This story was co-published with Rolling Stone.

In Ohio’s rural southeastern corner, Marietta College geology professor David Jeffrey was among the residents worried that industry activity in America’s booming natural gas region could be polluting their drinking water. That’s “the biggest fear,” he said at an August meeting with top Ohio officials.

When Jeffrey and residents from advocacy groups Buckeye Environmental Network and Washington County for Safe Drinking Water met with Ohio officials, those state officials repeatedly assured residents that despite the up to 1.4 billion gallons of oil and gas wastewater injected in underground wells in their county and across Ohio each year, the state was unaware of any resulting drinking water contamination there.

“We would have heard about it,” Mary Mertz, director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR), which oversees both aspects of Ohio’s environment and its oil and gas industry, told residents in the August 17 virtual meeting.

“No one has called us that I’m aware of,” said Eric Vendel, ODNR’s oil and gas division chief. “We have a water investigation form that can be filled out and we would have my team down there and investigate the water.”

What officials did not tell the group that day is that five years earlier, the state did receive a call and, on Vendel’s orders, investigated a drinking water well for oil and gas wastewater contaminants in eastern Ohio, roughly 80 miles away from Washington County. Independent experts say the results are consistent with fracking wastewater contamination. Despite that and the water well’s location near two oil and gas wastewater injection wells, ODNR concluded fracking wastewater was not to blame, according to documents DeSmog and Rolling Stone obtained via public records request.

ODNR spokesperson Andy Chow told DeSmog and Rolling Stone: “When administrators were meeting with representatives in Washington County, they were discussing matters related to injection wells located in Washington County. ODNR stands by the comments made by its administrators.”

Concerns over polluted drinking water cross political and social divides, perhaps nowhere more so than rural Washington County. As intensely salty wastewater pushed below ground resurfaces, residents and officials have injected the issue into the already bitterly divided Ohio governor’s race. Susan Vessels, a Republican official in Washington County, recently appeared alongside Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dr. Amy Acton because of Acton’s pledge to pause new wastewater wells in this densely drilled area. “We have a chance to prevent the worst from happening, and we need to act now,” Acton told DeSmog and Rolling Stone.

Ohio ranks in the top 10 nationally for both oil and gas production. Fracking can occur within 100 feet of a school or rural home, and operators have been able to tap the gas-rich Marcellus and Utica formations by drilling directly beneath water reservoirs and state parks. But in order to maintain that production, the industry has to offload the tidal wave of toxic wastewater — rich in salts, carcinogens, heavy metals, and radioactive elements — that surfaces in the weeks and years that follow drilling an oil or gas well.

That wastewater gets pumped into injection wells deep below ground, where impermeable geological layers are supposed to keep it from leaking into oil and gas wells or drinking water supplies. Washington County, whose 19 injection wells outnumber all of Pennsylvania, has received complaints of this wastewater, or brine, flooding nearby oil and gas wells, according to the New York Times.

Now, an hour and a half drive north, in the town of Coshocton, Ohio, records show evidence of a family’s drinking water polluted by high levels of the same types of salts found in fracking wastewater.

“This is different”

In early November 2021, Bill Burgan, an eastern Ohio water well driller, called ODNR to complain about water from a 360-foot well he had drilled in 2017 for the Fisher family in Coshocton, according to ODNR documents. At the beginning of 2021, their water had become salty and corrosive. Not only did it leave a salty taste in the mouth, but it caused their hot water tanks to rust out prematurely. The couple had replaced two tanks in four years. Within weeks, the newest one became coated in an unidentifiable white precipitate.

“Sometimes we drill through pockets of salt,” said Burgan, president of American Drilling and Pump Service, in an interview with DeSmog and Rolling Stone this summer outside his Stone Creek, Ohio, shop. “But this is different, it’s fracking waste.”

Burgan told DeSmog and Rolling Stone, and, separately, ODNR according to public records, that he expressed concern that the Fishers’ drinking water well became impacted by an oil and gas wastewater injection well located less than two miles from the family’s home and operated by a Texas-based company called Buckeye Brine. The local community vigorously opposed Buckeye Brine’s installment of the injection well, where since 2014 the company has injected over 400 million gallons of waste.  

After receiving Burgan’s complaint, ODNR swiftly launched an investigation that agency geologist Tamara Richards said “will focus solely on contaminants associated with oil and natural gas exploration and production,” according to public records. 

The state’s results indicate signatures of possible drinking water pollution from oil and gas wastewater, according to independent experts who reviewed the findings. Ohio’s final report on the incident, completed in January 2022, found two separate indicators of potential fracking wastewater contamination — total dissolved solids, and chloride —  in the Fisher family’s water. Both tested at more than five times the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) limits. ODNR also tested for sodium, which lacks a formal EPA limit but has a threshold, as high levels can cause unpleasant taste and health problems for diabetics. In the Fishers’ water, sodium was 17 times the EPA threshold.

According to Jeffrey, the Marietta College geologist, high levels of total dissolved solids, chloride, and sodium also are found in the sea of fracking wastewater pumped into injection wells like the one operated by Buckeye Brine.

However, ODNR concluded there was “no evidence of an oilfield related impact” and pinned the cause of the contamination on a sandstone layer called the “Big Injun” that the agency, without providing any data, stated “appears to be” naturally salty and surrounded part of the family’s water well.

But Jeffrey said testing done by the state did not look at enough parameters to determine that the contamination was natural and not from fracking wastewater. “It seems ODNR is either stonewalling, misdirecting, or just doesn’t know what they are doing,” he told DeSmog and Rolling Stone.

In a separate case that would unfold over a year after ODNR tested the Fishers’ water, the agency was considering whether leaking injection wells or else the “Big Injun” sandstone formation might be contaminating conventional oil and gas wells in Athens County, just west of Washington County. This time, ODNR concluded the impacts “cannot be plausibly explained” by the sandstone formation due to its unique brine signature, citing a “June 2, 2020 technical analysis prepared by ALL Consulting.” The agency added that impacts from this natural layer would have been consistent from the start, and “it is unlikely” they would have appeared only after the injection well operator began working. ODNR ultimately suspended the permit for a set of three injection wells that were eventually shut in for leaking fracking wastewater. ODNR has not yet replied to questions regarding this case.

When asked about the state’s findings in Coshocton and their scientific evidence, Burgan was dismissive. “They are covering it up,” he said, “because they are making too much money off of this.”

Oil and gas companies pay Ohio five cents a barrel to dispose of in-state wastewater, and 20 cents for wastewater imported from other states. Much of the waste injected comes from neighboring West Virginia and Pennsylvania. With at least a billion gallons of waste injected every year, that income translates to an average of $2.4 million annually for state coffers, according to state documents.

“The ODNR Division of Oil and Gas Resources Management uses evidence and facts, testing, and the latest technologies to evaluate complaints of brine migration” and “stands by the results of its investigation,” said ODNR spokesperson Chow.

But ODNR did not investigate the Buckeye Brine injection well, subject of the original complaint, or any other injection wells. It did investigate “producing oil and gas wells within a one-half mile radius” of the family’s home.

After Burgan’s company reached out, we “contacted ODNR and ODNR was not interested in any further efforts on the matter,” said Susie Patterson, the manager at Buckeye Brine, by email. Patterson said groundwater monitoring wells installed in 2019 and sampled quarterly showed “no indication of contamination by oilfield substances,” or that “the water was not fit for consumption due to contaminants,” and pinned issues with the Fishers’ well on the water well driller. 

“The wells were drilled much deeper than surrounding wells producing good drinking water,” said Patterson. “It is Buckeye’s opinion that the driller was trying to justify to the well owner the bad wells.”

The Fishers declined to participate in the story. 

The Oil and Gas Industry’s Trillion-Gallon Problem

Across America, over one trillion gallons of oil and gas wastewater are generated every year — enough to fill a line of waste barrels to the moon and back 28 times. Nearly all of this waste — 96 percent — will be injected deep into the earth at disposal injection wells.

Given the oil and gas industry’s reliance on injection wells as a critical means of disposal for a dangerous waste stream, analysts have referred to injection wells as a linchpin to the sound operation of the entire oil and gas industry. Disposal of oil and gas wastewater is the industry’s “Achilles’ heel,” said Ted Auch, a researcher at the oil and gas industry watchdog Fieldnotes. A 2021 Rice University Center for Energy Studies report stated that if the industry did not have injection wells to rely on for waste disposal, the “resulting economic impacts would be profound — and likely, existential.” 

The United States has more than 181,400 oil and gas wastewater injection wells, but as industry leaders testified at the Texas state capitol in August, lack of space to store this toxic brine already is threatening to curtain oil and gas production in Texas’ productive Permian Basin. Even where it has been stored, increasing evidence shows the wastewater is not always staying put.

Injection has proven particularly problematic in Ohio, where state regulators have halted operations at over half a dozen injection wells, citing concerns that fracking wastewater has leaked and has traveled up to five miles underground to contaminate conventional oil and gas wells. ODNR noted in a 2023 letter to DeepRock Disposal Solutions, a southeast Ohio company formerly run by the chair of the state senate’s energy committee, that such incidents pose a risk to public health and drinking water too.   

