Oklahoma says fracking companies can be sued over earthquakes

Oklahoma’s highest court agreed energy companies can be sued for injuries to people and damage to property sustained during earthquakes.Plaintiffs in two lawsuits claim fracking companies are responsible for the earthquakes.

In a 7-0 decision, with two justices abstaining, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the plaintiff, Sandra Ladra, may seek damages from two energy companies for injuries sustained to her legs during an earthquake on November 5, 2011.

The quake shook the victim’s hometown of Prague, causing rocks to fall from Ladra’a chimney onto her legs. It was the highest magnitude trembler the state has ever experienced, registering 5.7 on the Richter scale.

“The size of rock is about the size of your head, certainly, and a significant sized and heavy rock,”Scott Poynter, Ladra’s attorney, told KFOR News Channel 4.

Poynter told the news channel Ladra is not looking for a payout, but the industry needs to stand up and pay for the problems they’re causing. Ladra has been in pain since the incident and Poynter said she is going to have knee replacement surgery.

Specifically, the lawsuit was filed against two Oklahoma companies, New Dominion and Spess Oil Company. It claims the companies’ storage of wastewater from the fracking process in high-pressure disposal wells is causing shifts in fault lines, resulting in earthquakes.

Earthquakes have been shaking central Oklahoma since late 2011. The Oklahoma Emergency Management Agency said three earthquakes in the Prague area with magnitudes of 5.0 and higher had destroyed six houses and damaged 172 others from November 5 to 8 of last year.

Attorneys for New Dominion and Spess argued in court that the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, not the court system, was the proper venue for damage claims, because the commission has sole authority over oil and gas operations, but the state’s Supreme Court justices disagreed.

“Allowing district courts to have jurisdiction in these types of private matters does not exercise inappropriate ‘oversight and control’ over the (Corporation Commission),” says the opinion, written by Justice James Winchester. “Rather, it conforms to the long-held rule that district courts have exclusive jurisdiction over private tort actions when regulated oil and gas operations are at issue.”

The court’s decision also gives the go ahead to another lawsuit filed against the same two energy companies over property damage, this one filed by Jennifer L. Cooper, also of Prague. Cooper claims her home sustained more than $100,000 in damage from three Prague earthquakes.

Poynter is also representing Cooper and is seeking class-action status for another suit covering nine counties in the state, which, if granted, could lead to damage awards potentially worth tens of millions of dollars. The suit states that the class would consist of people in those counties who have owned homes or business properties since November 5, 2011.

The US Geological Survey found that central Oklahoma experienced one to three 3.0 magnitude earthquakes per year from 1975 to 2008, The Nation reported. That number jumped to an average of 40 a year from 2009 to 2013.

Read Full Article: RT

Shell’s Arctic Drilling Hits a Walrus-Shaped Wall

Image Credit: Joel Garlich-Miller/USFWS

An obscure wildlife protection measure put a dent in Shell’s Arctic dreams on Tuesday, as federal officials told the company it would not be allowed to prospect for oil simultaneously at two sites in  nine miles apart in the Chukchi Sea, as it had requested.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service upheld a federal law mandating that wells operating in the area at the same time be at least 15 miles apart, so that Pacific walruses would not be harassed by the activity as they migrate or forage for food. Environmental groups had sent a letter to Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell on June 23, urging her to uphold the walrus protection measure.

The Obama administration is considering whether the Pacific walrus warrants federal endangered species protections, as warming temperatures caused by climate change have sharply diminished its Arctic sea ice habitat.

The agency did grant Shell permission for potential “take,” or deaths, of small numbers of polar bears and Pacific walruses during its prospecting activities. The activist group Friends of the Earth criticized that decision.

“Today’s authorization takes us one step closer to letting Shell turn the pristine American Arctic Ocean into an oil and gas sacrifice zone,” said FOE climate campaigner Marissa Knodel in a statement.

With the FWS authorization in hand, Shell now needs one more document, a drilling permit from the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, in order to begin boring a well.

In the drilling plan approved this spring by the Obama administration, Shell must have two drilling rigs in or near its Arctic lease site. One must be available within days to drill a relief well in case the other has a blowout, akin to BP’s Gulf of Mexico disaster in 2010.

But until today, Shell probably didn’t intend to let that second rig sit idle, since less drilling extends the time it will take for the company to make back the $7 billion it has spent on Arctic Ocean oil development so far, or even the $1 billion it has slated for this summer’s operations.

So, Why Should You Care? If science had the last word, the Arctic Ocean would be barred to energy companies. Research recently published in Nature found that there is no climate-friendly way to use any of the oil and gas below the Arctic seafloor. To have any chance of keeping global temperature rise below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, all these fossil fuels must remain buried.

Proponents argue that tapping these oil supplies is important to making the United States’ energy supply more secure. They also maintain that successful energy development in the region will help bring jobs and revenue to isolated Arctic Alaskan communities.

Opponents fear that an oil spill or well blowout could cause irreparable harm to Arctic ecosystems and the wildlife they support.

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OPEC agrees to keep output target at 30 mln barrels a day

Image Credit: Ask

VIENNA (AP) — OPEC decided to keep its output target at 30 million barrels a day Friday but left it to members to restrain their overproduction, reflecting the cartel’s inability to strictly enforce its own limits in attempts to control the world supply of crude.

While the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries accounts for over a third of the world’s oil, its power to determine supply and demand has been steadily eroding as outsiders capture large shares of the market. It gave up imposing quotas on individual members four years ago after these were consistently ignored.

That has led to an overhang in recent months of more than 1 million barrels a day of OPEC production beyond the target. But the likelihood of continued overproduction persists.

OPEC powerhouse Saudi Arabia is fighting to keep market share against U.S. shale oil, Iran plans to increase production in anticipation of an end to sanctions that have crimped its crude exports and other countries are trying to compensate for low prices by selling more.

The international price of crude was down 20 cents at $61.83 after Friday’s announcement.

Announcing the decision to keep the present target, an OPEC statement urged members “to adhere to it,” and Abdullah al-Badri, the organization’s secretary general, also urged member nations to “abide with that 30 million.” But he acknowledged that, as in the past, countries had only been assigned “indicators” — not quotas — in attempts to hew to the target.

In contrast, Saudi and Iranian comments Friday reflected the countries’ determination to produce what they decide.

“Production policy is a sovereign right,” Naimi told reporters.

Iranian Petroleum Minister Bijar Namdar Zangeneh, meanwhile, advised OPEC to make room for increased output from his country as early as the end of the month. That’s the target date for a deal between Tehran and six world powers envisaging an end to sanctions on the Islamic Republic in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.

Read Full Article: AP

Saudi Arabia’s solar-for-oil plan is a ray of hope

Image Credit: Fahad Shadeed/Reuters

So what to make of the statement by Saudi Arabia’s oil minister that the world’s biggest oil exporter could stop using fossil fuels as soon as 2040 and become a “global power” in solar and wind energy?

Ali Al-Naimi’s statement is striking as Saudi Arabia’s wealth and influence is entirely founded on its huge oil wealth and the nation has been one of the strongest voices against climate change action at UN summits.

“In Saudi Arabia, we recognise that eventually, one of these days, we’re not going to need fossil fuels,” said Naimi at a business and climate conference in Paris on Thursday. “I don’t know when – 2040, 2050 or thereafter. So we have embarked on a program to develop solar energy,” he said in comments reported by the Guardian, Bloomberg and the Financial Times. “Hopefully, one of these days, instead of exporting fossil fuels, we will be exporting gigawatts of electric power.”

Naimi also said he did not think that continuing low crude oil prices would make solar power uneconomic: “I believe solar will be even more economic than fossil fuels.”

Paris is the venue for a crunch UN climate change summit in December and Thursday’s conference was part of the French government’s preparations. The Saudi signal provides a ray of sunlight for those hoping for a strong deal to tackle global warming.

“Saudi Arabia is sending a strong signal to all oil producers and companies they must plan for an energy transition,” said Mark Fulton, former head of research at Deutsche Bank and advisor to the Carbon Tracker Initiative (CTI).

“If Saudi Arabia is starting to hedge its bets by developing solar capacity, this could change the fundamentals of the oil market,” said James Leaton, CTI head of research.

But Naimi also said that the idea of keeping most fossil fuels in the ground, as scientists say is necessary to tame climate change, “may be a great objective but it is going to take a long time” and needed to be put “in the back of our heads for a while”. He said fossil fuels will still dominate the world’s energy supply up to 2050.

Saudi Arabia had already said in 2012 it aimed to be powered by 100% renewable energy and later that year announced a $109bn solar plan. In January, that plan was delayed by eight years.

So Ali Al-Naimi’s comments on Thursday need to be treated with a degree of scepticism. Furthermore, making the kingdom itself fossil-fuel free doesn’t rule out continuing to export oil for many years. And in the past, Saudi Arabia has suggested it should be compensated for keeping any of its oil in the ground.

Read Full Article: The Guardian

Shutting Down Shell in Seattle

Image Credit: Jason Redmond/Reuters

It could be a long, hot spring in Seattle as one of the nation’s greenest cities becomes a new front in the climate wars. With Shell Oil using the Port of Seattle as the staging ground for its Arctic drilling fleet, activists are vowing to disrupt the petroleum giant’s plans to drill in the Arctic Ocean in the coming months.

On Saturday, some 2,000 protesters turned out on land and in water in Seattle, vaulting the “Shell No” campaign onto the international stage. Photographs and video circulated the globe via social media, showing the Polar Pioneer—the company’s gargantuan, acid-yellow Arctic oil drilling platform—looming over several hundred kayakers holding protest signs.

When the Obama administration last week gave Shell conditional approval to drill in the Arctic Ocean, activists in Seattle were ready.

Emily Johnston, 48, a cofounder of the grassroots climate action group 350 Seattle, said she and other area activists learned that the Port of Seattle intended to lease docking terminal space for Shell’s Arctic drilling fleet when local news media broke the story in January.

“So one of the greenest cities in the country is going to host Shell’s drilling rigs, which if they succeed in their mission will cause havoc with the climate?” she said. “We were appalled.”

Saturday’s “Paddle in Seattle,” as well as a march attempting to blockade workers from getting to the Polar Pioneer on Monday, were just the beginning of an ongoing opposition campaign against Arctic Ocean drilling, she said.

“With elected leadership having utterly failed us, we have no alternative but to launch a movement of non-violent civil disobedience to stop this project,” said Seattle City Councilmember Ksharma Sawant in an email. Sawant, a socialist, has publicly supported the protests, despite the economic hit Seattle’s port and its workers might take if Shell’s business goes elsewhere.

“The goal, to the extent possible, is to stop or delay work” at Shell’s port operations, Johnston said. “They have a very narrow drilling window. Maybe we can materially narrow that window.”

Johnston did not want to offer details about what shape future protests might take. “There is going to be tons of pressure on the port commissioners to rescind Shell’s lease,” she said, as well as close attention on the city permitting process. “I know it makes it harder for an agency to do things in a shoddy way when there’s this much attention being paid to the process.”

Many of the Seattle groups that protested against Shell’s use of the port have spent the past three years organizing against fossil fuel export terminals in the Pacific Northwest as well as the Keystone XL tar sands oil pipeline. “It’s entirely possible that some groups will do small actions that we don’t know about in advance,” Johnston said.

At a minimum, Johnston believes, the “Shell No” campaign can do for Arctic Ocean drilling what the campaign to stop the Keystone oil pipeline has done for that project: transform the air of political and economic inevitability that hangs around most major oil or gas projects.

“KXL hasn’t been stopped, but it hasn’t been built, even though the majority of energy industry folks said it was a done deal. We’ve been able to change the discussion around building the pipeline,” Johnston said. “We’re trying to change the whole context in which this is happening and shine a light on the fact that Arctic drilling is crazy.”

Ahmed Gaya agrees. The 29-year-old Seattle resident is a volunteer organizer with Rising Tide Seattle, part of a network of about a dozen grassroots climate action groups around North America. He and Johnston were among the key organizers of the “Shell No” protests in Seattle.

“Changing the direction of the conversation on Arctic drilling is a big goal,” said Gaya. Another, “for many of us, through the Shell No Action Council, is to shift the climate conversation from Shell’s project to fossil fuel projects more broadly.”

One sign that a broad grassroots movement on climate change has caught fire is how many people helped organize and put on the “Shell No” protests, said Gaya.

“Over 200 people were involved in the planning and organizing of this weekend’s actions,” he said. “The vast majority were ordinary citizens who have never done something like this before.”

He and Johnston also highlighted the diversity of the protesters, which included members of Native American communities in Alaska and Washington as well as Filipino American community organizers.

On Wednesday the Rising Tide network that Gaya works with launched a new effort, called “Flood the System,” in advance of December’s international climate treaty negotiations.

“Flood the System” will take “ ‘Shell No’ actions as a model” for grassroots groups and concerned citizens around the country, Gaya said, to inspire “mass civil disobedience, organized along the same lines of mass democratic participation that we used in Seattle” in the months leading up the United Nations–sponsored talks, which will be held in Paris.

Read Full Article: Take Part

 

Dirty air and disease: why we must end the subsidy of fossil fuels

Image Credit: Michael Bowles/Rex

The world is starting to realise that fossil fuels are not cheap. It is increasingly clear that oil, coal and gas have huge hidden costs that are omitted from prices, and they are therefore heavily subsidised.

The latest evidence about how expensive fossil fuels really are has been provided this week by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an organisation that monitors the progress of the world’s economy. It estimates that oil, coal and gas will receive US$5.3tn in subsidies this year around the world. That is the equivalent of 6.3% of global GDP. The IMF correctly argues that the damages and costs caused by fossil fuels, through impacts such as air pollution, congestion, traffic accidents and climate change, should be treated as subsidies if they are not included in the prices paid for oil, coal and gas.

The increase from previous estimates is due to a number of factors, particularly a deepening understanding of the immense costs of air pollution. The unpriced costs of fossil fuels are in addition to, and much greater than, the direct financial support for fossil fuels through, for instance, tax breaks for oil and gas exploration and subsidies for consumers. The IMF points out that coal receives the biggest subsidies worldwide, and has the largest negative impact on human health through the pollution that it causes.

While the IMF’s figures are eyewateringly large, they are, if anything, conservative because they are based on low estimates of the costs of climate change from the US government, which tends to omit many of the largest risks. While the IMF offers a regional breakdown, there are no figures for individual countries. However, there is much evidence that the subsidies in the UK are large, as air pollution from use of fossil fuels has an enormous impact.

In its ruling last month that the UK government must submit new air quality plans to the European Commission by the end of the year, the supreme court recognised that microscopic particles produced by the burning of diesel and other sources are responsible for the equivalent of 29,000 premature deaths each year in Britain, more than 10 times the number of fatalities from road accidents.

So the costs of fossil fuels are paid through the death and illness of present and future generations. That is why it is so important to create a level playing field for alternative energy sources and help to propel our economies away from their dependence on dirty and expensive fossil fuels.

To achieve this, direct subsidies for the production and consumption of oil, coal and gas must end, as the G20 group of countries with the largest economies have made clear at their last few annual summits. But governments must also start to implement policies that properly price in the hidden costs of fossil fuels.

With oil prices currently at a low level, now would be the ideal time to introduce levies that remove the implicit subsidy for pollution from petrol and diesel. The revenue from these levies could more than compensate the poorer members of the community for the price increases, give a boost to research and innovation, and contribute to the cleaner and more attractive investments that we need.

Read Full Article: The Guardian

US taxpayers subsidising world’s biggest fossil fuel companies

Image Credit: PR

The world’s biggest and most profitable fossil fuel companies are receiving huge and rising subsidies from US taxpayers, a practice slammed as absurd by a presidential candidate given the threat of climate change.

A Guardian investigation of three specific projects, run by Shell, ExxonMobil and Marathon Petroleum, has revealed that the subsidises were all granted by politicians who received significant campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry.

The Guardian has found that:

• A proposed Shell petrochemical refinery in Pennsylvania is in line for $1.6bn (£1bn) in state subsidy, according to a deal struck in 2012 when the company made an annual profit of $26.8bn.
• ExxonMobil’s upgrades to its Baton Rouge refinery in Louisiana are benefitting from $119m of state subsidy, with the support starting in 2011, when the company made a $41bn profit.
• A jobs subsidy scheme worth $78m to Marathon Petroleum in Ohio began in 2011, when the company made $2.4bn in profit.

“At a time when scientists tell us we need to reduce carbon pollution to prevent catastrophic climate change, it is absurd to provide massive taxpayer subsidies that pad fossil-fuel companies’ already enormous profits,” said senator Bernie Sanders, who announced on 30 April he is running for president.

Sanders, with representative Keith Ellison, recently proposed an End Polluter Welfare Act, which they say would cut $135bn of US subsidies for fossil fuel companies over the next decade. “Between 2010 and 2014, the oil, coal, gas, utility, and natural resource extraction industries spent $1.8bn on lobbying, much of it in defence of these giveaways,” according to Sanders and Ellison.

In April, the president of the World Bank called for the subsidies to be scrapped immediately as poorer nations were feeling “the boot of climate change on their neck”. Globally in 2013, the most recent figures available,the coal, oil and gas industries benefited from subsidies of $550bn, four times those given to renewable energy.

“Subsidies to fossil fuel companies are completely inappropriate in this day and age,” said Stephen Kretzmann, executive director of Oil Change International, an NGO that analyses the costs of fossil fuels. OCI found in 2014 that US taxpayers were subsidising fossil fuel exploration and production alone by $21bn a year. In 2009, President Barack Obama called on the G20 to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies but since then UN federal subsidies have risen by 45%.

“Climate science is clear that the vast majority of existing reserves will have to stay in the ground,” Kretzmann said. “Yet our government spends many tens of billions of our tax dollars – every year – making it more profitable for the fossil fuel industry to produce more.”

Tax credits, defined as a subsidy by the World Trade Organisation, are a key route of support for the fossil fuel industry. Using the subsidy tracker tool created by the Good Jobs First group, the Guardian examined some of the biggest subsidies for specific projects.

Shell’s proposed $4bn plant in Pennsylvania is set to benefit from tax credits of $66m a year for 25 years. Shell has bought the site and has 10 supply contracts in place lasting up to 20 years, including from fracking companies extracting shale gas in the Marcellus shale field. The deal was struck by the then Republican governor, Tom Corbett, who received over $1m in campaign donations from the oil and gas industry. According to Guardian analysis of data compiled by Common Cause Pennsylvania, Shell have spent $1.2m on lobbying in Pennsylvania since 2011.

A Shell spokesman said: “Shell supports and endorses incentive programmes provided by state and local authorities that improve the business climate for capital investment, economic expansion and job growth. Shell would not have access to these incentive programmes without the support and approval from the representative state and local jurisdictions.”

ExxonMobil’s Baton Rouge refinery is the second-largest in the US. Since 2011, it has been benefitting from exemptions from industrial taxes, worth $118.9m over 10 years, according to the Good Jobs First database. The Republican governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal has expressed his pride in attracting investment from ExxonMobil. In state election campaigns between 2003 and 2013, he received 231 contributions from oil and gas companies and executives totalling $1,019,777, according to a list compiled by environmental groups.

A spokesman for ExxonMobil said: “ExxonMobil will not respond to Guardian inquiries because of its lack of objectivity on climate change reporting demonstrated by its campaign against companies that provide energy necessary for modern life, including newspapers.”

The Guardian is running a campaign asking the world’s biggest health charities, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust, to sell their fossil fuel investments on the basis that it is misguided to invest in companies dedicated to finding more oil, gas and coal when current reserves are already several times greater than can be safely burned. Many philanthropic organisations have already divested from fossil fuels, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund whose wealth derives from Standard Oil, which went on to become ExxonMobil.

In Ohio, Marathon Petroleum is benefitting from a 15-year tax credit for retaining 1,650 jobs and a 10-year tax credit for creating 100 new jobs. The subsidy is worth $78.5m, according to the Good Jobs First database. “I think Marathon always wanted to be here,” Republican governor John Kasich said in 2011. “All we’re doing is helping them.” In 2011, Kasich was named as the top recipient of oil and gas donations in Ohio, having received $213, 519. The same year Kasich appointed Marathon Petroleum’s CEO to the board of Jobs Ohio, a semi-private group “in charge of the economic growth in the state of Ohio”.

A spokesman for Marathon Petroleum said: “The tax credit recognises the enormous contribution we make to the Ohio economy through the taxes we pay and the well-paying jobs we maintain. We have more than doubled the 100 new jobs we committed to create.” The spokesman said the company paid billions of dollars in income and other taxes every year across the US.

“Big oil, gas, and coal have huge influence on politicians and governments and they get that influence the old fashioned way – they buy it,” said Kretzmann. “Through campaign finance, lobbying, advertising and superpac spending, the industry has many ways to influence candidates and government officials seeking re-election.”

He said fossil fuel subsidies were endemic in the US: “Every single well, pipeline, refinery, coal and gas plant in the country is heavily subsidised. Big Fossil’s lobbyists have done their jobs well for the last century.”

Read Full Article: The Guardian

Amount of carbon dioxide in air keeps rising, hits milestone

Image Credit: NBC News

WASHINGTON (AP) — Global levels of carbon dioxide, the most prevalent heat-trapping gas, have passed a daunting milestone, federal scientists say.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says in March, the global monthly average for carbon dioxide hit 400.83 parts per million. That is the first month in modern records that the entire globe broke 400 ppm, reaching levels that haven’t been seen in about 2 million years.

“It’s both disturbing and daunting,” said NOAA chief greenhouse gas scientist Pieter Tans. “Daunting from the standpoint on how hard it is to slow this down.”

He said it is disturbing because it is happening at a pace so fast that it seems like an explosion compared to Earth’s slow-moving natural changes.

Carbon dioxide isn’t just higher, it is increasing at a record pace, 100 times faster than natural rises in the past, Tans said.

Pushed by the burning of coal, oil and gas, global carbon dioxide is 18 percent higher than it was in 1980, when NOAA first calculated a worldwide average. In 35 years, carbon dioxide levels rose 61 parts per million. In pre-human times, it took about 6,000 years for carbon dioxide to rise about 80 parts per million, Tans said.

Monthly levels fluctuate with the season, peaking in May and then decreasing as plants absorb carbon dioxide. But they are increasing on a year-to-year basis.

Levels are also higher in the Northern Hemisphere because that’s where carbon dioxide is being spewed by power plants and vehicles, Tans said.

Read Full Article: AP

Can the U.S. Go All-Electric?

Image Credit: Mother Earth News

New homes wired with the latest smart gadgets cluster together around shared park spaces. Blue-black panels that transform sunshine into electricity grace a majority of roofs. Electric cars or hybrids glide silently to rest in garages. This is not some distant future; this is life today in Mueller—an innovative suburb of Austin, Tex., and just one of the pioneering places I visit in the next episode of “Beyond the Light Switch,” premiering tonight in Detroit.

