Berkeley Unanimously Declares Climate Emergency!

On Tuesday night, Bay Area mobilizers made history.

As a result of local organizers’ tireless work, the Berkeley City Council faced the truth of the climate and ecological crises and committed to protecting its residents and all life on Earth by unanimously declaring a climate emergency and endorsing a just citywide climate mobilization effort to end greenhouse gas emissions emissions as quickly as possible!
The resolution called for Berkeley to become a carbon sink by 2030, which the energy commission will study. It also called on all other governments to address the crisis at the speed and scale required, setting in motion a nine-county Bay Area climate emergency town hall this summer aimed at catalyzing local, regional, state, national and global mass mobilizations to restore a safe climate and a collaborative regional mobilization effort. You can read the full text of the resolution here.

In the same hearing, the council took a critical first step in realizing the mobilization by voting to refer a Fossil Free Fast resolution to the city’s energy commission. Under this resolution, Berkeley would actively oppose new fossil fuel infrastructure, making it the first municipality in California and the second in the nation to move forward such a sweeping block. You can read the full text of the resolution here.

http://bit.ly/2l9QBXP

Hawaii just passed a law to make the state carbon neutral by 2045

In a little less than three decades, Hawaii plans to be carbon neutral–the most ambitious climate goal in the United States. Governor David Ige signed a bill today committing to make the state fully carbon neutral by 2045, along with a second bill that will use carbon offsets to help fund planting trees throughout Hawaii. A third bill requires new building projects to consider how high sea levels will rise in their engineering decisions.

The state is especially vulnerable to climate change–sea level rise, for example, threatens to cause $19 billion in economic losses–and that’s one of the reasons that the new laws had support. “We’re on the forefront of climate change impacts,” says Scott Glenn, who leads the state’s environmental quality office. “We experience it directly and we’re a small island. People feel the trade wind days becoming less. They notice the changes in rain. They feel it getting hotter. Because we are directly exposed to this, there’s no denying it.” The state’s political leaders, he says, are “unified in acknowledging that climate change is real and that we do need to do something about it.” Read More

Saudi Aramco CEO Says Oil Supply Shortage Coming, Cites Steep Drop In Conventional Discoveries & Steep Drop In Investments

The CEO of Saudi Aramco, Amin Nasser, was recently quoted at a conference in Istanbul as saying that the world is likely heading towards an oil supply shortage before too long as a result of falling discoveries of new conventional oil reserves and steep drops in new investment.

This situation — peak oil for conventional oil fields, which was passed several years back, and the growing dependence on expensive “unconventional” options — is one that we’ve reported on numerous times now.

We’ve also reported on the way that the oil price crash of recent years has led directly to rapid increases in the debt levels at many top oil companies, and to a steep drop in new investments.

While taking an oil exec at their word when they’re discussing the oil market is probably ill-advised, in general, Nasser is more or less just stating the blunt reality of the situation here — as far as general trends go, oil is only going to get more expensive as time goes by, as cheap conventionals are rapidly being depleted.

“If we look at the long-term situation of oil supplies, for example, the picture is becoming increasingly worrying,” Nasser commented, as reported by Reuters. “Financial investors are shying away from making much needed large investments in oil exploration, long-term development and the related infrastructure. Investments in smaller increments such as shale oil will just not cut it.”

To put a figure to that, around $1 trillion in new investments have been “lost” since 2014 or so. This only compounds the situation as regards the increasing difficulty of finding new conventional oil reserves. The easiest to find and develop have been in production for a long time now — what remains are the less attractive options. More

Could the entire American economy run on renewable energy alone?

Fisticuffs Over the Route to a Clean-Energy Future - The New York Times

This may seem like an irrelevant question, given that both the White House and Congress are controlled by a party that rejects the scientific consensus about human-driven climate change. But the proposition that it could, long a dream of an environmental movement as wary of nuclear energy as it is of fossil fuels, has been gaining ground among policy makers committed to reducing the nation’s carbon footprint. Democrats in both the United States Senate and in the California Assembly have proposed legislation this year calling for a full transition to renewable energy sources.

They are relying on what looks like a watertight scholarly analysis to support their call: the work of a prominent energy systems engineer from Stanford University, Mark Z. Jacobson. With three co-authors, he published a widely heralded article two years ago asserting that it would be eminently feasible to power the American economy by midcentury almost entirely with energy from the wind, the sun and water. What’s more, it would be cheaper than running it on fossil fuels.

(https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/business/energy-environment/renewable-energy-national-academy-matt-jacobson.html

Bermuda Government seeks feedback on fuels policy

National fuels policy is the subject of a new government discussion paper — and the Department of Energy is now seeking public feedback on it.

The policy sets out the government’s aims of achieving a mix of fuels that is cost effective and less polluting.

The document, which is available on this webpage under the heading of Related Media, can also be found on the Bermuda Government web portal or in hard copy from the Department of Energy at the Government Administration Building, 3rd floor, 30 Parliament Street.

The deadline for written comments on the policy document is close of business on July 7, 2017, submitted via e-mail to energy@gov.bm or by hand at the Department of Energy, Government Administration Building, 3rd floor, 30 Parliament Street.

The Department says it will review all information obtained and respond to each submission.

Jeane Nikolai, Department of Energy director, said: “Fuels is another essential pillar of the energy sector which directly affects the local community and economy. The New Fuels Sector Policy will mark the beginning of Bermuda’s road towards a fiscally transparent, efficient and environmentally sensitive fuel regime.” More

National Fuels Policy Document

Chevron is first oil major to warn investors of risks from climate change lawsuits

Big Oil’s lies about the existential risk posed by its product are now catching up with the industry and threatening profits.

For the first time, one of the major publicly owned fossil fuel companies admitted publicly to investors that climate change lawsuits poses a risk to risk to its profits.
You’re probably thinking that seems like an obvious admission. After all, 190 nations unanimously agreed in the December 2015 Paris climate deal to leave most fossil fuels in the ground because of the existential threat they pose to human civilization.

But this is Big Oil — the industry that has been denying or pretending to deny the existence of climate change for over half a century.
In the “risk factors” section of Chevron’s 2016 10-K financial performance report to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) — amid a discussion of how those pesky climate rules governments are enacting might hurt demand for its product — is this sentence: “In addition, increasing attention to climate change risks has resulted in an increased possibility of governmental investigations and, potentially, private litigation against the company.” http://bit.ly/2mndUir