WASHINGTON — U.S. President Barack Obama launched America’s most ambitious attempt yet to tackle greenhouse gas emissions Monday, pushing ahead with tough restrictions on power stations in the teeth of fierce opposition from industry and the Republicans.
With one eye clearly on his political legacy, Obama said he was committing the United States, which relies on coal for much of its power needs, to leading the world on climate change “because I believe there is such a thing as being too late.”
The following is a presentation by Sean Sweeney to the 'Democracy Rising' conference in Athens, Greece on July 18, 2015. Sean Sweeney, PhD, is Coordinator of Trade Unions for Energy Democracy. He recently joined the Murphy Institute at City University of New York to direct its International Program for Labor, Climate and the Environment.
Third memorandum or Grexit: What are the implications for the future of Greece’s energy system?
There's a growing global recognition that it's time for banks to stop funding coal: it's financially risky and implicates them in serious environmental and human rights abuses. But the largest global investment banks continued to finance coal mining and power last year.
As the 2015 Coal Finance Report Card, The End of Coal?, published by Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack, and the Sierra Club, makes clear:
Opponents of a planned coal export terminal on the Fraser River are vowing to keep the fight going.
They made that clear June 2 at Port Metro Vancouver's annual general meeting, where Paula Williams, organizer for the group Communities and Coal, presented a petition opposing the plan by Fraser Surrey Docks to load coal onto ships in the river.
Some fantastic news! Breathe deeply the spring air! Grin! Dance! After our first court loss, we have continued to gnaw-away against this obscene and destructive project, including working with other communities, opposing the Surrey permits, and working on our powerful second court case for later this year.
The Church of England, one of the world’s wealthiest religious institutions, has decided to blacklist coal and tar sands investments, in a striking victory for campaigners seeking to make fossil fuels as unpopular as tobacco.
The Church announced on Thursday that it would sell £12m of its holdings in thermal coal and tar sands companies, two of the most polluting fossil fuels. “Climate change is the most pressing moral issue in our world,” said the Bishop of Salisbury, the Rt Rev Nick Holtam, lead bishop on the environment.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects world coal demand to reach 6,350 mtoe in 2040, but it expects the growth rate to drop to 0.5 percent annually, principally because of weaker demand in countries that belong to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Washington, D.C.—Global coal consumption rose 3 percent from 2012 to 2013, reaching over 3,800 million tons of oil equivalent (mtoe) in 2013. While the pace of growth is down from 7.1 percent in 2010, the continued increase in coal consumption and related carbon emissions is a cause for substantial concern among climate scientists.
It's been a big year in the campaign to prevent the expansion of US thermal coal exports from BC. We wanted to offer a quick review of recent events and a brief preview of the year to come:
The governing Liberals in BC and Conservatives in Canada insist that jobs, public revenues and economic growth all depend on expanding fossil fuel exports. Christie Clark’s Liberals won the 2013 BC election promising a future of jobs and rising public revenues based on the export of liquified natural gas. Now two years later faced with widespread protests and declining oil and gas prices, no LNG project has proceeded.
