Frank Carini: Front groups for polluters belch out fake news

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

The fact that the planet has a fever isn’t debatable. The millions of dollars lackeys for the fossil-fuel industry spend to discredit climate science doesn’t change reality.

Nearly 100 percent of climate scientists agree that human activity, most notably the burning of fossil fuels, is changing life on Earth — and not for the better, especially for humans.

It’s been more than five decades since scientists first expressed concern to a U.S. president about the dangers of a changing climate. Last year’s Fourth National Climate Assessment — the work of 13 federal agencies and 350 scientists — is crystal clear: The planet is warming faster than at any time in human history, and humans are causing it.

Seventeen of the 18 warmest years in the 136-year climate record have occurred since 2001, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

At least 18 scientific societies in the United States, including the Union of Concerned Scientists, have issued official statements about manmade climate change.

Despite this scientific consensus, climate-change deniers are still given airtime by the same media outlets that nightly report on floods, tornadoes, wildfires, and other extreme weather. Many of the same people being left homeless by a feverish Mother Nature vote for politicians who deride climate solutions.

Deniers ignore a public that is increasingly concerned about the impacts of climate change. A recent survey conducted by Yale University’s Program on Climate Change Communications found that 53 percent of Americans believe global warming is harming their local community and 57 percent believe fossil-fuel companies have either “a great deal” or “a moderate amount” of responsibility for the damages caused by climate change.

Deniers also ignore the fact that internal research by fossil-fuel companies supports the scientific consensus on climate change. But they plow ahead anyway with their campaign of misinformation, even as lawsuits are filed to hold the industry accountable for the climate impacts it knew would occur. Like the tobacco industry, the fossil-fuel industry minimized the negative health impacts of its products so it could operate unchecked. Some of the same shills, such as Steve Milloy, who protected tobacco profits at the expense of public health are using the same playbook to protect hydrocarbons.

“Scientific misinformation undermines public understanding of science, erodes basic trust in research findings and stalls evidenced-based policymaking,” according to a paper published in March in the science journal Nature.

The paper’s three authors noted that in April 2018 then-Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt signed a rule that would sharply reduce the number of scientific studies the federal agency can take into account, “effectively limiting the agency’s ability to regulate toxic chemicals, air pollution, carbon emissions and industries that science has already shown to have lethal impacts on human and environmental health.”

Milloy, a member of President Trump’s EPA transition team, said the rule to end “secret science” by “taxpayer-funded university researchers” is “one of my proudest achievements.”

In an interview with The New Yorker, Milloy defended his achievement by saying, “I do have a bias. I’m all for the coal industry, the fossil-fuel industry. Wealth is what makes people happy, not pristine air, which you’ll never get.”

Fossil-fuel front groups are paid to lie and misrepresent facts, all in the name of protecting polluting billionaires. (istock)

A dark place

Six years ago, Drexel University environmental sociologist Robert Brulle, now a visiting professor of environment and society at Brown University, published an analysis that found conservative foundations, such as the Howard Charitable Foundation, the John William Pope Foundation, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and Searle Freedom Trust, provided the largest and most-consistent money stream to the denial movement. Much of that secret funding is now commonly referred to as “dark money.”

Here in Rhode Island, denial propaganda is spread by the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity, with such headlines as “LAWSUIT: Center calls on RI Attorney General to release ‘secrecy pact’ documents re. cabal’s climate change inquisition” and “Center Plays Role in Lawsuit Against RI Attorney General for Climate Change Conspiracy Documents.”

The organization’s efforts are likely supported, at least in part, with money from special interests, but finding information on its website about how the center is funded is no easy task.

SourceWatch outlines the Center for Freedom and Prosperity’s strong ties to Koch-funded organizations such as the State Policy Network — a group that touts the free market as the panacea to all ills and rails against government regulation — and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate bill mill.

The Center for Freedom and Prosperity, the foundations mentioned above, and other front groups all have one thing in common: they discredit science and attack knowledge to undermine government intervention and muddy the warming waters when it comes to climate change.

