Category: News

Originally published on August 21, 2024 by Peter Stone for The Guardian

Association of attorneys general has received millions from Koch Industries, fossil fuel lobby and fund linked to billionaire Leonard Leo

A powerful group that boasts 28 Republican attorneys general, including many who have sided with oil and gas firms to block states seeking compensation for weather disasters caused by climate change, has raked in millions of dollars from fossil fuel giants and a dark money fund tied to Federalist Society co-chair, Leonard Leo.

The Republican Attorneys General Association (Raga) has roped in about $5.8m from oil and gas giants and their allied lobbying groups since Joe Biden was elected president in 2020, campaign finance records show.

Further, Raga has received a whopping $18.8m from the Leo-linked Concord Fund since 2014 when the dark money non-profit first registered with the IRS, according to the liberal-leaning Center for Media and Democracy.

During the first half of 2024, the Concord Fund was the largest donor to Raga, plowing $2m into the group’s coffers. The Concord Fund, formerly called the Judicial Crisis Network, spent millions of dollars supporting Donald Trump’s three conservative supreme court nominees and is led by Leo’s longtime close associate Carrie Severino.

Survivors of climate disasters demand US inquiry into big oil’s ‘climate crimes’

Labelled by watchdogs and critics as a “pay to play” operation for often supporting lawsuits by major donors, Raga has garnered six-figure checks from fossil fuel giants such as Koch Industries, which is chaired by billionaire Charles Koch, the American Petroleum Institute and the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers.

While oil and gas monies have been pouring into Raga’s coffers, Republican attorneys general have emerged as major allies of the oil industry on litigation to beat back climate change lawsuits and environmental rules

Raga, which bills its mission as “Defending the Rule of Law. Keeping America Safe,” drew fire during Trump’s fight to thwart Biden from assuming office when an affiliate, the Rule of Law Defense Fund, spent $150,000 on robocalls to boost attendance at Trump’s January 6 rally. The robocalls urged “patriots” to come to the rally and said: “We will march to the Capitol building and call on Congress to stop the steal.”

Launched in 1999, Raga has raised and spent tens of millions of dollars to help elect conservative attorney generals – including many who have filed corporate-friendly litigation.

Key Democrats in Congress and energy analysts voice sharp criticism of Raga’s role in defending fossil fuel interests at a time when climate-related disasters are rising, and Raga is raking in millions of dollars from oil and gas interests and dark money groups

“Raga is one tentacle of the effort by rightwing billionaires and the fossil fuel industry to capture our courts and government to the benefit of big corporate interests,” Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island Democratic senator, said.

“With big oil facing the possibility of real accountability in honest courtrooms, obedient Raga attorneys general are rushing in to provide taxpayer-funded legal services for their polluter funders. It’s a corrupt scheme.”

Energy experts too see GOP attorneys general working in tandem with the oil industry to block major environmental rules.

“Red state AGs are trying to put up a brick wall against important new environmental regulations,” Michael Gerrard, who heads the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, told the Guardian “Since the beginning of the Obama administration, everything that Democrats do to curb fossil fuel emissions or fight climate change is challenged by red states and industry.”

Gerrard’s point is underscored by several recent legal moves by Republican attorneys general who belong to Raga and have been busy this year filing legal actions to defend fossil fuel interests in key battles.

In late May, for instance, 19 Raga members asked the supreme court to halt actions by Democratic attorneys general in five states including California, Connecticut and Minnesota which brought cases in state courts seeking billions of dollars in damages from oil and gas companies due to climate change-related weather disasters such as wildfires, severe storms and floods.

The Raga members’ argument, which experts have said is unusual, comes as dozens of local and state governments have filed lawsuits that allege fossil fuel businesses for years deceived the public about their products’ risks which contributed to climate crisis.

The Republican attorneys general argue only federal agencies can regulate interstate gas emissions and that the state suits will increase costs for consumers in other states.

“They do not have authority to dictate our national energy policy,” Steve Marshall, the Alabama attorney general, said in a statement announcing the 19-state lawsuit. “If the supreme court lets them continue, California and its allies will imperil access to affordable energy for every American.”

Earlier in May, 27 Republican attorneys general and industry trade groups filed lawsuits to block the Environmental Protection Agency from going forward with a new Biden administration rule that requires coal-fired power plants and new natural gas plants to make large-scale reductions in carbon emissions.

The EPA rule, which had just been approved in April, requires existing coal-fired plants and many new ones to cut their emissions by 90% by 2032 which could require billions of dollars in new expenditures.

Furthermore, this April, 20 Republican attorneys general filed a petition asking the supreme court to intervene in a major lawsuit brought by Honolulu against Sunoco and slated to go to trial later this year that seeks billions of dollars in damages from major oil companies for misleading the public about climate crisis-related disasters.

The move by the Republican attorneys general came as several oil and gas giants including the powerful American Petroleum Institute filed similar petitions with the supreme court.

The growing volume of litigation by GOP attorneys general attacking environmental rules and trying to thwart climate change lawsuits, dismays energy experts and watchdog groups.

“What the oil industry is trying to do is to block efforts to hold them accountable for their actions, and undo the laws that would hold them accountable,” said Joe Romm, a senior research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media.

“The oil industry is a lot like their pal Donald Trump. They both believe they should be above the law.”

Longtime Raga watchers concur.

“It should come as no surprise that state attorneys general whose electoral campaigns are buttressed by the fossil-fuel-funded Raga are using their public offices to attack efforts to mitigate climate change despite how rising temperatures are harming their states,” said Lisa Graves, the executive director of the progressive watchdog group True North Research and the co-founder of Court Accountability.

More broadly, Graves lambasted Raga as a “pay-to-play group that has received millions via Leonard Leo, the rightwing lawyer who orchestrated the packing of the US supreme court”.

In a similar vein, Jim Jones, the former Republican Idaho attorney general, told the Guardian last year that he was troubled by Raga’s conservative direction.

“They’ve become political operatives instead of the people in their states to safeguard the rule of law. They seem to be pandering to rightwing extremist groups to gain office in the first place and then to retain office.”

Originally published on August 12, 2024 by Amanda Mott for Penn Today

The University of Pennsylvania is pleased to announce a $10 million gift from alumnus Alp Ercil to establish the Penn Climate Sustainability Initiative, which will draw upon Penn’s strengths in interdisciplinary teaching and research to address climate and sustainability from multiple perspectives.

“Penn has promised to lead on the greatest challenges of our time, and climate change may be the greatest challenge of all,” says Penn Interim President J. Larry Jameson. “Thanks to the groundbreaking work of Penn researchers and scientists, we are already seeing amazing breakthroughs. We are tremendously grateful to Alp Ercil for his inspirational commitment, which will allow us to accelerate our efforts. We will draw on our collective strengths in climate science and policy to advance our understanding of these challenges and discover solutions that will make a difference around the world.”

Building on Penn’s leadership in fostering collaboration across academic disciplines, the Climate Sustainability Initiative will create a unique university-wide initiative that brings together all 12 Schools on campus, as well as interdisciplinary programs including the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, the Environmental Innovations Initiative, and the Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media.

The Penn Climate Sustainability Initiative will also accelerate the campus-wide Climate and Sustainability Action Plan and enhance Penn’s contribution to the global policy debate.

“Penn has the key pieces in place to make a significant contribution to the urgent issue of climate change,” said Ercil. “I am thrilled to help advance this work, accelerate innovation, and strengthen Penn’s role at the forefront of this field.”

Leading on climate change is one of the key priorities of In Principle and Practice, Penn’s strategic framework. The University’s commitment to this issue is broad, ranging from leading in energy science and policy to designing and caring for the built environment. To realize these goals, Penn will support and recruit the best minds in the field, fuel initiatives that advance knowledge and promise solutions, and adopt institutional best practices for the sake of the future of the planet.

Ercil’s commitment will serve as a catalyst for this important work, providing needed funds for priority initiatives to be determined in partnership among the Interim President, Provost John L. Jackson Jr., and a soon-to-be appointed inaugural Vice Provost for Climate Science, Policy, and Action.

“This support from Alp Ercil comes at the perfect time, as we implement our strategic framework and prepare to introduce the new Vice Provost for Climate Science, Policy, and Action,” explained Jackson. “The Penn Climate Sustainability Initiative will advance Penn’s strengths in this critical field by accelerating interdisciplinary connections and building collaborations on our campus and beyond.”

