Big Oil Breaks Everything

The planet, our democracy, our courts...

In all honesty, you can probably skip this one. It’s entirely possible I’m writing it as therapy for myself. I try hard to stay focused on what we can still do to ward off the worst, but every once in a while I’m reminded of why we’re here, on a planet rapidly overheating. (And oh by the way, there’s a new study on the collapse of the Atlantic currents I discussed last week, and it leads the great expert on that system to now predict there’s a fifty percent chance they’ll collapse this century). When I started writing about the climate crisis in the 1980s I was in my twenties, and I didn’t fully comprehend that there could be a force on this planet so steeped in greed and power that it would sacrifice the earth and its inhabitants for its own narrow interests. But there is, and it’s Big Oil.

Over time their evil came into ever-sharper focus. During the 1990s it was clear they were organizing opposition to action on global warming—the CEO of Exxon famously insisted that the planet was cooling. Right after the 2000 election the heads of the oil companies held secret meetings with new vice-president Dick Cheney and soon thereafter George W. Bush reneged on his promise to treat carbon dioxide as a pollutant. And Big Oil mobilized to defeat the cap-and-trade proposals at the end of that decade and to scuttle the Copenhagen climate talks. What we didn’t know then was just exactly how vile all this greedy maneuvering really was: it wasn’t until 2015 that reporters delving into archives and interviewing whistleblowers proved that the Exxons of the world had known everything there was to know about climate change back in the ‘80s and simply chosen to lie about it. It’s never far from my mind what a different planet we’d live on had they simply fessed up at the start and gotten to work on the problem.

I’m thinking of all this because we’ve had a couple of new developments this week to remind us just how deep this evil runs.

The first, of course, is the simple fact that they are profiting in truly incredible fashion from the Iran war being waged by President Trump, the man they worked so hard to put in power. As Damian Carrington reported yesterday,

The world’s top 100 oil and gas companies banked more than $30m every hour in unearned profit in the first month of the US-Israeli war in Iran, according to exclusive analysis for the Guardian. Saudi Aramco, Gazprom and ExxonMobil are among the biggest beneficiaries of the bonanza, meaning key opponents of climate action continue to prosper.

They didn’t do anything new, or work any harder, to earn that extra $30 million an hour, which is coming straight from our pockets—they just sat back and watched as their handpicked President blew up a girl’s school. This is the very definition of a windfall profit, and I’m glad to see at least a few people—here’s the great Canadian analyst Seth Klein—making that case:

The windfall from spikes in the price of oil also overwhelmingly go to the wealthy, producing a hidden redistribution from lower-income households to the super-rich. A study by University of Massachusetts Amherst economists Isabella Weber and Gregor Semieniuk found that the price shock triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine resulted in 2022 net income of publicly listed oil and gas companies reaching “$916bn globally – a figure more than three times that of the preceding years (even excluding 2020). The US was the single largest beneficiary: US-headquartered companies captured $281bn.” Moreover, within the US, they found, “50% of all fossil fuel profit claims accrued to the wealthiest 1% of individuals. The bottom 50% of the population – 66 million households – received 1%.”

If you wonder what the oil companies think we should be doing instead of taxing them, here’s a Chevron executive named Andy Walz

“People should drive less. They should try to conserve energy.”

To which one can only say yes. And also, go jump in a lake.

The second reminder of Big Oil’s perfidy comes in a truly remarkable piece of reporting from Jodi Kantor and Adam Liptak at the New York Times. They are Supreme Court reporters (not an easy job, since the place is cloaked in secrecy) and they set out to understand how the Roberts Court has systematically replaced open argument about crucial questions with a “shadow docket” where big cases can be decided on the fly, without opinions. They trace the development to February of 2016, when, without argument,

By a 5-to-4 vote along partisan lines, the order halted President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan, his signature environmental policy. They acted before any other court had addressed the plan’s lawfulness. The decision consisted of only legal boilerplate, without a word of reasoning.

The two reporters obtained the internal memos from the five days that the justices were at work on this momentous and unprecedented step and they reveal that it was a tender solicitation for the oil companies that drove them.

At a critical moment for the country and the court, the papers show, he acted as a bulldozer in pushing to stop Mr. Obama’s plan to address the global climate crisis.

When colleagues warned the chief justice that he was proposing an unprecedented move, he was dismissive. “I recognize that the posture of this stay request is not typical,” he wrote. But he argued that the Obama plan, which aimed to regulate coal-fired plants, was “the most expensive regulation ever imposed on the power sector,” and too big, costly and consequential for the court not to act immediately.

