Big Oil’s BS

 

Big Oil is full of BS.

While polluting our environment, they’re also leaving behind thousands of oil wells and expecting taxpayers to deal with the clean up.

Here in California, roughly 35,000 oil and gas wells sit idle off our coast. Experts fear that polluters could leave behind around 70,000 wells if they’re not held accountable.

When my kids leave things around the house, I tell them to pick their stuff up. So why does Big Oil get to leave massive oil rigs in the middle of the ocean?

Here’s what we’re doing to stop the contamination: The bipartisan infrastructure bill that Congress passed in the fall will help plug some of these abandoned wells. I’ve also introduced legislation that would raise fees on polluters who are extracting from our public lands—saving taxpayers money and helping protect our environment.

Big Oil has profited at the expense of our planet and American taxpayers for too long. I’m proud to be holding them accountable.

—Katie Porter

Congresswoman Katie Porter is fighting for affordable child care, lower cost prescription drugs, climate action, and a strong, stable, globally competitive economy that works for everyone. She’s standing up to corporate special interests and doesn’t take any money from corporate PACs or lobbyists, so we rely on grassroots supporters like you pitching in when they can. Make a contribution today.

 

Paid for by Katie Porter for Congress

Our campaign is powered by grassroots supporters chipping in to emails just like this one. 

To contribute via check, please address to: Katie Porter for Congress, PO Box 5176, Irvine, CA 92616

 

RSN: FOCUS: Oil Companies' Profits Soared to $174 Billion This Year as US Gas Prices Rose

 

 

06 December 21

Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News

PEOPLE STILL COME, BUT THEY’RE TOTALLY UNMOVED BY THE FUNDRAISING APPEALS — People still come to Reader Supported News. In the age of social media giants who have devastated Progressive publishing, that’s no small thing. But the one thing we cannot have, the one thing the Facebooks of the world have made impossible is a budget. We have to play by their rules: “free.” But it’s not free @ social media is it? You of course are the product, you are what is for sale. We don’t harvest you, but we do ask you to chip-in. As a result we have far more trust and far less money. And that’s ok, to a point. Reader Supported News works. Take it seriously.
Marc Ash • Founder, Reader Supported News

Sure, I'll make a donation!

 

FOCUS: Oil Companies' Profits Soared to $174 Billion This Year as US Gas Prices Rose
Oliver Milman, Guardian UK
Milman writes: "The largest oil and gas companies made a combined $174 billion in profits in the first nine months of the year as gasoline prices climbed in the US, according to a new report."

Exxon, Chevron, Shell and BP among group of 24 who resisted calls to increase production but doled out shareholder dividends

The largest oil and gas companies made a combined $174bn in profits in the first nine months of the year as gasoline prices climbed in the US, according to a new report.

The bumper profit totals, provided exclusively to the Guardian, show that in the third quarter of 2021 alone, 24 top oil and gas companies made more than $74bn in net income. From January to September, the net income of the group, which includes Exxon, Chevron, Shell and BP, was $174bn.

Exxon alone posted a net income of $6.75bn in the third quarter, its highest profit since 2017, and has seen its revenue jump by 60% on the same period last year. The company credited the rising cost of oil for bolstering these profits, as did BP, which made $3.3bn in third-quarter profit. “Rising commodity prices certainly helped,” Bernard Looney, chief executive of BP, told investors at the latest earnings report.

Gasoline prices have hit a seven-year high in the US due to the rising cost of oil, with Americans now paying about $3.40 for a gallon of fuel compared with around $2.10 a year ago.

The Biden administration has warned the price hikes are hurting low-income people, even as it attempts to implement a climate agenda that would see America move away from fossil fuels, and has released 50m barrels of oil from the national strategic reserve to help dampen costs.

But oil and gas companies have shown little willingness so far to ramp up production to help reduce costs and the new report, by the government watchdog group Accountable.US, accuses them of “taking advantage of bloated prices, fleecing American families along the way” amid ongoing fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Americans looking for someone to blame for the pain they experience at the pump need look no further than the wealthy oil and gas company executives who choose to line their own pockets rather than lower gas prices with the billions of dollars in profit big oil rakes in month after month,” said Kyle Herrig, president of Accountable.US.

The analysis of major oil companies’ financials shows that 11 of the group gave payouts to shareholders worth more than $36.5bn collectively this year, while a dozen bought back $8bn-worth of stock. This apparent focus, rather than on further drilling, has caused some frustration within the federal government, with Jennifer Granholm, the US energy secretary, stating that “the oil and gas companies are not flipping the switch as quickly as the demand requires.”

