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Author Topic: Fossil Fuels: Degraded Democracy and Profit Over Planet Pollution  (Read 30348 times)

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AGelbert

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EcoWatch


Judge: Wildlife Must Be Considered Before Permitting Fracking Off SoCal Coast

By Olivia Rosane

Nov. 12, 2018 08:38AM EST

SNIPPET:

In what environmentalists are calling a major victory, a California judge ruled Friday that the Trump administration cannot approve any new fracking off the state's southern coast until a full review is done assessing the controversial technique's impact on endangered species and coastal resources, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.

"Endangered sea otters and other critters just won a reprieve from the Trump 🦀 administration's 🐉🦕 assault on our oceans for dirty oil    🦖," Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) Oceans Program Legal Director Kristen Monsell said in a press release. "We plan to celebrate this great victory in the fight against climate change and dirty fossil fuels."

Full article:

https://www.ecowatch.com/judge-halts-fracking-off-socal-coast-2619347365.html


« Last Edit: October 23, 2021, 10:41:42 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

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November 13, 2018
   
Dear Anthony,

Our efforts to pressure fossil fuel companies is really having an effect. Earlier this year, ExxonMobil and Chevron finally releasing climate risk disclosure reports and ConocoPhillips agreed to disclose its lobbying efforts. And now, a prominent corporate responsibility group is securing responses from major fossil fuel companies in response to our recent Climate Accountability Scorecard. Our work to hold these corporations accountable for years of deception and climate impacts is working—unfortunately, it’s not enough. Just last month, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released their latest report showing that every fraction of a degree of warming we can avoid matters. The report calls for ‘rapid and far-reaching’ action. And we needn’t look farther than the fires currently rampaging through Californian communities to understand how urgent the situation is. We need to keep the pressure on fossil fuel corporations to make real change and take responsibility for the impacts of their business.  —Katy

« Last Edit: October 23, 2021, 10:42:16 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Quote

No. 54, Nov. 15, 2018

SNIPPET:

Fossil fuels 🏴‍☠️ are driving our climate problems, as we all know, and a surplus of fracked shale gas is poised to make that even worse. The petrochemical industry🐉🦕🦖 😈 👹 is ramping up production of plastics thanks to fracking, with dire consequences for the climate and the health of residents in the Rust Belt, where many new pipelines and production facilities are being built.

Subscriber bonus:

We have a special thank you for our subscribers this week: a free copy of Corrupted Science: Fraud, Ideology and Politics in Science [/font]by John Grant, courtesy of publisher See Sharp Press. This must-read new book dives into the sordid history of how corporations and politicians — including the Trump administration — have twisted or attacked scientific expertise. As a subscriber, you can download the e-book in any of these formats: PDF, Mobi (Kindle) or Epub. Enjoy — and thanks for subscribing!


« Last Edit: October 23, 2021, 10:42:52 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Laura Flanders Show: Divest to Decolonize

November 25, 2018

At the traditional start of the holiday season, many in the US come together with family and friends to celebrate and give thanks. Though for indigenous peoples around the world perhaps apologies, even recompense, would be more in order. We hear from Native American activists Michelle Cook and Hartman Deetz about the ongoing struggle for autonomy and environmental protection


https://therealnews.com/stories/laura-flanders-show-divest-to-decolonize

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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How The Koch Brothers Broke Democracy & Stuck Taxpayers With The Bill

December 11th, 2018 by Steve Hanley

This is a story of how a small group of wealthy white men can hijack an entire nation, destroy its founding principles, and force those most affected by their deeds to pay for the damage. The background for this piece is Jane Mayer’s extraordinary book Dark Money 🦕🦖, which came out earlier this year. The subtitle says it all: The Hidden History Of The Billionaires Behind The Rise Of The Radical Right.

If you follow the link above, you can read the entire book in PDF form but be warned — the subject matter deals with such sleaze, so much self dealing, and so many crooked dealings in the halls of power, you will need a strong stomach not to feel sick to your stomach as you read it.

The principle characters in Mayer’s book are Charles and David Koch. Taken together, they are the richest people on the face of the Earth. They are also the sons of Fred Koch, who made his fortune supplying gasoline and diesel fuel to Josef Stalin and later Adolf Hitler. In December, 1958, the elder Koch became one of the founders of the John Birch Society, a radical right wing organization that has metastasized over the decades into dozens of right wing propaganda organizations, think tanks, and so-called “institutes.”


Weaponized 😈👹💵 🎩🍌 🏴‍☠️🚩 Philanthropy

You may never have heard of Charles and David Koch, but they have touched the lives of every American. Many of the coded phrases that have infected political discourse over the past 50 years are attributable to them — “trickle down economics,” “welfare Cadillac,” “shrink the size of government until it’s small enough to drown in a bathtub,” “Citizens United,” “the death tax,” “death panels,” “I’m from the government and I’m here to help,” “the Federalist Society,” and the “Tea Party” are phrases familiar to us all that trace their lineage to the Kochs.

Trickle Down EconomicsHow did this happen? According to Mayer, the Kochs were making little headway with their ultra right wing ideas until they figured out how to turn the tax code to their advantage. For generations, wealthy people were encouraged to donate to charities like hospitals, the Red Cross, and humanitarian causes because they could deduct their contributions from their taxable income.

What the Kochs did was take the charitable deduction process and stand it on its head.  They created their own “charities,” then funded them lavishly with money that qualified for tax deductions. Non-profits with patriotic sounding names like the Heartland Institute, the Heritage Foundation, Americans For Prosperity, and the Cato Institute have become powerful lobbying groups supported by non-taxable contributions.

Their methodology is always the same. Hire well-paid “researchers” who are smart enough to produce reports that support the positions espoused by the Koch Brothers and keep their mouths shut. Those reports, studies, and white papers are disseminated throughout the highest levels of government to elected officials who owe their seats to campaign contributions from the Koch Brothers. It’s a nice little sweetheart deal that was called racketeering when the Mafia did it, but is considered perfectly appropriate today.


Out Of Sight And Underground

Writing in The Guardian this week, columnist George Monbiot prefaced a story about how the Kochs have exported their ultra right wing agenda to the UK with this summary.

“Dark money is among the greatest current threats to democracy. It means money spent below the public radar, that seeks to change political outcomes. It enables very rich people and corporations to influence politics without showing their hands.

“Among the world’s biggest political spenders are Charles and David Koch, co-owners of Koch Industries, a vast private conglomerate of oil pipelines and refineries, chemicals, timber and paper companies, commodity trading firms and cattle ranches. If their two fortunes were rolled into one, Charles David Koch, with $120bn, would be the richest man on Earth.

“In a rare public statement, in an essay published in 1978, Charles Koch explained his objective. ‘Our movement must destroy the prevalent statist paradigm.’ As Jane Mayer records in her book Dark Money, the Kochs’ ideology — lower taxes and looser regulations — and their business interests ‘dovetailed so seamlessly it was difficult to distinguish one from the other.’

“Over the years, she notes, ‘the company developed a stunning record of corporate malfeasance’. Koch Industries paid massive fines for oil spills, illegal benzene emissions and ammonia pollution. In 1999, a jury found that Koch Industries had knowingly used a corroded pipeline to carry butane, which caused an explosion in which two people died. Company Town, a film released last year, tells the story of local people’s long fight against pollution from a huge paper mill owned by the Koch brothers.

“The Kochs’ chief political lieutenant, Richard Fink, developed what he called a three-stage model of social change. Universities would produce ‘the intellectual raw materials.’ Think tanks would transform them into ‘a more practical or usable form.’ Then ‘citizen activist’ groups would ‘press for the implementation of policy change.’

To these ends the Kochs set up bodies in all three categories themselves, such as the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the Cato Institute and the “citizens’ group” Americans for Prosperity. But for the most part they funded existing organisations that met their criteria. They have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into a network of academic departments, think tanks, journals. and movements. And they appear to have been remarkably successful.

“As researchers at Harvard and Columbia universities have found, Americans for Prosperity alone now rivals the Republican party in terms of size, staffing and organisational capacity (emphasis added). It has pulled ‘the Republican party to the far right on economic, tax and regulatory issues’. It was crucial to the success of the Tea Party movement, the ousting of Democrats from Congress, and the staffing of Trump’s transition team. The Koch network has helped secure massive tax cuts, the smashing of trade unions, and the dismantling of environmental legislation.

“But their hands, for the most part, remain invisible. A Republican consultant who has worked for Charles and David Koch told Mayer that ‘to call them under the radar is an understatement. They are underground.'”


Funding The End Of Democracy

Koch-inspired and funded groups have led the campaign to gerrymander voting districts in states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and North Carolina. The current maps were drawn by ultra right wing partisans using artificial intelligence. The intent was to make it impossible for Democrats to gain a majority of seats in the legislatures of those states no matter how many people voted for them.

The strategy has been phenomenally successful. In the election last month, Republican Scott Walker was given his walking papers by the voters, but even though Democrats got 54% of the votes cast, they were able to win only 36 of the 99 seats in the state assembly thanks to the anti-democratic bias created by gerrymandering.

Writing in The Guardian, law professor Lawrence Douglas says, “Pundits have described these actions as Republicans playing ‘hardball,’ though the description obscures a noxious reality: Republicans aren’t playing ball at all — they are rejecting the basic rules of the game. The notion that elections count only when our side wins is nothing short of a repudiation of democracy. Republicans, on both the national and state level, are essentially staging minor coups.”


Democracy Is Socialism   

We hear a lot of talk from conservatives reactionaries these days about socialism. Most of them have no idea they are spouting Koch Brothers-inspired dogma that has been injected into the national conversation at the highest levels and become part of the political landscape. But democracy itself is socialism. It is a contract between the people of a nation that says the government will be elected by the will of the majority. Any policy that interferes with that core principle is undemocratic and an affront to America’s heritage.

