October, 11 2023, 10:33am EDT
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New IEA Report gives President Biden sufficient justification to declare a climate emergency
Preventing climate catastrophe requires immediate cuts to methane AND phase out of fossil fuels
On Wednesday, October 11th, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released a report making clear that the ONLY way to avoid a climate catastrophe in our lifetimes is with immediate cuts to methane gas pollution from the oil and gas sector and a commitment from world leaders to phase out fossil fuels. It shows that no company or nation-state has yet done enough to cut methane gas emissions, that methane pollution continues to rise, and methane mitigation must be coupled with a committed phase out of fossil energy. These findings put the Biden administration on notice to not only rapidly enact methane reduction standards but to stop to permitting domestic production and exports that potentially locks the US into remaining the leading climate polluter for decades to come. The need to couple methane reductions with a fossil fuel phase out also calls out the oil and gas industry’s rhetoric: the industry can only be part of the solution if they quickly make meaningful, time-bound commitments to stop all investment in new production and infrastructure.
Methane gas is a climate warming accelerant 80x more powerful at warming the climate in the short-term than carbon dioxide. Significantly decreasing methane pollution is one of the fastest ways to slow climate warming and provide immediate health improvements to communities on the frontlines of pollution, including preventing 1 million premature deaths due to ozone exposure.
Statement by Earthworks Policy Director Lauren Pagel:
“The IEA says what Earthworks has long known. Preventing climate catastrophe requires the world to stop fossil fuel expansion and to do everything we can right now to cut methane gas pollution.
“In order to right historical injustices for those who have disproportionately experienced the harms of extraction -- Indigenous and Black and Latino and poorer white communities in the US, specifically -- we must aggressively and immediately cut pollution and manage the decline of the fossil fuel industry.
“This report discredits any attempt to use methane reduction efforts as an excuse to further permit fossil fuel expansion. It also gives President Biden sufficient justification to declare a climate emergency and steer the U.S. toward a sustainable, just energy future.”
Earthworks is a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting communities and the environment from the adverse impacts of mineral and energy development while promoting sustainable solutions.
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'Groundbreaking' Report Calls for Protecting Rights of Climate Refugees
"ICAAD's report incorporates lived-experience testimony and in-depth cross-disciplinary research to propose an innovative and, most importantly, practicable legal standard for the right to life with dignity," an advocate said.
Jul 03, 2024
A human rights group on Wednesday released what it called "a gift to the international legal and climate action communities" to support their efforts to protect people around the world displaced by the fossil fuel-driven planetary emergency.
The "groundbreaking" policy brief from the International Center for Advocates Against Discrimination (ICAAD) was crafted to fill a "void in international human rights law" using the insights of Indigenous and climate frontline communities, attorneys, climate modeling experts, social scientists, researchers, and data analysts.
Already, the climate emergency is displacing people within and beyond their home countries. According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, over 117.3 million people were forcibly displaced at the end of 2023 for a range of reasons. The report comes as Hurricane Beryl is leaving a trail of destruction through the Caribbean.
The Institute for Economics & Peace has estimated that by 2050, ecological disasters and armed conflict could forcibly displace about 1.2 billion people, about 10% of the global population. Given such warnings, ICAAD's report urges countries to "adopt inclusive, evidence-based legal frameworks" for climate refugees that center on "the right to life with dignity" (RTLWD).
The brief builds on a January 7, 2020 decision from the United Nations Human Rights Committee. As the document details:
Ioane Teitiota and his family sought to remain in New Zealand after migrating from Kiribati. Though the claimant identified how environmental degradation and its downstream impacts would violate his family's right to life with dignity, the majority of the committee did not find that returning the claimant to Kiribati would violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), citing a lack of individualized and imminent harm. Nevertheless, the committee did provide a significant opening by recognizing that environmental degradation could be so severe as to violate Article 6, right to life (with dignity), and Article 7, cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment (CIDT). This policy brief's analysis centers on Article 6, right to life with dignity, by first looking at the origin of the term "dignity" in legal contexts and how it should be applied today when considering climate-induced displacement.
After examining the etymology of "dignity," its use in international human rights law, and meanings in non-European philosophies and cultures, ICAAD proposed a legal standard for determining whether a climate-displaced person's RTLWD has been violated.
Under the group's standard, the right has been violated if they are deprived of, or are at risk of being deprived of:
- Life or access to basic necessities of life, including but not limited to potable water, food, or shelter;
- Security from serious illness or injury, whether physical or psychological; or
- Something that is fundamental to the identity, conscience, or the exercise of human rights of the applicant and of a particular social group to which the applicant belongs, including but not limited to the ability to engage in cultural practices vital to the particular social group.
ICAAD also offered an evidentiary standard for tribunals charged with considering a displaced person's application: "An applicant is entitled to protection and nonrefoulement if there is a reasonable chance that the applicant will suffer, in the applicant's lifetime, a violation of their right to life with dignity."
"In cases where multiple similarly situated applicants with familial or community ties apply for protection, some of whom satisfy this reasonable chance standard and some of whom do not, complementary protection should be extended to a nonqualifying applicant if denying protection to the nonqualifying applicant would violate any applicant's RTLWD," the group emphasized.
The new brief points out that "the proposed legal standard could also be adopted in national immigration policies, bilateral immigration policies, and internal relocation policies," highlighting that "in May 2019, a group of eight Torres Strait Islander people submitted a complaint against the Australian Government to the U.N. Human Rights Committee, alleging that Australia's failure to protect them from climate impacts was a violation of their rights under the ICCPR."
In a Wednesday statement, Yumna Kamel, co-founder and executive director of Earth Refuge, welcomed that "ICAAD's report incorporates lived-experience testimony and in-depth cross-disciplinary research to propose an innovative and, most importantly, practicable legal standard for the right to life with dignity for climate-displaced persons."
In addition to recommending legal and evidentiary standards, she noted, the brief "goes so far as to provide a guide to incorporating scientific modeling into future cases."
"The legal standard and overall thesis proposed is one that Earth Refuge would readily support and indeed seek to apply in pursuance of the rights of climate-displaced people," Kamel said. "It provides the practical, conscientious answers to the questions that those working in this field, and those experiencing these travesties, have been asking for years."
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Former Officials Say US Has 'Undeniable Complicity' in Killing, Starvation of Gazans
"The administration’s policy in Gaza is a failure and a threat to U.S. national security," said 12 ex-officials who resigned from the Biden administration over its support for Israel's war on Gaza.
Jul 03, 2024
Former Biden administration officials on Tuesday sharply criticized its Gaza policy, arguing that the continued supply of weapons to Israel is not only "morally reprehensible" but also a violation of U.S. and international law.
In a joint statement, 12 officials who've resigned in protest in the last nine months set forth a list of recommendations and urged their former colleagues in the administration to use American leverage to help bring an end to the assault on Gaza.
"The administration's policy in Gaza is a failure and a threat to U.S. national security," the statement says. "America's diplomatic cover for, and continuous flow of arms to, Israel has ensured our undeniable complicity in the killings and forced starvation of a besieged Palestinian population in Gaza."
The other resignees & I issued a statement calling for a new policy
"This failed policy has not achieved its stated objectives—it has not made Israelis any safer, it has emboldened extremists.. while it has been devastating for the Palestinian people"
1https://t.co/PHShChrn1u pic.twitter.com/PI8L5pjcYj
— Dr. Annelle Sheline (@AnnelleSheline) July 2, 2024
The 12 signatories included former officials from a wide range of posts and backgrounds.
One was the the administration's latest defector: 24-year-old Interior Department special assistant Maryam Hassanein, who resigned on Tuesday, tellingHuffPost that "serving in the administration in any capacity does essentially make you complicit in the genocide of the Palestinians." Hassanein was the first Muslim American administration appointee to resign, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which applauded the resignation on social media. She said the administration was engaging in the "dehumanization of Arabs and Muslims."
Another signatory was Harrison Mann, the most senior military official to have left in protest of the Gaza war. Mann had been a major at the Defense Intelligence Agency. He made the news this week when he toldThe Guardian that Israel was seeking out a war with Lebanon for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's political gain.
Stacy Gilbert, a 20-year-old State Department veteran who resigned in May over a key report, dealing in part with whether Israel was blocking humanitarian aid to Gazans, that she says contained "patently false" findings, was also among the statement's signatories, as was Lily Greenberg Call, a former Interior Department official who was the first Jewish American appointee to resign in protest of the administration's war policy.
The joint statement, timed to come on the week of Independence Day, warns that the U.S. government is risking its international credibility and the safety of its own citizens by putting a "target on America's back."
The authors argued that the administration was "willfully violating multiple U.S. laws and attempting to deny or distort facts, use loopholes, or manipulate processes to ensure a continuous flow of lethal weapons to Israel." They cited the Leahy Laws that forbid providing military support to forces engaged in human rights violations.
The U.S. provides Israel with billions of dollars per year in military aid and has significantly increased its support during the war. In April, President Joe Biden signed a bill providing at least $15 billion in military funds for Israel.
The former officials called for an end not just to the U.S. supply of weapons for the war but also the "diplomatic cover" the U.S. provides for Israeli military occupation and settlements in Palestinian territory. The administration should announce that U.S. policy is "to support self-determination for the Palestinian people," they wrote.
The 12 ex-officials also called for an "immediate expansion" of humanitarian aid to Gaza and funding to help rebuild the territory.
Their statement comes as Israel continues to pummel Gaza with strikes that kill Palestinian civilians. Nearly 38,000 Gazans have been killed in the last nine months, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Several strikes that killed Palestinian civilians, including a massacre in Rafah in late May that killed at least 45, have been undertaken with U.S.-made weapons, forensic analyses have showed.
The conditions for those that have survived the Israeli bombardment are dire, with Gazans forced to live amid sewage and debris.
"Civilians in Gaza are clinging to their dignity under the most inhumane conditions," Sigrid Kaag, United Nations senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator, said in a statement on Tuesday.
"The war has not merely created a humanitarian crisis, it has unleashed a maelstrom of human misery," she said.
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Project 2025 Architect Signals Bloodshed If Left Opposes Trump-Led 'Revolution'
The "second American Revolution" now underway will "remain bloodless," said the president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, "if the left allows it to be."
Jul 03, 2024
The president of the right-wing group spearheading Project 2025 raised the specter of violence Tuesday against those who refuse to capitulate to what he characterized as "the second American Revolution" ushered in by presumptive GOP nominee and would-be authoritarian Donald Trump.
Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation, said in an appearance on "Real America's Voice" that the coming "revolution" will "remain bloodless if the left allows it to be"—a thinly veiled threat against those who resist the far-right's efforts to seize power.
Trump said in April that whether there is violence surrounding the 2024 presidential election "depends" on the "fairness" of the contest and the outcome.
Watch Roberts' remarks:
The president of the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation, which is behind Project 2025:
"We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be." pic.twitter.com/g0oKslNwkA
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 3, 2024
"We are going to win. We're in the process of taking this country back," declared Roberts, who has said Project 2025 is "institutionalizing Trumpism" in preparation for a possible victory in November.
The Heritage Foundation president also hailed as "vital" the U.S. Supreme Court's decision earlier this week bestowing what analysts and critics described as king-like powers on the presidency—powers that Trump is already planning to exploit.
Project 2025, a sweeping 922-page document, provides Trump with a detailed blueprint to advance his far-right agenda, including by purging career federal civil servants and replacing them with loyalists and centralizing power in the executive branch.
Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University, has called Project 2025 "a blueprint for autocracy," characterizing it as "a direct copy of the plan that Viktor Orban used to take over the Hungarian government in 2010."
"If it is carried out, Project 2025 will concentrate huge power in the hands of the president, giving him the power to control the whole federal government at his whim," Scheppele added.
Scheppele's assessment echoed that of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which warned in an analysis published late last year that "the entire project is devoted to aggrandizing executive power by centralizing authority in the presidency, and a key aspect of democratic backsliding is viewing opposition elements as attempting to destroy the 'real' community, an essential aspect to quashing dissent."
"Project 2025 paints progressives and liberals as outside acceptable politics, and not just ideological opponents, but inherently anti-American and 'replacing American values,'" the analysis said. "Targeting vulnerable communities is a core tenet of Project 2025. Project 2025 is very clearly on a path to Christian nationalism as well as authoritarianism."
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