A glut of new oil drilling has made the US awash with oil in recent years, turning the country into a top-level exporter as well as domestic supplier, but this has kept prices low to the displeasure of investors. “A lot of this has been driven by investor sentiment,” said Helima Croft, head of global commodity strategy at RBC Capital Markets, of the current reluctance to expand production. “They don’t want them to spoil the party.”

The situation has left the White House in an awkward position with its commitments to rapidly reduce planet-heating emissions, with environmentalists furious at administration attempts to expand drilling and fossil fuel companies also unhappy over some of its earlier climate-related moves, such as shutting down the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.

The oil and gas industry has fought Joe Biden’s attempts to pause new drilling permits on federal land, despite its unwillingness to expand operations in order to reap the returns of costlier oil and the fact the industry currently sits on 14m acres of already leased land that isn’t being used, an area about double the size of Massachusetts.

“It’s not the government that is banning them from drilling more,” Pavel Molchanov, an analyst at Raymond James, told CNN. “It’s pressure from their shareholders.”

Aside from its role in the current high gasoline prices, the oil and gas industry is a leading driver of the climate crisis, the reality of which it sought to conceal from the public for decades, and is a key instigator of the air pollution that kills nearly 9 million a year, a death toll three times that of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

The American Petroleum Institute, a leading industry lobby group, pointed to a blog that blamed the Biden administration for policies that “significantly weaken the incentives to invest in America’s energy future” but did not answer questions on production rates of oil companies.

READ MORE

 

Contribute to RSN

Follow us on facebook and twitter!

Update My Monthly Donation

PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611

OIL-BACKED GROUP OPPOSES OFFSHORE WIND — FOR ENVIRONMENTAL REASONS

 

There's always a KOCH connection:

The foundation argues that any offshore wind development would pose risks for the environment given North Carolina’s location and vulnerability to hurricanes, “depressed tourism,” and potential ecological damage. But those concerns were not raised a few years ago, when the John Locke Foundation, which is funded heavily by the Charles Koch Institute and Charles Koch Foundation, advocated for oil drilling off the coast of North Carolina.

TomDispatch 

t

Lee Fang at The Intercept on the slimy efforts of one Big Oil-funded libertarian think tank to end a wind energy project off the coast of Delaware and Maryland.

—Erika

In November 2019, local property owners in Delaware and Maryland were sent a letter from “Save Our Beach View” asking neighbors to lobby local politicians against the Skipjack wind farm.

The plan, which was approved in 2017, sanctioned a Dutch company to build a 120-megawatt capacity wind energy project — enough to power 40,000 homes by placing turbines 26 nautical miles offshore. The letter warned that the project would “irreparably damage beach tourism, home values and the economy,” “lower rents generally,” and produce “no environmental benefit.” “In fact,” the letter claimed, “regional air quality would become worse because of them.”

While the letter was signed by a local resident, it made no mention of its true author: the Caesar Rodney Institute, a libertarian think tank at the time funded by the oil industry. The subterfuge was intentional. In an interview with the State Policy Network, a group that coordinates best practices for oil-and-gas-backed and libertarian think tanks, the Caesar Rodney Institute said it produced the letter and had it signed by a local concerned beach homeowner to “establish rapport” with the target audience of local residents and merchants.

Save Our Beach View was also created by Caesar Rodney expressly for the purpose of undermining the Skipjack project. “Our strategy was to market and promote the ‘campaign’ rather than our organization, so we came up with the name ‘Save Our Beach View,’ a project of the Caesar Rodney Institute,” said the think tank’s representative in the interview.

THEINTERCEPT.COM

Oil-Backed Group Opposes Offshore Wind — for Environmental Reasons

LINK

Why I put 479 pounds of rice in my car

 

Big Oil is greedy, and they want even more of our public land. That’s why during last week’s Oversight hearing (which I joined from my driveway in Irvine) I used bags of rice to demonstrate how much public land Big Oil is holding onto—and not even using.

There were 479 pounds of rice in the back of my van, and each grain represented just ONE of the 13.9 million publicly owned, unused acres of land leased by Big Oil. That’s equivalent to all of the land in Maryland and New Jersey combined.

Our public land belongs to the American people, not Big Oil. But the oil and gas executives I talked to refuse to support a pause on new public land leases. They already have millions of acres, but they say it’s still not enough.

