Episode 05 Text and Sources

Hear the episode here: https://www.spreaker.com/user/14101666/episode-05-federal-extermination 

Broken Planet Headlines 5

1.  Beginning with recent science, the UN's World Meteorological Association has released its annual State of the Global Climate report for 2020.  The report found that 2020 was tied for the hottest year on record with 2016 and 2019, despite the impact of the natural La Niña ocean cooling event.  The mean temperature for 2020 was found to be 1.2 degrees Celsius above that of the 1850-1900 period, a baseline also used by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change despite the fact that industrialism began around a century earlier.  The report also detailed severe flooding, droughts, wildfires and heatwaves across the world, exacerbating difficulties caused by the coronavirus pandemic. 

Meanwhile the latest Global Energy Review from the International Energy Agency finds that CO2 emissions are likely to increase this year by 4.8%, the second highest annual rise in history, beaten only by the 2010 rebound following the late 2000s financial crisis.  Coal use is expected to rise by 4.5% in 2021, with 80% of that growth taking place in Asia but also rising in the United States and European Union.  Renewables are set to provide more than half of the increase in global electricity supply, led by growth in China.  Executive Director of the IEA, Fatih Birol, stated that emissions next year could even rise above those of 2019, as the aviation sector creeps back towards pre-pandemic levels.  Birol also noted that he is "more disappointed than in 2010."

2.  In related news, while most new coal capacity is being built in the emerging economies of Asia substantial amounts of the funding for new coal comes from wealthy nations.  That's the finding of a study recently published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.  Since the signing of the Paris Agreement in 2015 around 700GW of new coal has come online and another 500GW is in development globally.  The U.S, Europe and Japan are found to be responsible for around 40% of what the paper calls the "finance-based emissions" of this coal capacity, mainly through loans, bonds and equity investment.  These investments go against the text of the Paris Agreement which calls for “finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.”  In a statement on Earth Day, April 22nd, UN Secretary General António Guterres commented that "[t]here is simply no reason for any new coal plants to be built anywhere," and called on rich countries to stop all international financing of the fuel.  Seven European countries including France, Germany and the UK recently committed to stop all state-backed export finance for fossil fuel projects, although timelines for how fast this will happen vary by country.  In the U.S. the government's Development Finance Corporation has recently pledged to be net-zero by 2040, leaving the door open for years of further financing, while no moves have yet been made to move taxpayer money for fossil fuels out of the U.S. Export-Import Bank, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, collectively responsible for billions of dollars of fossil fuel project backing in just the last few years. 

In other coal news the United Mineworkers of America has stated that it will support White House transition plans towards green energy as long as good-paying jobs can be guaranteed.  The union called for tax credits for wind and solar manufacturing and money to reclaim abandoned mines.  Two new studies from The Ohio River Valley Institute and ReImagine Appalachia find that cleaning up the over half a million abandoned oil and gas wells and over half a million acres of land scarred by coal mining across Appalachia could create more than 30,000 jobs in the region.  UMWA members at Warrior Met Coal in Alabama are currently heading into their fourth week of a strike over diminished pay, with critics arguing that the union is doing very little of substance to help the miners get their wages back up to 2016 levels.  Finally in coal news a study from the University of Oxford finds that investors are demanding returns for coal four times higher on average than those demanded for renewables, due to the risk of coal assets becoming stranded - that is, closed down prematurely due to climate breakdown mitigation measures. 

3.  A report funded by the U.S. Department of Energy finds that the current U.S. electricity mix is much less carbon intensive than past projections expected it to be.  The study, Halfway to Zero, looked at the Energy Information Administration's Annual Energy Outlook report for 2005, and found that emissions from the U.S. grid in 2020 were 52% lower than the EIA had anticipated at the time.  This is mainly due to an unexpectedly huge drop in the price of renewable power and battery storage during the time period.  The EIA had also projected a 25% increase in demand for electricity but increased efficiency caused it to stay relatively flat.  Despite the new reports title U.S. power emissions are not halfway down from any actual point in history, although such emissions were down 33% between 2005 and 2019.  The EIA makes its projections based on policy and business-as-usual trends at the time of writing, and points out that its reports are not intended to be predictions of what will actually happen.

