All posts by BenIndy

In Q3 2023, Valero raked in 70% more per gallon in California than in any other region

[Note from BenIndy: Today, we came across an article claiming that Valero commanded  higher profits in California compared to other regions – in the third-quarter of 2023, at the very least. After looking for other articles from Q3 referencing Valero’s higher refining margins in California, we learned that Valero reported gross refining margins of 78 cents per gallon on the West Coast, vs. “41 cents for the Gulf Coast, 49 cents for the U.S. Mid-Continent, and 48 cents for the North Atlantic​​​​.” Consumer Watchdog, by the way, suggests that 50 cents is the ‘red line marker’ for price-gouging. Wow. While it’s a little old, the best analysis of the price-gouging allegations levied against Valero and other refining giants comes from this October 2023 Daily Kos post. The images in this post were added by BenIndy are are not original to the Daily Kos post.]

Valero Posts $2.6 Billion 3rd Quarter Profit On CA Gasoline Margins 70% Greater Than Other Regions

Image generated by DALL·E, OpenAI’s AI-driven image creation tool. Please note that this image’s text is gibberish and not connected to reality, a known flaw in AI image generators, but the big “78 cents” referencing Valero’s refining margins in Q3 2023 is certainly correct.

Los Angeles, CA—The third quarter report to shareholders by Valero Energy Corporation shows it made 70% more per gallon in California than in any other region of the U.S. or the globe that it operates in, according to a report from Consumer Watchdog today.

Headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, the corporation operates 15 refineries in the U.S., Canada and U.K.

Consumer Watchdog called for the California Energy Commission to expedite the process for setting a price gouging penalty under a new law passed this year, SBx1 2.

“It is time for the California Energy Commission to put its foot on the gas and set a price-gouging penalty on big refiners ripping us off at the pump,” said Consumer Advocate Liza Tucker. “It is time for the state to prevent refiners from using us as one big ATM.”

Valero, one of the five big California refiners that control nearly the entire gasoline market, reported net profits of $2.6 billion this quarter, down a tick from $2.8 billion the year before, according to Tucker. Its refining sector reported third quarter operating income of $3.4 billion, down from $3.8 billion the year before: investorvalero.com/…

“Our refineries operated well and achieved 95 percent through put capacity utilization, which is a testament to our team’s relentless focus on operational excellence,” gushed Lane Riggs, Valero’s Chief Executive Officer and President in a press release. “Product demand remained strong in our U.S. wholesale system, which matched the second quarter record of over 1 million barrels per day of sales volume.”

Tucker had a quite different assessment of the corporation’s “relentless focus on operational excellence” than Valero CEO Riggs, describing the company’s profit margins on the West Coast, obtained through apparent price gouging, as “eye popping.”

Image from the California Energy Commission’s November 28, 2023 “SBX1-2 Workshop on Maximum Gross Gasoline Refining Margin and Penalty” presentation. To learn more about this workshop, click this link. You will be redirected to the workshop page on the CEC’s website.

“3rd quarter gross refining margins of 78 cents per gallon were eye-popping on the West Coast, far higher than in any other of Valero’s operating regions,” she stated. “Valero reported margins on Gulf Coast at 41 cents; at 49 cents for the U.S. Mid-Continent; and 48 cents for the North Atlantic.”

“The West Coast gross refining margin also blew past Valero’s 60 cents per gallon reported in the third quarter of 2022. Valero only has West Coast refineries in California,” Tucker pointed out.

She also said the gross refining margins reported to investors understate the gasoline profits as jet fuel and diesel are included,

Data reported by refiners to the California Energy Commission shows the average gross refining margin from all refiners in California just for gasoline was $1.29 per gallon in August, double the January margin of 66 cents, and has been over $1.00 per gallon since February, according to Tucker. See: https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/californias-petroleum-market/california-oil-refinery-cost-disclosure

Senate Bill (SB) 1322 requires all refiners of gasoline products in the state to provide monthly data about various price and volume information. The California Energy Commission (CEC) must publish aggregated, volume weighted reports of this data, within 45 days of the end of each calendar month

