May, 29 2024, 12:56pm EDT
New Sierra Club Report: Trading Away Our Climate Exposes How Trade Pacts Undermine Climate Action
Report Urges Elimination of ISDS Provisions, Calls for Stronger Trade Policies to Protect Climate
A new report released today, Trading Away Our Climate: How Corporations Use Trade and Investment Agreements to Undermine Action on Climate Change, highlights how fossil fuel companies worldwide threaten climate progress through outdated trade agreements that favor corporate interests over the public good. The report scrutinizes trade and investment agreements containing investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions as significant obstacles to lowering emissions and achieving a just clean energy transition. It argues that eliminating ISDS is crucial to the global goal of limiting warming to well below 2°C, and preferably to 1.5°C, above pre-industrial levels. Leading Democratic lawmakers on the top Congressional trade panels – Senators Warren and Whitehouse and Congress Members Doggett and Sánchez – reaffirmed support to end these harmful pacts.
“While it has correctly rejected ISDS for future trade agreements, the Biden Administration has made no effort to remove these egregious provisions from existing agreements. Powerful multinational corporations continue abusing ISDS to intimidate countries from strengthening environmental and human rights protections,” said RepresentativeLloyd Doggett. “Nor is any country immune – from Próspera’s nearly $11 billion lawsuit against Honduras to TC Energy’s fossil-fuel claim against the United States. Recognizing that a corporate victory in any of these cases would place an outrageous burden on taxpayers, I will continue urging the Administration to eliminate ISDS.”
“The Sierra Club’s report clearly shows that corporations have abused ISDS provisions to block progress in fighting climate change,” said Representative Linda Sánchez. “While I’m pleased President Biden is keeping similar provisions out of future trade agreements, we must also work to reform ISDS mechanisms in some of our existing trade deals if we’re going to meet our global climate targets.”
Humanity faces unprecedented challenges as global ocean heat content soared to record levels, Antarctic sea ice coverage plunged to record lows, and global temperatures approached a perilous 1.4°C above pre-industrial levels in 2023. Fossil fuels are responsible for over 75% of greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90% of all carbon dioxide emissions. Governments can take decisive action to avert catastrophic impacts on vulnerable ecosystems and societies by taking proactive steps in their trade policies to halt fossil fuel company abuse of the ISDS system.
“Many trade pacts provide corporations, including the fossil fuel industry, with extensive protections, enabling them to bypass domestic courts and sue governments. This threatens environmental and public health policies – including those that would reduce fossil fuel production,” said Iliana Paul, senior policy advisor on Sierra Club’s Industrial Transformation campaign. “Such actions pose a substantial financial risk to taxpayers and undermine efforts to combat climate change.”
Fossil fuel corporations are ardent users of ISDS provisions, with nearly 20% of the 1,206 known treaty-based ISDS arbitrations coming from fossil fuel companies. As a few notable examples, Canada-based TC Energy is suing the US for $15 billion over the United States government’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline and US-based Ruby River is using ISDS to challenge Canada’s rejection of a liquefied natural gas facility in Québec.
The report warns that ISDS challenges can deter governments from enacting policies in the public interest due to the threat of costly arbitrations. Defending against these cases requires millions of dollars and years of work, while settlements often lead to the weakening or rollback of essential policies.
"Giant corporations have and continue to weaponize ISDS – a secretive and rigged arbitration system that multinational companies use to bypass domestic courts and challenge protections for the environment, workers, and consumers around the world. It’s time to shut the door and eliminate ISDS from all existing trade agreements once and for all," said Senator Elizabeth Warren.
“ISDS mechanisms corruptly advance the power of big corporate polluters over the interests of the public and the planet. This new report from the Sierra Club makes it clear that ISDS’s time is up,” said Senator Whitehouse, Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee and a member of the Environment and Public Works and Finance Committees. “I’m glad the Biden administration remains committed to keeping ISDS out of future agreements, and I’m pushing the administration to remove these insidious provisions from agreements already on the books.”
Recognizing the broad dangers of ISDS beyond climate change, including impacts on public health, labor protections, and green jobs policies, the report advocates for the complete elimination of ISDS. It calls on the U.S. government to take the lead in this effort by:
- Stopping the Expansion of ISDS: President Biden and future administrations must publicly oppose ISDS, commit to avoiding new agreements containing ISDS, and use diplomatic influence to discourage other countries from entering into such agreements.
- Removing ISDS from Existing Agreements: The U.S. should terminate bilateral investment treaties (BITs) that include ISDS, neutralize sunset clauses that extend their effects, and renegotiate or withdraw consent to ISDS provisions in existing agreements.
As public and policy-maker sentiment against ISDS continues to rise, the report concludes that the only sensible path forward is to end the era of ISDS, ensuring the protection of our planet and its people from its extensive threats.
