Exclusive: Oil and gas majors are planning scores of vast projects that threaten to shatter the 1.5C climate goal. If governments do not act, these firms will continue to cash in as the world burns......The exclusive data shows these firms are in effect placing multibillion-dollar bets against humanity halting global heating. Their huge investments in new fossil fuel production could pay off only if countries fail to rapidly slash carbon emissions, which scientists say is vital.The oil and gas industry is extremely volatile but extraordinarily profitable, particularly when prices are high, as they are at present. ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron have made almost $2tn in profits in the past three decades, while recent price rises led BP’s boss to describe the company as a “cash machine”. The lure of colossal payouts in the years to come appears to be irresistible to the oil companies, despite the world’s climate scientists stating in February that further delay in cutting fossil fuel use would mean missing our last chance “to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all”. As the UN secretary general, António Guterres, warned world leaders in April: “Our addiction to fossil fuels is killing us.” Details of the projects being planned are not easily accessible but an investigation published in the Guardian shows......The fossil fuel industry’s short-term expansion plans involve the start of oil and gas projects that will produce greenhouse gases equivalent to a decade of CO2 emissions from China, the world’s biggest polluter. These plans include 195 carbon bombs, gigantic oil and gas projects that would each result in at least a billion tonnes of CO2 emissions over their lifetimes, in total equivalent to about 18 years of current global CO2 emissions. About 60% of these have already started pumping. The dozen biggest oil companies are on track to spend $103m a day for the rest of the decade exploiting new fields of oil and gas that cannot be burned if global heating is to be limited to . under 2C. The Middle East and Russia often attract the most attention in relation to future oil and gas production but the US, Canada and Australia are among the countries with the biggest expansion plans and the highest number of carbon bombs. The US, Canada and Australia also give some of the world’s biggest subsidies for fossil fuels per capita. Jump to........Code red          Plans to expand Carbon bombs        The money          The transition Race against time...........or continue to read the full article which contain the same text as under these headings.......... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2022/may/11/fossil-fuel-carbon-bombs-climate-br eakdown-oil-gas#Race-against-time

   The vast majority of fossil fuel reserves owned today by countries and companies must remain in the ground if the climate crisis is to be ended, an analysis has found. The research found 90% of coal and 60% of oil and gas reserves could not be extracted if there was to be even a 50% chance of keeping global heating below 1.5C, the temperature beyond which the worst climate impacts hit. The scientific study is the first such assessment and lays bare the huge disconnect between the Paris agreement’s climate goals and the expansion plans of the fossil fuel industry. The researchers described the situation as “absolutely desperate”   “The [analysis] implies that many operational and planned fossil fuel projects [are] unviable,” the scientists said, meaning trillions of dollars of fossil fuel assets could become worthless. New fossil fuel projects made sense only if their backers did not believe the world would act to tackle the climate emergency, the researchers said.  States that are heavily reliant on fossil fuel revenue, such as Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, are at especially high risk. A minister from oneOpec state recently warned of “unrest and instability” if their economies did not diversify in time.       To keep below 1.5C, the analysis says........The US, Russia and the former Soviet states have half of global coal reserves but will need to keep 97% in the ground, while the figure for Australia is 95%. China and India have about a quarter of global coal reserves, and will need to keep 76% in the ground.

Middle Eastern states have more than half the world oil reserves but will need to keep almost two-thirds in the ground......... while 83% of Canada’s oil from tar sands must not be extracted. Virtually all unconventional oil or gas, such as from fracking, must remain in the ground and no fossil fuels at all can be extracted from the Arctic.   It will require private companies to write down their reserves but, for countries with nationalised oil companies, they just see a whole heap of their wealth evaporating. Its latest report finds companies risk wasting more than a trillion dollars on projects incompatible with a low-carbon world, with ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Chevron and Shell most exposed. In May, an IEA report concluded that there could be no new oil, gas or coal development if the world was to reach net zero by 2050. A UN report in December found fossil fuel production must fall rapidly to keep under 1.5C and avoid “severe climate disruption” but that countries were planning increased outputs. The new research, published in the journal Nature, used a complex model of global energy use that prioritised use of the fossil fuels that are cheapest to extract, such as Saudi oil, in using up the remaining carbon budget. Costly and highly polluting reserves, such as Canada’s tar sands and Venezuelan oil, are left in the ground in the model.              https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/08/climate-crisis-fossil-fuels-ground        

Leading an alliance of more than 100 countries, US President Joe Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen have launched the Global Methane Pledge – an agreement to cut methane emissions by 30% between 2020 and 2030. Methane is a greenhouse gas that has caused about 0.5°C of global warming, according to the latest assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Each molecule added to the atmosphere is about 26 times more potent at warming than a CO₂ molecule but only remains in the atmosphere for about a decade. Methane leaks from oil and gas wells, landfills and is belched out by livestock. Countries signed up to the agreement encompass two-thirds of the global economy and half of the top 30 methane emitters, including Brazil. China, India and Russia however have not signed at the time of writing. I have been working on and talking publicly about methane emissions and their effect on the climate for about a decade. During that time, the levels of methane in the atmosphere have gone rapidly upwards, causing more global warming. So while I think it would be great to reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030, what is that niggling at the back of my mind?It’s the suspicion that so much noise about methane cuts will (deliberately or not) be a good news story that obscures slow progress on CO₂ emissions. You might ask: is this such a problem? Isn’t any action to be applauded? Yes, and no. Yes, because any reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is progress towards the Paris Agreement temperature goals. That is undeniable. No, if it displaces effort away from the main driver of global warming – fossil CO₂ emissions.                 https://theconversation.com/cop26-a-global-methane-pledge-is-great-but-only-if-it-doesnt-distract-us-from-co-cuts-171069?utm_campaign=Carbon%20Brief%20Daily%20Briefing&utm_content=20211103&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20Daily

 ^{Courts are stepping in where politicians fear to tread — forcing governments and companies to take radical action to slash greenhouse gas emissions. In a landmark ruling on Wednesday, a Dutch court ordered the oil giant Shell to cut its emissions by 45 percent this decade. The ruling marks the first time a court has mandated such a policy on a major energy company and, crucially, establishes Shell's responsibility for the environmental damage caused by its products and a failure to adequately plan to reduce its emissions. “The courts are having to step in to address the legal implications of glaring policy failures,” said Paul Benson, a lawyer with ClientEarth, an NGO. “If government policy and corporate policy ... was already sufficiently adequate, there wouldn’t be much of a role for courts to play." Such cases are increasingly common. About 3,000 have been filed since 2000, and their pace is expected to grow as concern rises about climate change, according to a new report from Verisk Maplecroft, a risk consultancy."The 2020s are a key decade for climate action. Therefore, sovereigns and corporates should expect more climate lawsuits to come down the line," the report said, noting that "companies risk fines reminiscent of tobacco trials."}

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