Home » Posts tagged 'Mychaylo Prystupa'
Tag Archives: Mychaylo Prystupa
US States Team Up to Nail Big Oil for Climate ‘Fraud’
US States Team Up to Nail Big Oil for Climate ‘Fraud’
Legal experts say oil companies could face billions of dollars in liabilities.
New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman a press event Tuesday to announce a multi-state legal probe into climate denial. At left is former US vice president Al Gore. Photo provided by the New York State Attorney press office.
If the oil giants lose, their total liabilities could run into the billions or even trillions of dollars, according to some legal experts, and Canadian energy firms may not be immune.
Flanked by Al Gore, five U.S. state attorneys generals took to a podium Tuesday to join New York’s legal battle against alleged climate denial by big oil companies, such as ExxonMobil.
“The first amendment, ladies and gentlemen, doesn’t give you the right to commit fraud,” said New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
“We have heard the scientists. We know what’s happening to the planet. There is dispute, but there is confusion — and confusion sowed by those with an interest in profiting from the confusion, and creating misperceptions in the eyes of the American public that really need to be cleared up,” he added.
A total of 17 state attorneys general agreed to coordinate their investigations against ExxonMobil and other giant oil firms suspected of suppressing the risks of climate change for decades from their shareholders and the American public.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Jeff Rubin: Oil Sands Are ‘Hemorrhaging Red Ink,’ Doomed to Shutter
Jeff Rubin: Oil Sands Are ‘Hemorrhaging Red Ink,’ Doomed to Shutter
Former CIBC chief economist outlines latest predictions at ‘Carbon Talks.’
Former CIBC world markets economist Jeff Rubin at SFU’s ‘Carbon Talks’ panel. On the right is Vancity’s mutual fund manager Dermot Foley. Photo by Mychaylo Prystupa.
Those were the takeaways from a trio of experts who spoke in Vancouver Wednesday at a “Carbon Talks” event hosted by Simon Fraser University with the David Suzuki Foundation and the Centre for International Governance.
And the reasons for them have a lot less to do with vocal activist opposition or the Trudeau government’s climate commitments than they do with the brute forces of the global marketplace for oil.
It was Jeff Rubin — former CIBC World Markets chief economist and now energy futurist — who declared some of Canada’s largest oil sands operations doomed to be shuttered.
“Hanging over the oil sands industry like the Sword of Damocles,” Rubin said, “is the fact that they are hemorrhaging red ink. At today’s prices, the oil sands are not commercially viable.”
The problem, he said, isn’t that the industry “has been targeted by sanctions or by environmental groups. The problem has been that oil imports in the United States have been halved over the last five years.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Site C Is a Climate-Change Disaster, Says Suzuki
Site C Is a Climate-Change Disaster, Says Suzuki
‘We have to rethink everything’ says noted environmentalist. A Tyee Q&A.
David Suzuki and Grand Chief Stewart Phillip at a media scrum outside the B.C. Superior Court Monday morning. Photo by Mychaylo Prystupa.
The farmland is needed to reduce B.C.’s dependence on imported foods, Suzuki said, and eliminate the huge amounts of carbon fuels needed to bring those foods here.
“It seems to me crazy to put farmland in the north underwater,” he said. “We live in a food chain now in which food grows on average 3,000 kilometres from where it’s consumed. The transport of all that food is dependent on fossil fuels.
“Food has got to be grown much closer to where it’s going to be consumed,” he said.
Instead of building dams and pipelines, Canada should “massively encourage” wind, solar and geothermal energy projects and put a stiff price on carbon emissions, he said.
Suzuki joined Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, head of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, at a news conference on the steps of B.C. Supreme Court just before the latest battle over the Site C hydroelectric project began inside.
BC Hydro is seeking an injunction to prevent protesters at the Rocky Mountain Fort camp from “physically interfering” with the construction of Site C. The B.C. government approved the $8.3-billion dam in late 2014.
If completed, Site C would flood about 83 kilometres of the Peace River valley near Hudson’s Hope, much of it fertile land, and generate enough electricity to power 450,000 homes.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Pipeline Reforms ‘Great Step’ but Don’t Account for Most Emissions, Say Climate Critics
Pipeline Reforms ‘Great Step’ but Don’t Account for Most Emissions, Say Climate Critics
Does ignoring downstream impacts export Canada’s responsibilities?
Canada’s minister of the environment and climate change Catherine McKenna at the COP21 climate summit in Paris, France in December. Photo by Mychaylo Prystupa.
The Trudeau government’s newly announced reforms to pipeline environmental assessments still fail to consider the impact of almost 90 per cent of resulting greenhouse gas emissions, climate experts have told The Tyee.
The government announced a new interim assessment regime Wednesday, saying it will restore public confidence in much-criticized National Energy Board reviews.
The major change will see a pipeline’s upstream emissions included in the assessment. For a pipeline from Alberta’s oil sands, for example, the greenhouse gases produced in mining and processing the bitumen will be included in the environmental assessment review.
But critics say government will still not be considering the much greater downstream emissions as pipeline products are processed and burned in vehicles, factories and power plants.
A recent analysis by Simon Fraser University climate economist Mark Jaccard found these emissions represented up to 89 per cent of greenhouse gases from the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion.
University of British Columbia climate policy expert Kathryn Harrison says Ottawa is effectively exporting the climate change problem to other countries by ignoring downstream emissions.
Analysis of the full greenhouse gas impact of Trans Mountain pipeline expansion pipeline shows 89 per cent is in the downstream GHG impacts overseas in refining and combusting. Source: Mark Jaccard and Associates.
Harrison said under international reporting norms the downstream greenhouse gas emissions are the responsibility of the end-user country. “But the fact is, we’re contributing to that, and we’re making money from it.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
