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Bill McKibben Responds to EPA Comments on Keystone XL
In response to comments issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on the Keystone XL Pipeline, in which the agency advises that "development of oil sands crude represents a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions," 350.org Co-Founder Bill McKibben issued the following statement:
In response to comments issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on the Keystone XL Pipeline, in which the agency advises that "development of oil sands crude represents a significant increase in greenhouse gas emissions," 350.org Co-Founder Bill McKibben issued the following statement:
"In a city where bureaucrats rarely say things right out loud, the EPA has come pretty close. Its knife-sharp comments make clear that despite the State Department's relentless spin, Keystone is a climate disaster by any realistic assessment. The president's got every nail he needs to finally close the coffin on this boondoggle."
Read the EPA's comments here: https://www.epa.gov/compliance/nepa/20140032.pdf.
350 is building a future that's just, prosperous, equitable and safe from the effects of the climate crisis. We're an international movement of ordinary people working to end the age of fossil fuels and build a world of community-led renewable energy for all.
Conserving Just 1.2% of Earth's Land Could Save Most Threatened Species From Extinction
More than a third of the sites identified as most vulnerable lie within a mile and a half of lands that are already protected, making the task entirely "doable," said one scientist.
Researchers revealed in a study published Monday that world governments are not doing enough to save the most endangered plant and animal species from extinction, and called for a more targeted approach to protect biodiversity.
Eric Dinerstein, a senior biodiversity expert at Resolve, led a team of researchers in the analysis, which was published in Frontiers in Scienceand revealed that conserving just 1.2% of the Earth's surface would avert the extinction of the most threatened species on the planet.
The scientists set out to identify the rarest species in the world in limited habitats, with Dinerstein noting that the majority of species are rare.
Most species "either have very narrow ranges or they occur at very low densities or both," he told The Guardian, suggesting that setting aside large percentages of the Earth's land isn't needed to protect the most threatened animals.
For example, the World Wildlife Fund identifies the Javan rhino as the most endangered species on Earth, having suffered "a staggering decline in their numbers due to hunting and habitat loss." Javan rhinos are found only on the island of Java, Indonesia.
Similarly, the Amur leopard has been critically endangered since 1996 and is only found in "a relatively small region of the far east of Russia and northeastern China at present."
"It's almost as if countries are using a reverse-selection algorithm and picking the non-rare sites to add to the global areas under protection. The call to arms of this paper is that we have to be doing a much better job in the next five years."
The study identified 16,825 sites around the world that should be prioritized for conservation over the next five years in order to prevent the extinction of animals and plants that are found only in those places.
Dinerstein told The Guardian that protecting the most vulnerable places is entirely "doable," especially considering 38% of the identified sites are within one and a half miles of areas that are already protected.
More than half the sites are in the Philippines, Brazil, Indonesia, Madagascar, and Colombia.
"Only 7% of the new protected areas between 2018 and 2023 overlapped with the conservation imperative sites," Dinerstein warned, calling for a more targeted approach. "It's almost as if countries are using a reverse-selection algorithm and picking the non-rare sites to add to the global areas under protection. The call to arms of this paper is that we have to be doing a much better job in the next five years."
The United Nations Environment Program reported in 2021 that 16.6% of the world's land surface and waters are currently protected.
Through land purchases, the creation of protected areas on federal lands, the leasing of community reserves and forests, and the expansion of Indigenous rights and land sovereignty, the study says, all of the key sites identified by researchers could be protected over the next five years for roughly $29 billion to $46 billion.
Even as Julian Assange's Release Celebrated, Deep Worries Remain for Press Freedom
"Make no mistake, the vital work of national security journalists will be more difficult today than it was yesterday."
Amid celebrations that a plea deal with the United States resulted in the release of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from a British prison, press freedom advocates on Tuesday continued to raise serious concerns about the damage done by the U.S. government's pursuit of a journalist who helped expose state secrets and evidence of war crimes.
"Julian Assange faced a prosecution that had grave implications for journalists and press freedom worldwide," said Jodie Ginsberg, CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists, following news of the deal.
"While we welcome the end of his detention," Ginsberg added, "the U.S.'s pursuit of Assange has set a harmful legal precedent by opening the way for journalists to be tried under the Espionage Act if they receive classified material from whistleblowers. This should never have been the case."