I’ll keep standing up to Big Oil—the whole industry is bad for our economy and bad for our environment.

Onward,

Katie

Paid for by Katie Porter for Congress

To contribute via check, please address to: Katie Porter for Congress, PO Box 5176, Irvine, CA 92616

Rep. Katie Porter dragged oil execs for wanting more leases to drill while they sit on 13.9 million acres of unused land

VVVV

Rep. Katie Porter will always put the American people before special interests like Big Oil. At a House Oversight Committee Hearing, she called out fossil fuel executives for their hypocrisy on climate action and how they use our federal land.

President Biden called Rep. Katie Porter the night before the House is expected to pass President Biden’s social and climate change agenda. Rep. Porter joins Lawrence O’Donnell to describe what the President said and how Democrats got the bill “over the finish line.”

Rep. Katie Porter breaks down how companies use laws to deny justice to people harmed by dangerous products, explains how bankruptcy was not designed for companies like Johnson & Johnson to avoid liability and weighs in on the Build Back Better Plan. #DailyShow #TrevorNoah #RepKatiePorter

Baby orcas vs. Big Oil and shipping industry

 

Southern Resident Killer Whales are among the most iconic species in the world -- but their numbers continue to decline due to shipping and oil tanker traffic: they are down to only 73 in existence. And among these threats, one disaster can render this species extinct -- a single oil spill. Help protect endangered orcas from extinction by donating $15 to Friends of the Earth Action today. 

Orcas have never needed you more than now. You see, orcas only give birth to one baby at a time every three to ten years. And recently, scientists have found that three of the orcas in the Southern Resident Killer Whale pods may be pregnant! While this is great news, we cannot ignore the threats that are awaiting these orcas, even before they are born.  

The odds are not in their favor. From increased tanker traffic, to less chinook salmon available for consumption, to high miscarriage rates and the potential threat of an oil spill, we need to fight for a better future for these orcas. And with Marina -- the 47-year-old orca grandmother -- presumed dead, these babies are already facing a higher likelihood of dying -- 6x higher to be exact. 

Southern Resident Killer Whales are the only endangered species of killer whales in the United States -- with only 73 left in the remaining pods. Once thriving in the waters of Washington and British Columbia, this incredibly precious species has been on the decline for years largely due to oil spills. And yet, private companies are looking to build the Roberts Bank T2 shipping terminal and expand the Trans Mountain Pipeline which would be a direct threat to the pods’ survival. 

Building the shipping terminal would increase vessel traffic and ship noise in these orcas’ habitats. Studies show that tankers coming within 1,200 feet of orcas can dramatically disrupt their feeding habits. They become disoriented and cannot use echolocation to hunt for food -- some giving up feeding entirely -- resulting in severe malnourishment and stress, two things that would severely impact orca pregnancies. 

The increased traffic resulting from these disastrous megaprojects would also further disrupt the migration patterns of chinook salmon in these areas -- the main food source for these orcas. At a time when pregnant orcas must eat for two, the diminished supply of chinook salmon would affect their ability to carry to full term. 

The Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion would also carry additional threats to these orca families. It would add 590,000 barrels a day of the dirtiest toxic tar sands oil while increasing tanker traffic from a little over one tanker a week to one per day! This activity would significantly increase the risk of a catastrophic oil spill -- one that could render the endangered orcas extinct forever. 

The calves are facing immediate and catastrophic threats to their existence before they are even born. The birth of these orcas can help turn around the drastically declining population of the Southern Resident Killer Whales -- but this is a very critical time in their survival. Pregnant orca mothers are battling grief at the loss of family members like Cappuccino and Marina, starvation, and stress -- a combination of things that negatively affect their pregnancies. 

Orcas are crucial to a thriving ocean habitat and our own health. They release vital nutrients for phytoplankton, which in turn provide half of the oxygen we breathe while absorbing hundreds of thousands of tons of carbon each year. We depend on this flow of nutrients for healthy ecosystems and a functioning planet, which is why we must protect these orcas at all costs. But the shipping and oil industries want to disrupt this for their own profit without a second thought to the consequences. 

Big Oil and the shipping industry are looking to add fuel to the fire, disrupting and threatening the existence of these orcas with their proposed projects. Just as we rely on orcas for the health of our ecosystems, they are relying on us to fight for them at a time when there is potential for hope.  