Over the past two decades through 2021, shareholder reports reveal refiners did not exceed a gross refining margin of 50 cents per gallon—except three times by Chevron. See: https://seuc.senate.ca.gov/sites/seuc.senate.ca.gov/files/02-22-23_court_presentation.pdf

In 2022, all five refiners breached that 50-cent per gallon windfall profit barrier, noted Tucker. This data is corroborated by a recent report by the California Energy Commission looking back ten years based on OPIS data.  See: https://consumerwatchdog.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Item_09_OIIP_Refiner_Margin_Penalty_ada.pdf

“Last year, legislation empowered the California Energy Commission to form a special division to investigate gas prices in California and to set a price-gouging penalty, which Governor Newsom has called for. Last week, the Commission voted to begin such a proceeding that first involves the gathering of accurate data from refiners. SB 1322 requires refiners to report their margins to the regulator that then posts them on its website,” concluded Tucker.

WSPA and Big Oil pump Big Money into influencing California regulators 

As Valero made 70% more per gallon in California than in any other region of the U.S. or the globe that it operates in, the oil and gas regulators in“green” California, the seventh largest oil producing state in the nation, continue to issue new and reworked oil drilling permits. The Newsom administration has approved a total of 15,722 new and reworked oil wells since January 2019.

This year CalGEM, the state’s oil and gas regulator, “has gone rogue, approving hundreds of oil permits in vulnerable communities breathing poisonous emissions from both active and idle wells,” reported Consumer Watch and FracTracker Alliance. For a complete permit update, see: https://newsomwellwatch.com

Why do California regulators continue to approve hundreds of new and reworked oil drilling permits each quarter as oil companies like Valero gouge Californians at the pumps?

It’s all due to deep regulatory capture by Big Oil and Big Gas in the “green” and “progressive” state of California. The Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), Chevron and the oil companies exercise their influence and power through a very sophisticated public relations machine in California and the U.S.

WSPA describes itself as “non-profit trade association” that represents companies that account for the bulk of petroleum exploration, production, refining, transportation and marketing in Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. WSPA’s headquarters is located right here on L Street in Sacramento.

Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the President and CEO of WSPA, is the former chair of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force for the South Coast to create “marine protected areas” in the same region that she was lobbying for new offshore drilling.

Since 2009 I have documented how WSPA and the oil companies wield their power in 8 major ways: through (1) lobbying; (2) campaign spending; (3) serving on and putting shills on regulatory panels; (4) creating Astroturf groups; (5) working in collaboration with media; (6) sponsoring awards ceremonies and dinners, including those for legislators and journalists; (7) contributing to non profit organizations; and (8) creating alliances with labor unions, mainly construction trades.

The oil and gas industry spent over $34.2 million in the 2021-22 Legislative Session lobbying against SB 1137, legislation to mandate 3200 foot buffer zones around oil and gas wells, and other bills they were opposed to: cal-access.sos.ca.gov/…

For the oil companies, this was just pocket change when you consider that combined profits of California oil refiners, including PBF Energy, Chevron, Marathon Petroleum, Valero, and Phillips 66, were $75.4 billion in 2022.

The two biggest spenders were WSPA and Chevron. WSPA spent $11.7 million in the 2021-22 session, while Chevron spent a total of $8.6 million lobbying California officials.

Lobbying disclosures from Quarter 2 of 2023 reveal that oil companies and trade associations spent more than $3 million lobbying and a grand total of $4,085,639.57 in just three months to shape policymaking efforts in its favor in California. That brings the total spent by Big Oil and WSPA to over $13.4 million total in the first six months of 2023, putting them on track to exceed the 2022 expenditure of $18 million.

Chevron topped the lobbying expenses with $1,139,130, while WSPA placed second with $716,824.

The latest disclosures follow the $9.4 million that Big Oil spent to influence the California Legislature, Governor’s Office and agencies in the first quarter of 2023. Chevron came in first with over $4.9 million spent in the first quarter, while the WSPA finished second with over $2.3 million and Aera Energy finished third with nearly $628,000.