In centuries past, the court would have weighed arguments over many months, but here Roberts demanded they act immediately

The chief justice contended that the court had to act immediately because the energy industry “must make changes to business plans today.”

“Absent a stay, the Clean Power Plan will cause (and is causing) substantial and irreversible reordering of the domestic power sector before this court has an opportunity to review its legality,” he wrote.

His offensive caught the other justices by surprise—Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for instance, was in Italy for a talk “billed as a conversation with the notorious RBG.” In the memos they exchanged they questioned the speed and the unorthodox procedure, but none of them seem to have raised the question of whether, say, global warming presented as “irreversible a reordering” of the planet as whatever might happen to the poor oil companies. (David Sirota adds some useful detail on the pivotal vote of Anthony Kennedy, also the author of Citizens United). It was no wonder this was the case Roberts chose—he was the perfect product of the rightwing reordering of the judiciary, a reordering underwritten above all by the Koch Brothers, who were in turn the country’s biggest oil and gas barons. But the damage done by his lickspittle acquiescence to Big Oil has harmed more than the atmosphere. As Kantor and Liptak report:

That night marks the birth, many legal experts believe, of the court’s modern “shadow docket,” the secretive track that the Supreme Court has since used to make many major decisions, including granting President Trump more than 20 key victories on issues from immigration to agency power.

And it marks the end of any sense that the federal judiciary is a fair arbiter instead of a politically engaged player in our national life. It may be the most cynical thing a chief justice has ever done. (And no Democrat should think twice about Supreme Court reform if they regain power).

But of course the judiciary can only act like this with the collaboration of the Congress, which approves their nominations. And Congress, too, is enmeshed in the same oil spill that stains the other branches, as we were reminded this week, when Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman finally introduced a long-awaited bill that would grant the industry immunity from lawsuits over the damage caused by climate change. This follows a spate of similar state laws passed in recent months, which a landmark Pro Publica investigation show were engineered by rightwing judicial activist Leonard Leo (the same guy who built the Roberts Court through the Federalist Society), using billions in a donation from a conservative businessman named Barre Seid who had bankrolled not only the fight for more DDT but also the Heartland Institute (The most outré of the climate denying thinktanks, famous above all for a series of billboards claiming that climate scientists were like Charles Manson.)

Anyway, as useful as those state laws are, the Holy Grail for the oil industry would be a federal grant of immunity, which would effectively eviscerate all the “climate superfund” laws passed in recent years by states like New York and Vermont, as well as the various lawsuits working their way through the courts. The oil industry began pushing for this immunity grant as soon as the president they’d elected took office—here’s a Wall Street Journal account form March 2025 outlining a White House meeting where they made the case. But now—with the GOP looking increasingly likely to lose control of Congress after the midterms—they’re making their play. And its actually a pincers move, since the Supreme Court is also about to consider a case from Colorado that would toss out many of the lawsuits.

Here’s what’s at stake: if this law passes and stands, then the oil industry will never be held accountable for the fact that they knowingly destroyed the planet’s climate system. Just as important, the law would remove the one source of real leverage to force the oil industry into some kind of grand bargain to wind down their business. This is precisely the tool that finally forced the tobacco industry to the table, and the oil industry is determined that they’ll get away with their much larger crimes. (Philip Morris killed people one smoker at a time; Exxon’s smoke can take out an entire planet). Here’s how former California insurance commissioner Davy Jones put it recently:

Putting any industry above the law — especially one responsible for creating many of the greenhouse gas emissions that have helped fuel climate-related destruction of homes, businesses and whole communities — would be beyond dangerous. If Big Oil gets its wish, it would be an injustice with lasting and cascading harm.

We need to continue this line of attack: there are “Polluter Pays” superfund bills up in a number of legislatures—you can get in the fight here; there’s a powerful new bill advancing through the Hawaii legislature that would empower insurance companies to sue Big Oil for compensation for the mounting climate claims from events like the Lahaina wildfires or the massive flooding of the last month. I’ve gone to jail to get the message across, and I probably will again.

But one reason I spend increasing amounts of my time pushing the rise of alternative energy is because I’ve come to fully understand the degree of corruption that the oil industry has produced in our system. Though I will fight hard for the Democratic majorities that might overturn grants of immunity, and for new laws to hold the oil industry accountable, I’m not sure we’ll win those fights in time.

