The big conservative talking point on climate now is that fossil fuel development is solving poverty and energy access, esp in Africa. A few key things to note:
1. Nigeria has the largest and oldest fossil fuel industry on the continent & lowest energy access rate in the world 🧵 2. The same people most at risk of energy poverty are being most harmed by extreme weather events and are most at risk for death, migration, etc. It’s not an either/or so anyone saying only one of these things impacts poor people has an agenda that goes beyond addressing poverty

Yes that web designer is a piece of shit, that’s why she was *selected* as a plaintiff by the rightwing group looking to erode rights. None of these cases are being brought by citizens, they are crafted and paid for by dark money funded conservative orgs. 🧵 Here’s who actually brought the cases from this session:

LGBTQ rights (303 Creative v Elenis)- The “Alliance Defending Freedom” 🙄🙄🙄 which has also backed various public prayer/prayer in schools cases, anti-abortion cases, etc.

The idea that the Clean Water Act doesn’t extend to wetlands, which is what the Supreme Court—not a single scientist among them—decided today, is like saying there’s no connection between air pollution and the atmosphere. It makes no goddamn sense but it doesn’t need to 🧵 The Sacketts, the wealthy couple behind this case, were selected as plaintiffs by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a dark $ funded “public interest” law org that’s been bringing cases intended to expand rights for polluting industries while also weakening civil rights, for decades.

I will never understand why people who are generally good at telling stories feel the need to give short shrift to creative, story, etc. when it comes to climate. If the fossil fuel industry left messaging up to their execs they’d never have been so successful. It’s bizarre to me that so many years into this there’s still so much cringey climate content

I haven't had time to report on #StopCopCity as much as I'd like but something that keeps jumping out to me, that I haven't seen covered (I probably just missed it, please share links if you got 'em!) is its connection to the broad criminalization of protest, esp wrt climate The police + fossil fuel reaction to Standing Rock was incredibly aggressive, not just on the ground, in the moment, but also in terms of immediately drafting and passing legislation that increased fines and jail time for protest near "critical infrastructure."

A new report out today from @DataProgress
and @FosFreeResearch finds that just 6 fossil fuel companies funneled nearly $700m to 27 U.S. universities from 2010-2020. It's almost certainly more than that, but most universities don't disclose this funding theguardian.com/environment/20… Of the five universities I contacted for comment, only @UCBerkeley provided a full accounting of their fossil fuel-backed research funding ($154 million over the decade in question). Stanford's spokesperson emphasized "we don't disclose this information publicly." Why not?

I'm sure someone else has already pointed this out, but the reason rightwing politicians care about gas stoves is because they are the linchpin to keeping gas in residential & commercial buildings. drilledpodcast.com/a-blockbuster-… The American Gas Association, SoCal Gas & other gas utilities have invested heavily in courting chefs and home cooks as a strategy to block gas bans in buildings. In California, it was restaurateurs and chefs that sued to block a statewide ban, for example

Working on a couple things on the climate docs @OversightDems has published (1500-ish pages!), including a story in @theintercept coming soon, but there's one bit in particular that provides such a helpful window into discussions of bias: Industry's attack on @HirokoTabuchi 🧵 First there's the all-hands-on-deck meltdown in response to Hiroko's tweet acknowledging the (well-established, historical) connection between fossil fuel dominance and white supremacy. Look how the API comms exec coordinates an industry-wide response...to a tweet.

You hate to see it: old school, coal-funded climate denial is back. A deep dive on how we got (back) here, through the story of the guy who never moved on. 🧵drilledpodcast.com/drilled-down-w… As @CandBP and @curious_founder have noted, there are literally 2 (?!) dudes who have pushed to block wind projects at the local level for the past 10+ years. When I look at their presentations, I see the fingerprints of a guy who predates both of them: Steve Milloy.

The fact that almost no one outside of media (and many in the industry!) seems to be able to tell the difference between a writer and a journalist seems really problematic. The difference basically comes down to research and documentation, which requires time & therefore money If that effort is not recognized it won’t be valued, which is one of the reasons we’ve seen a rapid decline in funding for journalism and an explosion of think pieces, essays, and newsletters in its stead. That doesn’t bode well for democracy

Concerned about the climate impact of NordStream? Please also consider Exxon’s offshore drilling in Guyana, which flared 17B cubic ft of gas from 2019 to 2021 & continues to let rip more than 100mn cubic feet a day (max from NordStream= 300mn cubic ft) kaieteurnewsonline.com/2021/11/11/in-… This is considered “normal” operation. The 100mn cubic feet a day thing came after the gov imposed a modest fine for flaring

Been talking about this for a while now, but a report out today from @PlasticsBeyond quantifies it even further. Plastic is the new coal. Except worse because it's not going to stop growing. Because it is Big Oil's escape hatch. 🧵 (or listen here: )podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s6-… @PlasticsBeyond TLDR; demand for fossil fuels in the transport and residential sectors are declining. Oil cos need to make that profit up somewhere and they've chosen to do it in petrochemicals ... so, plastic. It's a two-fer because they can make it with excess fracking crap