WSPA sponsors media dinners and awards for journalists

This year Big Oil has sponsored a chilling and highly successful campaign to sponsor dinners, awards ceremonies and conferences for journalists and the media. WPSA sponsored a “media dinner” on Tuesday, February 28 in Sacramento as part of #BizFedSactoDays.

The flyer for the event stated, “Journalists who play an outsize role in shaping narratives about state politics and holding lawmakers accountable will join business leaders to pull back the curtain on how they select and tell stories about California policies, policy and power.”

Speakers at the program included Coleen Nelson of the Sacramento Bee, Laurel Rosenhall of the Los Angeles Times, Kaitlyn Schallhorn of the Orange County Register and Dan Walters of Cal Matters.

Then on March 16, the Sacramento Press Club announced in a tweet that WSPA was the new “Lede Sponsor” of the Sacramento Press Club’s Journalism Awards Reception that was held on March 29: “Thank you to our new Lede Sponsor @officialWSPA! WSPA is dedicated to guaranteeing that every American has access to reliable energy options through socially, economically and environmentally responsible policies and regulations. Learn more more at http://wspa.org.

In response to this tweet, investigative journalist Aaron Cantu tweeted back on March 20, “As the recipient of @SacPressClub ’s environmental award last year, it’s concerning to see fossil fuel industry talking points passed off uncritically here. WSPA becoming lede sponsor happened in the context of a global PR turn as the climate crisis worsens.”

Unfortunately, Cantu and this writer are the only journalists with the courage to publicly criticize the sponsorship of a “journalism awards reception” by WSPA.

In addition to sponsoring journalism events in California, the Western States Petroleum Association has expanded its campaign to influence journalists nationally. WSPA and the controversial waste management firm Veolia North America sponsored events at this year’s Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) conference in Boise, Idaho, according to a report from DeSmog: https://www.desmog.com/2023/04/11/industry-sponsors-dinner-society-environmental-journalists-veolia-wspa.

The agenda for the conference, hosted in Boise, Idaho, revealed that WSPA and the waste management company Veolia North America sponsored two of the “beat dinners” hosted on April 21, the article by Sam Bright reported.

When #BigOil teams up with journalists, columnists and editors at events and only a couple of writers thinks there’s something wrong with this, you know we must be in deep trouble. Of course, no mainstream media reported on this huge scandal because it unveils the deep links between Big Oil and Big Media.

Background: California Oil Refinery Cost Disclosure Act Monthly Report

Senate Bill (SB) 1322 requires all refiners of gasoline products in the state to provide monthly data about various price and volume information. The California Energy Commission (CEC) must publish aggregated, volume weighted reports of this data, within 45 days of the end of each calendar month.

Specifically, SB 1322 requires the CEC to publish the following information from the refinery operators’ monthly reports:

  • A volume weighted gross gasoline refining margin for the state.
  • The gross gasoline refining margin for each refinery with two or more refining facilities in the state.
  • Volume and price of domestic and imported crude oil.
  • The breakdown of five types of sales required to be reported by refiners and associated volumes, prices per gallon, and actual or estimated costs associated with the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) and Cap and Trade programs.

SB X1-2, which took effect June 2023, expands the monthly reports to require refinery operators to provide net gasoline refining information. For more information, please visit Senate Bill X1-2 Implementation.

The data below complies with the CEC’s requirements to post the data as reported by the refiners. CEC continues to investigate the reported numbers. Additional findings, recalculations, further analysis, revised data, or other conclusions will be publicized here as we continue to verify the reported data.

Refiner Margin Data

Data last updated: October 18, 2023.

On October 3, 2023, the California Energy Commission published new petroleum market data showing the net gasoline refining information for California refiners. Volume-weighted average California gross refiner margin, net refiner margin, and numbers in the “Aggregated Data Reported” section are all calculated using information obtained from all six refinery companies. Gross and net margins reported by refinery company only reflect information from California refiners with two or more facilities which are Chevron, Valero, PBF, and Phillips 66.

