Ethical Oil Doublespeak Is Polluting Canada's Public Square

“Like any other tool, language can be abused, used not to build but to destroy, not to communicate but to confuse, not to clarify but to obscure, not to lead but to mislead.” 
- William Lutz⁠ Retired American linguist Dr. William Lutz spent much of his career at Rutgers University studying how language is abused in […]

Congressmen Supporting LNG Exports Received $11.5 Million From Big Oil, Electric Utilities

On Jan. 25, 110 members of the U.S. House of Representatives – 94 Republicans and 16 Democrats – signed a letter urging Energy Secretary Steven Chu to approve expanded exports of liquified natural gas (LNG). It was an overt sign of solidarity with the Obama Administration Department of Energy’s (DOE) LNG exports study, produced by a […]

New Video: Keystone XL the "Lynchpin" for Tar Sands Growth

A new video featuring four energy experts, outlines the issues surrounding the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, the Alberta tar sands and climate change. The video describes the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline as a “lynchpin enabling the climate intensive tar sands industry to grow unimpeded.” Watch it: The video features Dr. Danny Harvey, a Climatologist at the University […]

FreedomWorks Continues Dick Armey's Defense of Big Tobacco

The third in a series about Dick Armey and his relationship to the tobacco industry throughout his career. See part one and part two. In his last job as head of Freedomworks, Dick Armey became a more consistent and reliable ally for the tobacco industry for at least one of their pet issues: cigarette taxes. Under […]

Mystery Company Posts Job Opportunity For Anti Wind Power Protesters

Earlier this week, a Craigslist posting popped up that had that fresh stink of industry astroturf. The posting, listed for New York City, was from a mysterious company known only as “Ovation,” who was looking to hire “volunteers” to protest the construction of wind farms in Scotland and England.  The protest is to take place […]

Renewable Energy Capacity Surging, But America Betting On Shale Gas

A report from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Office of Energy Projects says that, in 2012, the capacity for renewable energy electrical generation accounted for almost 50% of all new installations for energy projects in the United States.  This includes solar, biomass, geothermal, and water-based generation capacity. On top of making up nearly half of all […]

Canadian Scientists Must Speak Out Despite Consequence, Says Andrew Weaver

“If people don’t speak out there will never be any change,” says the University of Victoria’s award-winning climate scientist Andrew Weaver.  And the need for change in Canada, says Weaver, has never been more pressing. “We have a crisis in Canada. That crisis is in terms of the development of information and the need for science to […]

James Lawrence Powell: Divest Over Global Warming?

This is a guest post by James Lawrence Powell, originally published on GoFossilFree.org A generation ago, students urged colleges to sell their stock in companies doing business in Apartheid South Africa. At least 155 colleges and universities, as well as 26 state governments, 22 countries, and 90 cities, partially or fully divested. One of the first […]

Smoke and Mirrors: Obama DOE Fracked Gas Export Study Contractor's Tobacco Industry Roots

At first, it was kept secret for months, cryptically referred to only as an “unidentified third-party contractor.” Finally, in November 2012, Reuters revealed the name of the corporate consulting firm the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) hired to produce a study on the prospective economic impacts of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports. LNG is the super-chilled final product of […]

Dick Armey's Long History of Working With Industry-Backed Groups

The second in a three-part series about Dick Armey and his relationship to the tobacco industry throughout his career. See part one here. There is no doubt that Dick Armey considered the tobacco industry a friend, as discussed in part one of this series. There is also no doubt that cigarette makers worked to stay on […]