After today, Earth Matters is taking a short break. The next edition will appear June 16.
A new study conducted by Data for Progress for Public Citizen asked respondents:
Do you think that oil and gas companies should be held legally accountable for their contributions to climate change, including their impacts on extreme weather events and public health?
A majority, 62%, said yes. There was a partisan gap, with 84% of Democrats, 59% of Independents, and 40% of Republicans saying yes. And a gender gap, with 67% of women, and 56% of men saying yes. And a race gap, with 71% of Black people, 68% of Latinos, and 59% of white people saying yes.
That question was followed by five others, which delved into respondents’ views about whether oil and gas companies have misled the public on climate change, explained that oil companies are already facing 40 civil lawsuits, and that some climate advocates have “proposed criminal prosecutions against these companies.” The final question:
“Knowing what you do now, do you support or oppose criminal charges being filed against oil and gas companies to hold them accountable for deaths caused by their contributions to climate change?”
Strongly or somewhat support was the choice of 49% of respondents, including 69% of Democrats, 41% of Independents, and 33% of Republicans. The race and gender gaps were much less pronounced.
Until last week when a criminal case was filed in France, all 40 climate lawsuits were civil torts. But, as Dharna Noor at The Guardian reports, last year the consumer advocacy non-profit Public Citizen proposed filing criminal charges—specifically including homicide—against the companies.
Big oil, the argument goes, knew pollution from the use of fossil fuels could have lethal consequences and yet still fought to delay climate action, which could be considered grounds for charges of reckless or negligent homicide. Asked for comment about the legal theory last year, the American Petroleum Institute, the top US fossil fuel lobby group, said that “the industry has achieved its goal of providing affordable, reliable American energy to US consumers while substantially reducing emissions and our environmental footprint”.
The seemingly radical idea has received “real, serious interest” from several district attorneys’ offices, said Aaron Regunberg, senior policy counsel with Public Citizen’s climate program. But it has also garnered some skepticism.
The obstacles are many. Such cases are hard to prove, and require long time-frames and huge amounts of public resources, making the political will for prosecution scarce even among officials who think Big Oil deserves it.
Grace Adcox, senior climate strategist at Data for Progress from the organization and advocacy group Fossil Free Media, told Noor that gaining the political backing to pull off such a prosecution might not be easy but the poll shows a possible path. “These national findings show these cases may be able to earn popular support, particularly in blue jurisdictions,” she said.
—MB
ECO-VIDEO
RESOURCES & ACTION
HALF A DOZEN OTHER THINGS TO READ (OR LISTEN TO)
One Year After Key Supreme Court Decision, Almost Half of States Leave Many Wetlands Unprotected at Environmental Integrity Project. A new report reveals that the states that joined West Virginia’s brief supporting the limits on federal authority ultimately approved by the Supreme Court last May in Sackett v. EPA are the least likely to protect wetlands that are now exempt from the Clean Water Act. This is despite claiming in their brief that states have not hesitated to “flex their authority” to protect these critical natural resources, according to the report by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP). “Justice Alito, writing for the 5-4 Sackett majority, assured us that ‘states can and will continue to exercise their primary authority to combat water pollution by regulating land and water use.’ That may have been wishful thinking,” EIP Executive Director Eric Schaeffer wrote in the report. “Based on a review of current state laws, at least 18 states do not require permits before developers dredge or fill wetlands that are now exempt from federal regulation under Sackett, regardless of their ‘physical, biological or chemical’ impact on nearby open water, while six more states lack such requirements in tidal or non-coastal areas.” These limitations arise from state laws that prohibit adoption of any regulations stricter than federal rules or which limit state jurisdiction to coastal waterways, or because states have never established a wetlands permitting program for other reasons. The EIP report notes that a March 2024 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report to Congress found that wetland loss in the U.S. between 2009 and 2019 increased by 50% over the previous decade. An area of wetlands larger than Rhode Island (about 670,000 acres) was lost to real estate development, farming, sea-level rise, and other causes from 2009 to 2019.
