What the Value of a Whale Tells about Corporate Green Capitalism and Climate Science, and What We Can Don’t Have to Say About It
The director of research for the London-based progressive think tank Common Wealth, Buller sees market-based corporate “green” initiatives as distracting at best—and, at worst, actively destructive. The Value of a Whale takes a bracing look at how corporate interests are using the superficial trappings of climate activism to reinforce their own power. As one might imagine, it’s not the most uplifting read in the world. A tough book, that asks us not to accept a simulacrum of improvement for the real thing.
“The House Oversight Committee report has sought to misrepresent ExxonMobil’s position on climate science, and its support for effective policy solutions, by recasting well intended, internal policy debates as an attempted company disinformation campaign,” Spitler said. If the specific members of the committee are certain they are right, why did they have to take so many things out of context?
I identify two core tenets of green capitalism. The attempt to resolve the climate crisis is an attempt to minimize disruption to our existing ways of organizing the economy, wealth and power. The second tenet is pursuing decarbonization in such a way that it makes sure there are still opportunities for profit-making and rent extraction. When moving away from private car ownership to mass transit, green capitalism is more about making sure we can transition to electric vehicles when private companies can keep making money.
I’d been working in the climate and finance civil society space for several years, and I started out at a totally nonpolitical watchdog company that helps financial firms understand how they should align their portfolios with the goals of the Paris Agreement. I came out of that experience feeling very cynical about whether that approach will actually change anything. The experience of crawling into the heads of people in finance made me think about how they understand the problem. That is what the book is trying to do.
Why Tlaib Made Putin a Day: After Years of Dealing with Climate Misinformation and Exxon Mobil, Mr. Putin and Mr. Biden
When Putin ended the charade, here’s what happened: On Sept. 28, Reuters reported from Frankfurt, “Germany’s cabinet on Wednesday passed two decrees to prolong the operation of sizable hard coal-fired power generation plants up to March 31, 2024, and to bring back idled brown coal capacity up to June 30, 2023, to boost supply.”
Big Oil companies have engaged in a “long-running greenwashing campaign” while raking in “record profits at the expense of American consumers,” the Democratic-led House Oversight Committee has found after a year-long investigation into climate disinformation from the fossil fuel industry.
As a Goldman Sachs newsletter in April put it: “How much future production have we lost because of all the delays in investment decisions on new oil and gas projects? The answer is 10 million barrels per day of oil, which is the equivalent of Saudi Arabia’s daily production and three million barrels per day of oil equivalent in liquefied natural gas (LNG), which is more than the equivalent of Qatar’s daily production. We could have had new oil and gas producing countries like Saudi Arabia and a new nation likeQatar if we had not kept stalling investment decisions.
America can take care of most of its needs for oil and gas today, unlike Europe, however we don’t have enough to make up for Putin’s and OPEC’s cuts and ease Europe’s transition to a decarbonized future.
“These companies know their climate pledges are inadequate but are prioritizing Big Oil’s record profits over the human costs of climate change,” Maloney said. The fossil fuel industry needs to stop lying to the American people and take serious steps to address the global climate crisis that they have created.
Tlaib then told Dimon that any students who had student loans and bank accounts with JPMorgan should retaliate by closing their accounts. Have no doubt: This kind of juvenile moral preening by Tlaib surely made Vladimir Putin’s day. She is not nearly as bad as the senators from G.O.P. who used ExxonMobil lies to block our transition to clean energy. But Tlaib still made Putin’s day.
Putin got even better when he saw the group of Democrats kill the bill that was backed by Biden.
The oil and gas industry deleted some of its previous posts, which could be problematic for the candidate in New Mexico’s second congressional district. America’s busiest area of oil and gas production is located in the energy-rich region.
Vasquez, who promoted himself in his campaign as a supporter of the region’s fossil fuel industry calling it “incredibly important” and previously called it toxic in comments on social media, has since removed those comments.
The City Is Your Own: When Police Reform is Needed (and Why Does It Need To Be) Done? Commentary on David Vasquez on Inside Elections
The race is rated a toss-up by Inside Elections, as one of 19 that could determine control of the House of Representatives this November.
