Big Oil’s deep injection wells are a pending large-scale disaster

Government agencies have long been complicit.

A cache of government documents dating back nearly a century casts serious doubt on the safety of the oil and gas industry’s most common method for disposing of its annual trillion gallons of toxic wastewater: injecting it deep underground.

Despite knowing by the early 1970s that injection wells were at best a makeshift solution, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) never followed its own determination that they should be “a temporary means of disposal,” used only until “a more environmentally acceptable means of disposal [becomes] available.”

…The documents show there may be little scientific merit to industry and government claims that injection wells are a safe means of disposal — putting drinking water and other mineral resources in communities across the country at risk of contamination, and jeopardizing local economies and public health.

The U.S. oil and gas industry produces 25.9 billion barrels of wastewater each year (or 1.0878 trillion gallons), according to the most recent data available, a 2022 report from Groundwater Protection Council that relies on 2021 data. That’s enough to form a line of waste barrels to the moon and back 28 times. - DeSmog

Insane desperation while trying to save Big Coal

Coal is an enemy of humanity. That's a simple statement of fact.

Almost all coal-fired power plants in the US had the ability to comply with rules limiting their emission of dangerous pollutants such as mercury that can cause brain damage in children. Despite this, Donald Trump’s administration decided to demolish the standards anyway.

Last week, the Trump administration said it is loosening restrictions on air toxins from mercury, lead and other heavy metals that are released by coal plants. Such pollution is known to be neurotoxic and has been linked to irreversible brain damage in children and infants, as well as heart disease and cancer in adults…

However, the EPA’s own previous analysis shows that only 27 coal plants across the US, out of around 219 total coal facilities, would have to adopt any sort of technological upgrade, such as filters in their smokestacks, to meet the stronger standards. - The Guardian

Another corporate "win" courtesy of Trump

And at the expense of the biosphere, and therefore everyone, whether they realize it or not.

U.S. President Donald Trump issued a proclamation on Feb. 6 to open a marine protected area off the northeastern U.S. to commercial fishing, in his latest move to deregulate the country’s waters and fisheries.

The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, a 12,725-square-kilometer (4,913-square-mile) area roughly 209 km (130 mi) southeast of Cape Cod, is home to deep-sea corals and sponges, whale sharks and a variety of marine mammals…

“This Monument supports amazing species from the seafloor to the sea surface, and we see evidence of that during every aerial survey,” Jessica Redfern, an associate vice president at the New England Aquarium, a Boston-based nonprofit, said in a statement. “Removing protections for Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument puts these species at risk.”

…The fates of the four other marine national monuments are also in limbo. In April, Trump issued a proclamation to open up most of the Pacific Islands Heritage Marine National Monument, an area larger than the state of Texas, to commercial fishing. A federal judge blocked that reopening in August, but the case is ongoing. - Mongabay

Trump loves deep sea mining, and that’s not good

Presumably there will be lawsuits over this, and maybe some action by state legislators (especially in Hawai’i), and we’ll see how things go.

The Trump administration is supporting a new and highly destructive deep-sea mining (DSM) industry in our ocean, despite immense environmental risks and broad international opposition. Early in his second term, President Trump issued an executive order directing agencies to fast-track deep-sea mining in both U.S. and international waters. Since then, and for the first time ever, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) officially initiated the process of leasing for deep-sea mining offshore American Samoa and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). BOEM also plans to initiate minerals leasing offshore Virginia. Meanwhile, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is advancing an application for an exploration license in the Pacific Ocean southeast of Hawai‘i and may soon advance an application for a permit to mine in the same area.

By fast-tracking deep-sea mining, the administration is leading a race to the bottom. The deep sea is the largest and least-explored habitat on earth. Humans know very little about it, yet we do know that DSM would likely cause significant and irreparable harm to deep-sea habitats over huge areas, including the destruction of the seafloor and the ecosystems it supports. The discharge of mining waste would result in sediment plumes that could spread for hundreds of miles. - NRDC

A big fat under-the-radar nuclear energy scam

The Trumpers' efforts to promote nuclear are every bit as bad as what they're doing to try to keep coal alive.

On (October 28), the White House announced an $80 billion deal with Westinghouse to finance construction of eight large new reactors in the U.S. There is not enough in the way of actual details about the deal, resulting in even more unanswered questions. But the promise of a large, direct investment in a pack of new reactors has predictably revved up talk of yet another “Nuclear Renaissance” and made it look like the DJT 2.0 administration is making good on big nuclear power goals from a group of executive orders issued in May.

$80 billion sure sounds like a lot! And the news that the announced $80 billion is going to come from Japanese taxpayers and not U.S. taxpayers sounds like a sweet deal!

…But $80 billion is only enough to build, at most, four Westinghouse AP1000 reactors. That’s because the cost of building nuclear reactors is four to 10 times more than wind, solar, or geothermal power. Even wind and solar paired with battery storage are still several times cheaper than new nuclear reactors.

But where would the other $80+ billion for eight reactors come from? U.S. taxpayers? Ratepayers? In this case, probably taxpayers. The reactors would probably receive low-interest loans from the Department of Energy’s (DOE) loan guarantee program, and, following construction, they would be eligible to claim the Clean Energy Investment Tax Credit, which provides a 30-50% subsidy for the cost of a new energy project. That would mean $80 billion or more in loans up front, and, later, $48-80 billion in rebates from U.S. taxpayers. - NIRS

The EPA is being gutted even worse than you think

This is of course being underreported in corporate media because its owners are loving it.

Combining EPA data on staffing changes with conservative estimates of the pending cuts, the initiative has calculated that 25% of EPA staff are already out of the agency.

That calculation does not include other announced cuts, including a third round of deferred resignations taking effect at the end of September 2025 and December 2025. Those cuts may see the departure of similar numbers of full-time equivalents as in the past two rounds – approximately 500 and 1,500.

The agency has also reportedly planned to be cutting as much as two-thirds of research staff.

With those departure figures included, the initiative estimates that approximately 33% of staffers at the agency when Trump took office will be gone by the end of 2025. That would leave, at the start of 2026, an EPA staff numbering approximately 9,700 people, a level not seen since the last years of the Nixon and Ford administrations. - The Conversation

Talks on a plastics treaty keep going nowhere

This was predictable, these days. Big Plastics is a powerful entity, and like all the Bigs is ethically bereft in every way.

Diplomats from around the world concluded nine days of talks in Geneva — plus a marathon overnight session that lasted into the early hours of (August 15) — with no agreement on a global plastics treaty…

Signs of a logjam were apparent even within the first few days of the talks, however, as countries hewed to the same red lines they’d stuck to during previous negotiations. A so-called “like-minded group” of oil-producing countries said it would not accept legally binding obligations and opposed a wide range of provisions that other nations said were essential, including controls on new plastic production, as well as mandatory disclosures and phaseouts of hazardous chemicals used in plastics. - Grist

Over half of world's people don't have clean drinking water

And it's getting worse, fast.

More than half of people on Earth — approximately 4 billion— lack access to safe drinking water, which is double the number estimated in 2020, a new study by REACH global research program has found...

“[A]n estimated 4.4 billion people lack safe drinking water across 135 low- and middle- income countries, which is more than double the global estimate made in 2020,” the study, published in the journal Science, said. “According to the Human Rights to Water and Sanitation resolution declared by the United Nations, water services must ensure sufficient quantity, safety, reliability, physical proximity, affordability, and nondiscrimination. These goals are challenging in rural areas of Africa and Asia and in sparsely populated regions where safe drinking water services on premises are costly and complicated to maintain.” - EcoWatch

Plastics industry seeks approval for another con

Actually, a lot of people still don’t know about the realities of plastics recycling in general.

Is there anything more pathetic than a used plastic bag?

They rip and tear. They float away in the slightest breeze. Left in the wild, their mangled remains entangle birds and choke sea turtles that mistake them for edible jellyfish. It takes 1,000 years for the bags to disintegrate, shedding hormone-disrupting chemicals as they do. And that outcome is all but inevitable, because no system exists to routinely recycle them. It’s no wonder some states have banned them and stores give discounts to customers with reusable bags.

But the plastics industry is working to make the public feel OK about using them again.

Companies whose futures depend on plastic production, including oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, are trying to persuade the federal government to allow them to put the label “recyclable” on bags and other plastic items virtually guaranteed to end up in landfills and incinerators. - ProPublica

Hawai'i bans seabed mining

Would-be miners will of course scurry, shrieking, to the courts. But ultimately this SCOTUS is more or less partial to states' rights, so we'll see.

On July 9, Governor Josh Green signed the Hawai’i Seabed Mining Prevention Act (SB 2575) into law, following the bill’s successful passage in the Hawaii Senate and Assembly. The new law prohibits the mining, extraction, and removal of minerals from the seabed in Hawai‘i’s marine waters while allowing exceptions for beach replenishment and scientific research – aligning with precautionary principles and protecting Native Hawaiian rights. Surfrider’s Hawai’i chapters supported the bill through public education and grassroots advocacy.

While the ban only covers waters out to three miles from shore from Hawaiʻi, it reflects a growing opposition to deep-sea mining across the globe. Industry interest in seabed mining is exploding, but government oversight in international waters remains severely lacking. The United Nations has designated the International Seabed Authority to govern activities, but they have limited authority and have yet to establish regulations or a scientific review process. The passage of the Hawaii bill is indicative of increasing pushback from U.S. states, countries, Indigenous peoples, and the public to seabed mining proposals in the world’s ocean. - Surfrider

A massive shortfall for cleaning up after Big Oil

We need strong, progressive governance, or we will get stuck with these kinds of bills.

