Double agents’: fossil-fuel lobbyists work for US groups trying to fight climate crisis. Exclusive: new database shows 1,500 US lobbyists working for fossil-fuel firms while representing universities and green groups..Guardian- Oliver Milman @olliemilman Wed 5 Jul 2023 14.22 BST More than 1,500 lobbyists in the US are working on behalf of fossil-fuel companies while at the same time representing hundreds of liberal-run cities, universities, technology companies and environmental groups that say they are tackling the climate crisis, the Guardian can reveal. Lobbyists for oil, gas and coal interests are also employed by a vast sweep of institutions, ranging from the city governments of Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia; tech giants such as Apple and Google; more than 150 universities; some of the country’s leading environmental groups – and even ski resorts seeing their snow melted by global heating. The breadth of fossil-fuel lobbyists’ work for other clients is captured in a new database of their lobbying interests which was    published online on Wednesday.  It shows the reach of state-level fossil-fuel lobbyists into almost every aspect of American life, spanning local governments, large corporations, cultural institutions such as museums and film festivals, and advocacy groups, grouping together clients with starkly contradictory aims. For instance, State Farm, the insurance companythat announced in Mayit would halt new homeowner policies in California due to the “catastrophic” risk of wildfires worsened by the climate crisis, employs lobbyists that also advocate for fossil fuel intereststo lawmakers in 18 states.Meanwhile, Baltimore, which issuingbig oil firms for their role in causing climate-related damages, has shared a lobbyist with ExxonMobil, one of the named defendants in the case. Syracuse University, a pioneer in the fossil fuel divestment movement, has a lobbyist with 14 separate oil and gas clients. When you hire these insider lobbyists, you are basically working with double agents. They are guns for hireTimmons Roberts of Brown University. “It’s incredible that this has gone under the radar for so long, as these lobbyists help the fossil fuel industry wield extraordinary power,” said James Browning, a former Common Cause lobbyist who put together the database for a new venture called F Minus. “Many of these cities and counties face severe costs from climate change and yet elected officials are selling their residents out. It’s extraordinary.   “The worst thing about hiring these lobbyists is that it legitimizes the fossil fuel industry,” Browning added. “They can cloak their radical agenda in respectability when their lobbyists also have clients in the arts, or city government, or with conservation groups. It normalizes something that is very dangerous." The searchable database, created by compiling the public disclosure records of lobbyists up to 2022 reveals.....1. Some of the most progressive-minded cities in the US employ fossil-fuel lobbyists.....and there's much more- read on    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/05/double-agent-fossil-fuel-lobbyists?utm_term=64a69fdf99125affa1d98ca303eb90

Namibia has always seemed to me to be a wondrous country, and not just for its paradoxical richness of life in a sparse, arid habitat. After an armed independence movement won Namibia’s freedom from South Africa in 1990, the new nation embraced an extraordinarily humane constitution protecting both the environment and the right of the people to support themselves by sustainable use of the land on which they live. The dominant SWAPO political party, formed from the armed independence movement, seemed, when I have visited over the years, to be following through on these commitments. With an area roughly equal to Texas and Louisiana combined, Namibia put more than 20 percent of its land under the control of community conservancies — clusters of subsistence farmers — who began to develop local economies based on wildlife tourism. Another 17 percent of the land area went into national parks. Wildlife populations soared as a result — tripling the elephant population, for instance, and almost doubling the number of mountain zebras, even as wildlife sharply declined elsewhere in Africa.                                                        But something has changed in Namibia. Resource exploitation of a sort that imperils both wildlife and the wellbeing of rural people has become commonplace, with the government, still dominated by SWAPO, looking the other way, or worse. In one recent case, a Chinese company used a government agricultural development program to justify opening thousands of acres of state forest in northeastern Namibia. They cut down ancient rosewood, teak, and other precious trees and exported the timber, in violation of national and international law on trade in threatened species. Then they left the country without bothering about the farm development that was the pretext for the deforestation. The government has also stood by as foreign companies have targeted Namibia’s flagship community conservancies. When activists visited villages to discuss the gas and oil drilling, Namibian police arrested them and held them for nine hours. So what changed in Namibia? Many people I interviewed suggested that the government became more corrupt, or more obvious about its corruption, following President Hage Geingob’s 2014 election..read on          https://e360.yale.edu/features/namibia-wildlife-conservation-corruption

