Groups of citizens have been organizing worldwide to fight against fossil fuel industry’s negative impacts on their lives. These impacts are either direct—through expropriations of land and development of infrastructure against the will of the population—or indirect—through their role in the sharp increase of climate-altering emissions threatening health and livelihoods worldwide. These movements are often […]
By Jake Johnson Indigenous leaders, lawmakers, students and environmentalists took part in a massive day of action that stretched across Canada on Friday to protest the expansion of Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain tar sands pipeline, a project Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said he will “ensure” is completed. Calling out the prime minister by […]
This was a big week for the suit brought by San Francisco and Oakland against the five largest investor-owned fossil fuel companies for the costs associated with adapting to climate change. First, the five companies in question—Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, BP and Royal Dutch Shell—filed a motion Tuesday to dismiss the case, arguing that the U.S. […]
By Ken Kimmell A major front in the climate change debate has moved to the courtroom, as I’ve previously discussed. Last week, plaintiffs in two separate cases won significant procedural victories—one against major fossil fuel companies, and a second against the Trump administration. Here are the latest developments and their implications. Bay Area vs. Big […]
By Jessica Corbett A team of researchers on Tuesday released a “blistering” report on the serious public health threats—from headaches to asthma to cancer—posed by hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a process of injecting a mix of water and chemicals into rocks to release oil and natural gas. The study—described as “the most authoritative” of its […]
By Andy Rowell The Terminator is back. And this time he has Big Oil in his sights. Ex-California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has vowed to take on Big Oil “for knowingly killing people all over the world.” Reflecting sentiments expressed by many commentators over the years, including myself, of how the denial and delay campaign by […]
By Justin Mikulka On Jan. 29, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee rejected a permit required for Tesoro-Savage to build the Vancouver Energy oil-by-rail facility, the largest such project in the nation, at the Port of Vancouver, along the Washington-Oregon border. The governor explained the basis of his decision, which followed a several year long process, in […]
By Andy Rowell As Washington continues to digest the explosive revelations in the book Fire and Fury about the chaotic and dysfunctional White House and whether the president is mentally fit for office, the Trump administration continues its full-frontal assault on the environment. Last week, just as Fire and Fury started to send shock-waves around […]
By Julia Conley The oil and gas industry is poised to save hundreds of millions of dollars over the next decade thanks to a rollback of offshore drilling safety regulations that have been proposed by the Trump administration—including the elimination of the word “safe” from one rule. The rules in question were put in place […]