July, 22 2016, 01:15pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Stephen Kretzmann, steve@priceofoil.org, 202-497-1033
David Turnbull, david@priceofoil.org, 202-316-3499
New Report Details Climate Threat of Proposed U.S. Natural Gas Expansion
Natural gas pipeline proposals fail the climate test
WASHINGTON
A new report out today from Oil Change International, in partnership with 11 other local, regional, and national organizations, shows that current projections for U.S. natural gas production - fueled by a boom in the Appalachian Basin - will lock in enough carbon to bust through agreed climate goals.
The report, entitled, "A Bridge Too Far: How Appalachian Basin Gas Pipeline Expansion Will Undermine U.S. Climate Goals," takes an extensive look at the climate implications of proposed natural gas infrastructure in the Appalachian Basin.
The report highlights three key facts:
- There are 19 key new proposed natural gas pipelines in the Appalachian basin. All of them are incompatible with the Paris target and existing US climate goals;
- Stopping this new supply infrastructure is critical to the keep it in the ground movement's goals of stopping infrastructure that creates carbon lock-in; and
- All new energy projects must pass a climate test to prove their viability in a climate safe world. These new gas pipelines fail that test.
"There's a strong and vital movement of people throughout Appalachia who are standing up to protect their communities and their land from pipelines and the increase in fracking they will bring" said Stephen Kretzmann, Executive Director of Oil Change International. "This report makes it clear that all of these people are fighting for our climate too."
The report focuses on the Appalachian Basin because it is the key source of projected natural gas production growth in the U.S. if pending projects are approved. The report recommends applying a climate test to all natural gas (and other fossil fuel) projects to ensure no projects are approved unless they are aligned with climate goals and other environmental and community hazards can be addressed.
"Expanded natural gas production is a bridge to climate disaster. Our report shows that even if we entirely eliminated emissions from coal and oil, the emissions from the natural gas boom alone would still blow our climate budget," Kretzmann said. "This should be a wake up call to anyone promoting natural gas as a bridge to a clean energy future. Put simply, it's not."
The report is endorsed by the following groups:
- Oil Change International
- Appalachian Voices
- Bold Alliance
- Chesapeake Climate Action Network
- Earthworks
- Environmental Action
- Sierra Club (national)
- 350.org
- Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League
- Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights (Virginia & West Virginia)
- Sierra Club West Virginia chapter
- Friends of Water (West Virginia)
The report can be found here: https://priceofoil.org/2016/07/22/a-bridge-too-far-report
A compilation of quotes from additional organizations endorsing the report follows:
"As one of the most susceptible states in the country to the devastating effects of sea-level rise, Virginia cannot afford to be locked into decades of more reliance on fossil fuels," said Anne Havemann, General Counsel at the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. "This report underlines why hundreds of Virginians will march to Governor Terry McAuliffe's house this Saturday to decry his support for the Atlantic Coast and Mountain Valley Pipelines. Real climate leadership means fighting for 100% renewable energy." (contact: Kelly Trout, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, 240-396-2022, kelly@chesapeakeclimate.org
"As a grassroots organizer, and landowner in the path of a proposed natural gas transmission pipeline, I've seen the ugliness of the corporate grab and greed. The fact is, rural communities are often targets for takeover only to further profits through the intention of overbuilding pipelines which are sourced from fracked gas, a dirty fossil fuel from start to finish," said Carolyn Reilly, Community Organizer with Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League (BREDL). "Truth be told, it's a bridge to the past. It's time to focus on a clean climate future for our children and grandchildren... we're ready for renewable energy and the time is now.
"The only place gas will bridge us too is more pollution and further climate disruption," said Lena Moffitt, Director of Sierra Club's Beyond Dirty Fuels campaign. "This report highlights the magnitude of the threat our climate and communities face from further expansion of gas pipelines and plants, and shows that the only solution to meeting our global climate commitment is to keep gas--like all dirty fuels--in the ground."
"The extractive fossil fuel industries in West Virginia have notoriously brought harm to human lives as well as the environment, regionally and globally, through the extensive release of greenhouse gas emissions. It is imperative, in order to be in compliance with US climate goals, that our local, state and federal government agencies responsibly and drastically limit further fossil fuel extraction," said Laurie Ardison, member of the Executive Committee of the West Virginia Sierra Club. "West Virginia's economy, environmental preservation, social justice issues and citizen well-being will be best served by shifting the focus to developing statewide renewable energy resource infrastructures. We will then be acting in accordance with the goal of keeping the global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius."
"Actions show the strength and commitment of people standing up to Big Gas and their reckless pipelines. These people are fighting for their land, and our climate," said Jane Kleeb, Bold Alliance President. "Using eminent domain for private gain is something the Cowboy and Indian Alliance stands against. We plan on using actions, prayer and all legal tools available to stop these risky pipelines." (contact: Jane Kleeb, Bold Alliance 402-705-3622, jane@boldnebraska.org)
Oil Change International is a research, communications, and advocacy organization focused on exposing the true costs of fossil fuels and facilitating the ongoing transition to clean energy.
