Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
“Net-zero” has become the corporate mantra of our time. But every “green” solution from solar panels to EVs leaves a trail of negative environmental impact (and greenhouse gases, that do exist and help to keep a temperate climate on Earth) somewhere else.
Every time I hear a company announce they are going “net-zero,” I start looking for the asterisk.
And sure enough, there it is, buried in the fine print next to a “carbon offset” bought somewhere far away or a “renewable certificate” that’s already been sold three times over. We’re stacking „carbon credit“s nine layers deep and calling it progress.
This isn’t sustainability…It smells of greenwashing.
Greenwashing exists because it is being rewarded. Investors pay for the story, consumers buy the feeling, and politicians need the slogan…a collective illusion that let’s everyone look good while nothing really changes.
The truth is, ESG was meant to guide responsible investment and governance, but in practice, it’s become a tool for marketing, not measurement. Companies are claiming “green” status at every stage, from mining, to manufacturing, to financing, each one earning ESG points, each one waving the sustainability flag. Meanwhile, our planet barely notices.
Let’s get one thing straight: nothing is or can ever be “net-zero.”
Not wind turbines, not solar panels, nor hydrogen. Every “green” technology depends on fossil fuels at some stage… usually at all stages: mining, manufacturing, transport, and disposal.
We have created a trillion-dollar distraction as we are counting, offsetting, and trading emissions instead of making a truly positive environmental difference.
If everyone can claim “net-zero,” then who is actually reducing emissions?
I wrote an article on Greenwashing our Future and it coveres the lesser-known facts from banks quietly shelving their „carbon credit“operations to ESG funds being shut down by the hundreds, even major players like HSBC have abandoned „carbon credit“trading. Seems like regulators are finally catching up, banning vague terms like “climate neutral” and demanding proof behind the promises.
It’s becoming clear that “green” finance may be built on very shaky ground…the signs are hard to ignore.
My blog is not about being anti-environment but rather about being honest and pro-environment. The only way forward is through truth, accountability, and innovation.
Greenwashing is no longer just a corporate PR problem, it has become a systemic delusion.
We want to feel good. We want simple stories. We want to be told we are solving climate related issues by checking the right ESG boxes.
But the unpopular truth is this: We cannot buy our way to sustainability with carbon credits. Real solutions require real energy, real accountability, and real trade-offs…and until we are honest about that, we are not saving the planet, we are just telling an expensive fairy tale.
Multiple mainstream media outlets published stories this week uncritically publicizing the claims of a climate change interest group, Climate Central (CC). According to CC, climate change has caused higher weather disaster costs in the United States this year than ever in history – or at least since 1980, which is as far as the records CC uses go back. These claims are false. While the costs of extreme weather events and wildfires were high in early 2025, there are no trends that indicate climate change is responsible.
Multiple mainstream media outlets published stories this week uncritically publicizing the claims of a climate change interest group, Climate Central (CC). According to CC, climate change has caused higher weather disaster costs in the United States this year than ever in history – or at least since 1980, which is as far as the records CC uses go back. These claims are false. While the costs of extreme weather events and wildfires were high in early 2025, there are no trends that indicate climate change is responsible. Rather, higher populations, increased development in disaster prone areas, poor water management, and human evil in the form of arson, were the cause of the abnormally high disaster costs.
The tenor of The Guardian, NBC, and other outlets covering CC’s disaster cost report was nearly universal. Climate change resulted in worse weather disasters and higher costs in early 2025 than ever before, a fact that would have been missed absent CC’s work since President Donald Trump cut funding for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration program, which has previously monitored such costs.
Per The Guardian:
The first half of 2025 was the costliest on record for major disasters in the US, driven by huge wildfires in Los Angeles and storms that battered much of the rest of the country, according to a climate non-profit that has resurrected work axed by Donald Trump’s administration that tracked the biggest disasters.
In the first six months of this year, 14 separate weather-related disasters that each caused at least $1bn in damage hit the US, the Climate Central group has calculated. In total, these events cost $101bn in damages – lost homes, businesses, highways and other infrastructure – a toll higher than any other first half of a year since records on this began in 1980.
