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Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice: for they shall be filled. Mine eye also shall see my desire on mine enemies, and mine ears shall hear my desire of the wicked that rise up against me. The glory of the Lord shall endure for ever: the Lord shall rejoice in his works. He looketh on the earth, and it trembleth: he toucheth the hills, and they smoke. I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. My meditation of him shall be sweet: I will be glad in the Lord. Let sinners be consumed out of the earth, and let the wicked be no more. Bless thou the Lord, O my soul. Praise ye the Lord.

Author Topic: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution  (Read 270 times)

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AGelbert

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So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

AGelbert

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« Last Edit: May 20, 2023, 04:59:14 pm by AGelbert »
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

AGelbert

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Guyana, 😈 Exxon, and the Making of a New 🦖☠️ Petro State
« Reply #17 on: June 21, 2023, 03:45:52 pm »
The Class Struggle

Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Guyana, Exxon, and the Making of a New 🦖☠️ Petro State

SNIPPETS:

“Guyana taxpayers are currently exposed,” Tom Sanzillo, director of financial analysis for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said. “The potential consequences for Guyana are catastrophic.” 

That’s because Exxon’s drilling project in Guyana is the riskiest kind: deep-water offshore drilling, which involves intense pressure bearing down on complex equipment. The conditions are similar to those that preceded the Deepwater Horizon explosion in 2010, which spewed oil and gas throughout the Gulf of Mexico, costing BP $69 billion.

Exxon’s own environmental impact assessments indicate that such a disaster in Guyana could send oil to the beaches of 14 different Caribbean islands, most of which depend on fishing and tourism — and all of which could hold Guyana liable for damages. The costs would be astronomical, which is why the permits for offshore drilling in Guyana require not only an independent liability insurance policy from Esso, but also an unlimited financial guarantee from its parent company to cover costs that exceed those covered by insurance. ... ...

In Guyana, it’s become hard to distinguish where the 🦖 oil company ends and the government begins. Exxon executives join the Guyanese president in his suite at cricket matches, and the vice president regularly hosts press conferences to defend the oil company. Vincent Adams, a Guyanese 😈 petroleum engineer and former head of the country’s EPA , has been one of the agency’s harshest critics.

Full article:
https://ongoingclassstruggle.blogspot.com/2023/06/guyana-exxon-and-making-of-new-petro.html

AGelbert COMMENT: 🌞👍 Excellent article. The 🦖 polluters appear to be stupidly, but 😈 greedily, doubling down 🥺. But, in order to stop these 🦍 intellimorons from further trashing our world, we need to overcome the HYDROCARBON HELLSPAWN HAPPY TALK 😇 Capitalist Propaganda. 👈
🤦‍♂️ The support by much of the populace for the unending irrational adherence by 🦖🐍🦍🐉 polluters to the despicable profit over people and "planet" (i.e. ALL of the other high order mammalian vertebrate species populating the biosphere) "business model" boggles the mind. 😬

I just had a back and forth with an otherwise rational individual named Randy Webster. I'm posting part of that thread here to provide readers with some debate points when trying to talk sense into that 💵 sort and also to show how dangerously irrational too many people out there ARE at present:

June 17, 2023
World Economic Forum Explodes The Profits Vs. Sustainability Myth
By Steve Hanley 👍

SNIPPET:

Business leaders who wish to incorporate more sustainability goals into their business planning must now also face growing 🦖👿 political pressures designed to enforce the status quo. Recently, 23 🐘😈 Republican attorneys general notified economic leaders they may be guilty of antitrust violations if they insist on making ESG policies part of their business decisions. Inquiring minds may wonder why such concerted action is not racketeering, and yet there has been no discernible pushback from the federal government. 😟

We ignore long-term trends at our peril. That’s the real bottom line.
Full article: 🧐
https://cleantechnica.com/2023/06/17/world-economic-forum-explodes-the-profits-vs-sustainability-myth/

Randy Wester > AGelbert 17 hours ago
"You know, when former Google big dog Eric Schmidt, who knows EXACTLY how much help the working homeless in the USA NEED NOW, can go out and buy a yacht..."

Last time I used Google it was still free.

Don't you think providing a free catalog of all the information ever made publicly available, and a directory of local resources, and maps, is of some help to the working homeless?

Plus a free email account, plus free file editing tools that can be used to write a resume, and free online data storage for documents.
These seem like things that would be handy to have.

AGelbert  > Randy Wester  16 hours ago
When YOU are the product, NOTHING IS FREE. Pretending otherwise is par for the course for those, like you, that think Eric Schmidt and his Social Darwinist ilk are "part of the solution", rather than the truth of the matter (see below):

Randy Wester > AGelbert 8 hours ago
Alphabet makes a profit selling you to their clients by way of presenting advertising. But don't pretend that they give you nothing in return.
A job ad, is an ad, and someone paid for you to sre it.

AGelbert > Randy Wester

You seem to have difficulties with the subject matter. 😕

Let's try again:
1. TPTB are mainly populated by Social Darwinists who care nothing for virtually everyone else. Because of said socially destructive ideology, the parasitic modus operandi of TPTB constitutes an existential threat to human civilization and much of the other high order mammalian vertebrate species in the biosphere.

