Environmentalists join forces to fight ‘carbon bomb’ fossil fuel projects
theguardian.comA coalition of environmental lawyers, investigative journalists and campaigners has launched a group to challenge the “carbon bomb” fossil fuel projects revealed in a Guardian investigation.
After a meeting in May, more than 70 NGOs and activist groups from around the world have formed a “carbon bomb defusal” network to share expertise and resources in the fight to halt the projects and prevent the catastrophic climate breakdown they would cause.
The Guardian investigation identified 195 carbon bombs, gigantic oil and gas projects that would each result in at least a billion tonnes of CO2 emissions over their lifetimes, in total equivalent to about 18 years of current global CO2 emissions. About 60% of these have started pumping.
The US is the leading source of emissions from these mega projects, with its 22 carbon bombs spanning the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico to the foothills of the Front Range in Colorado to the Permian Basin. Together they have the potential to emit 140bn tonnes of CO2, almost four times more than the entire world emits each year.
Saudi Arabia is the second biggest potential emitter after the US, with 107bn tonnes, followed by Russia, Qatar, Iraq, Canada, China and Brazil.
The new campaigning network aims to coordinate legal challenges and activist campaigns against these projects and the companies and politicians supporting them.
Organisers plan to create a central hub to formalise the burgeoning movement and urge other groups of activists, journalists and lawyers to sign up.
“It only takes a handful of dedicated people – lawyers, campaigners, activists – to defuse a carbon bomb,” said Kjell Kühne, from the University of Leeds, who led the carbon bomb research. “And we need such a team for each and
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