Alp Ercil is the founder and Chief Investment Officer of Asia Research and Capital Management, Ltd., a Hong Kong and Dubai-based investment management firm founded in 2011. He is a 1995 graduate of Penn’s Management & Technology (M&T) Program, a dual-degree program in which he earned a B.S in Economics from Wharton and a B.S. in Systems Engineering from Penn Engineering. An active Penn volunteer, Ercil is a current member of the Penn Asia Leadership Committee and an emeritus member of Undergraduate Financial Aid Leadership Council (UFLC). He also participates in the Alumni Ambassador Program (formerly known as the Penn Alumni Interview Program). His past gifts to Penn have supported the Ercil Endowed Scholarship, the M&T Integration Lab, and the UFLC Challenge Fund.

Originally published by Terrence McCoy, Júlia Ledur, and Marina Dias for the Washington Post on July 24, 2024. For full graphics and images from this investigation, please click here.

A six-month investigation reveals that many carbon credit ventures reap profits from public lands they have no right to and fail to share revenue with those protecting the forest.

Much of the Brazilian Amazon rainforest is safeguarded behind a green shield of publicly protected land.

In recent years, companies have launched preservation projects in search of a lucrative commodity known as carbon credits.

But a Washington Post investigation found that most of the projects — which have generated tens of millions of dollars — overlapped with public lands.

When added together, the ventures claimed enough public land to cover the state of Maryland — six times.

PORTEL, Brazil — Over the past two decades, a new financial commodity known as carbon credits has become one of the world’s most important tools in the fight against climate change. Companies and organizations seeking to offset their emission of carbon have spent billions of dollars on them.

The Amazon rainforest, because of its size and global environmental importance, has increasingly drawn those pursuing carbon credits. Here, these people are called “carbon cowboys.”

They’ve launched preservation projects across the region, generating carbon credits worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Those credits, in turn, have been purchased by some of the world’s largest corporations. The projects have helped transform the Brazilian Amazon into an epicenter of a largely unaccountable global industry with sales, according to market research, of nearly $11 billion.

But a six-month Washington Post investigation shows that many of the private ventures have repeatedly and, authorities say, illegally laid claim to publicly protected lands, generating enormous profits from territory they have no legal right to and then failing to share the revenue with those who protected or lived on the land. The use of such lands to sell credits also contributes little to reducing carbon emissions.

The frequency with which these projects make use of public property, the amount of land involved and the value of the credits generated have not been previously reported.

The Post found that more than half of all carbon credit forest preservation projects in the Brazilian Amazon overlapped with public territories. The amount of public land claimed by these private ventures was more than 78,000 square miles, six times the size of Maryland. The businesses that purchased the carbon credits from the private land ventures to offset emissions included major international companies: Netflix, Air France, Delta Air Lines, Salesforce, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Airbnb, Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., Boston Consulting Group, Spotify, Boeing.

The Post’s investigation is based on a review of thousands of pages of corporate and court records, interviews with dozens of people across the forest, and a geospatial analysis of carbon credit projects in the Amazon. In performing the geospatial analysis — the most extensive to date — The Post compared the boundaries of 101 private preservation projects submitted to the two international certifiers, Verra and Cercarbono, that operate at the center of the global carbon credit marketplace, with government maps of publicly protected areas in the Amazon. (Four ventures were eliminated from the analysis because their map files malfunctioned.)

A majority of the projects are still in line to be certified. But 35 have been certified. And among those, most — 29 — overlapped with public lands. The ventures have so far generated more than 80 million carbon credits, at least 30 million of which have been sold.

It’s unclear how much was made on the initial sales, since detailed transaction information is not publicly available. But their estimated value at the time that purchasers used them to offset emissions was more than $212 million, according to an analysis based on annual market rates.

The Post analysis found no evidence that the purchasers acted improperly. Nine companies identified in this article responded to a request for comment, saying they seek to ensure the carbon credits they purchase are of high quality or that they were reducing their use of credits.

In a country without any laws regulating the trade in carbon credits, the private ventures routinely proceed without government review. The Post could identify only two projects that had received government authorization. Asked for comment, several project owners disputed the accuracy of government maps used in The Post’s analysis.

Brazilian authorities are starting to investigate. Three projects were targeted last month by federal police, who issued five arrest warrants and alleged that nearly two dozen companies had conspired to improperly net nearly $35 million in carbon credit sales.

In this opaque global market, some projects earn carbon credits by increasing the use of renewable energies. Others recycle waste or plant trees or improve agricultural practices. But in the Brazilian Amazon, the approach that has been most popular — and profitable — is known as “avoided deforestation” ventures. These projects win credits by essentially maintaining the status quo — by preserving forests seen to be at risk.

The Post’s investigation not only exposes failings in the global system for vetting such ventures but also calls into question the value of some projects in addressing global warming. Much of the Brazilian Amazon is safeguarded by a green shield of publicly protected lands: national forests, Indigenous territory, federal and state reserves. But when polluting companies buy credits generated by supposedly preserving land that was already protected, their money contributes next to nothing.

“The system is very gameable,” said Joseph Romm, a climate researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. “And the victim is the planet, and all of humanity who suffers because we’re not reducing emissions, but get to pretend we are.”

Spanning the Amazon

One of the biggest actors in the Amazon’s carbon credit rush is American businessman Michael Greene, a brash Midwesterner given to bold proclamations. “I’m the biggest carbon credit [preservation] project developer in Latin America,” he boasted in a 2022 letter to officials in one Amazon city. “I’m so big that my business is 50 percent of Brazil’s carbon credit market.” On LinkedIn, his company, Agfor, has described itself as the world’s “largest” forest preservation carbon credit developer.

The Post identified 19 projects overseen by Greene and his companies. They all overlapped with public lands either partially or completely, according to The Post’s geospatial analysis. Ten have been certified, winning 45 million carbon credits. The projects have spanned the Amazon, but several have been centered in the impoverished river town of Portel.

Hours from the city’s bustling center, down rivers that run wide and clear, corporate records show that he and his companies have overseen four separate projects that overlapped overwhelmingly with public lands, much of which had been set aside for impoverished river communities. Credits sold by the projects, according to a Post analysis based on carbon credit market rates, had a final value of $87 million.

None of the river people got any money, Brazilian authorities said.

“They robbed from us,” said Maria de Nazaré Oliveira Sousa, 48, who lives on lands granted to her community by the state of Pará.

In response to lawsuits by state authorities alleging that he wrongfully used public land, Greene has denied all improprieties in filings submitted to Pará state court, claimed that the projects have not been profitable and said they have benefited local communities. He canceled a scheduled interview for this article, and he did not respond to a list of detailed questions emailed to him regarding his business practices in the Amazon.

Alleging that disgruntled former employees had provided an inaccurate portrait of his work, Greene issued a blanket denial.

“You are giving Credance [sic] and a platform to groups that want to discredit me and steal my business,” he wrote in an email to The Post. “Everything you have been fed so far is false.”

The world’s testing ground

For proponents, avoided-deforestation projects provide a market answer to a riddle that long troubled climate activists: how to make conservation profitable. But to critics, the projects are too speculative and too susceptible to exaggeration. How can anyone prove, skeptics ask, that a forest would have been torn down if not for the project?

The world’s testing ground has been the Amazon rainforest, which stores an estimated 123 billion tons of carbon. In 2005, Brazilian climate scientists were among the first to propose the idea of a carbon credit trade as a way to preserve a region that has now lost nearly one-fifth of its forest, often cut down for raising cattle, and is fast approaching what scientists fear is its tipping point.

Despite the global stakes, Brazil has failed to create a national system to regulate the rapid growth in private preservation initiatives. That job has instead fallen to two international registries — Verra, based in Washington, and the Colombian organization Cercarbono — which certify carbon credits for sale even without government approval.

In a statement to The Post, Verra spokesman Joel Finkelstein said that determining land ownership in the Amazon can be difficult and that the organization has urged third-party auditors, on which Verra relies, to identify any overlap with public lands. It has also suspended several projects, including three in Portel, over allegations of illegal use of public land. “This is the most important forest on the planet that we have to find a way to save,” he said. “We are committed to getting it right.”

Cercarbono said it is the responsibility of third-party auditors to identify irregularities. “Cercarbono does not provide verification services nor is it within our scope,” it said in a statement.

The industry’s reliance on auditors, who are hired by carbon companies and frequently must travel from abroad to assess Amazon projects, has had significant consequences, said Thales West, a Brazilian environmental geographer who worked as an auditor. He said he often witnessed the difficulties foreigners have had in the forest.

