FIRST LOOK: 

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Saving The Books, Cooking The Planet: Oil and gas companies are increasingly using mergers and acquisitions to offload emissions from their own balance sheets as a way to meet corporate climate targets without actually reducing emissions, according to a report released Tuesday by the Environmental Defense Fund. Examining mergers and acquisitions between 2017 and 2021, EDF found 155 deals totaling $84.6 billion that resulted in assets moving away from companies with net-zero pledges, and 211 deals worth $115.6 billion from companies with stated goals to reduce methane emissions. In total, deals involving “reduced-environmental-commitment transfers” rose from 10% in 2018 to 15% in 2021. For example, weekly flaring at the Umuechem oil field in Nigeria went from a max of 2 million cubic feet of flaring climate warming methane per week in 2020, to a near-overnight jump to 10 million after it was sold to a private equity firm, a 700 percent increase. “You can move your assets to another company, and move the emissions off your own books, but that doesn’t equal any positive impact on the planet if it’s done without any safeguards in place,” Andrew Baxter, director of energy transition at EDF told the New York Times. (New York Times $, Reuters, Financial Times)

Climate Driving Bangladeshi Children To Drop Out Of School: In Bangladesh, climate disasters are forcing children like 12-year-old dockworker Alamin, 10-year-old vegetable market employee Alauddin, and 9-year-old cargo unloader Rupa to seek work as their families flee extreme weather that flooded educational institutions they once attended. Bangladesh is low-lying and erosion and climate-worsened flooding and storms are destroying rural homes of the marginalized who are often forced to build on unsafe land that’s then washed away in floods. Families abandoning uninhabitable homes and moving to slums near the capital, Dhaka, are a key driver of a surge in school dropouts. Additionally, some 500 schools were destroyed or damaged by floods in the last year, Deputy State Minister of Education Mohibul Hasan Chowdhury told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, with very few having been repaired enough for children to return to classes – if they even still could. “The students could not go school for a long time," Chowdury said, and “a large number of them never come back to school and are involved in different work to support their family.” More than 2 million Bangladeshi children dropped out of school in 2021, a rate of 17%. According to a UNICEF report released last August, 1.7 million children in Bangladesh work as laborers, about a quarter of whom are 11 years old or younger. These children work in vegetable markets, at tanneries, factories, or shipyards, or carry luggage in transit terminals or fix automobiles. However, those figures, Reuters reports, don’t even include girls, who are forced into domestic or sex work, and rarely even show up in the statistics, per UNICEF. Sheldon Yatt, UNICEF’s representative, told Reuters that “children are paying a high price for climate change.” (Thomson Reuters Foundation)

Gasoline Hits New (Unadjusted) Record: The national average price of a gallon of gas hit $4.37 on Tuesday, a new record unadjusted for inflation but still a dollar shy of the 2008 peak, which would be equivalent to about $5.37 today. The pain at the pump comes as oil remains over $100 per barrel, although below its March peak of $130. The ripple effects of the stubbornly high prices, resulting from the record corporate profiteering off the pandemic and consequent labor and supply constraints, as well as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, are being felt across the U.S. economy. On Tuesday, President Biden vowed to keep reducing inflation his “top domestic priority” as he faces sagging approval ratings and political attacks from Republicans seeking to falsely pin the blame for expensive gas and inflation on climate policy. Meanwhile, the oil and gas industry is leveraging the crisis by pushing for deregulation and demanding new public investment to expand U.S. extraction and entrench new export capacity – despite market projections that anticipate sharply decreased demand, and counter to findings from April’s IPCC report that said fossil fuels must be phased out if we are to avoid unmanageable global warming, as even existing and planned capacity will break the carbon budget and bring catastrophic levels of warming. (Axios, The Hill, CNBC, E&E $)

CLIMATE DIPLOMACY: Climate reporter Dan Charles talks about the start of the UN's climate change fight. (NPR)

ENERGY GEOPOLITICS: Ukraine, Russia gas clash raises threat to Europe’s supply (Bloomberg $), Ukraine to halt key Russian gas transit to Europe, blames Moscow (Reuters, CNN, CNBC, Wall Street Journal $), EU drafts $205 billion plan to wean itself off Russian fuels (Bloomberg $)

LIFE WORTH LIVING: ‘Not everyone is on board with us’: Experts on protecting cultural heritage amid Ukraine war and climate change (ARTnews)

CLIMATE LITIGATION: 5th Circuit signals support for Biden leasing pause (E&E $), $1B hydropower project’s fate rests with Maine supreme court (AP, E&E $)

HEAD IN THE (TAR) SAND: Cash gushes for Big Oil. But climate investments plateau (E&E $)

FOSSIL VOLATILITY: Williams CEO puzzled as US northeast burns more oil for power (Bloomberg $)

SCOTUS: Environmental groups call for expanding SCOTUS bench (The Hill)

AGENCIES: Raimondo to try to allay fears of new triple-digit solar tariffs (Politico Pro $)

REWIND: Jimmy Carter says court ‘misinterpreted’ environmental law he signed (The Hill)

