May, 12 2015, 12:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Expert contact: Ben Schreiber, (202) 222-0752, bschreiber@foe.org
Communications contact: Kate Colwell, (202) 222-0744, kcolwell@foe.org
Advocates for Public Health and Environment Chide Rep. Blumenauer for Trade Vote
Groups launch TV ad buy in Portland, Ore. and Washington, D.C. condemning Rep. Blumenauer’s trade vote
WASHINGTON
Today Food & Water Watch, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace began running television advertisements in Portland, Ore. and Washington, D.C. condemning Representative Blumenauer's (D-Ore.) endorsement of the 'fast track' Trade Promotion Authority bill -- legislation that would expedite approval of large trade agreements being negotiated by the Obama administration;the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.
On April 16, fast track legislation sponsored by Senate Finance Committee Chair Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and House Ways and Means Chair Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) was introduced. Representative Blumenauer came out in support of Fast Track in a joint op-ed with Senator Wyden in The Oregonian. Representative Blumenauer then joined Representative Ron Kind (D-Wis.) as the only two Democrats to vote for the bill in the House Ways and Means Committee.
"Representative Blumenauer has been an important champion on climate change and the environment, but he is wrong on trade," said Friends of the Earth President Erich Pica. "There's a fundamental disconnect between supporting free trade and addressing climate change, eliminating cancer-causing chemicals from products and protecting our food supply. We can't have 'environmental champions' supporting a bad trade deal."
The groups are concerned that the Trans-Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership would require the Department of Energy to automatically approve natural gas exports to countries in the deal, which would lead to more fracking around the U.S. and more greenhouse gas emissions. The deals could also strip away government control of energy exports, potentially encouraging more trade of oil and coal.
"Simply put: a vote for fast track is a vote to accelerate the inherently environmentally dangerous practice of fracking for natural gas," said Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch. "Rep. Blumenauer voted to give foreign oil and gas companies powerful new trade litigation tools to go after the growing grassroots movement to ban fracking in statehouses, county seats and municipalities across the country."
Particularly contentious are provisions that would allow corporations to sue governments for millions or billions of dollars in 'damages' in secretive international tribunals if environmental and health regulations frustrate their business plans and erode their anticipated future earnings.
"Scientists tell us that we need to keep 80 percent of the world's fossil fuel reserves in the ground," said Greenpeace Executive Director, Annie Leonard. "There is no way that we are going to be able to achieve this rapid phase-out of the use of coal, oil, and gas if Rep. Blumenauer and other decision-makers vote in favor off an international bill of rights for nationless companies like Shell, BP and Exxon."
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.
(202) 783-7400LATEST NEWS
Study Estimates Fossil Fuel Giants Have Inflicted $28 Trillion in Climate Damage Worldwide
As people around the world cope with the worsening effects of planetary heating, "the veil of plausible deniability doesn't exist anymore scientifically" for fossil fuel giants.
Apr 24, 2025
As planetary heating has fueled increasingly damaging hurricanes, wildfires, and dangerous heatwaves, fossil fuel giants have long been shielded by plausible deniability: Despite scientists' consensus that oil, gas, and coal extraction are polluting the planet and causing global temperatures to rise, they couldn't prove that specific corporations were to blame for worsening climate destruction.
A study published on Wednesday could change that.
Using modeling techniques that have been utilized for more than a decade to explain how climate change is fueling weather disasters, researchers at Dartmouth College estimated that 111 of the world's largest fossil fuel companies have caused $28 trillion in heat-related climate damages so far—slightly less than the value of all goods and services produced in the United States last year.
"The global economy would be $28 trillion richer," reads the study, "were it not for the extreme heat caused by the emissions from the 111 carbon majors considered here."
The study, published in Nature, found that more than half of that amount—which doesn't include damages from hurricanes and other extreme climate events—could be attributed to just 10 oil, coal, and gas companies including Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Russia's state-owned Gazprom, and Saudi Aramco.
"Everybody's asking the same question: What can we actually claim about who has caused this?" Dartmouth climate scientist Justin Mankin, co-author of the study, told Euronews.
