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For Immediate Release
April, 12 2023, 08:57am EDT
Contact:
Brittany Miller, bmiller@foe.org
100+ Organizations Urge Biden Administration to Stop G7 Push for LNG Expansion
Today, 116 climate and environmental justice groups sent a letter to the Biden Administration ahead of this week’s G7 meeting of climate change and environmental ministers. The letter urges U.S. officials to resist extensive fossil fuel industry lobbying and the push by Japanese officials to increase public investments in LNG – expansion that would directly undermine the Biden Administration’s climate commitments, endanger frontline communities, and exacerbate the global climate crisis.
The new call to action comes amid uncertainty about the G7’s direction on LNG. According to a Reuters report, some language on LNG expansion has been dropped from a draft G7 statement. Nevertheless, leaders from Japan and other countries continue to push for an endorsement of increased LNG usage, and there is no clear evidence the Biden Administration is pushing back.“As the International Energy Agency and others have made clear, there is no preventing a 1.5C world without preventing new oil and gas investments. Every LNG terminal that comes online risks locking-in decades of avoidable climate pollution and environmental injustice. Given the pipeline of projects already under construction, it is widely expected that the global market will be glutted by mid-2025, leaving buyers trapped in inflexible long-term contracts and delaying the replacement of methane gas with cheaper renewables and efficiency,”the letter reads.
LNG is chilled and liquified gas extracted by fracking and drilling oil and gas wells. Communities living near these dangerous facilities face extreme health risks due to the high amounts of harmful pollutants released by LNG production and export terminals. Moreover, investments in LNG threaten global commitments to reduce emissions and keep global temperature rise below 1.5° C – every fraction of a degree beyond which the impacts of the climate crisis magnify. Grassroots and national campaigns to stop LNG expansion are gaining momentum, as today’s letter and a potential change to G7 language illustrates.In response, local and national environmental groups issued the following statements (Alphabetical by organization):
“At a time when climate change-driven extreme weather events and public health crises are on the rise, now is not the time to give the fossil fuel industry even more handouts,” said James Hiatt, Founder and Director of For a Better Bayou. “It is critical that decision-makers in the United States talk to and visit the communities most affected by the buildout of fossil fuel infrastructure before investing and expanding Liquified Natural Gas terminals. President Biden must oppose the proposed global investments in LNG for the sake of our communities, climate, and future.”
“President Biden can’t let LNG hijack the G7,” said Lukas Ross, Program Manager at Friends of the Earth U.S. “The global LNG boom must be stopped in its tracks. Climate leadership and dirty diplomacy don’t mix.”
“G7 countries – particularly the United States – must stand firm against Japan’s efforts to promote fossil gas investments,” said Brendan Guy, Director of International Climate, NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council). “The world’s leading scientific and energy authorities, from the IPCC to the IEA, have emphasized new fossil gas investments are starkly inconsistent with global climate goals and environmental justice. The world simply cannot afford G7 backsliding when they need to be turbocharging the clean energy transition.”
“The U.S. was a leader on climate at the G7 as the world began to transition off coal, and we hope President Biden and his team step up once again to end the era of all fossil fuels,” said Collin Rees, United States Program Manager at Oil Change International.
“Japan’s reckless boosting of LNG expansion and finance for new oil and gas threatens international progress on climate and would take us in a dangerous direction.”
“Not only does any expansion of gas infrastructure in Texas and Louisiana have profound climate implications for the entire planet, the corporations who have the ear of G7 leaders exploit Gulf South communities for purely selfish reasons,” said Jeffrey Jacoby, Deputy Director of Texas Campaign for the Environment. “Any politician who believes the Chenieres or Sempras of the world are acting in the ‘public interest’ just needs to visit Corpus Christi, TX or Lake Charles, LA and talk to the people who live there to know that LNG is a racist, climate-wrecking racket.”
“The era of fossil fuels is rapidly coming to an end, and any efforts to prolong the lifespan of LNG and methane gas is in direct conflict with our globally agreed-upon climate goals,” said Cherelle Blazer, the Sierra Club’s Senior International Climate and Policy Campaign Director. “The world’s foremost scientists have told us everything we need to know – the future will be dire if we do not rapidly transition to a 100 percent clean energy economy. There is no justification for any country to support the expansion of LNG projects anywhere when there are cleaner, safer, and more reliable energy alternatives readily available. The Sierra Club calls on the United States to use its influence to keep the G7 gathering on a path to clean energy and resist the efforts of Japan and the gas industry to prop up unsustainable LNG projects.”
Friends of the Earth fights for a more healthy and just world. Together we speak truth to power and expose those who endanger the health of people and the planet for corporate profit. We organize to build long-term political power and campaign to change the rules of our economic and political systems that create injustice and destroy nature.
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Emboldened by Trump Win, Israeli Minister Vows West Bank Annexation in 2025
"I have no doubt that President Trump, who showed courage and determination in his decisions during his first term, will support the state of Israel in this move."
Nov 12, 2024
Anticipating even greater U.S. support following Republican President-elect Donald Trump's White House return in January, far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Monday ordered officials to prepare to illegally annex the occupied West Bank of Palestine in 2025.
"The year 2025 will be, with God's help, the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria," Smotrich told members of his Religious Zionist Party. "The only way to remove the threat of a Palestinian state from the agenda is to apply Israeli sovereignty over the settlements in Judea and Samaria."
Judea and Samaria is the biblical name for the West Bank and is used by proponents of annexation and the creation of a Greater Israel, which would include all of Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon and parts of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iraq, and Turkey.
"The year 2025 will be, with God's help, the year of sovereignty in Judea and Samaria."
"I have no doubt that President Trump, who showed courage and determination in his decisions during his first term, will support the state of Israel in this move," Smotrich said.
On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who has repeatedly denied annexationist ambitions during the tenure of U.S. President Joe Biden—signaled that annexation would be back on the agenda in light of Trump's victory, according to Israeli state broadcaster Kan.
Smotrich said Monday that he has directed officials in the Ministry of Defense and Civil Administration "to actually prepare the necessary infrastructure for applying sovereignty" to the lands Israel has occupied and colonized after invading and conquering the West Bank and other Palestinian territories in 1967.
Israel's occupation and settlements are illegal under international law including the Fourth Geneva Convention. The International Court of Justice in The Hague—which is also weighing a Gaza genocide case against Israel—in July issued an advisory opinion affirming that the 57-year occupation is illegal and a form of apartheid.
Smotrich declared his intention to work "with the new administration of President Trump and with the international community to implement Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria."
In a swipe at the Biden administration—which has approved tens of billions of dollars in U.S. military aid for Israel and provided diplomatic cover for its war on Gaza and against Palestinian statehood—Smotrich said Monday that "we were on the verge of applying sovereignty over settlements in Judea and Samaria" during Trump's first term. "Now, it's time to act," he asserted.
While Netanyahu's government may find a willing partner in Trump—who calls himself "the best friend Israel has ever had"—most of the rest of the world is staunchly opposed to Israeli annexation. Nearly 150 nations recognize Palestinian statehood; in May, the United Nations General Assembly voted 143-9 to upgrade Palestine's U.N. status to observer state.
In September, European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell warned that "not only is there no pause in the war in Gaza, but what looms on the horizon is the extension of the conflict to the West Bank, where radical members of the Israeli government—Netanyahu's government—try to make it impossible to create a future Palestinian state."
Israel has already unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan Heights. While the U.N. and most countries' governments consider these moves—and Israeli settlements in the annexed territories—unlawful, the first Trump administration recognized them as legal. In February, the Biden administration reversed the so-called "Pompeo doctrine" and reverted to the State Department's legal opinion from 1978-2019: that settlements are inconsistent with international law.
Netanyahu has openly boasted about thwarting the so-called "two-state solution" and has repeatedly advocated full Israeli control of Palestine.
"From every area we evacuate we have received terrible terror against us. It happened in southern Lebanon, it happened in Gaza, and also in Judea and Samaria," the prime minister said earlier this year. "The state of Israel needs security control over all territory west of the Jordan River. Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea."
More than 700,000 Jewish settlers have colonized the West Bank since 1967, according to Israeli estimates.
Settlers often destroy property and attack Palestinians, sometimes in mobs that carry out deadly pogroms, in order to terrorize them into fleeing so their land can be stolen. As the world's attention is focused on Gaza, Israeli soldiers and settlers have killed more than 900 Palestinians including over 200 children in the West Bank since January 2023, according to the most recent figures from the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Last month, Smotrich and other far-right senior Israeli officials including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir spoke at a conference advocating for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza—which numerous critics say is already underway—to make way for Jewish recolonization of the embattled coastal enclave.
Proponents pointed to West Bank settlements as the example to emulate. But Smotrich has even greater ambitions.