The Sierra Club is the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States. We amplify the power of our 3.8 million members and supporters to defend everyone's right to a healthy world.
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Researchers Warn of Imminent 'Death Spiral' for Rapidly Melting Alaska Ice Field
The Juneau ice field is melting at a rate of 50,000 gallons per second and is possibly heading "beyond a dynamic tipping point," a new study says.
Jul 02, 2024
The melting of Alaska's Juneau ice field—which contains more than 1,000 glaciers—is accelerating and could reach a tipping point much sooner than predicted, according to research published Tuesday.
The study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications, shows that ice loss from the Juneau ice field began accelerating rapidly after 2005.
The paper's authors found that "rates of area shrinkage were five times faster from 2015-2019 than from 1979-1990," while glacier volume loss—which had remained relatively consistent from 1770-1979—doubled after 2010.
"Forty years from now, what is it going to look like? I do think by then the Juneau ice field will be past the tipping point."
"Thinning has become pervasive across the icefield plateau since 2005, accompanied by glacier recession and fragmentation," the study states. "As glacier thinning on the plateau continues, a mass balance-elevation feedback is likely to inhibit future glacier regrowth, potentially pushing glaciers beyond a dynamic tipping point."
Study lead author Bethan Davies, a glaciologist at Newcastle University in England, said in a statement, "It's incredibly worrying that our research found a rapid acceleration since the early 21st century in the rate of glacier loss across the Juneau ice field."
"Alaskan icefields—which are predominantly flat, plateau icefields—are particularly vulnerable to accelerated melt as the climate warms since ice loss happens across the whole surface, meaning a much greater area is affected," Davies continued. "Additionally, flatter ice caps and icefields cannot retreat to higher elevations and find a new equilibrium."
"As glacier thinning on the Juneau plateau continues and ice retreats to lower levels and warmer air, the feedback processes this sets in motion is likely to prevent future glacier regrowth, potentially pushing glaciers beyond a tipping point into irreversible recession," she added.
Study co-author Mauri Pelto, a professor of environmental science at Nichols College in Massachusetts, toldThe Associated Press that the Juneau ice field is melting at a rate of about 50,000 gallons per second.
"When you go there the changes from year to year are so dramatic that it just hits you over the head," Pelto said. "In 1981, it wasn't too hard to get on and off the glaciers. You just hike up and you could you could ski to the bottom or hike right off the end of these glaciers. But now they've got lakes on the edges from melted snow and crevasses opening up that makes it difficult to ski."
As the AP reported:
Only four Juneau ice field glaciers melted out of existence between 1948 and 2005. But 64 of them disappeared between 2005 and 2019, the study said. Many of the glaciers were too small to name, but one larger one, Antler glacier, "is totally gone," Pelto said.
Alaska climatologist Brian Brettschneider, who was not part of the study, said the acceleration is most concerning, warning of "a death spiral" for the thinning ice field.
Pelto said that "the tipping point is when that snow line goes above your entire ice field, ice sheet, ice glacier, whichever one."
"And so for the Juneau ice field, 2019, 2018, showed that you are not that far away from that tipping point," he added. "We're 40 years from when I first saw the glacier. And so, 40 years from now, what is it going to look like? I do think by then the Juneau ice field will be past the tipping point."
It's not just Alaska. Glaciers around the world—from Greenland to Switzerland to Africa and the Himalayas—are melting at an alarming rate. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization warned in 2022 that glaciers in one-third of the 50 UNESCO World Heritage sites where they are found are on pace to disappear by 2050—even if planet-heating emissions are curbed.
Another study published last year by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Alaska found that even if humanity manages to limit planetary heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial temperatures—the more ambitious goal of the Paris agreement—half of Earth's glaciers are expected to melt by the end of the century.
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'Corporate Greed': Biden, Sanders Tell Big Pharma to Stop 'Ripping Off' Americans
Past administrations "have been intimidated and deterred from challenging Big Pharma's monopoly power," an expert said. "Today, however, President Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders call Big Pharma's bullying bluff."
Jul 02, 2024
President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday called for prescription drug companies to lower prices and stop "ripping off" Americans.
The message from Biden and Sanders (I-Vt.) came in a joint op-ed in USA Today in which they laid out the reforms they've already pushed through, called out two pharmaceutical companies in particular for the "unconscionably" high prices they charge to Americans, and vowed to take governmental action to end the "corporate greed."
"There is no rational reason why Americans, for decades, have been forced to pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for the prescription drugs they need," Biden and Sanders wrote. "There is no rational reason why, for decades, 1 out of 4 Americans have been unable to afford the medicine their doctors prescribe.