As NBC News wrote:
The first half of this year was the costliest ever recorded for weather and climate disasters in the United States, according to an analysis published Wednesday by the nonprofit organization Climate Central.
It is information that the public might never have learned: This spring, the Trump administration cut the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration program that had tracked weather events that caused at least $1 billion in damage. The researcher who led that work, Adam Smith, left NOAA over the decision.
To be clear, Climate Central is not an objective authority on the causes and consequences of climate change, or a neutral party regarding proposed solutions. Rather, it was created and exists solely to produce and promote material blaming human activities for causing climate change resulting in catastrophic consequences that threaten human life, and to promote government enforced solutions that limit fossil fuel use.
Leaving aside the motives of the organization that produced the report, the news coverage of the report was inaccurate from the start. The stories ignore the history of natural disasters in the regions that have been impacted this year, the demographic changes that have resulted in the higher costs, and, most importantly, the lack of any long-term discernable changes in weather patterns and the incidences and severity of extreme weather events for the areas affected.
Looking at where the disasters occurred in the first half of this year, from CC’s own tracking we find the weather events were tornadoes that occurred during typical tornado season stretching from Texas through the plains to the upper mid-west. This area of the country is commonly referred to as “tornado alley” because such events are so common there during the spring and early summer. So, nothing unusual there. What critically undermines the CC report and the media’s suggestion that the rising cost of tornadoes is due to climate change is the fact, as explored in Climate Realism, here, here, and here, for example, that neither the number, frequency, nor severity of tornadoes has increased as the Earth has slightly warmed.
Other events include flooding in areas of the country historically known for spring flooding as a result of snowmelt and severe spring snowstorms – many of the areas are popular riverfront towns or communities. Climate Realism has repeatedly debunked media claims that flooding is getting worse – data show it isn’t. If flooding is not becoming more frequent or severe, climate change can’t be causing higher costs related to flooding.
Finally, more than 60 percent of the $101 billion disaster costs that CC says resulted from climate change altered weather events are attributable to just a single event: the January 2025 wildfires that decimated a large swath of Los Angeles. The Los Angeles fires were horrific, of a kind not experienced there in recent history, but not unusual historically. The huge damage was a result of a combination of factors, good seasonal rainfall in recent years creating lush natural growth combined with and regular lawn and tree watering in wealthy enclaves, followed by a severe drought, creating conditions for a wildfire, and strong Santa Anna winds to drive a fire quickly across the landscape once started (once again a natural feature of the area). With these conditions, all that was needed was a spark, which a perverse arsonist provided. Once the fire started, winds drove it quickly across a tinder dry landscape and firefighters found a shortage of water in reservoirs as a result of political decisions made by the state government.
Los Angeles is not warmer than is was in the 1950s and precipitation has actually increased slightly in the region since 1895. Despite climate alarmists and advantage seeking, virtue signaling Democratic politicians attempting to blame climate change for the fire and its severity, the evidence indicates it had nothing to do with it.
If climate conditions haven’t change appreciably across the United States, in the sense that the more extreme weather patterns are emerging, the question is, why have costs related to weather disasters gone up so much in nominal dollars? Keep in mind that in inflation adjusted dollars as a percentage of GDP, the costs of natural disasters have fallen over time. (see the figure, below)
As should be obvious to any honest observer exercising the least bit of common sense, the reason for rising disaster costs is clear, the expanding bullseye effect. As Climate Realism has explored in dozens of articles previously, with more people moving into ecologically/climatically desirable locations, locations prone to natural disasters, erecting more homes, businesses, and related structures and infrastructure, property has gone up dramatically in value overtime. When a disaster like a wildfire (in this case an arson started wildfire) strikes, more people and property is impacted and related costs are higher. Climate Realism discussed this very point in articles linked, here, here, and here, to take but a few examples. Quite simply, when a hurricane hits Miami or Galveston now, there are more buildings and structures to destroy at those locations than there was 100 years ago.
