Fossil-Fuel Industry Gets $2,000 In 'Subsidies' For Each $1 In Party Donations

The Guardian - Michael Slezak

Activist group 350.org claims fossil-fuel companies' $3.7m donations to Liberal, National and Labor parties taints the electoral process

The activist group 350.org has found that since the last federal election donations to the major political parties amounted to $3.69m. Photograph: Robb Kendrick/National Geographic Society/Corbis

Major political parties have receive $3.7m in donations from fossil-fuel companies since the last election, and will deliver $2,000 in subsidies to the industry for every dollar donated, according to a 350.org report.
"The ongoing failure of our politicians to tackle climate change is directly attributable to the political influence of the fossil-fuel industry," said Blair Palese, the chief executive of 350.org Australia.
"If we are serious about climate solutions, we must end the cosy relationship between our politicians and the big polluters."
The activist organisation has launched the report alongside a campaign asking individual federal politicians to sign a "pollution-free politics pledge", where they commit to refuse donations from the fossil-fuel industry.
It has already been signed by all federal Greens politicians, independents Cathy McGowan and Andrew Wilkie, and outgoing Labor MPs Melissa Parke and Kelvin Thomson.
A list of those who have signed is being curated by 350.org.
"The corrupting influence of political donations that the Liberal, National and Labor parties receive from the fossil-fuel sector will only stop when these donations are banned," said Greens senator Lee Rhiannon.
The Greens have a bill before parliament seeking to ban political donations from the mining sector, and Rhiannon said the campaign to win support for the bill would be "cranked up" in response to the report.
Parke said: "I am a strong supporter of action on climate change and I am against subsidies for the fossil-fuel industry. I would like to see greater restrictions on the influence of that industry."
The report looked at donations declared to the Australian Electoral Commission since the last federal election, which amounted to $3.69m. It then calculated the combined value of four tax rebates and credits that would be used by the fossil-fuel industry in the 2016-2017 financial year, which it estimated would amount to $7.7bn.
The Minerals Council of Australia argues that the mining industry does not receive any subsidies.
350.org included in its analysis that the fuel tax credit made up the bulk of the subsidies with $5.5bn. It is a rebate given to large vehicles that use diesel fuel for business purposes off public roads.
The Minerals Council argues it is not a subsidy, but merely a way of avoiding the fuel being taxed twice: once when used by the business and then again when the business itself is taxed.
Brendan Pearson, chief executive of the Minerals Council of Australia, said: "The ability of individuals, trade unions and corporations to make political donations is part of our robust democratic system.
"The implication that certain individuals or certain sectors of the economy should be prohibited from making donations to political parties is nonsense.
"The mining industry does not receive subsidies."
"The Productivity Commission confirmed that the mining industry was subsidy-free in its most recent Trade and Investment Review 2013-14," he said.
"The report noted that the effective rate of assistance for the mining industry has fallen from 0.2% to 0.1% over the past year," Pearson said.
Charlie Wood, from 350.org, said: "The fact is it's still a massive refund for the fossil-fuel companies.
"The sorts of activities that they are being supported by taxpayers to do are causing damage to the communities and the climate, and creating costs in the system that are then coming back to the taxpayer to pay for," she said.
With a federal election due in 2016, Wood said 350.org would encourage more politicians to sign the pledge and would target those who have been fighting the hardest inside their parties to limit action on climate change.

Links

• Thousands lost from retirement savings in fossil fuel investments – report
• Fossil fuel investments damaging Australians' retirement savings, research shows
• Gates Foundation would be $1.9bn better off if it had divested from fossil fuels
• World's biggest coal port joins fossil fuel divestment push

Why 175 Oil And Gas Companies Could Go Bankrupt This Year

ThinkProgress - Katie Valentine

CREDIT: shutterstock

About a third of U.S. oil and gas production and exploration companies are at high risk of going bankrupt in 2016, according to a new report.
The report, published Tuesday by consulting and business services firm Deloitte, looked at more than 500 oil and natural gas exploration and production companies worldwide. It found that 175 of the companies — or nearly 35 percent — were at high risk of going bankrupt, due largely to low oil prices. Together, these companies have more than $150 billion in debt.
"2016 will be the year of hard decisions. We could see [energy and production] bankruptcies surpass Great Recession levels as companies struggle to remain solvent," John England, vice chairman and U.S. oil and gas sector leader for Deloitte, said in a statement. "Access to capital markets, bankers' support and derivatives protection, which helped smooth an otherwise rocky road for the industry in 2015, are fast waning."
Oil prices have dropped over the last few years, and are now down to about $29 a barrel for crude oil. The drop in oil prices has caused a slowdown in some oil-producing states. North Dakota, for instance, has been riding a boom in oil production for the past eight or so years — now, new drilling is getting scarcer, and the man camps that popped up to house oil field workers are starting to empty.
"Those communities out there were drinking out of a fire hose," Nancy Hodur, a research assistant professor at North Dakota State University, told the New York Times of North Dakota towns that had been built up around drilling in recent years. "A lot of those communities would come right out and say that pace of growth isn't good, isn't sustainable. They're still playing catch-up."
According to the New York Times, 60 oil and gas companies have declared bankruptcy over the last 16 months. That number could double if oil prices stay where they are.
The Deloitte report outlines five ways companies have tried to cope with the downturn in oil prices, and how effective these efforts were. The companies that are at high risk of bankruptcy now, for instance, were the ones that chose to borrow money and now have a significant amount of debt. Going forward, the report notes, it won't be easy for companies to adapt to the changing economic climate.
"There is no silver bullet solution that applies to the whole industry; in fact, the landscape has never been more complicated," Andrew Slaughter, executive director of Deloitte Center for Energy Solutions, said in a statement. "Each company has its own set of unique factors to consider – from issues specific to each producing region and asset, to various states of financial circumstances. Staying solvent will require the same level of perseverance, innovative thinking and creativity as the technology breakthroughs that led to the boom in supply we have seen over recent years."

The oil industry isn't the only fossil fuel industry to be hit with a downturn. Coal, too, has been declining in recent years, as U.S. coal faces competition from cheaper natural gas. Multiple major coal companies have filed for bankruptcy over the last few years.

Links

• A Rockefeller explains: Why I lost faith in Exxon Mobil, and donated my shares
• Nearly 3,000 climate scientists condemn Australia's dramatic research cuts
• Who's hitting the EU's 2020 renewables target — and who's holding it back?
• BP admits it has repeatedly underestimated renewables

Global Temperatures Leap Higher In January, Smashing Records

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Global temperatures spiked higher in January, setting records, international agencies say. Photo: Leigh Henningham

This year has got off to a scorching start, with global temperatures marching to new highs as a giant El Nino rode on the back of creeping climate change, data from Japan and the US show.
Just a month after the world notched its hottest year on record, January's  global land and sea-surface temperatures were 0.52 degrees above the average for 1981-2010, Japan's Meteorological Agency reported.

The record is helped along a bit by El Nino, but most of it - more than 80 per cent - is due to human-caused global warming Stefan Rahmstorf

The departure from the norm easily eclipsed the previous record of 0.29 degrees shared equally by 2002, 2007 and 2015, the agency said.
Temperatures in January are rising at the rate of about 0.75 degrees per century, the agency said.
While more data will be released in coming days by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a chart from fellow US agency NASA (see below) also shows January's temperature spiking higher.
The data indicates last month had the biggest increase over the previous record for any month in more than a century of records.
January also had the largest anomaly – or departure from the long-term norm – for any month on record, Stefan Rahmstorf, a researcher from Germany's Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research and a visiting professorial fellow at the University of New South Wales, says.
"The record is helped along a bit by El Nino, but most of it - more than 80 per cent - is due to human-caused global warming," Dr Rahmstorf said.
"A strong El Nino event can elevate the monthly global temperature by up to 0.2 degrees, but this January is a whopping 1.1 degrees warmer than the average January during the baseline period of 1951-1980."
During El Nino years, the usual westward-blowing trade winds stall or reverse, lowering the rate the ocean absorbs the excess heat being trapped in the atmosphere by rising levels of greenhouse gases.
Global annual temperature records were broken in 2014 and then again in 2015, with the UK Met Office forecasting 2016 may lift the temperature bar again.
"This sequence of new records every few years - and now even two in a row - reflects the on-going rapid global warming trend," Dr Rahmstorf said.
"As the El Nino event winds down over the coming months we can expect somewhat lower global temperatures again for a while, but the global warming trend will continue until we phase out fossil fuels," he said.

Research cut
The latest record-hot month comes as Australia's premier scientific organisation, the CSIRO, has announced plans to axe 110 of its climate monitoring and modelling staff.
The cuts are part of a wider reorganisation that will slice 350 jobs before later recruitment in other areas restores the losses.
The move against climate research has been denounced by about 3000 scientists from almost 60 nations, who have signed a petition sent to the Turnbull government. They warn that Australia risks losing world-leading talent and will undermine the ability to observe the changes of the world's climate, particularly in the southern hemisphere.
CSIRO's chief executive Larry Marshall has said the two climate units targeted for deep cuts will eventually increase staff but numbers will be half current levels. The freed-up resources will be used for other research priorities including studying Australia's adaptation needs for the inevitable climate impacts to come as the country warms.
For Australia, mean temperatures were 0.52 degrees above the 1961-90 level used by the Bureau of Meteorology as its yardstick.
All states and the Northern Territory recorded warmer than average mean temperatures, with Tasmania recording its second-warmest January on record, the bureau said.

Links

• PR war over fires in Tasmania's world heritage area takes to the air
• Major conferences to 'expose' CSIRO climate cutbacks as scientists fear for jobs
• Canberra weather: ACT records hottest February morning in 2016
• El Nino seen exacerbating drought in south-east Asia