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When I began Schwartzreport my purpose was to produce an entirely fact-based daily publication in favor of the earth, the inter-connectedness and interdependence of all life, democracy, equality for all, liberty, and things that are life-affirming. Also, to warn my readers about actions, events, and trends that threaten those values. Our country now stands at a crossroads, indeed, the world stands at a crossroads where those values are very much at risk and it is up to each of us who care about wellbeing to do what we can to defend those principles. I want to thank all of you who have contributed to SR, particularly those of you who have scheduled an ongoing monthly contribution. It makes a big difference and is much appreciated. It is one thing to put in the hours each day and to do the work for free, but another to have to cover the rising out-of-pocket costs. For those of you who haven’t done so, but read SR regularly, I ask that you consider supporting it.
Sergio Chapa and Caroline Hyde, Reporters - Bloomberg Green
Stephan: More good news. Shell, Chevron, and Exxon in a single day have received legal notice that the days of the oil industry's domination are coming to an end.
Chevron Corp. shareholders voted for a proposal to reduce emissions from the company’s customers, the latest sign that oil titans are coming under increasing pressure to address environmental concerns.
According to a preliminary tally, 61% of investors backed the proposal at the company’s annual investor meeting on Wednesday, rebuffing the company’s board, which had urged shareholders to reject it. An item asking Chevron to report on how a significant reduction in fossil-fuel demand would affect its business and a request for a report on political lobbying were narrowly voted down.
The vote, which came on the same day Royal Dutch Shell Plc was ordered by a Dutch court to slash its emissions harder and faster than planned, highlights an unprecedented push to hold oil giants accountable for their contributions to climate change. Also on Wednesday, at least two nominees of an activist investment firm won seats on Exxon Mobil Corp.’s board in a major setback for Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods.
Chevron should be able to increase returns to investors at the same time as it strives to […]
Sarah McFarlane and Christopher M. Matthews, - The Wall Street Journal
Stephan: And here is the good news about Exxon, and a wrap up article by the leading business newspaper of what this means for the petroleum and gas industry. This is a historic day that changes the course of the future. Bravo!
Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell received sharp prods to move away from fossil fuels more quickly, in decisions highlighting the power of investors and activists. Credit: Andrew Kelly/Reuters
ExxonXOM 1.17% Mobil Corp. and Royal Dutch ShellRDS.A 0.38% PLC suffered significant defeats Wednesday as environmental groups and activist investors step up pressure on the oil industry to address concerns about climate change.
The back-to-back, watershed decisions demonstrated how dramatically the landscape is shifting for oil-and-gas companies as they face increasing pressure from environmentalists, investors, lenders, politicians and regulators to transition to cleaner forms of energy.
“The events of today show definitively that many leaders in the oil-and-gas industry have a tin ear and do not understand that society’s views and […]
Stephan: The integrity of the EPA was deliberately destroyed by Trump and his administration to curry favor with the chemical agriculture industry and keep it donating to the Republican Party. Here is some good news. Under Biden and his administration, those depredations are being reversed, and we have in this extraordinary report where the EPA admits it did wrong and is reversing itself. Good news.
The EPA’s Scientific Integrity Policy affirms that the The EPA needs to Agency’s ability to pursue its mission to protect document and follow human health and the environment depends upon established procedures the integrity of the science on which the EPA relies. to ensure scientifically Per the policy, the EPA’s scientists and managers sound decisions are expected to represent the Agency’s scientific regarding pesticides. activities clearly, accurately, honestly, objectively, thoroughly, without political or other interference, and in a timely manner, consistent with their official responsibilities. Additionally, federal and EPA requirements include documenting the formulation and execution of policies and decisions. For pesticide registration decisions, the OCSPP’s Office of Pesticide Programs must review registrations and document its decisions.
We found that the EPA’s 2018 decision to extend registrations for three dicamba pesticide products varied from typical operating procedures. Namely, the EPA did not conduct the required internal peer reviews of scientific documents created to support the dicamba decision. While division-level management review is part of the typical operating procedure, interviewees said that senior leaders in the […]
Stephan: Today a reader wrote to ask me which country is responsible for emitting the most CO2? I thought I knew the answer but did some research and discovered the answer was more nuanced than I had thought. This data is 2019 but, in other present-day but less comprehensive sources, I see no contradiction only expansion showing this is a reliable source. As you can see America's transition out of the carbon era will have a huge effect on the earth's matrix of life.
Since 1751 the world has emitted over 1.5 trillion tonnes of CO2.1 To reach our climate goal of limiting average temperature rise to 2°C, the world needs to urgently reduce emissions. One common argument is that those countries which have added most to the CO2 in our atmosphere – contributing most to the problem today – should take on the greatest responsibility in tackling it.