One can acknowledge that CC is right, natural disasters are imposing higher costs in nominal dollars now than they did in the past, without jumping to the completely unfounded claim that climate change is the cause. Legitimate journalists and honest news outlets, as NBC News and The Guardian purport to be, should check their facts before parroting the false rantings of a climate lobbing group as the truth. Misleading, false alarm stories like these are perhaps why trust in the media is low and falling.
Another alarmist narrative debunked by observations.
Coral coverage was supposed to be existentially devastated by the modern tenths-of-a-degree increases in sea surface temperatures and recurring bleaching events.
However, a new study points to assessments of coral cover percentages in the Great Barrier Reef and concludes is “at its highest since monitoring began in 1985.”
Further, the analysis reveals there is “no consistent correlation between rising temperatures and reduced coral cover,” and that “most corals [are] demonstrating rapid recovery” from bleaching.
The Australian Government also documents significant decadal variability in coral cover, but no overall trend or decline in coral coverage since the early 1980s.
The Conference of the Parties (COP30) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will take place from November 10-21, 2025, in Belém, Brazil, with an expected attendance of 70,000.
The Conference of the Parties (COP30) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will take place from November 10-21, 2025, in Belém, Brazil, with an expected attendance of 70,000.
Across the world, political leaders and environmental activists proclaim that renewable electricity will soon replace fossil fuels and usher in a cleaner, sustainable future. Yet few of them can explain how wind turbines and solar panels, which only generate electricity, can sustain the vast web of products and materials upon which human civilization depends. This blind faith in renewables has become what can only be called a green delusion.
Electricity may run our computers, light our cities, and power our vehicles, but it cannot create the raw materials needed to build those very machines.
Steel, cement, plastics, fertilizers, and pharmaceuticals all require hydrocarbons—not simply as fuels but as essential feedstocks. Oil, natural gas, and coal are the molecular foundations for over 6,000 everyday products that define modern life. Without them, hospitals would lack sterile equipment, farmers would lose fertilizers, and the construction of roads, bridges, and homes would grind to a halt.
This misunderstanding, treating electricity as interchangeable with materials, is the central flaw of the green movement. Electricity is a utility, not a substance. It drives processes but cannot itself make things. Even basic metals like iron and copper require carbon as a reducing agent during smelting. Without carbon, humanity would lose the very means of transforming minerals into usable materials.
Meanwhile, governments pour trillions of dollars into policies designed to eliminate fossil fuels, without considering the economic or physical realities. In California, for example, leaders boast about renewable progress while importing electricity from neighboring states that rely on natural gas and coal. Blackouts, surging prices, and industrial flight are the inevitable consequences of this ideological experiment.
The same contradiction appears globally. Electric vehicles are celebrated as zero-emission solutions, yet their manufacture depends heavily on fossil fuels—from the mining of lithium and cobalt with diesel-powered equipment to the production of steel, glass, and plastic components derived from hydrocarbons. The result is more ways to use fossil fuels, which is a carbon shift, not a carbon elimination.
Government-mandated winners and losers apply only to the few in wealthier countries who can afford huge subsidies, but the reality is that there are no silver-bullet answers. For those outside the few wealthy countries, we see that at least 80 percent of humanity, or more than six billion in this world, are living on less than $10 a day, and billions are living with little to no access to electricity.
Those green ideologies are 100% political in the few wealthy countries that can afford to subsidize their delusions! Examples of the “green” delusion:
The “green” mandates for transitioning from ICE vehicles to EVs would only eliminate gasoline used in ICE vehicles, which is only 1 of the more than 6,000 products made from fossil fuels. The EV, like the ICE vehicle, continues to be 100% made from those oil products, inclusive of tires, computers, wiring, and insulation, and all the electronics of those so-called “zero emissions” vehicles.
None of the green illusionists, inclusive of one of its political leaders such as California Governor Gavin Newsom, can explain how wind turbines and solar panels can make any of the other 5,999 products made from oil that we see in operating hospitals, airports, offices, shopping centers, datacenters, etc. or how those renewables will support the merchant ships, cruise ships, commercial aircraft, and military aircraft on this planet that did not exist 200 years ago?