“The auditors are from Germany or somewhere else, and they don’t speak any Portuguese, and they fly all the way to the Amazon to do an audit,” West said. “You can see why some certified projects have a lot of problems. … How many thousands of examples of fraud do we have in land deeds in the Amazon?”

An unusual report

West’s question is now at the core of an investigation being led by a Pará state official named Andréia Barreto. Responsible for agrarian cases at the Pará state public defenders’ office, Barreto had once believed she was familiar with just about every type of land dispute in the Amazon. But then in late 2022, an unusual report came across her desk.

The report, written by the environmental human rights organization World Rainforest Movement, told of foreigners pursuing carbon credit deals worth millions of dollars in faraway Portel. Barreto, a cerebral attorney with straight black hair, bought several books about the obscure market, assembled a team of investigators and reserved boat passage to the distant city.

Barreto said she found that Verra had over the past decade approved three large carbon credit projects, despite what appeared to be a significant irregularity. Maps showed the projects areas overlapped with several public tracts, much of which had been set aside in 2012 for local river communities. So Barreto, often working on the case until 10 p.m., tracked down the deeds that appeared to show the lands were private, finding 34 in all.

What she discovered, she recounted, confirmed her suspicions. Almost none of the deeds were valid. The preservation programs, she said, were built on a lie.

Barreto followed the story of the deeds back to 1990, when a geriatric physician in São Paulo named Jonas Morioka began buying vast tracts of land in Portel. But there was a major problem. After reviewing the deeds, Barreto said Morioka had never received the official authorizations he’d needed for the acquisitions, rendering them invalid.

That didn’t stop several deals from being struck by Morioka in the early 2010s, effectively leasing the lands to carbon credit developers, according to contracts reviewed by The Post.

Morioka did not respond to interview requests or an emailed list of detailed questions. He has previously said he is the rightful, taxpaying owner of the lands. On his personal website, Morioka has denied all allegations of wrongdoing and called himself a “target of defamation.”

Barretto filed four lawsuits naming Morioka and others, alleging theft of public lands. Other state agencies, including the state Institute of Lands of Pará, corroborated her finding in annexed filings. One person appeared to have had a hand in every one of the projects she reviewed.

“Michael Greene,” she said.

Fate of the river people

A hard-charging Midwesterner with barely a sprig of hair, Greene moved to Brazil around 2010 and quickly immersed himself in “complex real estate situations,” according to a biography included with project descriptions. He opened up a real estate brokerage firm specializing in carbon offset projects and, by 2011, was boasting to a Dutch public broadcast journalist that “we know absolutely everything about the laws in the Amazon.”

One of his partners was Morioka, whose land deeds opened up an opportunity to do large-scale carbon credit preservation projects in Portel.

Portel was described in reports associated with Greene’s projects as “a backwater mafia-lead [sic] city” where a cabal of illegal loggers, corrupt politicians and labor unions were destroying the forest and imprisoning thousands of poor river dwellers in a system of “oppression.” One of the few resisting, in Greene’s telling, was Greene. “If I stop, Portel is basically finished,” he told the Intercept Brasil in 2022.

The projects, according to reports submitted to Verra, had dispatched river scouts to surveil the forest and report illegal loggers to environmental authorities, and were helping impoverished river people resist loggers seeking to displace them. “We have saved innumerable river people from being killed and stripped of their land by illegal loggers,” reported his company’s website.

But a review of public records and academic research, a visit to the project areas, and interviews with 40 people familiar with the region or projects, including 16 of Greene’s current and former employees, offered a different picture.

The threat of widespread destruction and rampant violent crime was largely exaggerated, according to crime and deforestation data. None of those queried — including police officials, politicians, environmental authorities, community leaders and former employees — could confirm that projects ever conducted regular surveillance.

“There was never any patrolling,” said Sergio Gibson, an employee credited in project reports as having coordinated the surveillance.

Former employees, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of being associated with the projects or reprisals by Greene, accused the American businessman of fictionalizing Portel’s security situation, inflating the projects’ social impacts and brushing off their concerns over irregularities.

Heitor Gama, a Brazilian anthropologist, said he spent a month on Portel’s rivers, where he quickly began to question whether the programs were authentic. Reports submitted by the company to Verra and publicly available on its database had repeatedly asserted that the projects were bringing land tenure to the rural poor. But no one got property rights, he said, just a document that said they’d been entered into an agrarian registry. Most people Gama said he encountered had never heard of the preservation programs.

In January 2020, Gama filed a complaint with Verra.

“Tons of carbon credit is being sold in an area that belongs to traditional communities without them even knowing about it,” he said in the email. “Take a look at the information available in the project reports. … We notice the volume of fake information that these reports contain.”

A Verra spokesman said a review of the project is ongoing and that the organization takes complaints and grievances seriously.

Undeterred, Greene launched his boldest initiative yet.

An aggressive campaign

In the southern Amazon forest, in a large Indigenous territory in the municipality of Juína, discontent was spreading among the Cinta Larga people. A company named Indigenous Carbon had come to their villages to see if they wanted to make a deal to sell carbon credits. As time went on, concerns grew.

In two letters sent to federal attorneys late last year, Cinta Larga leaders pleaded for help and warned that Indigenous Carbon and its owner, Michael Greene, had sidelined the government agency charged with protecting Indigenous rights. “Consider this document an extremely grave denunciation,” said one of the complaints, signed by 10 Indigenous leaders, “of something that harms our rights.”

The push into Cinta Larga territory was part of an aggressive campaign across the Amazon. In 2022, Indigenous Carbon filed 18 project descriptions to the registry Cercarbono, according to the certifier’s project database, including seven on Cinta Larga lands. The ventures were big, asserting they were protecting more than 22,000 square miles of Indigenous land.

And, according to federal government attorneys who met earlier this year to review such projects, they were also invalid.

In the absence of government approval, companies like Greene’s have no right to carbon credits associated with Indigenous territories, and the residents themselves have no legal right to sell them or give them away, according to Brazil’s Federal Public Ministry. Such deals could open traditional communities to predation, federal attorneys said in a March meeting, and were void without government authorization.

“These contracts are illegal,” Daniel Luis Dalberto, a federal attorney helping lead the public ministry’s inquiry. “They are excluding public agencies, which can’t be left on the outside of this.”

Funai, the government’s Indigenous affairs agency, announced last year that the federal government, lacking a system of regulation, could not authorize deals involving Indigenous lands.

Still, Indigenous Carbon proceeded, reaping a windfall of carbon credits. And it did so by telling Cercarbono that the ventures had been the villagers’ idea. Greene’s company was only a consultant. But six former employees said Indigenous Carbon had been far more than a consultant — entering the territories, paying leaders to participate in unauthorized carbon credit deals and then seeking to conceal the company’s involvement.

“Have the leaders tell their people that they sought a company and contracted it to consult them on how to do the project,” Greene wrote to one employee in June 2022 in one of several WhatsApp messages reviewed by The Post. “Not that they were approached.”

“They need to say, ‘We did the project, without the help of a white man coming to our land,’” he wrote in another message in December 2022.

By late last year, an Indian firm hired by Greene verified six of the projects. Cercarbono then certified them all. They were allotted roughly 24 million credits, records show, worth $197 million at last year’s prices.

Valdomiro Cinta Larga, who leads a territory where one of the projects is based, said his people had made “very little” from the deal. Only about $4,000.

The credits keep selling

In late 2022, the Portel preservation projects burst into public view.

First came the World Rainforest Movement report, then Barreto’s lawsuits, which are still pending. State and federal police opened criminal investigations, which are ongoing, according to police records and interviews. And finally, in September 2023, Verra suspended the projects to investigate unspecified “stakeholder comments” and barred the projects from acquiring additional credits to sell.

In comments to the carbon credit trade publication Quantum Commodity Intelligence, Greene portrayed himself as a victim. He said corrupt officials and criminals resented him for the good he said he’d done in Portel to help its “oppressed population,” including the distribution of cookstoves and the construction of wells and schools.

“You’re changing the status quo; they don’t like it,” Greene told the publication. “They want the population to be poor, they want them to be uneducated.”

But some villagers said they received nothing but a small cookstove, which none of them said they used. Others said they had been tricked, persuaded to sign contracts that forfeited traditional livelihoods safeguarded on their lands — such as sustainable logging — on the false promise of land ownership.

“People thought they were becoming owners and were left with nothing, not even the right to do what they’d done before,” said Marivaldo Pereira de Oliveira, 48.