From how better batteries can make a better soldier to the race to invent those better batteries, this episode picks up where the previous award-winning shows left off—what would happen if the U.S. went electric? What would be the economic, environmental and national security impacts of that kind of transformation? It’s actually a transformation that’s already under way, from Atlanta’s airport to the Port of Los Angeles and beyond, to where Elon Musk’s self-described gigafactory to build batteries rises in the Nevada desert.

Your typical American home, in Mueller, Texas. © David Biello

An electric future could be cleaner and help wean the country from its oil addiction with the help of new kinds of cars. That future is coming up fast, shaped by global competition for clean energy, but this is our chance to create a vision for the America we want to see.

Read Full Article: Scientific American

M.I.T. Debates Whether to Drop Fossil-Fuel Investments

Image Credit: Coal Is Dirty

Last night, speakers at the nation’s most prestigious engineering school held forth on an array of financial and educational strategies to crack the challenge of man-made climate change.

They included: complete fossil fuel divestment; shareholder engagement with energy firms to advocate environmental concerns; frequent proxy voting on the resolutions of coal, oil and gas companies; educational outreach to politicians and the public to convey the gravity of rising emissions; tax incentives; steadfast energy research; and global emissions pricing.

Yet at this forum, an on-campus debate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology over whether the university should divest the fossil fuel holdings within its $11 billion endowment, might not have happened if market forces properly priced the economic and environmental costs of climate change, a theme that Anthony Cortese, the event moderator, alluded to at the outset.

“Some have called it an existential crisis,” said Cortese, a principal at the Intentional Endowments Network, which studies sustainable finance, referring to climate change. “This is happening for the failure of the market economy to equally account for many of the negative human and environmental impacts that are imposed upon society and the life support system.”

Since late 2012, college students in the United States have led the push, starting on their campuses with their school endowments, to boycott the fossil fuel industry by urging investors to sell off any coal, oil or natural gas holdings.

Most efforts have targeted the largest 200 publicly traded fossil fuel firms, maintained by a company called Fossil Free Indexes.

The MIT divestment advocates are requesting that the university block any new fossil investments and sell fossil fuel shares within five years.

“We must stop betting against our future,” said Don Gould, a financial manager who helped oversee Pitzer College’s divestment process last year, arguing in favor of MIT divestment yesterday.

Those in favor of divestment—John Sterman, a professor at MIT’S management school; Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard University professor and co-author of “Merchants of Doubt”; and Gould—said it is a symbolic act that can drive political policies to rein in emissions.

Conventional political efforts to mitigate global warming, this trio argued, have fallen short. Divestment creates the social and political will to shift public discussion on climate change and raise awareness of the risks that come with a hotter planet, they said.

… and also beat Harvard
“Divestment aligns the institute’s actions with its values,” Gould said, drawing roars from the crowd as he suggested MIT could show up cross-town rival Harvard University, also embroiled in a divestment debate, by selling its carbon-centric holdings first. “It can be done, and it is being done.”

Frank Wolak, an economics professor at Stanford University, which has pledged to divest its coal holdings, responded that MIT’s endowment, one of the biggest in the world, is a blip in the $60 trillion pool of public equities sloshing around worldwide, and the cost of divesting would be negligible.

Instead, Wolak said, slowing demand for fossil fuels is the step that would address the root of climate change. Fossil fuel corporations are simply meeting the public’s request for energy, he said.

“They’re only providing the demand for the services that we would like,” he said, throwing his support behind a global carbon tax.

“Divestiture does nothing to address that problem,” he said, calling divestment “purely symbolic, divisive and largely ineffective.”

Companies targeted by divestment campaigns—whether against firms involved in South Africa under apartheid, Darfur conflicts or this current carbon struggle—historically have responded that divestment does not affect their bottom lines.

However, in its latest annual report, Peabody Energy Corp., the largest private-sector coal company, cited divestment efforts as a business risk.

Recent divestment efforts, the filing reads, “may adversely affect the demand for and price of securities issued by us, and impact our access to the capital and financial markets.”

The goal underpinning divestment, at least for Oreskes, is not directly running coal, gas and oil businesses into the ground but inciting a discussion to generate the political atmosphere to pass bolder climate policies.

“How do we get the will to pass a carbon tax?” she said, noting that the divestment campaign could be a way. “I want to say, first of all, that symbols matter.”

The movement has had spillover impacts beyond the college quad; U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, World Bank President Jim Yong Kim and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore are some of top world leaders to support the divestment effort. Environmental advocates are calling on Pope Francis to support divestment, too.

To divest or vote stock holdings?
In the latest filings available from the Securities and Exchange Commission dated June 2011, the MIT investment management lists BP PLC; Conoco Inc., now ConocoPhillips; Dow Chemical Co.; Duke Energy Corp.; Exxon Mobil Corp.; and Halliburton Co. among its holdings.

