Record-breaking wildfire season will continue for months: officials

Canada's record-breaking wildfire season will continue to be abnormally intense throughout July and into August, posing a threat to communities across the country

Laura Osman, The Canadian Pressabout 15 hours ago

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A helicopter carrying a water basket flies past a smoke plume near Lebel-sur-Quevillon, Que., Wednesday, July 5, 2023. Natural Resources Canada says the country's record-breaking wildfire season will continue to be greater than normal throughout July and into August. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

OTTAWA — Canada's record-breaking wildfire season will continue to be abnormally intense throughout July and into August, Natural Resources Canada projected Thursday, posing a greater threat to the safety and health of communities across the country.

The wildfire season has been unusually severe this year, breaking historical records on the amount of land burned and affecting communities that are unaccustomed to dealing with the flames and smoke. 

"The risk of forest fires is going to remain very high," Michael Norton, director general with the Canadian Forestry Service, said at a briefing Thursday.

Atlantic provinces and eastern Quebec are expected to see more normal conditions in August, but other parts of the country can expect the severity forecast to be well above average, projections show. 

The forecasts are based on anticipated high temperatures, dry conditions and historical comparisons, Norton said.

The flames have threatened critical infrastructure and forced evacuations while the prolonged exposure to smoke has created potentially dangerous conditions, particularly for people with pre-existing health concerns. 

The months of intense fires spread out between British Columbia and the Atlantic provinces has also stretched Canada's firefighting capacity, and the government has called in 3,258 international firefighters to help over the course of the season. 

Despite the ongoing challenge, Norton said the government is confident they'll be able to sustain the number of firefighters needed until the flames die down. 

Canada surpassed the known historic record for total area burned by wildfires in one season on June 27, with months of hot weather still to come. 

The number of fires has more than doubled since that month, from 323 active fires at the beginning of June to 656 this week.

Some 88,000 square kilometres have burned as of July 5. Put together the burned land is be larger than the size of Lake Superior, and nearly 11 times the average amount burned by that date over the past 10 years. 

More Canadians have been evacuated from their homes this year than in the last four decades, with more than 155,000 forced to leave due to fire and smoke. 

Earlier in the season, the majority of fires were thought to have been caused by human activity, but since June 1 almost three in four fires are confirmed to have been started by lightning.

Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair said he expected this season would be difficult when it began months earlier than typically anticipated, calling the weather projections at that time "sobering and concerning."

Long and intense fire seasons have become more common in Canada, however, and the minister said climate change is to blame.

"I would not want to suggest that this is the new normal," he said at an online press conference Thursday.

"Given the difficult conditions, the concerning conditions that persist right across many parts of the country, I think it's very important that Canadians be aware of their risk, that they take the steps that are necessary to prepare." 

The risk isn't only to communities threatened by nearby fires, but also from the smoke that can travel great distances and settle over communities for days at a time.

The smoke can be particularly dangerous for people with heart and lung conditions, and Health Canada recommends people stay indoors in well-ventilated areas when the air quality is poor. 

For most people, though, overheating can be worse than breathing smoke, said chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam.

"If you did not have air conditioning and it's too warm to stay inside with the windows closed, seek out a local cooling or clean air space," she advised. 

"If you must spend time outside, consider using a well-fitted respirator type mask, like an N95, to reduce exposure to the fine particles from wildfire smoke."

Provincial and federal governments haven't tallied up the costs associated with this fire season yet, but expect the final figure will be considerable, given the record-breaking conditions.

"I believe the cost of this one will be as high as this event has been extreme in its impact across the country," Blair said. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 6, 2023.

— With files from Mia Rabson.

Laura Osman, The Canadian Press

Wildfires 'off the charts' in Canada as temperatures climb

Smoke rises as a wildfire burns south of Lebel-sur-Quevillon, Quebec, Wednesday, Jul 5, 2023. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press via AP)

08 Jul 2023 

MONTREAL: The number of forest fires continues to rise in Canada, climbing on Friday (Jul 7) to more than 670 blazes - more than 380 of them out of control - with a long and difficult summer ahead.

"The numbers are literally off the charts, with at least three more months left in the active wildfire season," said Michael Norton of the Canadian Ministry of Natural Resources.

And weather forecasts for the coming weeks predict above-average temperatures in many parts of the country in the west, and also in northern Quebec, the worst-hit region.

With nine million hectares already gone up in smoke - 11 times the average for the last decade - the absolute annual record set in 1989 has been surpassed.

Authorities tallied 677 active fires in the country on Friday, with 13 new blazes discovered during the day, including 386 that were burning out of control.

About 155,000 people have been forced to leave their homes at some point due to the fires since the beginning of May, the highest figure for 40 years.

"It's no understatement to say that the 2023 fire season is and will continue to be record-breaking in a number of ways," Norton said, adding that he expected the number of fires to remain above average throughout the summer.

The fires ravage areas on both sides of the country, and areas unaccustomed to fires are affected.

One of the forest fires in northern Quebec alone burned more than one million hectares.

"From evacuations to poor air quality and extreme heat warnings, we are experiencing the reality of climate change effects," Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said.

Related:

Fires intensify in Canada, could last 'all summer'


This has forced authorities to rely on an unprecedented level of international aid to support the 3,800 Canadian firefighters on the ground, backed up by the Canadian Armed Forces.

"The firefighting effort has now truly become a global effort," Norton said.

A total of over 3,000 international firefighters - hailing from countries including New Zealand, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, Spain and South Korea - are hard at work tackling the mega-fires.

Smoke from the fires so far this season has fouled the air in Canada and neighbouring United States, affecting more than 100 million people, at times disrupting flights and forcing the cancellation of outdoor events.

Source: AFP/gs

Wildfires in Canada have broken records for area burned, evacuations and cost, official says

Wildfires raging across Canada have already broken records for total areas burned, the number of people forced to evacuate their homes and the cost of fighting the blazes, and the fire season is only halfway finished

ByThe Associated Press
July 6, 2023,

Smoke billows from the Donnie Creek wildfire burning north of Fort St. John, British Columbia, Canada, Sunday, July 2, 2023. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Wildfires raging across Canada have already broken records for total area burned, the number of people forced to evacuate their homes and the cost of fighting the blazes, and the fire season is only halfway finished, officials said Thursday.