The data show that in August, California refineries produced and sold 950,529,000 gallons of gasoline for a total estimated profit of $228,126,960.*

CEC staff will continue to collect and report refiner information on a monthly basis in order to analyze long-term trends as part of its assessment of setting a maximum gross refining margin and penalty for exceeding that maximum, as allowed by SB X1-2.

* Based on data reported by California refiners. The total profit estimate does not include spot pipeline transaction sales and may be considered a conservative estimate as a result.

January 6: A Date Which, in One Key Respect, Will Live in Infamy Even Worse Than Pearl Harbor

[Note from BenIndy: This post was first published on Stephen Golub’s blog, A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country. There, Steve blogs about domestic and international politics and policy, including lessons that the United States can learn from other nations. If interested, you may sign up for future posts by subscribing to the blog. The images showing featured in this post were added by BenIndy editors and are not original to Steve’s post.]

By Stephen Golub, January 5, 2024

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub, A Promised Land.

December 7. September 11. And as we recall the third anniversary of the U.S. Capitol being seized by rioters, January 6 has joined the ranks of the most horrible days in American history. In the words FDR applied to Pearl Harbor, it is a “a date which will live in infamy.”

Thankfully, the January 6, 2021 insurrection did not wreak nearly the massive deaths nor physical havoc of those other two days. But in one crucial respect, it’s proven even worse.

How so? In the wake of December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001, the country came together in the face of massive challenges to our democracy and way of life. In contrast, the time since Insurrection Day has seen us more divided than ever. What’s more, we face the distinct prospect of the person who prompted the insurrection – and a wide array of other attempts to subvert the 2020 election results – being returned to the presidency this year.

Lies have been piled on lies, to portray the insurrectionists as heroes. A quarter of Americans believe that the FBI probably or definitely organized and encouraged the attack; fewer than half of us say that it probably or definitely did not do so.

The original, underlying sin of the insurrection and Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election was his misbegotten claim that Joe Biden stole it. Yet, as former Rep. Liz Cheney has pointed out, “There were over 60 court cases where judges, including judges appointed by President Trump and other Republican presidents, looked at the evidence in many cases and said there is not widespread fraud.”

Donald Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to contest the certification of the 2020 U.S. presidential election results. | Ahmed Gaber/ Reuters.

To further hammer home this same point, eight leading Republican legal luminaries published a 2022 report that explained that the 2020 election was lost by Trump, not stolen by Biden. The group included two former U.S. senators, two former federal judges and a former chief of staff to two Republican congressional majority leaders. As he explained in asserting the Biden’s election was valid, “I’m certainly not a ‘Never-Trumper.’ I voted for Donald Trump twice for President.”

Trump’s legal allies failed in 61 of 64 cases. Even their three “wins” were minor, technical exceptions to the rule, all in Pennsylvania and none of them undercutting the validity of Biden’s victory there: They “threw out 270 provisional ballots lacking signatures, separated Election Day provisional ballots from those cast afterward, and moved back Pa.’s deadline for absentee voters to present voter ID by three days.”

I’m belaboring the point about these lawsuits because the conclusions by Republican judges and attorneys constitute key parts of the overwhelming proof that Trump has misled his followers – the over a thousand insurrectionists and the many millions of others – about 2020. Yet an August CNN poll found that two-thirds of Republican still attribute his loss to voter fraud.

Which brings us back to the insurrection, and the one respect in which January 6 was worse than December 7 and September 11, for all of their horrors.

Supporters of Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. | Brent Stirton / Getty Images.

Here’s how it’s worse: The drive to undermine our democracy continues. It includes Trump’s election denialism, as well as his Hitleresque attacks on political opponents as “vermin” and on undocumented aliens as “poisoning the blood of our country.”

But it also includes so much more. Just a partial compilation of Trump’s anti-democratic attitudes, actions statements and online activity includes his: excusing the January 6 insurrection; suggesting that the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff deserved execution; accusing NBC of treason and threatening to deny it airwaves access; threatening and otherwise attempting to intimidate judicial system personnel and witnesses; stating that he has “no choice” but to lock up certain political opponents if elected – even contemplating indicting Biden; praising Hungary’s authoritarian leader (as well as like-minded figures such as Vladimir Putin); and planning to politicize the federal civil service to do his political bidding.

