Fact Checks

CLAIM:

The coronavirus has continued to take its toll on the American economy – forcing non-essential businesses to shutter, driving up unemployment, and testing our healthcare system. But there has also been a fair amount of misinformation disseminated regarding the virus. CNN recently reported “One of the most recent, baseless conspiracy theories surrounding the virus is that 5G networks — the next generation of wireless technology that’s steadily being rolled out around the world — are fueling the global coronavirus pandemic.”

RATING: False

FACT CHECK:

CNN and many other mainstream media outlets have been quick to quash misinformation regarding claims …

CLAIM

EcoWatch reports on legislation approved in Kentucky, South Dakota and West Virginia  designed to protect critical infrastructure projects and the workers who build them:

“While we are all paying attention to COVID-19 and the congressional stimulus packages, state legislatures are quietly passing fossil-fuel-backed anti-protest laws,” Greenpeace USA researcher Connor Gibson, who alerted HuffPost to the laws’ passage, told the news site. “These laws do nothing new to protect communities. Instead they seek to crack down on the sort of nonviolent civil disobedience that has shaped much of our nation’s greatest political and social victories.”

RATING:

False

FACT CHECK:…

The University of Pittsburgh’s Pitt News published an opinion column calling for the Dakota Access Pipeline, a 1,172 mile crude oil pipeline that runs from North Dakota to Illinois, to be shut down as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducts an additional environmental impact statement (EIS) on the pipeline as ordered by a federal judge last week. The column reads:

Until a more in-depth environmental statement is complete, we will not know the full scope of the pipeline’s risks. It’s possible that the USACE was accurate in its findings, but it’s also possible that the tribe’s concerns are valid.

CLAIM: The Hill reports on a federal judge’s ruling that the Army Corps of Engineers must once again review environmental impacts of the Dakota Access Pipeline:

The controversial Dakota Access Pipeline hit another roadblock Wednesday when a federal judge struck down permits for the pipeline and ordered a full workup of the environmental impacts of the project. … Judge James Boasberg said the environmental analysis by both the companies behind the pipeline and the Corps were severely lacking.

“In projects of this scope, it is not difficult for an opponent to find fault with many conclusions made by an

CLAIM: The New Yorker claims that protests against the Keystone XL pipeline have been successful in protecting the environment:

The Keystone fight was successful in stopping that pipeline, at least so far. … The delay has been very useful: it has meant eight hundred thousand barrels a day of the dirtiest oil on earth not flowing down through Nebraska.

RATING:

False

FACT CHECK:

Refusing to build the Keystone XL pipeline will do absolutely nothing to protect the environment or reduce the demand for oil. In fact, it will make transporting the oil that is taken from the ground more …

CLAIM: The Houston Chronicle today reported environmental groups have employed yet another tactic in their attempts to stop construction of Commonwealth LNG’s proposed export facility in Cameron, Louisiana:

Environmentalists plan to sue the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service to protect a rare marsh bird whose coastal habitat is being lost to urbanization, agriculture, climate change and some say, the liquefied natural gas industry.

The Arizona-based Center For Biological Diversity and the New Orleans environmental group Healthy Gulf plan to sue the agency and U.S. Interior Secretary David Bernhardt to protect the eastern black rail, a shy marsh bird that can

In the Democratic presidential debate Sunday night, former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders touched on energy policy – and reiterated their positions on fracking (against) and focus on climate change.

But Biden, the new frontrunner after the latest primaries, said something noteworthy:

Number one, no more subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, no more drilling on federal lands, no more drilling, including offshore, no ability for the oil industry to continue to drill, period, ends, number one.

We don’t believe Biden is really calling for a complete ban on drilling for oil, but it does …

CLAIM

The voters of Exeter, New Hampshire, voted to urge their town leaders to express opposition to the Granite Bridge natural gas pipeline under review by the state’s Public Utilities Commission.

“The safety risks of gas pipelines is evident in the recent leaks and explosions in Keene and Lawrence, Massachusetts,” Article 25 stated. “Furthermore, this fossil fuel project with its methane emissions and carbon dioxide is in opposition to the principles of Exeter’s ‘Right to a Healthy Climate Ordinance’ passed in 2010 and the Select board’s vote to support the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.”

RATING:

False.

FACT CHECK:…