Just 6 companies dump 25% of global plastic pollution
1 Coca-Cola 11%
2 PepsiCo 5%
3 Nestle 3%
4 Danone 3%
5 Altria 2%
6 Philip Morris 2%

And just 56 companies dump more than 50% of global plastic, polluting at will with no consequences

THREAD

science.org/doi/10.1126/sc… That's why 196 fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists have registered for the critical 4th UN session to advance a global plastics treaty, outnumbering country delegations, scientists and everyone else

2/5

ciel.org/news/fossil-fu…

Encyclopedic from Columbia's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law (@SabinCenter): "Rebutting 33 false claims about solar, wind, and electric vehicles" (all pushed - of course - by oil trolls and bots powered by Big Oil's fake profits)

THREAD 1 Electromagnetic fields from solar farms are harmful to human health: WRONG

2 Toxic heavy metals, such as lead and cadmium, leach out from solar panels and pose a threat to human health: WRONG

The European Environment Agency sent to EU leaders its first-ever report on the climate risks their people face

What are they trying to say in dense bureaucratic-speak? We're in the epoch of total climate f&%kery, to quote @EliotJacobson

THREAD 1. Serious people are now putting together charts which show, wait for it, warming of 7C+, while their minimum is 2C

I am not sure the general public (or our politicians) understands that we have zero evidence that we - humanity - can cope with any of this. Zero.

2/n

New 63-page report exposes the fraud of plastic recycling (more than 99% of plastics are produced from fossil fuels) and how Big Oil (yes, them again) and the plastics industry deceived the public for decades and caused the plastic waste crisis

THREAD Fact #1: The vast majority of plastics (94%+) cannot be “recycled” - meaning they cannot be collected, processed, and remanufactured into new product.

They never have been and never will be: In the US for example, the recycling rate for plastic is estimated to be only 5-6%

The Angry Clean Energy Guy's Top 10 Good Climate News Stories of 2023

#10 President Lula of Brazil re-activates fighting BACK against Amazon deforestation

(graph via @MongabayOrg)

THREAD #9 Natural gas bans in buildings

Why: buildings account for 39% of global energy related carbon emissions and we've begun to see serious movement in this sector in the US, Canada, Germany, the UK and elsewhere

Batteries are currently going through a massive domino effect of adoption certain to phaseout 50% of global fossil fuel demand by 2040 at the latest. Because: economics

We are witnessing, live, the end of the age of oil (that's why Big Oil hijacked the UN climate talks)

THREAD It's hard to conceptualize the sheer scale of what's going on: Annual commissions of new factories are 18 times those of just 5 years ago and we're building 400 gigafactories, with capacity to make 9 TWh of batteries/ year by 2030 - over 1 kWh for every person on the planet

2/9

Why are so many [very] wrong about the pace of our energy transformation?

"The 9 Deadly Sins of Analyzing the Energy Transition"

1 The inherent bias of those seeking to prop up the fossil fuel system in order to enjoy the largesse of its annual $2 trillion in rents

THREAD 2 Linear thinking: technology change is NOT linear.

"Core new energy technologies of solar, wind, batteries, heat pumps and green hydrogen fit S-shaped growth patterns. Too often the default position is linear change"

The UN released a "global stocktake" taking a hard look at the state of our planet

In short, we are still sleepwalking to a world we will increasingly not recognize

It has 17 key findings which I've tried to translate into non-UN speak

THREAD 1 We must not fool ourselves: we are nowhere near on track to keep warming below 2C, let alone 3C, and we must rapidly accelerate renewable energy deployment, electrifying everything and reversing deforestation to make proper progress by 2030

The G20 agreed to phase out fossil fuel subsidies in 2009, 14 years ago. They then said they're accelerating this at the Glasgow COP26 climate conference in 2021

Result: In an amazing act of self-harm, the IMF says we subsidized Big Oil with a record $7 TRILLION in 2022

THREAD In more acts of stupid self-harm:

> Total fossil fuel subsidies amounted to a humongous 7.1% of global GDP.
> Explicit subsidies (undercharging for supply costs) were 18% of the total

2/6

France moves against the scourge of fast fashion: you'll get €6 to €25/ item to repair your shoes or your clothes, instead of throwing them

And society wins because of the cost to our health, water and environment from this horrible industry

🧵

tf1info.fr/conso/le-gouve… The textile industry is a social, environmental and a #HumanRights nightmare: of the 75 million garment workers worldwide, less than 2% make a living wage