Phil ScroggsUnsplash.

However, there’s another compilation we can take into account as we ponder January 6. It lists what we can do to prevent that date of infamy from defining not just our recent past, but our impending future. It’s what we can do to help save democracy. Here are a few such actions from that lengthy list:

First and foremost, voting for democracy, which means for Biden (or, in the unlikely event he does not run, whomever else the Democrats nominate). Personally, I believe he’s accomplished a lot. But you don’t have to be a fan of Joe to cast your vote for him. Recognizing the threat that Trump represents, a very conservative friend of mine (who thinks that Biden is lousy) intends to do so.

Not voting for a third party candidate, and not simply sitting out the election, even if you’re a progressive who feels Biden has fallen short. The choice is either/or: not voting for Biden only helps Trump. This election will be decided by voter turnout and whom people turn out for – we need only bear in mind 2000 and 2016 to recall the consequences of third party candidates’ impacts.

Finally, a biggie: Becoming politically active, whether it’s through donations, phone banks, canvassing, writing letters to editors, helping out in toss-up states or seeking to influence friends and relatives on the fence. Democracy is not a spectator sport.

Once more, Steve blogs about domestic and international politics and policy, including lessons that the United States can learn from other nations, at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country. We recommend you sign up for future posts by subscribing to the blog.


MORE POSTS FROM STEPHEN GOLUB:

Three of California’s biggest climate polluters are in the Bay Area (and yes, one of those three is Valero’s Benicia Refinery)

[Note from BenIndy: Valero’s Benicia Refinery is the 5th largest stationary greenhouse gas (GHG) emitter in California. As Sunflower Alliance founding member Shoshana Wechsler notes below, “[t]he thing that continues to strike me is that the Bay Area has no clue how important we are as a major fossil fuel hub. […] We need to understand that refining both petroleum and biofuels has a very negative effect on our public health and obviously contributes mightily to the climate crisis.” Let’s enter 2024 with clear eyes…and hope for clearer lungs come 2025.]

Valero’s Benicia Refinery, a principal contributor of greenhouse gas emissions in California, looms over residential neighborhoods. | Samantha Laurey / The Chronicle 2022.

SF Chronicle, by Kurtis Alexander, December 31, 2023

California’s largest greenhouse gas polluters, from power plants to oil refineries to chemical manufacturers, produced slightly fewer emissions last year than the previous year, federal data shows. But it’s still too much planet-warming gas to cut significantly into the problem of climate change, environmentalists say.

Three of the five biggest carbon emitters in the state were in the Bay Area, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2022 data on large polluting facilities. All three were refineries in the East Bay, where the process of turning crude oil into gasoline, jet fuel and other high-demand petroleum products creates substantial greenhouse gas discharges — even before the fuels themselves are used in vehicles or planes.

The refineries were among 367 large stationary sites in California that collectively reported 93 million metric tons of carbon pollution last year, a decline of about 1% over 2021, according to the data. The facilities produce about a quarter of the state’s total human-generated greenhouse gases, which does not include wildfires. Cars and trucks remain the biggest source of carbon emissions.

“The thing that continues to strike me is that the Bay Area has no clue how important we are as a major fossil fuel hub,” said Shoshana Wechsler, a founding member of the Sunflower Alliance, an East Bay group that advocates for reducing refinery pollution. “We need to understand that refining both petroleum and biofuels has a very negative effect on our public health and obviously contributes mightily to the climate crisis.”

Worldwide discharges of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, have contributed to warming the atmosphere about 2 degrees Fahrenheit in the post-industrial age. The heat, scientists say, has led to a host of problems, from an increase in drought and wildfire to rising seas and more extreme weather. The Earth’s 10 warmest years on record all were logged since 2010. This year is on track to be the hottest yet.

California regulators have established some of the most ambitious policies to restrict the release of greenhouse gases from large polluting facilities, including a cap-and-trade program that forces emitters to buy permits to pollute and requirements that electric utilities generate increasing amounts of clean energy.

Over the past decade, carbon emissions from the state’s big polluters have declined nearly 20%, according to the EPA data.

Many, though, say industry is still given too much leeway and stricter regulation is necessary given the climate challenge at hand. The state has a broad goal of reaching zero carbon emissions, on net, by 2045.

“Major polluters continue to pollute somewhat unabated,” said Nihal Shrinath, an associate attorney for the Sierra Club based in Oakland. “We really need to see much more aggressive emission reductions over the next 25 years.”

Shrinath said much of the decline in pollution from large facilities was due, not to regulation, but to unrelated factors, like Californians being more efficient with their energy use and needing less fossil fuels.

California’s top five greenhouse gas emitters were all oil refineries, according to the EPA data. Two were in Southern California in addition to the three in the East Bay: Chevron Richmond Refinery, Valero Benicia Refinery and Martinez Refining Company.

Ross Allen, a spokesperson for Chevron, described the company’s Richmond refinery as “absolutely essential to modern life in the Bay Area,” saying the facility supplied 60% of the fuel for Bay Area airports and about 20% of the gasoline used in Northern California. It also provides more than 3,000 jobs.

This is a screenshot of SF Chron’s interactive data table that shows greenhouse gas emissions from large industrial facilities in California, 2022. Click the image to be redirected to the webpage with the article and the table. Readers can use the table to search for and filter GHG emitters in this state. There may be a paywall.

“We are working to reduce carbon intensity of our operations, while continuing to provide an essential product,” he said.

The state’s refineries cumulatively emitted 22 million metric tons of carbon pollution in 2022, according to the EPA data. Refineries were the second-most-polluting type of facility, following power plants, which are far more numerous and emitted 35 million metric tons last year. The chemical industry, manufacturing hydrogen, nitrogen and other products, reported 10 million metric tons of emissions.

Also among California’s 25 biggest greenhouse gas polluters were two gas-fired power plants in Pittsburg and an oil refinery in Rodeo.

The EPA data on large polluting sites generally includes facilities discharging at least 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide and equivalent greenhouse gases a year, about what’s emitted by burning coal from 136 rail cars, according to the agency.


Since you’re here, learn more about Contra Costa’s search for accountability and transparency from refineries by clicking on any of the following links:

Bill McKibben: “An odd silence…at the end of humanity’s hottest year (yet)”

[BenIndy Contributor Kathy Kerridge: An essay about the biggest story of the year…]

From The Crucial Years, a Substack by Bill McKibben, December 28, 2023

Bill McKibben, Author, educator, and environmental activist; a founder of 350.org and Third Act.

The world—its politics, its economy, and its journalism—has trouble coping with the scale of the climate crisis. We can’t quite wrap our collective head around it, which has never been clearer to me than in these waning days of 2023.

Because the most important thing that happened this year was the heat. By far. It was hotter than it has been in at least 125,000 years on this planet. Every month since May was the hottest ever recorded. Ocean temperatures set a new all-time mark, over 100 degrees. Canada burned, filling the air above our cities with smoke.

And yet you really wouldn’t know it from reading the wrap-ups of the year’s news now appearing on one website after another.

Earlier today, for instance, the Times published an essay by investment banker and Obama consigliere Steven Rattner on “ten charts that mattered in 2023.” That’s the most establishment voice imaginable, in the most establishment spot. And the global temperature curve did make the list—at #10, well behind graphs about the fall in inflation, the president’s approval levels, the number of Trump indictments, the surge in immigrants, and the speed with with the GOP defenestrated Kevin McCarthy.

Indeed, yesterday the Times and the Post both published fine stories about 2023’s record temperatures, but they were odd: in each case, they centered on whether the year was enough to show that the climate crisis was “accelerating.” It’s an interesting question, drawing mainly on a powerful new paper by James Hansen (one that readers of this newsletter found out about last winter), but the premise of the reporting, if you take a step back, is kind of wild. Because the climate crisis is already crashing down on us. It doesn’t require “acceleration” to be the biggest—by orders of magnitude—dilemma facing our species.