In advertisements, he promoted himself as a supporter of police. But he deleted a tweet rationalizing rioting in cities following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. While speaking with a local station during a protest in 2020, he was wearing a mask and claimed to be supporting a policy that defunded the police. He said there was need for serious police reform in this country. It’s about defunding a system which favors white people over everyone else.
“We’re seeing the monster that is white nationalism physically manifesting on the steps of the nation’s capitol [sic]. It has always been there, but it has not been seen by the public. We’ve always known it’s there. Today we see its many faces,” Vasquez tweeted at 3:50 p.m.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/14/politics/kfile-gabe-vasquez-new-mexico-deleted-progressive-tweets/index.html
New Mexico has not forgotten: The oil and gas sector is irresponsible, but we need to stop playing to the R’s talking points
“I think the oil and gas industry is incredibly important to New Mexico,” Vasquez told the local Carlsbad Current-Argus in August. The district is important, and I think that it supports an economy that supports small businesses that support the industry, and that is not only based on fossil fuel extraction.
To my Democratic friends, please stop playing to the R’s talking points. It’s OK to oppose fracking, OK to support the Green New Deal, OK to support Medicare for all, OK to talk about progressive immigration reform, OK to stand for what you believe. The since-removedNovember 2020 message reads #Stay Strong.
Another since-deleted tweet added, “Investing in oil and gas is irresponsible,” linking to an opinion article calling fossil fuels a “moribund industry.”
The pardoning of white, wealthy men who should be in prison is a damning reflection of how justice is served in this country. The white & privileged escape justice, while the poor, black, Indigenous & people of color are disproportionately targeted, sentenced & jailed #AmeriKKKa,” he wrote.
“Pendejos. Trump will pardon his army of con men who cheated minorities, the border wall will fall due to erosion, and racial tensions will continue to escalate. Nobody will be held responsible. Donald Trump had a white supremacist organization called the AmeriKKKa. What a disgusting mess,” Vasquez tweeted.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/14/politics/kfile-gabe-vasquez-new-mexico-deleted-progressive-tweets/index.html
Climate Change During the First Five Years: A Trump-Bannon-Vendidos Committee Briefing the American Economy and the European Commission on Climate Change
Then-President Donald Trump did pardon one of the defendants – his ally and former adviser Steve Bannon – but two other defendants pleaded guilty and another had a mistrial.
In other deleted tweets from November 2020, Vasquez attacked a commentator who was against student loan forgiveness, writing, “Oh you mean this American economy suddenly isn’t fair for white man? What will you ever do?”
In another, he attacked electing people of color who did not “think like us,” saying they were “vendidos out there clamoring to be part of the white establishment.” “Vendidos” is a Spanish term that implies someone is a “sell out.”
The new phase in the fight against climate change is marked by the report. In the last five years, greenwashing has been a topic for activists. But one result of the world making so many more climate pledges in the wake of the Paris agreement has been that many more people started looking at just how realistic those pledges were — and how many corporations and indeed nations were offering promises held aloft by hypocrisy and hot air.
The committee discovered that internal documents from the company show that they don’t fit with the company’s public comments, and that they aspire to be a “net zero company by 2050 or sooner.”
In a July 2017 email between several of the company’s high-level officials about whether to invest in curbing emissions from one of its gas projects off the coast of Trinidad and Tobago, BP’s vice president of engineering stated that BP had “no obligation to minimize GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions” and that the company should only “minimize GHG emissions where it makes commercial sense,” as required by code or if it fits into a regional strategy.
The slide that was presented to the Board of Directors by the CEO states that “Chevron’s strategy is to continue to invest in fossil fuels to take advantage of their plentiful supply.”
An employee of the company assessed in an email that the company had adopted an obstructionist strategy with regulators, and that it was waiting for the rules to come out.
Democrats wanted the hearings to be like the 1994 hearings of the tobacco industry, in which tobacco CEOs insisted that cigarettes were not addictive and caused accusations of perjury and federal investigations.
But what can be done to stop that? I talked to the subcommittee chair regarding what tools could be used to bring the Big Oil Companies to account and the state of climate action after the Inflation Reduction Act.
Democratic lawmakers said the oil and gas industry obstructed their investigation throughout the more than year-long process. They had requests heavily redacted by the companies, which didn’t specify reasons for keeping the information.