The are paid to consistently lie and misrepresent facts — all in the name of protecting polluting billionaires. They routinely claim, without evidence, that climate initiatives will hurt the economy, increase cost for ratepayers, and slow job creation. They argue that climate mitigation is a hidden tax, some violation of the free market, or unconstitutional overreach.

All of this fossil-fuel-powered propaganda is, to borrow a favorite denial-group phrase, fake news, but this dark-money campaign does corrupt politics, both locally and nationally, by pressuring politicians and policymakers to protect private wealth interests at the expensive of, well, everything. This clandestine operation makes having honest and open discussions about how to mitigate the very-real impacts of climate change nearly impossible. And that’s the point.

Brulle’s 2013 study was among the first academic efforts to probe the web of funding supporting the denial movement. It found that the amount of money flowing through third-party foundations, whose funding can’t easily be traced, had risen dramatically since 2008.

Brulle found that from 2003 to 2010, for example, 140 foundations funneled $558 million to nearly 100 climate-denial organizations. He also found that the traceable cash flow from more traditional sources, such as Koch Industries and ExxonMobil, had dried up.

From 2003 to 2007, Koch Affiliated Foundations and the ExxonMobil Foundation were “heavily involved” in funding denial efforts, according to Brulle’s research. He found, however, that ExxonMobil hadn’t made a publicly traceable contribution since 2008, and that the Koch brothers’ public contributions had been dramatically reduced.

There is evidence of a trend toward concealing the sources of climate-denial funding through the use of donor-directed philanthropies, according to the study.

The study concluded public records identify only a fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars supporting climate-denial efforts. An examination of various metrics, including Internal Revenue Service data, Brulle’s research found that 91 “climate change counter-movement” organizations have an annual income of some $900 million, with an annual average of $64 million in identifiable foundation support.

“The climate change countermovement has had a real political and ecological impact on the failure of the world to act on global warming,” Brulle wrote in a statement when his study was released. “Like a play on Broadway, the countermovement has stars in the spotlight — often prominent contrarian scientists or conservative politicians — but behind the stars is an organizational structure of directors, script writers and producers.

“If you want to understand what's driving this movement, you have to look at what’s going on behind the scenes. Without a free flow of accurate information, democratic politics and government accountability become impossible. Money amplifies certain voices above others and, in effect, gives them a megaphone in the public square.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse says the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, along with the National Association of Manufacturers, are the two biggest front groups for the fossil-fuel industry.

Front-group follies

It’s difficult to comprehend what climate change is delivering, and those who do understand are disparaged, threatened, and called greedy — apparently, federal grants are making them rich.

Much of this noise is mass-produced by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Petroleum Institute, and other front groups for the fossil-fuel industry. They all have well-funded lobbying arms and links to dark-money sources. They use both to block climate-mitigation efforts at every level.

In 2009, for instance, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce submitted written comment to the EPA after the agency said greenhouse-gas emissions are a threat to public health. The business organization, which two years later would urge lawmakers to focus on expanding fossil-fuel energy production and not “high-cost energy sources” such as wind and solar, was appalled by reality.

The chamber’s written response read, in part: “The Administrator has thus ignored analyses that show that a warming of even 3 [degrees] C[elsius] in the next 100 years would, on balance, be beneficial to humans because the reduction of wintertime mortality/morbidity would be several times larger than the increase in summertime heat stress-related mortality/morbidity.”

A year later, the chamber sued the EPA, seeking to overturn its finding that climate emissions endanger public health and welfare.

That’s the kind of stupidity front groups are using to assail science, endanger public health, and put future generations at risk. The fact we’re still being governed and represented by people who spew such nonsense — last year Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, blamed sea-level rise on erosion and rocks falling into the ocean, saying, “Every time you have that soil or rock or whatever it is that is deposited into the seas, that forces the sea levels to rise, because now you have less space in those oceans, because the bottom is moving up.” — speaks to the power special interests wield.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has gone to great lengths to protect the unrelenting burning of fossil fuels. In both 2005 and ’07, the chamber opposed bipartisan cap-and trade-legislation.

In 2009, the chamber was one of the leading front groups lobbying against the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill. Since the failure of that bill, the chamber’s allies in Congress have refused to hold hearings, debate, or vote on any legislation proposing reductions in carbon pollution.

