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phenominal.bsky.social
PhENtastic.bsky.social
@phenominal.bsky.social
5.4K followers 3.2K following 1.3K posts
You don't know me... but i unfortunately know a lot about climate denial, propaganda and rightwing disinformation
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phenominal.bsky.social
Oh, and biofuels boosters, blatant fossil fuel shills, and covert fossil fuel shills! What an unbiased survey of climate communications!
OUR PANEL INCLUDED… Gavin Schmidt, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies | Ken Caldeira, senior scientist emeritus at the Carnegie Institution for Science and visiting scholar at Stanford University | Kate Marvel, research physicist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies | Holly Jean Buck, associate professor of environment and sustainability at the University at Buffalo | Kim Cobb, climate scientist and director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society | Jennifer Wilcox, chemical engineering professor at the University of Pennsylvania and former U.S. Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy and Carbon Management | Michael Greenstone, economist and director of the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago | Solomon Hsiang, professor of global environmental policy at Stanford University | Chris Bataille, global fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy | Danny Cullenward, senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania | J. Mijin Cha, environmental studies professor at UC Santa Cruz and fellow at Cornell University’s Climate Jobs Institute | Lynne Kiesling, director of the Institute for Regulatory Law and Economics at Northwestern University | Daniel Swain, climate scientist at the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources | Emily Grubert, sustainable energy policy professor at the University of Notre Dame | Jon Norman, president of Hydrostor | Chris Creed, managing Chris Creed, managing partner at Galvanize Climate Solutions | Amy Heart, senior vice president of public policy at Sunrun | Kate Brandt, chief sustainability officer at Google | Sophie Purdom, managing partner at Planeteer Capital and co-founder of CTVC | Lara Pierpoint, managing director at Trellis Climate | Andrew Beebe, managing director at Obvious Ventures | Gabriel Kra, managing director and co-founder of Prelude Ventures | Joe Goodman, managing partner and co-founder of VoLo Earth Ventures | Erika Reinhardt, executive director and co-founder of Spark Climate Solutions | Dawn Lippert, founder and CEO of Elemental Impact and general partner at Earthshot Ventures | Rajesh Swaminathan, partner at Khosla Ventures | Rob Davies, CEO of Sublime Systems | John Arnold, philanthropist and co-founder of Arnold Ventures | Gabe Kleinman, operating partner at Emerson Collective | Amy Duffuor, co-founder and general partner at Azolla Ventures | Amy Francetic, managing general partner and founder of Buoyant Ventures | Tom Chi, founding partner at At One Ventures | Francis O’Sullivan, managing director at S2G Investments | Cooper Rinzler, partner at Breakthrough Energy Ventures | Gina McCarthy, former administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency | Neil Chatterjee, former commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission | Representative Scott Peters, member of the U.S. House of Representative Scott Peters, member of the U.S. House of Representatives | Todd Stern, former U.S. special envoy for climate change | Representative Sean Casten, member of the U.S. House of Representatives | Representative Mike Levin, member of the U.S. House of Representatives | Zeke Hausfather, climate research lead at Stripe and research scientist at Berkeley Earth | Shuchi Talati, founder and executive director of the Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering | Nat Bullard, co-founder of Halcyon | Bill McKibben, environmentalist and founder of 350.org | Ilaria Mazzocco, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies | Leah Stokes, professor of environmental politics at UC Santa Barbara | Noah Kaufman, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy | Arvind Ravikumar, energy systems professor at the University of Texas at Austin | Jessica Green, political scientist at the University of Toronto | Jonas Nahm, energy policy professor at Johns Hopkins SAIS | Armond Cohen, executive director of the Clean Air Task Force | Costa Samaras, director of the Scott Institute for Energy Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University | John Larsen, partner at Rhodium Group | Alex Trembath, executive director of the Breakthrough Institute | Alex Flint, executive director of the Alliance for Market Solutions
January 14, 2026 at 7:45 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
literally basing a story off what a venture capitalist, lobbyist, and cashed-out-former-policymaker said.
“‘Climate.’ Literally the word climate, I would just get rid of it completely,” one venture capitalist told us. “I would love to see people not use 'climate change' as a predominant way to talk to people about a global challenge like this,” seconded a former Washington official. “And who knows what a ‘greenhouse gas emission’ is in the real world?” A lobbyist agreed: “Climate change, unfortunately, has become too politicized … I’d rather talk about decarbonization than climate change.”
January 14, 2026 at 7:45 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
Everyone cites RealClear's polling like it's legit when on the energy side they're openly lobbying for their oily funders legislation and defending them from legal accountability.

But I'm sure their polling averages are unbiased and reliable...
Screenshot of RealClearEnergy editorial: " Why the U.S. Senate Must Soon Pass the SPEED Act and the MRCA of 2025 By The Editors January 07, 2026" Screenshot of RealClearEnergy editorial: Fossil Fuels Are Not Going Away: Why the Boulder Climate Case Is So Dangerous and SCOTUS Must Step In By The Editors January 04, 2026 Why Fossil Fuels Are So Important
January 8, 2026 at 2:12 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
Abundance is a not-even-thinly-disguised campaign to gut NEPA on behalf of the fossil fuel industry.

caad.info/analysis/new...
What’s the angle here? Attempting to grow support among the people they most heavily pollute? A word in one of their other ads hints at it, blaming “restrictions” for increasing costs and reducing access to energy. Other players are even less subtle. While some U.S. Democratic party darlings are pushing to reform permitting policies like the US’s National Environmental Policy Act, (one of the few tools frontline communities have to challenge polluters) billionaires and fossil fuel advertisers are also pushing the exact same line. What a wacky coincidence! Energy Citizens, a Big Oil advertising front group profiled in peer-reviewed papers and CAAD reports alike, has this LinkedIn ad copy: “Energy projects can get caught up in the courtroom for years. Permitting reform will help power our energy future.” (No telling how long until the American Petroleum Institute gets Billy Bob Thorton to say as much in Landman…) Big Oil’s lobby groups are singing the same tune, with the American Exploration & Production Council claiming in a LinkedIn ad that “permitting reform unleashes American-made energy.” And the CEOs themselves are in on it, with methane giant Williams’ (see past CLL for more) CEO Chad Zamarin making it clear that they want to gut NEPA, citing the Supreme Court’s ruling and positioning methane gas as the “solution.” So if you hear people – especially people who aren’t your usual climate deniers – arguing that we need to scrap the last remaining protections frontline communities have, supposedly to speed up renewables, ask them why they’re doing the fossil fuel industry’s advertising for them.
December 3, 2025 at 7:04 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
You can be right on everything, but if you don't account for politics and power, you'll still lose.
Henry didn’t ask a single question about coal’s impact on the climate, or even on public health. She just argued about electricity rates, which was why lawyers representing Walmart, the state’s hospitals, and a coalition of industrial users that included a factory owned by Koch Industries all echoed her arguments. Beyond Coal’s lawyers are ​“not burning bras. They’re fighting dollar for dollar,” an attorney for the hospitals told me. ​“They’ve become masters at bringing financial arguments to environmental questions.” Sure enough, later in 2015 the state’s rate-setting commission rejected OG&E’s costly plan to upgrade the coal plant. But that did not turn out to be the end of the saga. Oklahoma’s then–Attorney General Scott Pruitt — a Republican fossil-fuel booster who would go on to lead the Environmental Protection Agency during Trump’s first term — appealed the ruling, even though he was supposed to be advocating for lower rates for Oklahoma residents. Under intense pressure, the all-Republican commission reversed its decision. So Henry appealed to the Oklahoma Supreme Court, and in 2018, she won the case. But it didn’t matter, because OG&E went ahead with the coal upgrades, and the commission eventually approved massive rate increases to pay for them. It’s not fun to spend years on a case, win on the merits, then lose anyway. “That’s just reality,” Henry said. ​“You still have to keep fighting.” In Ohio, the utility FirstEnergy bribed legislators to pass a bill forcing customers to spend hundreds of millions of dollars propping up two aging coal plants — and even after the scandal erupted in 2020, the subsidies continued until this summer. Now Trump is threatening to prevent any coal plants from retiring; his order invoking an imaginary ​“energy emergency” to keep that clunky Michigan plant in operation is costing ratepayers millions of dollars per day.
December 3, 2025 at 6:56 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
Always happy to get @theonion.com in the mail
Exploring the potential of alternative fuels one incinerate corpse at a time. BP beyond petroleum
November 1, 2025 at 4:10 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
Third Way sounds like Republicans because theyre Republicans paid by Big Business to pretend to be Dems to spread disinfo and propaganda.
The Bigger Picture (As I Understand It) Looking at actual usage, the Third Way memo reads less like an audit of Democrats’ language and more like a list of terms Republicans tell us Democrats are saying. The data show that many of these phrases barely exist in constituent communications, and when they do, Republicans are often the ones writing them either to lampoon Democrats or to spotlight them as proof of “wokeness.”
August 24, 2025 at 12:20 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
oh right, Big Business funds Third Way. Weird how we are to assume they have anyone but their tobacco, oil, chemical, and pharma funders' interests in mind...
A list of Third Way's Big Oil, Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Tobacco, Big Business funders, from: https://www.prwatch.org/news/2020/01/13535/centrist-third-way-funded-corporate-interests-attacks-sanders-iowa
August 22, 2025 at 6:52 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
elon RTs praise for his "custom goon companions"
Screenshot of some sycophant praising xAI for "custom goon companions" https://x.com/ns123abc/status/1958593187116904502
August 22, 2025 at 5:01 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
Every rightwing propagandist is a failed Hollywood wanna-be, so it's interesting to see it go the other way, and a has-been rightwing actor goes all-in on fascist propaganda
Screenshot of guardian headline: Former Superman actor Dean Cain reveals he’s becoming an Ice agent to support Trump’s mass deportation agenda The actor will be sworn in ‘ASAP’ amid the federal agency’s recruitment drive and unprecedented immigration raids that have sparked protest across the US
August 7, 2025 at 5:55 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
Real climate science reports: hundreds of active scientists from Universities around the country

MAGA climate disinfo: I asked five people I saw on xitter and fox
Screenshot of text from CNN story: “I just made a list of who do I think are the true, honest scientists,” Wright said. “I made a list of about a dozen of them that I thought were very senior and very well respected. I called the top five, and everyone said yes.”
August 7, 2025 at 4:11 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
Musk turned Twitter into InfoWars and we're all just supposed to act like nothing happened (because if not, the supposed free speech champion will sue you.)
July 22, 2025 at 7:33 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
Every single solitary pearl-clutch about criminalizing false advertising (AKA climate disinfo) comes from someone who also believes in UFOs and the Flat Earth or doesn't believe in the Moon landing or vaccines.
Screenshot of headline at "climate.news" by S. D. Wells claiming "CLIMATE CULT ORGANIZATION OAS says global warming is about to burn up earth and anyone who disagrees must be CENSORED 100 PERCENT" https://climate.news/2025-07-08-oas-says-global-warming-about-to-burn-earth.html Headline from climate.news by S.D. Wells: "What do the MOON LANDING and CLIMATE CHANGE have in common? BOTH are FAKE" https://climate.news/2025-07-01-moon-landing-and-climate-change-are-fake.html
July 21, 2025 at 12:19 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
Climate denial website using advanced graphic design to...make @whitehouse.senate.gov look cool as fuck??
Image of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse's face on a cool cartoon sword-wielding hero from: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/07/13/democrat-senator-claims-fossil-fuel-industry-is-undercutting-weather-forecasting/
July 14, 2025 at 3:17 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
And it's not like CFACT demands excellence, one dude seems to do little more than scribble nonsense as he continues reeling from Quaaludes

www.dailykos.com/stories/2023...
As you may remember, back in May, we suggested "maybe Flanakin’s just enjoying his easy job at CFACT a little too much" because his writing was so, like, you know, out there, dude. After all, and please bear with us for a moment here because this is going somewhere, he even "mixed the metaphors of the Hookah-smoking caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland with Puff, the Magic Dragon." Then on top of those fun if muddled drug references, he "claimed 'Europeans may be rejecting the EV kool-aid','' and we noted “that metaphor was about a racist mass murder and not the LSD-laced electric kool-aid that we suspected Flanakin may have over-indulged in" a few months before. That's because in a prior February post, Flanakin combined AI concerns with EV fearmongering and a forced "Age of Aquarius" metaphor, and it seemed as though perhaps "it'd been written [by AI] in the style of an author who ate so much acid in the 70s that he's still tripping." And now, as though he read that criticism and decided to lean into it with a brain-melting batch of Kool-Aid-flavored EV disinfo, Flanakin's latest RealClearEnergy op-ed is headlined "The EV Kool-Aid Acid Test." Once again, he digs into the groovy vibes of the '60s to try and make yet another repetition of anti-EV disinfo seem new and fresh and interesting. According to Flanakin, the fact that the CEO of General Motors said, "Once you've experienced an EV … you're in" is similar to how "In his 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, author Tom Wolfe portrayed Ken Kesey as a man seeing [sic] to create a new religion… a new society based on psychedelic transcendence." Flanakin follows that logical leap from an oh-so-timely reference serving as his introductory news peg with fifteen paragraphs of standard anti-EV disinformation, before apparently remembering what the headline of the ramble, and tacking on "Kool-Aid, anyone?" to the end. …Yes? Or whatever it is you're having, Duggan, we'll take a double!
July 9, 2025 at 12:56 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
Funding is notoriously opaque but we do know CFACT's taken plenty of propaganda petrobucks

www.desmog.com/committee-co...
CFACT funding from DonorsTrust, ExxonMobil, Koch, and other rightwing billionaires and polluters.
July 9, 2025 at 12:56 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
Latest Wignut Welfare recipient? Chris "A Real Met told me I wasted my money on a degree" Martz, who's now working for CFACT and doing op-eds for eg Free Beacon where he immediately makes climate tragedy about...himself.

Because a persecution complex makes for better disinfo than science!
" Chris Martz July 9, 2025 Over the weekend, Sam Zeff, a reporter for KCUR, Kansas City’s NPR affiliate, told me over X that "you wasted your money on your degree."" https://freebeacon.com/policy/im-a-young-meteorologist-who-questioned-the-idea-of-man-made-climate-change-the-climate-zealots-wanted-me-punished-silenced-and-expelled/ In my final semester of college, I started thinking that all the blowback just wasn’t worth continuing this fight. But, as one veteran TV meteorologist told me, someone has to do it. Someone has to speak up for what’s right—the belief that in America, we have to protect the ability to say what we believe and publicly debate theories, or we will lose that right. The tragedy on the Guadalupe River shows that meteorology is serious business. Let’s not let politics, junk science, or unchallenged orthodoxies get in our way. Chris Martz is a recent graduate of Millersville University with a BSc in meteorology and is a policy analyst for the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow.
July 9, 2025 at 12:56 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
Jr. adding his 2cents in agreement with a xitter post from the New York Times' favorite racist. normal stuff!
Screenshot from Xitter in which a self-proclaimed "honest broker" complains about being cancelled while quote-tweeting a racist. https://x.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/1940387456853115337
July 7, 2025 at 5:59 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
It's not that Dems need a Joe Rogan- they have Late Night TV!
It's that Republicans USE podcasts to spread their propaganda and disinfo, so no matter how many late night talk shows don't platform hateful racist liars, if there's a pay-to-play podcast ecosystem where they can build an audience!
A stupid whiny Media Research Center blog post complaining about conservatives not being invited on late night TV shows. https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/alex-christy/2025/07/01/study-late-night-comedy-shows-begin-2025-99-percent-guests-being
July 3, 2025 at 1:58 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
update: turns out at some point he got the keys back to his twitter account and is now lobbying hard, while also admitting that he uses the plaigarism machines that make you stupid as a "the greatest learning tool".
Alex Epstein saying "ChatGPT is the greatest learning tool I've ever discovered" in response to research showing ChatGPT is bad for your brain
July 2, 2025 at 5:31 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
Here's the full report, and a couple screenshots, I'll just assume you're accusing Google of hiding its numbers on purpose noclimateresultsfound.com/report/
Summary of Findings These are some of our most important takeaways from investigating Google’s climate claims. We will expand on each in the sections that follow. • Google’s aggressive investment in Generative AI and its infrastructure is a major factor behind its climate failings. Google’s Scope 2 emissions5 , which measure the emissions from energy that Google purchases to power its data centers, have increased by 820% since 2010. • Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in three “scopes.” Scope 1, which covers direct emissions from Google’s own facilities (not from purchased energy) and vehicles,6 Scope 2, which covers indirect emissions primarily from purchased electricity (i.e., energy to power Google’s data centers), and Scope 3, which covers indirect emissions from other sources such as suppliers, use of consumer devices, and business travel. Scope 1— which accounts for less than 0.31% of Google’s reported total emissions 7 —is the only emissions metric for which Google has achieved an actual decrease since its 2019 base year. • Google’s reported total greenhouse gas emissions increased 1,515% from 2010 to 2024 according to the company’s own published data.8 In real terms, Google released 21.9 million metric tons more emissions in 2024 than it did 14 years ago. That’s like adding 4.7 million cars (for context, San Diego County, the country’s fifth largest metro area, has 2.2 million registered cars) to U.S. roads in one year.9 In 2018, the methodology Google used to calculate Scope 3 emissions changed, but they did not release adjusted figures for the prior years. • Google’s claim that it can achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2030 relies heavily on speculative technologies, particularly nuclear power, which remains dangerous and toxic – and which experts agree and Google itself admits has been scaling too slowly to make a difference in time. We found that the company is unlikely to achieve any emissions reductions by 2030. • Google-owned platforms spread li… How misleading metrics hide a massive increase in emissions “We’ve taken significant steps over the past two decades to minimize our GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions.” — Google 2024 Environmental Report40 Google’s 2025 environmental report adds a chart that was not in their 2024 report. For the first time, Google actually graphs its data centers’ energy use: because, the report’s authors proudly tell us, those emissions are dropping for the first time.41 As we will discuss in the following section, this claim is highly misleading. Google’s location-based Scope 2 emissions,42 (Scope 2 includes emissions from the energy Google purchases to power their data centers) have actually increased by 820% since 2010. In 2024, Scope 2 accounted for 48.2% of Google’s total 2024 emissions. During this same 14-year period, reported total emissions have increased by 1,515% and data center energy usage has increased by 1,282%.43 These figures compare with an 8% increase in total greenhouse emissions from all sources on the planet through the year 2023.44 Scope 3 emissions, which include the emissions users generate when using Google products and the emissions generated from the company’s supply chain, are the most challenging to measure precisely. Google changed the way it measures Scope 3 emissions in 2018, changing the methodology to “align with industry best practices.”45 This change caused a big jump in Google’s reported emissions (see chart), and may imply that the company underreported Scope 3 emissions prior to 2018. However, the company has not publicly released accurately calculated emissions for the years before 2018. It is possible, but impossible for independent factcheckers to verify, that Scope 3 and therefore total emissions were actually larger than Google reported in 2010–17, and that the company’s 14-year increase in total emissions was therefore somewhat lower than 1,515%. We would welcome Google’s comprehensive emissions disclosure, using methodology that aligns wi…
July 2, 2025 at 1:07 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
Love the /r/conspiracy subreddit.

Great stuff.
Post claiming George Soros is paying for bots to subscribe to OnlyFans
June 26, 2025 at 7:10 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
The other reason is that they're lying, because any Republican who takes climate change seriously will get primaried by the Koch network

web.archive.org/web/20240710...
David Koch worked tirelessly, over decades, to jettison from office any moderate Republicans who proposed to regulate greenhouse gases. In 2009, for example, a South Carolina Republican, Representative Bob Inglis, proposed a carbon tax bill. Koch Industries stopped funding his campaign, donated heavily to a primary opponent named Trey Gowdy and helped organize teams of Tea Party activists who traveled to town hall meetings to protest against Mr. Inglis. Some of the town hall meetings devolved into angry affairs, where Mr. Inglis couldn’t make himself heard above the shouting. Mr. Inglis lost re-election, and his defeat sent a message to other Republicans: Koch’s orthodoxy on climate rules could not be violated.
June 17, 2025 at 1:13 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
Some additional recommendations:
Recommendations to States 54. Priority, comprehensive, coherent action on the fossil fuel phaseout within this decade is necessary to ensure a liveable future for all, as an urgent precondition for a just transition and for effective human rights protection in the context of current planetary crises. 55. While decarbonization continues to be essential, coupled with detoxification of any decarbonization technology, 155 it must be accompanied by the defossilization of our economies with a view to: (a) Prioritizing the phaseout of fossil fuel production and of the use of fossil fuels, as the main cause of climate change; (b) Overcoming “carbon tunnel vision”, to prevent biodiversity loss and toxic pollution from the fossil fuels life cycle, which cause further human rights harm and worsen climate impacts on those in vulnerable situations; (c) Preventing fossil fuel lock-in through plastics and petrochemicals production, which would continue to harm the climate system;156 (d) Reckoning with the impacts of the “playbook” and the six-decade delay in taking effective climate action, and widespread disinformation; (e) Transforming economic models in the light of co-benefits for the protection of planetary and human health, which are a precondition for the protection of all human rights A/HRC/59/42 GE.2506866 15 (f) Redressing the multiple inequitable burdens placed on States, communities and individuals that have been disproportionately impacted by climate change, notably those who have faced the worst impacts and have contributed the least to climate change. A. Defossilize the economy 56. All States should immediately start inclusive processes to co-develop defossilization plans and measures, with the informed and meaningful participation of workers and unions, 157 representatives of human rights holders most affected by climate change, 158 Indigenous Peoples, people of African descent, peasants, women, children and youth159 and representatives of States that depend on fossil fuel exported by the country concerned.160 57. Co-development, which is part of transformative change,161 is essential to ensure that those who are most affected by climate change are not further undermined by the phaseout, and, rather, contribute to the transformation of economic models.162 58. States should adopt and enforce explicit and time-bound legislative measures: (a) To prohibit new fossil fuel exploration and exploitation, as well as any expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure; (b) To revoke licences for existing fossil fuel exploration and exploitation,163 including for captive and on-grid coal plants;164 (c) To strictly regulate the import and export of fossil fuels; (d) To prohibit the abandonment of fossil fuel infrastructure without remediation, requiring financial guarantees to cover costs for the environmental management of facility closure and subsequent phases, including regarding extraterritorial impacts; (e) To clarify how energy services will be maintained and improved through other sources, prioritizing the energy needs of rights holders in vulnerable situations domestically and abroad. 59. States should immediately prohibit: (a) Fracking, oil sands and gas flaring;165 (b) Offshore exploration and exploitation;166 (c) Exploration or exploitation in pro… To respect the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, developed countries should: (a) Take immediate defossilization measures; (b) Prioritize international financial, capacity-building and technological support to other countries to defossilize, in accordance with their maximum available resources; (c) Avoid any transactional or limited approaches to defossilization in energy transition partnerships with developing countries, instead supporting their self-determination and intergenerational equity.169 63. Highest-emitting States, according to their historical responsibility, current contributions and respective capabilities,170 should: (a) Complete phasing out fossil fuels by 2030; (b) Refrain from “fossil fuel dumping”, such as using public finance to secure export markets for technologies or processes relying on coal-fired power; (c) Avoid debt-related or technological forms of fossil fuel lock-in.171 B. Reprioritize energy demands 64. To prevent mass human rights violations arising from climate change, 172 it is necessary to tackle historical responsibilities and current injustices, including the extent to which the dependency on fossil fuels has perpetuated energy poverty,173 with a view to fairly and equitably distributing benefits and burdens of defossilization.174 Rising energy costs and cost-of-living crises exacerbate the disproportionate climate impacts on communities in marginalized situations, while an equitable transition to a renewables-based economy can mitigate climate change and reduce the financial burden on them.175 In 2022, 685 million people were without electricity access,176 curtailing their human rights to life, health, work, education, housing, political participation, information and science, among others, with disproportionate impacts on low-income households, children, youth, persons with disabilities, older persons, LGBTQIA+ persons, ethnic minorities and migrant families.177 65. States shoul… A/HRC/59/42 18 GE.25-06866 (b) Conduct environmental and human rights assessments of proposed projects in all sectors to ascertain how they contribute to: (i) Reducing energy poverty; (ii) Preventing the creation or further development of sacrifice zones; (iii) Not delaying defossilization or negatively affecting ecosystems, water, food or health. C. Carefully phase out fossil fuel subsidies 70. States should: (a) Conduct independent, participatory and comprehensive assessments of the likely direct and indirect human rights impacts of the subsidies phaseout, with a view to preventing any exacerbation of inequalities;187 (b) Require private and publicly owned financial institutions to divest from fossil fuels, and provide instead finance for renewables development, for adaptation and for responses to loss and damage; (c) Introduce regular, participatory and transparent monitoring, evaluation and learning from subsidy reform. 71. Public authorities at all levels should contribute to the assessment, by considering: (a) The socioeconomic contexts of communities likely to be affected by subsidy reforms options, including local dependencies on fossil fuels subsidies, and compensation and/or mitigation measures necessary, and also considering additional risks arising from disproportionate climate change impacts; (b) Impacts on small-scale producers, with a focus on workers losing their means of subsistence, and their re-employment and their access to social security measures, such as an early retirement pension; (c) The need to eliminate subsidies captured by high-income consumers and producers, and any other public spending and policies that perpetuate unequal wealth accumulation, and/or overproduction and overconsumption; (d) The need to provide for compensation for fossil fuel-related harm, social protection and climate finance; (e) The availability and relative cost of alternative goods and services that can provide the same benefits provided by fossil fuels, and their…
June 12, 2025 at 12:49 PM
phenominal.bsky.social
When I say we should criminalize climate lies I'm told I'm crazy, so here's UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Climate Change, Elisa Morgera recommending it as part of a suite of policies to "defossilize knowledge" on our way to "defossilize the economy"
A/HRC/59/42 GE.2506866 19 73. States should: (a) Inform the public about the fossil fuel industry’s deliberate contributions to the planetary crises and about their human rights impacts over decades; (b) Ensure that accurate, science-based information is made available to the public on defossilization plans, including the underlying economic and technological assumptions, fossil fuel subsidies inventories, emissions embedded in fossil fuel exports, and plans for the decommissioning of infrastructure; (c) Avoid loopholes in responsible decommissioning,190 and require independent verification of defossilization and decommissioning plans, and of their implementation; (d) Ban fossil fuel advertisements, promotion and sponsorship, including cross-border advertising; (e) Ensure access to comprehensive education on the human rights risks of fossil fuels, and on the benefits of fossil fuel-free production, consumption and lifestyles; 191 (f) Prohibit lobbying by the fossil fuel industry; (g) Require private financial institutions and universities to disclose publicly, including on social media, funding amounts, durations and any conditions from the fossil fuel industry; (h) Criminalize misinformation and misrepresentation (greenwashing) by the fossil fuel industry, including failure to disclose corporate lobbying activities or to provide remedies for harm; (i) Criminalize media and advertising firms for amplifying disinformation and misinformation by fossil fuel companies; (j) Criminalize attacks against environmental human rights defenders, including from judicial harassment tactics,192 in addition to enhancing environmental human rights defenders’ protection and access to justice and effective remedies.193
June 12, 2025 at 12:49 PM