Message From the Editor

This week, President Biden signed an executive order banning the import of Russian oil and gas. Gasoline prices are rising quickly, now averaging over $4.10 nationally, as Russian oil gets choked off from the global market. Biden couched his support for more oil and gas in the short-term with the need to accelerate the clean energy transition. But experts and activists in Ukraine, the U.S., and around the world say the ban on Russian oil imports won’t do much if the broader solution is simply finding other sources of oil and gas. Read on.

Senior Canadian officials are working with an Alberta company to open up new markets for natural gas in Germany, according to documents seen by DeSmog, contradicting a federal minister who says the Ukraine crisis can’t be solved by exporting more fossil fuels. During a two-hour virtual meeting on January 26, Alfred Sorensen, the President and CEO of Calgary-based Pieridae Energy, pitched the idea of exporting gas from Canada’s east coast to Europe to participants who included officials in Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology. Geoff Dembicki investigates.

Six months have passed since Hurricane Ida hit Louisiana and destroyed the dream home that Traditional Chief Shirell Parfait-Dardar of the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe had been building with her husband. She estimates that about 75 percent of her community is back, which she credits to the tribe’s resiliency. But the pandemic, material shortages, inflation, and insufficient funding are slowing recovery. Perhaps the biggest barrier to building back better, she says, is the lack of equitable and coordinated approaches to recovering from disaster and halting climate change. Julie Dermansky reports.

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Thanks,
Brendan DeMelle

Executive Director

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US Bans Russian Oil But Activists Want Broader Break With Fossil Fuels

— By Nick Cunningham (6 min. read)—

President Biden signed an executive order banning the import of Russian oil and gas on March 8, but activists around the world are calling for a more comprehensive break with fossil fuels, warning against replacing Russian fuels with a new drilling frenzy elsewhere.

“Today I’m announcing the United States is targeting the main artery of Russia’s economy,” President Biden said on Tuesday. “This is a step that we’re taking to inflict further pain on Putin. But there will be costs as well here in the United States.” Gasoline prices are rising quickly, now averaging over $4.10 nationally, as Russian oil gets choked off from the global market.

Biden couched his support for more oil and gas in the short-term with the need to accelerate the clean energy transition.

Amidst Ukraine Crisis, Canada Is Quietly Trying To Boost Gas Exports to EU, Documents Show

— Geoff Dembicki (3 min. read) —

Senior Canadian officials are working with an Alberta company to open up new markets for natural gas in Germany, according to documents seen by DeSmog, contradicting a federal minister who says the Ukraine crisis can’t be solved by exporting more fossil fuels. Alfred Sorensen, the President and CEO of Calgary-based Pieridae Energy, pitched the idea of exporting gas from Canada’s east coast to Europe during a recent meeting whose participants included officials in Germany’s Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology.

The two-hour virtual meeting, which took place on January 26 as tensions between Russia and Ukraine were quickly rising, included senior officials in Natural Resources Canada as well as provincial government officials from Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador.

Six Months After Hurricane Ida, Recovery for Many In South Louisiana Remains Aspirational While The Risks From Climate Change Increase

— By Julie Dermansky (9 min. read)—

“It is like it’s an environmental war zone,” Traditional Chief Shirell Parfait-Dardar of the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe, told me outside her new home in Chauvin, Louisiana, about 70 miles southwest of New Orleans.

On August 29, Hurricane Ida destroyed the dream home she and her husband had almost finished building. The stormed slammed into Louisiana with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph, just shy of a Category 5 hurricane.

When she drives to and from her new property, destroyed and damaged structures are still plentiful in the vast area impacted by the storm and she often passes the remains of her demolished former home a few miles away. It is now part of a large pile of debris in a temporary landfill.

Carbon Market Governance Body Yet to Appoint Indigenous Members

— By Phoebe Cooke (6 min. read) —

A new governance body set up to regulate how private companies offset carbon emissions has failed to appoint Indigenous board members months after pledging to do so, amid ongoing concerns over representation in the carbon marketplace.

The Integrity Council for Voluntary Carbon Markets (IC-VCM), which launched last year, has acknowledged it is “essential” to represent the communities that are home to the majority of “nature-based projects,” which carbon trading relies on.

But nearly five months after it announced the first 19 members of the board — who include a senior executive from oil company BP — the Council has still not filled the three posts set aside for Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLC), with campaigners labelling attempts at outreach as “desperate.”

Nigel Farage’s ‘Net Zero Referendum’ Drive is Steeped in Climate Science Denial

— By Adam Barnett (7 min. read)—

Nigel Farage’s campaign for a “Net Zero Referendum” is led and backed by climate science deniers, despite his repeated claims to care about the environment, DeSmog can report.

This week the GB News host and former UKIP leader said he was launching a campaign for a public referendum on the UK’s net zero policies, under the slogan “Vote Power, Not Poverty.”

He repeats familiar talking points from public figures blocking climate action, including the Net Zero Scrutiny Group of MPs, who argue that the war in Ukraine means the UK should extract more fossil fuels and overturn its moratorium on fracking. Farage went further – arguing for coal extraction at the proposed mine in Cumbria.

Alex Epstein is the director of the Center for Industrial Progress (CIP), a for-profit think tank he founded in 2011. Its mission is to “inspire Americans to embrace industrial progress as a cultural ideal.” Epstein is also a blogger at Master Resource, a “Free Market Energy Blog,” and a past fellow of the Ayn Rand Institute, an organization that has received funding from the Koch Foundations amounting to $100,000 between 2005 and 2011. “As the Founder and the Director of the Center for Industrial Progress, I make it my job to educate the public about the incredibly positive role energy and industry, particularly the oil industry, play in their lives,” Epstein wrote at CIP.

Read the full profile and browse other individuals and organizations in our Climate Disinformation Database and Koch Network Database.