In related news Facebook has announced that it has reached net-zero emissions and aims to reach net-zero across its supply chain by 2030.  Included as part of the claim is the purchase of renewable energy certificates, or offsets, rather than direct decarbonisation.  In February a BBC Brasil documentary revealed that Facebook was enabling landgrabs in the Amazon rainforest, while in October an investigation found that Facebook had allowed climate disinformation advertisements to be viewed 8 million times during the first 6 months of 2020, taking down just 1 of the 51 studied ads prematurely.

4.  In other Amazon news negotiations are continuing between the United States and Brazil over financing to combat deforestation.  U.S. officials have been holding weekly online meetings with Brazilian environment minister Ricardo Salles, who has recently stated that Brazil needs $1 billion per year in international assistance to reduce deforestation, and $10 billion a year for Brazil as a whole to reach net-zero emissions by 2050.  Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has been increasing steadily under the administration of President Jair Bolsonaro.  The deal stalled after NGOs and lawmakers in Brazil and the U.S. lobbied the Biden administration to not deal with or trust the Bolsonaro government on any environmental issues, especially without seeing improvements first.  Reports have emerged from Brazil in recent months of environmental scientists and officials facing increasing intimidation from the government and its supporters, including home break-ins, gag orders and kidnapping attempts.  Two bills currently going through the Brazilian Congress could grant land titles to invaders of public forests.  Critics point out that around $500 million, primarily from Germany and Norway, sits frozen in an international fund for the Amazon due to the government's poor record on deforestation, while some have suggested that the U.S. find alternate routes for the finance, such as through Legal Amazon, a consortium of regional states in the rainforest.

A report last month from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization looked at 300 previous studies and concluded that empowered indigenous and tribal communities are the best guardians of Latin American and Caribbean forests.  Another recent report, from Rainforest Foundation Norway, found that indigenous communities globally are being severely underfunded in their role as forest guardians.

5.  The European Union announced on Earth Day that it will be extending its emissions trading scheme to cover buildings and transport.  The scheme currently applies to utilities, manufacturers and internal EU flights.  The full addition of buildings and transport would lead to approximately 85% of the EU's emissions being covered, leaving agriculture as the major outlier.  Details on how exactly the sectors would be included have not yet been revealed, with some actors expressing concern at how implementation could adversely affect low-income residents.  The EU is expected to reveal a detailed proposal for adding shipping to the scheme in June, with some shipping companies urging the EU to include voyages between the bloc and third countries and to rule out free emissions allowances.  Groups representing more than 90% of the global shipping fleet have also in recent weeks called on all governments to implement a carbon tax in the sector.  Industry groups in both the UK and Europe are urging UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to link the fledgling UK emissions trading scheme, which launched on January 1st, to the EU's.  Since Brexit was finalised the UK government has been requiring organisations to comply with their obligations under the EU trading scheme, but only through the end of April.

6.  In other transport news the government of France has voted to ban domestic flights on routes that could be travelled by train in under two and a half hours.  The law is a result of a recommendation from France's Citizens Convention on Climate, a body comprised of 150 members of the public that was established in response to the gilets jaunes or yellow vests movement in 2019.  The Convention originally recommended a ban on flights that could be travelled by train in under four hours and short connecting flights inside France are exempt from the new law.  Planes cause a disproportionate amount of emissions during take-off and landing, so short flights have a higher rate of pollution per mile than longer ones.  Even so, due to these exemptions it has been estimated that the ban will reduce France's aviation emissions by under 1%.

Meanwhile the UK government has decided for the first time to include its share of international shipping and aviation emissions in its carbon budget planning.  The sixth carbon budget covers the period of 2033 to 2037.  The decision was adopted as part of a package of recommendations from the UK's independent Climate Change Committee, and also included declaring a new national emissions target for 2035 of a 78% cut, based on 1990 levels.  A goal of 68% by 2030 was declared in December under the Paris Agreement framework.  On the same day as the domestic flight ban decision in France a local council in the UK approved a runway extension at Southampton Airport.  Campaigners have long argued that there can be no further expansion of airports if the UK is to have any hope of reaching its climate targets.  The government also came under fire last month when it revealed it would be cutting the air passenger duty tax on domestic flights in half.  The UK is responsible for the third highest levels of CO2 emissions from aviation, behind only the U.S. and China.