In a sense, though, that’s the problem. Those stories in the Times and Post were a way to search for a new angle to a story that doesn’t change quite fast enough to count as news. (In geological terms, we’re warming at hellish pace; but that’s not how the 24/7 news cycle works.) It’s been record-global-hot every day for months now: the first few of those days got some coverage, but at a certain point editors, and then readers, begin to tune out. We’re programmed—by evolution, doubtless, and in the case of journalism by counting clicks—to look for novelty and for conflict. Climate change seems inexorable, which is the opposite of how we think about news.

The war in Gaza, by contrast, fits our defintions perfectly. It is an extraordinary tragedy, it changes day by day, and it is the definition of conflict. And perhaps there’s something we can do about it (which is why many of us have been trying to build support for a ceasefire). So, rightly, it commands our attention. But in a sense, it is the very familiarity of the war that makes it easy for us to focus on it; “mideast conflict,” like “inflation” or “presidential elections,” is an easily-accessed template in our minds. The images of the horror make us, as they should, feel uncomfortable—but it’s a familiar discomfort. The despair, and the resolve, we feel are familiar too; even the subparts of the story fit into familiar grooves (a New York Times reader would be forgiven for thinking the main front of the war is being played out in Harvard Yard, between free speech advocates and cancel culture warriors). Next year seems likely to be another orgy of familiarity: Joe Biden and Donald Trump, yet again.

Climate change has its own familiar grooves—above all the fight with the fossil fuel industry, which played out again at COP 28 in Dubai. But so much of the story is actually brand new: as this year showed, we’re literally in uncharted territory, dealing with temperatures no human society has ever dealt with before. And to head off the worst, we are going to require an industrial transition on a scale we’ve never seen before: there were signs this year that that transition has begun (by midsummer we were installing a gigawatt worth of solar panels a day) but it will have to go much much faster.

These changes—the physical ones, and the political and economic ones—are almost inconceivable to us. That’s my point; they don’t fit our easy templates.

And the point of this newsletter, now and in the years to come, is to try and explain the speed of our crisis, and explain what it dictates about the speed of our response. It’s a story I’ve been trying to put into perspective for 35 years now (the End of Nature was published in 1989, the first book about this crisis) and I’ll keep looking for new ways in. As the climate scientist Andrew Dessler put it in one year-end account, “The only really important question is, ‘How many more years like this we have to have before the reality of how bad climate change is breaks into the public’s consciousness?'”

Thank you for being part of this ongoing effort to break into that consciouness, and—well, happy new year. It’s coming at us, we might as well make it count.

In other energy and climate news:

+The LNG export fight has finally broken through into the big papers. The Times assigned three reporters to the story, and they published a long-awaited account the day after Christmas, under the headline “A Natural Gas Project Is Biden’s Next Big Climate Test.”

The decision forces the Biden administration to confront a central contradiction within its energy policies: It wants nations to stop burning the fossil fuels that are dangerously heating the planet and has heralded a global agreement reached in Dubai earlier this month to transition away from fossil fuels. But at the same time, the United States is producing record amounts of crude oil, is the leading exporter of liquefied natural gas and may approve an additional 17 export facilities, including CP2.

Since early September, activists have lit up TikTok and Instagram, delivered petitions to the Biden administration and met directly with senior White House climate officials to urge Mr. Biden to reject CP2. Jane Fonda recorded a video for Greenpeace calling on the public to work against the project.

“We have enough gas and export terminals to supply everything in the world right now,” said Naomi Yoder, a staff scientist at Healthy Gulf, one of many local groups working to stop the construction of new natural gas infrastructure in the area. “There is no need for additional facilities.”

+A favorite video to end the year. The New York City Labor Chorus, with Jeffrey Vogel doing much of the work, has redrafted the Hallelujah Chorus to be about our beautiful if troubled earth. Enjoy.


Subscribe to Bill McKibben’s Substack here. His newsletter is free, and, in his own words, “if you can’t afford the modest and voluntary subscription fee that underwrites it, then don’t worry. If it wouldn’t be a hardship—thank you!”