"It is written," he said in a recent interiew, "that the future of Jerusalem is to expand to Damascus."
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Critics Warn Trump EPA Pick Zeldin 'Will Make Our Air and Water Dirtier' to Enrich Polluters
The choice, said one climate leader, "lays bare Donald Trump's intentions to, once again, sell our health, our communities, our jobs, and our future out to corporate polluters."
Nov 12, 2024
As U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's Cabinet continued to take shape on Tuesday, climate and environmental campaigners expressed deep concerns about his pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency: Lee Zeldin.
Like the EPA administrators from Trump's first term—former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler and "fossil fuel puppet" Scott Pruitt—Zeldin is expected to pursue the Republican's plan to "drill, baby, drill," despite the devastating consequences for the global climate.
In a statement announcing Zeldin as his pick, Trump unironically pledged the former New York congressman would usher in a new era of deregulation but ensure the United States has "the cleanest air and water on the planet." Zeldin similarly promised to achieve "U.S. energy dominance" while also "protecting access to clean air and water." Green groups responded with forceful criticism.
"We need a steady, experienced hand at EPA to marshal federal resources to fight climate change and utilize the full power of the law to protect communities from toxic pollution," Earthjustice president Abbie Dillen said Tuesday. "Lee Zeldin is not that person."
"His loyalty to Donald Trump indicates he will gladly take a sledgehammer to EPA's most recent lifesaving regulations, putting politics over science and endangering our communities," she warned. "It is clear President-elect Trump is prioritizing loyalty above actual qualifications to address our current and future environmental concerns."
Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous declared that choosing a candidate "who opposes efforts to safeguard our clean air and water lays bare Donald Trump's intentions to, once again, sell our health, our communities, our jobs, and our future out to corporate polluters. Our lives, our livelihoods, and our collective future cannot afford Lee Zeldin—or anyone who seeks to carry out a mission antithetical to the EPA's mission."
"2024 will assuredly surpass 2023 as the hottest year on record," he noted. "Across the country, we are experiencing record droughts, heatwaves, and deadly storms, wiping out entire communities in a matter of hours. Americans need and deserve someone who will put them first, not millionaires sitting in board rooms seeking to increase the profits of multibillion-dollar international corporations."
"We have made too much progress to allow Donald Trump and Lee Zeldin to take us back," Jealous added. "We will not give up the clean energy manufacturing jobs rebuilding communities. We will not accept more dangerous air and water. And we will not allow Trump, Zeldin, and corporate polluters to steal our future."
While campaigning against Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris—who was widely supported by green groups—Trump told Big Oil executives that he would repeal the Biden-Harris administration's climate policies if they poured $1 billion into electing him.
"Big Oil spent millions of dollars propping up Donald Trump's campaign—and he's not wasting any time giving them a good return on their investment," Climate Power executive director Lori Lodes said Monday. "Lee Zeldin is already promising to slash critical protections as head of the EPA."'
"During Donald Trump's first term in office, he slashed over 125 environmental protections and let polluters off the hook for putting harmful chemicals into our air and water," Lodes pointed out. "Trump's second term agenda will make our air and water dirtier just to make billionaires and big corporations richer—and Americans will pay the price."
After serving in the New York State Senate, Zeldin represented the 1st Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2015 to 2023, during which he was one of Trump's allies—or as Fossil Free Media's Jamie Henn put it, "ass-kissing sycophants."
Zeldin unsuccessfully ran for New York governor in 2022, during which he campaigned on reversing the state's ban on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. He has a 14% lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters.
E&E Newsspoke with multiple sources who believe Zeldin will be able to implement the incoming administration's playbook. Frank Maisano, a senior principal at lobbying firm Bracewell, described him as a fixture in "Trump World" who is "totally with the president's agenda."
"The EPA administrator last time... you had somebody who wasn't politically savvy and was an attorney general who just ramrodded his policy through and didn't have any real political acumen in the space," he said, referring to Pruitt.
"The agenda, I believe, needs to be radical, and there will be a lot of opposition from the mainstream media, environmental groups, the Democrats in Congress," Maisano added. "The job of deregulation is going to need someone who can also be a good defender and explainer of what they're trying to do and what it will accomplish, and why it's important and why it's not wrecking the environment."
Meanwhile, climate organizations and Democratic critics emphasize that wrecking the environment is Trump's plan and they are determined to fight against it.