We can compare each country’s total contribution to global emissions by looking at cumulativeCO2. We can calculate cumulative emissions by adding up each country’s annual CO2 emissions over time. We did this calculation for each country and region over the period from 1751 through to 2017.2
The distribution of cumulative emissions around the world is shown in the treemap. Treemaps are used to compare entities (such as countries or regions) in relation to others, and relative to the total. Here countries are presented as rectangles and colored by region. The size of each rectangle corresponds to the sum of CO2 emissions from a country between 1751 and 2017. Combined, all rectangles represent the global total.
Stephan: I have been telling you about the migration trend for years, and am seeing more and more reports about migrations arising from climate change. Here is a report describing this growing trend which is going to have an enormous impact on countries around the world.
Extreme weather is projected to displace more and more people through sudden shocks like storms and floods. Credit: DW / S. Bandopadhyay
Storms, floods, wildfires and droughts drove more than 30 million people from their homes last year, as rising temperatures wrought extra chaos on the climate, according to a report published Thursday by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center (IDMC).
Together with wars and violence, which forced 9.8 million people to flee within their borders, extreme weather brought the number of new internal displacements in 2020 to 40.5 million people, according to the IDMC. The Geneva-based research organization estimates a record-breaking 55 million people were living displaced within their own country by the end of the year.
That’s twice the number of refugees in the world.
Extreme weather is growing unnaturally strong as people burn fossil fuels and warp the climate. It is projected to drive more and more people from their homes through sudden shocks like floods and storms, as well as slower-burning crises like crop failures and drought. In rich countries, politicians have raised […]
Stephan: The Democrats are doing vastly better about climate change than the Trumpers, but still far from enough. This article describes an example of what I mean.
As President Joe Biden moves quickly to reinstate the full slate of environmental policies weakened by former President Donald Trump, including the landmark Migratory Bird Treaty Act, he’s signaling that climate change and biodiversity loss are now major priorities for the US.
Earlier this month, the Interior Department also launched a campaign to conserve 30 percent of US land and water by 2030, joining more than 50 other countries that have committed to that goal. Biden is pursuing the target, known as 30 by 30, alongside a new and more ambitious commitment to cut carbon dioxide emissions.
Yet there’s one big problem with this post-Trump environmental renaissance: The US still hasn’t joined the most important international agreement to conserve biodiversity, known as the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). And it isn’t just a small, inconsequential treaty. Designed to protect species, ecosystems, and genetic diversity, the treaty has been ratified by every other country or territory aside from the Holy See. Among other achievements, CBD has pushed countries to create national biodiversity strategies and to expand their networks of protected areas.
Since the early 1990s — when CBD was drafted, with input from the US — Republican lawmakers have blocked […]
Stephan: I have been surprised that there has been so little discussion about what would happen if the Arizona circus audit declared Trump the winner. That is so obviously what they are trying to achieve. But suppose they do? Legally they can not change the election but culturally, that's another issue, as this article describes.
The pro-audit camp outside the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Credit: Jeremy Stahl
Sitting in the press booth at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, several rows above where some two dozen tables of counters were retallying the 2020 presidential votes of the citizens of Maricopa County, Bennie Smith acknowledged something that has become readily apparent to most outside observers of the process that has come to be known as the “Arizona audit.”
“They’re not trying to capture an accurate count,” said Smith, a Democratic Tennessee election official who had traveled to Phoenix to advise the auditors. In fact, Smith said he expects the end result to be “wildly different from the count.”
Smith said he was advising the audit—a process specially ordered by the Arizona Senate and which began last month outside the county’s ordinary recount system—because he hopes to see a standardization of independent machine ballot audits of most U.S. elections. What’s going on in the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, former home to the Phoenix Suns and commonly used these days for gun shows and high school graduations, is not that. Nor […]
Stephan: I saw an interview with Rand Paul, whom I find one of the most repugnant people in Congress, as I found his father. He talked about why he did not get vaccinated. It was so stupid, so scientifically wrong, and such a failure of leadership, it made me think in historical terms and doing some research I came up with this. It is a fascinating exegetic essay about pandemics and how medical science dealt with those crises, what happened as a result, and why science is the correct path through such a crisis. I urge you to read it.
Aaron Tilley/The New York Times. Set design by Kyle Bean
In September 1918, a flu virus began spreading through Camp Devens, an overcrowded military base just outside Boston. By the end of the second week of the outbreak, one in five soldiers at the base had come down with the illness. But the speed with which it spread through the camp was not nearly as shocking as the lethality. “It is only a matter of a few hours then until death comes,” a camp physician wrote. “It is horrible. One can stand it to see one, two or 20 men die, but to see these poor devils dropping like flies sort of gets on your nerves. We have been averaging about 100 deaths per day.”
The devastation at Camp Devens would soon be followed by even more catastrophic outbreaks, as the so-called Spanish flu — a strain of influenza virus that science now identifies as H1N1 — spread around the world. In the United States, it would cause nearly half of all deaths over the next year. In what was […]