Despite the complaints and lawsuits, international buyers have continued to use the projects’ credits to offset their pollution, according to Verra’s registry.

This year alone, records show, more than 733,000 credits have been used. By a carbon credit broker that works with Netflix, Microsoft and PwC. An artisanal coffee wholesaler. A British freight company.

The world was heating up. And for the carbon cowboys, so was the market potential.

“Rising interest from buyers,” Quantum reported in March. The price of credits associated with one of the Portel ventures “assessed at a two-month high.”

Originally published by Mary Elizabeth Williams for Salon on June 28, 2024

It was still early in the day when the men with glitter in their copper beards started appearing on the streets. They had rhinestone cowboy hats on their heads. And they wore t-shirts that read “It’s me. Hi. I’m the dad. It’s me,” and “Spending a lot of money at the moment.” My family and I were in Cardiff for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour, and the Celtic dads were out in force and ready for it. We’d just come to see Taylor. We left with a newfound appreciation of the power of positive masculinity.

I had long been aware of the existence of Swiftie dads — I live with one, after all — but had regarded them as more of the “singing along to ‘Shake It Off’ in the car” variety than the boa-clad men I witnessed strolling up and down the high street that bright June Tuesday. Yet there they were, enthusiastically bonding not just with their families but with each other, sharing a brotherhood in friendship bracelet-laden arms. And we experienced it firsthand when we bumped into an old friend of my spouse, his wife and young daughters in tow, wearing a shirt that read, “Dad (Taylor’s Version).”

Our modern epidemic of loneliness is significantly more dire in men, who today have roughly only half as many friends as they did a generation ago. That isolation can have a significant impact on their mental and physical health and lifespan. They also spend about half as much time with their children as mothers do — and, according to one Pew Research Center poll, the majority of them say that it’s not enough. But as Prince William himself could tell you — Taylor might be able to help you out there on a couple of fronts.

It’s not about spending money or going to concerts, although that stuff can be fun. Instead, it’s about the emotional power of fandom, within families and between friends — even if that fandom happens to skew bejeweled.

Ben Valenta, coauthor (with David Sikorjak) of 2022’s  “Fans Have More Friends,” has some advice for the haters. He tells me that “We dismiss Taylor Swift or our daughters’ interest in Taylor Swift as girly or a waste of time to our detriment. It’s an opportunity to connect and deepen our engagement with each other.” And when I describe the scene last week in Cardiff to him, he says, “What you were seeing is fandom in action. There are various layers of interaction happening. The dad is there with his daughters; that’s the primary purpose. But the reason to wear the t-shirt is to signal to other dads, ‘Hey bro, I see you,’ and create opportunity for additional social interaction.”

And also, to enjoy some really good music. Joseph Romm, a Senior Research Fellow at the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media (PCSSM) — and a man who has some solid suggestions for Taylor about what she can do about climate change — acknowledges that he first got into Taylor thanks to now teenaged daughter. But they’re going to see the tour in Toronto because they both appreciate her artistry, and the conversations her songs spark.

“The first real introduction I had to Taylor in a big way was ‘Shake It Off,’” he recalls. “My daughter was seven. I’ve always been interested in the best storytellers, so there was a lot of bonding over music and storytelling. We saw the [“Eras Tour”] movie together, and we have endless debates about exactly what the songs mean, because, Taylor, as you know, likes to be cryptic. We have fun getting into arguments about ‘But Daddy I Love Him.’ Is the final chorus really about Travis?” he asks, adding, “I have very firm beliefs on that song.”

For Romm, Swift provides a unique window into the experience of girlhood. “Taylor obviously has connected with these girls,” he says. “What she is saying clearly is resonating with girls like my daughter. That is important to understand.” He also authentically appreciates Swift’s work. “I always tell people to go to watch her NPR Tiny Desk concert, and you will see her musicianship,” he says. “You will see how she thinks about her music. And you’ll get some very beautiful songs. I would say to dads, there’s a reason why your daughter is connecting with Taylor, and it’s worth figuring out why.”

Steve Knopper, an editor at large at Billboard, shares the sentiment. He’s been following Swift since his now 22-year-old daughter Rose was a 9-year-old fan. “When she was that age,” he recalls, “I was like, OK, my daughter is the center of the pop music universe. I’m just going to pay really close attention to what she listens to. I didn’t like all of it. But when she hit Taylor Swift — and she went through a massive Taylor Swift phase — I was like, I’m going to listen here with her. And we just listened to everything.”

The two also saw Swift on her 2011 and 2013 tours. “I loved hanging out with Rose and experiencing that with her,” he says. “Connecting with Rose on a deeper level through music was incredibly rewarding. I remember talking about it with my ex-wife, ‘I think that Rose is lucky to have such a worthy pop star of her generation.’ Not every generation gets one of those.” He continues, “When I see stuff on social media where people around my age — men and women, but mostly men — are just determined to say she is lesser, I don’t really understand that. She’s not. She obviously isn’t. She’s great.”

A decade later, their tastes have diverged, but Knopper and his daughter’s foundation of bonding over music remains solid. “We’re respectful of each other,” he says. “And it’s funny because we communicate about music in a way that’s really easy. It’s natural to us.”

That’s the kind of future that tech executive Kevin Brown — the friend we ran into in Wales — hopes for. “I read once that if you want to have a good relationship with your kids, do the things that they’re interested in,” he says, “and be a part of that.” He tells me, “I could have reverted to the classic, ‘I’m a dad, I’m not getting involved. This is for my wife and daughters.’ Or I could just go with it and have a blast. So I was like, great, where are the tattoos? Let’s get them on. And I’m still actually trying to wash them off.”

Looking back on the trip, Brown says, “I felt incredibly lucky to be in a place in time where I could be fully present with my kids and participate. My daughters are six and nine; they’ll soon be seven and 10. It was one of those moments where hopefully for them, but certainly for my wife and me, was going to be a lifetime memory.”

And when Eras ends, Ben Valenta hopes that dads continue to expand their opportunities for creating more of those special experiences. “One of the things we’ve focused on in our work in the last six months or so has been where fandom starts,” he says. “Fandom starts typically in the family. As we were going around the country spending time with families, it was very clear how gendered sports fandom was at the family level. Everyone sort of assumes that’s what the boys do.”

Now, though, he notes, “With the Swift phenomenon, you see dads thirsting for ways to connect with their daughters. I think if more people recognized that sports could be the same thing, they could utilize it in the same way. I’m all for connecting via Taylor Swift; I think that’s really positive. But I would suggest that Taylor Swift might have another tour, she might have two more tours. But the New York Yankees? They’re coming back next year and the year after that, forever. That’s the beauty of sports. If we can create that connection, we can have it forever, and it can be the tie that bonds forever.”

Those ties we form and keep forming with our kids — mine are university students, and the Taylor experience has been lifelong — happen when we meet them where they are, when we care more about what they care about than any limited gender norms. Real men can rock a boa just as well as a baseball cap. It’s all a lot more enjoyable that way. And Dad might just discover some really cool stuff while making memories.

“When Rose was getting into Taylor Swift,” says Knopper, “I was trying to understand my daughter and her friends and bond with her. She’s listening to and exposing me to songs like ’15’ and ‘You Belong with Me.’ Suddenly, I’m getting these broadcasts, in the form of Taylor Swift, straight from the hearts of girls. It was a delightful phase with Rose. It lasted, I don’t know, four or five years. I enjoyed every second of it. I’m sad it’s over. And,” he says, “I still love Taylor Swift.”

Originally published by Peter Stone for The Guardian on June 3, 2024.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse tells Guardian ‘quid pro quo is very evident’ amid investigation into Mar-a-Lago meeting in April.

Donald Trump’s brazen pitch to 20 fossil-fuel heads for $1bn to aid his presidential campaign in return for promises of lucrative tax and regulatory favors is the “definition of corruption”, a top Democrat investigating the issue has said.

“It certainly meets the definition of corruption as the founding fathers would have used the term,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said in an interview about Trump’s audacious $1bn request for big checks to top fossil-fuel executives that took place in April at his Mar-a-Lago club.

Whitehouse added: “The quid pro quo – so called – is so very evident … I can’t think of anything that matches this either in terms of the size of the bribe requested, or the brazenness of the linkages.”