"And it is most certainly not Americans' patriotic duty to pay high drug prices at home so others abroad can enjoy the fair prices that every American is entitled to," they added.
Consumer rights groups celebrated the strong position that the president and the senator took.
"For decades, presidential administrations on a bipartisan basis have been intimidated and deterred from challenging Big Pharma's monopoly power," Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, an advocacy group, said in a statement. "Today, however, President Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders call Big Pharma's bullying bluff."
Pharmaceutical companies can make whatever excuses they want for their sky-high drug prices — we know it’s bullshit. And Biden and Bernie just called them on it.
If Big Pharma won’t quell its own greed, it’s up to the government to do it for them.https://t.co/YiodsDIoQI
— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) July 2, 2024
Some progress has been made on prescription drug prices in the last four years, Biden and Sanders noted in their op-ed.
The Inflation Reduction Act, which they helped enact, established a price ceiling of $35 per month for insulin for senior citizens. And, starting in 2025, no senior citizen will have to pay more than $2,000 in prescription drug prices in a given year—a reform Biden and Sanders said they'd like to see apply to all Americans. Medicare can now also negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to lower prices, as other countries do.
Yet the problem of high drug prices remains, and Sanders has made solving it a priority, focusing on it as chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee. Last year, he wrote an op-ed in Fox News, calling the opposition to pharmaceutical company profiteering an issue on which Americans of all political stripes "could not be more united." He also released a report showing that medications made using publicly funded research were then being priced exorbitantly by private firms.
The Vermont Independent has also repeatedly grilled pharmaceutical executives in hearings over the last two years, but they have generally not committed to lowering prices, though some companies did institute caps on out-of-pocket expenses on inhalers.
In April, Sanders and Biden teamed up for an event at the White House to discuss the need to lower prescription drug prices.
"I'm proud that my administration is taking on Big Pharma in the most significant ways ever," Biden said at the event. "And I wouldn't have done it without Bernie... Bernie was the one who was leading the way for decades."
Tuesday's op-ed marks the continuation of their partnership on the issue, with Biden effectively endorsing Sanders' drug pricing agenda, particularly for obesity and diabetes medications. HELP launched an investigation into Novo Nordisk's pricing of Ozempic and Wegovy in April, and the Danish multinational was the primary example of wrongdoing chosen by Biden and Sanders in their op-ed.
Ozempic and Wegovy are up to six times more expensive in the U.S. than in peer countries, Biden and Sanders wrote.
"In 2023, for example, Novo Nordisk made over $12 billion in profits, in part by charging Americans over $1,000 a month for a prescription drug that can be profitably manufactured for less than $5. That is not making a reasonable return on investment. That is price gouging. That is corporate greed."
Sanders recently succeeded in pressuring Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen to agree to testify in front of HELP in September.
Biden and Sanders noted that even just within obesity and diabetes care, the problem goes beyond Novo Nordisk: Eli Lilly's Mounjaro, a comparable weight-loss drug, is also overpriced. They argued that if the prices of such drugs are not lowered, they could bankrupt the U.S. healthcare system.
Biden then repeated the message through his own channels.
"If Big Pharma refuses to lower prescription drug prices and end their greed, we will do everything within our power to end it for them," Biden wrote on social media following the publication of the op-ed. "Bernie Sanders and I will not rest until every American can afford the prescriptions they need to lead healthy, happy, and productive lives."
Though the timing may be incidental, Biden's cooperation with Sanders, a leading progressive, comes during a week in which he needs to rally his base—a task Sanders is known to excel at. Biden faces widespread pressure to step aside from the presidential race following a subpar debate performance on Thursday night.
While progressives have been sharply critical of Biden on a range of issues, it's not clear whether his potential replacements at the top of the Democratic ticket would be so willing to team up with Sanders and call out corporate greed.
"Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden just co-authored a piece laying into big pharmaceutical companies for overcharging Americans on obesity drugs," Matt Stoller, a progressive commentator and research director of the American Economic Liberties Project, wrote on social media. "I realize Biden is senile, but would his replacements do anything like this? Most wouldn't."
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Risk of Trump Win 'Too Great': First House Democrat Calls On Biden to Step Aside
"President Biden saved our democracy by delivering us from Trump in 2021," said Rep. Lloyd Doggett. "He must not deliver us to Trump in 2024."
Jul 02, 2024
Crediting U.S. President Joe Biden with spearheading "transformational" changes since taking office three-and-a-half years ago, Rep. Lloyd Doggett on Tuesday became the first Democratic member of Congress to call on the president to withdraw from the 2024 electoral race, warning that a potential victory by former President Donald Trump would "usher America into a long, dark, authoritarian era."