(202) 518-9029LATEST NEWS
State Department Spokesman Urged to Resign Over 'Despicable' Attack on UN Expert
One critic described Matthew Miller's attack on United Nations special rapporteur Francesca Albanese as a "Trumpian smearing of a principled human rights expert."
Mar 28, 2024
U.S. State Department Matthew Miller faced calls to resign Thursday after he accused a United Nations special rapporteur of engaging in antisemitism—an attack that came days after the human rights expert presented a report concluding that Israel's assault on Gaza has met the threshold of genocide.
Asked about the report during a press briefing on Wednesday, Miller said the U.S. has "for a longstanding period of time opposed the mandate of this special rapporteur, which we believe is not productive."
"And when it comes to the individual who holds that position, I can't help but note a history of antisemitic comments that she has made that have been reported," Miller added, pointing to comments that Francesca Albanese—the U.N. special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories—"made in December that appeared to justify the attacks of October 7."
A new low by the Biden team.
In response to UN Special Rapporteur @FranceskAlbs new report - Anatomy of a Genocide - concluding that the threshold of genocide has reasonably been met, the State Dep chooses to attack her persona and accuse her of antisemitism :( :( pic.twitter.com/iNpVT3BWQy
— Trita Parsi (@tparsi) March 27, 2024
It's not entirely clear which comments Miller was referencing.
In an interview with Jewish News Syndicate in December, Albanese was asked whether Palestinian militants' killing of Israeli soldiers on October 7 was a violation of international law. Albanese, an Italian attorney and academic, said that "killing a soldier is a tragedy under international law, but when there is an armed conflict, like in this case, killing a soldier is not illegal."
But Albanese stressed in the interview that the Hamas-led attacks on Israeli civilians—including the taking of hostages—were "not legitimate resistance."
"These are crimes and cannot be justified," she added.
Miller's attack on Albanese Wednesday—which echoed earlier attacks on the special rapporteur by U.S. officials and lawmakers—sparked immediate backlash and calls for his resignation.
"Matthew Miller should be forced to resign for trying to endanger the life of a U.N. official with falsehoods," Ashish Prashar, a spokesperson for Gaza Voices, said in a statement. Albanese said earlier this week that she has faced threats following the publication of her report accusing Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.
Rohan Talbot, director of advocacy and campaigns at Medical Aid for Palestinians, called the State Department spokesman's remarks a "truly despicable, Trumpian smearing of a principled human rights expert."
"Note the lack of substantive rebuttals of her careful analysis, and the resort to ad hominem attacks," Talbot wrote on social media. "Not the sign of a confident administration."
"Israel has a long history of weaponizing false charges of antisemitism to attack and undermine those fighting for human rights for Palestinians."
The Israeli government has similarly attempted to cast Albanese as an antisemite, drawing pushback from human rights organizations and academics who say the claim is a baseless attempt to discredit her work.
"Israel has a long history of weaponizing false charges of antisemitism to attack and undermine those fighting for human rights for Palestinians—and U.N. officials and experts have been among the most consistent victims of those attacks," Phyllis Bennis, director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, told Common Dreams.
"Almost 15 years ago Richard Falk," Bennis added, "an internationally respected Princeton professor of international law who had just been appointed special rapporteur, was not only denied access to the occupied Palestinian territory to carry out the terms of his U.N. mandate, but was also arrested and jailed by Israeli authorities."
"Since then every special rapporteur has been similarly excluded, their mandate and their work undermined, and their commitment to international law and human rights attacked as antisemitic," she said. "Francesca Albanese has been among the bravest of these SRs, maintaining her commitment to calling out all violations of international law relevant to her mandate—including when Israel has violated international covenants against apartheid and now, against genocide."
Albanese's 25-page report, which she delivered to the U.N. Human Rights Council on Tuesday, argues that "the overwhelming nature and scale of Israel's assault on Gaza and the destructive conditions of life it has inflicted reveal an intent to physically destroy Palestinians as a group."
"There are reasonable grounds to believe that the threshold indicating the commission of the following acts of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza has been met: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to groups' members; and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part," the report states. "Genocidal acts were approved and given effect following statements of genocidal intent issued by senior military and government officials."
Amnesty International praised the report as "a crucial body of work that must serve as a vital call to action."
The Biden State Department has publicly rejected genocide accusations against Israel as "meritless" and said it has not found Israel's military to be in violation of international law during its monthslong war on Gaza—an assessment that conflicts with the findings of leading human rights organizations and U.N. experts.
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'Horrifying' Footage Shows IDF Killing Two Gazans, Burying Their Bodies With a Bulldozer
"When the Israeli army can do these things and get away with it, it can only then do more of it knowing that it will not meet any punishment," said one analyst.
Mar 28, 2024
Video footage broadcast Wednesday by Al Jazeera shows Israeli soldiers gunning down two Palestinians on the coast of northern Gaza, even as one of them waves what appears to be a piece of white fabric.
The footage shows one of the men walking in the direction of an Israeli military vehicle with both hands raised. Despite the absence of any clear evidence that the man posed a threat, Israeli forces shot him from a short distance away. Another man is seen on the ground not far behind.
