[✔️] July 2, 2021 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
👀 Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Fri Jul 2 11:53:40 EDT 2021
/*July 2, 2021*/
[President Biden meets with Western state governors to discuss ways to
combat drought, heat and wildfires]
*Biden pledges better pay for firefighters as he hosts virtual meeting
of Western governors*
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/30/joe-biden-live-updates/
[Cough, cough]
*Smoke from California wildfires moving in to Oregon*
https://www.opb.org/article/2021/07/01/smoke-california-oregon-wildfire/
[Stinging Exxon - disinformation wars]
*In Video, Exxon Lobbyist Describes Efforts to Undercut Climate Action*
On the tape, made in a Greenpeace sting, he described working with
“shadow groups” to fight climate science, and detailed efforts to weaken
President Biden’s proposals to burn less oil.
By Hiroko Tabuchi - June 30, 2021
The veteran oil-industry lobbyist was told he was meeting with a
recruiter. But the video call, which was secretly recorded, was part of
an elaborate sting operation by an individual working for the
environmental group Greenpeace UK.
During the call, Keith McCoy, a senior director of federal relations for
Exxon Mobil, described how the oil and gas giant targeted a number of
influential United States senators in an effort to weaken climate action
in President Biden’s flagship infrastructure plan. That plan now
contains few of the ambitious ideas initially proposed by Mr. Biden to
cut the burning of fossil fuels, the main driver of climate change.
Mr. McCoy also said on the recording that Exxon’s support for a tax on
carbon dioxide was “a great talking point” for the oil company, but that
he believes the tax will never happen. He also said that the company has
in the past aggressively fought climate science through “shadow groups.”
On Wednesday, excerpts from the conversation were aired by the British
broadcaster Channel 4. The affiliate of Greenpeace that recorded the
video, Unearthed, also released excerpts.
In a statement, Darren Woods, Exxon’s chief executive, said the comments
“in no way represent the company’s position on a variety of issues,
including climate policy, and our firm commitment that carbon pricing is
important to addressing climate change.” Mr. McCoy and another lobbyist
interviewed by Greenpeace “were never involved in developing the
company’s policy positions on the issues discussed,” he said.
“We condemn the statements and are deeply apologetic for them, including
comments regarding interactions with elected officials. They are
entirely inconsistent with the way we expect our people to conduct
themselves. We were shocked by these interviews and stand by our
commitments to working on finding solutions to climate change,” Mr.
Woods said.
The lobbyist’s remarks came after Exxon, one of the world’s largest
fossil fuel producers, has in recent years said it backs the Paris
climate accord’s goal of limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees
Celsius compared with preindustrial levels.
In what has been hailed as a significant shift for the company, Exxon
has also thrown public support behind the idea of a carbon tax, a fee on
the carbon content of fossil fuels meant to discourage emissions by
making goods that are more polluting to manufacture more expensive.
Carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels trap the sun’s
heat and are a major contributor to climate change.
In advertising campaigns, Exxon has presented itself as a part of the
solution to, rather than a cause of, climate change. Mr. McCoy painted a
different picture of Exxon’s efforts behind the scenes. In the
recording, he said the company targeted a number of influential senators
with the aim of scaling back the climate provisions in President Biden’s
sweeping infrastructure bill by scrapping the tax increases that would
pay for it.
“We’re playing defense because President Biden is talking about this big
infrastructure package and he’s going to pay for it by increasing
corporate taxes,” Mr. McCoy said in the video call. But if the plan
stuck to “roads and bridges,” the budget would be reduced greatly and
limit the need for tax increases, a move that would save Exxon close to
a billion dollars, he said.
The Exxon lobbyist also expressed skepticism over the idea of taxing
carbon pollution produced by burning fossil fuels — a measure pushed by
some Republicans as “a conservative climate solution” based on
free-market principles. Mr. Woods, Exxon’s chief executive, has also
argued that instead of an “inefficient patchwork of regulations” in the
United States, the federal government should instead simply tax carbon.
Mr. McCoy seemed to contradict that position. “Nobody is going to
propose a tax on all Americans. And the cynical side of me says yeah, we
kind of know that,” he said. “But it gives us a talking point.”
Alex Flint, executive director of the Alliance for Market Solutions,
which has led the push for a carbon tax, said his experience with
Exxon’s lobbyists was that “they are genuinely committed to a carbon tax
and realize that a lot of work needs to be done.”
