Attention to the Unseen

The Wall Street Journal reports: The oil industry’s top lobbying group is preparing to endorse setting a price on carbon emissions in what would be the strongest signal yet that oil and gas producers are ready to accept government efforts to confront climate change. The American Petroleum Institute, one of the most powerful trade associations in Washington, is poised to embrace putting a price on carbon emissions as a policy that would “lead to the most economic paths to achieve…

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Naomi Klein writes: The bank of cameras that camped outside Delhi’s sprawling Tihar jail was the sort of media frenzy you would expect to await a prime minister caught in an embezzlement scandal, or perhaps a Bollywood star caught in the wrong bed. Instead, the cameras were waiting for Disha Ravi, a nature-loving 22-year-old vegan climate activist who against all odds has found herself ensnared in an Orwellian legal saga that includes accusations of sedition, incitement, and involvement in an…

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Bill McKibben writes: It was likely too much to hope that the Biden Administration, as it tries to get a handle on climate change, might find some help from Wall Street. Instead, last week, we saw financial heavyweights turn in a performance so rigid and so short-sighted that it makes one wonder whether capitalism in anything resembling its current form can, or should, survive. The scene was a virtual forum organized by the Institute of International Finance, and the participants…

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The New York Times reports: Even as Texas struggled to restore electricity and water over the past week, signs of the risks posed by increasingly extreme weather to America’s aging infrastructure were cropping up across the country. The week’s continent-spanning winter storms triggered blackouts in Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and several other states. One-third of oil production in the nation was halted. Drinking-water systems in Ohio were knocked offline. Road networks nationwide were paralyzed and vaccination efforts in 20 states were…

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WFAA reports: Many Texans are rightfully asking why the largest energy producing state in the country cannot produce enough energy to get through a week of below-freezing temperatures. So, what happened? Equipment failure turned out to be a big part of the problem. “Beginning around 11:00 p.m. [Sunday night], multiple generating units began tripping off-line in rapid progression due to the severe cold weather,” said Dan Woodfin, senior director of system operations at ERCOT, the organization that manages the state’s…

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Michael E. Mann writes: President Joe Biden, in his first weeks in office, already has advanced a sweeping agenda to tackle the climate crisis by addressing the health, economic, inequity and foreign policy aspects of the problem. An executive order he issued last week establishes climate as an essential consideration in U.S. foreign policy and national security, recognizing the importance of restoring our role as a leader in the international effort to avert catastrophic climate change. By labeling climate change…

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Bill McKibben writes: The blizzard of federal climate initiatives last week (a blizzard that might help allow actual blizzards to persist into the future) is without precedent. For the first time in the thirty-plus years of our awareness of the climate crisis, Washington roused itself to urgent action; veterans of the cautious Obama Administration—the domestic climate adviser Gina McCarthy and the global climate czar John Kerry chief among them—were suddenly going for broke. In fact, only one branch of the…

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Jody Freeman writes: General Motors’ announcement last week that it will stop making gas-powered cars, trucks and sport utility vehicles by 2035 and become carbon neutral by 2040 is even bolder than it sounds: The repercussions will ripple broadly across the economy, accelerating the transition to a broader electric future powered by renewable energy. The pledge by the nation’s largest automaker to phase out internal combustion engines puts pressure on other auto companies, like Ford and Toyota, to make equally…

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Markets Insider reports: S&P Global Ratings has put some of the biggest oil companies in the world on notice that it could soon downgrade their credit ratings thanks to heightened concerns about climate change and a global push towards greener energy. The agency – one of the three most influential ratings firms in the world – said it could downgrade the ratings of Chevron, Exxon, Shell and Total among others. It downgraded the outlook, although not the rating, for both…

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