Whitehouse and his fellow Democrat Ron Wyden have launched a joint inquiry, as chairs of the Senate budget and finance panels respectively, into Trump’s quid-pro-quo-style fundraising, which already seems to have helped spur tens of millions in checks for a Trump Super Pac from oil and gas leaders at a 22 May Houston event.

The two senators have written to eight big-oil chief executives and the head of the industry’s lobbying group seeking details about the Mar-a- Lago meeting, as has representative Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the oversight and accountability committee, who has begun a parallel investigation into the pay-to-play schemes that Trump touted to big oil leaders.

Amplifying those concerns, former Federal Election Commission general counsel Larry Noble said that Trump’s unusually aggressive money pitch “violates the letter and spirit” of campaign-finance laws, and a veteran Republican consultant called it “blatant pay to play”.

In a separate fossil-fuel inquiry, Raskin and Whitehouse released a joint report in April into long-running big-oil disinformation campaigns to undercut the enormous threats posed by global warming, which Trump has falsely labelled a “hoax”, and last week urged the justice department to investigate big-oil tactics to deceive the public.

Trump boasts a lengthy record of rejecting scientific evidence about the links between fossil-fuel usage and climate change: he has pushed a litany of bogus climate claims, including that windmills cause cancer and that electric cars are “bad” for the environment, while promising to end tax breaks for EVs if he wins this fall.

Further, in a major rebuke to environmental advocates and international efforts to curb global warming, Trump in 2017 announced the US was pulling out of the Paris agreement to limit climate change, a much-criticized move that Joe Biden reversed.

Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” mantra and his deep animosity toward alternative energy sources have been part of his fundraising pitches to oil and gas moguls, triggering alarm about the dangers of another Trump presidency.

“The totality of … Trump, the fossil-fuel industry and a [conservative thinktank] Heritage Foundation blueprint advocate will put a dagger through efforts to avoid catastrophic warming,” said Joe Romm, a senior research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media.

“Trump promises to undo every constraint on global warming. Trump has pushed more lies and disinformation about climate change than anyone ever has.”

Other climate scholars say Trump’s climate denialism is the culmination of years of fossil-fuel propaganda.

“Trump is an apotheosis of decades of denial, not only on the part of the fossil-fuel industry, but also by other industry allies, including now-certain billionaires, to deny the reality of the harms of unregulated, or very poorly regulated, capitalism,” said Naomi Oreskes, the co-author of Merchants of Doubt and a Harvard historian of science. “Donald Trump is the reductio ad absurdum of this rewriting of history, culminating in the big lie that he won the 2020 election.”

Trump’s strong embrace of climate-change denialism and his pro-big-oil policies were underscored by his aggressive $1bn pitch at Mar-a-Lago, which drew CEOs from giants such as Chevron and ExxonMobil, and the fracking multibillionaire Harold Hamm, the founder of Continental Resources, as the Washington Post first reported.

Hamm, an early Trump backer in 2016 and 2020 who took months before helping Trump’s current presidential bid, joined with two other industry CEOs to host a Super Pac bash in Houston that reportedly raised $40m on 22 May from attendees who paid at least $250,000 each to hear Trump promise more fracking and more pipelines if he wins.

Trump’s full-court press for fossil-fuel funds and political backing was palpable at an industry conference in North Dakota earlier in May, where Hamm surprised attendees by announcing Trump would join them via a video which featured bogus claims about the health of energy companies and the economy.

“Under ‘Crooked Joe Biden’, the American energy industry is under siege, it’s under crisis. [Biden] has made clear that he wants to abolish your industry and, with it, destroy our economy and send us into a new dark age of blackouts, poverty and de-industrialization,” said Trump.

The spotlight on Trump’s ardent pursuit of oil and gas donations comes after Biden championed major new regulatory, tax and spending measures to reduce global warming in a sharp break with Trump policies past and present.

Ironically, even as Biden succeeded in accelerating spending for green energy, and imposed new regulations on fracking on US lands and a moratorium on natural gas exports, oil and gas production in the US reached new highs in 2023 and major companies notched healthy profits.

Still, the oil and gas industry has been ponying up funds for Trump’s campaign faster than it did in 2020, according to the nonpartisan OpenSecrets group, which tracks money in politics.

The oil and gas industry has donated $7.3m to Trump’s campaign thus far, or more than three times the amount it gave at this point in 2020, OpenSecrets data shows.

Further, some industry titans have donated six- and seven-figure checks to a Trump Super Pac. Texas oilman and multibillionaire Tim Dunn gave $5m to Trump’s Make America Great Again Pac this year, and Hamm kicked in at least $200,000 last fall.

Campaign-finance watchdogs and some Republican veterans are dismayed by Trump’s fundraising tactics.

“Trump views everything as a transaction, so I’m not surprised,” said ex-GOP representative Dave Trott. “Any other politician who made these statements would be deemed dead on arrival because they’d be viewed as corrupt.”

Campaign-finance experts see other dangers in Trump’s heavy-handed fundraising appeals, which he links to favors.

“When wealthy special interests, like the oil and gas industry, have special access to candidates, and mechanisms to give them enough money to control their policy choices, everyday voters suffer,” said Shanna Ports, the Campaign Legal Center’s senior legal counsel for campaign finance.

“Trump’s request to oil executives is a troubling illustration of the quid pro quo corruption and pay-to-play-style politics that federal campaign laws are meant to prevent. Federal law includes strict contribution limits and bans corporate contributions precisely so candidates do not trade policy favors for campaign cash.”

Ports stressed that “candidates are forbidden from soliciting contributions that would break these laws – a prohibition that Trump may have violated”.

Likewise, Noble, the former Federal Election Commission general counsel, said Trump’s appeals for massive donations from oil and gas bigwigs [are] “pretty blatantly offering policy favors in exchange for large contributions”.

Little wonder, then, that top Senate and House Democrats are inquiring into whether Trump’s bald $1bn ask of big oil moguls broke campaign finance laws, as well as big oil’s long track record of spreading disinformation about global warming.

In Whitehouse and Raskin’s joint letter to the US attorney general, Merrick Garland, urging the DoJ to investigate big oil’s history of climate change disinformation, they drew parallels with the tobacco industry’s years of disinformation about the dangers smoking poses to human health.

“The DoJ is well situated to pursue further investigation and take any appropriate legal action, as it has in similar cases involving the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries,” they wrote.

Looking ahead to the November election, climate change experts predict another Trump presidency would decimate efforts to curb global warming.

“If Trump is elected and does what he has been saying and the fossil fuel industry wants, that would be the ruin of the United States and the world,” Romm, of the University of Pennsylvania, warned.

“Trump wants to roll back” the ambitious climate change steps and spending that the Biden administration has initiated, Romm added, saying: “We have dawdled a very long time on climate change. We need very sharp reductions. We can’t afford four years focused on raising emissions.”

Originally published by Shankar Parameshawarn for Knowledge at Wharton on May 21, 2024

The green hydrogen molecule has the potential to convert hard-to-decarbonize segments of the economy, but regulations stand in the way, according to a panel of experts who spoke at Wharton.

Originally published by University Communications on May 16, 2024

photo by Eric Sucar for the University of Pennsylvania

Michael Mann, Presidential Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science, has been elected a fellow of the Royal Society, the national academy of sciences in the United Kingdom. He joins more than 90 researchers worldwide—less than one-third of whom come from outside the U.K.—recognized for their “substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge, including mathematics, engineering science, and medical science.”

“This new cohort have already made significant contributions to our understanding of the world around us and continue to push the boundaries of possibility in academic research and industry,” says Sir Adrian Smith, Royal Society President. “From visualizing the sharp rise in global temperatures since the industrial revolution to leading the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, their diverse range of expertise is furthering human understanding and helping to address some of our greatest challenges.”

For more than three decades, Mann, who also directs the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media and who holds a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication, has studied human-induced climate change. In the late 1990s, he and colleagues mapped temperature changes for the past 1,000 years, determining a dramatic uptick around the year 1900—a jump that aligned with increases in the emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases. The finding, which pointed clearly to the part humans were playing in a warming planet, put Mann at the center of the climate change debate.

Today, he’s an outspoken advocate for accurate depictions of climate science in the media, actively debunking misinformation from climate deniers. His current research involves modeling climate systems to better understand what triggers an ice age to begin and end and how changes in climate affect extreme weather. He has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed and edited publications, numerous op-eds, and commentaries, as well as five books: Dire Predictions, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars, The Madhouse Effect, The Tantrum that Saved the World, and The New Climate War.

Originally published by The Royal Society on May 16, 2024

Over 90 exceptional researchers from across the world have this year been elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of sciences.