2. Rather than addressing the above unethical behavior by TPTB, you attempted to change the subject by pointing out that internet users, like me, are beneficiaries of Google products. I never denied that; I simply said they were not free, as you erroneously claimed. You then continued the distraction based argument (anything to keep from talking about ethics, eh, Mr. Webster?) by stating the obvious fact that someone does pay for it. At that point, we see a bit into your "might equals right" ideology. That is, as long as someone makes a profit from selling a service that appears to be "free", but actually makes a few clever people billionaires that can buy abandoned 67 million dollar yachts instead of act to help their underpaid working poor fellow citizens, it's "progress". That is fascist progress towards tyranny, not "progress".

3. Thus you reveal to all concerned that you are quite satisfied with the   🎩😈 status quo, while in total denial of the increasing ☠️ threat to the biosphere that 🦖 it causes. That is an irrational position based on confirmation bias.

4. We have some very, very, VERY serious environmental problems that ALL those clever billionaires you so admire ARE, according to the FACTS, not wishful "markets will solve all" thinking, ACCELERATING the degradation of the biosphere.
You think it will all "work out" because of, what?, Darwin? You are either kidding or enjoying a long bath in that river in Egypt.
« Last Edit: June 21, 2023, 04:29:57 pm by AGelbert »
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

AGelbert

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What the Fossil Fuel Industry Doesn't Want You To Know | Al Gore | TED
« Reply #18 on: August 20, 2023, 12:43:36 am »
What the Hydrocarbon Hellspawn "Industry" Doesn't Want You To Know | Al Gore | TED


349,336 views  Aug 7, 2023  #TEDCountdown #TEDTalks #TED
In a blistering talk , Nobel Laureate Al Gore looks at the two main obstacles to climate solutions and gives his view of how we might actually solve the environmental crisis in time. You won't want to miss his searing indictment of fossil fuel companies for walking back their climate commitments -- and his call for a global rethink of the roles of polluting industries in politics and finance.

Countdown is TED's global initiative to accelerate solutions to the climate crisis. The goal: to build a better future by cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, in the race to a zero-carbon world. Get involved at https://countdown.ted.com/sign-up
« Last Edit: August 20, 2023, 12:45:33 am by AGelbert »
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

AGelbert

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Commentaries are opinion pieces contributed by readers and newsmakers. VTDigger strives to publish a variety of views from a broad range of Vermonters. Commentaries give voice to community members and do not represent VTDigger’s views. To submit a commentary, follow the instructions here.

August 31, 2023, 6:00 am  This commentary is by Walt Amses, a resident of North Calais.

Walt Amses: The ☠️ Real Price of Oil

The planet is at a tipping point. Hopefully, someone is listening.

The images of people in Maui fleeing toward the safety of the ocean as an apocalyptic, hurricane-driven firestorm bears down unfolds like a horror movie, as it becomes clear that losing a step or two might be the difference between life and agonizing death.

By all accounts, this wildfire exploded like a bomb, speeding through Lahaina without warning — another vengeful environmental revolt, the latest in a series of climate hellscapes heralding the arrival of this week’s new normal. 

As the death toll exceeded 100 last week, and over 1,000 unaccounted for, officials expected the number to rise significantly as the grim task of sifting through tons of debris, much of it reduced to ash, searching for remains, dragged slowly on.

The recovery is tediously prolonged, becoming painfully apparent that the same blast-furnace heat that melted steel reduced bodies to brittle shells, so fragile they easily crumble, or even wisps of powder scattered ritualistically over the places they loved by Pacific breezes, as they might have been by distraught loved ones.

But even one of the worst tragedies of its type is not big enough to transcend American politics, with theatrically aghast Republicans — who routinely write off thousands of gun deaths to “freedom” — quick to blame President Joe Biden for a mountain bike ride and time at a Delaware beach, even as praise poured in for the White House’s rapid deployment of resources to the stricken island. 

Hawaiian Gov. Josh Green thanked Mr. Biden for sending emergency relief so quickly: “We’re honored to have the President jump to it so fast. In six hours he approved the presidential declaration (of disaster). It was incredible. Within six hours! And so that opened up FEMA and amazing support for recovery.”

Echoing Green, U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz said in a statement: “Recovering from these devastating fires will take significant time and resources and we need all the federal support we can get.”

While the GOP’s sudden concern for human suffering might easily be dismissed as an exercise in the sleight of hand necessary to deflect attention from their likely presidential nominee’s deepening legal quagmire, far-right politics does play a major role in the dangerous situation facing not only Hawaii but the rest of the nation and world as well.

Conservatives have propped up the fossil fuel industry for decades, profiting handsomely while suppressing any indication that petroleum products play a role in global warming, which ExxonMobil knew over 40 years ago would “lead to dramatic environmental effects by 2050.”

Capitalism, left to its own devices, rewards massive greed massively and the oil industry reflects perfectly how making money transcends all else, including human lives. 

As reported in The New Yorker, while gas prices soared last spring to well over $4 per gallon and people struggled to pay bills, Big Oil’s profits were through the roof, with major producers ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips all earning, after taxes, profits of over $5 billion — and that’s only the first three months of the year.