The ”green” ideological transition to renewables is a globalist suicide pact for the rest of us! Conversations are desperately needed, but the following points summarize their “explanation shortcomings”.
(1) Their zero-emission movement is a delusion that JUST electricity generated from wind and solar can replace refineries and the crude oil that they process to support the variety of the more than 6,000 products and fuels in our materialistic society that did not exist 200 years ago.
(2) They also remain oblivious that underground hydrocarbon resources of coal, crude oil, and natural gas are totally useless unless processed into something useful to meet the demands of humanity. Humanity needs the products, but it is incapable of identifying substitutes for fossil fuels to provide the supply chain for those products.
(3) They cannot explain how wind and solar can support the 50,000 merchant ships, 20,000 commercial aircraft, 50,000 military aircraft, and more than 300 cruise ships that did not exist 200 years ago, before those fossil fuel products were developed.
(4) They cannot comprehend that ALL electricity, from hydro, coal, natural gas, nuclear, wind, and solar, comes AFTER oil, as all the parts and components to make electricity are made from fossil fuels.
The path forward cannot be dictated by a centralized global plan that seeks to control the generation of electricity and economies from the top down. Each nation must be free to advance policies consistent with its own history, culture, and material realities, cooperating through mutual respect rather than imposing conformity. Humanity must rediscover balance — between progress and preservation, between innovation and responsibility, and between global ambition and local reality. That balance must also guide how nations and governments pursue electricity transitions in practice.
However, many governments, in their rush to appear green, often subsidize uneconomic projects, distorting markets and burdening taxpayers. The lesson is not that innovation should stop—it should continue vigorously—but that technology must mature before being imposed by government policy of mandates and subsidies. Engineering progress cannot be legislated into existence by politicians.
If any of the “green” delusionists are seriously considering a run for a political leadership position, or for the Presidency of the United States, such as California’s Governor Gavin Newsom, they may have to change their position and clean up their talking points!
For the COP30 attendees in Brazil that do not comprehend that JUST electricity generated from wind and solar will negatively impact humanity demands for the products,they’d best provide answers to the more than 8 billion on this planet as to how JUST electricity from wind and solar can support the supply chain of more than 6,000 products and transportation fuels to keep operating our hospitals, airports, militaries, offices, and datacenters. COP30 should serve not as a forum for ideology, but for rediscovering balance — a balance between humanity’s needs and nature’s limits.
In summary, true climate progress begins not with mandates, but with energy literacy — understanding what energy can and cannot do and respecting the balance between ambition and reality.
Please share this information with teachers, students, and friends to encourage Energy Literacy conversations at the family dinner table.
Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure, Co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations”, policy advisor on energy literacy for The Heartland Institute, and The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and National TV Commentator- Energy & Infrastructure with Rick Amato.
Ronald Stein, P.E. is an engineer, energy consultant, speaker, author of books and articles on energy, environmental policy, and human rights, and Founder of PTS Advance, a California based company.
Ron advocates that energy literacy starts with the knowledge that renewable energy is only intermittent electricity generated from unreliable breezes and sunshine, as wind turbines and solar panels cannot manufacture anything for the 8 billion on this planet.
Yoshihiro Muronaka, P.E., JP is a chemical engineer who currently focuses on evaluating net-zero and decarbonization policies, advocating alternative energy concepts such as “carbon symbiosis,” and promoting balanced international energy cooperation.
The United States is increasing pressure on its European allies to weaken or completely roll back regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, part of the Trump administration’s broader attempt to undermine international efforts to tackle climate change.
The United States is increasing pressure on its European allies to weaken or completely roll back regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, part of the Trump administration’s broader attempt to undermine international efforts to tackle climate change.
President Donald Trump has long dismissed concerns about climate change as well as the effects of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming, urging European leaders to also abandon their green crusade.
Since his first day in office, Trump has pushed for the U.S. to step back from climate change discussions on the international stage, pulling the country out of the 2016 Paris Climate Agreement for a second time.