In other French news the French oil company Total has signed an agreement with the governments of Uganda and Tanzania to begin construction of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, or EACOP.  This comes despite the fact that financing for EACOP has not been fully secured, with a massive opposition campaign from NGO's deterring banks and governments from backing the pipeline.  Total is expected to require $2.5 billion of funding.  Last week three French banks that have traditionally supported Total announced that they would not be financing the project.

7.  The German Green Party has announced its first ever candidate for Chancellor in September's federal election.  The party - which has historically had a male and female co-leader - selected Annalena Baerbock last week, a decision made due to their growing role in the mainstream of German politics.  A recent election poll showed the Greens at 22%, moving them in to second place and capitalising on a fall in popularity of the two biggest parties.  This makes it likely that barring an outright win the Greens will form a significant part of any potential coalition government.  Germany's new Expert Council on Climate Change body is reporting that the country may have to increase its 2030 reduction target to as high as 68%, to comply with the EU's recent decision to raise the bloc's reduction target to 55% compared to 1990.

In other news from Germany the German Institute for Economic Research reports that the country will violate its Paris Agreement commitments if it does not turn away from its current plans for natural gas infrastructure growth.  This includes attempts to complete the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline connecting Germany with Russia via the Baltic Sea.  The Green Party are opposed to the pipeline.  The United States has shown bipartisan opposition to Nord Stream 2, with sanctions against pro-pipeline entities in Europe passing through a divided Congress and enforced by both the Trump and Biden administrations.  Last month the State Department described the pipeline as "a Russian geopolitical project intended to divide Europe." 

8.  And finally a number of updates on U.S. domestic pipeline infrastructure.  Indigenous groups are continuing to demand that the Biden administration put a stop to pipelines such as Dakota Access and Line 3, following the executive order signed on Biden's first day in office cancelling a permit for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.  On April 1st hundreds of people rallied at the headquarters of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, delivering a petition signed by 400,000, followed by road blockades at the White House.  In the lead-up to the day of action 40 indigenous youth from Standing Rock and the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation held a 2,000 mile relay run to Washington D.C.

Line 3, owned by the company Enbridge, is a replacement tar sands pipeline that would be double the capacity of the original, running from Alberta to Minnesota before connecting to existing routes, and emitting 193 million tonnes of CO2 per year, more than the rest of Minnesota entirely.  Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm was recently asked about the administration's position on the pipeline at a climate town hall and said that while her department is not responsible for the decision, the White House feels a "moral obligation" to partner with indigenous communities.  The Interior Department - headed by Deb Haaland - is responsible for the decision on Line 3.

A bill currently pending in the Minnesota legislature would impose a felony offense of up to 5 years in prison for anyone that attempts to disrupt pipeline operations.  More than 200 people have so far been arrested resisting Line 3.  Minnesota law enforcement is being reimbursed by Enbridge for any pipeline related arrests.  Similar bills have been enacted or are pending in 20 other states, mostly states impacted by controversial pipeline projects.  Last week more than 400 climate scientists, including over a dozen from the IPCC, signed a letter warning against the increasing criminalisation of civil disobedience climate activists in countries such as the U.S. and UK.

Meanwhile, another cross-border pipeline owned by Enbridge, Line 5, faces an increasingly uncertain future after a commission in Michigan ruled that it must consider greenhouse gas emissions in deciding whether to allow the pipeline to be relocated.  Line 5, originally built in 1953, has a segment that currently runs along the lakebed between Michigan's two peninsula's.  Enbridge is proposing to build a tunnel beneath the lakebed for the line instead, a process that could take years.  Governor Gretchen Whitmer has ordered that the line stop transporting petroleum by May 13th due to the "unacceptable" risk of a spill, an order that Enbridge has vowed to defy.  The Canadian government is publicly throwing its weight behind Enbridge, with Natural Resources Minister Seamus O’Regan recently stating that Line 5 is "nonnegotiable."  At Joe Biden's Leaders Summit on Climate Prime Minister Justin Truedeu pledged to cut national emissions 40% by 2030 based on 2005 levels.  Canada was recently revealed to be the only G7 member whose emissions have gone up since the signing of the Paris Agreement, mainly due to its tar sands operations.