They don’t have anything against you personally; it’s just business. But as we are learning perhaps too late, the financial dividends of oil extraction are dwarfed by its extensive devastation of the natural world.

The tar sands of northern Alberta are challenging to describe in size and scope; words feel insufficient and seem like an exaggeration. Imagine a gouged-out hole in a pristine boreal wilderness covering over 54,000 square miles, roughly the size of Florida, visible from space.  The oil extraction project going on there for decades is a filthy degradation of the earth where sludgy deposits of bitumen, mixed with sand, clay and water are — eventually — converted to usable, synthetic oil through a hugely expensive and environmentally disastrous process, leaving enormous loads of toxic waste as well as water and air pollution.

A riveting new book that reads like fiction but isn’t, John Vaillant takes us to the center of the tar sands, Fort McMurray, 600 miles north of the border, “an island of industry in an ocean of trees,” connecting, according to a Guardian review, “all those trees and that industry in an increasingly deadly symbiosis.”

In “Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World,” the author outlines how one of McMurray’s byproducts is the very climate change that came home to roost in 2016 when a gigantic, fast-moving wildfire took the area by complete surprise, similar to the fate suffered in Maui last week.

The same familiar circumstances were at play in the forests around Fort McMurray as in Hawaii: rising temperatures, dropping humidity and strong winds leading to fires of unusual intensity that caught officials unaware, leading to the mass evacuation of nearly 100,000 people in Alberta and the desperate flight toward the sea in Lahaina.

Created by climate change, according to Vaillant, these conditions have led to an atmosphere “more conducive to combustion than any time in the past 3 million years.”

The price the world pays for oil extends far beyond the gas pump. Previously safe places are no longer safe. Fire and water inexorably march through communities like a merciless, invading force bent on obliterating any illusions of safety we continue to harbor.

We’re no longer shocked by reports of blistering temperatures lasting for weeks on end; tropical downpours more likely in a monsoon; and the threat of rising tides, 100-degree ocean water and a planet at the tipping point.

Earth is screaming. Hopefully, someone is listening.
https://vtdigger.org/2023/08/31/walt-amses-the-real-price-of-oil/
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

AGelbert

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Commentaries are opinion pieces contributed by readers and newsmakers. VTDigger strives to publish a variety of views from a broad range of Vermonters. Commentaries give voice to community members and do not represent VTDigger’s views. To submit a commentary, follow the instructions here.

September 1, 2023, 6:30 am  This commentary is by George Longenecker of Middlesex, who taught at Vermont Technical College.

If this is the free market at work, where is the freedom?

The freedom of 🦖 industry to thwart emissions regulations and to argue that climate change is a myth got us into this disaster.

The week after the flood, I walked through downtown Montpelier. On the lawn of the Kellogg-Hubbard Library was a 5-foot-high pile of waterlogged books. Across Main Street were piles of debris from Hugo’s Restaurant and other businesses. I had to meander around head-high piles of debris in front of Bear Pond Books and Capitol Stationers.

We met in offices above Walgreen’s Pharmacy, where a disaster recovery team had ripped the store to its studs. The building and the whole city smelled of mold.

In their book “The Big Myth,” Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway document how for the last century big business has lobbied against any government regulation. They say: “Climate change is a market failure, because markets, acting illegally, failed to provide what people need and created a problem markets have been unable to solve.”

In their earlier book, “Merchants of Doubt,” they documented how think tanks and lobbyists, some funded by fossil fuel corporations, cast doubt on the science of climate change. They did so, especially in the case of Exxon-Mobil, knowing that the scientific predictions of global warming were reasonably accurate.

Any science operates within limits of reasonable accuracy, but 🐘🦕🦖🐍😈 doubters twisted the science to claim that global warming was false.

If fossil fuel emissions had been more strictly regulated starting in the mid-20th century, we probably would not have had the disastrous Vermont flood of July 10-12. The freedom of industry to thwart emissions regulations and to argue that climate change is a myth got us into this disaster.

A few powerful corporations have tried to convince us that there should be no federal regulations on their activities and that the free market will fix things. Yet freedom has always been a delicate balance, weighing some rights against others.

With more than 4,000 homes and 800 businesses in Vermont destroyed, we see close up the effects of climate change. Vermont’s July flood was but one in series of summer climate disasters that are coming more frequently and coming sooner than predicted.

I recently drove through Montpelier at dusk; storefront after storefront was dark. I realized that things will never be the same. If this is the free market at work, where is the freedom?

It’s as though we’re driving a 1960 Edsel down the highway at 95, gas to the floor, 10 miles to the gallon, unwilling to hit the brakes even when we see the flood ahead.

There is still time to put on the brakes and reverse course, though we cannot easily undo the damage done and the warming that’s begun. It will take federal and international cooperation. Oreskes and Conway say in “The Big Myth”: “American antagonism toward science and government regulations has hindered action on global climate change.”