With just four months until Election Day, and weeks until the Democratic Party formally nominates its presidential candidate, Doggett (D-Texas) said in a statement that the party's "overriding consideration must be who has the best hope of saving our democracy from an authoritarian takeover by a criminal and his gang."
Doggett spoke out five days after Biden faced Trump in the first debate of the presidential campaign and alarmed viewers, Democratic strategists, and aides with his performance. The president, speaking in a raspy voice and appearing to lose his train of thought several times, struggled to make the case for his achievements and to call out Trump's repeated lies.
The debate reportedly sent a wave of panic through the Democratic Caucus, with one party insider telling Politico that names of potential replacements for Biden were being floated.
In his statement, Doggett noted that Biden's poll numbers compared to Trump's were cause for concern for several months before the debate.
"Too much is at stake to risk a Trump victory—too great a risk to assume that what could not be turned around in a year, what could not be turned around in the debate, can be turned around now," said Doggett. "President Biden saved our democracy by delivering us from Trump in 2021. He must not deliver us to Trump in 2024."
Doggett's comments came as CNN released a poll showing that Trump is leading Biden by 49% v. 43%, while his lead over Vice President Kamala Harris in a potential matchup is smaller. Trump leads the vice president by two points.
Among Independent voters, Harris has a three-point edge over the former president, while Trump leads Biden by 10 points.
A separate poll released Tuesday by the progressive grassroots group Our Revolution showed that 67% of respondents supported Biden suspending his reelection campaign.
Doggett noted that the days following the debate have made increasingly clear the danger of a potential second Trump term, as the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday ruled that Trump has "absolute immunity" regarding "official acts" he committed while he was in office—casting doubt on whether he can be held accountable for trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and rendering any U.S. president, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, "a king above the law."
"Newly empowered with immunity," said Doggett, Trump would be "unchecked by either the courts or a submissive Republican Congress."
The congressman noted that while Biden has spearheaded some far-reaching legislative reforms, the president signaled earlier in his term that he planned to serve only one term.
"He has the opportunity to encourage a new generation of leaders from whom a nominee can be chosen to unite our country through an open, democratic process," said Doggett. "Recognizing that, unlike Trump, his first commitment has always been to our country, not himself, I am hopeful that he will make the painful and difficult decision to withdraw. I respectfully call on him to do so."
Doggett told Matthew Choi of The Texas Tribune that he had notified the White House of his decision to speak out in favor of Biden stepping aside last Friday, the day after the debate.
"After the debate, the risk of a Trump presidency has grown so much that I felt forced to take this action," Doggett said.
Another survey released Tuesday by Puck News showed alternative candidates including Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer polling ahead of Biden in a potential matchup with Trump.
In light of the the new polling numbers, said former Rhode Island lawmaker and lawyer Aaron Regunberg, Democratic leaders who are "trying to shut down this debate are actively helping Trump."
Regunberg called Doggett's statement "courageous."
"Biden cannot beat Trump," he said. "But another Democrat absolutely can! Whether it's a handoff to VP Harris or an open convention, we don't have to resign ourselves to fascism. It's time for Biden to do the honorable thing and pass the torch."
Also on Tuesday, longtime Democratic National Committee (DNC) member James Zogby wrote to Chairman Jamie Harrison outlining a process through which the party could select its presidential nominee over the next month, ahead of the Democratic National Convention.
Potential candidates could work to secure the endorsements of at least 40 current DNC members and the party could then host two televised events in which the candidates would "make their cases before Democratic voters across the country" before the formal nomination process at the convention starting August 19.
"The excitement generated by this process and the attention it will be given will be a plus for our eventual nominee," said Zogby.
In an interview with The Nation national affairs correspondent John Nichols, Zogby concurred with Doggett's suggestion that Biden's ability to continue serving as president is not what has caused growing concern.
"The focus of this election shouldn't be on the president's age, on his capacity to campaign, on his capacity to govern," said Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute. "It should be on the danger that Donald Trump presents to the country, on the threat that Donald Trump poses."
"We have to face reality here," he said. "Do I think that Joe Biden is capable of governing? I would say 'yes.' Is he capable of forming a team that can govern? Yes. But can he win an election under these circumstances, when these questions about his abilities will be the constant focus? When the Republicans and the media are looking for the next gaffe, waiting for the next time he forgets something, watching his every step to see if he will stumble? This is not what the election should focus on. And, yet, that's where it's headed."
"I would trust Joe Biden on his worst day more than Donald Trump on his best day. But I don't want his last campaign to be one where all people talk about are his weaknesses," Zogby added. "To go out as the gracious warrior, who fought the great battle to defeat Donald Trump in 2020, served four years and then decided to pass the torch, would absolutely solidify his place in history as somebody who thought more about the good of the country than himself."
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