In Texas, wastewater shot down injection wells has burst back to the surface at old oil and gas wells, at times generating 100-foot geysers of brine in the desert, and Inside Climate News reported that oilfield waste has contaminated drinking water sources in the heart of West Texas oil country. Reporting by ProPublica revealed the situation is similar in neighboring Oklahoma, where regulators have clashed over how far to rein in the injection industry, despite state evidence showing drinking water sources polluted with contaminants consistent with oilfield waste. 

Independent scientists raise the question of whether other oil and gas states may be facing similar problems.

“We have always been concerned as environmental scientists and geologists in this area that there is no underground containment in these [injection] wells,” said Jen Bowman, a water chemistry expert and the director of environmental programs at Ohio University, in Athens. “What so many folks in this area don’t understand, our underground layers are just rock layers so there is no magic underground lake where you are getting water from, and there is no magic underground storage container where the waste is going.” Injecting millions of gallons of waste at high pressure means contamination miles from the site of injection is inevitable, she said.

“This is not a good plan or disposal mechanism for potentially dangerous materials,” Bowman told DeSmog and Rolling Stone, “especially given that people rely on groundwater in so much of rural Ohio.”

The concern about drinking water in Washington County is exactly what motivates Susan Vessels, the Republican president of the Marietta City Council. She has led the council in writing a resolution, passed last October, urging Ohio state legislators to introduce legislation imposing a three-year moratorium on new wastewater injection wells in Washington County. More recently she has crossed the political aisle when Amy Acton, the former state health director, came to Marietta last month as part of her gubernatorial campaign. Acton supports Vessels’ proposed moratorium and is facing an ugly, expensive race against billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy. 

Acton told DeSmog and Rolling Stone that the fight over injection wells and drinking water contamination comes down to ensuring a better future for Marietta and all of Ohio. 

“That is why I am committing to a three-year moratorium on wastewater injection wells in Washington County,” said Acton. “I’m fighting against the corruption in our Statehouse and the cost of that corruption that we pay for. We must act to protect our resources and our drinking water.” Ramaswamy’s campaign has not replied to questions. 

“Drinking water is not political,” said Vessels, “and it is my hope Ohioans will come together across party lines on this issue.”

In an op-ed, she took to task the GOP contender Ramaswamy, who called people “whiners” for raising concerns about clean water, energy use, and other issues as proposals for AI data centers arrive in Ohio.

Washington County water well driller Phillip Johnson said he has drilled hundreds of private water wells in the region. He disagreed with the state’s conclusion that brine from the sandstone formation caused the Fisher family well’s contamination.

“I think they are full of shit, and that is point-blank my opinion,” he said.  

Johnson said that if the sandstone formation was the cause of the salt contamination in the Fishers’ drinking water, then the salty taste should have been there from the beginning, and not strengthened over time as the couple reported, according to ODNR documents.

“Just because you drill 1,000 wells and everything works fine, it just takes one well to not work right for there to be a problem,” said Johnson. “It is nature, if you pump something down under pressure, the path of least resistance is up.”

“I am all for drilling oil and gas,” he added, “but fresh natural water is the most essential natural resource there is, in this country, the state, anywhere in the world, and if you contaminate it, you essentially ruin everything.”

Dominic DiGiulio, a retired EPA scientist with a doctorate in geoscience and decades of experience investigating the movement of underground fluids, provided another assessment of the state’s conclusions in the Coshocton case.

“The ODNR’s logic for stating that the domestic well is partially screened in the Big Injun formation is flawed,” said DiGiulio, who also previously consulted for government agencies and NGOs. “ODNR does not provide compelling evidence.”

The post Ohio Denies Evidence of Fracking Waste in Drinking Water. Its Own Records Show Otherwise.  appeared first on DeSmog.

At a Tuesday campaign rally for Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton in Lubbock, Texas, President Trump announced the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposal to roll back a Biden-era methane rule, setting up a likely future showdown in how the agency oversees climate pollution under the Clean Air Act.

The proposal marks a break from the agency’s previous approaches to greenhouse gas regulation by maintaining that — for now — the EPA still has the authority to regulate climate pollution from the oil and gas industry, though it might revisit this decision later. With affordability top of mind for many midterm voters, however, the President framed the move in economic terms.   

“Tonight I’m officially terminating Biden’s expensive and unnecessary methane regulations,” Trump announced to the crowd, located near the oil-rich Permian Basin. The new plan would loosen federal requirements for oil and gas operators to detect and repair leaks, ease restrictions on gas flaring, and eliminate the Super Emitter Program, a third-party monitoring and reporting system designed to identify major releases of methane, known as a climate super pollutant.

Trump said the proposal, which addressed a 2024 rule known as OOOOb/c, would “save consumers and energy producers $45 billion in costs, unlock vast quantities of Texas natural gas, and produce 210 million barrels of oil.” Under President Biden, the EPA estimated the rule would prevent the release of 58 million tons of methane and 16 million tons of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), leading to major public health and climate benefits. Climate change already is raising costs for American households by an estimated $400 to $900 annually, according to a 2025 Brookings report.  

Trump’s Lubbock announcement follows a series of sweeping deregulatory moves by the EPA in which the agency has stated it does not have the authority to regulate the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change under the Clean Air Act. EPA’s most notable decision came in February when the agency rescinded the 2009 endangerment finding, the U.S. government’s scientific finding that greenhouse gases harm human health and the environment and the legal basis for its rules addressing climate change. More recently, the EPA stated in September that it would no longer limit climate pollution for power plants, a move which would likely extend the lifespan of coal-fired power plants. 

In the wake of these decisions, however, legal experts and environmental advocates say that the EPA is attempting to assert power unevenly. On the one hand, the agency says it lacks the legal authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars, trucks, power plants, and industrial sources under the Clean Air Act. On the other, the latest EPA proposal relies on, in some cases in the same section of, the Clean Air Act to regulate methane, a greenhouse gas, from the oil and gas industry.

In its latest proposed rule, the EPA addresses this tension, acknowledging that “stakeholders have also raised concerns” about the agency’s authority to regulate the oil and gas sector’s greenhouse gas emissions under the landmark air pollution law. Depending on the agency’s final handling of the issue with fossil fuel-fired power plants, the EPA states it could then use a “future rulemaking” to resolve the issue in the oil and gas sector. (The EPA is accepting public comments on its proposed repeal of its authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions for fossil fuel-fired power plants until Nov. 2.)

Attacking EPA’s ‘flawed legal basis’

In 1999, the oil and gas industry’s largest trade group, the American Petroleum Institute (API), organized a meeting over whether it should “coordinate a multi-industry, trade group response” to the threat of what it called EPA’s “flawed legal basis” for regulating greenhouse gas pollution, including carbon dioxide and methane, under the Clean Air Act. In 2024, the API filed a legal challenge over the OOOOb/c rule, which was eventually consolidated into a lawsuit with states and other industry trade groups. That suit has been paused while the agency reconsiders the rule.

Parts of the oil and gas industry have flagged this distinction in how the Trump EPA is handling two different greenhouse gases under the same law. Shortly after the EPA repealed the endangerment finding, the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance (DEPA), an oil and gas trade association founded by fracking magnate and Trump donor Harold Hamm, wrote a letter to the EPA, thanking the agency for “restoring the rule of law.” The group called out “methane and other greenhouse gas emission requirements for the oil and gas sector” among its examples of “major regulations based on the Endangerment Finding.”

A few months later, after the agency published an update on its proposed reconsideration of the OOOOb/c methane rule, DEPA wrote in an internal newsletter that EPA “does not explain its legal reasoning for continuing to regulate methane emissions when it has found that it does not have the authority to regulate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from vehicles and has proposed it does not have the authority to regulate power plants’ CO2 emissions.”

On Tuesday in Corpus Christi, the president called out Hamm by name at another midterms rally shortly before the one announcing the methane rule rollback. “Harold Hamm is here, the great oilman,” said Trump, looking around the audience. “Hi, Harold.” 

‘The Very Definition of Arbitary’

Legal experts and environmental advocates say the EPA’s inconsistency leaves unresolved important legal questions about the federal government’s authority to regulate climate pollution, potentially keeping the door open to upend federal methane regulation entirely.

“Treating similar pollutants under the same statute differently, with no stated reason or evidence, is the very definition of arbitrary and capricious decision making,” said Alejandro Camacho, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Camacho argues that if the EPA adopts a broad theory limiting its authority over greenhouse gases, it must explain why that theory doesn’t also undermine its authority to regulate methane. “States have already sued over the power plant repeal, as have health and environmental groups, and they can and should attack this inconsistency too,” he added.

The EPA’s proposal nods to the industry’s questioning of its authority and points to the agency’s history of handling the oil and gas sector separately, “but the agency hasn’t explained how it will navigate it,” said Rosalie Winn, senior director and lead counsel on methane and clean air policy for the Environmental Defense Fund.

Mary Sasso, an attorney for the Clean Air Task Force, said the agency’s decision to defer the question could leave the future of methane regulation uncertain. “I think that there’s very real concerns that we could see changes to EPA’s interpretation of its own authority finalized in some type of regulation that would be really damaging for public health and the environment,” she said.

Camacho agrees, and warned that the deferral could foreshadow future agency backtracking. “The deferral is less a reasoned distinction than a placeholder for the next rollback,” he said.

The administration also argues that the proposed changes will reduce regulatory costs, encourage domestic energy production, and help lower prices for consumers. “Since day one, President Trump has been putting real money back into the hands of American people by putting American energy back in the hands of the American workers, businesses, and communities,” said Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in a press statement about the proposal.

Consumer savings uncertain

Although the EPA estimates that the proposed rollback to the methane rule would save consumers tens of billions of dollars, the relationship between domestic production and consumer prices is more complicated, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. In an emailed response to DeSmog, the EPA said its estimate reflected the anticipated cost oil and gas operators would save by not having to comply with regulations, their excess profits, and consumer savings. The proposed rule reflects this calculation in its Regulatory Impact Analysis section, but does not provide further details on how the agency determined these figures. These figures are not independently established consumer savings.

“As much as it would be easy to paint oil executives as cartoonish villains hiking prices while families suffer, individuals have little to no control over benchmark oil prices,” said Kelly Mitchell, the executive director of the oil and gas watchdog Fieldnotes.

“The administration may claim that new rules will incentivize new production, bringing online supply to counter the barrels trapped behind the Strait of Hormuz,” Mitchell said. “However, these new rules are primarily designed to help operators of marginal wells — wells that produce fewer than 15 barrels per day.”

Mitchell questioned whether the benefits of the rollback would reach consumers, arguing that changes would primarily reduce costs for oil and gas operators without guaranteeing lower prices at the pump. “We’re left with an outcome where oil companies get to war profiteer, avoid using any of those profits to clean up a major pollution source, and fail to reduce prices. Now they have the gall to look us in the eyes and tell us this is a gift to the American consumer.”

Since rescinding the endangerment finding, the EPA no longer accounts for the cost of harms from additional climate pollution — only the economic harms — which does not figure into the new rule’s estimated savings. Meanwhile, in a study recapping the last decade of climate-induced health harms, the Lancet reported a record high of 710,000 heat-related deaths in 2023 — and almost 72 percent of them caused by climate change.

The proposed rule places particular emphasis on a class of low-producing facilities known as marginal wells, which typically produce relatively small amounts of oil and gas. The Trump administration alleges that regulations established under the previous administration stymied these wells. “Under crooked Joe Biden, ‘Dumocrats’ crushed the small oil and gas operators,” Trump said during the rally Tuesday. “There are small operators, they’re great operators too, I know so many of them — with crippling regulations and methane that caused prices to skyrocket.”

The EPA says many of these wells are family-owned operations that struggle with the costs of complying with Biden-era standards, but an Environmental Defense analysis found that nearly half of all marginal wells are owned by just 93 corporations.

The proposed methane rule reconsideration is the latest development in a broader campaign to weaken federal methane protections under the purview of Aaron Szabo, a former registered lobbyist for a member of a major trade group pushing for these rollbacks. Earlier this month, Szabo stepped down as the head of the EPA Office of Air and Radiation. Last month, DeSmog reported that members of the oil and gas industry had simultaneously voiced public support for federal methane rules while covertly working to “eviscerate”them during the second Trump administration, according to an investigation published by Fieldnotes.

The proposed changes to the OOOOb/c methane rule are not yet final. The EPA says it will provide at least 45 days for public commentafter publication in the Federal Register, including a public hearing.

The post President Trump Unveils EPA’s New Contradictory Methane Proposal at Campaign Rally appeared first on DeSmog.

Two directors of GB News, which has loudly advocated for the new Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields, hold shares in the firms behind the projects.

Sir Paul Marshall, a millionaire hedge fund boss who also owns The Spectator magazine, and Lord (Theodore) Agnew of Oulton, a Conservative peer and donor, sit on the board of All Perspectives Ltd, the holding company of GB News.

Marshall is also one of its two principal funders, pumping money into the loss-making right-wing outlet.

GB News – which employs Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and former Tory Cabinet minister Jacob Rees-Mogg – has strongly supported new North Sea drilling, with presenters recently calling Rosebank “a no-brainer” that should be approved “instantly”.

The Labour government last week approved the development of the Jackdaw gas field near Aberdeen and is expected to make a decision on Rosebank soon.

Rosebank would create an estimated 250 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions over its 10-year lifetime, roughly 70 percent of the UK’s total annual emissions. The oil and gas field near the Shetland Islands is 80 percent owned by Adura, an “independent joint venture” by the fossil fuel giants Equinor and Shell that also owns the Jackdaw site.

At the end of June, Marshall’s hedge fund Marshall Wace held $16.3 million (around £12.3 million) of stock in Shell, according to its latest filings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Meanwhile, Lord Agnew is a shareholder in Equinor, owning a stake in the company worth at least £100,000 according to his parliamentary register.

DeSmog first revealed Marshall Wace’s huge fossil fuel portfolio in 2023, which increased to $2.8 billion (£2.1 billion) in the first quarter of this year.

One of Marshall Wace’s biggest backers, U.S. private equity giant KKR, is itself a major investor in fossil fuels.

“GB News has gone way beyond just covering the Rosebank decision. Presenters repeatedly attacked the energy secretary for considering rejecting it, and demanded that the government ‘drill baby drill’,” said Richard Wilson, director of the campaign group Stop Funding Heat.

“The public deserves to know when the people overseeing a TV station have a financial stake in the outcome it’s pushing for”.

Wilson also pointed out that media regulator Ofcom requires “due impartiality” from broadcasters on live policy decisions, potentially including the approval of specific oil fields.

“It’s time for Ofcom to take action,” he said. “In the meantime, it’s vital that advertisers continue to steer clear of GB News”.

Paul Marshall and Marshall Wace declined to comment. GB News and Lord Agnew were approached for comment.

GB News’s ‘Rosebank-tinted’ Coverage

Presenters and guests on GB News have vocally backed the Rosebank and Jackdaw projects.

On 26 October, Rees-Mogg, who lost his seat at the 2024 general election, was asked for his view on Rosebank, replying: “Oh, drill, baby drill. We should get on with it as fast as possible,” adding that the UK should also overturn its ban on fracking for shale gas.

On 19 August, GB News presenter Andrew Pierce interviewed Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice about the two projects, saying: “If both of them were given the go-ahead, wouldn’t that instantly create some of the extra fuel security, energy security we need, apart from the revenue for the Exchequer?”

Tice replied, “Of course. Both should be given the go-ahead instantly,” adding that the government should grant new North Sea exploration licences, which would break its 2024 manifesto commitment.

On 22 October, Pierce himself called Jackdaw “brilliant” and said it was “madness” for Labour MPs to oppose Rosebank.

GB News political editor Christopher Hope has also made the case for Rosebank, remarking on 26 October: “We’re buying in the oil and gas we would take from Rosebank. Anyway, why not make it in [the UK] and get tax revenue from that asset?”

A few days earlier, on 16 October, he said: “It seems like a no-brainer to many, but not on the left of politics.”

Last week, the GB News website ran an opinion article by Russell Borthwick, the chief executive of Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce, headlined: “Jackdaw approval is a victory for common sense. Now it’s Rosebank’s turn.”

As DeSmog has documented, GB News has long backed new fossil fuels and attacked climate action. It has also given a platform to climate science deniers, including from the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), a pressure group that says more CO2 emissions would be a “benefit to the planet”.

Marshall has also personally criticised policies designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, claiming in a speech to the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference in February 2025 that the world has been infected by a “climate derangement syndrome”. He said “our economic prosperity and our people’s livelihoods” are being sacrificed “all for the sake of making some fractional changes to the level of CO2 in the atmosphere”.

In reality, reaching net zero emissions is predicted to cost only a fraction of UK GDP, while the extreme weather events caused by climate change could have a dramatic impact on the global economy.

Marshall’s Spectator magazine, edited by former Conservative Cabinet minister Michael Gove, has also strongly supported new North Sea drilling.

A piece last week by anti-net zero columnist Ross Clark hailed Jackdaw as “a small victory for common sense” but lamented that Labour will not approve Rosebank so long as the UK keeps its net zero targets.

The Spectator’s “gossip columnist” Steerpike also last week accused Labour MPs of “throwing a tantrum over Jackdaw”, and concluded: “It has taken years, and so much time has been wasted, but at least the most obvious decision facing the country has finally been made. The question is whether Burnham will be brave enough to approve Rosebank as well.”

The Spectator was approached for comment.

The post Two GB News Directors Have Investments in Oil Companies Behind Rosebank and Jackdaw appeared first on DeSmog.

Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor’s End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World is critical reading for anyone seeking to understand and push back against the far-right coalitions wielding considerable state and corporate power around the world.

Klein and Taylor posit that today’s fascists believe that end times have arrived, and have made it their mission to profit from cascading global crises, while hunkering down and protecting themselves as the world burns around them.

The book details three factions of end times fascists, united by their shared apocalypticism. The religious fundamentalists believe end times are upon us, but they will be saved by their messiah. The Silicon Valley technologists are building technologies they say could be world-ending, that in the meantime are killing jobs, consuming vast resources, and polluting communities. The ethno-nationalists espouse conspiratorial ideas about cultural replacement and treat immigration as an existential threat.