Friends of the Earth Action is working with the Biden administration to increase protections for Southern Resident Killer Whales, but we need your help to step up our fight. We need you to be the hero in this story so we can welcome these orca calves into a brighter future for them and their families. 

Standing with you,  
Marcie Keever,  
Oceans & vessels program director,
Friends of the Earth Action

Contact Us: Friends of the Earth Action Washington, D.C. | Berkeley, CA 1-877-843-8687

RSN: FOCUS: Bill McKibben | As Biden Speaks in Glasgow, Manchin Muddles the Message

 

03 November 21

Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News

 

FOCUS: Bill McKibben | As Biden Speaks in Glasgow, Manchin Muddles the Message
Bill McKibben, The New Yorker
McKibben writes: "Monday should have been a day of great triumph for America, marking its emergence from the Trump years."

Monday should have been a day of great triumph for America, marking its emergence from the Trump years.

Joe Biden, who had promised to come to the Glasgow climate summit with “bells on,” appeared to snooze for a moment as he sat listening to speeches at Monday’s session. It was a highly relatable interlude. An inescapable feeling of fatigue has settled in around the summit—barring some useful surprise, much of the air seems to have been sucked from this conclave before it began, not least because of the ongoing antics of Senator Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, whose influence was easy to feel even a (rising) ocean away.

The world arrived at the Paris climate meeting, six years ago, primed for action: recovering economies, a discernible beginning to a drop in the price of renewable energy, and a surge of activism around the globe meant that negotiators couldn’t really go home without having reached a groundbreaking agreement. But now that the time has come to strengthen that pact—and the whole point of this Glasgow conference is to get countries to substantially increase the commitments they made in Paris—conditions have changed. We have lived through the hottest years on record since Paris, but the pandemic has driven the climate and other crises out of the headlines, and sidelined (or, rather, Zoom-lined) movements calling for change. The world is also lurching through a cycle of illiberalism, and, although its hold has loosened in the United States, it has left figures such as India’s Narendra Modi and Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro in positions of power. Modi is in Glasgow, and he announced on Monday that India would get to net zero by 2070—a half century from now. (Granted, meeting even that mark would mean that the country will have generated far less carbon in the course of history than the United States.) Bolsonaro is not attending, but, even as the Amazon region is being destroyed at an ever faster rate, Brazil’s representatives announced that the nation is “a longtime champion of the environmental agenda.” Xi Jinping, of China, and Vladimir Putin, of Russia, are also skipping the summit; on Monday, China submitted a written statement that basically just repeated its Paris pledges.

And the United States? This should have been a day of great triumph for America, marking its emergence from the Trump years—nothing the former President did caused as much international anger as withdrawing from the Paris accords, and Biden did apologize for that act. But, owing largely to Manchin, Biden arrived in Glasgow without the set of dramatic legislative victories that were supposed to unlock this conference. Manchin is currently the Senate’s leading recipient of donations from the fossil-fuel industry, and it is proving a sound investment. He stripped any real guarantees of carbon reduction from Biden’s Build Back Better plan, leaving in their place five hundred billion dollars to subsidize the construction of green energy. As Daniel Aldana Cohen, a professor of sociology at Berkeley who focusses on the climate, tweeted on Monday, the basic “economic theory is that half a percent of GDP will be enough of a thirst trap for green capital that private investors will overhaul the economy, guided by invisible hands.” And even that is no guarantee—Manchin, having promised “clarity” on his stance Monday morning, said a few hours later that he was “open to supporting a final bill that helps move our country forward. But I’m equally open to voting against a bill that hurts our country.” One imagines that the statement quickly made its way through the vast negotiating hall in Glasgow.

Manchin’s muddling is why Biden’s summit speech sounded fairly flat—it was full of talk about how his stripped-down plan would create jobs, but, in the middle of a labor shortage, that’s not the most compelling selling point. A large cast of American advisers accompanied the President to Glasgow, and they did their best to sell the plan—Gina McCarthy, the Administration’s domestic climate czar, said that America was “kicking butt” on offshore wind, for instance. America’s chief climate envoy, John Kerry, was perhaps more accurate. A month ago, he called the Glasgow conference the planet’s “last, best hope”; now he said that “Glasgow was never going to be, you know, the definitive one meeting.”