“It’s no understatement to say that the 2023 fire season is and will continue to be record breaking in a number of ways,” Michael Norton, director general, Northern Forestry Centre, Canadian Forest Service, said during a briefing.

A health expert also warned that smoke from the fires can cause health problems for people living in both Canada and the United States.

“When you’re emitting large amounts of fire smoke into the air, and that smoke is reaching populated areas, there will be health effects,” said Ryan Allen, a professor of health sciences at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.

Norton said warm weather and dry conditions across Canada indicate the potential for higher-than-normal fire activity through July and August.

“Drought is a major contributing factor affecting parts of all provinces and territories, intensifying in some regions,” he said. “When coupled with forecasts for ongoing above normal temperatures across most of the country, it is anticipated that many parts of Canada will continue to see above normal fire activity."

As of Wednesday, there were 639 active fires burning in Canada with 351 of them out of control. So far this year there have been 3,412 fires, well above the 10-year average of 2,751, said Norton.

The fires have burned 8.8 million hectares (27.7 million acres) an area about the size of the state of Virginia. This already exceeds the record of 7.6 million hectares (18.7 million acres) set in 1989 and is 11 times the 10-year average experienced by this date.

“The final area burned for this season may yet be significantly higher,” said Norton. “What we can say with certainty right now is that 2023 is a record-breaking year since at least since 1986 when accurate records started to be kept.”

Allen said the fine particles found in fire smoke not only have the ability to penetrate deep into airways, they also can travel long distances meaning they could drift far into the U.S.
There have been reports that fires in Eastern Canada and Quebec are affecting air quality in Europe
Allen said higher concentrations of smoke increases health risks to the lungs, brain, cognitive functions and even fetal development.

“As you get very far away, it’s unlikely the concentration would be as high as they are in close proximity to the fire and therefore the health risk would be lower, but the health risk is probably not zero,” he said.

Norton said the fires have forced an estimated 155,856 evacuees, the highest number in the last four decades. Currently about 4,500 people remain under evacuation orders across the country with about 3,400 in Indigenous communities.

Fighting the fires has taken on a global proportion.

There are about 3,790 provincial firefighters battling the blazes across the country being assisted by Canadian Armed Forces personnel. Another 3,258 firefighters from Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, the U.S., Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico, Spain, Portugal, South Korea and the European Union have travelled to Canada to fight fires.

Norton said the cost of fighting wildfires has steadily grown and is approaching about CDN$1 billion (US$750 million) a year.

“With the scale of this year’s activity and the fact we’ve still got three months left, there’s no question in my mind the direct cost of suppression will be a new record,” he said.

What would net-zero shipping look like?

(Image credit: Oceanbird)

By Isabelle Gerretsen

BBC

7th July 2023

The International Maritime Organization has set a net-zero goal "by or around 2050". What is needed to reach this?

At a UN summit, countries have agreed to curb shipping emissions to net zero "by or around 2050".

At the annual meeting of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), countries agreed to cut emissions by 20% by 2030 and 70% by 2040, compared to 2008 levels, and 100% by or around 2050. Small island nations and richer countries had called for a 50% reduction by 2030 and 96% by 2040.

Kitack Lim, Secretary-General of the IMO, described the deal as a "monumental development [that] opens a new chapter towards maritime decarbonisation". But campaigners warn that the deal is flawed and will fail to bring the shipping industry in line with the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5C by the end of this century.

Shipping is a highly polluting industry, responsible for nearly 3% of global emissions and generating around 1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases each year - roughly the same amount as Germany's carbon footprint. If it were a country, the shipping industry would be the sixth largest polluter in the world.

Reducing maritime emissions rapidly in the next three decades will require new regulations, infrastructure and fuels. But what might green shipping of the future look like?

The world's largest wind-powered ship

Wind-powered ships

The shipping industry can reduce its reliance on fossil fuels by turning to an ancient technology: sails. Wind propulsion is considered one of the most promising energy sources available for the rapid decarbonisation of shipping. Swedish company Oceanbird has built a prototype ship with four rigid sails. Wind power not only propels the ship forward but also aids its manoeuvrability and agility on the water. One of the biggest challenges is encouraging governments and investors to adopt wind propulsion and retrofit ships, while wind propulsion is still early-stage. (Read more: Will shipping return to its ancient roots?)

 

Norwegian ship Edda Breeze has been built to run on a hydrogen-based propulsion system 

(Credit: Alamy)

Hydrogen

Deploying clean fuels such as hydrogen is critical if the shipping industry is to reach net zero by 2050. Green hydrogen - generated by using renewable energy, such as wind or solar power, to extract hydrogen from water molecules - is emissions-free. But there are some major challenges when deploying hydrogen: the fuel must be stored at cryogenic temperatures of -253C (-423F) and crew must be trained how to handle it as the fuel is highly flammable. (Read more about the fuel that could transform shipping).

Maersk has ordered a total of 25 methanol-powered ships 

(Credit: Getty Images)

Methanol

Maersk, the world's second-largest container shipping company, is betting big on green methanol to help it decarbonise. The company has ordered a total of 25 methanol-powered ships to date. Green methanol is a low-carbon fuel which can be produced from sustainable biomass or by using renewable electricity to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, which is combined with carbon dioxide. Unlike hydrogen, green methanol does not have to be stored under pressure or extreme cold, and many ports already have infrastructure in place to store the fuel. But the process is complex: CO2 must be captured out of the atmosphere, technology which is still emerging, expensive and as yet unproven.

 

The largest battery-powered river container ship transports goods on the Yangtze River in China 

(Credit: Getty Images)

Electric boats

Batteries charged using renewable electricity are another way to curb shipping emissions. But there are limits to the distances they can power. Currently, renewable batteries are an option only for smaller ships making short journeys, such as ferries and river boats, not for large cargo ships crossing oceans. Instead, ship owners are looking to power cargo ships with a combination of wind power and solar panels.Japanese renewable energy systems company Eco Marine Power, for example, has developed " EnergySails": rigid sails fitted with solar panels, which allow ships to use both solar and wind energy at the same time.

