greenwashing

By Kiley Bense - Inside Climate News, March 12, 2024

Activists want more public participation in a proposal to produce hydrogen in southeastern Pennsylvania. Touted by the Biden administration as “crucial” to the nation’s climate goals, advocates fear the federally-funded project will create more pollution and further burden environmental justice communities.

Protestors disrupted a public meeting on Monday about a federally-funded “hydrogen hub” to be located in southeastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey and Delaware that would produce, transport and store the controversial fuel at sites across the region.

While the Biden administration considers these hubs a key part of its climate agenda that would decarbonize greenhouse-gas intensive sectors of the economy like heavy industry and trucking, climate activists consider hydrogen a false solution based on unproven technology that will only lead to more fossil fuel extraction and further pollute the environment.

Minutes after Governor Josh Shapiro took the stage at a union hall in northeast Philadelphia to speak in support of the project, which will be funded with $750 million from the Department of Energy as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Delaware Riverkeeper, Maya van Rossum, stood up from her seat and demanded his attention.

“The Department of Energy said that community engagement is supposed to be a highest priority. You have yet to have a meeting with the impacted community members to hear what they have to say,” she shouted, interrupting Shapiro as he was speaking about the buy-in for hydrogen hubs at all levels of government in Pennsylvania. “When are you going to have a meeting with those community members?” she asked.

By staff - How We Fix The Climate, February 28, 2024

By Emma Foehringer Merchant and Joshua Yeager - Inside Climate News, February 21, 2024

On a recent Tuesday evening, several oil workers in Kern County, California, spoke out in support of a project that they hope will create much-needed jobs.

“What I’m hoping to get out of this is hope for my grandson’s generation,” said Allen Miller, a third-generation oilman who came to work in the petroleum-rich region in 1984. “That they can provide for their family the way my grandpa did and the way I did.”

The audience applauded Miller’s comments during a crowded public meeting in Taft, a city of about 8,500, in the heart of the state’s oil country. 

The proposed project, known as Carbon TerraVault 1, would store millions of tons of planet-warming carbon a mile beneath the nearby Elk Hills Oil Field. Oil production in that field and others nearby has sustained the county’s economy for over a century. 

“This is our oil field,” said Manny Campos, a longtime Taft resident and businessman. “I’m glad to see we are being intentional about keeping it that way and keeping the benefits local.”

Some environmental advocates are skeptical of the carbon removal industry — and its ability to create a significant number of jobs — but California policymakers view carbon removal and storage as a necessary tool to manage greenhouse gas emissions. 

The fledgling technology is a key part of the state’s plan to fight climate change, which also includes phasing out oil drilling by 2045. The county and California Resources Corporation (CRC), the oil company hoping to build the TerraVault, see carbon management as a vital new revenue stream. Kern County stands to lose thousands of jobs and millions in tax dollars as drilling declines 

But carbon storage facilities themselves are not currently projected to generate large numbers of jobs, according to a report prepared for the county. Kern’s own analysis shows the initial phase of the TerraVault project will only produce five permanent positions.

By Sam Black and Josh Hirschfeld-Kroen - More Perfect Union, February 20, 2024

By Clare Carlile, Adam Barnett and Phoebe Cooke - DeSmog, February 8, 2024

Producers say ‘No Farmers, No Food’ is a populist initiative that serves to “whip up indignation and anger”.

Producers say ‘No Farmers, No Food’ is a populist initiative that serves to “whip up indignation and anger”.

A network of climate science deniers has been accused of “hijacking” rural concerns over a new social media campaign “to save the farming industry”. 

‘No Farmers, No Food’ has gained over 50,000 followers on X in the fortnight since its launch, which was framed as a response to the widespread farmers’ protests sweeping across Europe.

The campaign, which started in the UK, has rapidly won support from a number of international pundits, from Canadian climate science denier Jordan Peterson, to Fox News contributor and host Tomi Lahren, who has called climate change a “hoax”. Populist politicians in the UK and elsewhere have also declared their support. 

Conspiracy theorists have jumped to support the social media account, which has boosted false claims about people being forced by the World Economic Forum to “eat bugs”.

The campaign has expressed scepticism around climate targets, claiming that “Farming is being sacrificed on the altar of net zero.”

Sporting a distinctive black and yellow tractor logo, the campaign’s hashtag trended on X a week after its launch on 23 January. Its founder James Melville told DeSmog that the campaign, which claims to represent the voices of farmers, plans to target national and local legislation on issues like pricing and food security as well as “aspects of net zero”.

James Melville is a PR consultant who has appeared as an anti-lockdown campaigner on right-wing broadcaster TalkTV and a farming commentator on GB News. A former journalist who grew up on a livestock and arable farm, he said he started the campaign to put “pressure on governments to help farmers … and shape the messages that will build public support”. 

“I think it’s time for a national debate on climate and net zero,” Melville told DeSmog. The campaign is due to launch a new mission statement in the coming days.

Scientific consensus on human-caused climate change is equivalent to that on evolution. 

The UK’s legally binding target to cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050 is part of an international effort to limit global warming to 1.5 C. Food production accounts for around a quarter of global emissions. 

But while Melville’s campaign claims to speak for farmers, arable and livestock farmer Joe Stanley says the initiative does not represent his industry.

“There is massive discontent in the farming community,” he said. “But this does not seem to be a farmer-generated movement.”

“Populism whips up indignation and anger,” Stanley added. “That is what ‘No Farmers, No Food’ is doing, clearly with the hope of creating a wider movement as we’ve seen in Ireland and Holland.”

Journalist Peter Geoghegan, author of ‘Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics’, said that ‘No Farmers, No Food’ had “all the hallmarks of a classic astroturf campaign” – a supposedly ‘grassroots’ campaign that provides a front for political or commercial interests. 

“As we can see here you don’t need any grassroots support to be able to push an agenda straight into the media and the political system,” he said.

James Melville denied that the campaign was a front for political interests, adding that ‘No Farmers, No Food’ was “non-partisan”. “I welcome all sides of the debate,” he said.

By Abbe Ramanan, Amanda McKay, David Schlissel, Anika Juhn, et. al. - Clean Energy Group, January 18, 2024

By Jeremy Brecher - Labor Network for Sustainability, January 3, 2024

The appeal of the Green New Deal lies in its drawing together the varied needs of diverse constituencies into a common program that realizes them all. Here’s how that works at the sub-national level.

By Finlay Asher, Kieran, and Marius - Aerospace Ambition, December 22, 2023