Message From the Editor
This week, Clare Carlile has mapped the deep ties between big agriculture and the continent’s right-wing politicians.
Relationship-building activities have helped to forge a powerful alliance in Brussels between select politicians from the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) and those with a commercial interest in slowing moves to more nature-friendly farming: pesticide manufacturers and farming unions linked to industry.
This builds off our investigation two months ago that revealed agriculture lobby groups have been in constant contact with a small group of influential European politicians, holding an average of over two meetings a week.
The nature of the links featured on the map range from direct contact in meetings, at socials and on hikes, as well as membership of industry-linked organizations and committees. Take a look at the new, interactive map here.
While the 24th edition of the World Petroleum Congress was ambitiously titled Energy Transition: The Path to Net Zero, little progress appears to have been made on advancing the cause of energy transition or of accelerating on the road to net zero.
Rather, a consistent theme of the congress was the idea that international commitments to achieve net zero by 2050, or to attain even modest Paris Agreement targets, were unrealistic, arbitrary, or threatened global energy stability and security.
Nasser and other panelists neglected to mention that climate change is already driving social, economic, and environmental destruction in the developing world and a root cause of an affordability crisis across much of the Global North.
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Thanks,
Brendan DeMelle
Executive Director
P.S. Investigative journalism like this is made possible by readers like you. Can you donate $10 or $20 right now to support more of this essential work?
Image credit: DeSmog
Mapped: The Deep Ties Between Big Ag and Europe’s Right-Wing Politicians
— By Clare Carlile (10 min. read) —
Striding out on alpine hikes, mingling at rooftop soirées and lending office space free of charge – these are just some of the ways Big Ag has sought to win over influential EU lawmakers on critical green reforms in recent years.
These relationship-building activities have helped to forge a powerful alliance in Brussels between select politicians from the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) and those with a commercial interest in slowing moves to more nature-friendly farming: pesticide manufacturers and farming unions linked to industry.
Despite ‘Energy Transition’ Theme, Petroleum Congress Rejected Climate Action
— By Taylor Noakes (4 min. read) —
At the conclusion of the 24th edition of the World Petroleum Congress, which was ambitiously titled Energy Transition: The Path to Net Zero, little progress appears to have been made on advancing the cause of energy transition or of accelerating on the road to net zero.
Rather, a consistent theme of the congress was the idea that international commitments to achieve net zero by 2050, or to attain even modest Paris Agreement targets, were unrealistic, arbitrary, or threatened global energy stability and security.
95 UK Universities That Have Pledged to Divest from Oil and Gas Use Banks Funding Climate Crisis
— By Max Colbert (4 min. read) —
Almost 100 universities that have pledged to shed ties to the fossil fuel industry still bank with financial institutions that have collectively provided $419 billion (£345 million) to polluting interests between 2016 and 2022.
The new research, conducted by campaign group Make My Money Matter and obtained using Freedom of Information requests, shows that 95 universities still hold a bank account with one of five leading global fossil fuel funders: Barclays, HSBC, Santander, NatWest, and Lloyds.
A Secretive Network Is Fighting Indigenous Rights in Australia and Canada, Expert Says
— By Geoff Dembicki (4 min. read) —
A campaign to deny Indigenous peoples a voice in Australia’s national Parliament is using tactics similar to an earlier conservative legal battle against First Nations communities in Canada, a new research paper argues.
That’s no coincidence, according to the paper’s author Jeremy Walker, because think tanks linked to these efforts in Canada and Australia belong to a secretive U.S. organization called the Atlas Network that’s received support from oil, gas and coal companies and operates in nearly 100 countries.
‘Deeply Troubling’ Lack of UK North Sea Oil and Gas Monitoring
— By Andrew Kersley (5 min. read) —
The main regulator of North Sea oil and gas doesn’t conduct physical inspections to ensure companies operating in the region are following the rules, DeSmog can reveal.
The revelations, labelled “deeply troubling” by campaigners, come as the government and the regulator, the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), have announced plans to approve drilling at a new oil field, Rosebank, that could produce 69,000 barrels of oil and 44 million cubic feet of gas a day.
From the Climate Disinformation Database: Yara International ASA
Yara International ASA is a Norwegian fertilizer company headquartered in Oslo. The company was founded in 1905 “to solve the emerging famine in Europe” and claims to be the world’s only agrichemical “crop nutrition” company with a sole focus on the production of fertilizers since its establishment. The company’s global annual revenues for 2020 amounted to US$11.6 billion. Yara’s largest factory for ammonia and nitrates, located in Sluiskil, Netherlands, produces 15 percent of Yara’s worldwide fertilizer products – approximately 5 million tons per year. An estimate by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency found that the plant’s 2017 emissions of greenhouse gases were equivalent to 3.4 million tons of carbon dioxide.
Read the full profile and browse other individuals and organizations in our Climate Disinformation Database and Koch Network Database.