The only sets of laws the oil industry lacks the cash to completely corrupt are the laws of physics, and the law of markets which indicates that in the end a cheaper and better product should win out. Obviously they’re trying hard to end-run that latter law, even as they lie about the first—but in this case their greed may actually be handing them a serious defeat. It’s by now obvious to almost anyone that Trump’s maniacal attack on Iran is hastening the move towards alternative energy, primarily wind and sun. (There are myriad examples: here’s Raphael Rashid talking about the renewables revolution suddenly underway in South Korea; here’s Tim McDonnell with a fine account of how China’s finding itself in the catbird seat as buyers from places like Egypt flock to its clean-energy offerings). For decades Big Oil’s final riposte in any debate was: ‘well, you can’t do without us if you want hot showers and cold beer.’But now we can.

I work on solar energy because it will help limit the damage from climate change, and because it’s potentially liberating, empowering local communities instead of vast multinationals. But there are days when I work on solar energy just because it’s the sharpest stick with which to poke Exxon and Chevron and the rest, companies that I despise. Companies that if I’m honest I hate, though I try hard not to hate. They are the vampires of our world, sucking the life from the earth we were lucky to be born on. And we all know what sunlight does to vampires.

In other energy and climate news:

+When the Trump administration crashed the American EV market, automakers were left with lots of capacity to build batteries—which they’re now churning out for all kinds of other purposes.

Ford, for example, announced that it would transition its factory space in Kentucky to build Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) packs in December. The keys to its second plant in Tennessee would be handed over to Ford’s partner in the battery space, SK On.

GM said that its Ultium Cells plant in Nashville would also move towards building BESS solutions. It will spend around $70 million to retool and retrain workers so as not to flush away its $2.3 billion partnership with LG Energy Solution.

There’s no denying that this is a smart move for automakers. Even though EV demand may have shifted in the near-term, automakers have already built out the factory capacity and signed sourcing contracts for critical minerals. Moreover, energy demand is rising and storage has become more critical infrastructure than ever. Big Auto has a choice: Write-down those costs, or make the most of what they have and pivot.

+A pretty depressing story from public radio reporters Julie Bourdin, Tommy Trenchard, and Maya Miskir on the apparent failure of much of the “Great Green Wall” effort to build a cordon of trees to stop deserts spreading in Africa. The project has been plagued by funding troubles, and by the droughts that come as the planet warms: They visited many sites along the route, including one in Djibouti:

But within a few years, the water supply began to dwindle. The dam had been thwarted by persistent drought, then sprung leaks. The solar pump extracting the groundwater broke. It didn’t help that the borehole had brought new settlers to the valley, increasing strain on the remaining supply. Eventually, the water dried up altogether.

Today, a water truck paid for by the government still comes once a week from the capital to fill up the tanks, but without the pumped supply, there’s barely enough to give the livestock, let alone to irrigate Guelleh’s field. The crops withered and died. Before long, the farm reverted to desert.

As if droughts and heatwaves weren’t by themselves enough, a new study finds that climate change is making these hot/dry extremes much more likely to combine—and much more likely to be found in poor countries that of course have done nothing to cause the trouble.

The simulations show that the dominant driver behind the increase in compound hot-dry events is the rising global temperature, amplified by land-atmosphere feedbacks. These changes are driven primarily by human greenhouse gas emissions rather than by natural variability. The AWI-team also found a linear relationship between global temperature rise and the fraction of the population exposed to heightened compound hot-dry extremes. “If current climate policies stay the same, nearly one third of the global population could face more frequent and severe hot-dry conditions by the end of the century”, says Di Cai. That would be nearly 2.6 billion people. To put this into perspective: based on current global average per-capita emissions, the lifetime carbon emissions of about 3.4 people would be enough to expose one additional person to heightened compound hot-dry extremes by the end of the century.

+New study finds that thawing permafrost may release carbon many times faster than anticipated.

Experiments conducted by researchers at the University of Leeds, and published in the AGU journal Earth’s Future, show that when permafrost thaws, it becomes 25 to 100 times more permeable. This change allows significantly greater amounts of climate-forcing gases to escape into the atmosphere.

Permafrost, soil that has remained frozen for long periods and spans vast regions of the Arctic, has long acted as a natural barrier that limits the release of greenhouse gases. As global temperatures rise, however, this frozen layer is beginning to thaw.

Across the planet, permafrost is estimated to hold about 1700 billion tons of carbon, roughly three times the amount currently present in the atmosphere.

+A fascinating (and somewhat ominous) new study helps explain why a huge percentage of Antarctic sea ice suddenly vanished last decade. Warm water had been building up under a surface cap of colder water, until persistent winds blew that cap away, allowing the hot stuff below to surge to the surface. As Matt Simon writes,

“What we witnessed was basically this very violent release of all that pent up heat from below that we linked to the sea ice decline,” Wilson said.