The bickering and blaming will have to stop. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 was a good start. Congress needs to continue to do more. Without government leading the way on climate change, the weather we’ve seen this summer will continue.
https://vtdigger.org/2023/09/01/george-longenecker-if-this-is-the-free-market-at-work-where-is-the-freedom/
« Last Edit: September 06, 2023, 04:02:23 pm by AGelbert »
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

AGelbert

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October 27, 2023

The Laptop-Throwing Oil Boss Hosting Climate Negotiations Has Benefited From 30 Years of PR

This year’s annual global climate negotiations, the 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) or just COP28 for short, will be hosted in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) by Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who heads the petrostate's oil and renewables companies. As we and others have noted, the UAE's been on quite a public relations (PR) kick, making use of bots on Twitter and accounts effusively praising the country on Reddit.

The latest insights into the petrostate’s PR efforts come from Ben Stockton and Amy Westervelt, who provide The Intercept with a look "inside the campaign that put an oil boss in charge of a climate summit." There's a lot of great history in the article, but here are excerpts of our favorite parts to entice you to go read the story in full! 

It seems that years of PR contracts with major American agencies have been important not just to the UAE as a whole but also to 🦍 Al Jaber on a personal level, as "behind closed doors, Al Jaber is said to be an exacting boss with a domineering approach.” “Two former COP28 team members claimed Al Jaber once threw a laptop at a wall in a fit of anger; one of them said he had a reputation as a 'bully.'"

Yikes! And the bigger climate picture isn't any better. Stockton and Westervelt explain, "Al Jaber has rebuffed calls to step down from Adnoc, insisting there is no conflict of interest. But the line between the oil company and COP28 has 'blurred,' one former summit staffer said. At one point, the COP team was working out of Adnoc headquarters." What's more, when the UNFCCC questioned the UAE team about whether the national oil company Adnoc "had access to COP28 strategic documents," it turned out that "Adnoc employees were still being consulted on how to respond to media inquiries about the summit" months later. 

In fact, "One of Al Jaber’s advisers at Adnoc was signing off on communications leaving the COP28 team while still employed at the oil company, according to people who worked with him. While attending a U.N. conference in June, Oliver Phillips registered as a representative of Adnoc. But according to two sources who worked on COP28 communications, Phillips had already played a key role in steering PR efforts for the summit." 

Despite multiple sources confirming that Phillips had been an employee of the oil company until recently, he doesn’t even declare any affiliation with Adnoc on his LinkedIn page.

The line between Al Jaber's roles as an oil boss and as the climate negotiations overseer have even been blurred for the high-power American public relations firms long tapped by the UAE to burnish its image, which include APCO, Burson Cohn & Wolfe, Edelman, and Teneo. "Some agencies acting on behalf of COP28 were engaged by Adnoc and Masdar rather than the COP team, according to sources with direct knowledge and filings with the U.S. Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, which requires U.S. companies to report their dealings with foreign governments." 

Edelman in particular has apparently tasked "Lindsay Clifton, former spokesperson for the Republican National Committee and deputy press secretary for President Donald Trump" to work for the UAE's COP team. This adds someone to the climate negotiation organizing crew whose White House position entailed defending "Trump’s stance on climate change as his administration rolled back policies intended to help abate global heating." Clifton was "listed as Al Jaber’s direct 'media support' during the U.N. General Assembly in September," according to a "strategy document." Despite being a PR person hired for media support, "Clifton did not respond to requests for comment."

Fortunately, someone actually worth hearing from did respond to the reporters’ inquiries: "Melissa Aronczyk , media studies professor at Rutgers University and co-author of ‘A Strategic Nature,’ a book about the history of environmental PR". She told Stockton and Westervelt that the fossil fuel industry has been working for decades to prevent climate action: “Working with U.S. 🐍 PR firms, oil and gas companies, car companies, and petrochemical companies all conspired 30 years ago to create campaigns and programs around ‘sustainability’ with the goal of telling the world that the fossil fuel industry was helping to ‘solve’ the problem of environmental degradation and climate change." 

And, according to Aronczyk, "when companies want a seat at the table where climate policy is at stake, it’s primarily so they can control what happens.” “Having the head of an oil company presiding over COP28 represents the culmination of 30-plus years of capitulation to the power and money of the fossil fuel industry.”

So next time you come across articles trying awfully hard to prop up public opinion of the UAE, remember just how much money and time powerful actors are investing in laundering the petrostate’s oil-stained reputation.
https://newsletter.climatenexus.org/evs-hit-bumpy-phase-u.s.-makes-it-easy-to-launder-dirty-money-more
« Last Edit: October 27, 2023, 01:47:05 pm by AGelbert »
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

AGelbert

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CleanTechnica

December 11, 2023 by Steve Hanley 30 Comments

Proposed Final 💰🦀🐘🦕🦖🐍🦍🐉😈 COP28 Statement Eliminates Any Mention Of Fossil Fuel Phase Out

e proposed final draft of the COP28 climate conference is pretty much exactly what any informed observer might have predicted when the decision was made for Dubai to host the event and Sultan Al Jaber was selected to be its president. Al Jaber is the chief executive of ADNOC, the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. Although Al Jaber talked a good game, in the end it was same old same old in Dubai.

