SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
big oil
Big Oil Tax Could Boost Global Loss and Damage Fund by 2000%
"The damages resulting from the industry’s operations are disproportionately borne by people who did not cause the crisis," said one campaigner.
Nov 18, 2024
A modest tax on the world's seven largest oil and gas companies could generate hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the decade to assist poor and vulnerable communities with the impact of the climate crisis, according to a new analysis out Monday from the groups Greenpeace International and Stamp Out Poverty.
The groups found that a tax on fossil fuel extraction, which would increase each year, combined with additional taxes on excess profits would grow the UN's Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage by more than 2,000%.
The loss and damage fund was created two years ago during the COP27 summit in Egypt with the aim of helping vulnerable countries confront the risings costs of climate disasters. Last year, a group of nations that included the United States made their first financial pledges to the fund—though the size of the U.S. pledge was panned as "paltry" by climate justice advocates. As one of the world's largest fossil fuel emitters, the initial pledge of $17.5 million was miniscule relative to the hundreds of billions in fossil fuel subsidies the U.S. government handed out in 2022.
Total commitments to the loss and damage fund currently hover at around $720 million, according toThe New York Times.
This year, at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, boosting the money in the fund is top of mind for a number of UN leaders.
"The $700 million is obviously insufficient," Jorge Moreira da Silva, the executive director of the United Nations Office for Project Services, toldthe Times.
"In an era of climate extremes, loss & damage finance is a must. And we must get serious about the level of finance required. At #COP29, I urged governments to deliver. In the name of justice," U.N. Sectary-General António Guterres wrote on X as the summit kicked off last week.
The joint analysis—which focused on world's largest publicly traded oil and gas companies, a group that includes ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron, TotalEnergies, BP, Equinor, and Eni—illustrates how major polluters could be tapped to support the fund.
Stamp Out Poverty researchers have "found that home government collection of volume-based [climate damages tax] is feasible, with many countries already collecting volume-based revenue from oil and gas producers," according to the report.
The briefing notes that the Climate Damages Tax "would be a fee on the extraction of each tonne of coal, barrel of oil or cubic metre of gas, calculated at a consistent rate based on how much CO2e [carbon dioxide equivalent] is embedded within the fossil fuel."
To illustrate the impact of this tax, Greenpeace and Stamp Out Poverty looked at the estimated costs associated with multiple extreme weather events in 2024 alongside the hypothetical tax revenue.
Hurricane Beryl, which impacted multiple Caribbean islands, Mexico and the U.S. Gulf Coast, caused at least $6.6 billion in estimated damages and losses, according to the report. Meanwhile, imposing a hypothetical Climate Damages Tax on the 2023 carbon emissions from ExxonMobil alone would raise enough money to cover nearly half of that price tag.
ExxonMobil made $38.6 billion in adjusted earnings for 2023, so levying a tax of $5 per tonne of CO2e in 2023 would yield $3.19 billion. Over the first year, the combined revenue from all seven companies would be over $15 billion. As the levy was increased over the two following years, that annual figure would grow to over $37 billion. The analysis, according to its authors "contributes to the growing civil society call for long term tax on fossil fuel extraction."
The report comes on the heels of two weeks of worldwide protests by Greenpeace activists and allies, during which some demonstrators confronted fossil fuel executives about their role in fueling climate disaster and demanded that they "pay for the climate damage they cause."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'We Need a Shift': Climate Leaders Demand End of COP Dominated by Petrostates, Big Oil Lobby
"It is now clear that the COP is no longer fit for purpose," a coalition of scientists and advocates wrote as more than 1,700 fossil fuel lobbyists swarmed COP29 in Azerbaijan.
Nov 15, 2024
The crushing influence of petrostates and fossil fuel industry lobbyists has rendered the annual United Nations climate conference unfit to deliver the kinds of sweeping changes needed to avert catastrophic warming, a coalition of leading scientists, advocates, and policy experts warned in an open letter released Friday as the first week of the COP29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan came to a close.
Acknowledging that the COP process has achieved "important diplomatic milestones" and "a remarkable consensus" on climate targets over nearly three decades of international negotiations, the coalition wrote that the policy framework produced by dozens of U.N. summits is not sufficient to solve the pressing crises facing humanity in an age of runaway warming and large-scale climate devastation.
"Science tells us that global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 7.5% annually to have any chance of staying within the 1.5°C threshold, a prerequisite for the stability of our planet and a livable future for much of humanity. In 2024, the task is unequivocal: Global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 4 billion tonnes," reads the letter, whose signatories include former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, former U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary Christiana Figueres, Club of Rome global ambassador Sandrine Dixson-Declève, and Potsdam Institute for Climate Action Research director Johan Rockström.
"Twenty-eight COPs have delivered us with the policy framework to achieve this, but it is now clear that the COP is no longer fit for purpose," the letter continues. "Its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity."
The letter calls not for a complete abandonment of COP but rather "a fundamental overhaul" that would enable the U.N.-led summit "to deliver on agreed commitments and ensure the urgent energy transition and phase-out of fossil energy."
The coalition of experts and advocates recommended a number of reforms for future COP summits, including "strict eligibility criteria to exclude countries who do not support the phase-out/transition away from fossil energy," new "mechanisms to hold countries accountable for their climate targets and commitments," and changes to limit the influence of fossil fuel lobbyists and ensure equitable representation.
