The Daily Telegraph has published weekly articles since 11 August by David Blackmon, a veteran of the oil and gas industry. The articles have all been critical of current policies to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions and ensure the transition to renewable energy. The idea of “an energy transition that will dramatically reduce the […]
The post Revealed: Oil and Gas Industry Links of Telegraph Energy and Climate Commentator appeared first on DeSmog.
Fire at the Marathon Refinery between Reserve and Garyville, Louisiana, seen from across the Mississippi River in Edgar, Louisiana, on Friday, August 25, 2023. Credit: Julie Dermansky
The post Toxins from Marathon Refinery Fire Leaked 15 Hours Before Evacuation Called appeared first on DeSmog.
In early March, global food giant Tyson unveiled a new beef product line at the 2023 annual industry meat conference. Named “BrazenTM Beef”, it was the first ever product of its kind to receive the “Climate-Friendly” stamp from the US Department of Agriculture. The brand, which grew out of Tyson’s “Climate-Smart Beef Program”, reportedly earned […]
The post The Rise of the ‘Climate Friendly’ Cow appeared first on DeSmog.
Once a giant pure-play independent power producer, NRG Energy has cultivated a legacy of pioneering business models to withstand waves of change in the power sector. Its latest strategic shift pivots from
The post NRG Energy’s Pivot Amid Power Sector Change appeared first on POWER Magazine.
The Conservative Party has received in excess of £600,000 since Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister from four board members at leading Tufton Street ‘think tanks’, a new DeSmog analysis shows. The data also shows that free market groups based in Tufton Street, Westminster, have retained significant influence in Sunak’s administration. More than half a dozen Tufton Street alumni currently serve as special advisers to the government, while seven ministers have appeared at events hosted by Tufton Street groups since Sunak became prime minister in October. These groups have often acted as a blocker to climate action. All are known for their anti-big-state and pro-fracking views, while their anti-green stances range from opposition to state-led climate intervention to active climate science denial. Previous reports indicate that Tufton Street groups have received substantial funds from organisations that support climate science denial in…
Deutsche Bank and other German lenders have poured finance into gas export terminals on the U.S. Gulf Coast since Russia invaded Ukraine, a report has found, sparking anger among residents who say the megaprojects are devastating their communities. German banks lent 2.17 billion euros to U.S. gas export projects since the beginning of 2022, a sharp increase on the 1.86 billion euros in loans made during the 10 preceding years combined, according to underlying data used to produce the report by environmental groups Urgewald, Environmental Action Germany (DUH) and Andy Gheorghiu Consulting. The banks also underwrote 610 million euros of bonds for the projects from 2012-2021, the data showed. “I am here to sound the alarm alongside my German colleagues: This is destruction masked as economic development, and we will do everything we can to protect our homes and to…
Leader of the House of Commons Penny Mordaunt and Conservative MP Liam Fox have each received £10,000 from companies owned by a director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) – one of the UK’s leading climate science denial groups. New parliamentary records show that Mordaunt received £10,000 on March 28 from the management consultancy First Corporate Consultants. The firm is owned by Terence Mordaunt, a director at the GWPF who served as its chair from April 2017 to November 2019. The GWPF said in 2015 that “policies to ‘stop climate change’ are based on climate models that completely failed to predict the lack of warming for the past two decades”. It has also expressed the view that carbon dioxide has been mis-characterised as pollution, when in fact it is a “benefit to the planet”. In September 2022, Net Zero…
The Environmental Protection Agency’s Administrator Michael Regan announced a new proposed rule to govern toxic chemical air emissions at an April 6 press conference choreographed to have the Denka Performance Elastomer Plant, a synthetic rubber manufacturing facility in St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana, as a backdrop. The Denka plant is located next to the Mississippi River in the middle of an 85-mile stretch between Baton Rouge and New Orleans lined with chemical plants and refineries that President Joe Biden referred to as “Cancer Alley” when he rolled out his environmental policy, is one of many that will be subjected to new regulations included in the proposed rule, if it is finalized and enacted. Members of the Concerned Citizens of St. John the Baptist Parish stood next to Regan as he explained the far reach the prosed rule was designed to have. The community group…
Later this month, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) will head to the 2023 National Agri-Marketing Association’s conference to see if its public relations campaign about beef’s sustainability can secure the national award for campaigns directed to consumers. Earlier this year, a campaign NCBA began in 2021 called “Beefing up Sustainability,” and a corresponding campaign targeted to kids, advanced to the final round. Both were part of NCBA’s multi-pronged PR campaign about how beef is actually a climate-conscious food. The group, which is the beef industry’s largest trade association, plastered the New York Times (including its popular podcast The Daily) and the Washington Post with climate-conscious food messaging. It also hired food and nutrition influencers to talk about #sustainablebeef on social media. On Earth Day and during the United Nations Climate Week, it published 85 letters to the editor in…
Years before Hurricane Katrina levee failures flooded New Orleans, a Louisiana hurricane expert warned federal officials of the potential for the levees to break. Now, Ivor van Heerden, the former deputy director of Louisiana State University’s Hurricane Center, is concerned about the disastrous and potentially lethal consequences of a hurricane hitting a liquified natural gas (LNG) export terminal under construction south of New Orleans. “Once again we’ve got politicians and state agencies ignoring the facts, just like they did with Hurricane Katrina,” van Heerden said. “We’re going to have another catastrophe.” His concerns center on Venture Global’s plans to build an LNG export facility near Black and Indigenous communities in Plaquemines Parish, on a sliver of land between the Mississippi River and wetlands. About 73 percent of the population within 3 miles of the facility’s site are people of color,…