The Tide is Turning in Favor of Saner Energy Policies
Exxon Mobil keeps lawsuit against eco-activists going, Bank of America back-tracking on green investment policies, and automakers putting brakes on race into EV production.
So, as I write this post, I am being treated to howling winds blowing through Southern California. To my north, there is a rare hurricane warning for this part of the country.
A fierce winter storm fueled by a raging atmospheric river was thrashing Californians on Sunday with intense downpours, threatening treacherous flooding and hurricane-force winds − even in major urban areas.
Up to 37 million people, about 94% of the state’s population, were at risk for life-threatening floods from the storm, Accuweather meteorologists warned. The atmospheric river − like a river in the sky − is the second to pound the state in recent days, but forecasters said this storm would be the season’s most potent, particularly in Southern California.
I remember all the “global warming drought” gloom and doom, which allowed our power-hungry regulators to justify increased rates and water use restrictions. Now, there seems to be a “turning of the tide” against the climate cultists and their mandates.
I come back to you now, at the turning of the tide. pic.twitter.com/pWDCdtMceT
— George DeSand (@George_DeSand) December 30, 2022
I have often complained that the fossil fuel industry should stop trying to play nice with eco-activists (who will never be satisfied until every oil field is closed and every coal mine shuttered). So, I am delighted to report that one of the world’s largest publicly traded international oil and gas companies has finally listened.
Exxon Mobil said Friday it will continue to pursue a lawsuit against two activist investors even after they withdrew a shareholder proposal on climate change, setting up a clash over what constitutes legitimate debate between a public company and its owners.
Exxon had taken the rare step in January of filing the lawsuit to block the shareholder measure from being voted on at its annual meeting.
In response, activist investors Arjuna Capital and Follow This said Friday that they had withdrawn the proposal, which called on Exxon to reduce its emissions.
But Exxon said it would continue with the suit, which questions the motivations of the investors and notes the rising number of resolutions being filed for corporate ballots.
“We believe there are still important issues for the court to resolve. There is no change to our plans, the suit is continuing,” Exxon said in an emailed statement.
May this be the start of a serious and much-needed counter-offensive?
But the fossil fuel industry isn’t the only one that has tried negotiating with cultists and finding that it isn’t leading to compromise, cooperation, or profits. Bank of America has begun to climb down from its No Coal/No Arctic Drilling stance.
It isn’t entirely off the ledge, but it is getting there.
Two years ago, Bank of America won kudos from climate activists for saying it would no longer finance new coal mines, coal-burning power plants or Arctic drilling projects because of the toll they take on the environment.
The bank’s latest environment and social-risk policy reneged on those commitments. The policy, updated in December, says that such projects will instead be subject to “enhanced due diligence.”
Bank of America’s change follows intensifying backlash from Republican lawmakers against corporations that consider environmental and social factors in their operations. Wall Street in particular has come under fire for what some Republicans have called “woke capitalism,” a campaign that has pulled banks into the wider culture wars.
States including Texas and West Virginia have passed financial regulations designed to ward off efforts to deny fossil-fuel companies access to banking services. In New Hampshire, state lawmakers have sought to criminalize the business principle known as E.S.G., shorthand for environmental, social and governance.
These actions have sent a chill through the E.S.G. world.
Ohhhhhh can I play? pic.twitter.com/YmbipHbFfH
— Limited reach Random Normie. shame on X (@amwick2) February 5, 2024
To conclude this news roundup, Volvo, an early electric vehicle (EV) adopter, has cut off funding for an EV affiliate.
It’s not the only automaker reviewing the real market conditions for EVs.
Volvo Car said it won’t provide further funding to Polestar, the electric-car maker it created with Volvo’s Chinese owner Geely—the latest EV retrenchment by the global auto industry.
The auto industry’s pivot to electric vehicles has been rocked by setbacks this year, just as a flood of new battery-powered models is hitting showrooms.
Earlier this week, French automaker Renault said it has decided to cancel the initial public offering of its electric-car unit Ampere. Ford, meanwhile, has slashed production of its electric F-150 Lightning, a pickup truck that has generated major buzz since its launch. Rental-car firm Hertz has said it was dumping about one-third of its EV rental car fleet, replacing the cars with gas-engine vehicles.
Can policymakers mandate the buying of products that simply don’t exist?
It looks like the tides have shifted against Climate Crisis/Global Warming hysteria. Hopefully, it will join all the other apocalypse agents sooner rather than later.