DeSmog Canada editor/reporter Mary Stuart spoke with Astra Taylor about how climate change fits into end times fascism, the importance of AI data centre fights, and how we can understand Canadian Prime Minister Carney’s neoliberal moves in response to U.S. President Donald Trump.

Taylor is a writer, documentarian, and activist. She co-founded the Debt Collective, a membership-based union for debtors, and is the author of several books, including The Age of Insecurity and Democracy May Not Exist But We’ll Miss It When It is Gone.

This interview was conducted by phone and has been edited for length and clarity.

Mary Stuart: I want to start by asking how your book can help us understand some recent elections. Jair Bolsonaro’s son Flávio won the first round of voting in Brazil’s election and nearly became president. The far-right AfD recently won in Saxony-Anhalt. How do these wins fit into your analysis of end times fascism?

Astra Taylor: One phenomena we describe in End Times Fascism relevant here is the role of Pentecostal religious communities in turning out the vote. To paraphrase reporting from Brazil, a voter said “my heart’s with Lula, but my pastor told me to vote for Flávio”.

The incredibly difficult conditions that we’re living under created fertile terrain for prophecy and religion, for kinds of pentecostalism, a faith that is focused on prosperity, individual advancement and banking on the idea that life is suffering here on earth, but you will be rewarded in the afterlife.

There’s also interference from Tech oligarchs. We don’t know the half of it at this moment, but the way the platform [Meta] refused to run ads for Lula’s party and beyond is certainly a factor. And the Trump regime [is playing a role] as well.

AfD is a similar. Naomi and I wrote a piece in the Financial Times and we open with the images that went viral this summer of the Danube River drying, and Nazi warships emerging. Hundreds of Nazi warships sank during WWII, and as the river receded, this paraphernalia was coming out of the mud. We thought it was a powerful metaphor for today. What’s really striking is the riverbed— the fact that it’s drying because of climate change. Our point is that fascism always emerges from crises. And we cannot separate the ecological and economic crises people are facing.

People are really struggling with affordability. People are feeling that they don’t have a future. And actually quite strikingly, rates of immigration are quite low, right? So [Saxony-Anhalt is] one of the places with the least immigration, but [the AfD] step in and say “the problem is the immigrants, it’s not a larger economic system.” This is a classic fascist move that we describe throughout the book.

MS: What role do climate change and climate denial play in end times fascism?

AT: Naomi and I are insistent that the planet is a player in our politics. Fascism always surges in moments of crisis.

We are in a world that is being roiled by disasters and shocks. We’ve reached a point where the consequences [of climate change] are undeniable. You cannot deny a heat dome when you’re inside it. You cannot deny a hurricane when it’s blowing the roof off your house. Of course, you can still deny why the storm is coming. You can embrace a Marjorie Taylor Greene perspective and say that it’s due to space lasers or you can say “the climate has always changed, this is nothing new, we don’t know if it’s human causing it.”

The far-right is adapting to circumstances … where ecological catastrophes are the norm, people can’t pay their property insurance bills anymore because the rates have been jacked up or because the insurers have pulled out, or where people have to pay the cost of fixing their homes or moving because of disasters.

The far-right is having to acknowledge that there are fires, there are storms, that people are suffering. They’re responding by deflecting, by saying, “don’t blame the fossil fuel companies and the politicians who take their money, blame the globalists in the EU and their climate policies, or blame the immigrants”.

We saw this really vividly after Hurricane Helene, a tropical storm that hit Appalachia. Trump and Elon Musk were going around saying “FEMA has no money for you because the Democrats spent it on immigrants.” So they use the hurricane to advance the Great Replacement Conspiracy. It’s an amazing pivot to go from a storm destroying tens of thousands of houses to say, “the problem is the globalists are importing immigrants to replace you”. But it’s working.

People have been warning for many years about ecofascism being the consequence of climate change. Ecofascism is the consequence of decades of denial, not just from the far-right, but by liberals who insisted that we could address this crisis through market policies that were doomed to fail.

It’s absolutely criminally irresponsible to not talk about climate change right now because that will create a vacuum for this pivot from the real arsonists to the immigrant victims. And we need to insist on robust climate policies. Not just renewables. It’s investments in care work and in all sorts of low carbon important initiatives. It needs to be at the centre of our politics.

There was a time when liberals could think people will stop denying climate change when they experience it firsthand. We’re seeing that is not true. People in that state of vulnerability and shock are more susceptible to strongmen and scapegoating, and we need to be right there with a different plan and a different story.

MS: In the book you talk about a number of site fights and bright spots, one of them being the AI data centre backlash. What is the importance of AI data centre fights in defeating end times fascism? Can these fights be sites of expansion for movements to touch on other issues as well?

AT: The data centre fight is an amazing opportunity to weave together all of these issues that we know are interconnected. People aren’t fighting data centres in their backyard for just one reason. They are fighting them because they care about their air and water, because they don’t want a future where all the jobs are gone and every bit of economically valuable work, as OpenAI calls it, is performed by robots. It’s also a democracy fight. These data centres are coming in under the cover of non-disclosure agreements, often with little input from even the city council and no input from the community.

But it’s more than that. There’s such intensive capital expenditure, like borrowing on capital markets right now. That’s part of why interest rates are being jacked up around the world, which increases the cost of borrowing for ordinary people. Rates are going up, it’s making homes more unaffordable. The fact that the population is buried by debt is a huge part of what drove Flávio Bolsonaro’s surge in recent months.

All of these factors are compounding, and so it would be foolish for environmentalists not to intervene and try to connect those those dots. The data centre fight has to be connected to affordability.

MS: In Canada, our Prime Minister Mark Carney is a former investment banker who Naomi recently referred to as the ‘paragon of liberalism’. He’s privatizing key pieces of Canadian infrastructure, doubling down on fossil fuels, other extractive projects, and AI, while using the language of standing up to Trump. His approval ratings are incredibly high. How are we to understand this?

AT: Naomi might call him a paragon of liberalism. I call him Sir banks a lot. I don’t trust bankers, especially those who are committed to the kind of neoliberalism and financialization that he’s proposing.

It’s dangerous to say “peer into the window, asset managers of the world. Canada has lots of resources that you can purchase and we have a healthcare system that can still be privatized and higher education system that still has some public funding that we could siphon off to the private sector.”

These are the policies and conditions that created fertile terrain for the far-right. Carney does not seem to have learned that lesson. It was striking when he gave that speech at Davos, about there being a rupture. The world was so ready for Canada to lead, and to project onto that speech that he was actually standing up for true universalism and for international law.

Instead he’s doing this nostalgic hyper-nationalist neoliberalism that isn’t really nationalist, because it was reported by the the Toronto Star that the amount of money going to [the] American tech sector from the Department of National Defense has doubled in the last year. He’s spending Canadian money to enrich the very companies that are behind Trump. You cannot fight oligarchy with oligarchy. You definitely can’t fight fascism with oligarchy. You fight it with solidarity and with democratic socialism, with addressing the root crises.

People want to believe that this figure can protect them when the truth is protection is in building collective power and insisting on a deep economic and political transformation. What he’s doing is incredibly dangerous. And the fact that he’s rolling back already weak climate policies when Canada’s main export is wildfire smoke, is just incredibly insulting and incredibly dangerous. The world needs Canada to stand firm against fascism.

MS: You talk about the power of stories, and detail the stories that the end times fascists are telling. What’s a counter story that’s been missing?

AT: In the book we talk about how we need to tell stories not of end times but of better times. We are entering a period where there are going to be roiling crises. We need to figure out how to live together well under these conditions.

I think we need stories that just remind us of how critical this fight is and that ground us in a love of this world. Naomi and I want stories that connect people to that, that remind people that we do live in a planetary paradise. It’s worth defending.

Ultimately, the organizer in me says we need more than stories. I think it’s incumbent on all of us to try to find a political home, to face the fact that fascism is not something that we can fight alone, we can only fight it together. If there’s not something for you to join, where you live, then start something … It takes not just stories, but actions, however imperfect, however small, however inadequate, but when we all take them, it adds up.

End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World can be ordered in Canada, the U.S. And UK.

The post How the Far-Right Uses Climate Disasters to Build Political Power appeared first on DeSmog.

Would you trust a detox facility that offers a minibar in every room? How about a climate course sponsored by ExxonMobil? If not, you might direct the same incredulity towards Canada’s recently unveiled Responsible Data Centre Development Principles, endorsed by tech giants that are implicated in violating those same principles. 

Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation Evan Solomon announced the voluntary and non-binding principles in September in response to mounting public opposition to massive data centre developments. It is hardly encouraging that the same companies leading the disruptive build out of massive data centres, such as Amazon, Google, OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic, quickly signed on to this toothless commitment. 

“Data centres must protect ratepayers, respect water and energy resources, and create lasting benefits for the communities that host them,” assured Solomon at the launch in September. “These principles set a clear national standard: If you build in Canada, you must build responsibly and transparently and you must build for Canadians.”

Really?

Barely three weeks after these companies pledged to Canadians to be “transparent about local impacts,” the U.S. House Judiciary Committee opened an investigation into Amazon, Google, and Meta for using non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) to gag state and local officials from telling their constituents about data centre impacts on local water supplies and electricity rates.

“Google’s own confidentiality agreements have been shown to contain language that explicitly prevents local officials from disclosing ‘the terms of any agreement,’” ranking member Democratic U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin wrote in a letter to Google’s parent company Alphabet.

For over a year, the company fought a local newspaper in Oregon in the courts to keep its Dalles data centre’s water consumption hidden, arguing the figure was a “trade secret.” When the courts finally forced the release of this essential information, it was revealed  that Google was using a quarter of the entire city’s water. A company that litigates to hide its water use from the residents of one small town is now asking Canadians to trust its promise of transparency here.

A Meta subsidiary in Louisiana likewise convinced Republican Gov. Jeff Landry to sign an NDA tied to a $50 billion data centre campus. Over 100 Louisiana state public officials signed similar gag orders that apparently silence them even if they leave government. Eric Holl, an adviser to former Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, told the Gulf States Newsroom, “I don’t see this being used as anything other than a tool of intimidation and control.”

Citizens in Wisconsin were also forced to sue the local utility regulator to release documents detailing the projected energy demand of a proposed Meta data centre after this basic information was also deemed a trade secret.

The impacts of enormous AI facilities on American communities are well known. The consequences being visited on Canadian towns and residents are concerning to say the least.

The principles say centres must reduce environmental impacts, and prioritize “low-emission energy sources.” Yet a contentious data centre development in Saskatchewan proposed by Bell Canada – also a signatory to Minister Solomon’s principles – would require as much generating capacity as the entire city of Regina. About 900 megawatts (MW) of its power will come from behind-the-fence gas generation. The Regina City Council recently debated the development for over seven hours and voted to demand more information on potential impacts on local water supplies and electricity costs. A total of 18,000 residents have signed a petition opposing the project.

Beacon Data Centers is another signatory, which stated it is “proud to stand with governments, municipalities, and industry in supporting them.” Yet the company is embroiled in a bitter dispute with residents of Lorneville, New Brunswick, who are understandably opposed to the company’s plans to fill in a local wetland to expand an industrial park with a data centre that will require more than 10 percent of provincial energy demand. The data centre would become one of New Brunswick’s biggest emitters, generating 6.6 percent of provincial emissions.

According to reporting from the Narwhal, “documents obtained through provincial access to information legislation … show provincial officials were in discussions to bring a data centre to the [industrial] park long before residents were told about the tenant — and that details of that data centre conflicted with the more low-impact vision for the industrial park advertised to residents.”

DeSmog has already documented the massive buildout of data centres in Alberta, almost entirely powered by burning natural gas. Almost 21 GW of potential new gas capacity is enthusiastically being embraced by provincial regulators, an amount described as “absurdly high” by Alex de Vries  at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Based on similar gas-fired installations around the world, de Vries estimated this amount of new data centres would require about 200 billion litres in cooling water each year. How is this not supposed to impact local electricity rates, heating costs, or water supplies?

This absurd increase in climate-killing gas consumption seems, in fact, to be the point. Internal Privy Council documents obtained by DeSmog from Greenpeace showed that increased gas demand was being touted by senior advisors to Prime Minister Mark Carney as one of the top “public policy benefits to Canada” of data centres.

Bringing “strategic value to Canada” is another vague goal of the newly announced data centre principles. If this is meant to allude to protecting Canadian data sovereignty, building facilities owned by Google, Meta, Amazon or other tech giants will accomplish very little. The U.S. government can compel an American company that controls data – regardless of location – to release it to American regulators under the CLOUD Act (2018). 

Regardless of the law, many of the enthusiastic corporate endorsers of Canada’s new data centre principles have repeatedly demonstrated their obedient political fealty to the Trump administration. Tech leaders attended his inauguration, donated vast sums of money to the Trump campaign, and indulged the president’s geographic fits of pique by rapidly renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America” on Google and Apple maps. 

With this cohort driving Canada’s tech build-out, what could possibly go wrong?

Canadians are justifiably concerned data centres will impact local water supplies and electricity costs. We need bold policies that will improve digital safety and address increasing democratic threats from AI-driven disinformation. Rather than bringing in meaningful and enforceable regulations, the federal government has instead trotted out vague platitudes endorsed by the same companies contributing to the problem. Ottawa, we have a credibility problem.

The post Canada’s ‘Responsible’ Data Centre Principles Have a Credibility Problem appeared first on DeSmog.

Campaigners backing attempts to sue Shell over a typhoon in the Philippines have launched an online archive showing that the British oil major knew that burning fossil fuels could harm the climate as early as the 1960s. 

ExposeShell.com features documents including a 1966 memo Shell commissioned from British scientist James Lovelock and the ‘Greenhouse Effect’, a confidential 1988 report predicting that human-caused warming could trigger “dramatic” changes in sea level, ocean currents, weather and precipitation — “larger than any that have occurred over the last 12,000 years.” [Read these and other documents in the DeSmog series #ShellKnew]

The interactive site went live as Shell announced the latest figures showing that oil majors are enjoying bumper profits as the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran pushes oil prices higher. Shell said its adjusted third-quarter earnings had doubled to £10.8 billion in comparison to the same period last year.

“We don’t need any more reports to us that this big oily industry has been creating disaster,” Robin Wells, director of Fossil Free London, one of the groups behind the website, said in a statement. “Shell researched the reality but tore up the truth and locked it in the dark. Now, we are all facing the disastrous consequences.”

Fossil Free London protesters took to the streets outside Shell’s head office in London on Thursday, dressed in 1960s-style suits and holding banners that read “Shell Knew.”

ExposeShell.com is also backed by The Odette Case, a campaign group supporting more than 100 survivors of Typhoon Rai — known in the Philippines as Typhoon Odette — who began seeking damages from Shell last December in a first-of-its-kind case in the UK courts. 

The typhoon tore through the Philippines in December, 2021, killing 400 people, injuring more than 1,000, and forcing almost 3.2 million people from their homes. 

The survivors argue that Shell should be held liable for its historic contribution to the greenhouse gas emissions fuelling extreme weather events and its support for climate science denial via its past membership of industry groups such as the Global Climate Coalition — despite its early knowledge of the risks posed by burning its products.  

Filed by UK law firm Hausfeld, the case draws on recent advances in attribution science that enable scientists to assess the degree to which climate change has contributed to an extreme weather event. Through Shell’s contribution of more than 2.5 percent of historical global greenhouse gas emissions, the suit alleges that Shell contributed to both the likelihood and severity of Typhoon Rai. It is the first civil claim to link the climate impacts of an oil and gas company’s activities with death, personal injury, and damage to property that has already occurred in the Global South.

Shell has dismissed the lawsuit as “baseless” and said that it had no “unique knowledge about climate change.”

(This story was updated at 12:44 GMT on October 29, 2026 to include Shell’s third-quarter earnings)

The post Interactive Archive Shares Secrets of Shell’s Early Climate Research appeared first on DeSmog.

Canada’s already battered reputation on curbing climate emissions has become drastically worse under the leadership of Prime Minister Mark Carney according to a recent report card from Climate Action Tracker, approaching levels of inaction comparable to the “drill baby drill” Trump Administration.

“Prime Minister Mark Carney has so far been unwilling to recommit to either the 2030 or 2035 targets and has conceded that, under his energy plan, Canada’s emissions will be higher in the near term than previously projected,” warned the report. “If Canada were to officially abandon its 2030 and 2035 targets, it would be the first country after the United States to do so.”

The emissions watchdog didn’t mince words about the pace and scale of Canada’s climate rollbacks.

“What is shocking to us is the true extent to which Prime Minister Carney has rolled back climate policies, largely in favour of the fossil fuel industry,” Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics, a CAT partner, said in a release.

“This Carney climate carnage, while not quite as bad as Trump’s, is rapidly heading in the same direction, despite the country being hit by record wildfires and other devastating climate impacts,” he added. 

While Canada’s planned policies were expected to cut emissions by 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 two years ago, since Carney has come into office Climate Action Tracker estimates this planned reduction has been cut in half. Current policies are on track to only deliver a 14 percent decrease in emissions.

Carney’s oil-friendly government has swept aside a suite of climate regulations aimed at reducing the massive and growing emissions from the oil sands, which have ballooned by 178 percent since 2005 and now almost equal the entire passenger transport sector.

Perhaps the single fig leaf remaining to cover this naked climate failure is the long-touted and still not-built Pathways carbon capture and storage (CCS) project.

But this project is nothing more than a boondoggle in waiting, with rapidly diminishing expectations of what Pathways would accomplish and growing estimates of what it would cost.

“These technologies are nowhere near the scale and commercial viability needed to deliver on the needed emission reductions,” Climate Action Tracker concluded.

Pathways was originally hyped by bitumen producers as the largest CCS project in the world that would eliminate 68 million tonnes (MT) of emissions a year, or three-quarters of the oil sands’ entire output. That dubious goal has since been quietly rolled back to 16 MT by 2050, a decline of 76 percent.

The first phase of the Pathways project was supposed to be completed by 2030 to store 22 MT per year, now revised down to 6 MT sometime after 2032. Dilling bravely characterized these massive decreases in sequestered emissions as “slightly smaller”.