The administration also moved to pull the U.S. from discussions with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in February, ordering federal scientists to halt work on all climate assessment-related activities.
More recently, Trump and his Cabinet have taken aim at several European Union- and United Nations-backed climate-focused rules and regulations.
While EU leaders have publicly defended these policies, vowing not to roll them back completely, ramped up pressure from the Trump administration appears to have created more wiggle room in some negotiations.
The Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive
Just this week, the Department of Energy sent a letter to EU officials urging the bloc to roll back the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive.
This directive, set to take effect for some companies in 2027, would require those affected to provide reports on ESG effects and establish liability for ESG violations. The primary aim of the rule is to limit harm to the environment and human rights throughout EU and non-EU supply chains.
Under the current language, companies that fail to comply with the regulations will face a fine of 5% of the company’s global net turnover.
The rule has been heavily criticized by U.S.-based companies, who claim it would cause major barriers to trade between the U.S. and the EU.
“[T]he CSDDD, as it is worded today, poses a significant risk to the affordability and reliability of critical energy supplies for households and businesses across Europe and an existential threat to the future growth, competitiveness, and resilience of the EU’s industrial economy,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright wrote in the letter sent this week, which was cosigned by the Qatari government.
However, while the EU has given no indication that it plans to walk back the directive, European officials appear willing to negotiate some provisions.
Earlier this week, the European Parliament said it would further negotiate changes to the rule during a scheduled vote and hopes to finalize any amendments by the end of the year.
From the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and the “Friends of King Canute” department comes this laughable exercise in statistical futility.
Deep emission cuts before mid-century decisive to reduce long-term sea-level rise legacy
Rising seas are irreversible on human time scales and among the most severe consequences of climate change. Emissions released in the coming decades will determine how much coastlines are reshaped for centuries to come. New research shows that near-term mitigation could spare future generations around 0.6 meters of sea-level rise that would be caused by emissions between 2020 and 2090 following current policies, making today’s decisions critical not only for limiting warming but also for coastal impacts.
Led by IIASA researchers in collaboration with colleagues from institutions in the UK, Belgium, The Netherlands, and Germany, the study published in Nature Climate Change goes beyond the usual sea level projections by quantifying how much sea-level rise in 2300 will be “locked in” by emissions this century. By isolating the effect of near- and mid-term emissions, the study provides a direct link between today’s policy choices and sea levels hundreds of years from now – an aspect that has not been quantified in this way before.
“It is common for sea-level rise research to deliver projections to 2100 based on a standard set of scenarios, which doesn’t allow to isolate the longer-term sea-level impacts of today’s greenhouse gas emissions. But we have to explore these impacts on timescales beyond 2100 because oceans and ice sheets keep responding for centuries,” explains lead author Alexander Nauels, a senior research scholar in the Integrated Climate Impacts Research Group of the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program. “Our study shows clearly that mitigation decisions in the next few decades will have multi-century consequences for coastlines worldwide.”
The researchers found that under current policies, emissions from 2020 until 2050 would already commit the world to about 0.3 meters of additional sea-level rise by 2300. What may seem like a modest increase would have major implications for long-term adaptation planning. Extending emissions on this trajectory until 2090 would lock in a global rise of about 0.8 meters, of which roughly 0.6 meters could still be avoided if the world started emissions reductions consistent with the Paris Agreement now. These differences can determine whether some low-lying coastal areas and islands remain habitable or not.
“Our work highlights the long-lasting legacy of today’s emissions and that adaptation planning must consider centuries ahead,” notes Matthew Palmer from the UK Met Office, a coauthor of the study. “We also illustrate that some regions like the vulnerable Pacific islands will experience even higher sea-level rise than the global average. These regional and local changes have to be understood and resolved in much greater detail to better inform decision makers.”
The authors set out to determine how much future sea-level rise is already committed by past and near-term emissions, and they show how strongly choices in the coming decades influence outcomes centuries from now.
“These choices will determine when more adaptation limits will be reached and how many adaptation options remain for coastal communities in vulnerable regions,” notes coauthor Aimée Slangen from the Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research.
“The difference between decisive climate action today and continued high emissions is not just measured in degrees of warming but also in meters of sea-level rise that will reshape coasts worldwide for centuries. Importantly, we show that we still have the opportunity to limit the sea-level rise commitment we pass on to future generations,” Nauels concludes.
Reference Nauels, A., Nicholls, Z., Möller, T., Hermans, T.H.J., Mengel, M., Klönne, U., Smith, C., Slangen, A.B.A., Palmer, M.D. (2025). Multi-century global and regional sea-level rise commitments from cumulative greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades. Nature Climate Change DOI: 10.1038/s41558-025-02452-5
Approving the construction of a gravel mining road in a remote stretch of northwest Alaska may not sound like much, but it’s a giant step toward challenging an assertive China’s plan to become the 21st century’s dominant global power.
Approving the construction of a gravel mining road in a remote stretch of northwest Alaska may not sound like much, but it’s a giant step toward challenging an assertive China’s plan to become the 21st century’s dominant global power.
Once completed, the proposed 211-mile-long Ambler Road Project will provide access to rich deposits of copper, cobalt, zinc, lead, gold, silver, gallium, germanium, and other valuable ores with both commercial and military applications, according to the Trump White House. The road will enable essential surface transportation to Alaska’s Ambler Mining District, one of the largest undeveloped copper-zinc mining belts in the world. Over 1,700 active claims have already been filed in the district, a clear indication of the area’s potential.
Until recently, it looked as if these strategic minerals were going to continue to rest undisturbed underground, in what can only be seen as part of a deliberate effort by the Biden administration to cede global leadership in minerals and energy to China — America’s chief geopolitical rival.
The Ambler Road Project was approved during President Donald Trump’s first term. That decision was later reversed by the Biden White House, which said the project threatened caribou and other wildlife. Seeing domestically sourced critical minerals as crucial to its vision of reindustrializing the United States, the Trump administration, on Oct. 6, instructed federal agencies to approve permits for the mining road.
This decision came not a second too soon. Four days later, China announced sweeping new export controls on rare earths, a move designed to stifle global — and especially American — access to critical raw materials for magnets found in computer chips, medical devices, radar systems, jet engines, laptops, defense technologies and other products. China’s export restrictions are a timely reminder that Beijing is prepared to use its near monopoly on the global supply chain for rare earths (both mining and processing) as leverage against the U.S. in trade disputes with Washington.
By requiring foreign companies to file dual-use export license applications for rare earths with China’s Ministry of Commerce, Beijing knows it can clog up supply chains to data centers, giving China a leg up in the development of artificial intelligence (AI).
“The new directive is a clear attempt to undermine the industrial base development efforts of the United States and its allies,” said Gracelin Baskaran, director of the Critical Minerals Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, in a comment to The Washington Post. “What’s remarkable about the move is its focus on the military applications of rare earths, rather than the broader economy.”
What Chinese President Xi Jinping is doing on rare earths — taking full advantage of America’s dependency — he can do with other essential raw materials. This is why the greenlighting of permits for the Ambler Road Project is crucial in today’s no-holds-barred geopolitical rivalry. On Oct. 9, the Senate approved three resolutions reversing Biden-era Resource Management Plans (RMPs) that had put millions of acres of federal lands in Alaska, Montana and North Dakota off-limits to energy and mining development.
Using the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which allows a simple majority of both houses to undo regulations adopted in the final months of the previous administration, GOP-led lawmakers unlocked the resources the Biden administration thought it had locked up. This includes 2.75 million acres of land and 11.7 million acres of mineral estate in Montana, where the Biden administration had restricted access to the Powder River Basin, home to 30% of the nation’s coal reserves. The Senate also rolled back a Biden RMP that prohibited leasing on 99% of North Dakota’s coal deposits and 44% of the state’s oil and natural gas acreage.
Finally, the Senate overturned the Biden-era Central Yukon RMP, which locked up more than 13.3 million acres of land in Alaska from mineral and energy development. The vote will also ease the way for the construction of the Ambler Road Project and the Alaska Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Pipeline. The House passed all three CRA resolutions in September, and Trump is expected to sign the resolutions in short order.
The fight over the Ambler Road Project is not yet over, with environmental groups threatening to sue the administration for having the temerity to stick up for American interests. In the meantime, until the U.S. can close the gap with China on the mining and refining of rare earths — and that will take several years — it can continue to augment its global leadership in the production of oil and natural gas by taking advantage of its own vast mineral resources. How valuable are these resources? A soon-to-be-released report by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity estimates there are $12 trillion in recoverable mineral resources in the United States.
Norway scored a win Tuesday at Europe’s top human rights court after a group of young climate activists challenged its Arctic oil plans.
The judges found that while the country’s licensing system wasn’t flawless, it still offered enough safeguards to protect human rights and the environment. The Courthouse News Service has the story.
The case was filed by six young Norwegians, backed by Greenpeace Nordic and Young Friends of the Earth, over the government’s 2016 decision to open new oil and gas exploration areas in the Barents Sea. They argued that by expanding fossil fuel development in the Arctic, Norway was putting their futures at risk and failing its duty to protect people from the worsening impacts of climate change.
For the young activists, most of them born in the 1990s, the lawsuit was an attempt to push Norway’s courts and eventually Europe’s to draw a clear line between climate policy and human rights. They said they had grown up seeing the effects of a warming world: shorter winters, melting glaciers and smoky summer skies. If Norway could keep approving new oil projects without fully weighing their climate impact, they argued, then future generations would bear the cost.
Reviewing Norway’s climate reviews
That question, how far a state’s duty to protect against climate harm should go, was at the heart of the case the European Court of Human Rights examined in Strasbourg. The judges ultimately took a different view, saying Norway’s approval system already had enough checks in place to prevent serious harm.
Exploration and production happen in separate phases, and no drilling can begin until a full environmental review and public consultation are carried out later on. Any shortcomings in the early stages, the court said, could still be fixed at the final approval phase.
The court acknowledged that the 2016 review wasn’t perfect and skipped over some big questions, like the long-term climate impact and emissions from exported oil. Still, it found that Norway’s overall system met its human rights obligations.
Norway requires its own environmental checks, public input and legal oversight at each step in the petroleum process — from opening new areas to licensing and finally to production — which the judges said were enough to keep the process on solid ground.
Because of those safeguards, the judges said any early gaps could be corrected later. They also pointed out that the exploration licenses didn’t let companies start pumping oil or guarantee that extraction would ever happen. The risks tied to those permits, they found, were too uncertain and too far in the future to amount to a human rights violation.
No immediate threat
Petra Minnerop, an international law professor at Durham Law School, said the court’s approach largely came down to trust in Norway’s pledge to carry out a full environmental review later on.
The judges emphasized the need for any review to rely on current, reliable data, and to consider the combined impact of all future projects together.
But Greenpeace Nordic says Norway falls short in practice. Legal campaigner Klimentina Radkova said the court’s assumption that full climate reviews take place at the final approval stage “is not done for any new oil and gas projects on the Norwegian continental shelf today,” adding that the group is challenging that gap in a separate case over three North Sea fields.
The court also drew a sharp line between this case and earlier climate rulings that dealt with governments allowing pollution that posed an immediate danger to people’s lives. In Norway’s case, no drilling had been approved, and no real environmental harm had occurred. Human rights protections, the judges explained, only apply when a government’s actions create a clear and immediate threat — and opening exploration areas didn’t cross that line.
The activists argued that Norway should have counted the climate impact of oil burned overseas, saying pollution doesn’t stop at the border. But the court wasn’t convinced. It found that those global effects were too uncertain and too far removed to factor in at the licensing stage. The judges added that international law still doesn’t offer clear rules for how to measure or assign responsibility for such emissions.
As far as the “climate” is concerned, the Court of Justice often makes politics instead of administering justice: For example, it upheld the complaint of two Swiss women who saw their “health” endangered by Switzerland’s “insufficient climate protection”.
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