Just say no

When it comes to oil and gas, it's the one crucial word. But our leaders can't bear to utter it.

Our leaders—good and bad—have understood that they must say and do something about climate change; it is, after all, the worst crisis we’ve ever wandered into as a species. The word they like to say is yes!—to new spending on all sorts of things. Which is great: Joe Biden, for instance, convinced Congress to say yes to the IRA, which has tons of money that, as the Economist pointed out this week, seems to be functioning as intended, spurring lots of investment in wind, solar, EVs and so on.

But the ultimate goal of climate policy can’t be just to produce more renewable energy; if it doesn’t also dramatically and quickly cut the production of oil, gas and coal then it won’t really help.

That’s why the news about the Biden administration’s capitulation on the Willow oil complex was so woeful. Here was a brand new project on the most remote and untouched corner of the nation, in a place already so damaged by climate change that its builders may have to refreeze the tundra before they can drill—and yet Biden could not bring himself to say no to the Alaska congressional delegation, nor to campaign advisors who were warning him that the price of gas would doubtless be a topic in the next campaign. He broke a clear campaign promise to say no; it was just too painful for him.

And the Willow project was far from singular. As an important New York Times survey this week makes clear, it’s only a small fraction of the increase in oil and gas projects now on the books in America. And that’s only a fraction of the projects planned across the world. As Max Bearak reported

Vast new oil fields have also been approved for exploitation by Western multinational companies in Guyana, Brazil and Uganda, among others. Some developing countries have argued that income from fossil fuel — essential to the prosperity of the industrialized world — is also their right, and that climate change mitigation is largely the responsibility of wealthy nations.

In fact, the president of Ghana told visiting vice-president Kamala Harris last week that he too planned to drill for oil, “which my government is seeking to use as the basis to transform its economy." There wasn’t much she could say in return—Ghana’s moral case is obviously stronger than rich Alaska’s.

The most remarkable example may be the United Arab Emirates, which will host this fall’s climate negotiations. Sultan Al Jaber, who will serve as host of the talks, runs the Emirates renewable energy company, Masdar, which claims to have invested more than almost any other corporation in solar and wind—more than $30 billion over the last two decades. Over the last two months he’s told various international forums that “we have to rapidly reduce emissions” and that “oil and gas companies need to align around net zero,” and that “we in the UAE are not shying away from the energy transition. We are running towards it.”

But as a Guardian expose this week revealed that the UAE in fact is running in precisely the opposite direction: it has plans for the world’s third-biggest expansion of oil and gas drilling. The busy Al Jaber in fact runs not just its renewable energy company but its fossil fuel company as well, and that one plans to spend $150 billion over the next five years (compared, again, with the $30 billion over the last two decades on the clean stuff) to enable an “accelerated growth strategy” for oil and gas production.

Since the International Energy Agency warned us three years ago that all new investment in oil and gas infrastructure had to stop in 2021 to give us a chance of meeting our global climate targets, almost all of this—like Willow—is plain and simple ecocide, rogue behavior outside the laws of physics.

Just 10% of Adnoc’s expansion is compatible with the IEA’s scenario for the world to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The IEA said the 2050 goal requires no new oil and gas projects to be approved after 2021, but 90% of the oil and gas expansion being planned by Adnoc were advanced after this date and would have to stay in the ground to be compatible.

But it is going on everywhere. And virtually no world leader has been willing to stand up to it. Canada’s Justin Trudeau remains perhaps the most honest—though he talks a good game at home about the importance of climate progress, his remarks a few years ago at a Texas oil conference remain the chilling (well, the opposite of chilling) truth for the whole world. Describing Alberta’s tarsands, he said “no country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and just leave them there.” But just leaving them there is…precisely what physics requires.

Against all this, movements can offer only continued resistance. Sometimes we win—last week, for instance, enviros scrambled, apparently successfully, to protect New York’s strong new climate law, which the gas industry tried to scuttle with a last-minute change about how to count methane emissions. And new champions keep arising: Justin Pearson, the hero of the fight against the Byhalia pipeline through Memphis, saw the Tennessee legislature shoot his star into the firmament last week when it expelled him from office—the expulsion won’t stick, but the stardom will.

