Shaming Blaming and Sabotaging the world’s worst ‘Filthy Rich’ ‘Climate Criminals’ to help save the planet

–“The rich and powerful have thrown their lot in with those who have a vested interest in continued fossil fuel use, and this cabal is the main thing standing in the way of a fossil fuel-free future ..”

by John Thomason on Oct 07, 2024 at Grist home. (via thefreeonline at https://wp.me/pIJl9-Els on Telegram – t.me/thefreeonline )

For 40 years the US Regime, fired by world military domination, ‘exceptionalism’ and the ability to ‘just print money, denied climate change and systematically sabotaged all our efforts to confront it.

At last the USA, with the highest Carbon Footprint and insanely wasteful over consumption, is forced, at least for now, to recognize the shocking facts, only to be infested with a host of reactionary colonist deniers, urged on and often funded by the billionaire military/corporate deep state.

The Deniers are happy to flaunt their ‘rights’ to proclaim that black is white. Saving the Planet is held hostage to the rights of a tiny US minority, backed by a ruling class, to maintain their absurd mega privileges. This article, for us, is not nearly angry enough and suffers from the usual blindness of assuming the USA is the world.

Climate Defiance activists direct our fury at the rich and powerful.

Greenberg, right, and other Climate Defiance activists protest the Willow project

An unfailingly friendly 30-year-old with tousled black hair and a slight, willowy frame, Michael Greenberg almost never loses his beatific smile — not even when a black SUV is plowing straight toward him.

This apparent serenity makes it nearly impossible to imagine Greenberg uttering the following words, which he posted to X in May: “We are bold and brash. We get in your face and get in your space. We do not grovel. We do not make requests like Oliver Twist asking for gruel. We make life miserable for people in power. And we do not apologize. Respect us or expect us.”… /continues below

Climate Criminals Time to NAME names!

All eyes on the Climate criminals. running out the clock. It’s time to name names. the individuals delaying climate action and financing the climate crisis Must be held accountable. meet the 2024 climate criminals Contact us at info@climatecriminals.org. ABOUT US — Climate CriminalsThe 2024 Climate Criminals Top 24 list was selected from a vigorous nomination and research process. Our team of researchers, academics, and climate justice experts reviewed over 300 individuals engaged in deflection, denial, and delay.

… As the founder of the activist group Climate Defiance, Greenberg has proven that he means what he tweets. Since the group’s founding last year, Climate Defiance activists have stormed dozens of formal events with the goal of, in their words, “ending the careers and decimating the reputations of those who disagree with us.”

Exxon Climate Criminals may already have knowingly caused runaway Climate Change, which could lead to the extinction pf millions of species, including YOU and ME.

They’ve called Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, a “murderer” to her face, told Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia that he’s a “sick f***,” and demanded that Exxon Mobil’s CEO, Darren Woods, “eat shit.”

In the last month alone, they’ve berated Occidental Petroleum’s CEO, Vicki Hollub, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and — for the sixth and almost certainly not final time — retiring Senator Manchin. On the strength of this chaos, the group raised well over $100,000 in just one week in September.

The group’s public shaming efforts have also sometimes targeted policymakers who have committed their entire political careers to fighting climate change. In the span of a few days in New York City last year, the group heckled President Joe Biden’s climate adviser, Ali Zaidi, four different times.

‘50% chance of Methane burst in ESAS, could cause Climate Chaos, put us near 2C in 2 yrs’

“The East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) is exceptionally shallow — more than 75 per cent of its entire area of 2.1 million square kilometres is shallower than 40 metres — so most of the methane gas avoids oxidation in the water column and is released into the atmosphere.” (Wadhams, pg. 123“).

”To spot methane levels breaking the 2000ppb mark so sharply in this fragile region is unprecedented.”

”Another factor that works against acceptance by the scientific community is due to native biases towards Russian researchers, namely Natalia Shakova, one of the foremost prominent researchers of ESAS.”

The Rumbling ESAS Methane Enigma

in Climate Change — by Robert Hunziker — January 18, 2020 – shared with thanks

The northern continental shelves of Russia, inclusive of the Barents Sea, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea and East Siberian Sea (ESAS) are some of the least researched yet most controversial subjects in climate science today. It’s the one region that has the biggest potential to trigger runaway global warming because of sizeable sub sea methane deposits, thereby taking civilization down to its knees. But, that prospect is also extremely controversial within the scientific community.

Scientific opinion runs the gamut: (1) high risk-methane bursts will bury civilization with runaway global warming – a dreadful, deadly risk (2) not to worry, it’s low risk because almost all of the massive deposits of undersea methane will stay put (3) not to worry, low risk because any methane seepage via undersea permafrost is oxidized and dissolves within the seawater and not a threat to runaway global warming.

By and large, climate scientists dismiss the ESAS and some go so far as to vilify published research. In fact, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) dismisses its near-term/intermediate-term risks. The reasons are manifold (more on that later).

Unfortunately, recent events in the high Arctic lean towards option number one as the more likely outcome. In that regard, I recently met with Dr. Peter Wadhams, world-renowned Arctic expert, to discuss the issue (more on that follows).

Continue reading “‘50% chance of Methane burst in ESAS, could cause Climate Chaos, put us near 2C in 2 yrs’”

It’s a Vast, Invisible Climate Menace. We Made It Visible.

shared with thanks… 242+ comments at original HERE> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/12/climate/texas-methane-super-emitters.html?searchResultPosition=6#commentsContainer

see also> Seeing is Believing, Earthworks: Community Empowerment against fracking pollution and climate change. HERE> .https://wp.me/pIJl9-e9f

By Jonah M. Kessel and Hiroko Tabuchi Dec. 12, 2019

Immense amounts of methane are escaping from oil and gas sites nationwide, worsening global warming, even as the Trump administration weakens restrictions on offenders.

Jonah M. Kessel, a New York Times visual journalist, and Hiroko Tabuchi, a Times climate reporter, went to West Texas oilfields with a camera that can photograph methane.

To the naked eye, there is nothing out of the ordinary at the DCP Pegasus gas processing plant in West Texas, one of the thousands of installations in the vast Permian Basin that have transformed America into the largest oil and gas producer in the world.

There is a huge global spike in methane, one of the most potent greenhouse gases driving climate change over the last decade, according Harvard University Studies. The U.S. is the biggest culprit, mostly from oil and gas fracking wells, there are over a million of them, with half already abandoned. Obama introduced laws so that the industry would -voluntarily- at least measure the leaks. But even that is being repealed by the Trump administration, a criminal and ecocidal policy in the light of years of concrete scientific proof that the methane emissions are tipping us towards imminent uncontrollable climate chaos.. Controlling methane emissions would be a quick way to pause climate change, while CO2 remains in the atmosphere for many decades.

But a highly specialized camera sees what the human eye cannot: a major release of methane, the main component of natural gas and a potent greenhouse gas that is helping to warm the planet at an alarming rate.

Two New York Times journalists detected this from a tiny plane, crammed with scientific equipment, circling above the oil and gas sites that dot the Permian, an oil field bigger than Kansas. In just a few hours, the plane’s instruments identified six sites with unusually high methane emissions.

DCP Pegasus Gas Processing PlantNov. 5, 2019Using a powerful infrared camera, The Times identified large-scale releases. Here, methane escapes from a device meant to be burning it off.

Methane is loosely regulated, difficult to detect and rising sharply. The Times’s aerial and on-the-ground research, along with an examination of lobbying activities by the companies that own the sites, shows how the energy industry is seeking and winning looser federal regulations on methane, a major contributor to global warming.

Operators of the sites identified by The Times are among the very companies that have lobbied the Trump administration, either directly or through trade organizations, to weaken regulations on methane, a review of regulatory filings, meeting minutes and attendance logs shows. These local companies, along with oil-industry lobby groups that represent the world’s largest energy companies, are fighting rules that would force them to more aggressively fix emissions like these.

Next year, the administration could move forward with a plan that would effectively eliminate requirements that oil companies install technology to detect and fix methane leaks from oil and gas facilities. By the E.P.A.’s own calculations, the rollback would increase methane emissions by 370,000 tons through 2025, enough to power more than a million homes for a year.

Continue reading “It’s a Vast, Invisible Climate Menace. We Made It Visible.”

Seeing is Believing Earthworks: Community Empowerment against fracking pollution and climate change.

Creative Commons reuse allowed) shared with thanks

see also: It’s a Vast, Invisible Climate Menace. We Made It Visible.. HERE:https://wp.me/pIJl9-e8w

Texas & New Mexico communities & experts urge COP25 to defuse Permian’s carbon bomb…

Impacted residents travel to Madrid to highlight that planned infrastructure to process & export Permian oil & gas would guarantee catastrophic climate change

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Optical gas imaging picture of pollution above regular still image. — [Top] Optical gas imaging by Earthworks reveals normally invisible air pollution from an unlit flare. [Bottom] A regular still image taken at the same time and place shows what you see with the naked eye.

Madrid, Dec 4 — Today at an official COP25 side event Texas and New Mexico residents — impacted by the extraction of Permian Basin oil & gas, and by planned infrastructure to transport, process and export it — informed delegates and other attendees that catastrophic climate change is inevitable unless the Permian infrastructure expansion is stopped.

“The Permian Basin is an oil and gas carbon bomb that’s exploding, and it’s happening right now. If we can’t defuse it, the world cannot avoid catastrophic

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is extremeenergy_2.jpg

climate change. Major oil companies are trying to lock in decades more oil and gas demand by building infrastructure from the Permian to the Texas Gulf Coast to transport, process and export the world’s largest current oil & gas play,” said Earthworks’ Energy Campaigner Ethan Buckner.

Between 2018 and 2050, production of new U.S. oil and gas reserves could unlock 120 billion metric tons of new carbon pollution. Meanwhile the U.S. — thanks to Permian production — just marked its first month as a net exporter since records have been kept. If production and expansion are not curtailed, U.S. oil and gas expansion will impede the rest of the world’s ability to manage a climate-safe, equitable phase out of oil and gas production.

Although communities across the region are bearing the brunt of impacts from oil, gas and petrochemical development, those most at risk from the Permian expansion are those already the most impacted by social and environmental injustice. And on Texas’ Gulf Coast — where the oil & gas is processed and exported — they’re suffering twice: from the operations’ toxic pollution, and from intensified climate change.

“I live less than two miles from the Ship Channel in the East End of Houston, TX. My dad was a United Steelworker who died of cancer in 2016, and I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that same year. So I’m well aware that workers and fenceline communities are paying with their health the price of daily exposure to toxic pollution from oil and gas infrastructure,” said Ana

Image result for Ana Parras, Co-Executive Director Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services.

No One Should Have to Breathe These Chemicals – AnaParras of Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services (@tejasbarrios). HOUSTON — While families across the country celebrated Thanksgiving with their loved ones, more than 50,000 people in Port Neches, Tex., were forced to evacuate from their homes and spend the holiday in makeshift shelters

Continue reading “Seeing is Believing Earthworks: Community Empowerment against fracking pollution and climate change.”

BRAZIL: Army and Military Police evict 400 families in Porto Velho

EAT the RICH.. SMASH Capitalism.. Save Planet Earth

.. In 2015 a group of billionaires announced amid much fanfare that they’d be investing a few globs of their fortunes in clean energy research, and the world was all: “Hooray for billionaires!” But two days

later a report from OXFAM called “EXTREME CARBON INEQUALITY” (capitalization not my own) revealed that rich people are the biggest contributors to climate change — by a wide, wide margin. Climate justice activists protest outside the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative event

Climate justice activists protest outside the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative event

Greta Speaks Truth to Power as Those She Criticizes Applaud…16-year-old climate activist Greta Thunberg addressed the U.N. Climate Action Summit with an emotional speech condemning leaders for inaction and stressing that while “[e]ntire ecosystems are collapsing… all you can talk about is money and about fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!”

Embarrassment of Riches By George Monbiot ….. For the sake of life on Earth, we should set an upper limit on the money any person can amass.

It is not quite true that behind every great fortune lies a great crime. Musicians and novelists, for example, can become extremely rich by giving other people pleasure. But it does appear to be universally true that in front of every great fortune lies a great crime. Immense wealth translates automatically into immense environmental impacts, regardless of the intentions of those who possess it. The very wealthy, almost as a matter of definition, are committing ecocide.

A few weeks ago, I received a letter from a worker at a British private airport. “I see things that really shouldn’t be happening in 2019,” he wrote. Every day he sees Global 7000 jets, Gulfstream 650s and even Boeing 737s take off from the airport carrying a single passenger, mostly flying to Russia and the US. The private Boeing 737s, built to take 174 seats, are filled at the airport with around 32,000 litres of fuel. That’s as much fossil energy as a small African town might use in a year.

Where are these single passengers going? Perhaps to visit one of their superhomes, constructed and run at vast environmental cost, or to take a trip on their superyacht, which might burn 500 litres of diesel per hour just ticking over, and is built and furnished with rare materials, extracted at the expense of stunning places. continues below

Eat the Rich? How Offshore Capital Now Rules the World .. Today’s super-rich are the most privileged and powerful group of people in history. If you’re a billionaire, you can even decide an election by funneling a little bit of your money into the race. You can choose to pay 0% tax. You can sway public opinion by buying up media outlets, and by using think […]

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that when Google convened a meeting of the rich and famous at the Verdura resort in Sicily this July to discuss climate breakdown, its delegates arrived in 114 private jets and a fleet of megayachts, and drove around the island in supercars. Even when they mean well, the ultrarich cannot help trashing the living.

A series of research papers shows that income is by far the most important determinant of environmental impact. It doesn’t matter how green you think you are. If you have surplus money, you spend it. The only form of consumption that’s clearly and positively correlated with good environmental intentions is diet: people who see themselves as green tend to eat less meat and more organic vegetables. But attitudes have little bearing on the amount of transport fuel, home energy and other materials you consume. Money conquers all. continues below

Growing inequality in the United States shows that the game is rigged. …..Last month, Bloomberg reported that Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post, has accumulated a fortune worth $150 billion. That is the biggest nominal amount in modern history, and extraordinary any way you slice it. Bezos is the world’s lone hectobillionaire. He is worth what the average American family is, nearly two million times over. He has about 50 percent more money than Bill Gates, twice as much as Mark Zuckerberg, 50 times as much as Oprah, and perhaps 100 times as much as President Trump. (Who knows!) He has gotten $50 billion richer in less than a year. He needs to spend roughly $28 million a day just to keep from accumulating more wealth.

The disastrous effects of spending power are compounded by the psychological impacts of being wealthy. Plenty of studies show that the richer you are, the less you are able to connect with other people. Wealth suppresses empathy. One paper reveals that drivers in expensive cars are less likely to stop for people using pedestrian crossings than drivers in cheap cars. Another revealed that rich people were less able than poorer people to feel compassion towards children with cancer. Though they are disproportionately responsible for our environmental crises, the rich will be hurt least and last by planetary disaster, while the poor are hurt first and worst. The richer people are, the research suggests, the less such knowledge is likely to trouble them. Another issue is that wealth limits the perspectives of even the best-intentioned people. This week Bill Gates argued in an interview with the Financial Times that divesting (ditching stocks) from fossil fuels is a waste of time. It would be better, he claimed, to pour money into disruptive new technologies with lower emissions.

World’s poor get less than 1 cent a day for climate change: Oxfam World’s poorest communities have done the least to cause climate change, but end up paying for it, says charity.

Of course we need new technologies. But he has missed the crucial point: in seeking to prevent climate breakdown, what counts is not what you do but what you stop doing. It doesn’t matter how many solar panels you install if you don’t simultaneously shut down coal and gas burners. Unless existing fossil fuel plants are retired before the end of their lives, and all exploration and development of new fossil fuels reserves is cancelled, there is little chance of preventing more than 1.5°C of global heating. continues below

see also: US Millionaires Pass $1.500,000,000,000 Tax Cut for Rich Every year wealth and power are concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.. HOW CAN WE STOP THIS MADNESS NOW? ‘Welfare for the Wealthy’: 227 Congressmen Pass $1.5 Trillion Tax Cut for Corporations and the Rich “It’s immoral that many hardworking families will pay a higher tax bill or lose access to critical services like healthcare […]

But this requires structural change, which involves political intervention as well as technological innovation: anathema to Silicon Valley billionaires. It demands an acknowledgement that money is not a magic wand that makes all the bad stuff go away. On Friday, I’ll be joining the global climate strike, in which adults will stand with the young people whose call to action has resonated around the world. As a freelancer, I’ve been wondering who I’m striking against. Myself? Yes: one aspect of myself, at least. Perhaps the most radical thing we can now do is to limit our material aspirations. The assumption on which governments and economists operate is that everyone strives to maximise their wealth. If we succeed in this task, we inevitably demolish our life support systems. Were the poor to live like the rich, and the rich to live like the oligarchs, we would destroy everything. The continued pursuit of wealth, in a world that has enough already (albeit very poorly distributed) is a formula for mass destitution. continues below

see also: The US military is a bigger polluter than as many as 140 countries …The US military is one of the largest polluters in history, consuming more liquid fuels and emitting more climate-changing gases than most medium-sized countries. Its carbon bootprint is enormous. Like corporate supply chains, it relies upon an extensive global network of container ( … )

A meaningful strike in defence of the living world is, in part, a strike against the desire to raise our incomes and accumulate wealth: a desire shaped, more than we are probably aware, by dominant social and economic narratives. I see myself as striking in support of a radical and disturbing concept: Enough. Individually and collectively, it is time to decide what enough looks like, and how to know when we’ve achieved it.

Left, Center and Right: We’re All in Denial About Climate Change .. by Ted Rall .. If you really believe that the planet is becoming uninhabitable, if you think you are about to die, you don’t march peacefully through the streets holding signs and chanting slogans begging the corrupt scoundrels who haven’t done a damn thing for decades to wake up and do something. You identify the politicians and corporate leaders who are killing us, you track them down and you use whatever force is necessary to make them stop. Nothing less than regime change stands a chance of doing the job.

There’s a name for this approach, coined by the Belgian philosopher Ingrid Robeyns: limitarianism. Robeyns argues that there should be an upper limit to the amount of income and wealth a person can amass. Just as we recognise a poverty line, below which no one should fall, we should recognise a riches line, above which no one should rise. This call for a levelling down is perhaps the most blasphemous idea in contemporary discourse but her arguments are sound. Surplus money allows some people to exercise inordinate power over others, in the workplace, in politics, and above all in the capture, use and destruction of natural wealth. If everyone is to flourish, we cannot afford the rich. Nor can we afford our own aspirations, that the culture of wealth maximisation encourages. The grim truth is that the rich are able to live as they do only because others are poor: there is neither the physical nor ecological space for everyone to pursue private luxury. Instead we should strive for private sufficiency, public luxury. Life on earth depends on moderation.

shared with thanks from www.monbiot.com (inserts and illustrations added.)

Climate is class war — what next for green activism? …

https://freedomnews.org.uk/climate-is-class-war-what-next-for-green-activism/

An alliance of non-hierarchical groups formed over the last few months, the Green Anticapitalist Front is attempting to provide a link between the extensive anarchist experience of green direct action and the latest wave of climate change activism. Here, the group outlines its background and ideas for future activity.

see current updates: Direct Action beats Pleading: Green Anticapitalist Front/

CGT Anarchist Union Joins the World Climate General Strike Sept. 27th

The General Confederation of Labor (CGT) has shown its support for the World Strike for Climate day by joining it in defense of the planet on September 27, 2019.

by ..Press Office of the CGT via RojoyNegro. translation thefreeonline

On this day of struggle, convened by groups and organizations throughout the State, governments will be required to immediately declare a climatic emergency and take urgent and concrete measures aimed at reducing greenhouse gases.

More than 50 organizations urge citizens to support this strike day in defense of the planet and call a student and consumer strike in the Spanish State.

In this sense, organizations raise the need to adopt a new socio-ecological model “that does not compromise life as we know it”, since more than one million species (animals and plants) are on the verge of extinction as a consequence of human activity

Similarly, rising temperatures are also worrisome and will have catastrophic consequences for present and future generations due to sea level rise, more intense and prolonged heat waves, droughts, lack of drinking water, etc.

The signatory organizations of the Alliance for Climate Emergency remind state rulers of the responsibility they have in front of different institutions, so they insist that the fight for the climate emergency must encompass all people.

From CGT, a call has been made to the whole society to support this day of World Strike for Climate and urges to participate in all the events organized for this day throughout the Spanish State.

Press Office of the CGT

CGT se suma a la Huelga Mundial por el Clima el próximo 27 de septiembre

Más de 50 organizaciones instan a la ciudadanía a secundar esta jornada de huelga en defensa del planeta y convocan una huelga estudiantil y de consumo en el Estado español

Gabinete de prensa del Comité Confederal de la CGT

Enviado por RojoyNegro_Digital el Mié, 24/07/2019 – 11:53.

Comunicados

La Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT) ha mostrado su apoyo a la jornada de Huelga Mundial por el Clima sumándose a la misma en defensa del planeta el próximo 27 de septiembre de 2019.

En esta jornada de lucha, convocada por colectivos y organizaciones de todo el Estado, se exigirá a los Gobiernos la declaración inmediata de la emergencia climática y la adopción de medidas urgentes y concretas encaminadas a la reducción de gases de efecto invernadero.

En este sentido, las organizaciones plantean la necesidad de adoptar un nuevo modelo socioecológico “que no comprometa la vida tal y como la conocemos”, puesto que más de un millón de especies (animales y plantas) están al borde de la extinción como consecuencia de la actividad humana.

De igual modo, el aumento de las temperaturas es también preocupante y tendrá consecuencias catastróficas para generaciones presentes y futuras por el aumento del nivel del mar, olas de calor más intensas y prologadas, sequías, falta de agua potable, etc.

Las organizaciones firmantes de la Alianza por la Emergencia Climática recuerdan a los gobernantes de los Estados la responsabilidad que tienen al frente de distintas instituciones, por eso insisten en que la lucha por la emergencia climática debe englobar a todas las personas.

Desde CGT se ha realizado un llamamiento a toda la sociedad para que secunde esta jornada de Huelga Mundial por el Clima e insta a participar en todos los actos organizados para este día en todo el Estado español