Selling stocks is a financial option to mitigate climate change, said Timothy Smith, an investment expert with Walden Asset Management, but not the only choice. (Smith, alongside Brad Hager, a professor at MIT’s Earth Resources Laboratory, and Wolak, the Stanford professor, argued against divestment.)

Ceres, an investment network that studies sustainable finance and leads a group of more than 100 investors overseeing more than $10 trillion in assets under management, is a strong example of engaged shareholders pushing fossil energy companies to improve their climate policies, Smith said. And CDP, formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Product, does impressive work with the corporate sector and climate risk disclosure, he added.

“There are investors who are using their voice and vote,” said Smith, to, in some cases, push companies to stop flaring methane releases or publish their carbon footprints.

This shareholder-engagement strategy paid dividends for Arunja Capital, which has about $1 billion in managed assets, and As You Sow, a nonprofit focused on sustainable investing and finance (ClimateWire, March 26).

After asking the SEC to stop a resolution filed by Arunja and As You Sow, Chevron Corp. will see its shareholders vote on the petition, which asks the energy major to reassess high-cost projects due to the possibility that such energy deposits could be stranded by climate regulation.

Earlier this year, a U.K. group of investors with $300 billion in assets under their watch prompted the boards of BP and Royal Dutch Shell PLC to support similar resolutions at their upcoming annual meetings (ClimateWire, Feb. 19).

After committing to support these resolutions for increased carbon emission disclosure, the CEOs of both companies also publicly endorsed pricing greenhouse gas emissions.

Environment, morality and government force
“The stakes are immense,” said John Sterman, the MIT management professor who backs divesting. “The impacts are already being felt.”

With atmospheric concentrations of 400 parts per million, far above what scientists widely consider safe, oceans are becoming more acidic, wildfires rage and droughts stifle communities around the world, Sterman said.

Investing in fossil companies, he told the audience, is not just antithetical to MIT’s mission of long-term education and academic stewardship.

Read Full Article: Scientific American

Big oil is pressuring scientists not to link fracking to earthquakes in Oklahoma

Image Credit: Bloomberg/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Many Oklahomans can still vividly recall the day they experienced their first earthquake. Ever since 2009/2010, earthquakes in the state have increased exponentially – leading to what are called “seismic swarms”. In 2000 there was not a single earthquake, but in 2014 we experienced 585 quakes of magnitude three or larger.

Oklahomans want to get to the bottom of this mystery increase of quakes and are turning to state officials for answers. As a state legislator, I am concerned that a conflict of interest in universities could get in the way of finding answers – and implementing solutions.

For some time now, scientists have wondered whether fracking-related activities, such as wastewater injection, might be the source of increased seismic activity in Oklahoma. In May of last year, the Oklahoma Geological Survey, an affiliate entity of the University of Oklahoma, released a statement in conjunction with the United States Geological Survey, saying that wastewater injection was a “likely contributing factor the increase in earthquakes”.

Not long after this statement, David Boren, president of the university, summoned the Oklahoma Geological Survey’s lead seismologist Austin Holland, who was also one of the authors of the statement, to a meeting with Harold Hamm, CEO of Continental Resources, one of Oklahoma’s largest oil and gas exploration and production companies. Boren facilitated the meeting despite the fact that he also serves as a member of the Continental Resources board of directors.

In July 2014, Continental Resources released a presentation
positing an alternative theory for the seismic swarms and downplaying the influence of induced seismicity. One can only imagine the pressure this meeting must have brought upon Holland and his team of scientists.

That’s why state policy makers like myself are concerned that industry pressure conveyed through the highest levels of academia could compromise the deliberative and fact-based response by which state officials are attempting to put an end to the seismic swarms.

It has become exceedingly clear that Oklahoma’s particular geology is conducive to induced seismicity from injecting wastewater from the fracking process into the ground near faultlines.

State officials have responded to these findings by attempting to parse the responsible well site operators from the irresponsible ones. In particular, the state is focused on discouraging injections near faultlines, prohibiting injections which are too deep, and collecting real time pressure data from injection sites located near the quakes.

Read Full Article: The Guardian

China Targets Big Oil In Wars On Corruption, Pollution

Image Credit: SBS

BEIJING — What do China’s “war on pollution” and campaign against corruption have in common? They’ve both placed China’s coal and oil empires in their crosshairs, and they’re firing away.

Over the past two years anti-corruption squads have investigated dozens of high-ranking officials in coal and oil bureaucracies, with the latest detention announced Monday night: The vice chairman of China National Petroleum Corp., Liao Yongyuan, was placed under investigation for “serious violations of discipline,” Communist Party-speak for corruption. In China, the announcement of corruption investigations virtually guarantees an eventual conviction.