A decision about whether to temporarily close the Dakota Access Pipeline during an environmental review is still pending and expected during May.  The review from the Army Corps of Engineers, regarding DAPL's operation below Lake Oahe in North and South Dakota, is expected to be completed by March of next year.  A federal appeals court last week upheld the decision to demand the review.  The Dakota Access company argued in court that closing the pipeline would cost them around $4 million a day.  Finally, despite President Biden's day one rescinding of cross-border permits for the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, operators TC Energy - formerly Transcanada - are continuing to pursue eminent domain claims against 65 landowners in Nebraska.  

Federal Extermination

The following essay was originally broadcast on WMNF Tampa community radio in February 2020.

After the success of taking apart the military draft-pushers at the Selective Service System last time I thought I'd stick with the theme of obscure government agencies working full throttle against the interests of the common people.   The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, is a larger department than the Selective Service but perhaps less well known.  For decades it has been rubber stamping interstate fossil fuel projects even as the evidence of planetary disaster continued to grow, rejecting just 2 gas pipeline permits out of 500 in the last 30 years.  The agency defends this record by pointing to its obligations under the Natural Gas Act of 1938 to approve such projects, as if nothing has changed since then.  As the campaign group Beyond Extreme Energy likes to say, FERC is the most dangerous organization you’ve never heard of.

For anyone not in the loop, we're living through a time where climate change emission targets are becoming increasingly irrelevant.  What I mean by that is if our goal is to minimise suffering from climate breakdown and maximise our hopes for avoiding a runaway warming scenario that threatens everything on the planet, we must learn to think and act in terms of abolition and harm reduction.  The science now indicates that our only meaningful target must be net zero emissions by the year ASAP.  Understand this, and the approval of a single further fossil fuel project, let alone the hundreds that FERC has approved, amounts to a crime against survival, and the condemnation of a system seemingly incapable of going against it's corporate backers no matter the human cost.

FERC is not simply corrupted by fossil fuel money, it is largely made up of fossil fuel representatives and those that aspire to be.  Documents acquired via Freedom of Information Act requests show that in one year -- 2014 -- there were more than 40 instances of then current FERC employees entering into job negotiations with grid operators, utilities and law firms that the agency is supposed to be regulating.  The industries pushing fossil fuels obviously see value in the employee's inside information.  Little surprise then that this so-called public body hosts information sessions for oil and gas companies on how to navigate the FERC process, and even provide strategies to the companies on how to deal with protest movements.

Two of the three current commissioners for FERC (all of which were appointed by Donald Trump) exemplify the revolving door between the agency and the fossil fuel industry, with bad behaviour increasing sharply since their terms began.  In the past year they have approved 11 liquid natural gas projects, and actually put out a press release bragging about it.  In December the commission voted to force customers of an electrical grid serving over a dozen Eastern states to pay more for wind and solar in order to subsidise fossil fuels.  In January they said a pipeline company could seize state-owned land  in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. 

In response to all this we have the organisation Beyond Extreme Energy or BXE (as with Extinction Rebellion, we've learned it's important to have an X in the acronym of your direct action climate group, like some overwhelming marketing campaign for a 90s video game).  BXE has been fighting FERC for 5 years, regularly disrupting their meetings and spreading awareness of the illegitimacy of the agency.  They focus on FERC because when the agency is prevented from operating smoothly it disrupts the approval of pipelines across the entire country, supporting front-line campaigns.   They call to have FERC replaced with a Federal Renewable Energy Commission, or FREC, a plan that presidential candidates Howie Hawkins, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren have come out in favour of.

In just the past week BXE have been extremely busy. On February 20th 12 activists were forcibly removed from a FERC commissioners meeting by security for disrupting proceedings with songs, banners and a 13,000-strong petition. The commission was discussing a proposed fracked gas line in Oregon, and despite the recent record chose to deny the permit, at least temporarily. BXE also took part in an action at the Supreme Court on Monday, where around a dozen were arrested for blocking the street. The court was hearing arguments about the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, a 600 mile gas line that would cut through the Appalachian Trail. At time of writing it seems the supreme court might be willing to overturn a lower court and approve the permit. The pipeline is being built by Dominion Energy and Duke Energy, everyone's favourite local utility. Remember this the next time they try and tell us their green credentials while jacking up your electric bill. To learn more and support the work of this organisation, look up beyondextremeenergy.org.