SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
WildEarth Guardians condemns Biden plan to sell public lands for fracking as climate hypocrisy and more broken promises
Ahead of Glasgow climate summit, Biden administration announces plans to authorize more climate pollution; U.S. Bureau of Land Management continues moving forward with selling oil and gas leases on public lands in Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, and in several eastern states
DENVER
As world leaders gather in Glasgow for the 26th United Nations' Climate Conference, President Biden and his administration announced new plans to sell public lands for fracking, a move WildEarth Guardians condemned as hypocritical, scientifically ignorant, and legally indefensible.
"While President Biden is talking a good talk on climate action, the reality is his administration is actively working to fan the flames of the climate crisis by selling more public lands for fracking," said Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director for WildEarth Guardians. "This isn't just hypocritical, it's outright deceitful and it truly calls into question whether the Biden administration's climate agenda is nothing but broken promises."
This week, the U.S. Department of Interior's Bureau of Land Management announced plans to continue move forward with selling oil and gas leases on public lands in Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming and in several eastern states. All told, the agency has proposed to sell more than 730,000 acres--more than 1,000 square miles--of public lands to oil and gas companies.
The move comes even as millions of Americans have called for an end to fossil fuel production. These calls culminated in a week of action last month by Indigenous, climate, and environmental groups targeting the White House and the Interior Department.
The proposal comes only a week after the United Nations warned that the U.S. and other countries must begin to reduce fossil fuel production in order to limit global warming. In a report prepared by the UN Environment Programme and other research institutions, scientists found that without rapid reductions in oil, gas, and coal production, the world would not meet its goal of limiting global temperature rise to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, a core U.S. commitment under the Paris Climate Agreement.
"The truth is, we can't frack our way to a safe climate," said Nichols. "With all eyes on Glasgow this week, the Biden administration seems to be turning its back on reality and throwing climate leadership into the toilet."
The Biden administration's plans to sell more public lands for fracking also come on the heels of numerous court rulings holding Bureau of Land Management oil and gas leasing to be illegal, including a ruling last month out of Colorado.
While President Biden initially pledged to pause more oil and gas leasing in order to align federal fossil fuel production with the need to confront the climate crisis, he has since backpedaled.
In August, the Bureau of Land Management announced plans to move forward with new leasing. Citing a federal court ruling out of Louisiana, the agency wrongly claimed it had no choice but to move forward with selling more oil and gas leases. WildEarth Guardians and others have blasted the Bureau over its misleading claim. While court after court has ruled against the agency's leasing, no court has ever actually ordered the Bureau of Land Management to lease oil and gas.
"The Bureau of Land Management is lying to the American public, claiming they've been compelled by a court to sell public lands for fracking," said Nichols. "The fact is they have absolutely no legal basis to move forward with more oil and gas leasing."
WildEarth Guardians has been at the forefront of challenging Bureau of Land Management oil and gas leasing, earlier this year filing suit together with Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Western Environmental Law Center over the sale of more than one million acres of public lands for fracking in Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming.
"Frankly, we're sick of going to court to defend the climate, but if President Biden continues to reject the law, the science, and the public, then we'll have no choice," said Nichols. "We hope the administration reconsiders these latest plans to sell public lands for fracking, but we will not hesitate to fight back to protect our planet and our future."
WildEarth Guardians protects and restores the wildlife, wild places, wild rivers, and health of the American West. Driven by passion, we've tackled some of the West's most difficult and pressing conservation challenges over the past three decades. We've celebrated small victories (banning leghold trapping in the state of Colorado), monumental triumphs (ending logging on more than 21 million acres in the Southwest), and everything in-between.
(206) 417-6363LATEST NEWS
Bolsonaro and 36 Others Indicted in Brazil Over Right-Wing Coup Attempt
"Well, look at this thing called 'accountability,'" said one MSNBC host.
Nov 21, 2024
The Brazilian Federal Police on Thursday indicted former President Jair Bolsonaro and 36 others for allegedly plotting the "violent overthrow of the democratic state" after the country's current leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, defeated the right-wing leader in 2022.
"The final report has been sent to the Supreme Court with the request that 37 individuals be indicted for the crimes of the violent overthrow of the democratic state, coup d' etat, and criminal organization," police said in a statement about the conclusion of the two-year investigation.
As The New York Timesexplained: "Although the police in Brazil can make recommendations about criminal prosecutions, they do not have the power to formally charge Mr. Bolsonaro. The country's top federal prosecutor, Paulo Gonet, must now... decide whether to pursue charges against Mr. Bolsonaro and compel him to stand trial before the nation's Supreme Court."
The recommendations for charges came after the arrest of four members of the military and a federal police officer earlier this week over an alleged plot to kill Lula and Vice President Geraldo Alckmin before they were sworn in, as well as Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. Police said that "a detailed operational plan called 'Green and Yellow Dagger' was identified, which would be executed on December 15, 2022, aimed at the murder of the elected candidates for president and vice president."