A draft of the text of a statement made public by COP28 officials on Friday included several options for final language, ranging from a call to phase-out fossil fuels “in line with the best available science,” to no mention at all of the future of oil, gas and coal. The possibilities also included a phase-out of “unabated” fossil fuels, a vague term that suggests that oil, gas and coal could continue to be used as long there was technology to capture and store the resulting carbon emissions. No such technology currently exists at the scale that scientists say is required, the New York Times noted.

The COP28 End Game

Now it is December 11. The conference is supposed to end with rousing speeches and much glad handing, back slapping, ans bonhomie all around as the attendees celebrate a significant step forward in the campaign to limit global heating to 1.5ºC. The final draft was finally trotted out six hours behind schedule.

According to CNN, the proposed final statement calls on countries to take actions to reduce planet-warming pollution, which “could” include reducing the consumption and production of oil, coal and gas. Many climate experts and observers have blasted the draft for its vague language — especially the use of the permissive “could”  rather than a mandatory “shall” — and a lack of concrete timelines. Earlier drafts had included several options that called on countries to phase out climate-polluting oil, gas and coal, which observers said was an encouraging sign that this year’s summit agreement would be stronger than previous years.

Climate advocate and former US vice president Al Gore said in a post on X the summit “is now on the verge of complete failure. The world desperately needs to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible, but this obsequious draft reads as if OPEC dictated it word for word. It is even worse than many had feared.”

Big Oil Puts Its Thumb On The Scale At COP28


The secretary-general of the oil-producing group 🦖 OPEC, 😈Haitham Al Ghais, called on members and allies last week to “proactively reject” any language that targeted fossil fuels rather than emissions. That letter, written before the latest draft was posted, noted the previous option for a fossil fuels phase out and said it would be “unacceptable that politically motivated campaigns put our people’s prosperity and future at risk.”

The new draft calls for countries to take action to reduce planet warming emissions, with a menu of choices that could include “reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner so as to achieve net zero by, before, or around 2050 in keeping with the science.” It also includes an option for “tripling renewable energy capacity globally.”

“We have made progress. But we still have a lot to do,” COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber said Monday in a summit session. “You know what remains to be agreed. And you know that I want you to deliver the highest ambition on all items, including on fossil fuel language.”


Monday’s draft came after marathon negotiations and was published more than six hours later than expected. The conference is due to end on Tuesday, but the new draft — which departs substantially from what many nations taking part in the COP28 conference had called for — could prolong one of the most contentious and high stakes conferences in its nearly three decade history.

The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), an intergovernmental organization, has already indicated its members will not approve the agreement in its current form and has criticized the negotiations as lacking transparency and inclusivity. “We will not sign our death certificate,” Cedric Schuster, a Samoan politician and chair of AOSIS, said in a statement. “We cannot sign on to text that does not have strong commitments on phasing out fossil fuels.”

A US State Department spokesperson said in a statement the draft “seeks to balance a variety of interests,” but still “needs to be substantially strengthened.”

Lead negotiators for the European Union described the draft as “insufficient.” EU Climate Action Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra told reporters, “I cannot hide the fact from you that the text, as it now stands, is disappointing. There are a couple of good things in there, but overall, it is clearly insufficient and not adequate to addressing the problem we are here to address.”

Hoekstra added that the EU was sticking to its stance, calling for the phase-out of coal, oil and gas, allowing only for fossil fuel use in sectors where renewables are difficult to employ. Heavy industries like steelmaking, for example, can’t use wind and solar power.

Alok Sharma, a British MP and the president of COP26 in Glasgow two years ago, said it’s “difficult to see how this text will help to achieve the deep and rapid cut in emissions we need by 2030. With so many countries backing clear language on fossil fuel phase-out, who does this text actually serve?” Sharma said.

Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network International, said the latest draft at COP28 was “a significant regression” from previous versions. “Astonishingly, it has dropped explicit language on phasing out fossil fuels, opting instead for a vague commitment to ‘reduce both consumption and production’ by 2050,” he told CNN. “This is a clear indication of the fossil fuel industry’s lobbying power, influencing global policies to favor prolonged fossil fuel use.”

Rachel Cleetus, the policy director and a lead economist for the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the draft agreement was “extremely disappointing, concerning, and nowhere close to the level of ambition people around the world deserve. This draft comes with a huge qualifier of ‘could’ at the top that makes all the listed actions optional for nations. It has a laundry list of actions filled with glaring loopholes, including a lack of meaningful timelines” she said in a statement.

Some experts were more optimistic. “We are cooking a fossil free meal here in Dubai,” said Mohamed Adow, director of climate think tank Power Shift Africa. “People will argue if it’s the correct recipe, but the main thing is that all the right ingredients are there.”

Russia Blocks Next COP Summit Location

As if to underscore the extent to which politics play a dominant role in these climate talk charades, Russia has blocked most of the countries that are in line to host COP29. Under UN rules, the location of the summit rotates among regions and countries within those regions must agree on the host. Next year it is scheduled to take place in Eastern Europe or the Caucasus — both of which have been battered by war. Russia has blocked nearly every viable candidate in the region, effectively holding next year’s event hostage, according to the New York Times.