Asked in Philadelphia “What sort of government have you given us?” Benjamin Franklin reportedly said, “A republic — if you can keep it.” Largely through the unrelenting efforts of the Koch Brothers — efforts that have been generously subsidized by American taxpayers — the prospect of America ceasing to be a republic is becoming more real every day.

Republic is another way of saying a representative democracy. Since all 330 million Americans cannot assemble in one place for a national conversation, they elect people to represent their interests. But the Kochs have broken the link between the people and their representatives.

Today, most government officials are looking out for the interests of the Kochs and their super rich colleagues, not those of the people who elected them. The only way to make America great again is to restore the democratic system of government the Founding Fathers envisioned.

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/12/11/how-the-koch-brothers-broke-democracy-stuck-taxpayers-with-the-bill/


 The Fossil Fuelers 🦖 DID THE Clean Energy  Inventions suppressing, Climate Trashing, human health depleting CRIME,   but since they have ALWAYS BEEN liars and conscience free crooks 🦀, they are trying to AVOID   DOING THE TIME or   PAYING THE FINE!     Don't let them get away with it! Pass it on!   
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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What a Gag — BY MR. FISH
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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TRUTHDIG

DEC 18, 2018

Quote
David Sirota, who told people “Something I didn’t know: Beto O’Rourke is the #2 recipient of oil/gas industry campaign cash in the entire Congress.” Sirota provided a link to campaign finance data.

Quote
“While O’Rourke 🦖 steadily avoided left-wing legislation, he went above and beyond to ally himself to the corporate wing of the Democratic Party,” Jilani reported.

Read more:

He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Updated January 2, 2019 Filed to: POLITICAL CLIMATE CHANGE

By Maddie Stone

SNIPPET:

Castor  herself has also sparked controversy since rumors began swirling that she would lead whatever committee was being put together. Despite her solidly pro-environment record, she drew the ire of climate activists last week when she suggested congresspeople 🐵😈🦕 shouldn’t be disqualified from serving 🐵😈🦕 on a climate committee if they’d taken campaign contributions from the fossil fuel 🦕🦖 industry.

Full article:


 The Fossil Fuelers 🦖 DID THE Clean Energy  Inventions suppressing, Climate Trashing, human health depleting CRIME,   but since they have ALWAYS BEEN liars and conscience free crooks 🦀, they are trying to AVOID   DOING THE TIME or   PAYING THE FINE!     Don't let them get away with it! Pass it on!   
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Bill McKibben ✨: The Fossil Fuel Industry 🦕🦖 Has Money, But We Have Movements

January 9, 2019

At the Sanders Institute Gathering, Bill McKibben says that a Green New Deal must address climate change, immigration, and unemployment, or we’re headed “if not to Hell, then to a place with a very similar temperature.


https://therealnews.com/stories/bill-mckibben-the-fossil-fuel-industry-has-money-but-we-have-movements
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here to subscribe.

March 4, 2019     

« Last Edit: October 23, 2021, 10:43:37 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

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« Last Edit: October 23, 2021, 10:44:01 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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March 13, 2019

Are the Fossil Fuel Industry's Days Numbered?

By MIKE LUDWIG, TRUTHOUT

The oil and gas industry has "no greater friend" than President Trump, as Vice President Mike Pence recently pointed out. Now with deadlines to avert climate catastrophe looming, the debate over fossil fuels in the U.S. has never been so partisan and polarized among candidates and elected leaders. Each side of the debate presents starkly different visions of the future.

Read the Article →
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Wed 27 Mar 2019 10.48 EDT Last modified on Wed 27 Mar 2019 15.02 EDT

Quote
Republicans are doing everything in their power to kneecap the country’s ability to respond to climate change  >:(





He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

AGelbert

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Make Nexus Hot News part of your morning: click here to subscribe.


April 2, 2019


The BRIDGE to the Future made by LNG 🦕 "BRIDGE FUEL"

« Last Edit: October 23, 2021, 10:45:53 pm by AGelbert »
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

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April 4, 2019

The First Meeting of the House ‘Climate Crisis’ Committee Did Not Go So Well

SNIPPET:

“Forget about being on the right side of history,” Piper said in his testimony. “If there even are history books, it will be because of the efforts that we are taking today. Be on the side of young people right now.”

That may well be true, but what happened today will be part of the record until said record is swallowed by the sea or burned up in a wildfire. And let the record show that it was problematic. There was a lot praise for the young adults for being there and calls for bipartisanship. But the Republicans on the committee appeared to largely view climate change not as a crisis but as a threat to fossil fuel production and deregulation. From the looks of it, their 🦕🦖 goal on the committee is to delay action as much as possible.

Full article:

https://earther.gizmodo.com/the-first-meeting-of-the-house-climate-crisis-committ-1833812915


 The Fossil Fuelers 🦖 DID THE Clean Energy  Inventions suppressing, Climate Trashing, human health depleting CRIME,   but since they have ALWAYS BEEN liars and conscience free crooks 🦀, they are trying to AVOID   DOING THE TIME or   PAYING THE FINE!     Don't let them get away with it! Pass it on!   
He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Matt 10:37

 

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