After spending seven years in the Ecuadorian Embassy in the United Kingdom and then five more in the London's Belmarsh Prison, Assange agreed to plead guilty to one felony to avoid more time behind bars. The 52-year-old Australian was fighting against his extradition to the United States, where he faced 18 charges under the Espionage Act and a federal computer fraud law for publishing classified material and could have been locked up for the rest of his life.
"With today's guilty plea, Julian Assange stands convicted of practicing journalism, and all investigative journalists now face greater legal peril."
"We are hugely relieved that Julian Assange is finally free—a long overdue victory for journalism and press freedom. He never should have spent a single day deprived of his liberty for publishing information in the public interest," said Rebecca Vincent, Reporters Without Borders' director of campaigns, in a statement.
"Nothing can undo the past 13 years, but it is never too late to do the right thing, and we welcome this move by the U.S. government," she added. "We will continue to campaign in support of journalists around the world who find themselves targeted for national security reporting, and for reform of the U.S. Espionage Act, so that it can never again be used to target journalistic activity."
Vincent's group is among several press freedom and human rights organizations that had long called for the U.S. Department of Justice to drop the charges against Assange—and after news of the plea deal broke, several others warned of what is to come.
Amnesty International secretary general Agnès Callamard celebrated what the deal will mean for the WikiLeaks founder and his family—including his wife Stella Assange, who plans to seek a pardon for her husband, and their young children—but said Tuesday that "the yearslong global spectacle of the U.S. authorities hell-bent on violating press freedom and freedom of expression by making an example of Assange for exposing alleged war crimes committed by the USA has undoubtedly done historic damage."
"Amnesty International salutes the work of Julian Assange's family, campaigners, lawyers, press freedom organizations, and many within the media community and beyond who have stood by him and the fundamental principles that should govern society's right and access to information and justice," she added. "We will keep fighting for their full recognition and respect by all."
Not all journalists and media outlets defended Assange, despite the precedent that his conviction could have set, and multiple Monday headlines—including at The Associated Press, The New York Times, and The Washington Post—highlighted his guilty plea. According to the BBC, Assange plans to return to Australia after finalizing the deal in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth.
"A plea deal would avert the worst-case scenario for press freedom, but this deal contemplates that Assange will have served five years in prison for activities that journalists engage in every day," said Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. "It will cast a long shadow over the most important kinds of journalism, not just in this country but around the world."
Ben Wizner, director of the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, emphasized that "with today's guilty plea, Julian Assange stands convicted of practicing journalism, and all investigative journalists now face greater legal peril."
"Exposing government secrets and revealing them in the public interest is the core function of national security journalism," Wizner continued. "Today, for the first time, that activity was described in a guilty plea as a criminal conspiracy. And even if the current Department of Justice stays true to its assurances that the Assange case is unique and will not provide a precedent to be wielded against other publishers, we can't be confident that future administrations will honor that commitment."
"The precedent set by this guilty plea would have been far more dangerous had it been ratified by federal courts," he added. "But make no mistake, the vital work of national security journalists will be more difficult today than it was yesterday."
"Just imagine what an attorney general in a second Trump administration will think, knowing they've already got one guilty plea from a publisher under the Espionage Act."
Seth Stern, director of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), also looked to the future, tying Assange's deal to the November U.S. election in which Democratic President Joe Biden is set to face former Republican President Donald Trump.
The current administration "could have distinguished itself from Donald Trump, Biden's openly anti-press electoral opponent, whose administration first indicted Assange," Stern noted in a piece for the Daily Beast. "It could have dropped the case."
Instead, the Biden administration opted for a plea deal that "does not add any more prison time or punishment for Assange," Stern stressed, echoing his initial statement on the news. "Its only impact will be to legitimize the criminalization of routine journalistic conduct and encourage future administrations to follow suit—including a potential second Trump administration."
In a Tuesday opinion piece for The Guardian, FPF executive director Trevor Timm wrote: "Just imagine what an attorney general in a second Trump administration will think, knowing they've already got one guilty plea from a publisher under the Espionage Act. Trump, after all, has been out on the campaign trail repeatedly opining about how he would like to see journalists—who he sees as 'enemies of the people'—in jail. Why the Biden administration would hand him any ammo is beyond belief."
"So if the Biden administration is looking for plaudits for ending this case, they should get exactly none," Timm asserted. "Now we can only hope this case is an aberration and not a harbinger of things to come."