Six years into this alleged climate saving megaproject, no design proposals have been made public and not a single shovel has been stuck in the ground. The only things that have tangibly changed are the steadily diminishing projections about what Pathways could achieve if it ever gets built, and the mounting costs of doing so.

Originally budgeted at $16.5 billion, the current costs of building a potentially dangerous 650 km CO2 pipeline to Cold Lake and injecting CO2 into an underground reservoir three times larger than Prince Edward Island have ballooned to as high as $30 billion. Guess what? The same companies that are on track to pocket $100 billion in war-related profits this year expect the Canadian taxpayer to foot most of the bill.

It is increasingly clear that the Pathways project is less about carbon sequestration and more about political leverage. The so-called grand bargain between Ottawa and Alberta explicitly links Pathways with a new pipeline approval to the west coast to further boost bitumen production that has already increased almost 40 percent since 2015, undoing any climate benefits.

“The Pathways project… will not come close to compensating for the new west coast oil pipeline, which could add up to 28 MTA of greenhouse gas emissions every year,” Aly Hyder Ali, Environmental Defence Canada’s senior program manager for oil and gas told DeSmog. “It will require tens of billions of dollars in public support, while capturing only a small portion of the emissions from oil sands production.”

Carbon capture and storage has long been held up as a way to slow down climate consequences while still burning fossil fuels. Despite much industry-funded hype and $40 billion so far spent around the world, CCS only sequesters a puny proportion of global greenhouse gases.

A recent peer-reviewed study of the technology warned, “continued reliance on CCS is a high-cost gamble that risks delaying the deployment of truly effective climate solutions… Despite decades of promotion and investment, [CCS] remains technologically constrained, economically inefficient, and strategically misapplied.”

Even if Pathways worked perfectly it would do nothing to mitigate the tailpipe emissions once bitumen is refined into transportation fuel, which are four times higher than production emissions.

The Pathways project is a diminishing technological fix for a problem that industry has refused to deal with. Alberta oil sands operators have repeatedly stalled taking action, demanded more taxpayer largess, and allowed their emissions to grow north of 92 MT per year – an increase of more than three percent over the previous year due to ballooning production.

The oil patch is Canada’s biggest climate laggard while banking massive profits. Alberta’s bitumen producers raked in $13.3 billion in the first three months of 2026. Yet such wealthy companies still expect the beleaguered Canadian taxpayer to foot most of the bill for another pipeline to the Pacific and the expensive CCS project that makes the pipeline politically possible. Perhaps oil patch lobbyists deserve a raise. To gaslight a country into shelling out billions in subsidies to a wildly profitable sector that is also fuelling an accelerating climate crisis is no small feat. Pathways’ diminishing targets and mounting costs make this outlandish accomplishment even more outrageous.

The post Carney Almost as Bad as Trump on Climate, Emissions Watchdog Warns appeared first on DeSmog.

Countries should be willing to overlook “mild amounts of corruption” in government if it serves the larger goal of political stability, according to a U.S. lawyer and political activist closely aligned with U.S. President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.

“This may be the most provocative thing I say,” explained Will Chamberlain during a speech earlier this month at the National Conservatism Conference (NatCon) in Jerusalem, an event that brought together far-right figures from Europe and Israel along with MAGA leaders closely linked to the Trump administration.

Chamberlain is vice president for external affairs at the Edmund Burke Foundation, which organizes NatCon, a conference that in previous years has been hosted in cities across the U.S. and Europe.

He is also senior counsel with the Article III Project, a MAGA group set up to fight against “lawfare,” which it describes as efforts by “Marxist” Democrats to weaponize the justice system against Trump and his political allies. The group has recently targeted what it calls “climate lawfare,” which refers to lawsuits that aim to hold oil and gas companies accountable for misleading the public about climate change

“Corruption is bad,” Chamberlain said during his Oct. 8 speech at NatCon. “But I think in general, countries should be willing to tolerate mild amounts of corruption in order to avoid lawfare.”

Chamberlain, through the Article III Project, works with the conservative political strategist and lawyer Mike Davis, who claims credit for helping win the nomination fights of conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Chamberlain’s comments come as the U.S. approaches midterm elections on Nov. 3 where voters have identified government corruption as a defining issue.

He argued that efforts to impeach and prosecute politicians for corruption have driven up the stakes of elections to the point where candidates either win or risk going to jail, citing the example of Jair Bolsonaro, the former Brazilian president serving a jail sentence for planning a coup following his 2022 election loss.

He also cited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption charges including fraud and accepting bribes. Earlier this year, Trump said Netanyahu should be pardoned. Chamberlain defended that position, arguing that pardons are a useful tool for reducing political tensions.

“People shouldn’t be afraid of them,” he said. “I think too many people are so obsessed with the idea that no one can ever be above the law that they’ll let their country tear itself apart.”

He added, “There’s another old maxim, ‘let justice be done though the heavens fall.’ I think that’s a bad impulse.”

Chamberlain didn’t respond to questions from DeSmog.

‘Climate Lawfare’

This year’s National Conservatism Conference in Israel featured speeches from senior White House official Sebastian Gorka, as well as Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation, which authored the Trump policy blueprint Project 2025.  

It took place as Chamberlain’s legal group, the Article III Project, turned its attention to the dozens of lawsuits filed by cities, counties and states across the U.S. against Big Oil.

In early October it co-hosted a Washington, D.C., event where conservative legal experts argued that efforts to hold oil and gas companies legally liable for misleading the public about climate change is a form of “climate lawfare,” which one participant defined as “trying to basically drag these fossil fuel companies into court to get access to their documents and, of course, their pockets.”

The occasion for the event was the U.S. Supreme Court agreeing to hear oral arguments from the oil companies Suncor and Exxon, which are trying to get the court to invalidate a lawsuit against them currently proceeding in Colorado state court.

That Colorado lawsuit alleges, based on extensive historical documentation, that these and other oil companies engaged in multi-decade campaigns to stave off climate regulation by running disinformation campaigns around their key role in global temperature rise.

Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has framed this history of climate denial as large-scale deception meriting federal investigations and lawsuits. In 2024, Whitehouse described the Trump administration’s reported offering of political favors to the oil industry in exchange for $1 billion in campaign contributions as “the definition of corruption as the founding fathers would have used the term.”

From the perspective of MAGA legal activists such as Chamberlain, “lawfare is worse than corruption.”

“I mean, corruption’s bad. I kind of imagine it is like a slow-growing cancer that can undermine ultimately and eventually really hurt your country,” he said.

“But lawfare — and reciprocal, brutal lawfare against heads of state, especially — is kind of like having a gushing, gaping bullet wound in your chest,” he added.

‘Openly Corrupt’

That position appears out of step with many U.S. voters. A recent Fox News poll suggested that 88 percent of voters are “extremely/very concerned” about “corruption in government,” making it the top issue ahead of cost of living, healthcare, and the Iran war.

That poll came out following reporting in the Wall Street Journal that Kimberly Guilfoyle, then U.S. ambassador to Greece, had asked a Trump donor for $100,000 to pay off her credit card bill in exchange for favorable access to the administration.

That seemed to cross a line even for Chamberlain and his colleagues.

After Guilfoyle resigned on Oct. 13, Chamberlain questioned on X whether her resignation message was written by AI, while another senior counsel at the Article III Project described her as “an absolutely stupid pick for U.S. Ambassador to Greece in the first place.”

Yet, Chamberlain argued at NatCon that civil and criminal efforts in recent years to hold Trump legally accountable for alleged financial fraud, defamation, his role in the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection, and other legal violations have been “an enormous strain on the president’s time and resources, as well as everybody else.”

Chamberlain claimed that without unique features of the U.S. legal system, including the lack of an attorney general independent from the White House, “I think Trump would be in jail,” adding that “the Western world would be worse for it.”

Meanwhile Trump has reaped $2.2 billion in 2025 revenues alone from his cryptocurrency holdings and other personal business interests. This has led former general counsel at the Federal Election Commission Larry Noble to describe Trump’s second term as potentially “the most openly corrupt administration in our history.”

The post As Midterms Loom, MAGA Lawyer Defends ‘Mild Amounts of Corruption’ in Governments appeared first on DeSmog.

In December 2025, former B.C. Premier Christy Clark gave an interview on Global News where she described Canada’s west coast ban on oil tankers as a “ridiculous” constraint on the Canadian economy.

A clip of Clark’s interview then began to circulate online, where it was shared by several Canadian conservative influencers and aggregator accounts on platforms including X and Facebook with captions including “reality check,” “huge truth bomb” and “economic self-sabotage.”

Within days, the interview clip was spreading across the social media feeds of people in B.C. and beyond, eventually surpassing 1.6 million views.

But this was not necessarily a case of west coast residents suddenly deciding organically they wanted to overturn the ban on coastal oil tanker traffic brought in by former Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The digital media amplification of Clark’s comments was orchestrated in part by Canada Action, a pro-oil industry advocacy organization partly funded by Cenovus Energy, Canada’s third-largest oil and gas company.

It was one example of “showcasing Canada Action’s content leadership influencing the public discussion,” according to an internal slidedeck from the Calgary-based group. That slidedeck, which hasn’t yet been reported on, was obtained by Greenpeace Canada and published in its October 2026 report Manufacturing Petro-Populism.

