Abu Dhabi, the largest of seven sheikhdoms in the United Arab Emirates, is swimming in oil revenue - and it's investing some of that money in solar power. That's more than can be said for Exxon Mobil Corp., which rebuffed a Rockefeller initiative at yesterday's annual meeting to nudge the company toward renewable energy. A shareholder resolution sponsored by the company's founding family was easily defeated.

Exxon's stance is an assertion that today's primacy of oil will continue for years to come, and that what the oil giant does best is look for oil and gas, not manufacture solar panels. But Abu Dhabi is doing the sort of forward planning that the Rockefellers wish Exxon would consider for tomorrow. Today Masdar, part of the industrial development arm of the Abu Dhabi government, unveiled plans to invest $2 billion in thin-film photovoltaic solar technology. True, this amounts to about a month of Exxon Mobil's projected capital spending this year. But in the solar world, it's substantial and noteworthy and probably just the sort of thing the Rockefellers would like Exxon to do.

Steven Geiger, director special projects at Masdar, talked with me by phone today. He said that Masdar aims to produce 1 gigawatt of panels by 2013 by adding plants, most likely in the southwest United States and Asia.

The first phase of investment will help bring solar power to Abu Dhabi and other Mideast oil producing countries, many of which still use oil to generate electricity, a practice that is wasteful and costly. In addition, Geiger said, there is a “staggering the growth of power demand” in the UAE.

The decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Monday upheld a lower court’s finding, which found the Ecuadorean court judgment was obtained by corrupt means, according to the Associated Press.

READ MORE: Ecuador, the poisoned rain forest

The appeals court said Judge Lewis Kaplan had the authority to rule as he did. It noted, however, that Kaplan's decision after trial doesn't invalidate the Ecuadorian judgment and does not stop the enforcement of the judgment anywhere outside the US.

The ruling comes amid a 23-year legal battle against Texaco, later a subsidiary of Chevron, over claims that the oil company polluted vast swaths of Lago Agrio in the Ecuadorean jungle. Plaintiffs argued the company discharged polluted wastewater into open pits, contaminating water used by the locals, while operating a concession there from the 1970s to 1990.

Chevron lobbied for $TTIP right to fight foreign regulations – reporthttps://t.co/cvJfo7QTatpic.twitter.com/ITrmsRyngX

During litigation in 1995, Texaco agreed to clean a number of waste pits in proportion to its interest in the consortium, at a cost of $40 million, and the Ecuadorian government released Texaco from further liability. In subsequent litigation, indigenous Ecuadorians argued the cleanup was incomplete. They argued the company had hidden toxic waste pits with a thin layer of topsoil.

“Everything was contaminated, but you do not see everything at first glance,” Celine Meneses, a special adviser to the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister, told Responding to Climate Change, an advocacy news source. “Everything seems to be normal, there is vegetation. But what is a bit strange is there are no animals. You have insects, but no animals.”

Chevron has long argued the 1998 agreement between Texaco and the Ecuadorian government absolves it of liability.

After years of fighting, Chevron shifted the case to Ecuador, only to lose a multibillion-dollar judgement after a new left-wing government supported the plaintiffs of some 30,000 villages in the polluted area. They won a $17.3 billion judgement, which was cut in half in 2011.

Chevron appealed the Ecuadorian court ruling, arguing it was “illegitimate” and “unenforceable in any court that observes the rule of law.”

Chevron argued the judgement was obtained through bribery, coercion and fraud.

Much of Chevron’s defense rested on former Ecuadorean Judge Alberto Guerra, who claimed the plaintiffs offered him a $300,000 bribe to ghostwrite the ruling in their favor.

https://www.rt.com/usa/355161-court-chevron-ecudorians-rainforest/