Automakers hedge their bets with plug-in hybrids as EV sales slow by Mari Novik, Arjun Neil Alim, Kana Inagaki & Peter Campbell at Arstechnica. A combination of still high interest rates and concern over inadequate charging infrastructure has chilled buyers’ enthusiasm for fully electric cars, prompting a rebound in sales of hybrid vehicles that most of the industry had long regarded as nothing more than a stop-gap. Tapping the resurgent demand for hybrids was a priority, executives from General Motors, Nissan, Hyundai, Volkswagen and Ford told the Financial Times’ Future of the Car Summit this week. “We have to invest heavily in the future of plug-in hybrids,” said Mark Reuss, the president of General Motors. “We have to be agile. We have a global tool chest of technical things that we can deploy fairly rapidly.” The view was echoed by José Muñoz, global president of Hyundai, which is now considering manufacturing hybrids at its new $7.6 billion plant in Georgia given more drivers are balking over buying fully electric vehicles. “If you asked me six months ago, definitely a year ago, I would have told you... fully electric,” said Muñoz. “A lot of things have happened between then and now. Electric is still the future. But now we are seeing a longer transition.”
RELATED:
Who is displaced by tornadoes, wildfires and other disasters tells a story of vulnerability and recovery challenges in America by Tricia Wachtendorf & James Kendra at The Conversation. People often think of disasters as great equalizers. After all, a tornado, wildfire or hurricane doesn’t discriminate against those in its path. But the consequences for those affected are not “one-size-fits-all.” That’s evident in recent storms, including the widespread storms that brought deadly tornadoes to several states over the 2024 Memorial Day weekend, and in the U.S. Census Bureau’s national household surveys showing who was displaced by disasters in 2023. Overall, the Census Bureau estimates that nearly 2.5 million Americans had to leave their homes because of disasters in 2023, whether for a short period or much longer. However, a closer look at demographics in the survey reveals much more about disaster risk in America and who is vulnerable. It suggests, as researchers have also found, that people with the fewest resources, as well as those who have disabilities or have been marginalized, were more likely to be displaced from their homes by disasters than other people. [...] This research also shows how disaster recovery is a social process. Recovery is not a “thing,” but rather it is linked to how we talk about recovery, make decisions about recovery and prioritize some activities over others.
Report Details ‘Catastrophic Decline’ of Migratory Fish at Yale e360. Populations of salmon, trout, eel, sturgeon, and other migrating freshwater fish have shrunk by 81 percent on average since 1970, a new report finds. “The catastrophic decline in migratory fish populations is a deafening wake-up call for the world,” said Herman Wanningen, founder of the World Fish Migration Foundation, one of the groups behind the report. “We cannot continue to let them slip silently away.” The analysis, published by a coalition of conservation groups, finds that fish have been in decline for 30 years, and that their collapse is most severe in Latin America and in Europe. Humans are driving the losses by overfishing, polluting waterways, damming rivers, converting wetlands to farmland, and by fueling warming. The report offered a silver lining, however, finding that nearly one-third of species studied have grown in number. Analysts credited the creation of new fish sanctuaries, greater legal protections for migrating fish, and the removal of dams. Last year, 487 barriers came down in Europe, while in the U.S., the biggest-ever dam removal got underway on the Klamath River in California and Oregon.
Climate Solutions for the Future of Coffee Anne Connor at Civil Eats. There’s not enough coffee in the world. In 2023, the world produced 3% less than it consumed. Growing consumer demand in Asia exacerbates the deficit, while climate change affects supply. Coffee is susceptible to heat and drought. It needs predictable conditions to thrive, and conditions now are anything but predictable. Heat and novel rain patterns harm plants and encourage coffee rust, a devastating fungal disease. Rains may come too early or too late. There may be too much rain or too little. Or all of the above.Climate models show what farmers are already experiencing on the ground: Climate change and arabica are incompatible, at least where coffee is currently grown. Climate change causes labor problems and hurts farm owners, too. Lower yields mean less cash flow, contributing to wage stagnation. Underpaid pickers don’t show up, and coffee cherries rot on the ground, wasting the harvest. Heat can also cause coffee to ripen before pickers are available; again, the cherries fall and are wasted. Some harvests last for six months instead of the standard two, and some are shockingly short. [...] With increasingly tight margins, farm owners can’t afford the upgrades needed to make their coffee production more water-efficient, and they can’t buy new cultivars that resist coffee rust and heat. If smallholder farmers are “deciding between ‘feed my family,’ or ‘renovate the farm,’ they’re going to feed their family,” says Maria Cleaveland, a coffee industry expert and board member of the U.S. chapter of the International Women’s Coffee Alliance (IWCA). Without hope, people leave—and many of them head for the U.S.
Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon
Rep. Earl Blumenauer Thinks Biking Is About To Have Its Big Moment, an interview conducted by Kea Wilson at Streetsblog. The last time we interviewed Congressional Bike Caucus founder and chair Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, it was just days before he announced that he would not be seeking re-election after 28 years in the House. But leaving office doesn’t mean he’ll be biking off into the sunset — and he says he’ll be fighting for livable communities just as fiercely in his next chapter. An excerpt:
Streetsblog: You’ve had a long career in Congress. In your view, what’s unique about this moment in the sustainable transportation movement?