When he assumed power at the end of 2012, Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed to purge the Chinese Communist Party of rampant corruption, and he’s since executed an anti-corruption campaign that has decimated patronage networks ranging from the coal industry to the People’s Liberation Army. As that anti-corruption campaign continued to gather steam in 2014, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang responded to the putrid haze blanketing Beijing by publicly “declaring war” on air pollution.

Beijing’s National Stadium, aka the Bird’s Nest, on clear and polluted days in 2014.

Though the parallel campaigns haven’t been explicitly linked by Chinese leadership, the drives to clean up China’s skies and the Communist Party leadership have both hit hardest in the country’s vast coal and oil empires. Over the past two years coal-rich provinces and CNPC, the fourth-largest company in the world by revenue, have respectively racked up some of the highest tallies of corruption detentions. At the same time, the central government has imposed strikingly ambitious targets for slashing coal consumption.

China incinerates nearly as much coal as the rest of the world combined, and fumes from low-quality gasoline contribute to air pollution that chokes the skies of northern China. Last year the mayor of Beijing described his own city as “unlivable” because of the pollution.

China’s two major state-owned oil companies — Sinopec and CNPC (also known as PetroChina) — came in for a scathing treatment in a viral pollution documentary released earlier this month. The film, “Under the Dome” — which was largely blocked from the Internet by government censors after one week — accuses the firms of stymying pollution controls and milking their duopoly position for corrupt profits.

The film was produced by former Chinese state television journalist Chai Jing, and China’s new minister of Environmental Protection compared it to Silent Spring, the book credited with helping launch environmentalism in the U.S. in the 1960s. In the film, an anonymous official with China’s main economic planning agency claims that the oil firms even threatened to cut off gasoline supplies if their demands weren’t met.

“You can’t control them,” the official from China’s National Development and Reform Commission said. “Say you have an only child and this child is picking up some bad behaviors. As his mother, what can you do? All you can do is give him one good beating, but you can’t beat him every day.”

This year corruption inspectors have vowed to deliver such beatings to corrupt officials at state-owned enterprises (SOEs), the bureaucratic and often monopolistic businesses that dominate key sectors like telecommunications, media and energy. SOEs intermingle government responsibilities and business functions, but they’ve also shown the ability to resist or twist directives from the central government. Monday’s investigation announcements included Liao from CNPC and Chairman Xu Jianyi from FAW, one of China’s largest state-owned automakers.

“Each [SOE] tends to be a mini empire,” professor Dali Yang, who researches Chinese politics at the University of Chicago, told The WorldPost. “They have become very powerful vested interests in the Chinese system, so anti-corruption is not only useful in fighting against corruption but … makes it possible for Xi’s agenda, for the agenda of the Communist Party, to be carried out, to be obeyed.”

Academics have long debated the true motivation for Xi’s corruption crackdown. Is it a move to clean up the party from within? A front for knocking off political rivals? A strategy to clear the way for ambitious reforms?

“All of the above and then some,” said Yang.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has launched a sweeping anti-corruption campaign, but critics question the real motives behind the crackdown.

Just two years into office, Xi has already earned a reputation as the most powerful Chinese leader in decades. He has waged an extensive campaign to limit domestic dissent, and has put anti-corruption, major economic reforms and pollution alleviation at the center of his public agenda.

2014 proved to be a landmark year for curbing both corruption and pollution. As coal-intensive industries slumped and strict pollution controls started to bite, China saw its first fall in both coal use and carbon emissions in over 15 years. China’s air was made marginally more breathable, but coal-dependent northern provinces fell into deep economic ruts. Coal powerhouse Shanxi province barely achieved half of its 9 percent growth target.

At the same time, anti-corruption investigators had a heyday raking through Shanxi’s political circles: Last year the province reportedly ranked first in its percentage of high officials to be probed for corruption, with nearly one-third of the the province’s party committee coming under investigation. Last week, the governor of Shanxi said coal empires are deeply entwined with the province’s corruption cases.

But no bureaucracy has proved as ripe for investigators as CNPC. According to Chinese media reports, more than 45 CNPC employees and officials have come under investigation. Online news portal Sina Finance reports that CNPC has even instituted a policy to deal with a wave of secret detentions: High-ranking employees all have designated back-ups who will take over duties if they have gone missing for a set period of time.

Much of that activity has reportedly swirled around the patronage networks of Zhou Yongkang, the ex-security czar who last year became the highest-ranking official to come under investigation since the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949. Zhou spent decades rising through the ranks of China’s oil bureaucracy, serving as the Chinese Communist Party secretary of CNPC before climbing into the Politburo Standing Committee, the most powerful body in China.

Read Full Article: The Huffington Post