New Report Highlights Pesticides’ Overlooked Climate Connection
As chemicals designed to kill insects and weeds, fungi and rodents, pesticides are among the most toxic and damaging substances on the planet. Their harmful impacts on human and ecosystem health are generally well understood. What receives far less attention, however, is the climate impact of these agrochemicals. Not only do pesticides directly contribute to the climate crisis, but a changing climate is likely to intensify pressure from agricultural pests and decrease plant resiliency, resulting in greater pesticide usage and therefore further greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new report.
This “vicious cycle” of pesticide use fueling climate change, and vice versa, is examined in a report published Tuesday by the advocacy group Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA). According to PANNA, the assessment is the first in-depth scientific review of the relationship between pesticides and climate change.
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@juliedermansky rang in the new year by capturing this video on January 1 of Shell’s petrochemical complex in Norco, Louisiana, next to Valero’s St. Charles Refinery. 2023 marks 10 years that Julie has been reporting from the front lines of climate change for DeSmog, covering the Gulf Coast’s fossil fuel buildout, industry greenwashing, and the impacts of climate change on Indigenous people and communities of color, among many other stories. This year, Julie and the rest of the team will keep chasing stories like these, bringing you more of the powerful public interest journalism you come to DeSmog for.
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House Committee Wraps Up Historic Investigation Into Oil Industry
Congressional investigators released a new set of documents that underscored the oil and gas industry’s ongoing attempts to block climate policies and confuse the public about their long-term investments in fossil fuels. The latest tranche of documents caps off a nearly two-year investigation that appears set to come to an end with Republicans taking control of the House of Representatives in January.
On December 9, the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee published its latest set of documents as part of its ongoing investigation into the oil industry’s history of climate denial and obfuscation. The documents offer more evidence showing that the industry’s “greenwashing” continues up to the present day.
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House Committee Report Shows How Big Oil Has Been Gaslighting us all Along
On Friday, the House Oversight Committee released the final report from its year-long investigation into fossil fuel industry disinformation. The result is the most damning indictment yet of the industry’s attempts to “greenwash” its public image while continuing to expand fossil fuel production and lobby against climate action.
According to the findings of the committee, major fossil fuel companies like Chevron, Exxon, BP, and Shell have no intention of seriously reducing their emission by moving away from oil and gas production. Instead, they’re using false “net zero” commitments and other marketing tactics to mislead and distract the public while they double down on fossil fuel production.
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1.5 and 2°C: A Journey Through the Temperature Target That Haunts the World
Two numbers. One long-term goal. In 2015, nearly 200 countries agreed to “Holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change”. It was at COP21, where the Paris Agreement, the most important climate pact to date, was enshrined.
That paragraph, in article 2, paragraph 2.a., marked a before and after. Every policy, law, regulation, study, analysis, proposal or action that has the climate crisis in mind is built on the basis of those two figures: 1.5 and 2. They are our lighthouse. But why are both numbers so important? And what is even less well known: where do they come from?
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Pipeline Company Wants to Quietly Expand Gas Shipments in the Pacific Northwest
Canadian pipeline company TC Energy is aiming to expand the volume of methane gas that it ships through a long distance pipeline in the Pacific Northwest, potentially locking in higher gas use despite laws in western states that chart a path away from fossil fuels in the years ahead.
TC Energy’s existing GTN pipeline carries methane gas from British Columbia down through much of the U.S. Pacific Northwest, passing through Idaho, Washington, and Oregon, and connecting to northern California.
The company’s proposed GTN Xpress project would expand the volume of gas flowing through that pipeline by roughly 150 million cubic feet per day. Such an expansion would result in the carbon pollution impact of adding more than 750,000 cars onto the road annually for the next thirty years.
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A New Era for Germany’s Gas Industry Fuels Climate Fears
WILHELMSHAVEN, Germany — For 150 years, heavy industry has been the lifeblood of the German port of Wilhelmshaven, a hub for shipbuilding, plastics, coal and steel. Now, the city is at the forefront of the country’s dash to break its dependence on Russian gas.
On Saturday, a newly built jetty is due to welcome the Norwegian-flagged Höegh Esperanza, a 280-metre vessel capable of offloading cargoes of natural gas supercooled into liquid form, then shipped across the ocean in specialised tankers.
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Puerto Rican Cities Sue Fossil Fuel Companies in Major Class-Action, Climate Fraud Case
Nearly 25 years ago, oil major Shell predicted in an internal 1998 report that a class-action lawsuit would be brought against fossil fuel companies following “a series of violent storms.” That prediction is finally coming true: A group of Puerto Rican communities, which were ravaged by Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017, are suing Shell and other fossil fuel producers in a first-of-its-kind, class action climate liability lawsuit.
The groundbreaking case — filed November 22 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico — is the first climate-related class action lawsuit in the United States filed against the fossil fuel industry to target the industry with federal charges of racketeering. It alleges that the fossil fuel defendants engaged in a coordinated, multi-front effort to promote climate denial and defraud consumers by concealing the climate consequences of fossil fuel products in order to inflate profits.
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Heartland Institute’s Survey Actually Supports the 97% Climate Science Consensus It’s Trying to Attack
The Heartland Institute, a self-described free-market think tank notorious for its climate science denial efforts, is at it again. This time, Heartland is frantically spinning the results of a survey it commissioned in its latest attempt to dispute the robust scientific consensus on climate change.
To be clear, climate experts overwhelmingly agree that climate change is happening and that humans are primarily responsible. And there’s plenty of evidence about that consensus.
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On Tuesday, gas company Coterra Energy pleaded no contest to environmental crimes related to contaminated water supplies from fracking operations more than a decade ago. The plea is the culmination of a long saga that has left residents of a small Pennsylvania town without clean drinking water for 14 years, and it resulted in some semblance of accountability for a company that has long denied any wrongdoing.
“We are here today because fundamentally Pennsylvanians have a right to clean air and pure water. And for too long, the good people of Dimock have waited to have the clean water that our constitution promises restored to them in their homes and throughout our community,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro said at a press conference on November 29. “More than a decade of waiting for a permanent plan for clean drinking water is far too long.”
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Judge Deals Latest Blow to Big Oil in DC Climate Fraud Case
In recent years, communities across the United States increasingly have turned to the courts to hold oil and gas companies accountable for alleged fraud — which has worsened the climate crisis — and now those lawsuits are inching towards trial. Despite dogged attempts from industry lawyers to force the litigation into federal courts, where they see an easier path to dismissal, they continue to strike out as judges from California to Connecticut rule that state courts are the appropriate venues for these climate accountability lawsuits.
The latest addition to the fossil fuel industry’s long procedural losing streak came on November 12 when a federal district judge decided that the District of Columbia’s climate liability lawsuit belongs in the local court, where it was originally filed in June 2020. As with other climate liability lawsuits, lawyers for the oil and gas companies in the District of Columbia case devised a multitude of arguments claiming that only federal courts have the jurisdiction or authority to handle such lawsuits. But federal courts have not been buying these legal theories.
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