These and other presentation slides from Canada Action demonstrate how fossil fuel interests manufacture the appearance of consent for increased oil and gas production in Canada, according to experts who study the spread of climate disinformation online.

“Most people can pretty easily see through messages coming directly from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) or industry CEOs,” said Shane Gunster, a professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Communications, in a statement to DeSmog. 

“But when the message comes from people in their social network, local business leaders, their family and friends, they’re far more likely to engage with it and maybe even be persuaded by it. And this is especially true for growing segments of the public that don’t consume a lot of news.”

Canada Action didn’t respond to DeSmog’s questions about the slidedeck.

‘Snipped And Posted’

Canada Action was founded in 2012 by Cody Battershill, a Calgary-based realtor. Though Canada Action claims to be a grassroots effort, it has numerous reported ties to the fossil fuel sector and its lobbyists. According to the Greenpeace report, Canada Action spent $1.9 million CAD on marketing in 2024, and $1.5 million CAD in 2023.

The presentations were made in the context of a funder session for the group Canadian Energy Prosperity (CEP), through its Energy in Action (EIA) initiative, and held at the Calgary Petroleum Club in January 2026.

According to the Greenpeace report, Energy in Action is an oil-industry backed network of thirty organizations that advocate for the fossil fuel sector, including front groups, charitable organizations, companies, media organizations and lobby groups. EIA is itself funded by Canadian Energy Prosperity.

Though neither of these are public facing organizations, members of EIA’s network are prominent pro-oil and gas voices in Canada. They include, among others, the Fraser Institute, Canada Action, Energy United, Debunk, Canadians for Affordable Energy, Young Canadians for Resources, Resource Works, Energy Creates, and The News Forum.
 

Two of those organizations, Resource Works and Energy United, prepared a slidedeck for the Calgary Petroleum Club event describing environmental groups as “opponents” and Indigenous rights as a “problem,” as reported previously in the Narwhal.

 Many of the groups that are funded by CEP also receive funding from Gwyn Morgan, a Canadian fracking magnate who has financed a climate misinformation ecosystem with nearly $10 million in funding to right wing anti-regulation lobby groups. Morgan is also linked to Cenovus (which has funded Canada Action), as well as Second Street, a libertarian advocacy organization.

In its presentation to CEP, Canada Action explained how it was able to manufacture viral pro-oil content online from a December 1 interview former B.C. Premier Clark gave to Global News.

First, Canada Action explained, “we snipped and posted a critically important message from former B.C. Premier Christy Clark, highlighting the importance of revisiting the federal tanker ban.”

Then, the group “modified the video to add the ‘On the Oil Tanker Ban’ text on the video, so any other video containing that graphic can be directly attributed to stemming from our post.”

Canada Action carefully tracked “other major pages who have taken our content and then directly re-uploaded it on their platforms as a new post on their page.”

One of these reposts was from the page Debunk, Inc., which characterized Clark’s comments as explaining “why the Pacific tanker bank is pointless.” That post garnered thousands of likes and comments. In a separate slide presentation obtained by Greenpeace, Debunk stated that “the energy narrative is ours to shape. With your continued support we will continue to challenge the myths, engage Canadians, and advocate for the energy future our country deserves.”

All told, the Clark clip generated 1,614,000 views across Canada Action’s social media pages as well as “unattributed traffic” due to the video being shared by third-party accounts, according to metrics shared by the group.

In a separate slide deck, titled “Digital Reach Report: April 2026 Social Media & Website Views & Impression”, Canada Action indicated its social media content received over 37.5 million views. The bulk of its monthly impressions came from one of its three Twitter accounts — @LNGAction, @OilSandsAction, and @CanadaAction — which together brought in over 25 million views.

Amplification Machine

Canada Action has considerable social media reach, noting in its presentation that its Facebook and Instagram posts “are being reached and interacted with by millions of unique Canadians.” Indeed, according to its presentation slides, the Canada Action Facebook page drew 2.8 million unique people while the Oil Sands Action Facebook page drew 1.4 million. On Instagram, Canada Action claimed to have attracted 559,000 while Oil Sands Action drew 476,000.

Canada Action uses its sizable digital imprint to amplify other groups in the CEP network, including Young Canadians for Resources, its youth advocacy arm.

The Canada Action presentation also highlights a  partnership with Resource Works “to amplify the economic leadership of 5 Mayors from the Alliance of Resource Communities,” an effort to build public support for oil and gas and other natural resource projects in B.C.  “We can now say that we are the LNG capital of Canada,” Kitimat mayor Phil Germuth stated in one Facebook post. At the time the screenshot was taken, that post had garnered 6,600 likes, 490 comments, and was forwarded 274 times.

Resource Works is also identified in the Greenpeace report as an organization with ties to the fossil fuel sector. DeSmog has previously reported that the organization has been involved in other influence campaigns, including an astroturf campaign to oppose a ban on natural gas that involved template comments for restaurant owners, hospitality workers and residents of Vancouver.

Gunster argues that the sorts of digital campaigns led by Canada Action and its allies have influenced how Canadians think and feel about the oil and gas sector.

“Look at the big swings in public opinion in favour of oil and gas projects over the past year-and-a-half,” said Gunster. “Some of that is obviously Trump and the trade war, and some of that is the Carney government. But I have no doubt that the kinds of campaigns described in this [Greenpeace] report are also having a significant impact, saturating our social media feeds with pro-industry messaging.” 

DeSmog reached out to Christy Clark and Global News to determine whether Canada Action had asked permission to use the video clip and still images in their promotional materials. Neither responded.

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Across Brittany, tractors can be seen trundling onto beaches to remove truckloads of foul-smelling algae ahead of the tourist rush. 

Situated below steep cliffs and ancient forests, these once pristine beaches have been devastated by algal blooms – the rapid growth of toxic seaweed which kills off fish and plant life. This sea lettuce algae can also release a toxic gas that can cause humans dizziness, chest pain, breathing problems, and even cardiac arrest.

The French peninsula is not alone. Fed by harmful pollution from agriculture, and fuelled by seas warmed by climate change, lurid green blooms are increasingly appearing on beaches and lakes across Europe – prompting hundreds of swimming bans across the continent this summer. 

This article was published in partnership with Euronews and Climatica

Scientists are clear on the cause: for decades, chemicals including nitrogen and phosphorus have leached into waterways from human sewage, as well as fertilisers and excess manure fuelled by the rapid growth of Europe’s factory farms. 

These ‘nutrients’ are vital for plant growth – but in large quantities they destroy the delicate balance of ecosystems, allowing certain plants, including algae, to multiply at the expense of animals and other species.

DeSmog visited some of the worst impacted spots in Europe, speaking to fishers, swimmers, and business owners whose livelihoods and wellbeing depend on healthy waters.

On the shores of lakes and beaches across France, Spain, Germany and Northern Ireland, we heard accounts of plummeting fish and insect numbers, swimming bans, and beach closures. 

The risks of algal growth have been known for decades, but higher temperatures and longer summers mean these dangerous blooms are growing larger and lasting longer in many of the continent’s most iconic waterways. 

“I remember our beautiful beach before the pollution,” says Brittany resident Jean Hascoet, who leads local campaign group Baie de Douarnenez Environnement. “Now, with thousands of pigs near our town, everything is different.”

Brittany resident and environmental campaigner Jean Hascoet, pictured here in Douarnenez Bay, France, says the surge in intensive farming in the region has devastated local beaches. Credit: Selene Magnolia Gatti

‘Spain’s Sacrificial Zone’

“You’ll never see me swimming in that water again,” Fina says. 

The 84-year-old from Murcia in southeastern Spain lives with her husband Francisco on the beachfront at Los Urrutias, on the west coast of the Mar Menor, Europe’s largest saltwater lagoon. Rotting seaweed piles up on the shore, giving off a foul stench. 

“This used to be paradise. The sea was teeming with seahorses,” Fina says. 

The last decade has seen a sharp increase in algae growth in the Mar Menor – a hotspot for Spanish and international tourists. Cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, is reliant on nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus to grow, and in this region, intensive farming has provided a ready supply. 

Spain is the EU’s largest producer of pork, accounting for a quarter of the bloc’s production. In the Mar Menor catchment area, according to latest government figures, 305 pig farms house nearly 700,000 animals – producing vast amounts of manure and slurry, a liquid mixture containing faeces and urine. When it rains, the nutrient-rich mixtures flow from fields into rivers feeding the lagoon.

“The land can’t accommodate it all,” says Pedro Luengo, a biologist and spokesperson for the campaign group Ecologistas en Acción in Murcia. “We’re a sacrificial zone.”

Tourists now steer clear of the area closest to the farmland – the western region where Fina lives, which was once an idyllic family holiday spot. 

Instead, on other beaches, such as La Manga in the east, bathers enjoy an artificial paradise thanks to local authorities who, as in France, remove the algae daily over the summer months. In the first three months of 2026, they collected more than 4,000 tonnes from Mar Menor’s shores and nearby water– roughly the weight of 1,000 elephants.

Authorities say these clean-ups help protect human health and allow essential sunlight to reach sea life, which would otherwise be blocked by the blooms. But it has not shielded those who rely on the lagoon for their livelihood.