Rep. Earl Blumenauer: There are unprecedented resources available to promote a cycling agenda right now. The Vision Zero notion is not just a theory; it’s part of what the Biden administration is actively working on. We have hundreds of local plans and people who are involved with these [efforts]. It is just incredibly encouraging for me, and it's something that we can share with virtually anybody. But helping people understand what's there and how to implement it, I think, is absolutely critical. So that's part of what I am focusing on now; helping people understand what we've got, and how to utilize it. This is the first time we have an administration that is committed to rebuilding and renewing America in a low-carbon, equitable fashion, and it's a gift. [...]
ECO-QUOTE
“Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control our appetites.”—William Ruckelshaus
ECOPINION
Biden vs. the Free-Trade Blob by Robert Kuttner at The American Prospect. President Biden’s initiative to quadruple tariffs on made-in-China EVs, related batteries, solar products, steel, and aluminum has engendered the usual cries of outrage from the usual suspects. But there has clearly been a major shift in the thinking of the foreign-policy establishment, and that is all to the good. [...] China’s threat to the West is not just industrial. The whole Chinese system, orchestrated by the Chinese Communist Party, uses a combination of theft of intellectual property, partnerships with Western companies on coercive terms, extensive spying on Chinese and non-Chinese alike, and a variety of tactics to gain allies in the West, including sweetheart deals with financiers and extensive cultural exchanges that lavish free trips and stipends on potential useful idiots. But listen to the rearguard arguments by those who either naïvely or disingenuously invoke “free trade,” as if the Chinese system had anything to do with free trade. Steven Rattner, a journalist turned Wall Street major player, writing in a New York Times op-ed, contends: “America’s new protectionist stance will raise prices, limit consumer choices and risk our growth.” But the increase in prices on Chinese exports is an issue only if you take a short-run economic snapshot. For the long run, Biden’s industrial and trade strategy increases American prosperity by reducing dependence on China and bringing production home.
Japanese degrowth plus communism advocate Kohei Saito
Is America Ready for ‘Degrowth Communism’? by Christopher Beam at The Atlantic. Kohei Saito knows he sounds like a madman. That’s kind of the point, the Japanese philosopher told me during a recent visit to New York City. “Maybe, then, people get shocked,” he said. “What’s this crazy guy saying?”The crazy idea is “degrowth communism,” a combination of two concepts that are contentious on their own. Degrowth holds that there will always be a correlation between economic output and carbon emissions, so the best way to fight climate change is for wealthy nations to cut back on consumption and reduce the “material throughput” that creates demand for energy and drives GDP. [,,,] Saito did not invent degrowth, but he has put his own spin on it by adding the C word. As for what kind of “communism” we’re talking about, Saito tends to emphasize workers’ cooperatives and generous social-welfare policies rather than top-down Leninist state control of the economy. He says he wants democratic change rather than revolution—though he’s fuzzy on how exactly you get people to vote for shrinkage. This message has found an enthusiastic audience. Saito’s 2020 book, Capital in the Anthropocene, sold half a million copies. He took a job at the prestigious University of Tokyo and became a regular commentator on Japanese TV—one of the few far-left talking heads in that country’s conservative media sphere.
Net Metering 3.0 Rules Create Chaos In Rooftop Solar Market In California by Steve Hanley at CleanTechnica. The thing about solar panels is that anyone can install them and make their own electricity. How dare they! It was never possible for individual homeowners to build their own thermal generating station or nuclear power plant. Rooftop solar leads to the democratization of electricity and that is anathema to the utility industry. Why, before you know it, one person may get the wild idea to share some of that rooftop solar electricity with a neighbor and then where will we be? Net metering is the engine that has driven the rooftop solar industry since its inception. Putting solar panels on the roof isn’t cheap, even with various federal and state incentives. The money the utility companies had to pay pursuant to various net metering schemes went a long way toward making rooftop solar affordable for many, especially low-income families for whom the monthly electric bill was a significant part of their household budget. Last year, the California Public Utilities Commission, with the active support of the state’s largest investor-owned utilities, eviscerated the existing net metering regulations. The new plan, known as NEM 3.0, slashes the amount the utilities have to pay their rooftop solar customers by 75 percent. Ouch! As a result, applications for new rooftop solar systems skyrocketed, as people sought to get in on the gravy before the new rules went into effect. After NEM 3.0, applications fell by about 50 percent. Since then, several large rooftop solar companies have gone bankrupt.