Sanders Report Details Plot by Right-Wing Billionaires to 'Sabotage' Public Education
"Instead of siphoning money and increasing tax breaks to subsidize private education, we have a responsibility to ensure all students have access to quality K-12 education."
Sen. Bernie Sanders released a report Tuesday detailing how right-wing billionaires are bankrolling coordinated efforts to privatize U.S. public education by promoting voucher programs that siphon critical funding away from already-underresourced public schools.
The report notes that last year, the American Federation for Children (AFC)—an organization funded by former Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos—"ousted state lawmakers in Iowa and Arkansas who resisted proposals to subsidize private education in states and passed expansive private school vouchers."
Aided by millions of dollars in funding from DeVos and her husband, "AFC's political affiliates and allies spent $9 million to win 277 out of 368 races to remove at least 40 incumbent lawmakers," the report adds.
The DeVos family is hardly alone in using its wealth to undercut U.S. public education. The Bradley Foundation, which has been knee-deep in efforts to privatize education in Wisconsin and across the country, spent $7.5 million in 2022 "to fund 34 state affiliates of the State Policy Network to push conservative policy agendas, including privatizing education, and $8.3 million to building a youth movement to 'win the American Culture War.'"
"The Koch-sponsored group, American Encore, has funneled substantial amounts into state governor races and ballot initiatives around the country, including more than $1.4 million to elect Arizona's former governor Doug Ducey in 2014 (who led the efforts to create the nation's first universal private school voucher)," the report adds.
"For too long, there's been a coordinated effort to sabotage our public schools and privatize our education system. Unacceptable."
The analysis also names billionaires Jess Yass of Susquehanna International Group, Richard Uihlein of Uline, and Bernard Marcus of Home Depot, all of whom have recently donated to the School Freedom Fund—a PAC that supports voucher programs and shuttering the U.S. Education Department.
School voucher programs
disproportionately benefit wealthy families, analyses have shown, while undercutting the goal of serving all students within a community.
"Over the past decade, there has been a coordinated effort on the part of right-wing billionaires to undermine, dismantle, and sabotage our nation's public schools and to privatize our education system," Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, said in a statement. " That is absolutely unacceptable."
"We can no longer tolerate billionaires and multinational corporations receiving massive tax breaks and subsidies while children in America are forced to go to understaffed, underresourced, and underfunded public schools," Sanders continued. "On this 70th anniversary year of Brown v. Board of Education, let us recommit to creating an education system that works for all of our people, not just the wealthy few."
The new report, authored by the Senate HELP Committee's majority staff, comes days after Sanders presided over a hearing at which a pair of public school teachers decried the low educator pay and lack of resources plaguing schools across the U.S. and threatening the foundations of the country's public education system.
The committee's report shows that while most states have chronically underfunded their public schools, spending on voucher programs that subsidize private schools with taxpayer dollars has surged across the country. Between 2008 and 2019, according to a recent analysis cited in the report, Florida ramped up spending on voucher programs by 313% while "decreasing per-pupil funding of public schooling by 12%."
"The expansion of private school voucher programs forces very real tradeoffs. Money spent on private school vouchers could instead be used to hire teachers, raise wages, hire school counselors, and invest in high-quality academics for students," reads the new report, which estimates that "Arizona could hire 15,730 more public K-12 teachers with the money it is instead spending on private school vouchers."
The report calls on Congress to help reverse the trend of billionaire-backed school privatization by investing more in public education—including early childhood education and community schools—and by passing Sanders' legislation to set the pay floor for U.S. public school teachers at $60,000 a year.
The report also recommends passage of the
College for All Act, a Sanders-led bill that would make public colleges and universities tuition-free for students from households making less than $250,000 a year.
"As the richest country in history, the United States should have the best education system in the world," Sanders' report reads. "Our public education system is not perfect—it is underfunded and racially and socioeconomically segregated. Our educators are not respected or paid nearly what they deserve."
"Massive tax breaks to the wealthiest people and largest corporations are being prioritized over opportunities to progressively raise revenue to support social services and public education," the report continues. "Instead of siphoning money and increasing tax breaks to subsidize private education, we have a responsibility to ensure all students have access to quality K-12 education. This requires adequate and equitable funding and addressing structural challenges in our public schools."