The latest impasse came on Friday when Azerbaijan won the blessing of its neighbor and longtime foe, Armenia, to host the summit, only to be blocked by Russia hours later, according to European diplomats. Observers called the inability of nations to select a host for next year a troubling sign for efforts to find global consensus on the far more serious issue of tackling climate change.

“Russia just wants to be a troublemaker on everything in the international setting,” said Jake Schmidt, the senior strategic director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. “I can’t ever remember us not being able to find a location for the next meeting.” Julian Popov, Bulgaria’s environment minister, called the situation “absurd. You can’t have a position in which one member can block the entire process.”

If countries cannot agree on a host for 2024, the summit will default to Germany under the rules of the U.N. climate body. “This is a unique situation,” said Alden Meyer, a strategic adviser at E3G, an environmental research group, adding, “It’s amazing we can make any progress on climate.”

What is really amazing is that the world continues to look upon these annual events as vital to the effort to keep the Earth habitable for humans and other species. They are not. They are political theater that is reminiscent of the scenes in the Peanuts cartoon when Lucy always pulls the football away from Charlie Brown at the last second. We continuously hold out hope that this time Charlie Brown will get to kick the football, but he never does.

The only logical conclusion is that people will keep doing what they have always done until one day they look around and notice all the other people are gone, along with the birds, whales, fish, and other creatures who could not survive on a hotter planet. By then, of course, it will be too late.
https://cleantechnica.com/2023/12/11/proposed-final-cop-28-statement-eliminates-any-mention-of-fossil-fuel-phase-out/

AGelbert



It's the Social Darwinism, stupid!

AGelbert:
To anybody who is surprised at the morally bankrupt "😈 real 🦖 world" the Biosphere Destroying Hydrocarbon Hellspawn have, once again, successfully defended with their endless legerdemain, I have only this to say:





The 😒 Hydrocarbon Fuel Based Corporations are not concerned with the future of life on planet Earth 👀.





If that seems like an irrational position for reality based human beings, who certainly do love their children, to take (even if they, being members in good standing of the Social Darwinists 'R' US, care nothing for anybody else's children), then please read this article, and my comments on it. 

SNIPPET:
Theresa  Morris said, "Ethical considerations aside for a moment, the people in these powerful corporations are not stupid. They love their own children."

So, if they knew, because over 40 years ago ExxonMobil scientists laid out the facts to oil executives, who then secretly joined with several other corporations to fund denial of climate change and obstruct climate change legislation, why did they, with malice and aforethought, engage in disguising the fact that they were, and are, getting an F in viable biosphere math?

Some will say that it's a no brainer that they did it for profit. While that is partially true, it ignores the fact that big oil corporations DO believe their own scientists. It also ignores the fact that fossil fuel corporations DO NOT believe the happy talk propaganda that they fund.

They plan ahead. They plan to take advantage of the 'Fragmentation of Agency' mentioned by  Stephen Gardiner. The corporations did not get limited liability laws passed because they wanted to be socially responsible. I believe they will use the 'Fragmentation of Agency', in regard to biosphere damage claims, to unjustly limit their liability in a typically unethical "damage control" exercise.

One of the themes about human history that I have tried to communicate to readers over and over is that predatory capitalist corporations, while deliberately profiting from knowingly doing something that causes pollution damage to the populace, always plan AHEAD to socialize the costs of that damage when they can no longer deny SOME liability for it. Their conscience free lackey lawyers will always work the system to limit even PROVEN 100% liability.


Read more: 🕯️   
"The central problem with an argument that considers the effects of present actions on the future world lies in the fact that those acting today will not exist in the world they are affecting with their actions." -- Theresa Morris


What it Means to be Responsible - Reflections on Our Responsibility for the Future by Theresa Morris, State University of New York at New Paltz

Assaf
Thank you Steve for being on the beat for this, and on the very precise description of COP as mostly-useless political theater.
Please do report on the final version though, and I'm definitely looking forward to reading your analysis of it.

Outside of the Paris agreement, these summits have mostly wasted time, efforts, and CO2.
It seems that progress is happening by single nations or coalitions of nations banding together for action - rather than by the impossible task of having a text that is both unanimously signed by all political leaderships of 200+ nations, *and still somehow useful.

Essentially, it's the structural failure of the UN Security Council, multiplied 40x.

Steve_S
So for the 28th Time, people puffing on their Hopium Cigar came to realize they've been suckling the limp syphilis ridden dick of Oilygarchs.... Twas a perfect opportunity to cleanse the earth of the most Vile Filth on the rock, just one nice small nuke could have solved a lot and sent a clear message that the game is over. What a message that would send to Oilygarch Hell. It is THEM or US as a species !

Hopefully, next year the Default will be used and COP29 is held in Germany and may the 10's of thousands descend upon them in RIOT over the inaction.

Will there ever be a COP30 ?
Depends on how much the F u c k Humanity @ 29... Tolerance Level globally after THIS Fiasco has got to be at an all time low.

AGelbert > Steve_S
Yep.


I know you have been paying attention and know the score,, but I post the following graphics for those who labor under the irrational belief that incremental measures can solve this Hydrocarbon Hellspawn PLAGUE dooming humanity AND most other high level mammalian vertebrate species.


















Electricity Electricity > Steve_S
Who is going to nuke an oil summit?