Al Jazeera's Tareq Abu Azzoum said the killings took place near where World Central Kitchen recently dropped off food aid.
The video then shows Israeli soldiers burying the bodies with a bulldozer.
"Probably certain words should be invented for this sort of thing," Marwan Bishara, AI Jazeera's chief political analyst, said in response to the footage. "I am not sure we have the sufficient vocabulary to describe this sort of twilight zone of Israel's fantasy of being the world's most moral army."
"It's a fantasy that meets the reality of a genocide," Bishara added. "An attempt to kill or destroy much of Palestine and Palestinians and hide the evidence and lie about it. When the Israeli army can do these things and get away with it, it can only then do more of it knowing that it will not meet any punishment."
Watch:
مشاهد حصرية للجزيرة لإعدام جنود إسرائيليين مدنيين فلسطينيين أثناء محاولتهم العودة لشمال قطاع غزة#الأخبار #حرب_غزة pic.twitter.com/QER98mv2n6
— قناة الجزيرة (@AJArabic) March 27, 2024
Richard Falk, former United Nations special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, toldAl Jazeera that the footage provides "vivid confirmation of continuing Israeli atrocities" and spotlights the "unambiguous character of Israeli atrocities that are being carried out on a daily basis."
"The eyes and ears of the world have been assaulted in real-time by this form of genocidal behavior," said Falk. "It is a shocking reality that there has been no adverse reaction from the liberal democracies in the West. It is a shameful moment."
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, whose board Falk chairs, has documented numerous examples of Israeli soldiers conducting close-range field executions in Gaza since October 7, when Israel launched its latest assault following a Hamas-led attack.
In less than six months, Israeli forces have killed more than 32,500 people in Gaza and sparked one of the worst humanitarian catastrophes in modern history.
The video footage emerged just days after the United Nations Security Council approved a resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire in Gaza. The U.S., Israel's leading arms supplier, abstained from the vote and falsely claimed the measure was "nonbinding."
The Israeli government, for its part, immediately signaled that it would disregard the resolution, just as it has ignored orders from the International Court of Justice.
Sophie McNeill, a human rights campaigner, called the footage released Wednesday "horrifying" and demanded that the International Criminal Court "urgently prioritize investigating and charging all those carrying out war crimes in Gaza."
"There just so happened to be a camera here in this moment. What are we not seeing?" McNeill asked. "This impunity must end."
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Joe Lieberman, Iraq War Cheerleader and Killer of Public Option, Dead at 82
"Joe Lieberman's legacy will live on as your medical debt."
Mar 27, 2024
While current and former officials across the U.S. political spectrum shared praise for and fond memories of former Sen. Joe Lieberman in response to news of his death on Wednesday, critics highlighted how some of his key positions led to the deaths of many others.
Lieberman's family said the 82-year-old died at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital after a fall at his home in the Bronx. He served in the Connecticut Senate, as the state's attorney general, and in the U.S. Senate—initially as a Democrat and eventually as an Independent. He was also Democratic former Vice President Al Gore's running mate in the 2000 presidential election.
"Up until the very end, Joe Lieberman enjoyed the high-quality, government-financed healthcare that he worked diligently to deny the rest of us. That's his legacy," said Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, which advocates for universal, single-payer healthcare.
As Warren Gunnels, majority staff director for Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.),
explained, "Joe Lieberman led the effort to ensure the Affordable Care Act did not include a public option or a reduction in the Medicare eligibility age to 55."
Noting that Lieberman also lied about the presence of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq—which was used to justify the 2003 U.S. invasion—Gunnels asked, "How many people unnecessarily died as a result?"
He was far from alone in highlighting the two defining positions.
The Lever's David Sirota declared, "RIP Joe Lieberman, Iraq War cheerleader who led the fight to make sure Medicare was not extended to millions of Americans who desperately needed the kind of healthcare coverage he enjoyed in the Senate."
The Debt Collective said on social media that "Joe Lieberman killed so many people when he killed the public option. Not to mention all the people he killed by cheerleading every war and every lie that led to war. A truly horrible person with a shameful legacy."
Journalist Jon Schwarz pointed out that Lieberman continued to lie about the WMDs long after the claims were debunked.
FormerMSNBC host Mehdi Hasan noted that Lieberman declined an opportunity to apologize for the disastrous war, sharing a clip from his on-camera interview with the ex-senator in 2021.
And please don\u2019t give me this \u2018don\u2019t speak ill of the dead\u2019 stuff - 1) I\u2019m not speaking ill, I\u2019m stating facts, and 2) public figures are public figures, and their obits reflect their legacies and so we should be honest in our accounts of their legacies. Not offensive but honest— (@)
"We lost a giant today. I often disagreed with Joe Lieberman but he was always honorable in the way he called for American troops to murder people abroad so he could get his jollies," said Matt Stoller of the American Economic Liberties Project in a series of sarcastic social media posts.
"Joe Lieberman balanced his love of other people fighting in immoral wars with a commitment to preventing Americans from getting healthcare," Stoller added. "Even after his Senate career, he showed his strong democratic values by lobbying for Chinese telecom firms. We will miss this man."
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