“We used to catch far more gilthead seabream and prawns. Now the catch is much smaller,” says Rubén Albaladejo, a fisherman from Lo Pagán. “The Mar Menor is a drain into which everyone dumps their rubbish and waste.” 

Algal blooms endanger aquatic life by consuming vast amounts of oxygen, meaning fish, seahorses, and crustaceans can suffocate. They also produce toxins that attack the nervous and respiratory systems of sea life. 

Alongside nutrient pollution, water temperatures rose sharply this year amid record-breaking heatwaves across the continent. “We’ve reached 30 degrees – something we’ve never seen before.” Albaladejo says that in these conditions, species such as gilthead seabream struggle to reproduce.

Scientists warned in August that human-caused climate change was driving record temperatures in the continent’s seas, with a 2C temperature rise registered in the Mediterranean, and around 1.4C in ​Western European seas.

‘The Lough Is Dead’

Albaladejo shares his worries with fishers across Europe. Around 2,000 kilometres away in Northern Ireland, Declan Coney has also seen Lough Neagh – the UK’s largest lake – devastated by blue-green algae every summer since 2023. 

“Fishing is instilled in me – generation after generation,” Coney says. “This year has been the worst ever for fishing. The Lough is dead.”

Coney has been working on the lake since 1975. He used to go out with his father and sometimes caught £1,000 worth of fish in a day, he says. But now the cost of the diesel required to boat to his nets can be greater than the value of the catch. 

Trout and eel numbers have fallen in recent years, in part thanks to the oxygen-hogging blue-green algae, whose weight also forces Coney’s fishing nets shut, so fish can’t swim inside. 

Since the 2000s, the lough has also been besieged by the invasive zebra mussel species. These consume large amounts of phytoplankton, depriving other species of these microscopic plant-like organisms, a vital food source, as well as attaching to fishing nets and ripping them. 

“There’s no money [in it],” Coney says. “It’s not a livelihood anymore.”

As in Spain, Lough Neagh’s algal blooms are the result of decades of nutrient pollution. Northern Ireland’s livestock sector has grown rapidly, supported by government expansion plans since 2013: poultry numbers have risen by a third, and pigs by 74 percent. 

Earlier this year, investigative outlet Watershed and The Guardian found evidence of cattle, pig and human faeces in samples of water from the lough, which spans nearly 400 square kilometres and provides 40 percent of Northern Ireland’s drinking water. 

Mary O’Hagan lives on the north-west of the lake. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she set up a wild swimming group, and found that the cold water had huge benefits – from improving mental health to relieving chronic pain.  

“In my 30s, I didn’t have much of a life, I wasn’t looking after myself. Swimming in Lough Neagh changed my life completely,” O’Hagan says. “We had a community.”

But after the second year of the blooms, she felt forced to shut the swimming group down. 

“I couldn’t in all good conscience organise swims where people would be exposed to bacteria, algae, or god knows what else.” 

“The first year… was awful. It was like Armageddon. To see the shores covered as far as the eye can see in pea green sludge, was horrendous,” she says.

O’Hagan’s concerns are shared by swimmers and local authorities elsewhere in Europe. In Germany, dozens of lakes are also routinely devastated by algal blooms, triggering a spate of temporary swimming bans this summer. 

“The water used to be clear, you could see your own feet,” says Oland Stephan, who has run a kiosk at Sander lake in northern Germany for 18 years. Once a popular bathing spot, the lake has been off-bounds for swimmers for the last few years because of the blue-green algae – which can cause vomiting, diarrhea, and skin irritation, among other issues. 

“I could make a living back then, but not anymore,” Stephan says. “I have bankruptcy papers at home.”

Peter Bünting, a lifeguard at the lake, says the cloudiness of the water from the algae makes search and rescue operations challenging. “You might have a casualty in front of you but you just can’t see.”

‘More Animals Than People’

Certain types of algae have been linked to fatalities. When sea lettuce and blue-green algaes break down, they can produce hydrogen sulfide, a lethal gas that smells like rotten eggs and causes  blocked airways and fluid to build up in the lungs if inhaled in large quantities. 

Since the 1980s, sea lettuce algae has been linked to as many as six deaths on Brittany’s beaches. 

Locals here are clear about the cause of the algae growth. Near the tourist town of Saint-Brieuc, “the pigs” has been scribbled across an official sign warning about the danger and symptoms of inhaling toxic gas from the algae. 

“We have many more animals than people,” environmental author Yves-Marie Le Lay told DeSmog. Although the peninsula covers just five percent of France’s surface, its 6.8 million pigs account for 58 percent of the country’s total population. “We have a manure problem, it all ends up in the rivers.”

For environmental activist Fabrice Hamon, who lives near the Penfoul beach in Western Brittany, bacteria such as E. coli and salmonella from manure run-off have also become a daily concern – washed by rain from farmland down to the sea. 

Since official tests in the summer of 2025 identified E. coli on Penfoul, the beach has been under a partial swimming ban, and is at risk of being closed permanently. 

Hamon says these bacteria are “super dangerous” if they are swallowed or come into contact with areas like the eyes and nose – and can cause infections, such as conjunctivitis, urinary tract infections, and gastro-intestinal infections that lead to diarrhea and vomiting.

Hamon is uneasy about the coming months. This summer’s droughts meant that fewer harmful excess nutrients were washed into the waterways from fields treated with manure, but instead are stored in the soil until it rains. Europe, the fastest-warming continent in the world, is seeing more intense and unpredictable bouts of extreme weather, including increased downpours and flooding.

“Right now there’s a build-up of bacteria in the fields,” Hamon says. “All it takes is a heavy downpour and bingo. It’s a slow-acting poison: little by little, ecosystems are being degraded by the build-up of pollution linked to intensive farming.”

Warming Seas

As climate change accelerates, warming temperatures are also exacerbating the algal blooms. Algae grows quicker and lasts longer in warm waters, as higher temperatures allow it to digest and reproduce at a faster rate. 

Jürgen Leicher, deputy chairman for the German environmental group BUND in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, has been sailing on the Baltic Sea for 40 years, and says this year’s algal blooms were the worst he’s ever seen. 

Temperatures in Germany broke records for three consecutive days in June, reaching almost 42C. Satellite images of the Baltic in August show vast algal blooms swirling towards the coast.“You feel really afraid when you sail for hundreds of miles through a yellow-brown dirty sea,” says Leicher. “All the way through this algae, the sea was dead. You see no birds, no mammals, no fish. It’s so empty.”

Agriculture is the biggest source of the problem: the intergovernmental body HELCOM estimates it accounts for up to 90 per cent of nitrogen and up to 80 per cent of phosphorus in diffuse nutrient run-off into the Baltic. 

Despite decades of intergovernmental efforts to reduce nutrient pollution, the Baltic is struggling to recover from the environmental damage combined with rising temperatures. Each year, when algae dies it sinks to the seabed, taking large amounts of phosphorus with it. That phosphorus is released back into the ocean in future years — a dangerous feedback loop that picks up speed as the sea warms.

Seeking Solutions

In the face of these huge challenges, residents, campaigners and scientists are united in their determination to find solutions. 

Leicher thinks that better monitoring could help track the profound environmental disruption taking place in the Baltic Sea. His colleagues at BUND Schleswig-Holstein have launched a citizen science project, which will see volunteers collect water samples twice a month from local rivers. By analysing the samples in a laboratory, the organisation hopes to pinpoint sources of pollution and help efforts to cut nutrients.

In Brittany, Fabrice Hamon has designed an app – La Météo Bacterio – which helps monitor for bacteria in the 20 odd rivers that flow onto local beaches, meaning tourists and residents can check for warnings before they swim.

Others are focusing their efforts on political and legal action. In recent years, campaigners and residents have won a raft of legal victories – including persuading the Spanish government in 2022 to bestow ‘legal personhood’ on Mar Menor, providing the lagoon with rights to protection and restoration.

Ultimately, though, scientists say that nutrient pollution must be slashed to limit the recurrent harmful algae growth – and that means transforming agricultural practices. 

“The science is clear on what needs to be done,” says Professor Friedhelm Taube from Kiel University (CAU), who spent 12 years advising Germany’s Ministry of Agriculture. Governments should support farmers to use less nitrates-heavy fertiliser, plant catch crops like grass clover that absorb some of the excess nutrients from soils before they run into rivers, lakes and sea, and reduce the number of animals farmed on limited land, he says.

“Farming animals can be fine,” Taube says, but to keep nutrient run-off within safe limits, numbers should be reduced to just one ‘livestock unit’ per hectare – a technical term that translates to just one dairy cow or around three pigs. That means far fewer animals in regions where they are intensively farmed, he adds. 

Campaigners in Spain also face a stark choice. “Either we wreck the Mar Menor,” says Pedro Luengo from Ecologistas en Accion, “or we transform the agricultural model”.

In Northern Ireland, Mary O’Hagan is determined to continue to fight for change. “I credit getting into Lough Neagh for the lovely active life I lead,” she says. “It’s one of the reasons I fight back in the way I do.” 

It’s a long fight, but Mary is hopeful. “I’d like to see improvements in my children’s lifetimes – to see it restored to how it was.”

Additional research by Joey Grostern and Louis Bontemps

Editing by Phoebe Cooke and Clare Carlile

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