Banks Funneled $1.9 Trillion Into Fossil Fuels Since Paris Agreement

A new report published this week shows that 33 global banks provided $1.9 trillion to fossil fuel companies since the adoption of the Paris Climate Agreement at the end of 2015 and that the amount of fossil fuel financing has increased in each of the past two years.

The new report, Banking on Climate Change 2019, is the tenth annual fossil fuel report card and the first-ever analysis of funding from the world’s major private banks for the fossil fuel sector as a whole. The report was released Wednesday by Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack, Indigenous Environmental Network, Oil Change International, Sierra Club, and Honor the Earth, and endorsed by over 160 organizations around the world.

In addition to finding that 33 of the world’s top banks are supplied $1.9 trillion to fossil fuel companies since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, the report also found that of that $1.9 trillion, $600 billion went to 100 companies that are most aggressively expanding fossil fuels, highlighting business-as-usual practices that fly in the face of the latest scientific warnings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which warned that “Limiting global warming to 1.5°C would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.”

Read the Clean Technica story by Joshua S. Hill - “Banks Funneled $1.9 Trillion Into Fossil Fuels Since Paris Agreement."

Baltimore Becomes Latest City to Sue Fossil Fuel Companies for Climate Damages

Baltimore became the second East Coast city to file a climate liability lawsuit against fossil fuel companies. Its suit, announced Friday, becomes the 12th suit filed across the country aiming to hold the industry accountable for flooding and other harms caused by climate change.

Baltimore, devastated by Hurricane Isabel in 2003,
understands the costs of climate damages will
skyrocket and wants the oil industry to pay for them.

The mayor and city council of Baltimore filed a complaint in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City that ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and 23 other fossil fuel producers and distributors violated Maryland laws, including its consumer protection law.

“These oil and gas companies knew for decades that their products would harm communities like ours, and we’re going to hold them accountable,” Baltimore City Solicitor Andre M. Davis said. “Baltimore’s residents, workers, and businesses shouldn’t have to pay for the damage knowingly caused by these companies.”

Read the Climate Liability News story by Jennifer Dorroh- “Baltimore Becomes Latest City to Sue Fossil Fuel Companies for Climate Damages.”

‘Carbon bubble' could spark global financial crisis, study warns.

Plunging prices for renewable energy and rapidly increasing investment in low-carbon technologies could leave fossil fuel companies with trillions in stranded assets and spark a global financial crisis, a new study has found.

A sudden drop in demand for fossil fuels could happen
before 2035, a new study shows. 

A sudden drop in demand for fossil fuels before 2035 is likely, according to the study, given the current global investments and economic advantages in a low-carbon transition.

The existence of a “carbon bubble” – assets in fossil fuels that are currently overvalued because, in the medium and long-term, the world will have to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions – has long been proposed by academics, activists and investors. The new study, published on Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, shows that a sharp slump in the value of fossil fuels would cause this bubble to burst, and posits that such a slump is likely before 2035 based on current patterns of energy use.

Read the story from The Guardian by Environment Editor, Fiona Harvey - “‘Carbon bubble' could spark global financial crisis, study warns.”

Trump Administration Joins Fossil Fuel Companies in Climate Fight Against Cities

Just before a critical hearing to determine the fate of a pair of climate lawsuits in California, the United States government has weighed in as a heavyweight ally on the side of the fossil fuel companies.

San Francisco and Oakland have sued five major
 oil and gas companies in an attempt to
hold fossil fuel producers accountable for the
 effects of climate change. Lawyers for the Trump
administration have now filed a brief in support of the
companies' efforts to have these cases dismissed

Lawyers from the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division filed a friend of the court brief last week in support of five of the world's largest oil and gas companies, which are seeking to have lawsuits by the cities of San Francisco and Oakland dismissed.

U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup is scheduled to hear arguments on Thursday on a motion by the companies to throw out the cases.

Federal lawyers argue in their brief that if the two lawsuits succeed, it could stymie domestic and international energy production.

Read the story by David Hasemyer from Inside Climate News - “Trump Administration Joins Fossil Fuel Companies in Climate Fight Against Cities.”

Scientists Getting Filthy Rich On Climate Change? Here Are The Facts

When people attempt to debunk climate science, they come up with some pretty fanciful theories.

For example, people try to downplay the rapid rate of warming in the industrial era by saying "the climate's changed before", even though countless sources show that no, not this quickly it hasn't. Not even close.

But there's one line about climate science which almost defies belief. It's the idea -- often circulated by people working for billion-dollar fossil fuel companies -- that climate scientists are in it for the money.

In a moment, we'll give you three specific cases which provide fantastic examples of why this argument is a furphy. But first, a little background.

Read the Huffington Post story - “Scientists Getting Filthy Rich On Climate Change? Here Are The Facts.”

Fossil fuel companies risk wasting investors' money

F

ossil fuel companies risk wasting up to $2tn (£1.3tn) of investors’ money in the next decade on projects left worthless by global action on climate change and the surge in clean energy, according to a new report.

The world’s nations aim to seal a UN deal in Paris in December to keep global warming below the danger limit of 2C. The heavy cuts in carbon emissions needed to achieve this would mean no new coal mines at all are needed and oil demand peaking in 2020, according to the influential thinktank Carbon Tracker. It found $2.2tn of projects at risk of stranding, ie being left valueless as the market for fossil fuels shrinks.

Read The Guardian story - “Fossil fuel companies risk wasting $2tn of investors' money, study says.”

Publically lamenting Paris events,quietly and privately celebrating

-      Robert McLean

C

limate doubters and fossil fuel company executives are undoubtedly publically lamenting recent events in Paris, but quietly and privately celebrating their luck.

The deadly terrorist attacks were sad, distressing and worthy of the world-wide response they generated, but a massive distraction on the eve of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC) .

Should the real intent of the conference be emasculated and nothing happen to change the mind of the doubters or weaken the influence of the fossil fuel companies, then we face a life punctuated by events catastrophically worse that what we witnessed in Paris just a few days ago.

Yes, discussions in Paris are simply that important.

Risking alienation from friends and others, it must be noted that the satisfactory result from the Paris talks, in terms of lives at risk and lives saved, are vastly more important than the recent events in the “city of love” that claimed nearly 130 lives and caused massive disruption.

Climate change, by comparison to the relatively easily understood Paris terrorist attacks with a clearly identifiable enemy, is nebulous, difficult to understand and no enemy can be easily and clearly defined.

Unable to identify an enemy, many grope about, seeking refuge in denial and some get angry and then bargain that anger away or, as is often the case see climate change as something about which “others” should worry or invest their future wellbeing and that of humanity in technology, ignoring repeated warnings from the world’s climate scientists.

World leaders face an almost unprecedented challenge in mentally, and practically, extracting themselves from the “terrorist-Paris” and becoming a working and effective part of “climate-Paris”.

That is, however, something they must do for if they can’t, or won’t, what we saw in Paris will be little more than a curtain-raiser as people in every part of the world compete to survive in a world in serious disarray.