The chamber has convened fossil-fuel lobbyists, lawyers, and political strategists to plot legal strategies for opposing future regulatory actions to limit carbon pollution. It led a coalition of trade groups suing to block an EPA plan to reduce carbon emissions in the electric power sector. It funded a study critical of the Paris Agreement. It spearheaded a lobbying campaign in support of a Congressional Review Act resolution to repeal a Department of Interior rule limiting methane emissions from oil and gas facilities on public lands.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers have softened their stance on climate change somewhat in the past year or so, mainly because of increasing corporate pressure. However, the leadership of these trade/front groups is still dominated by fossil-fuel money and is loyal to a political party that has branded coal as clean.

The foundation upon which these organizations rest — the businesses they supposedly represent — is beginning to crack, as some corporations, most notably Apple, have left the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over its climate-change position, and others are following them out the denial door.

The public’s growing concern about climate change has exposed a rift between the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s corporate members and the organization itself, according to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and some other D.C. lawmakers are applying pressure to this mounting relationship tension by making sure the corporate world and the public understand the negative impact fossil-fuel front groups are having on delaying solutions to a serious problem.

ecoRI News recently spoke with Whitehouse in a downtown Providence cafe. He said now that the climate-change issue has reached a level of public priority it has forced corporate America to get serious about the problem. This corporate seriousness, he added, has exposed a rift between the chamber’s members and the organization itself.

Whitehouse believes that widening this rift and exposing the front groups that are laundering denial money are the keys to addressing climate change. “All of this nonsense is funded by fossil-fuel money,” he said.

Now that House committees have subpoena power, Whitehouse said they will start digging into the “dark-money stuff.”

“There’s nothing about dark money that enjoys a legal privilege,” Rhode Island’s former attorney general said. “You just don’t have to disclose it, so they don’t. But it’s not like you can take a subpoena and say, ‘No, I don’t have to respond to that subpoena.’ All we have to do is start digging and we’ll find some very interesting stuff.”

Front groups are paid to create the appearance of public support for deregulation and to remind politicians that they may lose an election if they oppose corporate priorities, such as the burning of fossil fuels. (istock)

Follow the money

Prof. Timmons Roberts are continuing the work Brulle started nearly a decade ago.

The Climate and Development Lab at Brown University is working to shine a light on the individuals and organizations behind the climate-denial movement. The lab’s research aims to make known the vast sums spent on public-relations firms by ExxonMobil and other energy corporations to obscure what they have known for decades: that fossil-fuel emissions are destructive.

“This really is a failure to warn us that (fossil-fuel companies) know their products are going to cause all of these problems but they are not warning the public about it,” Brulle told ecoRI News earlier this year. “They are selling us the idea of oil, prosperity, and fossil fuels are all the same thing … a very, very subtle manipulation that runs into the billions of dollars over decades.”

The project has already untangled a web of denial money from oil and gas companies such as Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, and Texaco, and from automakers such as Ford and General Motors. These corporations fund groups such as the National Mining Association and the American Petroleum Institute, and denial groups with ambiguous names such as the Global Climate Coalition and the Cooler Heads Coalition.

The initiative profiles these groups and explains how they create the appearance of public support for deregulation, while also reminding politicians that they may lose election/re-election by opposing corporate priorities — i.e., the burning of fossil fuels.

In Rhode Island, National Grid has been one of the top opponents to legislation that would address climate emissions. The British multinational opposed seven bills that supported renewable energy and action on climate change in the General Assembly between 2012 and 2017, according to the Climate and Development Lab.

Rhode Island’s primary electric and gas utility has also donated to the front group Edison Electric Institute (EEI). The organization has opposed, or funded groups that oppose, net metering, one of the core renewable-energy policies that allow homes and businesses to sell excess solar energy to the power grid.

A 2017 report by the Energy and Policy Institute explores how regulated investor-owned utility companies are including their EEI annual membership dues in their general operating expenses. This widespread practice results in ratepayers subsidizing the political activities of EEI, which works closely with ALEC.

The Energy Council of Rhode Island also opposed seven climate and renewable-energy bills proposed at the Statehouse between 2012 and 2017, according to the Climate and Development Lab.

