EPA staff say the Trump administration is changing their mission from protecting human health and the environment to protecting industry

By Chris Sellers, Lindsey Dillon, and Phil Brown 6 June 2018 (The Conversation) – The Environmental Protection Agency made news recently for excluding reporters from a “summit” meeting on chemical contamination in drinking water. Episodes like this are symptoms of a larger problem: an ongoing, broad-scale takeover of the agency by industries it regulates.We are […]

Standing perfectly still: no progress in replacing fossil fuels for the past twenty years

15 July 2018 (Desdemona Despair) – It’s well known that human population is increasing relentlessly, with no peak in sight for at least the next century. Various projections estimate that the population will be somewhere in the neighborhood of ten to twelve billion by the year 2100 (cf. New projection shows human population could reach […]

Graph of the Day: Global economic growth and energy consumption growth, 1991-2017

By Dr. Minqi Li 28 June 2018(Peak Oil Barrel) – This figure compares the historical world economic growth rates and the primary energy consumption growth rates from 1991 to 2017. The primary energy consumption growth rate has an intercept of -0.012 at zero economic growth rate and a slope of 0.914. That is, primary energy […]

Appalachia’s $84 billion secret: China and U.S. plan massive petrochemical hub in West Virginia – “Most people have no clue how much more damage is coming if it doesn’t stop. The industry doesn’t want people to know about this.”

By Natalie Stickel 13 June 2018 (Blue Ridge Outdoors) – The biggest energy project you’ve never heard of commonly goes by the acronym ASTH—the Appalachian Storage and Trading Hub. This massive petrochemical hub in West Virginia and Pennsylvania would be the largest infrastructure in the region’s history, consisting of hundreds of miles of pipelines, fracked […]

BP: Carbon emissions and coal consumption increased in 2017, reversing recent trends – “This should serve as a wake-up call for all of us”

By Spencer Dale 13 June 2018(BP) – At first blush, some of last year’s data might seem a little disappointing. Growth in overall energy demand is up; gains in energy intensity are down. Coal consumption grew for the first time in four years. And, perhaps most striking of all, carbon emissions are up after three […]

Anti-coal mine activist Suresh Oraon shot dead In Jharkhand, India

7 June 2018 (Countercurrents) – Suresh Oraon (27) of Purnadih Chatra Jharkhand was shot dead this morning. Suresh and his people were the owners of the land on which the state owned Central Coalfields Limited (CCL) built their Purnadih coal mines. Suresh kept fighting CCL and their mafia against land grabbing. When CCL bulldozed the […]

Think the big banks have abandoned coal? Think again

By Emily Flitter 28 May 2018 (The New York Times) – Starting three years ago, the largest American banks vowed to cut back on lending to the coal industry. “The bank has a responsibility to help mitigate climate change by leveraging our scale and resources to accelerate the transition from a high-carbon to a low-carbon […]

Idle coal-fired power plant in Australia will reopen to power bitcoin mining

By Claire Reilly 11 April 2018 (CNET) – Sure, you could mine bitcoin on that old PC in your garage, or you could use a whole power station to do it. That’s the idea behind the Blockchain Application Centre — an Aussie tech initiative that will see one of the country’s now-shuttered coal-fired power plants […]

WHO report: 90 per cent of world population breathes polluted air

2 May 2018 (UN News) – In a call for Member States to take action urgently, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General, Tedros Adhanom Gebreyesus, warned that air pollution “threatens us all, but the poorest and most marginalized people bear the brunt of the burden.”According to WHO’s ambient air quality database, despite some improvements, pollution levels […]

China is massively betting on coal outside its borders, even as investment falls globally

By Huileng Tan 6 April 2018 (CNBC) – Once globally vilified for extensive air pollution due to heavy coal usage, China now talks a big game about its environmental efforts after the U.S. withdrawal from the Paris climate pact.But, beyond its borders, the country has been the world’s biggest investor in coal power.”Chinese banks’ and […]

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