By Dharna Noor 1 May 2024 (The Guardian) – The fossil fuel industry spent decades sowing doubt about the dangers of burning oil and gas, experts and Democratic lawmakers testified on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. The Senate budget committee held a hearing to review a report published on Tuesday with the House oversight and accountability […]
By Victoria Milko 28 April 2024 JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) – From trees felled in protected national parks to massive swaths of jungle razed for palm oil and paper plantations, Indonesia had a 27% uptick in primary forest loss in 2023 from the previous year, according to a World Resources Institute analysis of deforestation data. But […]
By Ian James 23 April 2024 (Los Angeles Times) – Southern California’s rivers and creeks once teemed with large, silvery fish that arrived from the ocean and swam upstream to spawn. But today, these fish are seldom seen. Southern California steelhead trout have been pushed to the brink of extinction as their river habitats have […]
By Niranjana Rajalakshmi 23 April 2024 (University of Arizona) – The impact of human activities – such as greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation – on Earth’s surface have been well-studied. Now, hydrology researchers from the University of Arizona have investigated how humans impact Earth’s deep subsurface, a zone that lies hundreds of meters to several […]
By Brad Plumer 17 March 2024 (The New York Times) – Something unusual is happening in America. Demand for electricity, which has stayed largely flat for two decades, has begun to surge. Over the past year, electric utilities have nearly doubled their forecasts of how much additional power they’ll need by 2028 as they confront […]
March 2024 (IEA) – CO2 Emissions in 2023 provides a complete picture of energy-related emissions in 2023. The report finds that clean energy growth has limited the rise in global emissions, with 2023 registering an increase of 1.1 percent. Weather effects and continued Covid-19 reopening played a significant role in driving emissions in 2023. Advanced economies saw […]
By Victoria Seabrook and Daniel Dunford 11 April 2024 (Sky News) – China ramped up coal power capacity last year, according to new analysis, despite a pledge to “strictly control” the dirtiest fossil fuel. The country added 47.4 Gigawatts (GW) of new coal power in 2023, more than double the amount added by the rest […]
By Geert De Clercq and Ingrid Melander 19 February 2024 PARIS (Reuters) – A fire at a battery recycling plant in southern France is under control, though burning, the local firefighters service said on Monday, two days after the blaze began. The fire broke out in a warehouse containing 900 metric tons of lithium batteries […]
By Alistair Smout 5 January 2024 LONDON (Reuters) – A former British energy minister on Friday said he would quit the ruling Conservatives and stand down as a lawmaker over the government climate record, rebuking plans to allow more North Sea oil and gas licencing. Chris Skidmore’s resignation will trigger a by-election to replace him […]
By Victor Maus and Tim T. Werner 3 January 2024 (Nature) – Mining is a crucial industry — from iron and copper to gravel and sand, we depend on it for the basic building blocks of the modern world. It is a fast changing sector, as the clean energy transition and digitalization boost demand for […]
![Effect of political contributions from oil and gas companies on U.S. legislators that vote against the environment. Coefficients and 95 percent CIs for tests of investment (Left) and influence (Right) hypotheses and their corresponding metaanalytic effects for the years 1992 to 2018. In 13 out of 14 analyses, lower LCV scores (i.e., more antienvironmental votes) in one election cycle predicted significantly increased contributions in the following election cycle. For example, the strongest result was observed for the 2016 election: For every additional 10 percent of congressional votes against the environment in 2014, a legislator would receive an additional $5,400 in campaign contributions from oil and gas companies in 2016 (b = −0.54, SE = 0.12; P < 0.001; 95 percent CI [−0.77, −0.31]). This is an especially strong relationship considering that many elected officials vote against environmental policies nearly 100 percent of the time, thereby compounding the cycle of antienvironmentalism and increasing rewards in the form of contributions. Graphic: Goldberg, et al., 2020 / PNAS](https://desdemonadespair.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/image-8.png)
