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Senate Infrastructure Deal: Billions for Fossil Fuels
Industry handouts make a mockery of climate action claims
WASHINGTON
As more details about the Senate bipartisan infrastructure proposal are revealed, reports indicate that the deal includes billions of dollars in new fossil fuel subsidies.
By one count, the proposal could provide at least $25 billion to support fossil fuel interests, much of it in the form of ineffective carbon capture boondoggles.
In response, Food & Water Watch Policy Director Mitch Jones released the following statement:
"This infrastructure proposal is not a down payment on real climate action -- it is doubling down on support for climate polluters. The Senate is proposing that we spend tens of billions of dollars propping up fossil fuel corporations -- this is on top of the $15 billion these companies already receive every year from the federal government. A substantial share of this new money -- about $12 billion -- would go to promoting carbon capture, which does absolutely nothing but extend the life of the fossil fuel era.
"While handing money to dirty energy companies might help win votes in the Senate, it fails the only test that matters: Whether or not we are taking meaningful action to address our mounting climate crisis. Throwing away money is not going to reduce emissions. We need massive investments in proven renewable solutions, not carbon capture fantasies. If the Senate cannot manage to get this right, climate champions in the House will need to strip out these wasteful dirty energy subsidies."
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US Plastics Industry Dumps Almost Half a Billion Gallons of Wastewater Daily
"Plastics plants are poisoning our waters and contaminating our bodies—and EPA needs to do its job and protect our waterways and downstream communities," said one watchdog leader.
Nov 14, 2024
Amid fears over President-elect Donald Trump's pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, a government watchdog on Thursday called out the EPA for letting the plastics industry pollute U.S. waterways with about half a billion gallons of wastewater every day.
The new report—Plastic's Toxic River: EPA's Failure to Regulate the Petrochemical Plants That Make Plastic—is based on an Environmental Integrity Project (EIP) analysis of records for "70 petrochemical plants that manufacture the most common plastics and their primary chemical ingredients and discharge wastewater directly into rivers, lakes, and other water bodies."
The publication provides just a snapshot of the industry's pollution of U.S. waters. The group focused on plants "that make raw or pure plastics, sometimes referred to as resins, pellets, or nurdles, that are eventually turned into plastic products, like plastic bottles," and did not examine oil refineries or facilities that only make the end-use or consumer products.
"Federal regulations on the wastewater from plastics manufacturing plants have not been updated in over 30 years, are grossly outdated, and fail to protect waterways and downstream communities."
The document explains that "many harmful chemicals released by plastics manufacturers are completely unregulated" by the federal agency, including "dioxins, which are known cancer-causing agents that are highly toxic and persist in the environment; and 1,4-dioxane, a likely carcinogen that EPA scientists recently indicated is threatening drinking water sources."
"Nitrogen and phosphorus pollution discharged from plastics and petrochemical plants—which cause algal blooms and fish-killing low-oxygen zones—are also not controlled by EPA's industrial wastewater rules," it continues. "Although state agencies can set limits for these pollutants in individual wastewater discharge permits, practices vary across states and the limits are inadequate and inconsistent."
EIP found that last year, the 70 plants collectively released nearly 10 million pounds of nitrogen and 1.9 million pounds of phosphorus into waterways. The previous year, eight facilities released an estimated 74,285 pounds of 1,4-dioxane, and 10 of the 17 plants manufacturing polyvinyl chloride (PVC) or its ingredients released 1,374 grams of dioxins and dioxin-like compounds.
The watchdog also found that "although absolute numbers are not known," releases of nurdles into waterways "appear to be common," enforcement of existing regulations is "rare," 58 of 70 plants violated the weak limits "by releasing more pollution than allowed at least once from 2021 to 2023," and 28 facilities are operating with outdated water permits.
"In addition to all these problems, petrochemical plants have been recognized by EPA as potential sources of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS, the 'forever chemicals' that persist in waterways and have been linked to increased cancer risk, hormone disruption, reduced ability of the body to fight infections, and reproductive harms, including low birth weight in babies and developmental delays," the publication notes.
U.S. Geological Survey scientists last month published a study on forever chemicals in the journal Science and released an interactive, online map for the Lower 48 states. They estimated that "71 to 95 million people in the conterminous United States potentially rely on groundwater with detectable concentrations of PFAS for their drinking water supplies prior to any treatment."
EIP's new report highlights that "federal regulations on the wastewater from plastics manufacturing plants have not been updated in over 30 years, are grossly outdated, and fail to protect waterways and downstream communities," despite the Clean Water Act's requirement that the EPA "set wastewater discharge limits (called 'effluent limitation guidelines') for harmful pollutants based on the best available technology economically achievable."
"Because treatment technologies improve over time, EPA is supposed to review existing limits every five years and strengthen them when data show treatment options have improved," the document details. "EPA has failed to comply with this mandate, resulting in an excessive amount of potentially dangerous water pollution pouring from plastics manufacturers into America's waterways."
The group's recommendations are to mandate the use of modern wastewater pollution controls, prohibit plastic discharges into waterways, increase accountability at the state and federal level, enhance monitoring requirements in permitting, and improve permit transparency and recordkeeping.
"It is inexcusable that EPA is not following the Clean Water Act and failing to require the multibillion-dollar plastics industry to install modern pollution control systems," EIP executive director Jen Duggan said in a statement. "Plastics plants are poisoning our waters and contaminating our bodies—and EPA needs to do its job and protect our waterways and downstream communities."
Local groups in Lousiana, South Carolina, Texas, and West Virginia also responded to the report with calls for action.
"Decades of unchecked pollution have transformed the Calcasieu River into a dumping ground for toxic chemicals, with little accountability for the companies responsible," said James Hiatt, executive director of the Louisiana-based For a Better Bayou. "It's unacceptable that these plastics plants, profiting from our natural resources, are allowed to continue to release carcinogens like dioxins into our waterways. We need to hold these polluters accountable—and make them clean up the damage they've caused."
Despite such demands for action, environmental advocates have grave concerns about the EPA's future under Trump, including over his pick of Lee Zeldin, a former Republican member of Congress, to head the agency.
During Trump's first term, his administration rolled back over 100 environmental rules. Although Zeldin, as a congressman, was sometimes "willing and even eager to address environmental problems at home on coastal Long Island," as The New York Timesnoted Tuesday, his voting record and fealty to Trump have green groups fearful for the future.
As Common Dreamsreported earlier this week, 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."
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As Planet Heads Toward 2.7°C Rise, Tracker Warns Global Climate Action Has 'Flatlined'
"As the world edges closer to these dangerous climate thresholds, the need for immediate, stronger action to reverse this trend becomes ever more urgent," one report author said.
Nov 14, 2024
Existing policies and actions taken by world governments put the world on track for a median estimate of 2.7°C of warming by the end of the century, Climate Action Tracker revealed on Thursday at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.
If global leaders make no further effort to reduce emissions, temperatures have a 33% chance of spiking past 3°C of warming by 2100 and a 10% chance of overtaking 3.6°C, which report lead author Sofia Gonzales-Zuniga called "an absolutely catastrophic level of warming."
"The combined global effect of government action on climate change has flatlined over the last three years, underscoring a critical disconnect between the reality of climate change and the lack of urgency on policies to cut emissions," Climate Action Tracker (CAT) announced during its annual update at COP29.
The report attributes the lack of progress to the fact that few governments announced new climate targets in 2024 while they continued to facilitate the increased burning of fossil fuels, despite the pledge made at last year's COP28 to transition away from oil, gas, and coal.
It comes on the heels of a series of reports released ahead of or during COP29 that paint a consistent picture of escalating greenhouse gas emissions and climate extremes paired with government inaction. The U.N. Emissions Gap Report, published in late October, projected that the world was on track for 3.1°C of warming based on current policies. The World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) Greenhouse Gas Bulletin, also published last month, found that all three main greenhouse gases reached record atmospheric levels in 2023.
"The impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly dramatic, yet we still see no sign that burning of fossil fuels has peaked."
2023 was also the hottest year on record, but the WMO's State of the Climate 2024 update for COP29 warned that 2024 was likely to surpass it. Further, global temperatures from January to September averaged 1.54°C above preindustrial levels, temporarily surpassing the 1.5°C warming limit enshrined in the Paris agreement.
"The record-breaking rainfall and flooding, rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones, deadly heat, relentless drought, and raging wildfires that we have seen in different parts of the world this year are unfortunately our new reality and a foretaste of our future," WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said in a statement. "We urgently need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and strengthen our monitoring and understanding of our changing climate."
Yet this is precisely what is not happening: Another study from the Global Carbon Budget released on Wednesday projected that carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels would increase by 0.8% from 2023 to reach 37.4 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent, a record high.
"The impacts of climate change are becoming increasingly dramatic, yet we still see no sign that burning of fossil fuels has peaked," study leader Pierre Friedlingstein, a professor at Exeter's Global Systems Institute, said in a statement. "Time is running out to meet the Paris agreement goals—and world leaders meeting at COP29 must bring about rapid and deep cuts to fossil fuel emissions to give us a chance of staying well below 2°C warming above preindustrial levels."
The Climate Action Tracker report adds to these findings, concluding that while renewables have surged in recent years, continued reliance on fossil fuels have undermined that progress. While clean energy like wind and solar and clean transit like electric vehicles now receive double the investments of oil, gas, and coal, funding for the latter still ballooned by a factor of four between 2021 and 2022 while fossil fuel subsidies are at a record high.
"We are clearly failing to bend the curve," Gonzales-Zuniga said. "As the world edges closer to these dangerous climate thresholds, the need for immediate, stronger action to reverse this trend becomes ever more urgent."
CAT called on the world's largest emitters to lead the way. It recommended 1.5°C-aligned 2035 targets for the world's seven biggest climate polluters—China, the U.S., India, the E.U., Indonesia, Japan, and Australia—as well as the "troika" countries of Brazil, UAE, and Azerbaijan. To bring its policies in line with the 1.5°C goal, the U.S. would have to cut its total emissions (including from land-use and forests) by 65% of 2005 levels by 2030 and 80% by 2035.
This is unlikely to happen under the administration of President-elect Donald Trump, who has promised to "drill, baby, drill" as soon as he retakes the White House in January. CAT concluded that Trump's promised energy policies would raise its projection for 2100 temperatures based on current actions by 0.04°C. However, if the U.S. permanently axes its net-zero goals, and if other countries decide to follow Trump's lead, that temperature increase could be higher.
"Clearly, we won't know the full impact of the U.S. elections until President-elect Trump takes office, but there is a clean energy momentum in the U.S. now that will be difficult to stop," Bill Hare, the CEO of Climate Analytics, said in a statement. "While the Trump administration will undoubtedly do its best to throw a wrecking ball into climate action, the clean energy momentum created by President [Joe] Biden, being actioned across the country, is likely to continue at significant scale."
"The key issue is whether countries stick together and continue to move forward with action," Hare concluded. "A Trump rollback of U.S. policies, as damaging as it is, can be overcome."
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Lifesaving Gaza Aid 'Has Fallen to an All-Time Low' Under Israeli Siege
"There is a strong likelihood that famine is already occurring in northern Gaza, and that immediate action is required within days, not weeks, to address the crisis," a new analysis warns.
Nov 14, 2024
More than two dozen international relief groups operating in Gaza warned Thursday that humanitarian assistance entering the embattled Palestinian enclave "has fallen to an all-time low" as Israel continues to block lifesaving aid, fueling nascent famine in the north.
"An average of only 37 humanitarian trucks per day entered Gaza in October, and an average of 69 per day during the first week of November. This is still well below the average of 500 per day which entered Gaza... before October 7, 2023, and was insufficient to meet the needs of the population," the seventh Gaza Humanitarian Aid Snapshot notes.
"For almost a month, Israel has blocked attempts by aid organizations to deliver aid in areas of northern Gaza, effectively severing the population from access to vital lifelines, including food, medical supplies, and all other humanitarian aid," the report continues, adding that "there is a strong likelihood that famine is already occurring in northern Gaza, and that immediate action is required within days, not weeks, to address the crisis."
"Tragically, Israeli airstrikes killed at least 20 aid workers from both Palestinian and international organizations," the analysis laments. "Staff were killed in their homes, in displacement camps, and while delivering lifesaving aid. Many aid workers lost close family members and relatives."
One forcibly displaced resident of northern Gaza told the report's authors:
Everyone has received this call before: One of your friends or colleagues or relatives or cousins is under the siege or bombs. And they ask for help. And you can't do anything. You can't do anything for them. And they die. They die while they are asking us to help them. This is the worst thing.
The report also notes widespread looting by desperate Gaza residents—a consequence not only of the bombing, invasion, and siege but also of Israel's targeted killing of Palestinian police officers—and criminal gangs extorting aid groups for "protection" money.
The new analysis came on the same day that a United Nations committee published a report concluding that Israel's policies and practices in Gaza "are consistent with the characteristics of genocide" and two days after the Biden administration—which backs Israel with arms and diplomatic support—sparked worldwide anger by asserting that Israel is not violating humanitarian law during the war.
A scorecard published earlier this week by some of the same groups that compiled the Humanitarian Aid Snapshot detailed how Israel has failed to fully comply with any of the Biden administration's 19 demands indicating compliance with humanitarian law.
As children in Gaza began starving to death earlier this year, the International Court of Justice—which is weighing a genocide case against Israel—ordered the Israeli government to stop blocking aid from entering the enclave. Israel has been accused of ignoring the order.
As the Humanitarian Aid Snapshot notes, Israeli forces have killed more than 43,000 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded over 103,000 others as of November 12. Approximately 80% of Gazans are under forced displacement orders—a policy denounced by many as ethnic cleansing—and around 90% of Gaza residents have been forcibly displaced, most of them multiple times.
"The population in northern Gaza faces starvation, severe shortages of clean water, critical supply scarcity, and ever-increasing desperation," Mercy Corps, one of the groups that contributed to the analysis, said in a statement. "We call on all those with influence and power to take urgent action to de-escalate and halt the unrelenting violence in Gaza, to protect civilians and aid workers, and to do everything possible to achieve an immediate and lasting cease-fire."
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