It's in the warehouse with acid rain and the New Ice Age. pic.twitter.com/unO9VDy6St
— \ Noticer of Patterns \ (@IrwinJMainway) February 4, 2024
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Comments
What took so long? Better late than never I suppose.
I wouldn’t hold my breath yet. New York State and New Jersey appear gung-ho on installing more wind mills on the sea, with no thought to fish and whales. I think it will take blackouts lasting several days to convince voters that ruinables are not a good idea.
Heaven knows that I make many errors, typos in posts, ruinables is funny and apt.
For the record, it wasn’t a typo.
we wish!!
the government /msm stooges who are peddling this is once again
election time pr
they know americans wont fight back but will still vote
and that even minorities who the dems own ( you aint black if you aint vote n joe) love their gas stoves etc
There will be no turning of the tide. The climate cultists will see your ‘atmospheric river’ as yet more evidence of globull warming. And their Marxist leaders will instruct the press minions to beat the drum louder
I love the poetic language they come up with to make normal stuff seem exotic and unusual. Much of California is a semi-arid desert. It tends to run for seven to tweleve years of low precipitation followed by a year or two of floods and mudslides. They used to know this and built reservoirs to hold water for the intervening years. They had plans to expand the number of reservoirs but now they are remove ones that exist.
Drill baby drill. Capital outflow of energy is a really bad thing for our economy. If people don’t like fracking, then use coal. I think that they will find fracking the lessor evil. We should be going full bore on energy production in promptly replace our reserves. And we should create a more redundant grid which includes small nuclear reactors.
Many, many small nuclear reactors.
Natasha Lamb, managing partner, Arjuna Capital, said: “Across multiple issues, shareholders in 2021 will have the opportunity to show whether or not they believe Black Lives Matter. The push for median race and gender pay equity is going to be a major issue in the 202
so even though its known that blm is a a pro communist outfit wile using the political GOTCHA of
hey,,do blm to you ,,and if not you are in bigggggg trouble
so we alllll know whats really going on here as the Arjuan agenda is just more cloward-piven tactics meant to harass intimidate and one might call blackmail but yet allll legal b/c they are on the left side of the law
There is one and only one energy source that we will never run out of — human poop. Dry it and burn it.
SF will become the richest city in America because of all their brown gold.
Oooh.. tidal power! Build tidal power stations! Can’t get any greener than that, can you?
You think they’re batsh*t crazy now over a half degree rise? Wait until you start slowing the rotation of the earth by one second a decade.
I’d forgotten about that type of generation. I remember them installing a test site up in the Bay of Fundy. I think the total silence about tidal power is a clue as to how it’s coming along.
Biden green new deal is trillion dollar fraud. Won’t lower temps by one degree.
I’m still wondering why libs ignore questions about the mile deep ice that covered most of northern America during the last ice age.
Just kidding, I’m not really wondering why the liars won’t answer the question.
What questions? The fact that there was an ice age doesn’t change any of the evidence for the temperature curve or the observed facts around climate change. indeed the cause of ice ages is to do with the Milankovitch cycles where the temperature trend pre industrialisation was that the northern hemisphere was getting progressively cooler. Thus this is another piece of evidence that another factor (read human activity) is responsible for reversing that natural trend.
The problem here is they made the timeline too short. There are all sorts of promised cuts in less than a decade some much closer in several States. Heck some of the folks who made these decisions will still be in office at implementation time. Banning natural gas as some States have scheduled after they already closed down their Nuke plants and coal fired plants is economic suicide. IMO make them live with it. Don’t send them any power when their grid dies. Be upfront with them about it b/c they still have time to alter course. If despite this warning they stubbornly cling to their net zero dream fueled without Nuke, coal or Nat Gas…it’s on them to lay down in the bed they made without any compliant.
The bed they made is a great place to hold the blanket party they deserve.
Indeed, let them huddle for warmth under their blanket of consequences when despite their smug condescending attitude their cosplay fantasy of powering their State by wind and solar doesn’t pan out.
Oil company not wanting to change its business plan, who’d have thought it. Dinosaurs will be dinosaurs.
No, dinosaurs will be fuel. Are fuel. Efficient and effective fuel, and it’s fuelish to leave it in the ground.
No they are not. If you knew anything about this you would know that dinosaurs are not a factor in this.
“it’s fuelish to leave it in the ground” Haha very good
This turning of tides is an additional reminder that we are facing a climate emergency.
Somebody needs to tell Biden since he just issued a bunch of demands on manufacturing companies. Of course, in reality, he doesn’t know what he’s doing.