(1/12) Fossil fuel companies being complicit in Russian aggression: a thread
(2/12) On its website, @Exxon brags about its ties to the Russian oil sector.
It's embarked on joint ventures with the Russian state oil company Rosneft.
Indeed, its former CEO once received the Order of Russian Friendship award directly from Putin.
(3/12) @bp_plc touts the fact that it's one of Russia's largest foreign investors, and holds seats on the board of a fossil fuel company personally run by a top Putin deputy.
According to The Guardian, these ties have sparked concern at the highest levels of UK government.
(4/12) @Shell is a top partner in the Russian oil giant Gazprom's Sakhalin-2 natural gas project, and a backer of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that sought to help Russia sell gas to western Europe.
(5/12) #Schlumberger has been fined for ignoring sanctions and selling to Russian fossil fuel interests.
(6/12) @Chevron is involved in a multi-billion dollar Russian pipeline, supplies the Russian oil refining industry, and proudly declares that it "continues to identify business opportunities in Russia."
(7/12) @APIenergy has previously lobbied against real sanctions on Russia, since it might have hurt their sector's profit.
(8/12) So why does this matter? Because right now, fossil fuel companies are arguing that they need to be set free of regulation to serve America's interests, trying to claim the mantle of patriotism to justify expanded exploration and production. nytimes.com/2022/02/26/cli…
(9/12) And thus far, they've managed to get a lot of people to listen. Indeed, as @adam_tooze notes, the recent American sanctions package explicitly had a fossil fuel carve-out:
(10/12) This is dangerous. Not only are renewables a better solution for ensuring global peace and security — a continued fossil fuel reliance only strengthens Russia's geopolitical power and finances its aggression.
(11/12) So don't let fossil fuel companies pretend that they're on the right side of history. They've spent years propping up Putin's war machine, and plan on continuing for years to come.
Decarbonization is a crucial step towards the more stable and just world we all deserve.
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Exxon likes to tell students that it's serious about the energy transition. And then it invests the vast majority of its money into continued fossil fuel extraction.
That's why we and @MitDivest crashed their recruiting event to call Exxon's lies.
Students know that as employers go, when can do better than ExxonMobil. So why do our universities maintain such tight relationships with Big Oil?
@Harvard and @MIT: Time to break up with Exxon now.
A few days ago, @ForeignPolicy published a piece claiming that divestment would derail the energy transition.
What wasn’t mentioned was that its authors’ research is funded by big oil — and one of them is literally the vice president of a fossil fuel company.
(THREAD)
2/ Both authors work at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. Some of the recent donors to its energy initiatives include Exxon, Saudi Aramco, Schlumberger, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips.
3/ Dr. Foss also taught at the University of Texas, where she founded the Exxon/Chevron/Koch-funded Energy Institute, served as a Shell Interdisciplinary Scholar and Exxon Mobil Instructor of Excellence, and ran executive education for fossil fuel industry leaders.
BREAKING: After a decade of constant pressure by students, faculty, and alums, @HARVARD IS FINALLY DIVESTING FROM FOSSIL FUELS.
It’s a massive victory for our community, the climate movement, and the world — and a strike against the power of the fossil fuel industry. (THREAD)
1/ From the beginning, Harvard has sought to duck, dodge, and deny: claiming that fossil fuel stocks were necessary for profit, claiming that the endowment shouldn’t play a role in fighting climate change, and even claiming that fossil fuel companies are part of the solution.
2/ And the fossil fuel companies have loved this, constantly holding up Harvard’s embrace of the industry as a vindication of the industry’s unjust and unsustainable vision for the future.
And his research initiative, the Harvard Electrical Policy Group, is funded largely by utility companies… including ERCOT, the very company whose policies have caused the crisis in Texas. web.archive.org/web/2016032823…