Climate Change | The Price of Oil

Posts in Climate Change

“The door is closing”
Andy Rowell
Nov09
We are used to dire warnings about climate change. But they do not often come from the IEA, the world’s energy watch-dog. And for such a conservative body, they do not often sound this dire. Such is our predicted catastrophic path of fossil fuel dependence, that over the next five years the last chance of…
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“Everything Koch stood for was a lie”
Andy Rowell
Oct04
Ever since Greenpeace outed the Koch brothers as the largest financiers of climate change denial, the secretive brothers have started getting much more media attention. The fact that they are also major backers of the controversial Tea Party movement – with its loathing of environmental protection and dismissal of climate change – has added to…
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Chinese Increase Investment in Tar Sands
Andy Rowell
Sep19
In its “Energy Outlook” for last month, the global investment bank Goldman Sachs argued that “China remains the key growth driver” for worldwide oil demand. One of the key questions for the past decade for many in the oil-game has been where China, this vast emerging super-power, is getting access to its oil and will…
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Canada’s “Dirty Lobby Diary” Exposed
Andy Rowell
Aug11
Over the last few months I have been working with Friends of the Earth Europe looking at the extensive lobbying by the Canadian government over the tar sands in Europe. What we uncovered is that over the last two years we have seen a concerted lobbying campaign by the Canadian and Albertan governments to undermine…
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Congress is “Most Anti-Green” in History
Andy Rowell
Aug02
OK there is only one story in town this week in Washington. With just hours to go the House of Representatives has just passed a last minute bill to raise the US borrowing limit, preventing the markets free-falling. The Senate is now expected to follow suit. The immediate reaction from the Democrats is anger that…
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“You have authority over my life, but not my principles”
Andy Rowell
Jul27
In the end the sentence was predictably severe. Yesterday Tim DeChristopher, who has become an unlikely here for the climate change movement, was sentenced to 2 years in jail and fined $10,000. His crime had been not to hurt anyone or deface any building but to throw a virtual spanner in the works of the…
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The Norwegian Murderer, Climate Denial and Watermelons
Andy Rowell
Jul26
Sixteen years ago I wrote a book called Green Backlash, that looked at the growing backlash against the environmental movement worldwide. One chapter, called “Culture Wars and Conspiracy tales”, looked at the warped view of many of the conspiracies of the right wing and far right. The book examined the many ways in which environmentalists…
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What if the Carbon Bubble Bursts?
Andy Rowell
Jul13
For many years now, a number of activists and analysts have argued that if we are serious about tackling climate change then the reserves of oil and gas in the ground need to be seen as liabilities and not assets. At the moment an oil company is judged by investors by the strength and size…
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Sceptic Gets $1 Million from Oil and Coal
Andy Rowell
Jun29
Two Greenpeace-related stories in two days for you. Yesterday the blog was about how Greenpeace was attacking VW for its poor performance on fuel efficiency and for blocking climate progress in Europe. Let’s turn back to the US for a moment and hats off to Greenpeace US’ research director Kert Davies, who has been tracking…
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VW’s Dark Side
Andy Rowell
Jun28
Europe’s largest car maker, Volkswagen, is harbouring a “dark secret” according to Greenpeace. Despite its populist and consumer-friendly image, VW stands accused of greenwashing its dirty activities, trying to water down action on climate change and refusing to make popular models more fuel efficient. According to Greenpeace, the car maker has repeatedly claimed that it…
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