The researchers pursued that question as climate advocates pushed policymakers to adopt the "polluters pay principle": the idea that companies that produce pollution should pay for the damages it causes. Earlier this year, a California Democratic lawmaker introduced legislation that would allow homeowners and businesses to recoup losses caused by climate disasters like the wildfires that devastated parts of the Los Angeles area.
"The global economy would be $28 trillion richer were it not for the extreme heat caused by the emissions from the 111 carbon majors considered here."
New York and Vermont have enacted laws that would hold fossil fuel companies accountable for greenhouse gas emissions and require them to pay for climate damages and adaptation, and other states are considering similar proposals—with oil and gas companies fighting back in court.
Mankin told Euronews that Dartmouth's new research shows that "the veil of plausible deniability doesn't exist anymore scientifically."
In the past, he said, carbon emitters could ask, "Who's to say that it's my molecule of CO2 that's contributed to these damages versus any other one?"
"We can actually trace harms back to major emitters," he said.
The research team examined the final emissions of the products produced by the 111 largest fossil fuel giants and used 1,000 distinct computer simulations to determine how those emissions impacted changes in the Earth's global average surface temperature, comparing the results to a simulation in which each company's emissions did not exist.
Epidemiologist Ali Khan said the method represented "great improvements in attribution" as at least 68 lawsuits have been filed globally demanding that polluters pay for damages. About half of those lawsuits have been filed in the United States.
"So far, attorneys and litigants have often named defendants as part of the initial legal process, under the assumption that knowing a defendant's emissions is sufficient to make a claim," reads the study. "Science can help claimants assess potential defendants in a transparent and low-cost way."
The researchers determined that Chevron's oil and gas extraction has raised the Earth's temperature by 0.025°C. The company is to blame for an estimated $1.98 trillion in climate damage, behind only Saudi Aramco, which is liable for an estimated $2.05 trillion, and Gazprom, which is responsible for $2 trillion.
Kevin Reed, a professor at Stony Brook University's School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, toldThe Washington Post that Dartmouth's research into climate damage attribution is "the real deal."
"This is the first time I've seen this done in a really comprehensive way that isn't just for one specific event," Reed said.
The European Green Party cataloged a number of steps that policymakers could take if $28 trillion had been saved by forcing companies to end their climate-wrecking emissions.
Financing 100% renewable energy would cost just $4 trillion, while guaranteeing universal housing and energy efficiency would cost $3 trillion, said the political party.
"Polluters," said the European Greens, "need to start paying for the damage they are causing to our planet."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Rights Groups to UN: Trump Tactics Bear 'Hallmarks of Fascist Regimes'
"The human rights violations described in the report make clear that the U.S. is in an authoritarian political reality."
Apr 24, 2025
A coalition of human rights organizations on Wednesday submitted a report to the United Nations warning that U.S. President Donald Trump's far-right administration is exploiting a decades-long erosion of American democracy to consolidate power and undercut basic freedoms.
The report—crafted by the Center for Constitutional Rights, Muslim Advocates, and other organizations—argues that a "central feature" of the Trump administration's intensifying repression of dissent "is a metastasizing 'terrorism' framework that escalated in the aftermath of September 11th."
The report points to the administration's invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport immigrants en masse without due process and its use of the notorious Guantánamo Bay military prison to detain potentially thousands of migrants.
"The methods deployed in the name of 'counter-terrorism' and 'national security' evolved from emergency measures to common practices, ensnaring new populations and cannibalizing a broader range of issues," the report states. "Today, university students and professors that challenge support for Israel's genocide of Palestinians are being targeted. Environmental activists that oppose the plan to build a police training facility in a clear-cut forest outside of Atlanta, Georgia have been prosecuted as 'domestic terrorists.' And key to the administration advancing its anti-democratic and anti-rights agenda is the expansion of a vast surveillance infrastructure of law enforcement agencies with the aid of unaccountable tech magnates."
The report, which was submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Council ahead of a formal review of U.S. compliance with human rights obligations, calls on the international community do whatever it can to push back against the Trump administration's agenda, including by pressuring the White House to end its use of the Alien Enemies Act and cease targeting Palestinian rights advocates.
"In just 100 days, the Trump administration has inflicted enormous damage to human rights in the United States and around the world."