There are more than 2 million unplugged oil and gas wells that will need to be cleaned up, and the current production boom and windfall profits for industry giants have obscured the bill’s imminent arrival. More than 90% of the country’s unplugged wells either produce little oil and gas or are already dormant.

By law, companies are responsible for plugging and cleaning up wells. Oil drillers set aside funds called bonds, similar to the security deposit on a rental property, that are refunded once they decommission their wells or, if they walk away without doing that work, are taken by the government to cover the cost.

But an analysis by ProPublica and Capital & Main has found that the money set aside for this cleanup work in the 15 states accounting for nearly all the nation’s oil and gas production covers less than 2% of the projected cost. That shortfall puts taxpayers at risk of picking up the rest of the massive tab to avoid the environmental, economic and public health consequences of aging oil fields. - ProPublica

The hidden costs of industrial ag are mind-blowing

The UN report linked in the quoted story actually covers all agriculture worldwide. But when you look at the second paragraph below, you know almost all the problems are originating with the greedheads of Big Ag.

Food systems are about much more than just food. What’s on your plate or in your bowl is important, of course, but food is linked with everything from labor rights and healthcare to social justice and the climate crisis.

But when consumers buy a cluster of tomatoes on the vine or a carton of eggs, the price does not necessarily consider that inter-tangled web of connections. These external impacts of food production—on human health, animal welfare, workers, biodiversity, waterways, or soil—aren’t always reflected in the market price.

The movement to calculate, value, recognize, and pay down these costs is known as True Cost Accounting (TCA), and we’ve talked about it before. But in a landmark report just published, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization took on the massive task of analyzing virtually the entire world’s food system through the lens of TCA.

This report estimates that the global quantified hidden costs of agrifood systems is approximately US$12.7 trillion.

It’s almost like a debt the food system owes to the world—a debt that, so far, it’s not making payments on. - Food Tank

Big Oil's disgusting plan to deal with protest

Vile.

A new report by Greenpeace USA details the widespread coordination between the public and private sectors to monitor activism, punish protesters both physically and legally, and grease the wheels for proposed anti-protest bills that criminalize civil disobedience.

“Corporate polluters, and their allies in government, have shown they will go to extreme lengths to silence us,” said Greenpeace Senior Research Specialist Andres Chang, one of the authors and editors of the report. “Why? Because a supermajority of Americans support climate action, and our ability to voice our dissent is essential to making climate progress.”

The Greenpeace report combines previously available research with new details about the ongoing collaboration between police officers and private security forces, the strategic use of dissent-chilling lawsuits, and tight-knit relationships between fossil fuel representatives and law enforcement — all of which compromise both the public interest and the First Amendment rights of protesters. - Truthout

Yes, fracking kills

The evidence has become for all practical purposes conclusive.

Hydraulic fracturing for oil and gas is linked to an array of health harms, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, asthma and birth defects, according to the latest compilation of studies on the impact of fracking on human health.

The ninth edition of a “compendium” of scientific, medical, government and media reports on the industry’s health effects, released (October 19), contains references to almost 2,500 papers that add to evidence that fracking has an array of negative impacts on human health, the authors say.

The number of studies collected is now more than six times what it was when the first compendium was published in 2014, but the conclusions are the same, said Dr. Sandra Steingraber, the lead author, and a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility and Concerned Health Professionals of New York, which jointly published the 637-page document. - Inside Climate News

The "Atlas Network" needs to be exposed, far and wide

The referendum in Australia, referenced in the article, didn't pass.

A campaign to deny Indigenous peoples a voice in Australia’s national Parliament is using tactics similar to an earlier conservative legal battle against First Nations communities in Canada, a new research paper argues.

That’s no coincidence, according to the paper’s author Jeremy Walker, because think tanks linked to these efforts in Canada and Australia belong to a secretive U.S. organization called the Atlas Network that’s received support from oil, gas and coal companies and operates in nearly 100 countries.

“The coordinated opposition to Indigenous constitutional recognition by the Australian arm of the Atlas Network we can assume is motivated by the same intentions underlying the permanent Atlas campaign against climate policy [globally],” writes Walker, a senior lecturer in social and political sciences at the University of Technology Sydney in Australia.

“That is, to minimise the possibility of democratic government challenging the ever-expanding frontier of fossil fuel extraction,” he argues, a charge one conservative Australian advocacy group strongly denies. - DeSmog

Too often, conservation programs help bolster industrial ag

There is plenty of both good and bad in this report.

Industrial animal agriculture is a well-documented and significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, water and air pollution, poor animal welfare and environmental injustice.

One way the U.S. Department of Agriculture attempts to address the harms caused by industrial agriculture is with conservation programs funded through the Farm Bill. These programs are intended to “help agricultural producers improve their environmental performance with respect to soil health, water quality, air quality, wildlife habitat, and greenhouse gas emissions.”

However, one of the leading conservation programs, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), also supports the factory farm system of industrial animal agriculture — the very system that impairs rural water and air quality, releases high levels of greenhouse gases and undercuts independent farmers using high animal welfare systems that protect the environment! Since 2002, 50% of total EQIP funding has been required to support livestock operations, including industrial-scale factory farms. These EQIP contracts are often up to six figures and pay for equipment and infrastructure that support and lock in the industrial model, ultimately using limited conservation funds to subsidize factory farms. - IATP

Deep-sea mining is a horrifying idea

And with other battery designs and far better recycling practices (by law if necessary), we won't need the ores anyway. Of course some people may not get as rich as they intend to be, if it doesn't happen, but so be it.

Rising demand for metals like nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese to make batteries used in smartphones and electric vehicles, along with depleting land-based deposits, has led to increased interest in deep-sea mining. But research suggests that the process of extracting mineral deposits from the ocean floor could destroy habitats and decimate species.

According to a new report from British nonprofit financial think tank Planet Tracker, mining the ocean’s depths could cause as much as 25 times more biodiversity loss than terrestrial mining, reported Reuters. And the financial cost of repairing that damage would be twice as much as extracting it. - EcoWatch

Big Oil should be paying big, big reparations

Not just because of their vile behavior. Anything that might help drive Big Filthy Fossil Fuels into the ground, and make way for a government takeover and subsequent rapid phaseout, would be great. I'm well aware that widespread support has yet to be generated for that approach.

The world’s top fossil fuel companies owe at least $209 billion in annual climate reparations to compensate communities most damaged by their polluting business and decades of lies, a new study calculates.

BP, Shell, ExxonMobil, Total, Saudi Arabia’s state oil company and Chevron are among the largest 21 polluters responsible for $5.4 trillion in drought, wildfires, sea level rise, and melting glaciers among other climate catastrophes expected between 2025 and 2050, according to groundbreaking analysis published in the journal One Earth. - Mother Jones

Shocking food waste numbers

I've actually seen estimates over the years, from various sources, ranging from 25-40%. If you click on the link below, then on "new estimates" in the first paragraph, and start looking around, you can see that this outfit has clearly done its homework.

ReFED has released new estimates on the extent, causes, and impacts of food loss and waste in the United States, as well as an updated analysis of the solutions needed to fight it. The findings represent a stark call to action for food businesses, funders, policymakers, and other food system stakeholders to dramatically ramp up the investments, operational changes, and policy shifts that are critical to cutting the amount of food going to waste in the country. The new data comes from the ReFED Insights Engine, an online hub for data and solutions that features the most comprehensive examination of food waste in the U.S., now updated to include estimates through 2021.

According to ReFED, in 2021 the U.S. generated 91 million tons of “surplus food,” defined as all food that goes unsold or uneaten. This represents 38% of U.S. food supply and contributes nearly 6% of the country’s annual greenhouse gas emissions – the equivalent of driving 83 million passenger vehicles for one full year. Close to 50% of this surplus was generated by households, with another 20% generated by consumer-facing businesses. And while 80% of total surplus food was edible parts, less than 2% was donated.

Beyond emissions, producing food that goes unsold or uneaten uses 22% of U.S. freshwater and 16% of cropland. Wasted food is also a drain on the economy, since food that goes uneaten still costs money to grow, harvest, transport, cool, prepare, and then ultimately dispose of. ReFED’s analysis places the value of food that went unsold or uneaten at $444 billion in 2021, approximately 2% of U.S. GDP. What’s more, the amount of food that goes uneaten is the equivalent of 149 billion meals’ worth of food that could have gone to the 10% of Americans who struggle with food insecurity. - ReFED

Where are new ozone-destroying emissions coming from?

Scientists don't know, yet.

Thirty years after countries agreed to ease up on the use of chemicals damaging the ozone layer, there are promising signs that the ozone will be fully recovered by the 2060s. But we’re not out of the woods yet. A study published this month in Nature Geoscience shows that emissions from dangerous gases banned in the 1980s are actually on the rise today—with implications not only for the ozone layer but for climate change as well. Even more worryingly, we’re not sure what, exactly, is causing some of these emissions to creep up...

The research done by Western and his team isn’t able to concretely pin emissions to a specific region or factory—but we can make some guesses. China has, historically, been the world’s largest producer of HFCs. As InsideClimate News reported, outside of China, the largest producer of the HFCs whose byproducts were tracked by the study is a Honeywell factory located in Louisiana. - Earther