Climate Change News & Discussions

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Catalonia declares drought emergency, extending restrictions to Barcelona

Thu 1 Feb 2024 13.11 GMT

After more than 1,000 days of drought, the Catalan government has formally announced a state of emergency, extending water restrictions to Barcelona and the surrounding region.

Announcing the measures on Thursday, Pere Aragonès, the Catalan president, said that in some areas it had not rained at all for three years, describing the situation as the worst drought in modern history.

It is estimated that 500mm of rain needs to fall in Catalonia to make up the deficit. Water reserves have fallen below 16%, a level low enough to trigger the emergency declaration.

Measures already in place in the north of the region, including a 20% reduction in agricultural irrigation and a ban on watering public parks, will be extended to Barcelona.

Public and private swimming pools will close, with exemptions for those in sports centres, although some pools are adapting to use sea water. Parks will no longer be watered but groundwater will be used to save the city’s 35,000 trees from dying.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/ ... -barcelona

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Big Oil Companies Continue to Expand Fossil Fuel Extraction Worldwide
February 2, 2024

Introduction:

(Eurekalert) Despite the growing social and political discourse in favor of energy transition and the greening of the industry, big oil companies continue to rely almost exclusively on fossil fuels to perpetuate their function of obtaining and concentrating energy.

A study carried out by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) shows that, far from choosing new alternative and sustainable energy sources, the companies are relentless in their efforts to expand their extractive operations. To do so, they deploy new technologies and seek politically favorable locations in the world to perpetuate oil and gas extraction.

The research, recently published in the scientific journal Energy Research & Social Science, is based on the analysis of fifty socio-environmental conflicts caused by the extractivist industry around the world documented in ICTA-UAB's Global Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJAtlas).

The report reveals the significant social and environmental costs of this industrial activity. "The relentless growth of the global economy and the inexorable dissipation of energy drive oil and gas companies to constantly expand their operations in the world's peripheries to meet the demand of industrial economies," says Marcel Llavero-Pasquina, ICTA-UAB researcher and first author of the study, who notes that these companies continue to rely on oil and gas because of its high energy density and easy transportation and storage.

The growing need for fossil resource extraction requires the constant expansion of extraction frontiers, and the exploitation of the environment and of local and indigenous communities in unindustrialized areas. This gives rise to numerous conflicts where local organizations fight for the preservation of their lives, livelihoods and culture, while companies defend their profits. "This is evident, for example, in the cases of conflicts generated by the French company TotalEnergies over the extraction of fossil fuels in the Global South, where indigenous peoples fight against these activities that are so harmful to their environment and way of life," explains Llavero-Pasquina, who points out that oil companies thus become vectors of an oppression that links societies enjoying the benefits of lavish energy with those that suffer the impacts of extraction.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1033231

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States Consider a New Way to Make Big Oil Pay for the Impacts of Climate Change
by Katie Meyers
February 2, 2024

Introduction:

(Gist) Last July, the normally warm and humid but still pleasant New England summer was disrupted by a series of unusually heavy rain storms. Flash floods broke creek banks and washed away roads, inundating several cities and towns. Vermont and upstate New York in particular saw immense damage. As communities attempted to recover from the havoc, legislators in these states, and several others, asked themselves why taxpayers should have to cover the cost of rebuilding after climate disasters when the fossil fuel industry is at fault.

Vermont is now joining Maryland, Massachusetts, and New York in a multi-state effort to hold Big Oil accountable for the expensive damage wrought by climate change. Bills on the docket in all four states demand that oil companies pay states millions for such impacts by funding, as Vermont’s proposal outlines, energy efficiency retrofits, water utility improvements, solar microgrids, and stormwater drainage, just to name a few resiliency programs.

“There will be no shortage of climate expenses that it would be entirely appropriate for this fund to pay for,” said Ben Edgerly-Walsh, the climate and energy director for the Vermont Public Interest Research Group. “These are not going to be avoidable expenses at the end of the day because of the way the climate crisis is playing out.”

One 2023 poll showed that over 60 percent of voters nationwide support making polluters pay for the consequences of their actions. Should these bills become law, however, they surely face a long road of legal battles before they are implemented. The American Petroleum Institute, which represents some 600 fossil fuel companies, did not respond to a request for comment.

Still, such efforts have a number of precedents. The most obvious is the 1998 settlement that forced Big Tobacco to provide $206 billion over 25 years to underwrite state public health budgets. Another example is the federal Superfund legislation enacted in 1980 that followed a number of toxic spills that drew national attention to hazardous waste dumps. After intensive advocacy by environmental organizations and frontline communities, Congress passed the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, or CERCLA, which forced those responsible for these messes to clean them up or pay the government to do so.

Read more here: https://grist.org/accountability/a-sup ... oil-pay/