The U.S. is happy with it's current campaign against Palestine. And Lebanon where it is reportedly using white phosphorous. Russia is proceeding with its Ukraine campaign which may be over soon as the U.S. switches sides.

France, UK, India and Pakistan aren't likely to use nukes. And the U.S. State of Israel is already busy (see above).

Electricity Electricity
In other oil-related news, the #1 and #3 oil producers are busy with their military campaigns against Palestinians and Ukrainians.

AGelbert > Electricity Electricity
Yep.


It's the Social Darwinism, stupid!
« Last Edit: December 14, 2023, 12:26:59 am by AGelbert »
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12

AGelbert

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Thread Source
 
AGelbert truncated post (full post with several images at Thread link):
The 😒 Hydrocarbon Fuel Based Corporations are not concerned with the future of life on planet Earth 👀.





If that seems like an irrational position for reality based human beings, who certainly do love their children, to take (even if 🦖 they, being members in good standing of the Social Darwinists 'R' US, care nothing for anybody else's children), then please read this article, and my comments on it. 

SNIPPET:
Theresa  Morris said, "Ethical considerations aside for a moment, the people in these powerful corporations are not stupid. They love their own children."

So, if they knew, because over 40 years ago ExxonMobil scientists laid out the facts to oil executives, who then secretly joined with several other corporations to fund denial of climate change and obstruct climate change legislation, why did they, with malice and aforethought, engage in disguising the fact that they were, and are, getting an F in viable biosphere math?

Some will say that it's a no brainer that they did it for profit. While that is partially true, it ignores the fact that big oil corporations DO believe their own scientists. It also ignores the fact that fossil fuel corporations DO NOT believe the happy talk propaganda that they fund.

They plan ahead. They plan to take advantage of the 'Fragmentation of Agency' mentioned by  Stephen Gardiner. The corporations did not get limited liability laws passed because they wanted to be socially responsible. I believe they will use the 'Fragmentation of Agency', in regard to biosphere damage claims, to unjustly limit their liability in a typically unethical "damage control" exercise.

One of the themes about human history that I have tried to communicate to readers over and over is that predatory capitalist corporations, while deliberately profiting from knowingly doing something that causes pollution damage to the populace, always plan AHEAD to socialize the costs of that damage when they can no longer deny SOME liability for it. Their conscience free lackey lawyers will always work the system to limit even PROVEN 100% liability.


Read more: 🕯️   
"The central problem with an argument that considers the effects of present actions on the future world lies in the fact that those acting today will not exist in the world they are affecting with their actions." -- Theresa Morris


What it Means to be Responsible - Reflections on Our Responsibility for the Future by Theresa Morris, State University of New York at New Paltz

fcfcfc
First, WOW! That's what I call a reply.
Second: "Some will say that it's a no brainer that they did it for profit. While that is partially true, it ignores the fact that big oil corporations DO believe their own scientists. It also ignores the fact that fossil fuel corporations DO NOT believe the happy talk propaganda that they fund. "Ah NO.

As the altered saying goes, "ITS THE PROFIT STUPID"!! 100%
IT'S CALLED WEALTH IMMUNIZATION.

AGelbert > fcfcfc
Your reply is precisely why I wrote the snippet of my comments to the linked article by Theresa Morris. I would be honored if you would read the full article and my comments. Then, hopefully, you would revise your, "ITS THE PROFIT STUPID"!! 100% IT'S CALLED WEALTH IMMUNIZATION." assumption. Yeah, you probably will just ignore what I just wrote, which is your prerogative, but going FULL CAPS does not provide any evidence that your position on said issue is accurate.

I get it that you just do not want to go there, but the morally bankrupt ideology I keep being so "redundant" about is the problem. These depraved wealthy polluter greedballs actually believe that "empathy is a weakness". They didn't get that stupid, socially destructive idea from makin' money, bro.

So, castigate me until the cows come home, but we-the-people will not be able to put a stop to this celebration of sociopathic biosphere destruction until the Social Darwinist Ideology at the root of this evil is exposed as an aggressive behavioral cancer threatening us with extinction and rejected by our entire civilization, in general, and the wealthy in particular. Human civilization goes the righteous route or it really is game over. Have a nice day.

The righteous shall never be removed: but the wicked shall not inhabit the earth. -- Proverbs 10:30
fcfcfc > AGelbert
People make society's, true and bio and family can fire the clay in positions that are produced by exposed behavior in lieu of DNA (Family).

But more to the point is that Societies (Based on profit and currency) can make people as well. Read about the Famous Stanford Prison Experiment instead of the Bible and you might learn something. People do not come to the "way they are" independent of the societies they live in. You reap what you sow.

AGelbert > fcfcfc
You strike me as someone who genuinely wants a better world and a viable biosphere. For that, I am grateful.

That said, if you think my exclusive source of reality based information is the Bible, you are mistaken. All the other university stuff aside, I have 27 credit hours of biological science courses in a pre-med program of studies.

The Stanford Experiment was child's play compared with the "successes" the NAZIs had in "proving" how depraved humans can become under certain circumstances. That proves nothing but that we do have a baser nature that, if not controlled by community, as well as personal, ethical guard rails, leads to moral bankruptcy and social decay. We are there.

