Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here to subscribe.September 22, 2022
Manchin Fossil 🦖 Fuel 💰 Streamlining Bill Panned By Dems 🤔, GOP 🤔: Coal millionaire and West Virginia senator Joe Manchin III released his long-awaited bill on Wednesday to streamline the construction of fossil fuel projects including methane gas pipelines.
The bill was promised to Manchin by Sen. Majority Leader 🐍 Chuck Schumer during the negotiation of the Inflation Reduction Act. Manchin has insisted the legislation be attached to a government funding bill, setting up the prospect of a government shutdown. The bill would require the approval of the beleaguered Mountain Valley Pipeline, a provision on which Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine was not consulted and to which he would not support because his constituents "have felt ignored" by the opaque process, the Virginia Mercury reported. “[The Mountain Valley pipeline section] is completely unacceptable,” he told reporters Wednesday night per E&E News.
“I will do everything I can to 🦅 oppose it.” Multiple Democratic senators have stated Manchin's fossil fuel streamlining bill should not be attached to a government funding package and Kaine joins Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in opposing it even if it is.
Manchin has said he is
seeking support from at least
20 🐘 GOP senators for the
legislation which he says 🦖 Republicans have wanted for years and told reporters Tuesday “There’s no reason Republicans shouldn’t support it.”
Republicans have responded cooly
to the bill, however, instead Manchin's fellow West Virginian senator, Republican Shelley Moore Capito, has released a far more aggressive bill to slash regulations on fossil fuel extraction and transportation. The
🦕 White House said Wednesday it
supports Manchin's
legislation . (Manchin bill & reception: E&E News, Washington Post $, E&E News, CNN, Politico, The Hill, Roll Call, New York Times $, The Hill, Houston Chronicle,
Reuters, The Hill, National Journal, E&E News; MVP & Kaine opposition:
Virginia Mercury, WFXR; Capito: Politico Pro $; Substantive details: E&E $)
Amnesty Accuses Egypt Of 'Shiny Cover-Up' Of Human Rights Violations: A second major international human rights group in less than two weeks accused Egypt of trying to conceal a decade's worth of “unrelenting violations of human rights” ahead of COP27 in November. Amnesty International, in a report released Wednesday, outlined crackdowns on dissent and individual freedoms, including the imprisonment of political opponents and journalists over the last ten years. It also detailed a "shiny cover-up" on the part of the el-Sissi administration intended to accrue goodwill from foreign governments and financial institutions ahead of the UN climate conference. (AP)
Diversity-Lather, Greenwash, Nature-Rinse, Repeat: EU Companies Dodging Climate Culpability Online
In the summer of 2022, a heat wave broke records across Europe, bringing unprecedented temperatures and drought worse than any in at least 500 years. Thousands died, wildfires burned out of control, and the companies complicit or causing the climate crisis were busy posting through it.
Unsurprisingly, they weren't owning up to the impacts of their profits. Instead, as a new report from Geoffrey Supran and the Algorithmic Transparency Institute documents, they were distracting the public with posts about sports, using images of nature and diverse communities to improve their public image.
The analysts looked at the social media output of 22 European companies across three sectors: fossil fuel companies like Shell and Total, airline industry players like Air France and Lufthansa, and car companies like BMW and Mercedes-Benz. The research examined 2,416 posts from 375 social media accounts run by these companies across five platforms- Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and TikTok.
They found that during the climate-driven extreme weather of the summer, "the 22 companies remained silent about climate change in the examined posts, with only a negligible handful (0.3%) making explicit reference to 'climate change' or 'global warming'."
But they weren't being quiet. Instead, they found "that two-thirds (67%) of the 22 companies’ posts communicate a narrative of ‘Green Innovation’" which "avoids directly addressing climate change while nonetheless presenting companies as environmentally-conscious, engaged in or committed to low- carbon technologies and/or technological innovation."
Another one in five of the posts "offer a narrative of ‘Misdirection’" which "uses messaging about sports, fashion, and social causes to direct attention away from firms’ core business roles and responsibilities."
Additionally, they "also show that a number of companies variously leverage imagery of nature, female- presenting people, non-binary-presenting people, non-Caucasian-presenting people, young people, experts, sportspeople, and celebrities to strengthen their messages of greenwashing and misdirection."
The consequences of climate change, which Europeans were experiencing over the summer, "were never communicated (0%) by any industry." That said, they also avoided the explicit denial of claiming climate change isn't real or human-caused, and didn't attack the science, scientists or activists calling for climate action, but that's not surprising given that such toxic denial is why they covertly fund front groups to spread it, instead of tainting their brand with it.
What they DID post, though, was content that the report describes as its titular "Three shades of greenwashing": the idea that "green innovation" will save us, that other problems are more important, and that business-as-usual with its "visuals and language fetishizing luxury and performance, with no consideration of sustainability."
And as much as the text, the imagery plays an important role, something these companies know and exploit by something known as "nature-rinsing", or more formally as "executional greenwashing." The report explains that "these findings demonstrate a systematic use of Nature/Environment visuals in fossil fuel interests’ social media posts to strengthen their ‘green’ messaging."
Similarly,"fossil fuel interests variously leverage visuals of select demographics - sportspeople, celebrities, young people, and racial minorities - to misdirect audience’s attention with discourses about sports, social causes, and fashion and design."
For example "car manufacturers and airlines additionally show more racially diverse casts to misdirect with posts about social goods such as LGBTQIA+ issues and Women’s rights" but "when car companies post about sports, particularly motor racing, the trend is reversed, with more people - including sportspeople - being all- Caucasian."
"All told," lead researcher Geoffrey Supran tweeted, "our data show that 😈 fossil fuel interests are engaged in strategic brand positioning to establish themselves as 😇 green, 😇 innovative, & 😇charitable. These subtle, 😈 systematic trends have been hiding in plain sight for too long."