Hi, Connor. The following article from DeSmog is an example of where left and right interests overlap, but for different reasons. Conservatives might oppose carbon storage projects because they require massive government support to be viable. Meanwhile, people somewhere on the left don’t want to support wasteful projects that do little to help the climate, and in fact often go towards developing more oil.
CCS is an expensive technology and not actually used in the few cases where it might be useful, but it is used to increase oil production. It also requires a network of pipelines to move the highly toxic material. Carolyn Sen upon translation: today: pic.twitter.com/kr849wzmXA
— Amy Westervelt (@amywestervelt) July 31, 2024
Neither the left nor the right want their land taken away for a pipeline, nor do they want an invisible cloud of poison to hang over their communities, as happened in Satartia, Mississippi in 2020. Huffington Post:
It was just after 7 p.m. when residents of Satartia, Mississippi, began to notice a rotten egg-like smell before a greenish cloud rolled across Highway 433 and spread into the valley surrounding the small town. Within minutes, people were inside the cloud, gasping for breath, nauseous and passing out.
Within minutes, about two dozen people collapsed in their homes, at a nearby fishing camp along the Yazoo River, and in their cars, causing a catastrophe. Cars’ engines shut down because they need oxygen to burn fuel. Drivers scrambled to get out of their stuck vehicles, but became disoriented and were forced to wander through the darkness.
The initial call to Yazoo County Emergency Management came in at 7:13 p.m. on Feb. 22, 2020.
“Caller reports a foul odor and green mist on the highway,” read the message dispatchers sent to the cellphones and radios of all county emergency personnel two minutes later.
Emergency personnel were dispatched almost immediately, although they still didn’t know exactly what the emergency was: a leak in one of the nearby natural gas pipelines, or perhaps a chlorine leak from a water tank.
But the first thing that came to mind was not the carbon dioxide pipeline that runs through the hills above the town, less than a half mile away. Denbury, then known as Denbury Resources, Communication network CO2 pipelines in the Gulf Coast region are used to inject gas into oil fields to extract oil. Atmospheric CO2 is odorless, colorless and heavier than air, but the industrial CO2 in the Denbury pipeline is compressed into a liquid and pumped through the pipeline under high pressure. rupture In such pipelines, CO2 Erupt A dense, powdery white cloud sinks to the ground, making steel brittle and cold enough to be smashed with a sledgehammer.
The following article from DeSmog is mostly about Canada, but also touches on the opposition of some conservative politicians in the U.S. However, there is a big backlash in the interior of the U.S. (Covered by NC last year“We’re not going to let the carbon capture pipeline go through rural, mostly Republican states like Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota,” Republicans said of the effort.
By Jeff Dembicki, a New York City-based investigative climate journalist and author of The Petroleum Papers and Are We Screwed? Smog Removal.
Earlier this year, far-right groups Canadian Pride The company began serving Facebook ads to its more than 534,000 followers attacking climate change technology supported by conservative leaders and the nation’s largest oil and gas producers.
“Carbon capture is touted as a green technology that keeps carbon from being released into the atmosphere,” the ad explains. “But is it really better for the environment? As it turns out, not really.” Canada Proud claimed the technology “can contaminate groundwater, release carcinogens into the soil, and has even been recorded to cause earthquakes.”
For years, big oil sands companies and their political allies in Alberta and Ottawa have pushed the exact opposite message: that carbon capture and storage (CCS) is needed to ensure the viability of oil and gas while addressing climate change.
So far, the fiercest attacks against carbon capture have come from environmental groups and progressive politicians, who see it as an expensive, false solution to climate change that will deepen our dependence on oil and gas.
But as the projects move forward, they have also faced growing opposition from the right, opening up new political divisions between establishment conservatives and groups seeking to stoke grassroots anger over expensive industrial megaprojects in rural areas.
“It’s really interesting that groups like Canada Proud appear to be mobilizing, or preparing to mobilize, in opposition to carbon capture and storage,” Bob Neubauer, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Manitoba who studies right-wing populism and climate change disinformation, told DeSmog.
“Their support base doesn’t seem to be full of people who are excited about technocratic decarbonization scenarios,” he added.
Mobilize Media, the company that operates Canada Proud, did not respond to questions from DeSmog.