According toCNN, "Police reportedly allege that Bolsonaro had 'full knowledge' of a plan to prevent Lula and his government from taking office after his election victory."
Summarizing a conversation with a columnist, Bolsonaro said on social media Thursday that "we have to see what is in this indictment by the Federal Police. I will wait for the lawyer." He also said that Moraes "does everything that the law does not say" and "I cannot expect anything from a team that uses creativity to denounce me."
Bolsonaro has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, including with two other pending cases: In March he was indicted for allegedly falsifying his Covid-19 vaccination data and in July he was indicted for crimes including embezzlement related to alleged misappropriation of diamond jewelry and other state property. Those indictments came after Brazil's highest election authority last year barred him from running for any public office for eight years over his lies about the 2022 contest.
In addition to Bolsonaro, the other three dozen people indicted on Thursday include "some of the most important members of his far-right administration," The Guardianreported. As the newspaper detailed:
They included Bolsonaro's former spy chief, the far-right Congressman Alexandre Ramagem; the former defense ministers, Gen. Walter Braga Netto and Gen. Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira; the former minister of justice and public security, Anderson Torres; the former minister of institutional security, Gen. Augusto Heleno; the former navy commander Adm. Almir Garnier Santos; the president of Bolsonaro's political party, Valdemar Costa Neto; and Filipe Martins, one of Bolsonaro's top foreign policy advisers.
Also named is the right-wing blogger grandson of Gen. João Baptista Figueiredo, one of the military rulers who governed Brazil during its 1964-85 dictatorship.
The list contains one non-Brazilian name: that of Fernando Cerimedo, an Argentinian digital marketing guru who was in charge of communications for Argentina's president, Javier Milei, during that country's 2023 presidential campaign. Buenos Aires-based Cerimedo is close to Bolsonaro and his politician sons.
Given that Bolsonaro previously traveled to the United States when faced with legal trouble shortly after his loss two years ago, in this case, "precautionary measures have been issued, including a ban on international travel, which led to the confiscation of Bolsonaro's passport months ago," EL Paísnoted Thursday.
Bolsonaro was among the right-wing leaders around the world who celebrated U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's victory earlier this month. The Brazilian—who is sometimes called the "Trump of the Tropics" and like the American incited an insurrection after his last electoral loss—said that the impact of Trump's win "will resonate across the globe... empowering the rise of the right and conservative movements in countless other nations."
Trump's return to office is expected to at least stall if not end his various legal issues, including for trying to overturn his 2020 loss.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Unacceptable': Campaigners Decry Climate Finance Failures as COP29 Enters Final Hours
"By the end of the UN climate talks, we must see at least a trillion dollars in public finance on the table," said one campaigner.
Nov 21, 2024
As the clock winds down at the UN climate summit taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan, green groups are sounding the alarm Thursday following the release of a draft climate finance deal that they say falls short of what's needed to support climate-vulnerable countries and adequately address the planetary crisis.
"The clock is ticking. COP29 is now down to the wire," said UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday, just a day before the two-week conference is set to conclude.
Finance has been a major focus of this year's summit. Under the 20125 Paris Agreement, countries are supposed to come up with a "new collective quantified goal"—or NCQG in COP jargon—that will govern how much money from rich countries will be transferred to developing countries in order to help the latter cut their emissions and adapt to climate change.
No equivalent climate finance arrangement has been agreed to before, though countries at the summit broadly agree that richer countries, who are responsible for much of historic CO2 emissions, should help poorer and more climate-vulnerable nations deal with natural disasters and their transition to green energy.
The draft text that dropped early Thursday, however, was received poorly.
Oxfam International's climate justice lead, Safa’ Al Jayoussi, said "COP29 must do more than simply repeat the same threadbare promises. Rich countries have spent decades now stalling and blocking genuine progress on climate finance. This has left the Global South suffering the most catastrophic consequences of a climate crisis they did not create. The draft text scandalously misses the crucial element of declaring a clear public commitment to a new climate finance goal."
Instead of specifying how much annually should be funneled towards developing countries via climate finance, the NCQG draft text displayed "X" in place of any actual figures or monetary commitments.
Oscar Soria, a director at the Common Initiative think tank, told the Guardian: "The negotiating placeholder 'X' for climate finance is a testament of the ineptitude from rich nations and emerging economies that are failing to find a workable solution for everyone."
"By the end of the UN climate talks, we must see at least a trillion dollars in public finance on the table," added Andreas Sieber, 350.org associate director of policy and campaigns. Economists told the summit attendees last week that developing countries need at least $1 trillion annually by 2030 to deal with climate change.
