Message From the Editor

This week, investigative reporter Sara Sneath covered the frontline communities launching a hunger strike to protest the plastic giant Formosa.

Fishers, organizers, and concerned citizens in Texas, Vietnam, and Louisiana — areas that are home to existing or proposed Formosa plants — have supported each other’s efforts to mobilize against the Taiwan-based firm, forming the organization International Monitor Formosa Alliance.

Now the alliance is launching a hunger strike to demand that the victims of a 2016 environmental disaster in central Vietnam caused by Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corporation, a subsidiary of the Formosa Plastics Group, be compensated for their losses, that the polluted area be restored, and that those who have been jailed for protesting be released. 

Diane Wilson, winner of the “Green Nobel Prize” is one of the organizers for the strike.

Out in Hawaii, a lawsuit filed by the city and county of Honolulu against nearly a dozen fossil fuel companies is moving towards trial in Hawaii.

Honolulu first sued 10 fossil fuel companies — including BP, Chevron, Shell, ExxonMobil, and Aloha Petroleum — in March 2020, in an attempt to hold these companies accountable for alleged deception over the climate risks of their products. Though the defendants have attempted to get the case thrown out, the Hawaii Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected the arguments for dismissing the case on appeal.

“This will be the first [climate liability] case to go to a jury,” Patrick Parenteau, emeritus professor of law and senior fellow for climate policy at Vermont Law and Graduate School, told DeSmog. He called the ruling a “breakthrough.”

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Thanks,
Brendan DeMelle
Executive Director

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Image credit: Gage Skidmore / WC

Frontline Communities Launch Hunger Strike to Protest Plastics Giant Formosa

— By Sara Sneath (3 min. read) —

Communities around the world impacted by the plastics giant Formosa are launching a global hunger strike on October 31. 

In April 2016, a steel factory in the Ha Tinh province owned by the corporation leaked a toxic mixture of chemicals — including cyanide — into the coastal waters of central Vietnam, killing fish and poisoning residents in four provinces. Formosa denied it had discharged the toxic waste for months, but later acknowledged it had caused the spill.

Honolulu’s Climate Suit Against Big Oil Advances Towards Trial

— By Dana Drugmand (3 min. read) —

A lawsuit filed by the city and county of Honolulu against nearly a dozen fossil fuel companies is moving towards trial in Hawaii after the Hawaii Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected the companies’ arguments for dismissing the case on appeal.

Honolulu first sued 10 fossil fuel companies — including BP, Chevron, Shell, ExxonMobil, and Aloha Petroleum — in March 2020, in an attempt to hold these companies accountable for alleged deception over the climate risks of their products. The fossil fuel defendants had been seeking to have the case dismissed, arguing that the lawsuit was an attempt to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, a task left to the EPA rather than states.

New Report Calls Out Chemical Recycling as a ‘False Solution’ to the Plastics Crisis

— By Dana Drugmand (4 min. read) —

The plastics and petrochemical industries’ latest purported solution to the plastic pollution crisis – chemical or “advanced” recycling – is essentially a public relations and marketing strategy designed to distract from the urgent need to curb plastic production, a new report contends. The report, released today by Beyond Plastics and the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN), exposes the failures and perils of chemical recycling as an approach to manage plastic waste.

GB News Owner’s Hedge Fund Has $2.2 Billion Fossil Fuel Investments

— By Sam Bright and Joey Grostern (7 min. read) —

One of the owners of GB News runs a hedge fund that has a major financial stake in more than 100 oil and gas firms, DeSmog can reveal. 

This news comes after former prime minister Boris Johnson was announced as a new presenter on the television broadcaster on Friday.

LNG plant operators change their tune on carbon capture

— By Sara Sneath (7 min. read) —

As Louisiana attempts to spew less climate-warming pollution, which disproportionately comes from industry, fossil-fuel companies have convinced lawmakers to jump onto the bandwagon of carbon capture and storage (CCS), a controversial and unproven  method of addressing the issue.

They’ve also asked lawmakers to finance the technology, which critics say is classic “greenwashing” – it may sound good, but will not curb the state’s overall emission levels.

From the Climate Disinformation Database: American Chemistry Council

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) describes itself as “the leading association representing the $553-billion U.S chemicals industry.” ACC members listed on its website include subsidiaries of Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, Total and BP as well as four out of the five largest pesticides manufacturers in the world – Bayer, BASF, FMC and Corteva. The ACC was previously led by Jack N. Gerard, who left the ACC in 2008 to lead the American Petroleum Institute (API). Gerard was described by the Washington Post as “the force majeure behind Big Oil,” for his work at the API. While at the ACC he worked to turn the organization into a more “potent political force” and coordinated a campaign to secure passage of legislation that would open new areas off the U.S. coast to drilling for natural gas.

Read the full profile and browse other individuals and organizations in our Climate Disinformation Database and Koch Network Database.