"At the last COP, fossil fuel lobbyists outnumbered representatives of scientific institutions, Indigenous communities, and vulnerable nations," Figueres said in a statement Friday. "We cannot hope to achieve a just transition without significant reforms to the COP process that ensure fair representation of those most affected."
Rockström added that "there is still a window of opportunity for a safe landing for humanity, but this requires a global climate policy process that can deliver change at exponential speed and scale."
"Planet Earth is in critical condition," he said. "We have already crossed six planetary boundaries."
"2024 marks yet another year at COP where we see those fighting the climate crisis outnumbered by those that have contributed to it the most—the fossil fuel industry."
The open letter was released in the wake of a new analysis from the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition showing that at least 1,773 fossil fuel lobbyists have been granted access to the COP29 summit—giving the industry primarily responsible for the global climate emergency more representation than nearly every country present at the talks in Baku.
According to the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition, the fossil fuel industry has more representation at COP29 than the 10 most climate-vulnerable nations combined.
Additionally, The Guardianreported Friday that "at least 132 oil and gas company bosses and staff were invited" to COP29 as "guests" by Azerbaijan's government and "given host country badges."
"2024 marks yet another year at COP where we see those fighting the climate crisis outnumbered by those that have contributed to it the most—the fossil fuel industry," said Joseph Sikulu of 350.org. "How can we achieve the ambition that is needed to save our homes when these negotiations are continually flooded with fossil fuel lobbyists? There is a ban on tobacco lobbyists from attending the World Health Organization's summit, why is that not the case for the fossil fuel industry at COP?"
"We demand that the upcoming COP presidencies set clear rules against the presence of fossil fuel interests at the negotiating table," Sikulu added. "Our lives depend on it."
Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president, joined climate advocates on Friday in decrying Big Oil's capture of the U.N. climate summit.
"It's unfortunate that the fossil fuel industry and the petrostates have seized control of the COP process to an unhealthy degree," said Gore.
Lamenting that the follow-through on COP28 commitments to transition away from fossil fuels has been "very weak," Gore said he believes "one of the reasons for that is that the petrostates have too much control over the process."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Picks Big Oil Ally and Drilling Enthusiast Doug Burgum for Interior
"Burgum is an oligarch completely out of touch with the overwhelming majority of Americans who cherish our natural heritage," said the executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity.
Nov 15, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump announced Thursday that he has chosen billionaire North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a close ally of the fossil fuel industry and vocal proponent of oil drilling, to serve as head of the Interior Department in the incoming administration, a critical post tasked with overseeing hundreds of millions of acres of federal land and water.
Burgum, a friend of oil billionaire Harold Hamm, served as a kind of middleman between Trump's presidential campaign and the fossil fuel industry during the 2024 race. The Washington Postreported that Burgum's selection as interior secretary will "give Hamm expansive influence over policy related to drilling on public lands, at a time his company stands to benefit from the rule changes Trump envisions."
Burgum and Hamm have already worked to shape Trump's energy policy during the presidential transition, with Reutersreporting Thursday that the pair is leading the push for a repeal of electric vehicle tax credits—a key component of the Biden administration's signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act.
During a fundraiser over the summer, Burgum said Trump could "on day one" move to unleash "liquid fuels," accusing the Biden administration of waging war on "American energy."
"Whether it's baseload electricity, whether it's oil, whether it's gas, whether it's ethanol, there is an attack on liquid fuels," Burgum declared.
"We're ready to fight Burgum and Trump's extreme agenda every step of the way."
Trump campaigned on a pledge to "drill, baby, drill" in the face of a fossil fuel-driven climate emergency that is wreaking deadly havoc in the United States and around the world. While the Biden administration has presided over record oil and gas production and approved many new drilling permits to the dismay of climate advocates, Trump has made clear that he intends to take a sledgehammer to any guardrails constraining the fossil fuel industry.
In Burgum, Trump will have an enthusiastic champion of oil and gas drilling in a Cabinet that is shaping up to be a boon for the fossil fuel industry. Burgum helped organize the dinner at which Trump urged the oil and gas industry to raise $1 billion for his campaign in exchange for tax breaks and large-scale deregulation.
"We're going do things with energy and with land—Interior—that is going to be incredible," Trump said late Thursday.
Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement that "Burgum is an oligarch completely out of touch with the overwhelming majority of Americans who cherish our natural heritage and don't want our parks, wildlife refuges, and other special places carved up and destroyed."
"We're ready to fight Burgum and Trump's extreme agenda every step of the way," Suckling added.
In his current capacity as North Dakota governor, Burgum is pushing a 2,000-mile carbon pipeline project set to be built by Summit Carbon Solutions with the stated goal of capturing planet-warming CO2 and storing it underground. Climate advocates have long derided carbon capture and storage—a method boosted by the fossil fuel industry—as a dangerous scam that can actually result in more emissions.
The Associated Pressreported earlier this year that "the blowback in North Dakota to the Summit project has been intense with Burgum caught in the crossfire."
"There are fears a pipeline rupture would unleash a lethal cloud of CO2," the outlet noted. "Landowners worry their property values will plummet if the pipeline passes under their land."
The North Dakota Public Service Commission is planning to meet Friday to vote on the project.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular