A global movement to end fossil fuels fast, fair, and forever. But there is a ton of opposition from the fossil fuel industry, and especially from state-owned or affiliated oil companies.
We’ve been pushing President Biden, in particular, stop approving new fossil fuel projects and declare a climate emergency. But our work got a big and unexpected boost from a recent UN Science report.
The report is called the “global stocktake” and it’s scientists best assessment of whether countries are meeting the emissions pledges they made under the 2015 Paris agreement. As usual, the UN scientists found that we’re not doing nearly enough, or making enough progress, in the US or around the world to cut global warming pollution. But the report also demanded governments enact “transformations across all sectors and contexts, including scaling up renewable energy while phasing out all unabated fossil fuels.”
That’s a big deal, not only because UN Scientist are usually a little more circumspect with their wording, but because the global stocktake is the basis for the upcoming UN climate ambition summit in New York, and the international climate talks at the end of this year in Dubai.
President Biden is on his way to New York City next week for a big climate summit, and experts say the inclusion of anti-fossil fuel language in the global stocktake report could galvanize the action we need. One world leader, Rishi Sunak of the United Kingdom, has already been forced out of next week’s climate talks for vowing to “max out” oil and gas leasing. Will President Biden be the first leader of a major oil and gas producing country to declare an end of the era of fossil fuels?
Fighting agains the leadership we need are the biggest fossil fuel companies. And you might be surprised to learn than some of the biggest are not the US oil companies we’re used to hearing about, they’re state owned or affiliated fossil fuel companies from Europe, China, the Middle East, and even South America.
For example, Eni — the Italian oil company — is the third biggest oil and gas developer of 2023, behind only QatarEnergy, the national oil company of Qatar, and Petrobras, the state-owned Brazilian oil company. Eni is not well known in the US, but they are one of the worst, and they have plans to increase oil and gas extraction by 3-4 percent per year through 2026 according to Oil Change International’s Big Oil Reality Check 2023. Eni invested 15 times (1,500%) more in fossil fuels than in renewable energy, in 2022 while raking in record profits — and they’re also the only big oil company left with an office in New York City.
State-affiliated oil companies are also a big threat to human rights and the right to free speech. Big fossil fuel companies have maintained profitable relationships with Russia despite sanctions related to the war in Ukraine. And Eni recently launched a SLAPP lawsuit against our allies in Italy like Greenpeace.
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