team,’ raising questions about whether government was representing the American people.
In early 2018, a few months after the cities of Oakland and San Francisco sued several major oil companies over climate change, attorneys with the U.S. Department of Justice began a series of email exchanges and meetings with lawyers for the oil companies targeted in the litigation.
At one point, Eric Grant, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, sent an email to Indiana’s solicitor general saying that his “boss” had asked him to set up a meeting to go over a plan for the government to intercede in the cases on the companies’ behalf.
The cities were arguing that oil companies should be held liable for catastrophic flooding, sea-level rise and other harmful consequences caused by climate change. The DOJ was preparing an amicus brief in support of the industry, and the Indiana solicitor general was leading the charge by Republican attorneys general from 15 states to also file a court brief supporting the industry.
In another email, an assistant U.S. attorney general referred to the DOJ attorneys and industry lawyers—many of them former DOJ environmental lawyers—as a “team.”
DeSmog Blog, week of 5/23/2019
This week’s blog includes discussions about transporting fracked gas via trucks instead of pipelines; new laws in Louisiana that criminalize pipeline protests; Trump, DOJ, and “clean coal”; shipping companies and GHGs; a report on plastics; Biden and his Dominion Energy connection; Warren Buffet and fracking; FER$C and its pipeline rules; DOI rollback of O&G regulations; tribal communities embracing renewable energy; melting rate of polar ice; and climate change denier Andrew Bolt.
DeSmog Blog
This blog post discusses the following:
- Why Plans to Turn America’s Rust Belt into a New Plastics Belt Are Bad News for the Climate
- Peak Shale: Is the US Fracking Industry Already in Decline?
- Backed by Big Oil, Opponents of Washington’s Proposed Carbon Fee Claim Latino Businesses Support Them—Except They Don’t
- TigerSwan, County Sheriff Sued Over Road Blockade During Dakota Access Pipeline Protests
- A Field Guide to the Petrochemical and Plastics Industry
- inke’s Shrinking of National Monuments and Meetings With Halliburton Could Be Center of DOJ Investigation
- Coal Can’t Compete With Cheaper Alternatives and the Industry’s True Costs Are Higher Than They Appear
- This 1980 Shell Chemical Company Publication Outlines Plans to Create ‘Grassroots’ Campaigns
- From the Climate Disinformation Database: Grant Kidwell
Trump “draining the swamp”? No – he dove right in
The Daily Climate’s Weekend Reader, Sunday March 11 (email) contains the following analysis:
What is the Trump Administration’s role on keeping lobbyists out of government? “Apparently, President Trump’s operative plan for draining the Washington swamp is to hire former lobbyists to do cannonballs into it. The Associated Press reports that of 59 hires they tracked at EPA, about a third previously worked as registered lobbyists or lawyers for “chemical companies, fossil fuel producers, and other corporate clients.”
The New Republic’s Emily Atkin writes that EPA’s social media is promoting the work of the venerable climate deniers at the Heartland Institute. Meanwhile, The Hill, whose news reporters do solid work on the environment, chose to publish a cheerful op-ed from Heartland that blows kisses to EPA boss Scott Pruitt and his march toward “greatness.”
Hey, when you get chosen for the world’s most important cabinet, maybe $139,000 doors are appropriate? Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke spent that much, according to the AP, on office improvements. Secretary Zinke also opined this week that wind turbines are warming the planet.
Beyond the doors, these are strange days at Interior. Alexander C. Kaufman and Chris D’Angelo of Huff Post report that actual scientists are locked out of decision making in favor of unqualified bloggers and ideologues.
Not to be outdone, Attorney General Jeff Sessions was reportedly involved in some environmental swampery while in the Senate: Mother Jones links him to a bribery scandal involving a Superfund site in an inner-city Birmingham neighborhood.
And EPA brushed off environmental racism claims from another Alabama site: Uniontown is a predominantly black town in the shadow of a colossal landfill that receives garbage from 33 states,
Interesting read from The New York Times: EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt wanted to stage a “red-blue debate” on climate change late last year, but White House Chief of Staff John Kelly denied the effort (but credit the scoop to Robin Bravender of E&E News with the scoop on this, back in December.)”