Right-wing influencers attack CCS
Dissatisfaction with technology is becoming mainstream rhetoric on the right: “I’d rather have my taxes put to guns and burned,” says one Canadian conservative influencer. Jordan Peterson Mid-February I wrote to X He sent a message to his 5.3 million followers in response to the Wyoming CCS project.
American presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Frequently interviewed Last year, on a conservative media platform It’s called carbon capture. “A useless business.” Vivek RamaswamiHe ran against Donald Trump for the leadership of the Republican Party this year and lost in the primary. It’s called the Iowa Pipeline. The technology to transport captured carbon to a place where it can be buried underground is “the greatest violation of property rights”.
These tensions are rising in Alberta, the heartland of Canada’s oil and gas industry, where Pathways Alliance I applied this spring Regulatory approval to build a $16.5 billion carbon capture and storage project. Covering the whole country “Carbon capture is a critical step towards carbon-neutral resource extraction,” it touts.
Alberta Premier Daniel Smith said earlier this year: Shared the stage With Tucker Carlson Recently interviewed The plan will receive up to $5.3 billion in taxpayer backing, she announced on Peterson’s podcast. “Going forward, we’re only going to be pushing harder for carbon capture, utilization and storage,” she said. Said Last year’s industry convention.
Grassroots opposition grows
The rural area of northern Alberta where the project will be built is hardly a hotbed of environmental activism. The region is home to an anti-renewable energy group called Wind Concerns, whose leader is I told Desmog before. Climate science is ‘riddled with fraudulent data and outright lies’
However, local people have formed a new group called the “Anti-CO2 Landowners Group” Partnered with The Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation and environmental groups opposed the Pathways Alliance’s carbon capture plan.
“Despite their claims, this is an unproven technology that will have far-reaching implications for the future,” said Amir Shapka, a leading voice in the CO2 opposition. Said“This is Canada’s largest carbon dioxide pipeline and storage project, but are our communities prepared for the potential health, safety and environmental risks to our water?”
An increasingly confusing carbon capture policy is creating tensions at the national level in Canada. The federal Liberal government Proposed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has applied for up to $10 billion in investment tax credits to support his Pathways Alliance plan, a megaproject that is now opposed by some rural Canadians.
Pierre Poirièvre still supports CCS
This has made carbon capture a target of the anti-Liberal group Canada Proud, which has also started an online petition against the technology. “Rural Canadians deserve a safe and clean local environment and Canadians deserve affordable gas, groceries and heat,” the petition states. read“We, the undersigned, therefore call on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to stop forcing expensive and destructive carbon capture on Canada’s energy industry.”
The reality is the opposite. Oil producers Advertised He proposed carbon capture to the federal government as a “key element” of its climate change plan, making it far preferable to other solutions proposed by the federal Liberals. Caps on oil sands emissions, etc..
And their policy preference is to pump billions of dollars of taxpayer money into supporting carbon capture projects. Can be extended The argument that the oil and gas industry has played its role for decades is echoed by federal Conservative Party leader Pierre Poirievre.
“New green projects need to be approved, including nuclear, hydroelectric, tidal energy and carbon capture and storage,” Poirievre said. He said in an interview He spoke about his climate change plan in May.
The positive message about carbon capture ultimately didn’t make it onto Canada Proud, despite Poirievre putting it there. He was hired a few years ago The page’s operator, Mobirise Media, ran the ad to promote his federal leadership campaign. (The Conservative Party of Canada did not respond to questions from DeSmog about its current relationship with Mobirise.) But Canada Proud continues to post near-daily content on Facebook in support of Poirievre, including the Conservative leader’s frequent attacks on the country’s carbon tax.
That’s probably because it’s easier for a far-right audience to post anti-climate change content than pro-action, Neubauer said, especially since the majority of grassroots members of the federal Conservative Party are Voted against The party’s proposal states that “climate change is real.”
“Canada Proud’s policy priorities on this issue seem completely out of sync with the stated policy priorities of the Conservative party and oil and gas industry leaders,” he said. “But rank-and-file supporters of the conservative climate movement are so vehemently opposed to climate change that they probably don’t see much benefit in supporting CCS.”
