State attorney general offices in Massachusetts and New York are continuing a worrisome trend of refusing to release their communications with environmental activists to the public. In Massachusetts, the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) is refusing to release its correspondence with Matthew Pawa and Naomi Oreskes—two high-profile activists who have been advocating for climate
Read More...Last weekend local municipal officials in British Columbia (B.C.) met for the annual meeting of the Association of Vancouver Island Coastal Communities (AVICC) and rejected a resolution put forward by the city of Victoria that would have asked the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) to look into the possibility of a class action lawsuit
Read More...Despite recent efforts by anti-oil and gas activists and Green party members, the European Parliament voted not to strip ExxonMobil of its access badges to Parliament on Tuesday. According to reports, the parliament’s secretary general Klaus Welle “found no grounds to seek authorization to withdraw or deactivate ExxonMobil’s access badges, given the absence of formal
Read More...Climate activists and lawyers have released an over 1,000-page legal compendium that provides a cynical playbook for eliminating fossil fuels – threatening thousands of jobs, energy security, and the economy. In a bold move of hypocrisy, they now seek to mirror groups they criticize by working behind closed doors to organize activist attorneys and distribute pre-written laws to state
Read More...More than three-quarters of Americans want to see critical energy infrastructure developed more quickly – a goal of President Trump’s recent executive orders – and just one in five voter supports the so-called Green New Deal, a new report found. A full 79 percent of voters responding to a recent survey support “streamlining or expediting
Read More...As activists continue to push the misleading #ExxonKnew narrative, energy companies have continued to make strides on researching and combating climate change, and Congress is taking notice. This week, the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s Subcommittee on the Environment held a hearing examining the history of the scientific consensus around climate change and
Read More...A literature review of studies that have unsuccessfully attempted to show fracking is negatively impacting health is getting some media attention based on its claim that air quality monitoring and modeling may not capture the full picture of oil and gas development impacts. And despite the authors’ best efforts to show otherwise, this compendium simply
Read More...The mayor of the city leading the push for municipalities in British Columbia (BC) to file a class action lawsuit against energy companies for climate damages recently announced that she no longer believes climate lawsuits are the best way to deal with climate change. The announcement from Victoria Mayor Lisa Helps marks another major setback for the
Read More...The U.S. Chamber’s Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) recently released two reports examining the impacts of climate liability lawsuits in the United States. Waking the Litigation Monster focuses on the misuse of public nuisance action, while Mitigating Municipality Litigation examines the growing trend of municipalities engaging in costly lawsuits against different industries. The reports detail the ramifications of such
Read More...The switch to natural gas for electricity generation prevented 95 million tons of CO2 emissions in 2018, according to a new International Energy Agency (IEA) report. The report found that global energy emissions increased 1.7 percent in 2018 – largely attributable to increased global energy demand. And as IEA explained, without the switch to natural
Read More...In recent years, attorneys general in the District of Columbia, New York, Maryland and a handful of other states have sought to burnish their climate credentials by pursuing investigations and litigation against oil companies. In some cases, they have welcomed outside support through a controversial, Michael Bloomberg-funded law program, which was set up to help
Read More...Lower heating costs – brought on by increased natural gas production from the shale revolution – reduced winter mortality rates from 2000 to 2010, according to a new National Bureau of Economic Research paper. As the NBER paper explains, “We find that lower heating prices reduce mortality in winter months. The estimated effect size implies
Read More...Two associations representing business interests in the Canadian city of Victoria recently wrote letters to the city’s mayor, Lisa Helps, asking her to back away from a resolution calling for a class-action lawsuit from local municipalities demanding payment for climate related damages to local infrastructure. The Victoria lawsuit would have many hurdles to clear and
Read More...A new wave of aggressive anti-oil and natural gas legislation is cropping up in several states, driven by national “Keep It In the Ground” (KIITG) groups that have failed numerous attempts at the federal level to restrict development. Emboldened by the introduction of the “Green New Deal”, KIITG groups have made it clear that nothing
Read More...Earthquake activity in Oklahoma declined for the third straight year in 2018 even as oil and natural gas development increased in the area, according to the latest data from the U.S. Geological Survey. As EID’s updated infographic shows, seismic activity decreased by a whopping 83 percent – falling from a peak of 887 earthquakes in
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