"We count on the EPA to protect clean air and water and public health and that's what we'll hold the next administrator accountable to do," said Natural Resources Defense Council president Manish Bapna, taking aim at Zeldin's promises to "revitalize our auto industry to bring back American jobs, and make the U.S. the global leader" of artificial intelligence.
"Current EPA standards and federal incentives are already revitalizing the auto industry in precisely the way the industry sees its own future, with more than 160 electric vehicle projects totaling $82 billion in investment announced in just the past two years," Bapna explained. "Repealing these policies, as Trump has said he'll do, would devastate the industry in a moment of critical transition, threatening jobs, increasing tailpipe pollution that's wrecking the climate, and driving up consumer costs."
"Similarly, we can meet demand for data centers without scrapping EPA rules to clean up dirty power plants and cut climate pollution," he added. "We need EPA leadership that will protect the environment and public health. That's a big enough job without looking outside the agency's charge."
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UN Climate Chief Warns Inaction on Emissions Will Deliver 'Inflation on Steroids'
"Climate finance is global inflation insurance. Rampant climate costs should be public enemy number one," the U.N. official told world leaders at COP29.
Nov 12, 2024
As he addressed world leaders at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan on Tuesday, U.N. climate chief Simon Stiell made the case that action against the planetary emergency can help combat an economic problem plaguing nations around the world: inflation.
Far from a threat reserved for future generations, Stiell told ministers gathered for day one of the conference's World Leaders Climate Action Summit that the climate crisis was "fast becoming an economy killer," already slashing some nations' gross domestic products by up to 5%.
"The climate crisis is a cost-of-living crisis," Still said, "because climate disasters are driving up costs for households and businesses. Worsening climate impacts will put inflation on steroids unless every country can take bolder climate action."
Stiell's remarks come amid growing discussion of the impact of inflation on political stability following the victory of Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election last week. In the wake of Trump's win, commenters have pointed out that almost every country that voted in 2024 voted to oust the incumbent party, and inflation following the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia's invasion of Ukraine is one prominent explanation.
Stiell told the leaders gathered at COP29 that they should learn from that inflation spike when making decisions about climate.
"Let's learn the lessons from the pandemic—when billions suffered because we didn't take the collective action fast enough when supply chains were smashed," Stiell said. "Let's not make that mistake again."
"Climate finance is global inflation insurance," Stiell continued. "Rampant climate costs should be public enemy number one."
"Unless emissions plummet and adaptation soars, every economy will face far greater fury."
In his remarks to the leaders summit, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres also emphasized the economic impacts of climate-fueled disasters.
"No country is spared," Guterres said. "In our global economy, supply chain shocks raise costs—everywhere. Decimated harvests push up food prices—everywhere. Destroyed homes increase insurance premiums—everywhere."
Guterres also tied the climate emergency to economic inequality, citing a recent Oxfam study finding that billionaires emit more greenhouse gases in an hour and a half than an ordinary person will during their entire life.
"This is a story of avoidable injustice. The rich cause the problem, the poor pay the highest price," Guterres said, adding that "unless emissions plummet and adaptation soars, every economy will face far greater fury."
However, both U.N. leaders saw hope in a rapid and equitable transition to renewable energy.
"Bolder climate action can drive economic opportunity and abundance everywhere. Cheap, clean energy can be the bedrock of your economies. It means more jobs, more growth, less pollution choking cities, healthier citizens, and stronger businesses," Stiell said.
Guterres argued that "the economic imperative is clearer and more compelling with every renewables roll out, every innovation, and every price drop" and called doubling down on fossil fuels "absurd."
"The clean energy revolution is here," Guterres continued. "No group, no business, and no government can stop it. But you can and must ensure it is fair, and fast enough to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C."
Currently, national policies put the world on track for 3.1°C of heating, which scientists warn would have devastating consequences for ecosystems and human communities.
Both Stiell and Guterres urged leaders to rapidly reduce their climate pollution and agree to a new finance goal at COP29 to help developing countries fund their green transitions and adapt to increasing climate impacts.
"On climate finance, the world must pay up, or humanity will pay the price," Guterres said.
Stiell warned that "billions of people simply cannot afford for their government to leave COP29 without a global climate finance goal."
"These are not easy times, but despair is no strategy, and it's not warranted," Stiell concluded. "Our process is strong, and it will endure. After all, international cooperation is the only way humanity survives global heating. The time for hand-wringing is over; so let's get on with the job."
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