Even before Russia’s tanks started rolling into Ukraine, we were already hearing that the best way to stop Vladimir Putin’s aggression is to ramp up fossil fuel production in North America.
Within hours of the invasion, every planet-torching project that the climate justice movement had managed to block over the past decade was being frantically rushed back onto the table: every canceled oil pipeline, every nixed gas export terminal, every protected fracking field, every Arctic drilling dream.
Since Putin’s war machine is funded with petrodollars, the solution, we are told, is to drill, frack, and ship more of our own — no matter the cost to our planet and our future.
Oil CEOs and politicians like Sen. Joe Manchin are advocating for more drilling at home to help supply European allies like Germany, which just announced its own construction of two huge import terminals that could lock in emissions for decades to come.
With politicians and pundits scrambling to bring back the failed oil dreams of the past, I’m more committed than ever to The Intercept’s ongoing investigation of climate criminals and corporate polluters. Our reporters don’t just lament rising temperatures, they name names and follow the money, from the billionaire donors that obstruct climate action to the front lines of protest against pipeline construction and fossil fuel extraction.
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We’re told the push for new fossil projects in North America is about helping Ukrainians and weakening Putin. But the real reason all the old pipe dreams are being dusted off is far more crass: This war has sent the price of oil soaring and has made them vastly more profitable overnight.
We need journalists to have the time, resources, and editorial encouragement to expose who profits — and how we all suffer — from the continued destabilization of our planet.
Just as urgently, we need to tell the stories of the social movements and insurgent politicians who are fighting for a world no longer based on extraction and the fantasy of endless growth.
These stories are being told with rigor by The Intercept — and almost nowhere else. The Intercept’s nonprofit newsroom looks beyond the surface to challenge the corruption and self-serving orthodoxies of the powerful.
Thank you,
