Fighting climate change, Biden-style:

 

Jeffrey St. Clair

 

+ Fighting climate change, Biden-style: Biden’s Interior Department just approved the largest single oil drilling plan anywhere in the US, Conoco’s Willow Project in Alaska. It would bring 219 wells, 267 miles of pipelines, and 35 miles of roads to Alaska, while emitting over 280 million metric tons of climate pollution over 30 years. Because of the melting permafrost, Conoco’s own engineers say they “where necessary we will use cooling devices to chill the ground” drilling.

 

+ Even if emission rapidly decline in the next few years (very unlikely), there’s still a nearly 70% chance that the two-degree threshold would be crossed between 2044 and 2065.

 

+ The amount of extent sea ice in the Antarctic on February 1st 2023 was 2.26 million sq km, about 1.35 million sq km less than the 1981-2010 average and the lowest extent ever recorded on this day of the year. It is 10.8% lower than the previous record low, 2.53 million sq km in 2017.

 

+ Shell announced $39.9 billion in profits this. Another record. Meanwhile, four Greenpeace activists boarded a ship hauling new equipment to Shell’s off-shore platforms, which will enable the oil giant to drain 45,000 barrels of oil per day out of the North Sea.

 

+ Exxon also ended with 2022 with record profits of $56 billion