But because most of our leaders can’t bear to say no—can’t bear to stand up to the power of the fossil fuel industry and crimp the supply of oil and gas—their only remaining bet is that they can somehow nonetheless transition us off fossil fuel by cutting demand. Theoretically, enough EVs will eventually mean that drilling for more oil is a losing proposition, and it will dwindle of its own accord, without any politician having to take any pain in the process. But the key word in that last sentence is “eventually.” Time is what we lack, and time is what they waste with their calculation and cowardice.

In other energy and climate news:

+The ability of no-holds-barred capitalism to take anything and make it nasty is exemplified in this account of cannabis growing in Oakland, where indoor growers put up diesel generators to power their massive warehouse operations

The generators burned up to 12,000 gallons of toxic diesel fuel per day—enough to power 9,000 homes. The resulting carbon emissions were four times greater than they would have been if the producers had used the local utility’s far cleaner power. Most or all cultivators defied orders to stop their unauthorized use of the generators.

Inside grow facilities, disproportionately nonwhite workers receive pay that mostly hovers around minimum wage while being exposed to a nasty stew of agricultural chemicals, gases, mold, noise, high temperatures and humidity, and harsh lighting brighter than the sun. In one study, nearly three-quarters of workers reported respiratory symptoms (including “probable” work-related asthma), eye and nasal irritation, and allergic reactions.

The obvious solution to this problem would be to grow cannabis…outdoors, where 0.003% of U.S. farmland could supply the 17,000 tons of marijuana that Americans consume each year. Surely pot produced in this fashion would make you less paranoid.

+Perhaps you would like to read yet more of my words about climate change. I have a longish piece in the current issue of Rolling Stone, offering an update on the math of global warming.

+Breathing air polluted by traffic and industry while you’re pregnant reduces the lung capacity of your baby, a new study finds. We don’t need to be doing this—we could power our planet on the combustion of the sun, a safe 93 million miles distant. Instead:

The study found that exposure to higher levels of air pollution during pregnancy was linked to lower lung function when kids reached age six. Children with reduced lung function are more likely to develop respiratory problems like asthma or COPD in adulthood.

“The lungs start growing in utero and your lung function by six or seven years old tracks for the rest of your life,” said Dr. Wright. “We’re generally not talking to pregnant women about how to minimize and mitigate their exposure to air pollution, but we should be.”

+A new MIT study demonstrates the methods—mostly rock weathering—that the earth uses to stabilize its climate. Unfortunately for our current predicament, it takes a while…

“On the one hand, it’s good because we know that today’s global warming will eventually be canceled out through this stabilizing feedback,” says Constantin Arnscheidt, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). “But on the other hand, it will take hundreds of thousands of years to happen, so not fast enough to solve our present-day issues.”

+Offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico does even more damage than we thought, according to new data that uses airborne monitors to measure methane leaking from the oil rigs:

Methane pollution in the Gulf of Mexico totaled 600,000 metric tons a year, according to the report, which found that average methane levels in federal waters were three times higher than official inventories, and 13 times higher in state waters.

The report comes as the Biden administration last month put millions of acres of water in the Gulf of Mexico up for auction to offshore oil and gas drilling, and has plans for further auctions.

+Always read Rebecca Solnit. Here’s a new essay with Nina Riggio on protest in Europe and here’s her new anthology, compiled with the wonderful organizer Thelma Latunatubua. It’s called Not Too Late, which is a legitimately hopeful title

+Emily Atkin always adds to our shared understanding of the climate problem: her latest column brings ‘paltering’ to its glossary; it’s a form of lying at which the oil companies and their pr agencies excel:

Technically, they tell the truth—they’re investing in greener, cleaner technology. But the investments are small, the technology is unproven, and their companies are overall failing to reduce their emissions. The selective truth they choose is designed to create a false impression, so everyone gets off their back about climate change.

Meanwhile, Robinson Meyer has a fascinating essay in the Times about whether clean energy goals may best be served by competition instead of collaboration. It’s nuanced and smart and very worth the read.