The Sponge: Jul 2-Jul 7
Welcome to The Sponge, the place to soak up a week’s worth of environmental news.
“Eye of Fire”, AKA the Pits of Hell
Early Friday morning, an underwater oil pipeline leak in the Gulf of Mexico caught fire, creating an “eye of fire” that looked like molten lava bubbling at the water’s surface. The Mexican state-owned oil company responsible, “Pemex”, credited the catastrophe to an electrical storm and a break in a 12-inch diameter pipeline near one of its drilling platforms. After five hours, ships quelled the blaze using nitrogen, only after they (now infamously) tried dumping water…on top of an underwater fire. If only there were signs that could have warned us about the potential catastrophes caused by negligent fossil fuel companies.
It sounds like there were definitely some signs.
There were signs everywhere. For starters, Pemex has a history of accidents, including a blast at a petrochemical plant in 2016 that killed 24 people. In the U.S., huge human and environmental tolls are all but by-products of American fossil fuel production. But that should come as no surprise: dirty energy can never be clean. Nearly every coal plant, for example, leaks unsafe levels of toxins into nearby water systems. Oil rigs notoriously lack oversight and contaminate communities during the oil production process and especially after production has ended.
But they put out the “Eye of Fire”. Problem solved.
You’re missing the critical point: that fossil fuel companies like Pemex have an inherently dangerous business model. Friday’s fire and the recent heat wave in the Pacific Northwest (that killed at least 107 people in Oregon) ultimately arise from the same harmful source: burning fossil fuels. And the only way to stop burning fossil fuels is to stop burning fossil fuels, forcefully. It’s that simple. Whether it’s Pemex or BP after the 2010 oil spill, we simply cannot trust oil companies built on oil to ever take climate change seriously and not destroy our planet.
In Other News…
We Have the Receipts
After an incriminating video call, it turns out Exxon Mobil might not be as green as it pretends to be. The truth comes as a result of a sting operation done by Greenpeace (cue the Mission Impossible theme). They secretly recorded video calls with a senior Exxon Lobbyist, Keith McCoy, who admitted that Exxon has been up to some shady stuff. Stuff like: “aggressively” fighting against climate science, meeting with senators to get Climate legislation removed from Biden’s infrastructure bill, and caring more about talking points than actual change.
Of course, Exxon is denouncing McCoy, claiming that his statements aRe NoT rEfLeCtIvE oF tHe CoMpAnY and all that jazz. It’s hard not to be suspicious of Exxon: it’s the world’s largest public gas and oil company, which means it benefits directly from the gradual destruction of our planet. Plus, it doesn’t help that it has a loooong, long history of funding climate deniers and misleading the public. TBH, this video call doesn’t necessarily say anything that environmentalists haven’t been saying for years about the ways that big corporations perpetuate climate change, but it is wild to hear a senior Exxon employee say it with his chest. It’s a bad look for sure.
Coming Soon to a Theater Near You
Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News, is launching a brand new channel this year: Fox Weather. Just when you thought you couldn’t get enough, Fox Weather will be a 24-hour streaming service that will be reporting on, well, the weather. While viewership for political news has dropped over the past few months, the Weather Channel has been up 7 percent over the last year, probably because of the constant threat of heatwaves, hurricanes, and climate disasters.
Fox Weather is complicated when you consider the fact that Fox News has put a lot of energy into calling climate change a hoax. However, climate change is becoming harder and harder to ignore, and there’s a lot of money to be made in weather broadcasting. The Weather Channel is saying Bring. It. On. to the competition, claiming that Fox News “couldn’t even get a headline right on Hurricane Bill.” Embarrassing.
And also…