Recognised for their invaluable contributions to science, the elected Fellows are leaders in their fields. They include the Nobel laureate, Professor Emmanuelle Charpentier; an Emmy winner, Dr Andrew Fitzgibbon (for his contributions to the 3D camera tracker software “boujou”); and the former Chief Medical Advisor to the US President, Professor Anthony Fauci.

Drawn from across academia, industry and wider society, the new intake spans disciplines as varied as pioneering treatments for Huntington’s Disease, developing the first algorithm for video streaming, generating new insights into memory formation, and studying the origins and evolution of our universe.

Sir Adrian Smith, President of the Royal Society, said:

“I am pleased to welcome such an outstanding group into the Fellowship of the Royal Society.

“This new cohort have already made significant contributions to our understanding of the world around us and continue to push the boundaries of possibility in academic research and industry.

“From visualising the sharp rise in global temperatures since the industrial revolution to leading the response to the Covid-19 pandemic, their diverse range of expertise is furthering human understanding and helping to address some of our greatest challenges.

“It is an honour to have them join the Fellowship.”

Statistics about this year’s intake of Fellows:

• 30% of this year’s intake of Fellows, Foreign Members and Honorary Fellows are women
• New Fellows have been elected from 23 UK institutions, including The University of Nottingham, British Antarctic Survey, University of Strathclyde and the Natural History Museum
• They have been elected from countries including Brazil, China, Japan, Mexico and Singapore

The full list of the newly elected Fellows and Foreign Members of the Royal Society is, in alphabetical order:

New Fellows

Professor Simon Aldridge FRS
Professor of Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory, University of Oxford

Professor Sir John Aston Kt FRS
Harding Professor of Statistics in Public Life at Statistical Laboratory, Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics, University of Cambridge

Professor Frances Balkwill OBE FMedSci FRS
Professor of Cancer Biology, Centre for Tumour Microenvironment, Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London

Dr David Bentley OBE FMedSci FRS
Former Vice President and Chief Scientist, Illumina Inc

Dr David Bentley FRS
Professor, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics and Co-Director, RNA Bioscience Initiative, Anschutz Medical School, University of Colorado Denver, USA

Professor Donna Blackmond FRS
John C. Martin Endowed Chair in Chemistry, Department of Chemistry, Scripps Research, USA

Professor Sarah-Jayne Blakemore FBA FMedSci FRS
Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge

Professor Helen Blau FRS
Donald E and Delia B Baxter Foundation Professor and Director, Baxter Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology, Stanford University School of Medicine, USA

Professor Martin Blunt FREng FRS
Professor of Flow in Porous Media, Department of Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London

Professor Daniel Bradley FRS
Professor of Population Genetics, Trinity College Dublin

Professor Emmanuel Breuillard FRS
Professor of Pure Mathematics, Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford

Sir Philip Campbell FRS
Editor Emeritus, Nature

Professor Brian Cantor CBE FREng FRS
Visiting Professor, Department of Materials, University of Oxford and Professor and Senior Advisor, Brunel Centre for Advanced Solidification Technology (BCAST), Brunel University London

Professor Kenneth Carslaw FRS
Professor of Atmospheric Science, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds

Dr Andrew Carter FRS
Programme Leader, Structural Studies Division, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology

Professor Patrick Chinnery FMedSci FRS
Professor of Neurology, Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Cambridge

Professor Yanick Crow FMedSci FRS
Professor and Programme Leader, MRC Human Genetics Unit, University of Edinburgh and Institute Imagine, Université Paris, France

Professor Barry Dickson FRS
Professorial Research Fellow, Queensland Brain Institute, Australia

Professor Jo Dunkley OBE FRS
Professor of Physics and Astrophysical Sciences, Departments of Physics and Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton University, USA

Professor Aled Edwards FRS
Temerty Nexus Chair in Health Innovation and Technology, Structural Genomics Consortium, University of Toronto, Canada

Professor Paul Elliott CBE FMedSci FRS
Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health Medicine, Imperial College London

Dr Alan Evans FRS
Distinguished James McGill Professor of Neurology, Departments of Neurology and Psychiatry, McGill University, Canada

Professor Rebecca Fitzgerald FMedSci FRS
Professor of Cancer Prevention and Director, Early Cancer Institute, University of Cambridge

Dr Andrew Fitzgibbon FREng FRS
Engineering Fellow, Graphcore Ltd

Professor Michael Garrett FRS
Sir Bernard Lovell Chair of Astrophysics and Director of Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics (JBCA), Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester

Professor Toby Gee FRS
Professor, Department of Mathematics, Imperial College London

Professor Nigel Goldenfeld FRS
Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics, Department of Physics, University of California San Diego, USA

Professor Anjali Goswami FRS
Research Leader in Evolutionary Biology, Natural History Museum, London and President of the Linnean Society of London

Professor Maria Harrison FRS
William H. Crocker Professor, Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research and Adjunct Professor, Cornell University, USA

Professor Richard Hartley FRS
Emeritus Distinguished Professor, College of Engineering, Computing and Cybernetics, The Australian National University, Australia

Professor Laura Herz FRS
Professor of Physics, Department of Physics, University of Oxford

Professor David Hodell FRS
Woodwardian Professor of Geology and Director, Godwin Laboratory for Palaeoclimate Research, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge and fellow of Clare College

Professor Saskia Hogenhout FRS
Group Leader, John Innes Centre

Sir Peter Horby Kt FMedSci FRS
Moh Family Foundation Professor of Emerging Infections and Global Health, Nuffield Department of Medicine and Director, Pandemic Sciences Institute, University of Oxford

Professor Richard Jardine FREng FRS
Professor of Geomechanics, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Imperial College London, Imperial College Proconsul and Visiting Professor, Zhejiang University, China

Professor Heidi Johansen Berg FRS
Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Nuffield Department of Clinical Neurosciences, University of Oxford

Mr Simon Knowles FRS
CTO and EVP engineering, Graphcore

Professor David Komander FRS
Head, Ubiquitin Signalling Division, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI) and Professor, Department of Medical Biology, University of Melbourne, Australia

Professor Daniela Kühn FRS
Mason Professor of Mathematics, School of Mathematics, University of Birmingham

Professor Eric Lauga FRS
Professor of Applied Mathematics, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge

Professor Chwee Lim FRS
NUS Society Chair Professor, Institute for Health Innovation & Technology, National University of Singapore, Singapore and NUS Society Chair Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Design and Engineering, National University of Singapore

Professor Duncan Lorimer FRS
Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Department of Physics and Astronomy, West Virginia University, USA

Professor Douglas MacFarlane FRS
Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor, School of Chemistry, Monash University, Australia

Professor Barbara Maher FRS
Professor Emerita of Environmental Magnetism, Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University

Professor George Malliaras FRS
Prince Philip Professor of Technology, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge

Professor Ivan Marusic FRS
Pro Vice-Chancellor and Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor, University of Melbourne, Australia

Professor Tamsin Mather FRS
Professor of Earth Sciences, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford

Professor Stephen McGrath FRS
Discovery Leader in Sustainable Soils and Crops, Rothamsted Research

Professor Patricia Monaghan FRS
Regius Professor of Zoology, School of Biodiversity, One Health and Veterinary Medicine, University of Glasgow

Professor Graham Moore FRS
Director, The John Innes Centre

Professor Francis Nimmo FRS
Professor of Planetary Sciences, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California Santa Cruz, USA

Professor Sarah Otto FRS
Professor, Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, Canada

Professor Adrian Owen OBE FRS
Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience and Imaging, University of Western Ontario, Canada

Professor Lloyd Peck FRS
Science Leader, British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge

Professor José Penadés FRS
Professor of Microbiology, Centre for Bacterial Resistance Biology, Department of Infectious Disease, Imperial College London

Professor Sir Andrew Pollard FMedSci FRS
Ashall Professor of Infection and Immunity, Director of the Oxford Vaccine Group and Consultant in Paediatric Infectious Disease, Department of Paediatrics, University of Oxford

Professor Oscar Randal-Williams FRS
Sadleirian Professor of Pure Mathematics, Department of Pure Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics, University of Cambridge

Professor Keith Ridgway CBE FREng FRS
Senior Executive – Manufacturing, University of Strathclyde

Professor Tom Rodden FRS
Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Interactive Computing, School of Computer Science, Nottingham University

Professor Stuart Rowan FRS
Barry L MacLean Professor of Molecular Engineering, Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and Department of Chemistry, University of Chicago, USA and Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division, Argonne National Laboratory, USA

Mr Simon Segars FRS
Former CEO, Arm Holdings PLC. Board member Dolby Labs Inc, Vodafone Group PLC, Edge Impulse Inc, and Board Chair, Silicon Quantum Computing Pty

Professor Yang Shi FRS
Professor of Epigenetics and Member, Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, University of Oxford

Professor Lorraine Symington FRS
Harold S Ginsberg Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, Columbia University, USA

Professor Sarah Tabrizi FMedSci FRS
Professor of Clinical Neurology and Neurogenetics, Department of Neurodegenerative Disease, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, University College London

Professor Patrick Unwin FRS
Professor of Chemistry and Head, Department of Chemistry, University of Warwick

Professor Mihaela van der Schaar FRS
John Humphrey Plummer Professor of Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Medicine, Departments of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Engineering and Medicine, University of Cambridge

Professor Bart Vanhaesebroeck FRS
Professor of Cell Signalling, Research Department of Oncology, Cancer Institute, Faculty of Medical Sciences, University College London

Professor Glynn Winskel FRS
Professor of Computer and Information Science, University of Strathclyde

Professor William Wisden FMedSci FRS
Chair of Molecular Neuroscience, Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London

Professor Xiaodong Zhang FRS
Professor, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London and The Francis Crick Institute

New Honorary Fellows

Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah FRS
Silver Professor of Philosophy and Law, New York University, USA

Lord Anthony Hughes PC FRS
Former Judge, UK Supreme Court

New Foreign Members

Professor Yakir Aharonov ForMemRS
Distinguished Professor of Theoretical Physics, Institute for Quantum Studies and Faculty of Physics, Schmid College of Science, Chapman University, USA and Professor Emeritus, Tel Aviv University, Israel

Dr Adriaan Bax ForMemRS
NIH Distinguished Investigator and Chief of the Section of Biophysical NMR Spectroscopy, National Institutes of Health, USA

Professor Rene Bernards ForMemRS
Professor of Molecular Carcinogenesis, Division of Molecuar Carcinogenesis, The Netherlands Cancer Institute, Netherlands

Professor Emily A. Carter ForMemRS
Associate Laboratory Director and Gerhard R Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory and Princeton University, USA

Professor Emmanuelle Charpentier ForMemRS
Scientific and Managing Director, Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens, Germany

Professor Patrick Cramer ForMemRS
President, Max Planck Society and Director, Department of Molecular Biology, Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences, Germany

Professor Ingrid Daubechies ForMemRS
James B Duke Professor, Department of Mathematics and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Duke University, USA

Professor Anthony Fauci ForMemRS
Distinguished University Professor, Georgetown University School of Medicine, and the McCourt School of Public Policy

Professor Thomas Henzinger ForMemRS
Professor, Institute of Science and Technology Austria

Professor Ruth Lehmann ForMemRS
Director and President, Whitehead Institute and Professor, Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Dr Susana Magallón ForMemRS
Senior Research Scientist and Director, Institute of Biology, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico

Professor Michael Mann ForMemRS
Presidential Distinguished Professor, Department of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Pennsylvania, and Director, Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media (PCSSM), University of Pennsylvania, USA

Professor Anthony Movshon ForMemRS
University Professor, and Silver Professor of Neural Science and Psychology, New York University and Professor of Ophthalmology and of Neuroscience and Physiology, and Investigator, Neuroscience Institute, NYU Grossman School of Medicine, USA

Professor William Nix ForMemRS
Professor Emeritus, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Stanford University, USA

Professor Kyoko Nozaki ForMemRS
Professor, Department of Chemistry and Biotechnology, Graduate School of Engineering, University of Tokyo, Japan

Professor Jian-Wei Pan ForMemRS
Professor, Department of Modern Physics and Executive Vice President, University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), China

Dr Aviv Regev ForMemRS
Executive Vice President and Global Head, Genentech Research and Early Development, Genentech/Roche, USA

Professor Ares Rosakis ForMemRS
Theodore von Kármán Professor of Aeronautics and Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Division of Engineering and Applied Science, California Institute of Technology, USA

Professor Paul Schulze-Lefert ForMemRS
Director, Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Germany

Professor Erin Schuman ForMemRS
Director, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Germany

Professor Mark H. Thiemens ForMemRS
Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and John Dove Isaacs Endowed Chair in Natural Philosophy for Physical Sciences, University of California San Diego, USA

Professor Cesar Victora ForMemRS
Emeritus Professor and Director, International Center for Equity in Healths, Federal University of Pelotas, Brazil

Originally published by Phil McKenna for Inside Climate News on May 5, 2024

The report, led by former U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, came as an investigation by Democrats in Congress exposed efforts by the oil and gas industry to downplay the climate impact of natural gas.

With a pair of fossil-fuel friendly senators at his side, former U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz on Tuesday released a favorable report on U.S. natural gas and liquified natural gas (LNG), funded by the natural gas industry.

The report, “The Future of Natural Gas in a Low-Carbon World,” was written by the EFI Foundation, a nonprofit Moniz founded, and released at the U.S. Capitol. The report examined the role of natural gas in advancing energy security, energy equity and environmental sustainability in the United States, Europe and Asia.

The EFI report comes at a pivotal moment for the U.S natural gas and LNG export industry. The Biden Administration paused the approval of new LNG export capacity in January while the Energy Department considers the climate and financial impacts to U.S. gas consumers of additional LNG exports. The document seeks to broaden the discussion on U.S. LNG exports.

“The study, as you’ll be hearing, examines the role of natural gas in addressing what is sometimes referred to as the ‘energy trilemma’: energy security, energy equity and environmental sustainability,” said Moniz, president of the EFI Foundation and chair of the advisory committee that oversaw the report. “Unfortunately, too often, the discussion around those three priorities tends to devolve into stovepipes, as opposed to recognizing that progress on all of them requires treating it as one conversation.”

One of the report’s specific recommendations was to include an “energy security determination” in evaluating future permits for additional U.S. LNG export capacity.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), the largest recipient of oil and gas money in Congress, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), representing a state that derives a significant share of its revenue from oil and gas, joined Moniz as “keynote” speakers at the event.

Murkowski spoke of the need for an “all of the above” energy policy, which was the U.S. energy policy during the Obama administration when Moniz was Secretary of Energy.

Manchin called for lifting the pause on approvals for new LNG export capacity.

The report referred repeatedly to the “essential” role of natural gas.

The same day as the report’s release, Democrats in Congress released a report of their own, the culmination of a three-year investigation, concluding the oil and gas industry has misled Americans for decades about climate change.

“The fossil fuel industry engaged in an elaborate campaign of deception and doublespeak … as well as disinformation about the climate safety of natural gas and its role as a bridge fuel to a fossil-free future,” the Democrats’ report concluded.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who released the report as chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said the oil and gas industry seeks academic partnerships to legitimize its reports.

“Documents explicitly discuss leveraging ‘third party endorsements’ and partnerships with academic institutions to bolster Big Oil’s disinformation campaign,” Whitehouse said in a written statement to Inside Climate News.

Referring explicitly to the new Moniz report on natural gas, Whitehouse said “this report is yet another example of the industry deceiving the public about the compatibility of continued—or even expanded—production of natural gas with the scientific emission reduction targets we must achieve in order to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and avoid the very worst effects of climate change.”

A spokeswoman for Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability added that industry’s disinformation campaign “continues to this day, including, as [Moniz’s] recent report shows, their portrayal of natural gas as a green and climate friendly fuel even though they have failed to address methane emissions associated with natural gas. We know that Big Oil is intent on entrenching natural gas into both the U.S. and global energy economies for the foreseeable future by any means necessary.”

Some climate researchers echoed her conclusion that the new report may be a continuation of industry-funded misinformation.

“My concern is that Moniz is—and perhaps has been since his time in the administration—an advocate for polluters over people and the planet,” said Michael Mann, an earth and environmental science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media.

“It strains credulity to believe this is a coincidence,” Mann said of the report’s favorable view of natural gas, given its gas-industry funding. “Unfortunately, the old adage ‘follow the money’ seems quite relevant here.”

In addition to his role at EFI, Moniz is an emeritus professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a “special advisor” to MIT president Sally Kornbluth.

The EFI Foundation declined to respond publicly to criticisms of the report, and MIT did not respond to a request for comment.

The United States is the world’s largest exporter of LNG. Additional projects already approved by the Energy Department and not subject to the ongoing pause would triple existing U.S. export capacity.