For 20 years, from 1997-2017, the network of players spreading misinformation about climate change has been increasingly integrated into political philanthropy, according to a study published in March by a Yale University professor.

“The study introduces a new and broader pathway through which climate change misinformation travels, beyond the tendency of research to narrowly focus on the activities of think-tanks and fossil-fuel interests, often in isolation from mainstream American institutions like philanthropy,” Justin Farrell wrote. “Yet, as this study also shows, the impact of funding from fossil-fuel sources still plays an important role, revealing that the strength of the relationship between the misinformation network and philanthropy is strongest for people and organizations directly tied to such funding.”

Farrell’s research revealed new knowledge about large-scale efforts to distort public understanding of science and sow polarization. This influence has grown in recent years with the rapid expansion of untraceable donor-directed philanthropy that enables anonymous funding to pass-through organizations such as DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund, according to the study titled “The growth of climate change misinformation in US philanthropy.”

Frank Carini is editor of ecoRI News.

Tim Faulkner: Fossil-fuel groups try to drown out global-warming science

This chart shows the web of groups that share money and staff to spread misinformation about climate change. (Brown University Climate and Development Lab)

From ecoRI News (ecori.org)

TV ads spinning a positive message about fossil-fuel companies are running more frequently as climate change is poised to move into the legislative spotlight now that Democrats have taken control of the U.S. House.

Recent commercials by the ExxonMobil Corp. show millennials in lab coats, waiting tables, and welding pipeline tubes: jobs that are ostensibly created by the fossil fuel-extraction industry. Missing are the health and environmental impacts of oil spills and natural-gas leaks, acidifying oceans and displacement and destruction caused by powerful storms — all of which are the result of drilling, shipping, processing, and the burning of fossil fuels. This new PR blitz is the latest action in a decades-long offensive to counter the science proving that fossil fuels are destroying the planet.

A project led by the Climate and Development Lab at Brown University intends to expose and delegitimize this feel-good narrative by revealing the people and money behind climate-opposition efforts. It also aims to remind the public of what ExxonMobil and other energy companies have known for decades: that fossil-fuel emissions are destructive.

“This really is a failure to warn us that (fossil-fuel companies) know their products are going to cause all of these problems but they are not warning the public about it,” said Robert Brulle, a visiting professor at Brown University and one the leading national researchers on climate-change denialism.

One of the goals of the investigation is to bring to the fore the campaign of denialism and the accompanying disinformation funded by fossil-fuel corporations, utility companies, and right-wing policy groups.

“They are selling us the idea of oil, prosperity, and fossil fuels are all the same thing,” Brulle said. It’s “a very, very subtle manipulation that runs into the billions of dollars over decades.”

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D- R.I., has been broadcasting the issue from the Senate floor since 2012 with his Time To Wake Up speeches. But without hearings or other public debate led by Congress, clime-change legislation has been suppressed by intimidation, political contributions, and a mass media-marketing campaign to discredit the science.

“The biggest gap that we have on a pathway to success on climate is our failure to have shown the public who’s behind the curtain on so much of the nonsense that gets propagated as climate denial,” Whitehouse said.

Whitehouse is part of the multifaceted effort to out the climate-denial network and its funders. This includes a forthcoming book, new research, and legislation.

In Washington, D.C., Whitehouse and Rep. David Ciciliine, D-R.I., have introduced an updated version of the proposed Disclose Act, which prevents corporate donors from hiding their campaign donations in shell corporations. Whitehouse said making public such donations will cause the collapse of “the special interest hiding systems” and “laundering systems.”

“The dark money disappears when it’s required to become transparent,” he said. “It’s like when you flip on the light and the cockroaches scuttle for the shadows.”

At Brown University, Caroline Jones, a third-year student, wrote a 37-page report on the fossil-fuel spin apparatus with a team of classmates, Brulle, and professor J. Timmons Roberts. Jones delivered her findings to the Climate Action Task Force in the U.S. Senate.

“A lot of these groups engage in pretty blatant pubic misinformation campaigns,” Jones said. “They run targeted strategies to specific demographics, to people who they think are vulnerable to misinformation.”