On the video call recorded by Greenpeace, Mr. McCoy defended the
company’s efforts to mislead the public on climate change, even as the
company’s own scientists were recognizing greenhouse gas emissions as a
risk to the planet. “Did we aggressively fight against some of the
science? Yes. Did we hide our science? Absolutely not,” Mr. McCoy said.
“Did we join some of these shadow groups to work against some of the
early efforts? Yes, that’s true.”
Mr. McCoy didn’t identify the groups. Exxon Mobil has spent millions of
dollars funding conservative groups that challenge established climate
science. “But there’s nothing illegal about that,” he said. “We were
looking out for our investments. We were looking out for our shareholders.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/30/climate/exxon-greenpeace-lobbyist-video.html
- -
[see the video from TV journalist]
*Revealed: ExxonMobil’s lobbying war on climate change legislation*
Jun 30, 2021
Channel 4 News
They're America's biggest oil company - committed they claim, to
tackling the climate emergency. But tonight this programme can reveal
undercover footage of one of Exxonmobil's top Washington lobbyists -
speaking candidly about his efforts to undermine new legislation to
protect the environment. The lobbyist was captured on camera by the
environmental group Greenpeace UK - boasting of how Exxonmobil has
fought climate science, and operated behind closed doors to water down
green legislation. Exxonmobil dispute the claims - and accuse
Greenpeace of "waging a campaign against them". In the first part of a
series of reports on the secretive world of fossil fuel lobbying - our
Chief Correspondent Alex Thomson has this exclusive story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5v1Yg6XejyE
- -
[AOC - Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]
*ExxonMobil lobbying tactics ‘used against’ climate legislation are
‘shameful’*
Jul 1, 2021
Channel 4 News
We spoke to leading Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and
began by asking for her reaction to our ExxonMobil revelations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m7laYy5Zz4
[Greenpeace report]
*Inside Exxon’s playbook: How the oil giant works through front groups
to head-off regulations on toxic chemicals and plastics*
ExxonMobil worked with groups including the powerful American Chemistry
Council to influence policy on 'forever chemicals' and plastic waste,
insider tells undercover reporter
https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2021/07/01/exxon-undercover-pfas-plastic-chemicals/
- -
[the duped one apologizes]
*Exxon Lobbyist Issues Apology on LinkedIn as Company Goes Into Damage
Control*
The lobbyist caught admitting internal strategy on tape has apologized,
while Exxon seeks to distance itself.
- -
Keith McCoy, a senior director of federal relations at Exxon, took most
of the heat in the segment for his comments on, among other things, how
the company’s carbon tax endorsement is a “great talking point” because
it’ll never actually come to pass. He took to—where else?—LinkedIn on
Wednesday to issue an apology...
- -
“I am deeply embarrassed by my comments and that I allowed myself to
fall for Greenpeace’s deception,” his post reads. “My statements clearly
do not represent ExxonMobil’s positions on important public policy
issues. While some of my comments were taken out of context, there is no
excuse for what I said or how I said it. I apologize to all my
colleagues at the company and my friends in Washington, D.C., all of
whom have a right to expect better of me.”
Like most places on the internet, the LinkedIn comment section is a
pretty tough crowd. McCoy was roasted for the “PR lip service” apologies
while other users advocated for Exxon’s managed decline. McCoy does have
some support, though. One of the people who “liked” the post is George
David Banks, a former senior adviser to President George W. Bush on
climate change and who served a brief tenure as a special assistant to
former President Donald Trump for international energy and environment,
where he treated us to a baffling defense of Trump’s infamous “global
warming is a Chinese hoax” tweet. Banks stepped down after he was told
he wouldn’t receive full security clearance because he’d smoked too much
weed in the past (relatable, tbh).
https://gizmodo.com/exxon-lobbyist-issues-apology-on-linkedin-as-company-go-1847210308
- -
[Call it the Moon Walk]
*Exxon Mounts Feeble Walkback After Lobbyist Caught on Camera Telling
Truth About Anti-Climate Agenda*
The oil giant would like you to know that statements from its “Senior
Director for Federal Relations” in no way represent its position on
federal climate policy
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/caught-on-camera-exxonmobil-lobbyist-touts-anti-climate-actions-1192057/
[a well established wake-up call]
*‘This is a wake-up call’: Canada heatwave a sign of uncertain years to
come, scientists warn*
Experts say the soaring temperatures are ‘unequivocally’ a sign of
climate change, reports Ashleigh Stewart in Toronto
https://www.independent.co.uk/independentpremium/world/canada-temperatures-heatwave-climate-change-b1875709.html
[McKibben]
*The World Speeds Up—and We Slow Down*
Climate destruction is now moving much faster than human institutions.