Your entire "that's just the way humans are" argument is based on the assumption that, underneath the thin veneer of polite civilization, we are apex predators evolved to view ethics as a feel good mirage we invented to sugar coat our predatory behavior. And, that "ignorant Bible thumpers" like yours truly do not live in the "greed is good real world". I disagree based on historical facts ( Ancient Societies Collapsed When Leaders Ignored the Social Contract ), not on ideology or Faith.

Like using FULL CAPS, demeaning discourse is a fallacious debating technique. It does nothing to substantiate your argument and/or your assumption, in pedantic opposition to what I claim, that a Matthew 7:12 Based Civilization is certainly NOT (reference to your use of caps to make your point) sine qua non to our survival as a species.

I maintain that the ideology of the Social Darwinist is indistinguishable from the despicable ideology of NAZI Germany, clearly exemplified in their brutally enforced morally bankrupt concentration camp law: “Eat your own bread, and if you can, that of your neighbor.”

What all the entrenched insiders among the parasitic, predatory elites and institutions don't dare admit publicly, though they celebrate that privately, is that to protect themselves from consequence, making the rest of us sacrifice everything else is what they-the-Apex-Predators have a Darwinain duty to do. After all, since Homo sapiens is just the result of random undirected processes, the more you can "enlightened self interest" do to get more power by causing, directly or indirectly, the death of human competitors for the species gene pool high ground, the better. Surely, you cannot, in your heart, believe that is "just how it is".

I certainly agree that you reap what you sow; there is no shortcut.

fcfcfc > AGelbert
"Your entire "that's just the way humans are" argument is based on the assumption that, underneath the thin veneer of polite civilization, we are apex predators evolved to view ethics as a feel good mirage we invented to sugar coat our predatory behavior."

Ironically, you have completely 180 degrees misinterpreted what I am saying.

It is not, at this point with our knowledge and engineering eliminating scarcity for basic needs (If we chose to), some part our base instincts driving our societal behavior. It is currency. My whole POINT of mentioning "Stanford" WAS TO SHOW YOU that it IS NOT SOME BASE drive making them what they became, but the environment of the "society" (The experiment) that forged their behavioral output. Currency FORCES a Hierarchical structure rather than a lateral one. And that is where it all starts to fall apart. Currency at this point in time is to keep those in power, with power and control. George Orwell back when he published, "1984" in 1949, realized this with clarity when he wrote the following, "The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact".

War is waged today for profit (GMIC) to keep feeding the profit, power and control to those that possess it.
You need to improve your reading comprehension.

And I suppose to be nice and help you out, the massive significance of what George is saying about Hierarchical society is NOT that poverty and ignorance are needed for it, but what is he SAYING ABOUT THE DESIRABILITY OF A HEIRACHIEAL SOCIETY in the first place!?

AGelbert > fcfcfc
Irony?

More ad hom 🤦‍♂️? More "strenuous efforts on your 👨‍🔬 erudite self to patiently educate the Bible 🐵 thumper"?  😁 You need to polish your legerdemain, bro.

If your purpose is to "shame" me into abandoning this discussion by your continued display of "wisdom", you will succeed, not because of that, but because you have convinced me that you are not interested in reasonable debate.

Also, one more gratuitous snipe from you and you can count on being permanently free from suffering my "lack of reading comprehension", as I will no longer trouble you with responses to your posts.

Sir, please read carefully and slowly what you just quoted from George Orwell. Now, without having any blood pressure issues, please find some difference, in fundamental ideology, worldview, attitude, moral bankruptcy (and so on -you get the idea) between that Orwellian modus operandi and David Harvey's quote below about Neoliberal Ideology (hint: there is not a dime's worth of difference between them).

The celebrated social theorist and geographer David Harvey explains that neoliberal ideology serves the following principle:
"There shall be no serious challenge to the absolute power of money to rule absolutely. And that power is to be exercised with one objective: Those possessed of money shall not only be privileged to accumulate wealth endlessly at will, but they shall have the right to inherit the earth, taking either direct or indirect dominion, not only of the land and all the resources and productive capacities that reside therein, but also assume absolute command, directly or indirectly, over the labor and creative capacities of all those others it needs. The rest of humanity shall be deemed disposable."

You are allergic to going there, but anyone with two brain cells to rub together can see that the ROOT of BOTH of these "Might Equals Right" socially destructive approaches to human "bidness" is Social Darwinism. However, you cannot accept the hard TRUTH that 🦍 Social Darwinism is a clear and present ☠️ DANGER TO SOCIETY because you are obssessed with the role of 💰 currency in human affairs. Consequently you have unreasonably blinded yourself to the fact that 💵🎩🍌 control of the currency is just ONE of MANY 🦍 AUTHORITARIAN 🔨 TOOLS the Social Darwinists tyrannically wield, NOT the REASON they DO what they DO.

😁 You will, no doubt, vigorously disagree, but Thomas Paine had your number.


As to LACK OF READING COMPREHENSION SKILLS...

« Last Edit: December 14, 2023, 12:32:05 am by AGelbert »
So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 7:12