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18895 |
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Date: December 02, 2023 at 03:39:27
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: COP28: Biden admin is effectively undercutting emissions regulations |
URL: https://www.levernews.com/internal-doc-reveals-us-troubling-climate-summit-plans/ |
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NOV 30, 2023 - RISHIKA PARDIKAR
Internal Doc Reveals Biden’s Troubling Climate Summit Plans
"Government memo suggests the Biden administration is angering allies by
undermining strict standards for a new global carbon market.
The United States and the European Union (EU) are usually close allies at the
world’s annual climate negotiations — but according to internal documents
obtained by The Lever, tensions have arisen between the two blocs in the
run-up to this year’s summit. As world leaders head to Dubai, United Arab
Emirates, this week, the U.S. is undermining efforts to set stringent standards
for a new global carbon market that would allow polluters to help fund
carbon-reduction efforts to compensate for their emissions.
According to the Nov. 8 background paper, written by an executive working
group in the Council of the European Union, the U.S. is backing a largely
unregulated, voluntary system of trading emission offsets, even though such
voluntary schemes have been plagued by questionable climate benefits,
harms to indigenous communities, and outright corruption. The authors
write, “In our view, accepting a standard based on the [voluntary carbon
market] may hinder the independence and trust that compliance carbon
markets need to contribute towards the achievement of international climate
goals.”
Experts say the U.S. is going this route, rather than backing a more stringent
United Nations (U.N.)-regulated carbon market favored by the EU and other
stakeholders, because the Biden administration is hoping private-sector
climate solutions and corporate responsibility will help gloss over the fact
that the country is continuing to break records for fossil fuel production and
is the biggest laggard in terms of paying its fair share of finance for the
emissions it has wrought on the world.
“The U.S. government has trouble delivering climate finance and now
basically sees private investment, including [through] carbon markets, as an
opportunity to showcase that they are delivering climate finance,” said Sven
Harmeling, international climate policy coordinator for the non-profit coalition
Climate Action Network Europe. “But we know that [money via carbon
markets] is not climate finance. Climate finance means public funding.”
For the first time in his presidency, President Joe Biden will not be attending
the annual climate summit.
In response to a request for comment, the U.S. delegation to the summit
declined to answer questions on the record.
An Emissions Reduction Strategy “That Risks Backfiring”
In 1992, countries around the world signed the U.N.’s first climate change
treaty to coordinate global action to tackle the climate crisis. In 2015, after
two decades without meaningful action, 195 participating countries signed
the Paris Agreement, further hashing out details of climate action and the
necessity to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees celsius and pursue
efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees
At this year’s annual climate talks from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12 in Dubai, known by
the acronym COP28, negotiations are focused on a handful of core themes
like the clean energy transition, slashing carbon emissions, climate finance
from rich countries to support climate action in poorer countries, and
assessing the progress of global climate action efforts so far. Another key
task is to establish an international carbon market governed by the U.N.
In recent months, the U.N.’s supervisory body has been setting guidelines to
ensure such an international carbon market “benefits the environment, host
countries, and buyers alike.” Their recommendations are intended to govern
the market, and will be discussed at COP28.
Carbon markets allow companies, individuals, and countries to buy credits
associated with carbon-reduction efforts to compensate for their emissions.
For example, highly polluting companies in the manufacturing sector or the
aviation industry can invest in forest conservation and use the credits from
this investment — with prices set per ton — to offset their emissions.
Countries can do this, too: Switzerland has signed bilateral deals with Ghana
and Vanuatu to purchase carbon credits to meet its international emission
reduction goals.
There are two types of carbon markets: voluntary markets, in which
companies and organizations negotiate deals, and compliance markets that
are government mandated. California’s cap-and-trade program, a
compliance market framework, sets a limit on industries’ greenhouse gas
emissions, but allows them to trade in case they exceed the limit.
Neither market is ideally regulated at present (concerns have been raised, for
example, about the efficacy of California’s program). One overarching worry
is that carbon credits are often made through compensatory carbon-sink
projects like reforestation projects that can rob agency from the people who
live there.
But voluntary markets are considered by many to be especially inadequate,
since they rely on corporate responsibility to decarbonize their industries.