By Bill McKibben
- -
Leaked drafts of the next big report from the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change indicate that it will be even more dire than its
predecessors. “I suspect what we will face is further urgency and the
need to go further, faster,” the head of the Glasgow talks said.
You would think that changes in the planet’s climate would take a very
long time and changes in human opinion and action could happen fast.
You’d think that sentience would be an aid. But, instead, it appears
that we are slow and that nature—supercharged by our carbon—is fast as
hell. Since the climate crisis isn’t going to slow down, our only option
is to speed up.
- -
https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/the-world-speeds-up-and-we-slow-down
[promotion]
*The Chamber of Commerce Has Been Exposed as One of the Primary
Obstacles to Climate Action*
Internal documents suggest the Chamber acknowledged the threat in
1989—and spent many of the years since trying to block a response.
By Charles P. Pierce - Jun 30, 2021
In 2010, scientists opened the Climate and Development Lab at Brown
University to study various aspects of the climate crisis. The Lab’s
work covers all facets of the vast crisis and it produces reports, and
policy papers, and both op-ed columns and online commentary. This week,
with impeccable timing if you happen to live in the Pacific Northwest,
the CDL produced a report detailing the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s
longtime role as one of the primary obstructions to coping seriously
with the crisis, and its complicity in the dangerous practice of climate
denial.
After acknowledging potential adverse climate impacts predicted by
climate science in 1989, the Chamber shifted to discourses of
climate uncertainty and denial.
After a decade of articulating a fundamental conflict between
climate action and economic prosperity, the Chamber began suggesting
that a long-term, non-transformative strategy for climate progress
could combine formerly competing objectives.
After delaying addressing whether or not climate change was a
solvable challenge, the Chamber introduced 'surrender' discourses
that discredited the possibility of remedying climate change.
The Chamber framed non-transformative visions for climate governance
when significant opportunities for climate progress were absent,
while directly discrediting those policies and regulatory action
when opportunities were present.
Bill Kovacs pushed the Chamber to more extreme and dramatic
positions on climate change.
The report itself is a fascinating account of how the Chamber has
back-slid on the crisis ever since 1989. The report quotes internal
Chamber documents from that year, when NASA’s James Hansen sounded the
alarm for the first time:
There is qualitative agreement among prognosticators that sea levels
will rise, wetlands will flood, salt water will infuse fresh water
supplies, and there will be changes in the distribution of tree and
crop species and agricultural productivity.
By the 2000s, according to documents obtained by the authors of the
report, the Chamber still acknowledged the gravity of the crisis but,
apparently, it had decided that things were already beyond hope. The
report traces how this shift happened, and how it eventually morphed
into obfuscation and denial.
First, the Chamber utilized 16 unique “discourses of delay” to
discount climate science and dismiss a series of policy proposals.
Second, the frequency by which the Chamber employed these discourses
shifted significantly between presidential administrations.
Third, after affirming climate science in an internal May 1989
presentation, the U.S. Chamber shifted to frequent climate
skepticism that culminated in a public denial of climate science
during the ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’ moment of 2009. ...
Sixth, over the course of the 1989-2009 period, the Chamber tended
to ‘diagnose’ climate change and policy challenges when significant
climate policy opportunities were absent, and frame discussions in
prognostic, motivational, and policy-specific terms when they were
present.
Finally, the Chamber’s messaging about climate change became
markedly more extreme, dramatic, and aggressive during the 2000s,
likely related to the hiring of William Kovacs as Vice President of
its Environment, Technology, and Regulatory Affairs group.
Kovacs appears as the primary individual villain in the Brown center’s
report.
Discussions of climate science during the George W. Bush
administration in this report’s source material were mostly
concentrated in the 2003 & 2005 Reality Check reports, but the
Chamber returned to climate skepticism discourses during the early
Obama administration. In 2009, Kovacs led a campaign urging the EPA
to host a public, on-the-record ‘trial’ on the science of climate
change before moving forward with its endangerment finding. The
Chamber’s trial would be modeled after the historic Scopes Monkey
Trial, which brought evolutionary science to the US court
system…What is apparent is that Kovacs had an outsized role in
shaping Chamber climate discourses after his hire in 1998, and did
so in a way that garnered attention, seeded doubt, and solidified
the U.S. Chamber as a public climate obstruction organization during
the first decade of the 21st century.
I’ve long worried that the political institutions of this country are
wholly inadequate to confront the profound crisis that already is upon
us, let alone what’s coming next. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is a
political institution that doesn’t give a damn, one way or another.
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a36891796/chamber-of-commerce-climate-denial/
[follow the money]
*A Major New Index Fund Should Unnerve Climate-Skeptical CEOs*
The hedge fund that staged a revolt at Exxon last month is now
recruiting an army of mom-and-pop investors for future battles.
By Robinson Meyer
- -
The new Engine No. 1 Transition 500 Fund is, in other words, a low-fee,
diversified index fund of the type that now dominates the American stock
market. Yet unlike other index-fund providers, which sit out some fights
with management, Engine No. 1 has pledged to crusade. When Engine No. 1
campaigns against a company’s leadership, shares held by the Transition
500 ETF will vote for its slate. The ETF will trade on the stock market,
appropriately, under the ticker symbol VOTE.
- -
Last year, when I covered Betterment’s attempt to put a climate-friendly
portfolio together, I wished for an ETF just like VOTE—a fund that tried
to reshape the market not by withdrawing money from some places and
investing it in others but by engaging directly with corporate
leadership and using the power of shareholder voting to push boards
forward. “But right now, no such fund exists,” I concluded.
Now such a fund does. I think VOTE is a natural complement to a
divestment strategy, especially as clean energy gets cheaper and the
financial costs of fighting climate change for any one firm decline.
Engine No. 1 contends that such a strategy will bring in higher returns
too. “We believe that for companies to create shareholder value, they
need to focus on investments they make in communities, employees,
customers, and the environment,” O’Leary said. “If, over time, companies
are focused on those externalities, they are best positioned to succeed.
Engine No. 1 will focus on those issues and find the opportunities where
our votes will be the most effective.” We’ll find out if that investing
hypothesis holds.
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2021/06/climate-focused-hedge-funds-new-index-fund-engine-no-1/619264/
[fire forecast]
*Above normal wildfire activity predicted in the Northwest for July and
August*
https://wildfiretoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/month1_outlook.png
https://wildfiretoday.com/2021/07/01/above-normal-wildfire-activity-predicted-in-the-northwest-for-july-and-august/
[Like Snakes on a Plane]
*Rattlesnakes may be one of the only winners of climate change crisis*
The heat-loving reptiles could thrive in warmer temperatures.
Amanda Kooser - June 30, 2021
- -
The climate change news has been bad for humanity. Drought. Warmer
temperatures. Rising sea levels. Wildfires. Extreme weather. There may
be at least one denizen of Earth that could be OK with this mess:
rattlesnakes.
A study led by researchers at California Polytechnic State University
suggests the venomous snakes commonly found in the US Southwest could
benefit from a bump in heat. The paper is published in the journal
Ecology and Evolution.
https://www.cnet.com/news/rattlesnakes-may-be-one-of-the-only-winners-of-climate-change-crisis/
[ramifications]
*Focused on a hurricane's wind speeds? Here's other hazards you should
know about.*
Cheryl McCloud
Naples Daily News
Hurricanes are a known threat along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, but
that threat can be broken down into several specific hazards, not just
wind.
A hurricane is categorized based on its wind speed. A hurricane is born
when wind speeds reach 74 mph. A major hurricane, with winds of 111 mph
or higher, can bring major and up to catastrophic damage to a community.
While the category of a hurricane depends on its wind speed, wind is
only one of the many hazards posed by a storm.
The major hazards associated with hurricanes are:
storm surge and storm tide
heavy rainfall and inland flooding
high winds
rip currents
tornadoes
https://www.naplesnews.com/story/weather/hurricanes/2021/07/01/nhc-hurricanes-bring-deadly-storm-surge-wind-heavy-rain-tornadoes-flooding-rip-currents/4856202001/
[The news archive - looking back]
*On this day in the history of global warming July 2, 2006*
July 2, 2006: Notorious climate denier Dick Lindzen whines, moans,
kvetches and complains about "An Inconvenient Truth" in a piece for the
Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal.com.
http://web.archive.org/web/20060705111127/http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110008597
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