  5-5-2023    CORPORATE   ‘Monster profits’ for energy giants reveal a self-destructive fossil fuel resurgence. Last year’s combined $200bn profit for the ‘big five’ oil and gas companies brings little hope of driving down emissions. While 2022 inflicted hardship upon many people around the world due to soaring inflation, climate-driven disasters and war, the year was lucrative on an unprecedented scale for the fossil fuel industry, with the five largest western oil and gas companies alone making a combined $200bn in profits. In a parade of annual results released over the past week the “big five” – Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP and TotalEnergies – all revealed that last year was the most profitable in their respective histories, as the rising cost of oil and gas, driven in part by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, helped turbocharge revenues. Exxon, the Texas-based oil giant, led the way with a record $55.7bn in annual profit, taking home about $6.3m every hour last year. California’s Chevron had a record $36.5bn profit, while Shell announced the best results of its 115-year history, a $39.9bn surplus, and BP, another London-based firm, notched a $27.7bn profit. The French company TotalEnergies also had a record, at $36.2bn.When the 2022 results for all publicly traded oil and gas companies are tallied the total profits are expected to exceed $400bn, “a number we’ve never seen before, and one that was built off the backs of working families who were victimized by oil and gas executives’ greed”, according to Claire Moser, deputy executive director of the US activist group Climate Power. The stratospheric profits were criticized as “outrageous” by Joe Biden during his State of the Union address on Tuesday. Biden said that “we’re still going to need oil and gas for a while” but the US president attacked companies for enriching shareholders through share buybacks rather than helping alleviate rising gasoline costs for drivers. The big five oil and gas companies have already confirmed that most of the bumper profits will be going to stock buybacks and dividends. The $200bn in combined profits equates to about five times the US’s annual foreign aid budget, or about double what the world gave to Ukraine last yearin military and humanitarian assistance. António Guterres, the secretary-general of the UN, was scornful of the industry in a speech on Monday, in which he expressed incredulity at the “monster profits” of fossil fuel companies at a time when the world needs to be rapidly slashing its planet-heating emissions to avoid climate breakdown.         https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/09/profits-energy-fossil-fuel-resurgence-climate-crisis-shell-exxon-bp-chevron-totalenergies

Private planes, mansions and superyachts: What gives billionaires like Musk and Abramovich such a massive carbon footprint. Altogether, the world’s billionaires saw their wealth surge over $1.9 trillion in 2020, according to Forbes. Those are astronomical numbers, and it’s hard to get one’s head around them without some context. As anthropologists who study energy and consumer culture, we wanted to examine how all that wealth translated into consumption and the resulting carbon footprint.We found that billionaires have carbon footprints that can be thousands of times higher than those of average Americans. The wealthy own yachts, planes and multiple mansions, all of which contribute greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. For example, a superyacht with a permanent crew, helicopter pad, submarines and pools emits about 7,020 tons of CO2 a year, according to our calculations, making it by far the worst asset to own from an environmental standpoint. Transportation and real estate make up the lion’s share of most people’s carbon footprint, so we focused on calculating those categories for each billionaire. We started with 20 well-known billionaires whose possessions we were able to ascertain, while trying to include some diversity in gender and geography. We have submitted our paper for peer review but plan to continue adding to our list. We then used a wide range of sources, such as the U.S. Energy Information Administration and Carbon Footprint, to estimate the annual CO2 emissions of each house, aircraft, vehicle and yacht.  We did not try to calculate each asset’s “embodied carbon” emissions – that is, how much CO2 is burned throughout the supply chain in making the product – or the emissions produced by their family, household employees or entourage. In other words, these are all likely conservative estimates of how much they emit. We started with 20 well-known billionaires whose possessions we were able to ascertain, while trying to include some diversity in gender and geography. We have submitted our paper for peer review but plan to continue adding to our list. We then used a wide range of sources, such as the U.S. Energy Information AdministrationandCarbon Footprint, to estimate the annual CO2 emissions of each house, aircraft, vehicle and yacht. In some cases we had to estimate the size of houses from satellite images or photos and the use of private aircraft and yachts by searching the popular pressanddrawing on other studies. Our results are based on analyzing typical use of each asset given its size and everything else we could learn. We did not try to calculate each asset’s “embodied carbon” emissions – that is, how much CO2 is burned throughout the supply chain in making the product – or the emissions produced by their family, household employees or entourage. We also didn’t include the emissions of companies of which they own part or all, because that would have added another significant degree of complexity. For example, we didn’t calculate the emissions of Tesla or Amazon when calculating Musk’s or Bezos’ footprints. In other words, these are all likely conservative estimates of how much they emit. To get a sense of perspective, let’s start with the carbon footprint of the average person. Residents of the U.S., including billionaires, emitted about 15 tons of CO2 per person in 2018. The global average footprint is smaller, at just about 5 tons per person. In contrast, the 20 people in our sample contributed an average of about 8,190 tons of CO2 in 2018. But some produced far more greenhouse gases than others.....and much more!       https://theconversation.com/private-planes-mansions-and-superyachts-what-gives-billionaires-like-musk-and-abramovich-such-a-massive-carbon-footprint-152514