It’s not the first climate lawsuit. Could it finally be one that is consequential? Reminder: it took decades of failed lawsuits against the tobacco industry before health advocates finally won big. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported yet more evidence of fossil fuel industry lies and deception Just a few weeks ago, young people in Montana won a judgement against that state on evidence of fossil fuel wrong doing, which might have been the first crack in the wall. The stakes in this fight are far, far larger, and could be of enormous financial and social consequence. California Governor Gavin Newsom has been highly visible and vocal in support of this effort.
The state of California filed a lawsuit against some of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, claiming they deceived the public about the risks of fossil fuels now faulted for climate change-related storms and wildfires that caused billions of dollars in damage, officials said Saturday.
The civil lawsuit filed in state Superior Court in San Francisco also seeks creation of a fund — financed by the companies — to pay for recovery efforts following devastating storms and fires. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement the companies named in the lawsuit — Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and BP — should be held accountable.
“For more than 50 years, Big Oil has been lying to us — covering up the fact that they’ve long known how dangerous the fossil fuels they produce are for our planet,” Newsom said. “California taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill for billions of dollars in damages — wildfires wiping out entire communities, toxic smoke clogging our air, deadly heat waves, record-breaking droughts parching our wells.” ——–
Readers of this blog of course are well aware of the fossil industry’s long history of deception on the issue. One resource that is now available is researcher Ben Franta’s PhD thesis deeply examining the history and roots of that deceit. It opens with a surprising story of the earliest glimmers of awareness at an industry gathering in the late 1950s. Those who have seen the Oppenheimer movie may recognize physicist Edward Teller, who makes an appearance.
It was a brisk November day in New York City.7 The year: 1959. Robert Dunlop, 50 years old and photographed later as clean-shaven, hair carefully parted, his earnest face sporting horn-rimmed glasses, passed under the Ionian columns of Columbia University’s iconic Low Library. He was a guest of honor for a grand occasion: the centennial of the American oil industry.
Over 300 government officials, economists, historians, scientists, and industry executives were present for the Energy and Man symposium – organized by the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the Columbia Graduate School of Business – and Dunlop was to address the entire assembly on the “prime mover” of the last century – energy – and its major source: oil. As President of the Sun Oil Company, he knew the business well, and as a director of the American Petroleum Institute – the industry’s largest and oldest trade association in the land of Uncle Sam – he was responsible for representing the interests of all those many oilmen gathered around him.
While global climate models have done an amazing job of predicting the steady rise of temperatures as a global average, this year’s rash of catastrophic extremes has a lot of people asking if some dreaded “tipping point” has been crossed. The video above argues “no, but” – the caveat being that climate models, of necessity, paint with a broad brush, and generally have not been able to resolve the much smaller scale at which damaging extremes clobber human infrastructure and agriculture.
Many other types of extreme events are by nature small scale, i.e. on the order of a few kilometres to a few hundred kilometres. Such is the case of convective precipitation, flash floods, extratropical wind storms, cyclones, and medicanes. These are poorly resolved at the resolution of global climate models (GCMs) in CMIP5 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5; Taylor et al., 2012). Increased resolution in GCMs may improve the representation of small-scale processes and features, including orography and coastlines (downscaling effect), but it may also potentially improve the representation of the interaction between small- and large-scale dynamical processes and ultimately improve the large-scale atmospheric flow (upscaling effect)
Important point – in a series of extremes such as we’ve seen in Europe this summer, consecutive events can each set the table for more extreme impacts from the following event. Example: Heat wave/drought sets up more extreme wildfire, which denudes the landscape, making any extreme rain more impactful with greater runoff, leading to mudslides and avalanches, etc. Communities with fewer resources have difficulty recovering before the next punch lands.
“We have the impression that extreme heat is hitting us sooner and with greater intensity because of our unpreparedness,” he added. “Our perception is also biased by the fact that we are living more often in uncharted territory which gives a sense of acceleration. We now feel climate change that is emerging above usual weather.”
Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy, told The Guardian, “I do think we are hitting a tipping point in global consciousness. For years I’ve spoken about the challenge of psychological distance. When people are asked if they are worried about climate change, they say yes, But then when asked if it affects them, they say no. That barrier is falling very quickly as nearly everyone can now point to someone or somewhere they love that is being affected by wildfire smoke, heat extremes, flooding, and more.”
Transmission in the US has stalled in part due to the onerous process of permitting across numerous small jurisdictions, and in the face of NIMBY opposition that can be empowered by that permitting process. Many of the objections are simply “I don’t want to look at it”. One proposed solution has been to place lines underground, and route them along highways or railways which have already been by definition, permitted. One such key project in the Midwest is the SOO line, designed to bring wind and solar energy from the Iowa region to distribution points near Chicago. It’s designed to follow a rail line, which in theory could make permitting easier – but it’s been held up for a couple years in a frustrating permitting process. Now a key hurdle has been cleared. If the technology can be shown to be workable and economically viable, a huge obstacle to a revamped national grid will have been overcome.
The proposed SOO Green transmission line between the Midcontinent Independent System Operator and PJM Interconnection regions cleared a key hurdle when it was approved by Iowa regulators last week.
The Iowa Utilities Board on Sept. 13 approved a petition by SOO Green HVDC Link ProjectCo, the project developer, for a franchise to build and operate the Iowa portion of the line. The 525-kV high voltage direct current line would run about 350 miles underground next to a railroad between Mason City, Iowa, and Yorkville, Illinois.
SOO Green expects its project will deliver wind generation from Iowa to the PJM market while improving grid reliability by adding 2,100 MW of transmission capacity between MISO and PJM, according to the IUB’s decision.
“The electric transmission line is necessary to provide adequate electric utility service and is assistive to Iowa electric customers by supporting reliability and regional transmission organization cross-seam transmission,” the IUB said. “Reliability is increased by improved ability to both send and, more importantly, receive power if MISO is experiencing generation shortfalls.”
The SOO Green project proposes to build about 175 miles of underground high voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission line in Iowa, delivering wind, solar and possibly other energy from a converter station east of Mason City to the Iowa-Illinois border, then continuing to the Plano, Illinois, area.
The total transmission line would be about 349 miles long, although the company has identified possible expansions into northwestern Iowa, Minnesota and Missouri if market conditions justify it.
The franchise permit requires that the line operates as a merchant line, meaning the costs of the project will be paid by financial investors, who will earn a return on their investment through fees charged to transport energy. No public utilities will seek rate increases to pay for any part of it, the company said.
The 525-kilovolt line would cross through Cerro Gordo, Floyd, Chickasaw, Winneshiek, Allamakee, Clayton, Dubuque and Jackson counties in Iowa.
The primary route would run along Canadian Pacific Railroad right-of-way from Mason City through Charles City, through New Hampton over to Marquette, down along the Iowa side of the Mississippi River to Sabula, under the Mississippi River and then to Byron, Illinois, finally ending in Plano, Illinois.
Almost all of the project in Iowa will be located on private railroad rights-of-way owned by Canadian Pacific Kansas City Limited (Canadian Pacific Railroad) and on 18 miles of public road rights-of-way along Highway 18 in Clayton County.
..”re-powering of a dormant plant such as Palisades would be a feat that has never been achieved before,” Holtec International CEO Kris Singh said.”
We can only wish them luck. History suggests there may be hiccups, but clearly Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, has made this a priority, perhaps in view of her ambitious plans to also promote renewable energy in the state.
Holtec International announced Tuesday the signing of a long-term power purchase agreement between its Palisades Energy subsidiary and Wolverine Power Cooperative, which provides energy to rural communities across Michigan.
The PPA signing represents a “giant step forward” on the repowering of the 800-MW Palisades Power Plant, Holtec said.
“The signing of this business agreement is a significant milestone to ensure assured operation of the facility and an enhanced carbon-free energy future for Michigan,” Holtec added.
Wolverine has committed to buy up to two-thirds of the power generated by Palisades for its member co-ops, with its non-profit rural electric cooperative project partner, Hoosier Energy, purchasing the rest.
Holtec International spokesperson Patrick O’Brien provided some additional details on the PPA.
“The agreement goes into effect upon restoration of generation capability, expected as early as late 2025. The term of the agreement is expected to coincide with the plant’s [Nuclear Regulatory Commission]-granted operating license (effective through 2031), plus a subsequent license renewal period Holtec anticipates pursuing with the NRC as part of the restart activities. It could cover decades,” O’Brien said in an email.
The PPA also has “a contract expansion provision to include up to two small modular reactors, rated at 300 MWe each, that Holtec intends to build and commission at the Palisades site.”
The Palisades nuclear plant closed in May 2022 due to tough financial conditions and was then acquired by Holtec in June 2022. According to Holtec, this would be the first time a shuttered nuclear plant has successfully restarted in the U.S.
“We are well aware that, although we see no real obstacles ahead, re-powering of a dormant plant such as Palisades would be a feat that has never been achieved before,” Holtec International CEO Kris Singh said in a statement.
Europe is a continent on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
In Greece, nerves are shot as weeks of blazes raging out of controlhave given way to flooding that has submerged villages, washed away cars and left dead bodies floating in the streets. Italians are frazzled as a summer of incinerating heat waves lingers and fear mounts over the return of hailstones the size of handballs.
A group of young Portuguese, exhausted by sweltering temperatures and spreading fires, are suing European nations for causing the climate change that they claim has damaged their mental health, much as their counterparts in Montana sued the state.
And, in a common refrain of the eco-anxiety era, it gets worse.
The same storm that hit Greece gained strength over the Mediterranean and pummeled Libya with flooding that killed thousands.
A recent United Nations report delivered the bad news that the world was way off track in meeting it pledges under the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Polls have registered a deepening malaise. The specter of burning in nuclear fires started by the war in Ukraine has moved to the back burner.
In an era of ever-increasing anxiety, now is the summer — and autumn — of our disquiet, and eco-anxiety, a catchall term to describe all-encompassing environmental concerns, is having its moment.
While it is not clinically recognized as a pathology, or included in the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, experts say the feeling of gloom and doom prompted by all of the inescapable images of planetary gloom and doom is becoming more widespread.
“Climate change is moving faster than psychiatry for sure and also psychology,” said Dr. Paolo Cianconi, a member of the ecology psychiatry and mental health division of the World Psychiatry Association, who is publishing a book with colleagues on the topic this month. He said that the term eco-anxiety had existed for more than a decade, but that it was “circulating very much” these days, and that the condition would only increase in the future.
“When people start to be worried about the planet, they don’t know that they have eco-anxiety,” he said. “When they see this thing has a name, then they understand what to call it.”
The Osage Nation came into massive wealth after oil was discovered beneath its reservation in the 1890s. Worth about $400 million dollars annually in modern currency by the 1920s, oil transformed the daily lives of the Osage people and turned them into what was then considered the richest nation on Earth.
At the time, prevalent attitudes held that Native Americans were naive, primitive, and in need of white oversight lest they squander their wealth. The government also historically considered Indian tribes to be dependent nations in need of federal protection: promoting laws designed to “protect,” not empower, Native people.
These laws often did not protect Native interests—and instead served as ways for white settlers to seize and retain control over Native people and their ancestral lands. In 1887, for example, the Dawes Act broke tribal lands up and gave them to Native families with tribal claims willing to undergo cultural assimilation. However, the law also sold “excess” land to white settlers, dramatically reducing the amount of land owned by Native nations.
The Osage nation sidestepped this “allotment” system, since it had bought 1.5 million acres of Oklahoma land outright from the federal government when the group was driven out of its ancestral lands in Kansas in 1872. The Osage nation gave all the land to members, each receiving 657 acres. The nation itself held on to the mineral rights of the land, granting each member an inheritable “headright” to the share of the nation’s mineral wealth. As the nation’s oil brought in more and more money, each Osage was entitled to more wealth—drawing the interest, then interference, of non-Osage Oklahomans.
This chicken was grown in sterile, laboratory-like facilitiesby Good Meat and Upside Foods, a pair of Bay Area food technology companies that have been toiling for years to reach this moment. Their chicken started as cells, maybe taken as part of a biopsy from a living bird. The cells were cultivated in ever-larger vessels, or just plastic two-liter flasks,until enough tissue could be harvested and eventually processed into dishes at these full-service restaurants, where a select few diners are paying handsomely for the privilege to be among the first to taste chicken grown without the blood and guts of animal slaughter.
The chicken goes by a number of names — lab-grown meat, cell-cultivated meat, clean meat and, in certain agricultural circles, Franken-meat — but whatever label it adopts, the meat grown in sterile plants has also been billed as a potential savior to the troubles that plague our food system.
Proponents say cell-cultivated chicken, beef and the like could dramatically cut back the amount of land and water that goes into producing the meat that will feed a growing population along with its growing appetite for animal proteins. Cultivated meat could eliminate the inhumane treatment of animals raised for food, whose short lives are often hidden behind walls where, in some states, it is a crime for reporters or activists to access the facilities under false pretenses. They could help prevent the spread of zoonotic diseases. They could even reduce the 7.1 gigatons of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere every year by the livestock industry, representing 14.5 percent of all human-related greenhouse gas emissions.
Yet, to date, the two companies approved in the United States to sell cultivated meat can grow only hundreds of thousands of pounds per year, a microscopic fraction of the hundreds of millions of metric tons of meat produced annually around the world. In the near future, dozens of other tech companies hope to join Good Meat and Upside, but even if they do, critics and industry executives say it’s no sure bet that cell-cultured meat can ever scale up and compete, in quantity or price, with traditional animal agriculture.
Most everyone will tell you there are still huge obstacles to overcome — financial ones, scientific ones, even public resistance to the product — before most people will ever get a taste of meat that comes from bioreactors, not from an animal with legs, lungs, a heart and a brain.
Outstanding episode of the brilliant Climate Town series explores the penetration of fossil fuel propaganda, masquerading as “educational materials”, into public schools.
Climatetown turns us on to the oil industry’s faux “Bill Nye” knock off , – “Labtime with Leo” – truly a journey thru a hellish alternative universe. Example episode below.