A specific and shared concern from campaigners was the draft text's inclusion of carbon market schemes as a way "to scale up" climate finance. While the draft promotes "high-integrity voluntary carbon markets" and other "instruments that mobilize new sources of climate finance and private finance" as part of the equation, critics have long warned that these market-based approaches are nothing but false solutions designed to benefit corporate investors, wealthier nations, and the fossil fuel industry itself.
"Labelling carbon credits as climate finance—which they are unreservedly not—should be axed from the text or risk creating a dangerous escape route for polluters. The same goes for explicitly allowing investments in fossil fuel infrastructure. This is fundamentally incompatible with the goals of the Paris Agreement," said Laurie van der Burg, Oil Change International's global public finance manager, in response to the draft text.
While Article 6 of the Paris Agreement allows for the international transfer of carbon credits, groups warned the changes in the COP29 draft would dramatically strengthen the foothold of such schemes.
"Shockingly, COP29 is set to agree to carbon markets that are even worse than the voluntary carbon markets," said Kirtana Chandrasekaran, a climate campaigner with Friends of the Earth International. "We know these markets have failed. They are riddled with fraud and they do not reduce emissions or provide finance. Communities everywhere and, in fact, the planet itself is on the line."
Without addressing these concerns, advocates of a meaningful deal at the conference say COP29 is headed for failure.
As 350.org's Sieber argued, paying the "historic debt that rich countries owe will enable all nations to take action on climate at home and meet the collective goal agreed last year at COP28—to triple renewable energy, and transition away from fossil fuels. Right now, we only see cowardice and a void in leadership, ignoring the undeniable science that we can't keep polluting our planet with dirty oil, gas and coal."
"The time to course correct is now—the European Union and other rich countries must stop playing poker with the planet and humankind's future at stake," Sieber added. "It's time to put their cards on the table and commit real, transformative funding—no more excuses, no more delays, it's time."
Keep ReadingShow Less
US Plutocrats $276 Billion Richer Since Trump Win—And GOP Wants to Give Them Even More
"The tax fight is starting now," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren. "Will we sign our names to more giveaways to President-elect Trump's billionaire buddies, or will we fight for tax fairness for the American people?"
Nov 21, 2024
An analysis released Wednesday showed that the United States' 815 billionaires have seen their combined wealth surge by roughly $280 billion since Donald Trump's victory in the 2024 presidential election earlier this month, a finding that came as Republicans continued to lay the groundwork for another massive tax giveaway for the rich.
Citing Forbes data, Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) noted that the collective net worth of the nation's billionaires jumped $276 billion between November 4—the day before Election Day—and November 12. Elon Musk, the world's wealthiest man and a Trump confidant, accounted for 20% of the total billionaire wealth surge, with his net worth growing by $57 billion in just a week.
ATF found that U.S. billionaire wealth is now at an all-time high of $6.7 trillion—a fact that hasn't deterred Republican lawmakers from pursuing additional tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which they want to pay for in part by slashing Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance.
"Among the tax handouts the GOP hopes to offer America's plutocrats is a weakening or elimination of the estate tax, the federal government's only curb on dynastic wealth," ATF noted. "As proof of the party's intent, the new Republican majority in the U.S. Senate has chosen as its next leader the chamber's main champion of estate-tax repeal, John Thune (R-S.D.)."
The group observed that scrapping the estate tax would save billionaire households an estimated $2.7 trillion while depriving "working Americans of the exact same amount of funding for vital public services like Medicare, childcare, education, and housing."
Since the highly regressive 2017 Trump-GOP tax cut that Republicans are looking to extend and expand, U.S. billionaire wealth has risen by $3.8 trillion—over 131%—according to ATF.
"Instead of addressing the nation's growing economic inequality and the growing shortfall in federal revenue, President Trump and congressional Republicans plan to make the situation even worse by enacting a new tax cut package that gives billionaires tax breaks on the backs of working people," the group said Wednesday. "This Republican tax plan will start with extending all the expiring provisions in the 2017 Trump law—which alone will balloon the federal debt by $5 trillion over the next decade—but will likely include new handouts to the very wealthy, such as elimination of the estate tax."
During a hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) voiced similar concerns about the Trump-GOP tax agenda, which also includes cutting the statutory corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%.
"President-elect Trump has proposed making every single 2017 tax cut for the wealthy permanent," Warren said during the Senate hearing. "In fact, he plans to go further by cutting the corporate tax rate even more, so that giant corporations making record profits off struggling Americans can shovel even more cash to their rich executives and shareholders."
"The tax fight is starting now, and every person in the United States, every person in the Senate, needs to show the American people what side we stand on," said Warren. "Will we sign our names to more giveaways to President-elect Trump's billionaire buddies, or will we fight for tax fairness for the American people?"
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular