A Bit Closer to Holding Big Oil Accountable

This morning's fascinating Senate hearing shows the debate continues to progress

Jamie Raskin, testifying earlier this morning at the Senate Budget Committee Hearings on Big Oil Disinformation

This morning’s Senate Budget Committee hearings are wrapping up as I write this; they marked one more important step in the decades-long effort to hold Big Oil accountable for the fact that it is wrecking the one planet we’ve got.

The ostensible purpose of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s hearing, and one it effectively accomplished, was to get on the record a boatload of documents showing that the oil companies and their trade groups continue to lie about climate change. Many of the documents were obtained by the House Oversight Committee in the last Congress, back when it was controlled by Democrats—that’s why the first witness was Rep. Jamie Raskin, there to describe the trove of new papers and tapes demonstrating the industry’s ongoing fecklessness.

But the hearing also sent a deeper signal—which is that the power balance, at least as long as Democrats remain in power, is slowly shifting against what was long the country’s most powerful industry.

Raskin, for instance, told the tragicomical story of Exxon’s efforts to promote itself as an algae company—including literally spending half as much money on ads as on research before scrapping the whole program as impossible. (You can read my account of this fiasco here).

But then Raskin went much further, explaining the far more serious deception around natural gas that’s at the heart of Big Oil’s current efforts to prolong the energy transition.

Natural gas, he said, “isn’t green and it isn’t clean.” Indeed, explained Whitehouse, the industry’s master plan is to “disguise natural gas as renewable, to lock their fossil fuels into our energy future.”

This is an incredibly important point for senior Democrats to be making, because natural gas has always been the Democratic vice. Coal was obviously filthy, but natural gas, when you burn it, produces half as much carbon. Therefore it became the Democratic pathway to reducing emissions while not really offending the fossil fuel industry. Go back and look at Barack Obama’s State of the Union addresses—nearly every one contains a paean to the rise of fracked gas.

Sadly, of course, scientists soon found that natural gas production leaked large quantities of methane, which both Raskin and Whitehouse took pains to point traps eighty times more heat than co2. Now that we know that, it becomes clear that the efforts to replace coal with gas barely reduced America’s total greenhouse gas emissions at all.

The fossil fuel industry desperately wants to lock in more dependence on fracked gas while they still can—that’s why they reacted with such white-hot anger to the Biden administration’s pause on permits for new LNG export facilities earlier this year. But the hope raised by today’s hearing is that—if Biden wins re-election—that pause may become permanent, and the expansion of natural gas will finally be halted, recognized for the deep peril that it is. All the skirmishing that really matters is about gas—it’s the one thing the industry relies on to blunt the rise of its mortal foe, actual clean energy in the form of wind, solar, and batteries. And since California this spring is decisively showing that a modern economy can support itself on that trinity, the battle is growing ever more desperate for big oil. So far the Biden administration has been far more focused on aiding clean energy than hindering the dirty stuff (and yet more good news on that front this week). But we’re getting to the point where it may be politically possible to actually take on the bad guys.

Indeed, the hearing also gave some hints to a couple of possible end games.

When he had his turn to “ask questions,” Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen used his senatorial privilege to deliver a little tutorial on the Polluter Pays climate superfund bill that I’ve been writing about recently. “If you broke it, you pay for it,” he said—and then cited the essentially impossible cost of protecting Maryland, with its 7,000 miles of inlets and bays, from sea level rise. “It’s the tragedy of the commons,” Raskin said. “Big oil profits from using the sky, they’re the ones who’ve profited from it, but they’re not asked to pay the costs of climate destabilization.” A carbon tax would have been a straightforward way to make them pay those costs, but Big Oil has made sure it could never get through Congress—so this effort, at the state level, might do the trick, exerting enough pressure to make them reach a deal.

Or maybe it will come through a slightly different route. The panel of experts that followed Raskin had the indefatigable Geoff Supran, now a professor at the University of Miami, to follow up on the climate deception angle. But it also had Sharon Eubanks, who led much of the tobacco litigation for the Department of Justice, forcing the settlement that has driven cigarette smoking to the margins of our society. Bernie Sanders asked her the key question: should the Department of Justice consider using the RICO statutes to hold Big Oil accountable? Yes it should, she said.

Again, this is a signal of what a second-term Biden administration might be willing and able to accomplish. The Democrats are unlikely to hold the Senate—this kind of hearing might be on the House side next year, with Whitehouse heading over to be a witness—but if the White House itself remains in Biden’s hands then, freed of re-election pressures, he may be ready to move.

Especially since the Republicans have…not much. Louisiana’s John Kennedy, increasingly the Senate point man for the hydrocarbon industry, tried to embarrass Raskin with a bunch of questions about boreal forest fires—wouldn’t their carbon emissions somehow overwhelm any efforts to cut back on fossil fuels? Happily Whitehouse had the data on hand to show that against coal, oil and gas burning forests remain a small source of emissions, and Oregon’s Jeff Merkley pointed out the real issue: the reason boreal forests are on fire is precisely because we keep heating up the planet. Wisconsin’s low-wattage Ron Johnson wanted to talk about some climate declaration signed by “scientists” that says global warming isn’t a threat; “yeah, whatev” was essentially Raskin’s reply. The defense of fossil fuels at this point is intellectually impossible, and the ever-hotter temperatures will provide a political opening.

But that only matters if there’s someone there to seize the opening. If the Republicans win the fall elections, the fossil fuel strategy will have prevailed.

In other energy and climate news:

+A fascinating report from the University of Kansas find the depressing news that some communities are new experiencing climate disasters frequently enough tht they’ve started to be ‘normalized.’

A new study from the University of Kansas found residents of one Seoul, South Korea, neighborhood have grown so accustomed to living through extreme climate events they have developed a “disaster subculture” that challenges both views of reality and how social agencies can help.

Joonmo Kang, assistant professor of social welfare, spent a year living in Jjokbang-chon, an extremely impoverished neighborhood in Seoul, as part of an ethnographic research project. Residents there routinely live through extreme heat and cold in tiny, 70-square-foot units about the size of a closet. Over the course of a year, he interviewed residents about their experiences and worked with local social agencies to understand how they worked with the residents.

Residents regularly expressed a sort of indifference to extreme heat and climate change, stating they had no options or even that “every day is a disaster.” While that seeming difference with reality can potentially be caused by several factors, it shows that social work has a challenge in how to respond to climate disasters and their everyday effects, Kang said.

+Watch this reprise of James Balog’s career, as one of the earliest and finest chroniclers of a melting world—his images are joining other historic photos in the Library of Congress permanent collection this spring

+I’m pretty sure that it’s only a matter of time before Sammy Roth, the climate reporter/columnist for the Los Angeles Times, wins a Pulitzer Prize; he’s been at the forefront of covering the energy revolution in the region where it’s going fastest, and the climate crisis in one of the places where it’s been (literally) hottest. And the thing that makes him especially great is his unflinching willingness to think about both these things at once, and say the truth: that we’re going to have to make some sacrifices to get this done. Example: his recent column

Some farmers don’t think their neighboring growers should be allowed to replace fields of cattle feed and vegetables with solar panels, even though farm-to-solar conversions can save drought-depleted Colorado River water and slow global warming. Why are those farmers upset? Because they see industrial solar projects as a threat to their longstanding agricultural way of life.

Variations of the same aversion to change are at work in Nevada, where conservationists are working to block solar projects that would destroy desert wildlife habitat they’ve dedicated their lives to safeguarding. And in Wyoming, where some lawmakers have spent nearly 15 years trying to slow wind energy development. And in Idaho, where ditching fossil fuels almost certainly won’t be possible without hydropower dams — a frustrating reality for environmental activists committed to tearing down dams.

Please understand that I’m sympathetic to all of those concerns. That’s why I’ve spent the last decade reporting on them. As I’ve written previously, there’s no such thing as a perfect climate change solution. Even climate-friendly energy has its warts…

For activists fighting to restore rivers — and bring back salmon with whom Indigenous tribes share a sacred bond — that might mean deciding which dams are the highest priorities for demolition, and accepting that others have to stay, at least for now.

For wildlife lovers who hate solar and wind farms spread across thousands of acres — and rooftop solar advocates who hate that monopoly utility companies control our energy supplies — it might mean coming to terms with the math showing that small local solar systems alone will never come close to powering modern society, not without radical changes to modern society.

I wish radical changes were easier. I really do.

+Obviously I think collective action is what’s going to get this transition done. But we all do have lives and homes, and Climate Responsible has come up with one of the better websites I’ve seen to make this easier

+Trying to figure out Elon Musk/Tesla strikes me as an almost impossible task. As the world knows, his car business is suffering, laying off large numbers of workers as sales sag and Chinese competitors rise to the top of the EV pile. Matteo Wong, writing in the Atlantic, made a good case last week that Tesla was transforming from a car company to, essentially, a utility

the company has positioned itself to be on the edge of another, perhaps more crucial part of the green transition: delivering and storing America’s power. Tesla’s EV chargers are ascendant, if not dominant, as are its huge batteries that store renewable energy for homes and even entire neighborhoods. Profits from Tesla’s energy business were up 140 percent compared to the same period last year.

But then the news came yesterday that Tesla had laid off…its entire Supercharger team. Which is bizarre, since as Jameson Dow pointed out in Electrek

Firstly – it makes absolutely no sense to lay off the Supercharger team. Supercharging is an incredible opportunity for Tesla, especially now that everyone else has adopted NACS [its charging protocol].

To lay off that whole team just when the company has earned such a big win, when billions in public money is available for buildout (which would not have been available without industry NACS adoption, which was, again, spearheaded by Tinucci’s negotiations), and when there is a lead to be maintained, is absolutely crazy. This move, alone, would erode any confidence I had left in Tesla’s CEO – if I still had any.

Tesla has a fairly simple business case from here on out to become the leading “gas station of the future.” With its experience and lead on Superchargers, its more reliable and better-designed stations, and its existing business footprint with so many stations installed around the globe, the company has a natural lead. This business case is even stronger now that the entire industry is behind NACS.

I definitely can’t explain it, except that it all seems to me one more proof point that spending too much time on Twitter erodes your brain. (It has mine…)

+Also on the list of things I don’t understand: Britain’s medical authorities have suspended the medical license of a UK GP because she got arrested in a climate protest

In its decision, the tribunal noted that Dr. Sarah Benn’s actions did not give rise to concerns about patient safety, and there was evidence that she was an experienced doctor.

But it said there had been “no acknowledgement from Dr Benn that what she has done by breaking the law was wrong and no evidence that she has taken steps to remediate her actions”. And it found there was a “strong likelihood of repetition”, after Benn explicitly said she would continue with her actions.

Her case will be reviewed shortly before the suspension lapses. “They’ve given me essentially five months to offer apologies and regret and an undertaking to not do it again,” Benn told the Guardian. “But I’ve made my position very clear and really nothing is going to be any different in five months’ time.”

Since the Lancet, Britain’s authoritative medical journal, has declared that climate change is the “defining narrative of human health,” it seems clear to me that British medical authorities should be awarding Dr. Benn some kind of medal instead.

+Eve Schaub argues fairly powerfully that plastic recycling is really not a great idea

At this very moment, we all have microplastics coursing through our bodies. This is not the fault of not enough recycling. This is the fault of too much plastic. So I say: Let’s treat plastic like the toxic waste it is and send it where it can hurt people the least.

Right now, that place is the landfill.

Then we need to get to work on the real solution: making a whole lot less of it.

One sweet example: Plastic Free Restaurants has now eliminated ten million plastic utensils and cups by subsidizing the purchase of reusable stuff. Nice!

+On the list of scary stuff now underway, the rapid spike in ocean temperatures terrifies me as much or more than anything else. It’s led forecasters to predict a record hurricane season, and it’s already killing corals at a crazy pace, as a powerful Washington Post piece reports

As bleaching events increase in severity and frequency, it becomes harder for certain corals to bounce back. Last summer, corals in the Keys endured the hottest ocean temperatures on record, according to NOAA’s Mission: Iconic Reefs, a coalition of public and private groups. This heat streak has lasted more than a year: NOAA and the International Coral Reef Initiative just confirmed bleaching-level heat stress in every corner of the ocean.

Robyn Mast, a Key West reef restoration associate at CRF, recalled an emotional scene when she saw the havoc last year’s heat wrought on the species. Entire stretches looked like they were covered in a fresh layer of snow. The corals, full of color just days before, were bleached. As she dove closer, she realized many of the colorful coral left were burned to death: They had died so quickly that they didn’t even have the chance for color to drain. Temperatures were so hot that coral tissue melted from its skeleton.

+Check out this video of four first-time environmental protesters. It’s great to lift up the veterans in this fight—but we are most cheered when we see new people arriving!

+Coming up in early May, what sounds like a grand parade in NYC honoring some of the visionary women who have been in the vanguard of the enviro fight. Impossible to pay enough tribute to Wangari Maathai, among others!

Especially since, in her beloved and native Kenya, intense and deadly flooding closely tied to climate change is now underway.

+Following up on last week’s good news about rapid advances in battery recycling, a new Bloomberg analysis shows that the new technology will dramatically shorten the energy payback time on electric vehicles

Though still in its infancy, EV recycling is already profitable and capable of recovering more than 95% of the key minerals. A new analysis by Stanford University researchers, which is still under peer review, found that Redwood Materials’ recycling process produces up to 80% fewer emissions than the traditional supply chain using CO2 belching refineries. That’s enough to shorten an average EV’s environmental breakeven time with an internal combustion vehicle to less than 15,000 miles. Every mile thereafter is a carbon win against the internal combustion engine.

+As S. Nicole Lane reports, the snowmobile capital of the world is increasingly singing the climate change blues

Near the small town of Eagle River, Wisconsin (population 1,600), more than 500 miles of groomed trails weave through the Northwoods, granting it the name of the Snowmobile Capital of the World.

Eagle River is the home to the World Championship Snowmobile Derby, considered one of the most prestigious snowmobile competitions in the sport. Each year, hundreds of racers come from across the world to compete in multi-day races from Friday, skidding across 15-inch-thick ice at speeds up to 100 miles per hour, on a half-mile banked oval track, all for a shot at the title of world champion…This year, it isn’t just the racers who were heating up. The entire Midwestern landscape has seen record warm temperatures this year—the average statewide temperature in Wisconsin was nearly 10 degrees above normal from December through February.

Building a track requires heavy lifting. It usually takes a couple of weeks to build up the ice on the track, and warm weather can complicate the process quickly. (The track at Eagle River uses 2 million gallons of water to create 15 inches of solid ice for the track).

In 2023, the Town team helped host a race with the Midwest International Racing Association (MIRA) in Traverse City but had to cancel it because of warm weather. “Our team had started to build the track twice, and it melted before we could race on it,” says Stephen Town. “It has made us appreciate every event we are able to race and appreciate anyone who helps to build the race tracks.”

+Charles Komanoff takes a well-deserved victory lap about New York City’s impending debut of congestion pricing—he’s had more to do than anyone with the Big Apple’s decision to start charging a fee for cars entering lower Manhattan

An anticipated 15 percent or so of drivers will switch to transit, unsnarling roads within the “congestion zone” and routes leading to it. The other 80 or 90 percent will grumble but continue driving. That is by design. The toll bounty, a billion dollars a year, will finance subway enhancements like station elevators and digital signals that will increase train throughput and lure more car trips onto trains.

The result will be faster, smoother commutes, especially for car drivers and taxicab and Uber passengers, who will pay a modest surcharge of $1.25 to $2.50 per trip. Drivers of for-hire vehicles will benefit as well, as lesser gridlock leads to more fares.

The miracle is three-fold: Winners will vastly outnumber losers; New York will be made healthier, calmer and more prosperous; and that this salutary measure is happening at all, after a half-century of setbacks.

+Activists are worried that a Canadian pipeline company seems to be planning big upgrades of fracked gas pipe in the northeast so they can carry more of the high-polluting fuel. “Project Maple” is still shadowy, but opponents have a website up and running! It’s hard for me to imagine this industry being able to win a fight in the open in some of the most environmentally conscious states in the union—Massachusetts, for instance, has moved to rapidly move off gas. But eternal vigilance is the price of even minimal progress!

+Brazil is a car-racing haven—think Emerson Fittipaldi or Nelson Piquet Jr. With that background, you can imagine why this video went viral—it’s a fictional account of what a road rally through the Amazon will look like once climate change has finished off the job of wrecking the Amazon

And while we’re in the world of video, a final happy note: a new study from the good people at Good Energy makes clear that movies that take climate change seriously make more money than those that don’t.

This report suggests that not only are more movies beginning to depict climate change than before, but the ones that do so now tend to be 8 to 10% more profitable than those that do not.

“In previous years, there was a lot of fear that including climate in your movie might alienate audiences by being too dark or too complicated or boring or preachy,” says Good Energy founder Anna Jane Joyner. “We’ve had to work with a lot of creatives in this industry to show that audiences actually are worried about climate and relate to characters who express that—and now we have data that shows not only can you include climate in stories that are truly entertaining and riveting, but those stories can be critically acclaimed and make more money.”