This bluster was likely driven at least in part by climate change: As the planet warms, the atmosphere develops temperature gradients, which strengthen winds and change their patterns. Scientists, though, are still working out how much of this shift might be due to “natural variability,” or what might happen anyway if humans hadn’t released so much carbon since the Industrial Revolution.

Either way, the system shifted around 2016. Beyond bringing up warm waters, all that wind may have broken up the ice, both by pushing blocks together and by creating waves. “Recent research has shown that both atmospheric and oceanic warming is likely contributing to the sudden change in Antarctic sea-ice extent since 2016, and this paper helps to further develop the point that deeper ocean warmth is a significant player,” said Zachary Labe, a climate scientist at the research group Climate Central who studies Antarctic ice but wasn’t involved in the paper.

+Maybe you saw pictures of Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry at Coachella. Or maybe you saw pictures of the dust clouds that wiped out much of the music festival’s first weekend. As Tony Briscoe writes,

Wind-driven dust is an overlooked environmental hazard — and one that carries a hefty price tag. A recent study estimated that dust storms cost more than $154 billion in the U.S. in 2017 alone. The evaluation puts dust events on par with natural disasters in terms of economic costs, eclipsing, for example, the 2017 wildfire season but shy of that year’s hurricane season, according to Irene Feng, the lead author of the 2024 study, who researched dust at the University of Texas at El Paso.

“Dust is kind of a big deal,” said Feng, now a post-graduate student at George Mason University. “The fact that it was even comparable to hurricanes ... was a huge surprise to me.”

+Amid record drought, record wildfires have swept across the nation’s grasslands this spring, with the biggest fire burning more than half a million acres in Nebraska. As Gabrielle Cannon reports

“There is a changing wildfire dynamic in this region,” Dr Dirac Twidwell, a rangeland ecologist at the University of Nebraska, said, describing how a cycle of extreme conditions can create more catastrophes. Stronger summer storms seed the grasses that cure by winter. If there’s no protective snow cover, that browned vegetation ramps up fire risks – especially when the winds begin to blow.

This year, those conditions converged to create the perfect storm in Nebraska. After parts of the state were pummeled with rains last summer, winter was the second warmest on record and the fourth driest.

“The probability of ignition just goes through the roof,” Twidwell added. “The deck has been stacked.”

This is one reason that more and more farmers would like to offset some of the natural risk of their profession by putting up solar panels. In many places, of course, local opposition—often fueled by fossil fuel industry disinformation—has limited solar development, but the Associated Press reports that farmers are starting to fight back effectively

One farmer, who helped gather signatures for the referendum in Richland County, Ohio, found that when the debate over solar projects was framed as a property rights issue, people in the community were more receptive.

Another farmer also focuses on property rights when speaking on the issue. His farm is his retirement plan, and he should have the right to use it to support his family, he said.

“There’s families that are relying on this and looking for this,” he said. “And it’s been taken away, this opportunity.”

Meanwhile, here’s a weird twist to an old story. Farmers were lured to dry places like the Plains with the promise (absurd) that “rain follows the plow.” But there’s at least some sign that in certain places rain may follow the solar panel. Efosa Udinmwen reports from the UAE, where water is very valuable (especially as the Iran war threatens desalinization plants) that

A modelling study led by climate scientist Oliver Branch at the University of Hohenheim found dark solar panels absorb more heat than the surrounding reflective desert sand.

This temperature difference drives updrafts that can lead to rain, potentially providing water for tens of thousands of people.

The researchers modeled solar panels as nearly black surfaces that absorb 95% of incoming sunlight.

When solar farms exceeded 15 square kilometers, the increased heat contrasted sharply with the reflective sand around them, increasing the updrafts that drive cloud formation, but it needs a source of atmospheric moisture.

However, the model showed that moist, high-altitude winds from the Persian Gulf would suffice.

A 20 square kilometer solar field would increase rainfall by nearly 600,000 cubic meters under the right conditions, equivalent to 1cm of rain falling across an area the size of Manhattan.

+Finally, the huge surge for balcony solar that began on Sun Day continues to crest. Lining up behind Maine and Virginia (and of course pioneer Utah), the Colorado legislature has now passed the law, and it merely awaits the signature of Gov Jared Polis. All of you who helped make Sun Day a success own these wins—and there will be a bunch more of them in the weeks ahead.