That's just the tip of the iceberg

2/9

The number of oil trolls on my LinkedIn and Twitter feeds has seen a remarkable increase, some collecting 1,000+ replies

Top 10 Disinformation “Tag Lines” Peddled by Big Oil Trolls (courtesy of Big Oil + politicians, PR firms, lawyers and consultants on payroll)

THREAD 10 “We did this” or “we bought the oil” etc

The "Deflect-the-Blame" oil troll: It’s the consumer’s fault

Fact: Big Oil popularized the carbon calculator to create this narrative and backed this with over $2bn in propaganda-spending since 2004

science.thewire.in/environment/bi…

Top 10 Conservation Wins of 2023

(With so many of Earth's vital signs blinking red, I needed some positive news)

10. Population of kipunji monkey in Tanzania’s Southern Highlands is up 65%

news.mongabay.com/2023/07/meet-t… 9. A tiny earless dragon which experts thought was extinct has been spotted for the first time in over 50 years

euronews.com/green/2023/06/…

Our climate has gone haywire: so many of Earth’s vital signs are blinking red

But we're also in the midst of an unstoppable transformation of how we power everything: Renewables take over before 2030.

Nothing is more important than running faster: Speed is justice

THREAD The fossil fuel era is over

Fossil fuel demand in electricity has peaked, will plateau for a few years, and will fall by up to 30% by 2030

2/10

Earth vital signs, current checklist:

1. North Atlantic temperature: FAIL

"North Atlantic Ocean is way beyond record hot right now. The kind of heat that would only be found once in 10s or 100s of thousands of years in a climate before human-caused warming took hold"

THREAD 2. Global Ocean Temperatures: FAIL

"the heat [is] basically statistically impossible before human-caused warming existed. The black line below indicates this year’s sea surface temperature departure (about 4 standard deviations above normal) which is far above records"

2/9

Plastic bottles are, well, portable poison cancer super-spreaders. This has been hidden from us very well, but the secret is now out

THREAD The beverage industry buys more than 500 billion plastic bottles - better called crude oil bottles - every year to package its products (because they're essentially free to them, given that the plastic industry pollutes free of charge)

2/n

Every once a while, a momentous environmental law comes into force. That's the case of the EU Deforestation Regulation

This is the most consequential anti-deforestation law in history

THREAD #deforestation #climate #biodiversity The EU Deforestation Regulation mandates extensive due diligence for operators and traders dealing with products derived from

> Cattle
> Cocoa
> Coffee
> Oil palm
> Rubber
> Soya
> Wood

2/12

whitecase.com/insight-alert/…

The renewables revolution is unfolding live, fast and furiously.

"It's exponential, global, and this decade": look at the data and do the math

THREAD Building block #1: Mineral extraction for a renewable system (43 mt/y) is 360 times less than for fossil fuels (over 15,000 mt/y)

After 27 years of UN climate talks, Big Oil finally succeeded in completing its hijacking of the annual meeting of 198 countries to act on climate

@UNFCCC should be going nuts about it and acting (fat chance, probably)

Top 10 reasons why the hijacking is complete:

🧵 #COP28 1 For the first time ever, an oil chief - and in this case no less than the CEO of a major oil company - is appointed president of the COP28 climate summit

politico.eu/article/cop28-…

Saudi Aramco just posted $161b in "profits" and is going to "increase production capacity to 13m barrels/day"

Its scope 3 emissions, however, are 1,600m tons of CO2. Its charge for this environmental destruction should have been, at $100/ton, $160b, wiping out its profits

1/n That's before ANY charge for environmental destruction other than emissions, of which they have an enormous amount

2/n

Some context around the $200 billion in net profits just 5 oil companies made in 2022

$200bn isn't just obscene, it's also wrong: these companies all lost money. We just can't "see it" because they don't pay for their wanton destruction of the environment

THREAD Big Oil profits exist because environmental destruction isn't quantified or accounted for. Today, destroying the environment and polluting free of charge are simply a disclosure and reporting issue: Big Oil executives and shareholders are recompensated for destruction

2/n

The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero is a complete joke and provides cover to banks frying the planet while pretending to go "net zero"

A new report published by 13 NGOs comprehensively proves the point

THREAD The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero presents itself as "a global coalition of leading financial institutions committed to accelerating the decarbonization of the economy" blah bah blah

As a matter of fact, they appear committed to exactly the opposite aim

2/n