And, of course, he’s right. This is a huge war fought on many fronts, and on some of them responsible leaders are on the offensive. The price of renewable energy is now in such free fall that it’s clear how the energy future will eventually play out; what’s not clear is how fast it will happen. Activists are back on the streets, too late perhaps to change the outcome of this session but with a passion that should worry the big banks and asset managers who are increasingly the target of their efforts. It’s still possible that some startling new development could emerge to revitalize this conference. But, for the moment, although the power of Big Oil is much weakened, it isn’t broken, and that means that the thirty-year slog toward rational climate policy will have to plod on.

READ MORE

 

Contribute to RSN

Follow us on facebook and twitter!

Update My Monthly Donation

PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611

RSN: FOCUS | Bill McKibben: "Manchin's Latest Hissy Fit" Threatens to Curb Biden Agenda at UN Climate Summit

 

 

02 November 21

Live on the homepage now!
Reader Supported News

 

FOCUS | Bill McKibben: "Manchin's Latest Hissy Fit" Threatens to Curb Biden Agenda at UN Climate Summit
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "'The air went out of this conference' when Biden showed up with no major climate legislation passed, says Bill McKibben of 350.org in Glasgow."

As President Biden addressed the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow on Monday, warning that “climate change is already ravaging the world,” back home his climate agenda was dealt a major setback when Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia criticized the slimmed-down $1.85 trillion Build Back Plan. “The air went out of this conference” when Biden showed up with no major climate legislation passed, says Bill McKibben of 350.org in Glasgow. “It makes it extremely difficult to proceed when the world’s carbon champion — the country that’s poured more carbon into the atmosphere by far than any other — won’t provide leadership.”

Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show in Glasgow at the United Nations climate summit. At the opening ceremony on Monday, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres urged world leaders to do more to address the climate emergency.

SECRETARY-GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES: The six years since the Paris Climate Agreement have been the six hottest years on record. Our addiction to fossil fuels is pushing humanity to the brink. We face a stark choice: Either we stop it, or it stops us. And it’s time to say, “Enough.” Enough of brutalizing biodiversity. Enough of killing ourselves with carbon. Enough of treating nature like a toilet. Enough of burning and drilling and mining our way deeper. We are digging our own graves.

AMY GOODMAN: Over 120 world leaders are attending a two-day World Leaders Summit as part of the climate summit. This is Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley.

PRIME MINISTER MIA MOTTLEY: Failure to provide the critical finance and that of loss and damage is measured, my friends, in lives and livelihoods in our communities. This is immoral, and it is unjust. If Glasgow is to deliver on the promises of Paris, it must close these three gaps. So I ask to you: What must we say to our people living on the frontline in the Caribbean, in Africa, in Latin America, in the Pacific, when both ambition and, regrettably, some of the needed faces at Glasgow are not present? What excuse should we give for the failure? In the words of that Caribbean icon Eddy Grant, “will they mourn us on the frontline?” When will we, as world leaders across the world, address the pressing issues that are truly causing our people angst and worry, whether it is climate or whether it is vaccines?

AMY GOODMAN: A number of countries have made new pledges to address the climate crisis. India has vowed to reduce its carbon emissions to net zero by 2070. Over a hundred leaders have agreed to end deforestation by 2030. And the United States is announcing a new plan today to reduce methane emissions. On Monday, President Biden addressed the U.N. climate summit.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Climate change is already ravaging the world. We’ve heard from many speakers. It’s not hypothetical. It’s not a hypothetical threat. It’s destroying people’s lives and livelihoods, and doing it every single day. It’s costing our nations trillions of dollars. Record heat and drought are fueling more widespread and more intense wildfires in some places and crop failures in others. Record flooding and what used to be a once-in-a-century storms are now happening every few years. In the past few months, the United States has experienced all of this, and every region in the world can tell similar stories. And in an age where this pandemic has made so painfully clear that no nation can wall itself off from borderless threats, we know that none of us can escape the worse that’s yet to come if we fail to seize this moment.

AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, yes, President Biden addressed the U.N. climate summit. He later apologized for the United States pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement when President Trump was in office.

While Biden repeatedly vowed to address the climate crisis, his climate agenda was dealt a major setback back in Washington, D.C., when Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia criticized the slimmed-down $1.75 trillion Build Back Plan to address the climate crisis and to expand the nation’s social safety net. The plan will only pass the Senate if Manchin and Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema come around to support it. It was interesting Senator Manchin used Biden’s moment in Glasgow to hold his own news conference in Washington, D.C., to say, well, he’s weighing whether to support the Build Back Better Act.