Switching to green fuels in shipping will require investment in renewable energy infrastructure at ports (Credit: Getty Images)

Green infrastructure

A rapid uptake of green fuels on vessels will require abundant new infrastructure at ports to produce and store them, and to allow ships to refuel. Ports must invest in hydrogen-generating electrolysers, renewable energy capacity, such as wind and solar power, as well as battery and hydrogen storage facilities. Most ships will also need to be retrofitted to enable them to run on green fuels, use wind propulsion and digital software to improve their efficiency and optimise routes.

NARWHAL

INVESTIGATION
Oilsands giants pushed feds to delay and weaken emissions cap rules

Through the Pathways Alliance, an organization of some of Canada’s largest oil producers, high-level bureaucrats were asked for long lead times and a ‘flexible, non-regulatory approach’ to usher in a limit on the sector’s air pollution

By Carl Meyer
July 5, 2023

LONG READ

 EXCERPT

The Pathways Alliance plastered Toronto streetcars and Vancouver billboards with optimistic messages about its plan to slash pollution and help Canada meet its climate goals. Behind the scenes, the coalition of fossil fuel producers struck a different tone.

A collection of internal government documents obtained by The Narwhal show how six major oil companies lobbied the federal government to weaken and delay plans to place a cap on heat-trapping pollution from the oil and gas sector.

The Narwhal pieced together the extent of industry lobbying after reviewing six separate responses to access to information requests, totalling 69 pages. These documents show that, as early as December 2021, oil companies in the Pathways Alliance — Suncor, ExxonMobil affiliate Imperial Oil, Canadian Natural Resources, ConocoPhillips Canada, MEG Energy and Cenovus — were urging the government to consider “flexible and cost-effective” rules and give the industry a “long lead time” to prepare before they mitigate how they are contributing to the global climate crisis.

The comments were part of the government’s early, informal consultations on the emissions cap that would signal the start of months of meetings between senior government officials and Pathways executives touching on the cap’s design.

The documents — released by Natural Resources Canada — also show the lobbyists pressured the government to take a “non-regulatory approach” on slashing carbon pollution, one that could make it easier for industry and provincial governments to challenge or delay federal climate action through the courts.

An internal spreadsheet shows the Pathways Alliance lobbying the federal government in 2021 over upcoming rules for a cap on emissions from the oil and gas sector. Screenshot: Natural Resources Canada / Government of Canada

The documents include numerous examples of how oil lobbyists may be misleading the public.

Despite telling Canadians its net-zero plan was “in motion” and it was “making clear strides,” the documents show the Alliance downplayed progress in private discussions with the government. The lobbyists said technologies needed to fight the climate crisis are “still on the lab bench,” or in other words still in development. And while these same companies have reported making record profits, they claim they don’t have enough money to implement climate-friendly solutions.

“This is further evidence that the oil industry is aggressively lobbying for more government subsidies, loopholes and lower ambition,” said assistant professor Amy Janzwood at McGill University’s Bieler School of the Environment, who studies fossil fuel production and sustainable energy and reviewed the Alliance’s comments at The Narwhal’s request.

The Pathways Alliance did not respond to The Narwhal’s requests for comment. The industry group’s president said in June that the group has “enough in our toolkit today, with existing game-day-ready technologies, that can get us to net zero” and that the oilsands companies don’t need to rely on “some future breakthrough technology that doesn’t exist today.”

Oil and gas firms want delayed, ‘flexible, non-regulatory approach’

The Pathways Alliance formed in the summer of 2021. It was initially founded by five oilsands producers — Suncor, Imperial Oil, Cenovus, Canadian Natural Resources and MEG Energy. At the time, they claimed they would achieve “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions from oilsands operations by 2050,” in order to “help Canada meet its climate goals, including its Paris Agreement commitments and 2050 net-zero aspirations.” In November 2021, ConocoPhillips Canada joined the group as the sixth member.


The Alliance’s lobbying on the emissions cap would happen just six weeks after the group had fully formed. The Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had won the September 2021 federal election on a platform that promised to “cap and cut emissions from oil and gas.”

The details of the Alliance’s feedback, recorded in a Natural Resources Canada chart released to The Narwhal, shows how the government had asked the Alliance for its “high-level preliminary thinking” on the design of the cap. At the time, the government was also consulting with provinces and territories, other oil and gas industry groups and major companies, the details of which were censored in the released records.

The Pathways Alliance told the government it should “consider a feasible implementation plan to get to net zero” that would allow for a “long lead time” for the companies to prepare, according to a summary of the group’s comments in the departmental chart.

The Alliance asked the government to consider “sector level targets that are flexible and cost-effective” for the emissions cap, and that it wanted a “flexible, non-regulatory approach” to emissions cap rules.

Pathways also said the emissions cap’s first milestone in 2025 should be primarily about having the foundations in place for “deep decarbonization” to happen sometime “in the future.”

Flexibility is a common refrain in fossil fuel lobbying and submissions to the Canadian federal government, said Sofia Basheer, a senior analyst at the London-based energy think-tank InfluenceMap, who tracks oil and gas industry influence.

The group’s February report examining the Canadian oil and gas industry found the Pathways Alliance “appears to be getting increasing traction in Canadian climate policy debates,” by emphasizing support for emissions reductions from its operations and support for carbon capture technology, while also advocating in favour of “a long-term role for oil.”

The organization said it could not identify any evidence of the Alliance putting forward a position on the role for oil that would align with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recommendations.

“It seems like these are attempts to weaken the ambition of the [emissions cap] policy,” Basheer said. “They do not really talk about what flexibility, or compliance flexibility, means.”

Basheer said the comments from Pathways demonstrate how oil companies are misleading the public about being able to produce carbon-free oil. That was the basis for a Greenpeace Canada-led complaint about the group’s marketing practices that Canada’s Competition Bureau is now investigating, she said.

“When you advertise to the public ‘We can produce net-zero oil,’ they are not telling the whole story,” Basheer said

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The Pathways Alliance has promoted a plan to capture emissions from oilsands facilities and build a new pipeline to transport the captured carbon to underground storage areas. But it has said its decarbonization plans will depend on federal government funding. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

Carbon capture technology ‘still on the lab bench,’ decarbonization will ‘depend’ on government support

The Alliance’s plans rely on technology that hasn’t yet been fully developed, or budgeted for, it told the government.

The Pathways Alliance has said it will capture carbon dioxide emissions from oilsands facilities and build a new pipeline to transport the captured carbon to underground storage areas. It also has plans to electrify some of its operations with non-emitting electricity by using small modular nuclear reactors.

The group asked the government to “take into account” how its decarbonization plan relies on carbon capture and nuclear technologies that “are still on the lab bench,” according to its December 2021 comments on the emissions cap.

“Decarbonisation will depend on the federal government’s ability to fund and incent the transition,” added the Alliance.

The government’s early consultations on the emissions cap were followed by another round on Feb. 1, 2022, when senior public servants in Natural Resources Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada heard from Pathways Alliance members for a second time, according to an April 2022 briefing note prepared for one of the departmental deputy ministers.

During those consultations the oilpatch group expressed concerns over “the challenge of economic feasibility” surrounding the emissions cap, and highlighted the “need for government support” as well as “fiscal and regulatory support.”

Pathways also flagged “the need to avoid short-term measures with lower-long-term potential.” It’s unclear what this means, and Pathways did not respond to The Narwhal’s questions seeking clarity.

Several witnesses who appeared at the House of Commons environment committee’s study on fossil fuel subsidies said public funding of carbon capture technology risks promoting future oil and gas extraction at a time when scientists say fossil fuel production must be scaled back.

As a result, the committee recommended the government “ensure that all its policies and measures, including those related to support for the fossil fuel sector, are consistent with — and efficiently achieve — the country’s 2030 emissions reduction goals and its 2050 net-zero emissions goals.”

While opinions may vary about the oil and gas sector’s ability and desire to decarbonize, there was an “elephant in the room” when it comes to the Pathways plan, said Russill — the fact that the oil it produces will still generate emissions when it’s burned.

Carbon capture in the oil and gas sector “does nothing to reduce the approximately 80 per cent of emissions that come after production, from burning fossil fuels in cars and homes, for energy generation,” the committee noted.

Canada is the fourth largest oil producer in the world, but about four-fifths of the oil it produces is exported — so the country avoids responsibility for all the carbon pollution created when its exported oil is used in foreign countries.

“The Pathways Alliance is primarily focused on their own operational net zero,” Basheer said.

“They want to produce oil, but remove any emissions associated with their oil and gas production. But at the same time, they don’t care about what happens when their oil is burned, which is where our primary chunk of emissions comes from.”
‘The risk of production shut-in,’ or when lowering emissions means less oil and gas is extracted

During the government’s February 2022 consultations on the emissions cap, the Pathways Alliance outlined a number of “key concerns,” the briefing note prepared for the Natural Resources Canada deputy minister stated. At the top of the list was “the risk of production shut-in.”

The idea that placing a cap on oil and gas emissions could lead, inadvertently or not, to limiting the amount of oil that would be produced in Canada, has become a main message of the Pathways Alliance in the months since it first lobbied the government on the topic.

The theory works this way: if the government makes a rule limiting the pollution fossil fuel companies emit, but the companies have not yet implemented the technology to capture that pollution or make less of it, the only other way to comply with the new rule would be to produce less oil and gas in the first place  

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The federal government reassured oil companies that an emissions cap would not limit production of oil, according to this briefing note. Screenshot: Natural Resources Canada / Government of Canada

In August 2022, for example, the Alliance penned an editorial suggesting an oil and gas sector emissions cut in line with Canada’s 2030 climate plan was “simply unworkable given current technology, construction and regulatory requirements.”

“Impractical timeframes” for emissions targets, the editorial continued, could drive away investment, “reducing production in Canada and increasing production and emissions in other countries.”

But some economists say the Canadian industry’s future depends more on the price of oil in world energy markets, and how fast Canada and other countries implement climate policies and transition away from fossil fuels.

In the International Energy Agency’s net zero by 2050 scenario, where much of the world implements strong climate policies, global crude oil consumption would plummet from 94 million barrels per day to 22 million barrels per day in 2050, as countries become oversupplied with petroleum products no one wants anymore.

That oversupply would translate into much lower crude oil prices, the agency said — dropping from around US$75 per barrel today to US$35 per barrel by 2030, and US$24 per barrel by 2050 (all figures in 2021 dollars).

Those low prices, in turn, will be the “dominant factor” in a steady decline of oil production in the Canadian oilsands after 2030, according to a recent major report by the Canada Energy Regulator.

“The impact that the price of global commodities have on our analysis is very important,” Jean-Denis Charlebois, the regulator’s chief economist, told The Narwhal.

Everything from fuel to maintenance, royalties and climate policies like carbon pricing will drive up operating costs for producers, to the point where they start to outweigh revenues. At that point, facilities will start to close, the regulator said.

“Oilsands facilities that have the highest operating costs begin shutting down early in the 2030s. As oil prices continue to drop, more and more facilities shut down production, and only the lowest-cost projects are still producing in 2050,” the report stated.

The regulator found that oilsands oil production would fall to 0.58 million barrels per day in 2050, or 83 per cent lower than in 2022. Canadian crude oil production as a whole would drop 76 per cent from 2022 levels by 2050, or from five million barrels per day to 1.2 million barrels per day.

Nevertheless, the fear of an oil “production cap” being the result of a domestic Canadian emissions cap became a theme in internal government conversations with Pathways representatives, documents show.

During a June 7, 2022 meeting between Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson and the Canadian Fuels Association’s board of directors, for example, the minister’s briefing note included the talking point that “the intent of the cap is not to curtail production unless it is driven by declines in global demand.”

Four months later, when Cenovus, one of the Pathways Alliance companies, requested a meeting with Hannaford, the deputy minister from Natural Resources Canada, he was instructed to tell the company the following: “Let me assure you that a cap on emissions in the oil and gas sector is not a cap on production.”

While the federal government’s plan for capping emissions from oil and gas hasn’t yet been released, Basheer says there is a narrative in political circles about how it’s possible to have net zero oil. But she says this narrative doesn’t align with science.

“It shows that the lobbying was actually working.”

Meet the DC thinktank giving big oil ‘the opportunity to say they’ve done something’


The fossil fuel industry has a long history of hiring PR firms to sow confusion about climate change – but the Climate Leadership Council isn’t just a front group


Adam Lowenstein

Sun 9 Jul 2023 

The New York Times op-ed opened on a provocative note: “There is a real danger that the climate debate is deteriorating into a game of name-calling,” it began, “with oil and gas companies all too often portrayed as opponents of climate progress.”

The January 2020 article was written by the founder of the Climate Leadership Council (CLC), a Washington DC-based non-profit that advocates for scrapping certain fossil fuel regulations and replacing them with a carbon tax, with the proceeds from the tax returned to Americans as a rebate. Among the group’s “corporate founding members” are some of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies, including Shell, BP and, until 2021, Exxon – companies that have indeed spent decades, and billions of dollars, opposing climate progress.

The CLC launched in 2017 with a report by a “who’s who” of pre-Trump Republican officials and insiders, including former Republican cabinet secretaries James Baker and George Shultz. Since then the CLC and its lobbying arm have steadily attracted elite media coverage and supporters, including current the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen. “There is wide agreement among economists that this is the most effective and market-friendly way to reduce carbon emissions,” Yellen told the Washington Post in 2020.


‘Double agents’: fossil-fuel lobbyists work for US groups trying to fight climate crisis

The fossil fuel industry has a long history of hiring public relations firms to create front groups to obstruct climate legislation and sow confusion and doubt about climate change. But the CLC is not a front group. The organization’s “carbon dividends” proposal is real.

Last month when a bipartisan pair of US senators introduced a bill that lays the groundwork for a carbon tariff, the Prove It Act, that lays the groundwork for a carbon tariff, the CLC hailed the move as “an important step towards better understanding, and ultimately leveraging, America’s carbon advantage”.

To its critics, however, the policy details of the CLC plan and those it supports are secondary to what the group itself offers its oil and gas industry members: a climate change “solution” that they can be for – one that, conveniently, stands little chance of becoming law.

As fossil fuel companies continue lobbying against climate legislation, funding anti-climate politicians, bringing home sky-high profits from oil and gas sales, and doubling down on business models anchored on fossil fuel extraction and consumption, public participation in a “climate leadership council” appears to be an asset that corporations can deploy to perform the role of problem-solver while justifying their opposition to other laws and regulations.

“There is a part of me that sees this as, ‘We can hold industry accountable a little bit without having to be in a place of discomfort, [without] holding them accountable in the way that climate change, environmental injustice, requires,” said Dana Johnson, the senior director of strategy and federal policy at We Act for Environmental Justice. “I think it gives people the opportunity to say that they’ve done something … It’s safe.”

Titled “The conservative case for carbon dividends”, the original CLC report called for a steadily rising carbon tax that “might begin at $40 a ton”, with the proceeds returned to Americans in checks estimated to start around $2,000 a year for a family of four. The plan also featured a tariff on imports from countries without carbon pricing to discourage commerce from moving abroad and to give “lower-emitting US manufacturers … a competitive advantage”, said Greg Bertelsen, the group’s CEO, in a statement emailed to the Guardian.

Greg Bertelsen, CEO of the Climate Leadership Council, in 2022.

 Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images

The final plank of the CLC’s original plan was the repeal of not just federal emissions regulations but the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate carbon emissions at all. And buried in that section was another line that would be easy to miss: that a carbon tax “would also make possible an end to federal and state tort liability for emitters”. This otherwise innocuous sentence captured what Richard Wiles, the head of the non-profit Center for Climate Integrity, called the oil and gas industry’s “number one thing”: legal immunity for companies’ contributions to global warming and to the damages of climate change, and for their decades-long campaigns to deceive the public and obstruct legislative action.

The CLC removed the liability provision from its proposal in September 2019. “Misinformation on the issue was distracting focus away from the many economic and environmental upsides of the plan,” Bertelsen said. Asked whether the organization would consider resurrecting some sort of liability waiver if it meant gaining industry support for carbon dividends legislation, the CEO said that “we have no plans to revisit the issue”.

But the CLC’s agenda might differ from that of its industry backers. “No one is fooled into thinking [that] because they took it off their website,” oil and gas companies won’t continue to push for a liability waiver, Wiles said. Even Axios, which has given the CLC steady coverage and space to make its case, noted that “a similar proposal can always be added in the actual legislative process.”

The CLC’s support is not limited to the fossil fuel industry. Among the group’s corporate founding members were Conservation International and the Nature Conservancy, two environmental non-profits. Today it also counts as organizational partners companies such as Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, PepsiCo, and JPMorgan Chase.

But the CLC’s partners also include BP, Shell, Total, ConocoPhillips and mining giant BHP; until 2021, one of its most prominent members was ExxonMobil. In response to questions from the Guardian about the organization’s backing from companies that have helped create and sustain the climate crisis, the CLC sent a statement that echoed the founder’s New York Times op-ed: “Energy companies have the scale, research and development budgets, expertise and infrastructures needed to expand low-carbon energy technologies … and to pioneer new technological breakthroughs.”

If fossil fuel giants can indeed contribute to the CLC, the companies have found ways for their membership to contribute to them in return. Exxon’s trajectory is illustrative. Even before the CLC officially revealed its corporate supporters in June 2017, Exxon’s chairman and CEO, Darren Woods, announced the company’s support during its annual shareholder meeting. Not long after, Exxon began peppering public filings and corporate publications with mentions of its membership. In the company’s next “corporate citizenship report”, Exxon wrote that its participation in the CLC was evidence of how Exxon was “engaging on climate change policy”. The following year Exxon’s sustainability report included multiple mentions of its CLC membership.

On 8 October 2018, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a monumental assessment warning that keeping global temperatures from rising more than 1.5C “would require rapid, far-reaching, and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”, including deep emissions cuts. The very next day, as University of Miami climate disinformation expert Geoffrey Supran noted, Exxon announced it would donate $1m over two years to Americans for Carbon Dividends, the CLC’s lobbying arm. The $500,000 that Exxon would give in 2018 paled in comparison to the $11.15m the company would spend lobbying that year–let alone the $71.9bn it would report in revenue that quarter. Yet the donation nevertheless earned the company headlines in Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, Axios, the Washington Post and CNN, among other outlets widely read by the lawmakers, staffers and government officials. In a tweet, Supran called the company’s donation “PR Crisis Management 101: Change the narrative”.

Over the following years Exxon continued to tout its support for carbon pricing and its membership of the CLC. In the spring of 2021, a group of Exxon shareholders asked the company to publish a report outlining how its climate lobbying efforts “align with the goal of limiting average global warming to well below” 2C. In explaining why shareholders should vote against the proposal, Exxon’s board said that such a report would be “unnecessary”–in part because the company was already a member of the CLC.

In August 2021 Exxon was “suspended” from the CLC after a company lobbyist was caught on tape saying that Exxon had pledged to support a national carbon tax because such a policy was unlikely to ever become law. “A carbon tax is not going to happen,” the lobbyist said. Supporting the concept “gives us a talking point that we can say, ‘Well, what is ExxonMobil for? Well, we’re for a carbon tax.’”

While the comments sparked a media firestorm, they were little more than a concise articulation of a strategy that Exxon and its competitors had been executing transparently for years, said Matto Mildenberger, a political science professor at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB). “There has been a serious effort by some big fossil fuel interest groups to support a carbon tax because they understand that it’s much less likely to happen,” said Mildenberger, an expert in the politics of climate change. “And even if it does happen, it’s never going to be [politically] possible to increase that carbon tax to a level that would threaten the economic well being of entrenched fossil fuel interests.”

An oil refinery owned by Exxon in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 2020. 

Photograph: Barry Lewis/In Pictures/Getty Images

Exxon has reached the same conclusion. In 2018 the state of New York sued the oil giant, alleging that it had deceived its shareholders by asserting that the implementation of a carbon tax would not devalue the company’s fossil fuel reserves enough to threaten its business model. “Exxon was essentially saying, ‘We can have a carbon price, and it won’t strand our assets,’” said Benjamin Franta, head of the Climate Litigation Lab at Oxford’s Sustainable Law Programme.

The company’s argument, Franta said, was that even with a $40-a-ton tax on carbon–the starting point of the CLC proposal–“our fossil fuel development is so profitable that even if a carbon price is enacted, it won’t strand our projects, and therefore we’re a safe investment.” Exxon won the case.

One of the CLC’s key selling points for its plan is the organization’s own polling, which suggests bipartisan public support for “charging fossil fuel companies for their carbon emissions and giving the money back to Americans with the goal of cutting emissions”. Crucially, however, these questions are about an idea. As soon as this idea begins to shift from a “talking point”, as the Exxon lobbyist put it, into a tangible legislative proposal, it is likely to be rendered politically toxic.

Canada is among the handful of countries to have implemented some sort of carbon dividend. In Canada, UCSB’s Matto Mildenberger and his colleagues found, some four out of five Canadians receive more money from the dividend than they pay in higher taxes. Yet many people are nevertheless convinced that the policy makes them worse off. “Even telling people that they had received this money did nothing to change their support for the policy,” Mildenberger said. “Their understanding of [the] costs and benefits are mediated by politics.”

Mildenberger’s US surveys have yielded a similar conclusion. As soon as politics enters the equation – an inevitability in any American debate about climate policy – public support for a carbon dividends plan immediately plummets. “The minute you add even the slightest mention of politics into this scenario … that weakens all the effects [of support for the concept],” Mildenberger said. Once you suggest to people that Democrats and Republicans disagree over whether carbon pricing is a good idea, “people just stop trusting much of the information you’re giving them.”

To skeptics of the carbon dividends proposal, the fact that it remains trapped in the realm of the hypothetical helps explain the industry’s enthusiasm for it–and its determination to keep it there. Decades of unsuccessful attempts to implement some form of carbon pricing in the United States suggest that oil and gas companies’ rhetorical support for the idea of carbon dividends has little bearing on whether they would back an actual carbon dividends proposal.
They are playing a two-level game hereMatto Mildenberger, University of California Santa Barbara

“They are playing a two-level game here,” Mildenberger said. “On one hand, part of their strategy is to ensure that whatever policy gets written into law, or is voted on, is the lesser evil of the policies that might be voted on. And then they’re still going to try and stop even that policy from being passed because they prefer no policy.”

In the late 1980s, for instance, when scientists and environmental advocates began calling for mandatory emissions reductions, “already at that time you [saw] industry spokespeople saying, ‘We need market-based mechanisms rather than mandates,’” said Oxford’s Benjamin Franta. Seemingly in response to that preference for market-based policy, the Clinton administration moved to pass a tax on heat levels in fuel. But by June 1993 the administration was forced to abandon the effort after intensive industry lobbying. Companies and their trade groups publicly opposed the tax, while at the same time maneuvering feverishly (and successfully) to secure extensive loopholes and exemptions in the event that it did pass.

The Obama White House also encountered what Franta called the industry’s “bait and switch tactics”. The administration’s cap-and-trade proposal, which Obama repeatedly heralded as market-based, would have limited national carbon emissions and created a new market for emitters to buy and sell permits. Despite previous industry support for cap and trade and months of dealmaking with the administration and congressional negotiators, the bill ultimately died in the Senate after an onslaught of hundreds of millions of dollars of fossil fuel lobbying and campaigning.

State-level carbon pricing efforts have run into similarly vehement opposition. In 2017 BP joined the CLC as a corporate founding member and began promoting its membership on its website and in corporate reports. The following year the company spent some $13m opposing a carbon pricing measure in Washington state, even though the carbon tax in the state’s proposal would have begun at $15 a ton – less than half of the starting point of the CLC plan, which BP still claims to support. The sum that BP spent to defeat the Washington effort was thirteen times greater than what the company would later pledge to the CLC’s lobbying arm.

“Most oil and gas companies recognize the threat of climate change and want to be part of the solution,” the CLC’s founder wrote in that 2020 op-ed. Yet today these same companies are still lobbying to block climate laws and regulations. They’re still helping elect anti-climate politicians. They’re still trying to capture international climate conferences. They’re still developing business plans centered on fossil fuels. They’re still choosing not to channel their immense political power into policies that might threaten their profits.

“I don’t know what world people are living in when they think the most powerful companies in the history of mankind are going to suddenly wake up and say, ‘You know what? This oil and gas thing – I don’t know what we were thinking,’” said the Center for Climate Integrity’s Richard Wiles. “There’s just no way. Why? Why would they do that?”

Discarded pet turtles crowding out native B.C. species

4 days ago
CBC News
Duration1:57

Discarded pet turtles are thriving in lakes and ponds in B.C. threatening already endangered native turtles. Researchers found pet turtles not only encroach on habitat but expose native turtles to various diseases.

So many people have dumped their pet turtles that it's threatening B.C. species, says biologist

Why earthquakes happen all the time in Britain but not in Ireland

Published: July 6, 2023

Britain experiences hundreds of earthquakes each year. 

Raffaele Bonadio, Author provided

The village of Tean in Staffordshire, England, was hit by a 3.3-magnitude earthquake on June 28 2023. The tremors caused windows and doors to rattle in the surrounding area.

Earthquakes of this nature are not uncommon in Britain (the island including England, Scotland and Wales). In fact, hundreds of earthquakes shake Britain every single year.

The majority of these earthquakes are small in magnitude and do not result in any damage. However, there are occasional earthquakes in Britain that have the potential to be destructive. Scientists estimate that the largest possible earthquake in Britain is around a magnitude 6.5 – surpassing the intensity of the magnitude 6.3 earthquake that hit Christchurch, New Zealand in 2011 and killed 185 people.

The largest recorded earthquake in Britain so far took place in 1931 near Dogger Bank, 97km off the east coast of England. This earthquake measured 6.1 on the Richter scale and caused damage to buildings along the east coast.

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Most earthquakes in Britain are concentrated within a north-to-south band on the west side of the island. Neighbouring Ireland, however, is almost completely free from seismic activity – a phenomenon that has puzzled scientists for hundreds of years.

Research by my colleagues and I has provided a potential explanation for Ireland’s minimal seismic activity. We found that the lithosphere – Earth’s rigid outer layer that makes up its tectonic plates – is thicker and cooler beneath Ireland than it is under Britain. This makes the tectonic plate under Ireland much less likely to deform – a process that can trigger earthquakes.
Ireland’s missing earthquakes

Even before earthquakes were recorded by seismographs as they are today, reports of earthquakes were documented in various towns and monasteries across Britain and Ireland. In the mid-19th century, Robert Mallet, an Irish scientist credited with coining the term “seismology”, created earthquake maps based on these reports. He observed that Britain had intermediate seismicity (a term for earthquake activity), while Ireland had low seismicity.

In 1884, Irish seismologist Joseph O’Reilly published the first seismicity map of Britain and Ireland, emphasising that Great Britain was “by far more subject to earthquake action than Ireland”.

Understanding the reasons behind this uneven distribution remains important today, especially in terms of how it affects Britain’s growing population. Between 2011 and 2021, the UK population increased by 6%, to a total of 67 million people.
O’Reilly’s seismicity map of Britain and Ireland. O'Reilly (1884), CC BY-NC-ND
Intraplate earthquakes

Most earthquakes happen at plate boundaries where tectonic plates converge, diverge or slide past each other. Over 80% of the world’s largest quakes occur around the perimeter of the Pacific Ocean – an area known as the Pacific “Ring of Fire”.

Earthquakes that occur in the interior of the plates are much less common and typically smaller in magnitude. But there are a few notable exceptions. Between 1811 and 1812, the New Madrid Seismic Zone in the central US experienced a sequence of powerful earthquakes, ranging from magnitude 7 to 8.

Britain and Ireland are geologically very similar. They were formed in the same continental collision around 400 million years ago and are composed of parts of the same continents. The two islands are also equally far from plate boundaries and the tectonic stress (the pressure or tension exerted by other plates or underlying mantle) is similar across them.

Why then is the distribution of earthquakes in Britain and Ireland so uneven?
Through thick and thin

Seismic tomography, a technique that uses seismic waves from remote earthquakes to create 3D images of Earth’s interior, has provided valuable insights. Research that I co-authored in 2021 discovered previously unknown variations in the structure of the tectonic plate that both Britain and Ireland sit on.

Tectonic plates are cold and rigid compared to the hot, slowly creeping mantle beneath them. Thicker plates are colder, mechanically stronger and less likely to deform. Conversely, thinner plates are warmer, weaker and more susceptible to deformation.

In our more recent research, we found that that the plate thickness below Britain and Ireland ranges from about 75km to as much as 120km. Ireland has a relatively thick lithosphere (around 95-115km beneath most of the island) and very few earthquakes as a result. South-eastern England and eastern Scotland have a similarly thick lithosphere.

By contrast, western Britain has a thinner lithosphere (around 75–85km) and experiences regular earthquakes. Most Irish earthquakes are in the north of the island, the one place where its lithosphere is thinner, warmer and weaker.
Left: Occurrence of earthquakes in Ireland and Great Britain. Right: Differences in lithosphere thickness. Raffaele Bonadio, Author provided

This discovery solves a longstanding puzzle. Moderate variations in plate thickness, occurring far from plate boundaries, can influence patterns of seismic activity within those regions.

This breakthrough opens up new avenues of research for seismologists. In Britain and Ireland, scientists can now focus on closing the remaining gaps in the coverage of seismic stations (which monitor ground movement at specific locations) and constructing a model of the lithosphere to work out why earthquakes are concentrated where they are.

Earthquake catalogues in other world regions often do not go as far back into the past as in Britain and Ireland. Seismic hazards in these areas can also be much more uncertain. Modelling the thickness and strength of tectonic plates gives scientists the tools to study the puzzling distribution of earthquakes and improve their forecasting ability.

