Tag: fossil fuels

In another legal victory for opponents of Keystone XL and similar pipelines, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Thursday upheld a lower court ruling that suspended a federal fast-track permit for the controversial tar sands project that campaigners for nearly a decade have opposed as a climate-destroying effort of the first order. #NoKXL #KeystoneXL

A United Nations report described as the most authoritative and comprehensive assessment of global biodiversity ever published found that human exploitation of the natural world has pushed a million plant and animal species to the brink of extinction—with potentially devastating implications for the future of civilization.

America’s twisted politics may slow the transition to renewables, but other countries are now pushing the pace. In July of 2017, for instance, the Chinese announced that Qinghai Province—a territory the size of Texas—had gone a week relying on 100% renewable energy, a test of grid reliability designed to show that the country could continue its record-breaking pace of wind and solar installation.

A district judge in ruled that 13 fossil fuel pipeline protesters were not responsible for any infraction because of the necessity of their actions. “This may be a first in America,” tweeted Bill McKibben. The charges the defendants faced stemmed from actions they took in 2016 to block Spectra Energy’s fracked gas West Roxbury Lateral Pipeline.

The German non-profit Energy Watch Group (EWG) teamed up with Finland’s Lappeenranta University of Technology to present a study at the COP23 climate summit. The results of the study show “that a 100% renewable electricity system is an effective and urgently needed climate protection measure. A global zero emission power system is feasible and more cost-effective than the existing system based on nuclear and fossil fuel energy.”