To talk more about the U.N. climate summit and Biden’s climate agenda, we’re joined by two guests in Glasgow. Tom Goldtooth is executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network, member of the Diné and Dakota Nations. He lives in Minnesota. Bill McKibben is an author, educator, environmentalist, co-founder of 350.org, his latest book, Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? He writes a weekly climate newsletter for The New Yorker.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! We’re going to begin with Bill McKibben. Both our guests are in Glasgow. Bill, if you can respond to President Biden yesterday, the speech, both what’s happening in Glasgow with the U.N. — with the world leaders, over 120 gathered — this is far different than any other time — and what’s happening back in Washington, D.C., with Senator Manchin trying to steal the headlines?

BILL McKIBBEN: Sure, Amy and Juan. What a pleasure to be with you. And it’s strange not to have you here, I’ve got to say.

Yesterday, the air went out of this conference, I think, pretty much right at the start. The hope was that Joe Biden was going to arrive with some legislative victories that would at least point us in the right direction. He doesn’t. He arrives having approved, more or less, Line 3 and with nothing to show on the other side so far.

You know, the Build Back Plan plan had already been stripped of its most important elements, the enforcement provisions under this clean energy pricing plan, and now it’s not even clear it’s going to pass. The half-trillion dollars in subsidies for renewable energy are being held up by Joe Manchin’s latest hissy fit. Mark my words: Every single delegate from every nation heard Manchin’s quote yesterday about how he wasn’t at all sure he was going to vote for this.

It makes it extremely difficult to proceed when the world’s carbon champion — the country that’s poured more carbon into the atmosphere by far than any other — won’t provide leadership. Yeah, it’s better than Trump pulling out, but I think that, you know, basically, it’s a good thing that people like Tom Goldtooth are here, because this summit is not going to solve our problem. We’re going to be back in the streets in a serious way.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Bill, I wanted to ask you, first of all, about the Manchin new roadblock once again, because Manchin is really, basically, a stand-in or a puppet for the fossil fuel industry. What does it tell us about the ability of these corporate powers to stymie the majority or democratic action just by being able to capture a few key senators? What does that tell us about the future of action in a — by democratic vote in Congress? And also, what do you make of Biden, on the one hand, making this strong statement in Glasgow, but just a couple of days earlier at the G20 summit, he was urging the industrialized nations to increase oil and gas production temporarily?

BILL McKIBBEN: So, Manchin is the perfect example of how Big Oil works. He’s taken more money than any other senator from the fossil fuel industry. And, you know, there was that sting videotape released a couple of weeks ago where Exxon’s chief lobbyist reported talking to him every week and calling him their “kingmaker.” There was a report yesterday that Manchin spent part of September huddled with all the leading coal barons at a golf resort someplace, where they played a Civil War-themed golf tournament in between speeches. That sounds like a good deal of fun, I’ve got to say.

AMY GOODMAN: Some have said, Bill, that Senator Manchin has to decide whether he wants to be a senator or a lobbyist or maybe a Republican.

BILL McKIBBEN: Clearly, our system allows you to do both at the same time, Amy, and that’s the problem. Look, credit to Biden for getting 48 senators on board with a serious, progressive commitment around climate and other things. And that’s because we’ve built movements, and that’s because Bernie showed that there was a real appetite for this. But 48 isn’t quite enough. And so, I think one way to say it is, movements have gotten big enough and strong enough to force the question, to call the question in Congress, but not quite big enough to carry the question.

That’s why I think, coming out of this COP, those of us from all sorts of places, including Third Act, this new group we’re doing with people over the age of 60, are going to be heavily focused on banks and the finance system. That’s where groups like Indigenous Environmental Network were working 15 years ago, trying to interrupt bank financing for — and we’re going to have to go back there, because there really is a sense here that the political system and the U.N. system are beginning to reach limits. They’re not moving fast enough. They’re not coming close to keeping up with the pace of the devastation.

And so, Greta pretty much captured it: There’s a lot of “blah blah blah.” There is. And some of it’s very noble and very powerful, and the people who are saying it are magnificent. But it’s not adding up to enough. And there’s a sense, as with Manchin, that we spend a lot of time talking to the cashier at the front of the store, when our problem’s with the guy in the back room counting the money. So, I know I’m coming out of Glasgow determined to be taking on the Chases and BlackRocks and whatever of the world just as hard as we can.

READ MORE

 

Contribute to RSN

Follow us on facebook and twitter!

Update My Monthly Donation

PO Box 2043 / Citrus Heights, CA 95611