The pause followed the pre-release of a study that is still undergoing peer review by Robert Howarth, a professor at Cornell University. Howarth’s study concluded the climate impact of LNG fuel is worse than burning coal.

When burned, natural gas emits roughly half as much carbon dioxide as coal. However, methane, the primary component of natural gas, is a highly potent greenhouse gas, more than 80 times more effective at warming the planet than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. If even a small amount of methane is leaked, vented, or otherwise emitted into the atmosphere before the gas is burned—as it commonly is—the climate impact of natural gas can be worse than that of other fossil fuels.

Whitehouse challenged the energy security claims in the Moniz report.

“There is no energy security for American families and businesses when the price of energy is determined by geopolitical events outside our control and by an industry that frequently engages in cartel-pricing,” he said. “True energy security will be achieved when we fully transition to renewable energy sources, the ‘fuels’ for which—wind, sunlight, flowing water, the earth’s heat—are free and not controlled by any one country or cartel.”

Nonetheless, the European Commission’s executive vice president for the European Green Deal, Maroš Šefčovič, whose responsibilities include leading the European Commission’s work on becoming climate-neutral by 2050, praised the Moniz report in a video address shown at the release event.

“Natural gas has a role to play as a transitional fuel, something reflected in the COP28 conclusions,” Šefčovič said, referring to the 2023 U.N. climate conference in Dubai. “It will help ensure our energy security and energy equity as our economies decarbonize.”

“So with Europe, having taken decisive action to reach net zero by 2050 including by accelerating the clean energy transition, we also recognize the importance of natural gas, notably in the medium term, and LNG in particular will continue to represent a significant source of gas for the EU,” Šefčovič added.

Funders or “sponsors” of the report, which was not peer-reviewed, included Chesapeake Energy, one of the largest independent gas producers in the U.S, and U.S. LNG export companies Venture Global LNG and Tellurian. The American Petroleum Institute and three other gas industry organizations or industry PR groups also provided funding.

Additional money came from the Cynthia and George Mitchell Foundation, named after the late George P. Mitchell, who is often referred to as the “father of fracking” for his role in developing the drilling technology known as hydraulic fracturing. The Institute of Energy Economics, a think tank in Japan, the world’s largest importer of LNG, also provided support.

The report states that the “EFI Foundation maintains editorial independence from its public and private sponsors.” However, more than half of the report’s “advisory committee” was comprised of individuals representing the report’s funders.

“EFI’s report reinforces more than a decade’s worth of independent and government-led research that has consistently shown the long-term role of natural gas in the global energy mix and its ability to accelerate global climate progress while strengthening global energy security,” API spokesperson Scott Lauermann said.

Joseph Romm, a researcher also at the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media, said the report’s “energy trilemma” framing that looks at energy security, equity and environmental sustainability downplays the importance of climate change.

“Climate is the overriding issue,” Romm said. “Not that the others aren’t important, but if you don’t do climate, the others don’t matter.”

Romm noted that in 2018, the International Energy Agency, a global energy watchdog, concluded that the world could not afford to build any new carbon dioxide emitting projects if the planet were to stay within 2 degrees Celsius of warming, when compared to pre-industrial times.

Six years later, there is even less room for new fossil fuel developments, Romm said.

The EFI report states that carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) is an effective option for reducing CO2 emissions across the natural gas supply chain, even though to date such technology has never been successfully deployed at a commercial level. As the report notes, “there is no natural gas-fired power plant with CCUS in operation worldwide as of July 2023.”

The Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law have provided tax incentives and billions of dollars for large-scale carbon sequestration projects.

“You shouldn’t go around telling people that, ‘Oh, you’re going to solve whatever your natural gas problem is with carbon capture, utilization and storage’ when there isn’t a single one in operation,” Romm said. “One has to distinguish between reality and wishful thinking.”

The Moniz report also says that LNG shippers have started to offer their customers “carbon-neutral LNG cargo,” in which emissions from LNG production are offset through the purchasing of carbon credits.

Carbon offsets have come under increasing scrutiny in recent years as offset projects have failed to live up to their emission reduction claims. Even if the projects offset the emissions of LNG production, there would still be significant emissions when the fuel is burned.

The report acknowledges the climate impact of methane emissions associated with natural gas and says “methane emissions reductions are also critical.” The report also notes that “the carbon footprint of natural gas, while lower than some alternatives, must be dramatically reduced further” and “overcoming these challenges will ultimately determine whether natural gas is indeed a transitional fuel or an integral part of the long-term global energy mix.”

In releasing the report, Moniz said the gas industry “can do a lot more in terms of having the pause be a pause by taking care of some of the homework that needs to be done,” such as on methane emissions reductions.

However, the report focuses less on methane emissions and more on the carbon dioxide emissions reductions that can be achieved by switching from coal to gas.

Whitehouse said the focus on carbon dioxide emissions over methane emissions is misleading, intentional and not new.

“Internal documents obtained in our recent investigation demonstrate that fossil fuel companies knew methane leaks made natural gas just as harmful to the climate as coal but sought to discredit the scientific evidence and paint natural gas as a clean fuel and a crucial part of the energy mix,” Whitehouse said.

One such document obtained through the Congressional investigation was an August 2016 email from Amory Lovins, the cofounder and, at the time, chief scientist for the Rocky Mountain Institute, a clean energy and sustainability research organization now known as RMI. The email was addressed to Rex Tillerson, then the chief executive of ExxonMobil.

Tillerson had just been appointed the chair of the National Petroleum Council, a federal advisory committee to the Secretary of Energy, a position then held by Moniz.

Lovins, who served as an environmental representative on the council, warned Tillerson of increasing methane emissions monitoring by “citizen activists.” He urged Tillerson, the country’s leading oil and gas executive, and his industry to “get ahead of that emerging movement” and “fix the leaks” before the “sloppy operators further damage the good firms’ reputation.”

Another record obtained through the Congressional investigation is a document from Chevron marked “classified,” which includes a presentation Lovins gave to the oil and gas company’s board of directors at a meeting in Pebble Beach, California, in 2018.

In the presentation, Lovins notes that the “#1 threat to gas” is “methane ‘slip,’” or emissions. Lovins added that “2.3% of US gas output is now lost” as emissions, making gas “little/no” better for the climate than burning coal. Lovins added that LNG is “worse” for the climate than coal.

LNG has higher greenhouse gas emissions than natural gas due to the energy it takes to liquify and then regasify natural gas, not counting the additional methane emissions that occur during the transport of LNG in ships.

“RMI experts routinely share their independent analysis and research with a variety of stakeholders, and in this case, we presented our understanding of the climate risks of methane to the oil and gas industry, in the hopes that the facts would lead to solutions,” Lovins said in an email. “The facts presented then and subsequent research from RMI and peers have confirmed that leaks of methane, the main ingredient in natural gas, even at small amounts, make it as bad as or worse than coal for the climate and not necessarily the cleaner alternative it was once thought to be.”

Peer-reviewed studies published since 2018 suggest the climate impact of natural gas is worse than previously thought. A study published last month in Nature found that 2.95 percent of U.S. gas output is emitted rather than the 2.3 percent figure Lovins used in 2018. For the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico, where much of the natural gas that is exported from the U.S. as LNG originates, emissions are far higher—9.6 percent—according to the Nature study.

Other factors, such as the use of a 20-year rather than 100-year timeframe for measuring the climate impact of methane, can result in an even smaller leak rate, making natural gas worse than coal. A study published last year in Environmental Research Letters by RMI researchers found a “methane leakage rate as low as 0.2 percent brings a gas system’s climate risk on par with coal.”

For Howarth, the Cornell professor, recent events elicit a sense of déjà vu. In 2011, Howarth published one of the first studies suggesting the climate impact of natural gas may be worse than coal.

The same year, Moniz, then the director of the MIT Energy Initiative, was co-chair of a non-peer-reviewed Energy Initiative report funded largely by industry, “The Future of Natural Gas,” a title nearly identical to the EFI report Moniz and colleagues published this week.

The 2011 report led by Moniz downplayed Howarth’s findings and called for federal policies that “encourage the development of a [global liquid natural gas] market.”

“It feels familiar,” Howarth said of the new “Future of Natural Gas” report. “Shale gas is clearly as bad or worse than coal, no matter what industry funded people want to spin.”

“And even if I were wrong,” Howarth added, “It’s just not the time to be promoting any fossil fuels.”