During a recent meeting with members of the media, Jones, Roberts, and Brulle presented slides showing the complex network of companies, public-relations firms, lobbyists, and bogus environmental groups that spread climate disinformation. Brulle’s research dates back until 1967 and his current work focuses on the years 2010 to 2015.

The spider web of money comes from oil and gas companies such as Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Texaco; from automakers such as Ford and General Motors; and from utilities and chambers of commerce. They fund groups such as the National Coal Association and the American Petroleum Institute (API), and “astroturf” denialist groups with ambiguous names such as Global Climate Coalition and the Cooler Heads Coalition.

The report Countermovement Coalitions profiles these groups and explains how they create the appearance of public support for deregulation, while also reminding politicians that they may lose election/re-election by opposing corporate priorities.

In Rhode Island, the report looks at the institutions that have resisted climate and renewable-energy legislation. National Grid has been one of the top opponents to legislation endorsed by the Environmental Council of Rhode Island, a coalition of 60-plus environmental groups. National Grid opposed seven bills that supported renewable energy and action on climate change in the General Assembly between 2012 and 2017, according to the Climate and Development Lab.

The state’s primary electric and natural-gas utility also donates to the national anti-climate group Edison Electric Institute (EEI). The organization has opposed — or funded groups that oppose — net metering, one of the core renewable-energy policies that allow homes and businesses to sell excess solar energy to the power grid. EEI officials also question whether climate change is manmade.

The trade association of U.S. electric utilities works closely with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the conservative policy group with massive influence in state legislatures. ALEC is funded by climate deniers like the Koch brothers and Koch Industries. Among its initiatives, ALEC has pushed President Trump to rollback climate regulations and open public land to fossil-fuel and mineral extraction.

The Energy Council of Rhode Island (TEC-RI) also opposed seven climate and renewable-energy bills proposed at the Statehouse between 2012 and 2017. TEC-RI lobbies on behalf of the state’s largest electricity users and manufacturers. Other opponents of climate and energy legislation include the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce, the Rhode Island Pubic Expenditures Council (RIPEC), and the Rhode Island Building and Construction Trades Council.

National Grid confirmed that it continues to be a member of EEI. In response to the groups connection to ALEC and its front groups and opposition to climate legislation, National Grid said, “We as a company support the science of climate change.”

Spokesman Kevin O’Shea noted National Grid’s backs the nine-state Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, the nation’s first cap-and-trade program. He said National Grid also endorses the Paris Climate Accord’s Clean Power Plan. O’Shea also cited National Grid’s involvement with the Block Island Wind Farm and touted a corporation plan to cut greenhouse-gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.

EEI also has financial ties to groups fighting climate-change regulations, such as the Coalition for Affordable and Reliable Energy, the Global Climate Coalition, Alliance for Climate Strategies, and the Alliance for Energy and Economic Growth.

According to research by Brulle and Jones, most of these denial group share staff. They lobby Congress to oppose climate legislation, spread false information about climate science, and run public-relations and advertising campaigns that boost the image of fossil fuels.

Jones studied 12 front groups that spread climate denialism, four of which received money from EEI.

“The leaders in many of these denial coalitions have held highly influential positions in the Republican party and some are now in positions in the Trump administration with direct control over the future of U.S. climate and environmental policy,” according to their research.

EEI has contributed to the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) and the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). In 2016, a CEI official managed Trump’s transition at the Environmental Protection Agency. The GCC was a key player in rejecting the Kyoto Protocol and spread false narratives about the effects of carbon dioxide.

Jones’ research paints an unflattering history of the astroturf groups, showing how they disbanded after bad publicity only to reform under new names.

“They are all funded by the same people, a lot of them have the same leadership and membership,” Jones said. “They’re run out of the same offices, often times. And they engage in really slimy tactics to get their message across and to manipulate pubic opinion.”

Groups such as the Information Council on the Environment (ICE) received funding from EEI to support one of the first multi-media efforts to cast doubt on climate change. The effort relied on dubious climate experts to sow doubt about global warming through TV appearances and opinion pieces in newspapers in select cities and towns. Although ICE had a brief existence, it created a model that is used by many anti-climate networks today.