Employees of Solar Forward install solar electric panels on a residential rooftop.
The Stench of Climate Change Denial by Paul Krugman at The New York Times. Along the Gulf and South Atlantic coasts, The Washington Post reported last week, “sea levels have risen at least six inches since 2010.” This may not sound like much, but it leads to rising groundwater and elevated risks of overflowing [septic] tanks. [...] The emerging sewage crisis is only one of many disasters we can expect as the planet continues to warm, and nowhere near the top of the list. [...] There has been a trend in recent studies to mark up estimates of the damage from climate change. The uncertainty remains huge, but it’s a good guess that things will be even worse than you thought. So we’re going to have to take a wide range of steps to mitigate the damage — including expanding sewer systems to limit the rising tide of, um, sludge. But will we take those steps? Climate denial was originally all about fossil fuel interests, and to some extent it still is. But it has also become a front in the culture war, with politicians like Ron DeSantis of Florida — who happens to be the governor of one of the states at greatest immediate risk — apparently deciding that even mentioning climate change is woke.
RELATED: The South's aging water infrastructure isgetting pounded by climate change. Fixing it is also a struggle
Derrick Z. Jackson
In the Race for Clean Energy, the United States is Both a Leader and a Laggard—Here’s How by Derrick Z. Jackson at the Union of Concerned Scientists. According to the [British think tank] Ember report, per capita carbon dioxide emissions in the United States are three times higher than the global average and remain among the highest of all major economies. Many U.S. politicians who are apologists for the fossil fuel industry often deflect blame for heat-trapping gases onto newer mass emitters such as China or India. Indeed, China is a conundrum, adding more than half of the world’s solar and wind installations last year yet still producing more than half the world’s electricity from coal and spewing nearly a third of global carbon dioxide emissions. Countries like China and India clearly need to do more. But the fact remains that, even with reductions of recent years, the United States, which produced one quarter of the world’s global warming gases two decades ago, still produces between 13% and 14% of the world’s carbon emissions, more than triple our share of the world’s population. As the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says on its Climate.gov website: “The United States bears a greater share of the responsibility for current conditions—on both a national and per-person level.” A recent analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists shows that the best ways for the United States to meet its climate goals under the Paris Agreement and achieve a near phaseout of fossil fuels are to ramp up renewables in the power sector, increase energy efficiency, and electrify buildings, transportation, and industry.
Cutting forests for solar energy ‘misses the plot’ on climate action by Judith D. Schwartz at Mongabay. I recently participated in a conference on Enhancing Nature’s Complexity for Climate Stability at the Technical University of Munich. One focus was new science on how natural forests influence the movement of moisture, and therefore heat, around the globe. Think forest as “verb” rather than “noun.” One of the organizers, theoretical physicist Anastassia Makarieva of the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, said, “The biosphere is divided between natural ecosystems that work for stability and disturbed ecosystems that cannot do that work.” In other words, our climate can only be as salutary as the state of our ecosystems. This does not mean that CO2 concentrations are irrelevant. Rather, carbon in the atmosphere can be seen as a lever, part of an overall climate-regulation system. The other primary lever, or variable, is clouds, which may either trap or reflect heat. Ecological processes mobilized by biota—by life—to a large extent determine cloud patterns and thus directly affect cooling and warming. The good news is nature’s tendency is to self-heal and that even extensive damaged ecosystems can be restored—something I’ve seen time and again over fifteen years of environmental reporting. The trouble is that the vitality of ecosystems is not considered in discussions of climate. We’re too busy watching CO2 concentrations, riding the jagged upward-sloping line of the Keeling Curve, just as Thembi had her snout to the ground while the rabbit skittered away. Unfortunately, our land- and seascapes are under continual threat from industry, development, and, ironically, the implementation of renewable energy. The latter is something I’m dealing with in real time, as an 80-plus acre industrial solar project in nearby Shaftsbury, Vermont is poised to go through despite community opposition.
OTHER GREEN STUFF
Hollywood movies rarely reflect climate change crisis. These researchers want to change that • Giant Hail Is the Weather Threat Keeping Insurers Up at Night • How a simple fix could double the size of the U.S. electricity grid • Climate Change Added a Month’s Worth of Extra-Hot Days in Past Year • Urban gardening may improve human health: Microbial exposure boosts immune system • NOAA 2024 Hurricane Forecast Is for More Storms Than Ever Before • Microplastics found in the testicles of both man and man’s best friend