Author  

Sergei Lebedev
Professor of Geophysics, University of Cambridge

China has been secretly fueling a renewable energy boom in Latin America—just look at Chile

BYZDENKA MYSLIKOVA

THE CONVERSATION
July 8, 2023

Chile's President Sebastian Pinera, right, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, attend the welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of People in Beijing, China on April 24, 2019.
KENZABURO FUKUHARA/KYODO NEWS - POOL/GETTY IMAGES

The story of renewable energy’s rapid rise in Latin America often focuses on Chinese influence, and for good reason. China’s government, banks and companies have propelled the continent’s energy transition, with about 90% of all wind and solar technologies installed there produced by Chinese companies. China’s State Grid now controls over half of Chile’s regulated energy distribution, enough to raise concerns in the Chilean government.

China has also become a major investor in Latin America’s critical minerals sector, a treasure trove of lithium, nickel, cobalt and rare earth elements that are crucial for developing electric vehicles, wind turbines and defense technologies.

In 2018, the Chinese company Tianqi Lithium purchased a 23% share in one of Chile’s largest lithium producers, Sociedad Química y Minera. More recently, in 2022, Ganfeng Lithium bought a major evaporative lithium project in Argentina for US$962 million. In April 2023, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed around 20 agreements to strengthen their countries’ already close relationship, including in the areas of trade, climate change and the energy transition.

China’s growing influence over global clean energy supply chains and its leverage over countries’ energy systems have raised international concerns. But the relationship between China and Latin America is also increasingly complicated as Latin American countries try to secure their resources and their own clean energy futures.

Alongside international investments, Latin American countries are fostering energy innovation cultures that are homegrown, dynamic, creative, often grassroots and frequently overlooked. These range from sophisticated innovations with high-tech materials to a phenomenon known as “frugal innovation.”
Chile looks to the future

Chile is an example of how Latin America is embracing renewable energy while trying to plan a more self-reliant future.

New geothermal, solar and wind power projects – some built with Chinese backing, but not all – have pushed Chile far past its 2025 renewable energy goal. About one-third of the country is now powered by clean energy.

But the big prize, and a large part of China’s interest, lies buried in Chile’s Atacama Desert, home to the world’s largest lithium reserves. Lithium, a silvery-white metal, is essential for producing lithium ion batteries that power most electric vehicles and utility-scale energy storage. Countries around the world have been scrambling to secure lithium sources, and the Chilean government is determined to keep control over its reserves, currently about one-half of the planet’s known supply .

In April 2023, Chile’s president announced a national lithium strategy to ensure that the state holds partial ownership of some future lithium developments. The move, which has yet to be approved, has drawn complaints that it could slow production.

However, the government aims to increase profits from lithium production while strengthening environmental safeguards and sharing more wealth with the country’s citizens, including local communities impacted by lithium projects. Latin America has seen its resources sold out from under it before, and Chile doesn’t intend to lose out on its natural value this time.
Learning from foreign investors

Developing its own renewable energy industry has been a priority in Chile for well over a decade, but it’s been a rough road at times.

In 2009, the government began establishing national and international centers of excellence – Centros de Excelencia Internacional – for research in strategic fields such as solar energy, geothermal energy and climate resilience. It invited and co-financed foreign research institutes, such as Europe’s influential Fraunhofer institute and France’s ENGIELab, to establish branches in Chile and conduct applied research. The latest is a center for the production of lithium using solar energy.

The government expected that the centers would work with local businesses and research centers, transferring knowledge to feed a local innovation ecosystem. However, reality hasn’t yet matched the expectations. The foreign institutions brought their own trained personnel. And except for the recently established institute for lithium, officials tell us that low financing has been a major problem.
Chile’s startup incubator and frugal innovation

While big projects get the headlines, more is going on under the radar.

Chile is home to one of the largest public incubators and seed accelerators in Latin America, StartUp Chile. It has helped several local startups that offer important innovations in food, energy, social media, biotech and other sectors.

Often in South America, this kind of innovation is born and developed in a resource-scarce context and under technological, financial and material constraints. This “frugal innovation” emphasizes sustainability with substantially lower costs.

For example, the independent Chilean startup Reborn Electric Motors has developed a business converting old diesel bus fleets into fully electric buses. Reborn was founded in 2016 when the national electromobility market in Chile was in its early stages, before China’s BYD ramped up electric bus use in local cities.

Reborn’s retrofitted buses are both technologically advanced and significantly cheaper than their Chinese counterparts. While BYD’s new electric bus costs roughly US$320,000, a retrofitted equivalent from Reborn costs roughly half, around $170,000. The company has also secured funding to develop a prototype for running mining vehicles on green hydrogen.

Bolivia’s “tiny supercheap EV” developed by homegrown startup Industrias Quantum Motors is another example of frugal innovation in the electric vehicles space. The startup aspires to bring electric mobility widely to the Latin American population. It offers the tiniest EV car possible, one that can be plugged into a standard wall socket. The car costs around $6,000 and has a range of approximately 34 miles (55 kilometers) per charge.

Phineal is another promising Chilean company that offers clean energy solutions, focusing on solar energy projects. Its projects include solar systems installation, electromobility technology and technology using blockchain to improve renewable energy management in Latin America. Many of these are highly sophisticated and technologically advanced projects that have found markets overseas, including in Germany.

Looking ahead to green hydrogen

Chile is also diving into another cutting-edge area of clean energy. Using its abundant solar and wind power to produce green hydrogen for export as a fossil fuel replacement has become a government priority.

The government is developing a public-private partnership of an unprecedented scale in Chile for hydrogen production and has committed to cover 30% of an expected $193 million public and private investment, funded in part by its lithium and copper production. Some questions surround the partnership, including Chile’s lack of experience administering such a large project and concerns about the environmental impact. The government claims Chile’s green energy production could eventually rival its mining industry.

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With plentiful hydropower and sunshine, Latin America already meets a quarter of its energy demand with renewables – nearly twice the global average. Chile and its neighbors envision those numbers only rising.

Zdenka Myslikova is Postdoctoral Scholar in Clean Energy Innovation, Tufts University and Nathaniel Dolton-Thornton is Assistant Researcher in Climate Policy, Tufts University.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.