Existing standards for the voluntary market are currently designed by self-
appointed bodies like the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market
and the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative. These standards are
“full of loopholes,” said Avantika Goswami, program manager of climate
change projects at India’s Centre for Science and Environment. She
explained that the voluntary carbon market needs “regulation, a public and
independently managed registry, and high scrutiny of projects to determine
integrity and benefit-sharing with communities on the ground.”
A recent investigation by the Centre for Science and Environment found that
voluntary markets in India failed on two counts: Emission reduction outcomes
were either inflated or almost nonexistent, and revenue from the sale of
carbon credits wasn’t shared with local communities. Researchers also found
that many of the carbon-offset projects lacked transparency, and that some
community members who were involved in these projects had no clue what
carbon credits were.
Two months ago, research from University of California, Berkeley on
voluntary markets raised additional concerns about inflated credit values and
the potential marginalization of forest-dependent communities. Reporting
has found that the voluntary market’s largest firm sold millions of credits for
carbon reductions that didn’t exist. Meanwhile, private demand for these
voluntary credits has declined, and the credit price has plummeted.
Despite its shortcomings, the unregulated carbon market boomed to a value
of $2 billion per year in 2021.
Gilles Dufrasne, policy lead on global carbon markets at Belgium-based
nonprofit research organization Carbon Market Watch, said carbon credits
could be a way for companies to finance climate action beyond their own
production processes, but shouldn’t be a substitute for internal emission
reductions.
“Allowing loose rules that will incentivize the purchase of carbon credits at
any cost is a strategy that risks backfiring, when companies end up investing
a lot of money in credits that do not deliver real emission reductions, while
failing to decarbonize their own activities.”
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Internal Divisions
The new international carbon market that world leaders are negotiating at
COP28 is a compliance framework with legally mandated limits.
The finalization of these rules and their full implementation is “imperative for
COP28,” said Trishant Dev, program officer of climate change projects at
India’s Centre for Science and Environment and the lead author of the study
that exposed loopholes in the way voluntary carbon markets are currently
functioning in India.
But instead of seeking guardrails for a global carbon market, the U.S. seems
to be moving in the opposite direction.
According to the Nov. 8 memo obtained by The Lever, the Council of the
European Union, one of the EU’s two main legislative bodies, warned that at
COP28, the U.S. was set to advocate for building on existing voluntary
carbon market standards for the international carbon market, as opposed to
establishing a new robust framework with stringent standards.
According to the authors, the EU Council had concerns that such weaker
carbon market standards could lead to “over-crediting, disadvantaging host
countries and deviating from the pathway necessary to reach the Paris
Agreement long-term goals.” They added that the U.S. is promoting the
usage of carbon credits without clarifying the accounting rules that could
ensure their integrity and transparency, and “pressing hard for a prompt
finalization of the guidance, without much concerns for quality/robustness
but driving a lot of attention and time to solve their very specific concerns.”
Dufrasne at Carbon Market Watch said the different approaches on a global
carbon market reflect how the EU has historically been more active on
climate action than the U.S. According to Dufrasne, the European public is
putting more pressure on companies to act, compared to the American
public.
The memo hints at another potential reason that the U.S. is pushing for
weaker carbon market regulations: the matter of climate finance, or funding
that rich countries pay to poorer countries to help finance climate action, to
account for the former’s historically high emissions.
In the last few months, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry, who will be attending
the Dubai summit, has said climate action “takes trillions and no government
that I know of is ready to put trillions into this on an annual basis”. (Nevermind
that billions in U.S. public funding has gone to support foreign military aid in
Ukraine alone, or that the effects of climate inaction could cost trillions of
dollars per year.) Simultaneously, Kerry has repeatedly emphasized the
private sector’s role in the clean energy transition.
A voluntary carbon market could, at least in theory, make it easy to channel
money from the American business sector to climate action initiatives by
funding projects like forest conservation or development of renewable
energy capacity. But as research has demonstrated, the voluntary market
suffers from serious integrity and transparency issues.
The voluntary market is “unregulated, fraudulent, and open to ebbs and
flows,” said Goswami at the Centre for Science and Environment.
“Committing [to] this market as the tool for [an] energy transition, which
requires investment in public goods like renewable energy and transmission
infrastructure in developing countries, is like leaving the clean-energy future
of the Global South to the whims of an unreliable market.”
Goswami added, “The U.S. cannot let the private sector dictate the scrutiny
and oversight in these markets — it must be determined by the multilateral
process [at climate negotiations like COP28].”
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Responses:
[18896] [18897] [18898] [18899] [18903] [18905] [18906] [18907] [18908] [18904] [18900] |
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18896 |
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Date: December 02, 2023 at 05:55:00
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Surging US Oil Production Brings Down Prices & Raises Climate Fears |
URL: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/01/business/energy-environment/us-oil-production-record-climate.html |
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whatever happened to 'peak oil'? lol... and climate change?
Surging U.S. Oil Production Brings Down Prices and Raises Climate Fears
Clifford Krauss
Fri, December 1, 2023
"HOUSTON — American oil fields are gushing again, helping to drive down
fuel prices but also threatening to undercut efforts to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions.
Only three years after U.S. oil production collapsed during the pandemic,
energy companies are cranking out a record 13.2 million barrels a day, more
than Russia or Saudi Arabia. The flow of oil has grown by roughly 800,000
barrels a day since early 2022, and analysts expect the industry to add
500,000 more barrels a day next year.
The main driver of the production surge is a delayed response to the Russian
invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which sent the price of oil to well over
$100 a barrel for the first time in nearly a decade. The wells that were drilled
last year are now in full swing.
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With the surge in output, gasoline prices have fallen by close to $2 a gallon
since summer 2022 and are back to levels that prevailed in 2021. The
increase in production has also provided the Biden administration with
substantial leverage in its dealings with oil-exporting foes such as Russia,
Venezuela and Iran while reducing its need to cajole more friendly countries
such as Saudi Arabia to temper prices.
But the comeback in U.S. oil production poses big risks, too. More supply
and lower prices could increase demand for fossil fuels when world leaders,
who are meeting in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, are straining to reach
agreements that would accelerate the fight against climate change.
Scientists generally agree that the world is far from achieving the goals
necessary to avoid the catastrophic effects of global warming, which is
caused mainly by the burning of fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal.
“We’re achieving energy security and reducing inflation by leveraging high-
emitting, carbon-intensive oil production,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, director of
the Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab at New York University.
“We’re going to need to address that conflict.”
The United States now exports roughly 4 million barrels a day, more than any
OPEC member except Saudi Arabia. On balance, the United States still
imports more than it exports because domestic demand exceeds supply and
many American refineries can more easily refine the heavier oil produced in
Canada and Latin America than the lighter crude that oozes out of the shale
fields of New Mexico, North Dakota and Texas.
Nearly every extra barrel of American crude produced is being exported,
mostly to Europe and Asia, where supplies are tight. In addition, the natural
gas that often bubbles up with oil has led to record exports of gas and
helped to lower prices for that fuel and for electricity, much of which is
produced at gas-fired power plants in the United States.
The surge in U.S. production has helped to end the energy crisis that gripped
Europe after Russia invaded Ukraine — at least for now. European countries
have replaced much of the gas they were buying from Russia with gas from
the United States, Qatar and other exporters. They have also reduced their
use of natural gas, a phenomenon that a mild winter last year helped.
“There is a foreign policy dividend in keeping a lid on oil prices,” said David
Goldwyn, a leading energy diplomat in the Obama administration.
Not long ago, the U.S. oil industry was in deep trouble. It had suffered
repeated busts since 2015, culminating in a collapse of prices during the
pandemic. Investors fled. Exxon Mobil was kicked out of the Dow Jones
industrial average, and some European oil companies announced plans to
pivot from fossil fuels to renewables more quickly.
With concerns over climate change growing, Joe Biden, during his 2020
presidential campaign, promised to stop drilling on federal lands and federal
waters offshore. He also pledged to accelerate the transition to renewable
energy and electric cars to drastically reduce the emissions responsible for
climate change.
But as president, Biden has taken a much different tack. Although he has
supported green energy and battery-powered cars, he has also hectored oil
companies to increase production in an effort to drive down prices for
consumers. He has approved a large drilling project in Alaska over the
objections of environmentalists and a small number of offshore oil and gas
permits.
Biden has been under pressure from some Democrats to trumpet gains in oil
production as a way of reaching out to voters who are leery of high gas
prices. He has yet to do so — but his administration has not complained
about the production, either.
John Kirby, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council,
said the administration was committed to keeping energy prices low.
“The president is going to keep focusing, as he has been, on a healthy global
market that’s properly balanced and that can continue to bring the price of
gasoline down here in the United States,” Kirby said.
The pandemic took a heavy toll on U.S. oil production, which fell to just over
11 million barrels a day at the end of 2020 from 13 million at the end a year
earlier. Dozens of oil companies went out of business, and the number of rigs
in use fell to 350 in 2020, from 800, as thousands of field workers lost their
jobs.
Most of the new U.S. oil production is coming from the Permian Basin, which
straddles Texas and New Mexico. There are also some new projects and
expansions in Alaska and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.
“It’s the mother of all comeback stories,” said Robert McNally, who was a
senior energy adviser under President George W. Bush. “The last couple of
years have shown that you should never bet against the U.S. oil sector.”
The bonanza has helped American consumers. This week, the average price
for a gallon of regular gasoline was $3.25 a gallon, 25 cents below what it
cost a year earlier and nearly $1.80 below the record price set in June 2022,
according to AAA.
But the benefits to the oil industry workforce have been modest — the
industry has added only about 8,000 jobs over the past year. There has been
no repeat of the surge in oil and gas employment of a decade ago that
brought an economic boom to small towns across Texas and North Dakota.
That is because wells drilled through shale are established much faster now,
with fewer workers required to run the rigs thanks to software improvements
and robotics.
The industry has also figured out ways to produce more oil and gas by
lengthening the lateral wells that slash through hard shale rock, exposing
more rock for fracture than was possible a few years ago.
Of course, the current boom in production may not be sustained. The oil
industry is very cyclical. And shale wells, in particular, are highly productive
for only a couple of years, so a decline in drilling brings a quick, sharp decline
in output. Conversely, a rapid return of drilling ignites a spurt of production.
That said, price is what drives investment and production. Even when oil
prices climbed past $100 a barrel after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the
biggest companies such as Exxon and Chevron decided not to significantly
increase drilling because they feared a price collapse. Instead, the
companies spent billions of dollars buying back shares and handing out
dividends.
By late 2022, however, smaller public companies and hundreds of privately
owned firms began ramping up operations. Many small companies were
bought by larger firms, which also spurred more production.
“The independents were back close to pre-pandemic activity,” said Raoul
LeBlanc, a vice president at S&P Global Commodity Insights. “And the
privates just went crazy.”
LeBlanc said the investments made during the second half of last year were
now bearing fruit. He predicted that American production could rise to 13.7
million barrels a day by the end of 2024, unless there is a deep recession and
prices drop around $10 to below $65 a barrel.
“I am very surprised by how much we have produced this year,” said Scott
Sheffield, CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources, a major Permian Basin
producer that Exxon is acquiring. He predicted that the country could
produce 15 million barrels a day in five years.
Production is also growing in Canada, Guyana, Brazil and Norway.
Sheffield said “the big question” was how Saudi Arabia might respond if
production in the United States and other countries continued to rise.
As the leader of OPEC+, a group of 23 oil-producing countries, which
together produce nearly half the world’s oil, Saudi Arabia could eventually
pressure its allies to flood the market with oil in an effort to sharply drive
down prices. That would drive U.S. companies out of business or force them
to sharply lower production.
Investors have recently grown more fond of oil, and the stocks of Exxon,
Chevron and other companies are up a lot over the past two years. But that
could be changing. The price of oil has been falling recently and is down by
more than 15% since the summer.
Sheffield said the drastic swings in energy prices were a main reason that
investors were wary of his industry. “The reason for the lack of investor
interest is the volatility of our business,” he said. “Discipline is not out the
window, but we need to solve this volatility issue, and I don’t know when we
are going to solve it.”"
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Responses:
[18897] [18898] [18899] [18903] [18905] [18906] [18907] [18908] [18904] [18900] |
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18897 |
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Date: December 03, 2023 at 04:48:32
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Biden to Eschew COP28 as US Opens Another Oil and Gas Leasing Auction |
URL: https://www.democracynow.org/2023/12/1/headlines/biden_to_eschew_cop28_as_us_opens_another_oil_and_gas_leasing_auction |
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Biden to Eschew COP28 as U.S. Opens Another Oil and Gas Leasing Auction
DEC 01, 2023
The White House has confirmed President Biden will not attend the COP28
summit this year but that Vice President Kamala Harris will be in attendance.
This week the Biden administration launched an auction to sell $3.4 million in
oil and gas drilling leases. It’s just the first in a series of auctions that will take
place as COP28 unfolds. Over the next two weeks, the Interior Department
will sell off land exploitation rights in Wyoming, New Mexico, Nevada, North
Dakota, Oklahoma and Utah.
This comes as data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show
the Biden administration has surpassed the Trump
administration in crude oil production, bringing U.S. production higher than at
any other time in history. The Center for Biological Diversity warns that
Biden’s fossil fuel projects “threaten to erase the climate emissions progress
from the Inflation Reduction Act.”
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Responses:
[18898] [18899] [18903] [18905] [18906] [18907] [18908] [18904] [18900] |
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18898 |
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Date: December 03, 2023 at 06:48:10
From: eaamon, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Biden to Eschew COP28 as US Opens Another Oil and Gas Leasing... |
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I think the US is planning to get into WWIII when Iran Nukes Israel.
we will need the fuel then. you never know exactly how much oil wells are caped
that can be opened if a war starts.
too many lies.I for one can not see how Israel killing 15,000 civilians justifies
the 1200 Israels in the attack.
now bunker bombs were sent to Israel and I'm sure it will kill any hostages
Hamas was holding in those tunnels.
it will spark more outrage for the WAR!
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Responses:
[18899] [18903] [18905] [18906] [18907] [18908] [18904] [18900] |
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18899 |
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Date: December 03, 2023 at 07:52:44
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Biden to Eschew COP28 as US Opens Another Oil and Gas Leasing... |
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Between the two, Israel would likely throw the 1st
nuke.imo Is there any evidence Iran has developed any?
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Responses:
[18903] [18905] [18906] [18907] [18908] [18904] [18900] |
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18903 |
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Date: December 04, 2023 at 09:43:27
From: chatillon, [DNS_Address]
Subject: ‘Lack of sunlight during the day is worse than electric lighting at ni |
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Rumor has it that Iran scrapped the nukes and instead
has literally peppered Iran with hidden (or not) missile
bases. Should Isreal hit Iran with a nuke, there would
be enough missiles left to take Isreal down to rubbled
ashes.
Wish I'd saved that little tidbit.
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Responses:
[18905] [18906] [18907] [18908] [18904] |
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18905 |
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Date: December 04, 2023 at 10:07:45
From: Redhart, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: ‘Lack of sunlight during the day is worse than electric lighting... |
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rumors probably should go on wowows, then.
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[18906] [18907] [18908] |
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18906 |
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Date: December 04, 2023 at 10:54:41
From: chatillon, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: ‘Lack of sunlight during the day is worse than electric... |
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When did Bopp make you the board monitor?
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Responses:
[18907] [18908] |
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18907 |
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Date: December 04, 2023 at 12:05:16
From: Redhart, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: ‘Lack of sunlight during the day is worse than electric... |
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when did this become the juicy rumor board? Bopp created
a board just for those.
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Responses:
[18908] |
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18908 |
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Date: December 04, 2023 at 12:35:15
From: chatillon, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: ‘Lack of sunlight during the day is worse than electric... |
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Responses:
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18904 |
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Date: December 04, 2023 at 09:45:46
From: chatillon, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Ignore that subject title |
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computer doing strange things.
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18900 |
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Date: December 03, 2023 at 17:32:39
From: eaamon, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: Biden to Eschew COP28 as US Opens Another Oil and Gas Leasing... |
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not sure but I believe that while many years ago they Iran, were selling oil to North Korea.
there may have been a nuke missile given to them then. maybe even more than one.
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