The data has been out there for a long time. Fracking was a money pit for investors. I heard $500 billion in capital lost. Everyone should read this. From the New York Times:. Hardly Anyone Talks About How Fracking Was an Extraordinary Boondoggle

From 2006 to 2014, fracking companies lost $80 billion; in 2014, with oil at $100 a barrel, a level that seemed to promise a great cash-out, they lost $20 billion. These losses were mammoth and consistent, adding up to a total that “dwarfs anything in tech/V.C. in that time frame,”

From The Guardian. Have to go the the UK press to get this sort of investigative journalism these days.

US power companies secretly spending millions to protect profits and fight clean energy

It looks like there is a new four part series currently airing on the BBC about the petrochemical industries public relations efforts to deny climate change. Will post when it is available for viewing in the US.

The audacious PR plot that seeded doubt about climate change

From the Verge.

THE ‘ABORTION PILL’ COULD ALSO BE BIRTH CONTROL — AND ACTIVISTS ARE TRYING TO PROVE IT

From the Houston Chronicle.

Texas’ early season heat wave in May exposed the myth of fossil fuel reliability

I usually don’t watch CNN but stumbled on this hour long piece. Worth watching. Explained lots of thing about Texas politics that I didn’t understand. A good quote:

Kel Seliger, a longtime Republican state senator from Amarillo who has clashed with the billionaires, said their influence has made Austin feel a little like Moscow. “It is a Russian-style oligarchy, pure and simple,” Seliger said. “Really, really wealthy people who are willing to spend a lot of money to get policy made the way they want it — and they get it.”

How two Texas megadonors have turbocharged the state’s far-right shift

(Ok, it is The Onion)

State Department Brokers Alliance In Destabilized Region By Providing Arms To Texan Warlords

$3 billion a day in profits. $16 billion a day in subsidies ($11 million per minute).

Revealed: oil sector’s ‘staggering’ $3bn-a-day profits for last 50 years

Again we see the famously corrupt Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, at work. If he wasn’t the top law enforcement official in the state where I currently live, it would almost be amusing.

Texas charity that backs Trump’s stolen-election lie has deep ties to Ken Paxton

From the business section of the Houston Chronicle. Article also fails to point out that those windmills in the panhandle are funded by many people who made their fortunes in oil and gas.

Fact-checking the GOP’s false claims about wind power as Texans worry about broken grid