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Perdre la Terre, livre tiré de l’article-fleuve de Nathaniel Rich paru dans le New York Times en août 2018, retrace avec précision, à la manière d'un roman à suspense, la genèse de cet échec. Issu d’un travail de deux ans et de plus de cent interviews avec les protagonistes de ce drame existentiel (scientifiques, politiciens, militants…), il questionne gravement sur notre incapacité à agir pour éviter la catastrophe climatique. Car dans les années 1980, contrairement à ce qu’on pourrait penser, nous touchions au but. Le consensus scientifique était acquis ; la presse sonnait l’alarme ; les plaidoyers en faveur d’un traité international juridiquement contraignant s’enchaînaient au Congrès américain ; et même des grandes entreprises pétrolières comme Exxon et Shell ont sérieusement envisagé “une transition très raisonnable et progressive des combustibles fossiles vers les énergies renouvelables” (pour reprendre les mots d'Henry Shaw, chercheur à Exxon)... L’humanité était mûre. “Nous avons été près, en tant que civilisation, de rompre le pacte suicidaire qui nous lie aux combustibles fossiles”, signale Nathaniel Rich.

Ce que raconte Perdre la Terre, c’est un fulgurant backlash. Un pas en arrière soudain, une reculade brutale, un réveil enragé des forces conservatrices, savamment maîtrisé par des experts en communication.

The slogan of this year’s climate talks is “black to green” - appropriate, given the dirty energy companies that are bankrolling the conference. While the sponsors hide behind green branding, their core business models depend on coal, oil and gas, and are therefore absolutely incompatible with the Paris Agreement, let alone a planet still habitable in the future. Our new infographic and fact files, jointly produced with Corporate Accountability, zoom in on the climate culprits taking centre stage at the negotiations in Katowice, Poland.

A leaked internal memo, obtained by EURACTIV, gives a rare glimpse into the communication strategy of Europe's main business lobby group ahead of the COP24 conference later this year, showing how it plans to “oppose” any increase in the EU's climate ambition for 2030.

BlackRock, one of the world’s largest investors in banks and fossil fuel companies, has been hired by the EU to work on potential new environmental rules for banks.
Campaigners raised concerns about potential conflicts of interest, given BlackRock’s widespread financial interests in sectors that could be directly impacted by new environmental rules.
The European commission, the EU’s executive arm, said this week that BlackRock had beaten eight other bidders on a contract to study how the EU could best integrate environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors into its banking supervision.

Download the full report. The summary briefing is available in English, English (with UK examples), Deutsch, Español, and Français. The data for permanent representations' lobby meetings is available here.

Corporate lobbies are actively influencing decision-making, via national ministers and officials, to ensure that EU laws and policies suit them. These corporate lobbies include famous national brands such as Volkswagen and Telefónica; iconic sectors like the finance industry in the City of London or the Polish coal industry; and high-spending EU trade associations such as BusinessEurope and CEFIC (the European Chemicals Industry Council). And whether it is on climate change, finance, chemicals, data privacy, or many other issues, when corporate interests win, the public interest loses out.

More than half of the representatives in the Technical Working Group for the Industrial Emissions Directive were paid by polluting industries. Data: Greenpeace.