Nadia Ben-Youssef, advocacy director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in a statement that "the human rights violations described in the report make clear that the U.S. is in an authoritarian political reality where the Trump administration, Congress, and state governments have fully suspended international human rights and are engaging in tactics of repression that are hallmarks of fascist regimes."
"Our hope is that the report sounds the alarm for the international community to act with greater urgency to challenge this administration and its belligerent efforts to dismantle constitutional protections and international norms," said Ben-Youssef.
The coalition delivered its report to the U.N. as human rights organizations took stock of the Trump administration's devastating assault on civil liberties, the climate, workers, public health, immigrants, and more during the first 100 days of his second term.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) said Thursday that "since January, the administration has unlawfully transferred Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national, to his home country, deported other immigrants to El Salvador under circumstances that amount to enforced disappearance, and removed asylum seekers with various nationalities to Panama and Costa Rica in violation of international law."
"The administration has also attacked the rights to freedom of speech and assembly, including by arbitrarily detaining and seeking to deport noncitizens because of their activism related to Palestine," the group added. "These damaging policies are reverberating globally as the Trump administration has slashed support for human rights beyond U.S. borders. The administration abruptly ended US foreign aid programs, putting many people who were benefiting from them in life-threatening peril."
Tanya Greene, U.S. program director at HRW, said that "in just 100 days, the Trump administration has inflicted enormous damage to human rights in the United States and around the world."
"We are deeply concerned that these attacks on fundamental freedoms will continue unabated," Greene added.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'An Attempt to Silence the Public's Voice': Trump Moves to Accelerate Oil Project Approvals
"The announcement is another giveaway to the fossil fuel billionaires who spent millions to put Trump back in the White House, justified by a fake 'energy emergency.'"
Apr 24, 2025
The Trump administration announced late Wednesday that it is moving to implement new permitting procedures designed to speed up reviews and approvals of oil and gas development, a plan that environmentalists called an attack on the public's right to weigh in on projects that would directly impact communities across the United States.
The U.S. Department of the Interior, led by billionaire oil industry ally Doug Burgum, said the new permitting measures would "take a multi-year process down to just 28 days at most," citing President Donald Trump's declaration of a "national energy emergency" at the start of his second term.
"In response, the Department will utilize emergency authorities under existing regulations for the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act," the agency said.
The expedited permitting procedures will apply to crude oil, fracked gas, coal, and other energy sources favored by the president, according to the Interior Department.
Notably absent from Interior's list are wind and solar, which accounted for a record 17% of U.S. electricity generation last year. As it has moved to boost the fossil fuel industry—the primary driver of the global climate emergency—the Trump administration has canceled grants and halted construction for renewable energy projects.
"The real national emergency is the cabal of oil and gas CEOs harming working people and wrecking the climate to line their pockets."
Collin Rees, U.S. campaign manager at Oil Change International, said in a statement that the Interior Department's announcement of accelerated permitting procedures for dirty energy "is an attempt to silence the public's voice in decision-making, taking away tools that ensure our communities have a say in the fossil fuel project proposals that threaten our water, land, and public health."
"The announcement is another giveaway to the fossil fuel billionaires who spent millions to put Trump back in the White House, justified by a fake 'energy emergency,'" said Rees. "The U.S. is the largest oil and gas producer and is expanding extraction faster than any other nation. The real national emergency is the cabal of oil and gas CEOs harming working people and wrecking the climate to line their pockets."
Alejandro Camacho, a professor of environmental law at the University of California, Irvine, wrote on social media that the Trump administration is "once again disregarding the law, environment, and even market data. Ignoring environmental laws to approve dirty projects claiming an energy emergency that does not exist."
"Meanwhile, he's killing massive private wind power projects," Camacho added. "Sounds like an emergency to me."
The permitting announcement comes days after an internal document, leaked on Earth Day, showed that Trump's Interior Department intends to prioritize weakening environmental protections and opening federal lands to fossil fuel extraction.
The department is also "looking at whether to scale back" national monuments, including Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon, Ironwood Forest, Chuckwalla, Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, Bears Ears, and Grand Staircase-Escalante, The Washington Postreported Thursday.
"Interior Department officials are poring over geological maps to analyze the monuments' potential for mining and oil production and assess whether to revise their boundaries," according to the Post.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular