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- Diane Rehm Show - Climate Change, Exxon Mobil, and Columbia University
December 3, 2015 "In October, a critical report on Exxon Mobil’s climate change position appeared in The Los Angeles Times. Now the company is taking on the authors of the report — Columbia University’s journalism school." Guests David Folkenflik media correspondent, NPR; author of "Murdoch's World: The Last of the Old Media Empires" Paul Barrett assistant managing editor and senior writer at Bloomberg Businessweek, and author of "Glock: The Rise of America's Gun." His new book, about the Chevron oil pollution case in Ecuador, will be out later this year. Neela Banerjee reporter, Inside Climate News Susanne Rust director and senior reporter, Columbia University School of Journalism's Energy and Environmental Reporting Project Kenneth Cohen vice president for public and government affairs, Exxon Mobil
- Duke Energy boosted political donations to prep for major legislative initiative
Appalachian Voices, April 26, 2019.
A report out today from a coalition of 14 community and environmental justice organizations reveals that Duke Energy skewed its political campaign contributions last year in order to gain support from Senate Minority Leader Dan Blue and other lawmakers instrumental in reviewing what is now a highly controversial bill. Critics say the bill and review process have been deceptive, and could allow Duke to raise rates every year with reduced transparency while gouging ratepayers for tens of billions of dollars. The report is at http://energyjusticenc.org/reports/Monopoly-Money-report-April2019.pdf (click link in article)
- Exxon Mobil climate concealment
- In Many Ways, Author Says, Spanish Civil War Was 'The First Battle Of WWII'
NPR Fresh Air, with Terry Gross, March 28, 2016 Nearly 80 years ago, about 2,800 Americans volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil War. The war began in July 1936, when Gen. Francisco Franco led a fascist military coup against the the country's newly elected democratic government. It lasted until Franco's victory in 1939. Journalist Adam Hochschild tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross that "it was by far the largest number of Americans before or since who've ever joined somebody else's civil war." Hochschild chronicles Americans' involvement in the war in his new book, Spain in Our Hearts. He says that the majority of Americans in Spain (including writer Ernest Hemingway, who reported on the conflict) were sympathetic to the Republican forces who fought against Franco's Nationalists. . . . But Hochschild points out that not all Americans opposed Franco's regime. For instance, Torkild Rieber, CEO of Texaco, helped Franco by providing his military with a steady and guaranteed supply of oil. "[Rieber] violated American law in a couple of ways," Hochschild says. "U.S. neutrality legislation was pretty strict and said that if you were selling anything to a country at war the oil couldn't travel on American ships, but he shipped it on Texaco tankers."
- NPR - When Coal Companies Fail, Who Pays For The Cleanup? (5 min)
When Coal Companies Fail, Who Pays For The Cleanup? NPR, February 29, 2016
- Plastic Wars: Industry Spent Millions Selling Recycling — To Sell More Plastic
Laura Sullivan, NPR All Things Considered, March 31, 2020
The vast majority of all plastic produced can't be or won't be recycled. In 40 years, less than 10% of plastic has ever been recycled.
In a joint investigation, NPR and the PBS series Frontline found that oil and gas companies — the makers of plastic — have known that all along, even as they spent millions of dollars telling the American public the opposite.
- Review of "Deepwater Horizon: A Systems Analysis of the Macondo Disaster"
Over the Edge, Brian Hayes. American Scientist, May-June 2017. Review of: Deepwater Horizon: A Systems Analysis of the Macondo Disaster. Earl Boebert and James M. Blossom. 290 pp. Harvard University Press, 2016. Most accounts of the Deepwater Horizon disaster dwell on the drama of the rig’s last hours, as the crew struggled to cope with the well blowout and then fought to survive. Those events are also part of Boebert and Blossom’s story, but the scope of their narrative is broader. Much of the action takes place deep underground, where drilling technology meets the uncertainties of geology, or else miles away in BP’s Houston offices. Their approach is analytic rather than dramatic. Theirs is the account for readers who want to understand how such disasters come about and what strategies might have the best chance of preventing more of them.