The denial groups use these tactics to turn their economic capital into cultural and political capital. Anti-climate corporations outspend environmental groups 20 to 1.

“When you have multiple voices and multiple media outlets, if you can come in there with a big swath of money and push it across all of these outlets all the time that gives you an enormous advantage,” Brulle said. “If you’ve got a megaphone that can just drown people out, what does that say about democracy?”

Tim Faulkner is a journalist with ecoRI news.

Tim Faulkner: ExxonMobil exec makes case for offshore drilling

TheConduqtor photo

Via ecoRI News (ecori.org)

NARRAGANSETT, R.I.. 

There’s no bigger player in the fossil-fuel industry than ExxonMobil. The world’s largest oil company extracts nearly 100 million barrels of fuel daily and has no plans of stopping.

Exxon’s executive in charge of oil and gas drilling around the world, Stephen Greenlee, spoke Aug. 27, not far from the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography, where he earned his master’s degree in 1981. Greenlee’s message of “a case for exploration” in “an era of resource abundance,” adapted from a quarterly shareholder report, conflicts with the view shared by many environmentalists and climate scientists who call for a wholesale shift away fossil-fuel exploration and extraction in order to achieve dramatic reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions.

Greenlee used industry terms such as “unconventional technologies” and “tight oil” to describe natural-gas and oil extraction from the relatively new practices of horizontal drilling, fracking shale gas, and tar sands drilling. “Shooting seismic” means sonar surveys for offshore drilling.

Scientists maintain that climate emissions have to cease, while Exxon projects  that they will stay flat. Instead of investing in wind and solar energy, Exxon believes that emerging technologies such as algae biofuels and carbon capture will keep the global temperature from reaching the benchmark 2-degree-Celsius increase.

Greenlee described the rebound from losing the drilling project in the Arctic Circle in 2014 because of U.S. sanctions against Russia. Exxon also lost drilling sites in Kurdistan, Iraq, and Liberia due to geopolitical factors.

Most audience members seemed to appreciate Greenlee’s vision for fossil-fuel exploration. However, there were questions about climate change and oil and gas drilling in developing countries such as Guyana and Papua New Guinea.

“I go to jail if there are any bribes,” Greenlee said.

When asked about climate change, Greenlee discussed the struggle between demand for fossil fuels and carbon emissions. 

“It’s a super-hard question and none of us can answer that,” he said.

Greenlee made the case for exploration off the coastal United States to know what reserves are available.

“At some point it might be useful to know what's out there,” he said.

Tim Faulkner reports and writes for ecoRI News.

Why Trump sucks up to Putin?

Donald Trump, unlike other presidents is the past 40 years, refuses to release his tax returns or other data related to his conflicts of interest, The information below suggests some reasons why:

Why did Putin order hacking to help Trump get elected?   Stacey W. Porter posted to Facebook as follows:

1) Trump owes Blackstone/ Bayrock group $560 million (one of his largest debtors and the primary reason he won't reveal his tax returns)

2) Blackstone is owned wholly by Russian billionaires, who owe their position to Putin and have made billions from their work with the Russian government.

3) Other companies that have borrowed from Blackstone have claimed that owing money to them is like owing to the Russian mob and while you owe them, they own you for many favors.

4) The Russian economy is badly faltering under the weight of its over-dependence on raw materials which as you know have plummeted in the last 2 years leaving the Russian economy scrambling to pay its debts.

5) Russia has an impetus to influence our election to ensure the per barrel oil prices are above $65 ( they are currently hovering around $50)

6) Russia can't affordably get at 80% of its oil reserves and reduce its per barrel cost to compete with America at $45 or Saudi Arabia at $39. With Iranian sanctions being lifted Russia will find another inexpensive competitor increasing production and pushing Russia further down the list of suppliers.
As for Iranian sanctions, the 6 countries lifting them allowing Iran to collect on the billions it is owed for pumping oil but not being paid for it. These billions Iran can only get if the Iranian nuclear deal is signed. Trump spoke of ending the deals which would cause oil sales sanctions to be reimposed, which would make Russian oil more competitive.