THE HILL: House OKs Ukraine aid with money for minerals, nuclear power (E&E $), Democrats look to build momentum for mining reform (E&E $), Bennet bill would fund coal town economic transition (E&E $)

POWER TO THE PEOPLE’S HOUSE: House votes to allow staff unionization (Washington Post $)

SENATE: Manchin huddles with fracking billionaire Harold Hamm (E&E $)

WHITE HOUSE: Biden launches new transmission push (Axios), On The Money — Biden sets sights on inflation (The Hill), Biden fights bid to boost oil drilling, climate goal at risk (Bloomberg $), White House issues 'action plan' to speed up energy reviews (E&E $)

SPEC: John Kerry warns a long Ukraine war would threaten climate efforts (The Guardian),

POLITICS: Yellen defends climate initiatives against GOP onslaught (E&E $)

ELECTIONS: Trump-backed Mooney ousts McKinley in W.Va. primary (E&E $), Texas House race poses test for Democrats on abortion and climate politics (Washington Post $), Meet the nuclear booster who could unseat an energy appropriator (E&E $), Endangered appropriator gets new committee job: Agriculture (E&E $)

FED: Lisa Cook is confirmed as a new fed governor. (New York Times $), Senate confirms Lisa Cook for Federal Reserve post (E&E $)

CITIES AND STATES: 2 governors say they're finally winning on climate (E&E $), Ohio bill would open door to subsidize next-generation nuclear power work (Energy News Network), The temperature is the least surprising part of the Texas heat wave (Bloomberg $)

CALIFORNIA: California seeks 91% cut to oil use in revamped climate plan (Bloomberg $, AP), Calif. rejects plan to be carbon neutral by 2035 (E&E $), California urban water use rose 19% in March despite worsening drought (LA Times $, Bloomberg $), The largest water reservoirs in California are rapidly receding (Gizmodo), California heads back to drawing board on solar net-metering policy (Canary Media), How California can get to a reliable, 85% clean grid by 2030 (Canary Media), California considers 3 GW of offshore wind by 2030 as experts stress need for clean energy diversity (Utility Dive)

IMPACTS:  'Fifty-fifty chance' of breaching 1.5C warming limit (Washington Post $, BBC, CBS, Inside Climate News, Gizmodo, The Real News, Politico EU, The Hill, TIME, Truthout), Mountains Undergo Enhanced Impacts of Climate Change (Eos), Salt scourge: The dual threat of warming and rising (Yale Environment 360), Summerlike heat bakes central states, breaks records (Washington Post $), Most Great Barrier Reef coral studied this year was bleached (AP)

DROUGHT: Where are the bodies buried? Climate change is showing us (NBC) 

WILDFIRES: Cost of fighting New Mexico wildfires reaches $65M so far (AP), Crews battle 500-acre wildfire in North Carolina preserve (AP), Crews fighting brush fire in White Mountain [New Hampshire] National Forest (AP), Crews in New Mexico, Arizona scramble to corral wildfires (AP)

WATER: Water rages at Great Falls after the weekend deluge (Washington Post $), LA moving to third phase of emergency water conservation plan (The Hill)

HEALTH: Chemical exposures during pregnancy rose over last decade (E&E $)

RENEWABLES: Solar power offers Puerto Ricans a lifeline but remains an elusive goal (New York Times $), Danish renewable firm said to consider stake sale to fund growth (Bloomberg  $)

BATTERIES: Automotive industry faces long term battery, raw material supply issues, Tavares says (Reuters), Powering electric cars: The race to mine lithium in America’s backyard (FT $)

BAD BAD BAD: Atmospheric helium on the rise, as byproduct of fossil fuels (E&E $)

PLASTICS: In ‘Silent Spring,’ Rachel Carson described a fictional, bucolic hamlet, much like her hometown. Now, there’s a plastics plant under construction 30 miles away (Inside Climate News)

HYDROGEN: Rotterdam port hikes 2030 estimate for hydrogen supplies (Reuters)

UTILITIES: Duke Energy on track to meet 2022 solar project schedule despite shortages, CEO says (Utility Dive)

ACTIVISM: Activists target $491 billion in ‘toxic’ oil, gas and coal bonds (Bloomberg $)

CONFERENCES: Al Roker takes part in first-of-its-kind Aspen climate event in Miami (Today Show)

BOOKS: Everything you thought you knew, and why you’re wrong (New York Times $), As the climate changes, so does fiction (The Atlantic)

SHAREHOLDER SZN: How shareholders are pushing big banks for climate action (New York Times $), Talen Energy unit files for bankruptcy, looks to slash $4.5 billion debt (Reuters), ConocoPhillips' shareholders vote against new emissions-reduction targets (Reuters, Bloomberg $), BlackRock to back fewer shareholder resolutions in this AGM season (Reuters), J.P. Morgan leads $200M investment in Arcadia’s clean-energy platform (Canary Media)

BUSINESS: Pence rips socially minded investing, wants to ‘rein in’ ESG (Bloomberg $), Solar probe ‘most disruptive Event’ for US industry, Rystad says (Bloomberg $, E&E $)

COMMS: ​​Official climate reports pile up. But do they connect with the public? (Christian Science Monitor)

ECONOMY: U.S. power use to rise in 2022 as economy continues to grow -EIA (Reuters)

WILDLIFE: Emperor penguins could be extinct in our lifetimes (Gizmodo)

CHINA: China’s LNG buyers see virus curbs cutting demand through summer (Bloomberg $), Is China helping or hurting the battle against climate change? (Sacramento Bee), China assets Blacklisted by Dutch fund manager using new ESG tool (Bloomberg $)

INTERNATIONAL: How an unpredictable climate of change in Queensland (Australia) could affect the election (The Guardian), Brazil’s Amazon suffered record rate of deforestation in April (Democracy Now), Germany poised to become LNG powerhouse with law to cut red tape (Bloomberg $), Solar rooftops, manufacturing to get boost under draft EU plan (Reuters), Melting glacier triggers flash floods in northern Pakistan after record heat wave (Democracy Now), Putin (Russia) urges stronger action to prevent wildfires (AP), Hit hard by storms and forest loss, Zimbabwe builds stronger homes (Thomson Reuters Foundation)

• Climate change is devastating the Global South (Al Jazeera, Saleemul Huq and Mohamed Adow op-ed)
• Climate change: Put water at the heart of solutions (Nature, Aditi Mukherji op-ed)
• America’s cities offer a smart model for climate leadership (Newsweek, Francis Suarez op-ed)
• Climate change: A human rights issue (CT Post, Anna Peel op-ed) 
• Trillion-dollar question: How do we finance climate solutions? (The Hill, Andreas Karelas op-ed)
• The climate solution that can also restore our seas (The Hill, Brent Fewell and Alex Carlin op-ed)
• Reliably hitting 85% clean electricity has huge implications for California — and the rest of the country (Utility Dive, Daniel Esposito op-ed)
• Air-conditioning should be a human right in the climate crisis (Scientific American, multi-author op-ed)
• To save salmon, we have to slow climate change (Sequim Gazette, Ed Johnstone op-ed)

Big Oil Should Be Held Accountable For Human Rights Abuses & Cutting Jobs While Making $400 Million A Day

Here’s something that will shock you:

“Scientists, including those under the employ of the carbon majors, already knew about the harms that carbon dioxide from fossil fuels posed on the climate as early as the 1930s, with 1965 being the latest year that the fossil fuel industry can claim ignorance of such knowledge.” 

“The fossil fuel industry, including the carbon majors, engaged in measures to convince the public that the use of their products would not lead to significant harms…Through API, some of the carbon majors perpetrated massive climate denial campaigns.” 

“Carbon Majors, directly by themselves or indirectly through others, singly and/or through concerted action, engaged in willful obfuscation of climate science, which has prejudiced the right of the public to make informed decisions about their products, concealing that their products posed significant harms to the environment and the climate system. All these have served to obfuscate scientific findings and delay meaningful environmental and climate action.” 

No, perhaps longtime DR readers will not be so surprised. But the source is nonetheless a pretty big deal:

These are the words of the Philippines Commission on Human Rights, finding that the 47 biggest climate polluters spent decades lying about their products to fight climate policy. 

The report “is historic and sets a solid legal basis for asserting that climate-destructive business activities by fossil fuel and cement companies contribute to human rights harms,” one of the petitioners, Greenpeace South East Asia executive director Yeb Saño, told the Guardian. “The message is clear: These corporate behemoths cannot continue to transgress human rights and put profit before people and planet.”

And make no mistake, the industry isn’t letting up on the disinfo, as they need to cover for the fact that Americans are being left holding the bag while energy prices soar. As Bloomberg’s Kevin Crowley and Laura Hurst report: “Big Oil is raking in historic amounts of cash, but the windfall isn’t being invested in new production to help displace Russian oil and gas. Instead, executives are rewarding shareholders.” 

The five biggest Western oil companies made $36.6 billion in the first quarter of 2022, “about $400 million in spare cash a day,” according to Bloomberg. And while they could use that money to bring down prices, BP CEO Bernard Looney instead told analysts that “discipline is the order of the day.” 

They’re certainly toeing the line – the bottom line. Even as they cry foul, blaming Biden for allegedly creating a regulatory environment so unfriendly as to prevent them from ramping up production to meet demand, the industry continues to tax a hatchet to its workforce. As a BailoutWatch analysis published Monday showed, the 20 biggest fossil fuel companies in the US cut 15,000 jobs in 2021, even as demand rebounded from pandemic lows and companies enjoyed “record profits and increased CEO compensation”. 

The industry is making $400 million dollars a day, and using its disinformation machine to try and convince the public it’s Biden’s fault energy prices are so high. 

And it’s hard to see anyone stepping up to hold them accountable. After all, as the Philippines Commission on Human Rights, noted: “Fossil fuel enterprises continue to fund the electoral campaigns of politicians, with the intention of slowing down the global movement towards clean, renewable energy.” 

That’s an investment that’s paying off.

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