7) Rex Tillerson (Trump's pick for Secretary of State) is the head of ExxonMobil, which is in possession of patented technology that could help Putin extract 45% more oil at a significant cost savings to Russia, helping Putin put money in the Russian coffers to help reconstitute its military and finally afford to mass produce the new and improved systems that it had invented before the Russian economy had slowed so much.

8) Putin cannot get access to these new cost saving technologies OR outside oil field development money, due to US sanctions on Russia, because of its involvement in Ukrainian civil war.

9) Look for Trump to end sanctions on Russia and to back out of the Iranian nuclear deal, to help Russia rebuild its economy, strengthen Putin and make Tillerson and Trump even richer, thus allowing Trump to satisfy his creditors at Blackstone.

10) With Trump's fabricated hatred of NATO and the U.N., the Russian military reconstituted, the threat to the Baltic states is real. Russia retaking their access to the Baltic Sea from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and threatening the shipping of millions of cubic feet of natural gas to lower Europe from Scandinavia, would allow Russia to make a good case for its oil and gas being piped into eastern Europe.

Sources: Time Magazine, NY Times, The Atlantic, The Guardian UK.

Sent from my iPhone

Lindsay Suter: How I cast off my family's multigenerational oil-money legacy

via otherwords.org

I’ll feel empowered when ExxonMobil convenes its upcoming annual shareholders meeting. Oddly, that’s because I’ve sold all my stock in the company.

Shareholders like me and some major institutions, including New York State’s $178 billion pension fund, have urged the oil giant to change its business model for years. But the company shows no sign of listening.

Divesting my shares lifted a great burden. I’m both a direct descendent of one of the corporation’s early executives and an architect devoted to green building practices.

My great-great grandfather Lauren J. Drake was a classic American success story. He started out as a clerk in a small store before becoming a railroad conductor and what the Chicago Tribune called a “roustabout wrestling barrels of oil” in Keokuk, Iowa. In his 1918 obituary, the newspaper said he served as “a confidant and business adviser of John D. Rockefeller” and “the other great petroleum wizards.”

At the height of his career, my forebear led both Standard Oil of Indiana (which later became Amoco, then part of BP), and then Standard Oil of New Jersey. That firm became Esso, then Exxon. It’s now ExxonMobil, one of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies.

The Standard Oil stock  that my great-great grandfather bequeathed to his survivors appreciated tremendously for a century. Shares were handed down — at deaths, marriages, and births. We all benefited from this legacy. Indeed, those assets financed most of my education.

But I chose a different path.

I became an educator on environmentally responsible architecture. My home is run on a mix of vegetable oil, solar panels and other renewable sources, and I drive the first Prius sold in Connecticut. Yet I hung onto my Exxon stock, figuring it was better to seek change from within.

I wrote letters to Exxon’s management team and consistently cast shareholder votes for greater transparency, better governance, and corporate environmental and social responsibility — such as addressing climate change.

Just like some descendants of Standard Oil founder Rockefeller himself, I saw little change after years of advocacy. Once revelations surfaced of the degree to which ExxonMobil suppressed its own evidence regarding the industry’s global-warming potential, it hit me:

What am I doing?

I can be thankful for what my forebears provided me. But if that gift undermines my family and our planet’s very future, now is the time to change course.

I sold all the shares belonging to my immediate family late last year. I’m now reinvesting that money into greener things, including small-scale hydropower at my home in an 18th-Century grist mill.

With virtuous irony, the education paid for by the company that became ExxonMobil encouraged me to think, challenge, and discover. This source of wealth helped me become a discerning, rational person — and when necessary, an activist.

My great-great grandfather felt an obligation to ensure the well-being of his family’s next generations, so he left us valuable assets. One of my biggest family obligations is ensuring the well-being of future generations on a stable, fertile, and healthy planet.

I’m not trying to vilify my great-great grandfather for what ExxonMobil has done. But wecan blame the people and companies who are now recklessly and knowingly ignoring our common peril. Whatever brings on your own epiphany, I hope you’ll see that it’s time to divest from fossil fuels and invest in a climate-friendly future.

Lindsay Suter is an architect practicing sustainable design who guest lectures at Yale University and other schools.