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'A Huge Step Backward': US Export-Import Bank Approves Estonian Fossil Fuel Project
The approval comes as the nation has signed off on $1.5 billion for overseas oil and gas projects so far this year, even though it pledged to stop doing so by the end of 2022.
Oct 13, 2023
Despite President Joe Biden's commitment to end investments in overseas fossil fuel projects, the U.S. Export-Import Bank on Thursday agreed to fund the Liwathon oil tank project in Estonia.
The decision comes on top of the $1.5 billion that the U.S. has already promised to overseas oil and gas developments in 2023, in violation of a 2022 deadline to end international fossil finance.
"President Biden cannot claim climate wins while his U.S. Export-Import Bank is propping up a pollutive industry," Kate DeAngelis, senior international finance program manager for Friends of the Earth U.S., said in a statement. "EXIM spent the hottest months in history approving four major fossil fuel projects, demonstrating its disregard for the planet and all living beings. An institution that chooses polluters over people should not be trusted to follow President Biden's climate commitments."
"Biden and the United States risk becoming an international embarrassment with these retrograde approvals."
Biden signed an executive order in 2021 in which he promised to develop a climate finance plan that would promote "the flow of capital toward climate-aligned investments and away from high-carbon investments." Then, at the COP26 U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, the U.S. joined 24 other countries and five financial institutions in pledging to stop funding "unabated fossil fuel energy" overseas by 2022.
Despite this, Oil Change International found in a September report that the U.S. had approved more money for international fossil fuel projects in 2023 than any other nation that agreed to stop.
"EXIM's decision to approve the Liwathon oil project is yet another concerning step in the wrong direction for climate action," Collin Rees, U.S. program manager at Oil Change International, said in a statement, calling the approval "yet another setback for President Joe Biden's climate commitments."
"Despite lofty promises and international agreements, Biden continues to approve projects that exacerbate our climate crisis and threaten communities," Rees continued. "As many other G-20 countries implement their commitment to end public finance for fossil fuels, Biden and the United States risk becoming an international embarrassment with these retrograde approvals."
In addition to the Liwathon approval, the EXIM specifically has already signed off on almost $100 million for an oil refinery in Indonesia, $240 million for an Iraqi gas development, and $400 million for Trafigura to support U.S. exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), Friends of the Earth said. The bank is also weighing whether to fund Papua LNG in Papua New Guinea and oil and gas projects in Bahrain and Guyana.
Both the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have concluded that no new oil, gas, and coal developments are compatible with limiting global heating to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. At the same time, Nina Pusic, export finance climate strategist at Oil Change International, argued that fossil finance goes against economic as well as scientific sense.
"Ultimately, using American taxpayer dollars to finance oil and gas infrastructure is not only an irresponsible use of public money from a climate perspective, but also risks creating stranded assets, as many regions of the world quickly transition to cleaner energy sources," Pusic said in a statement.
However, it's not too late to reverse course.
"The U.S. can help lead a shift of billions of dollars from last century's dirty energy into the clean, renewable energy of the future," Rees said, "but approvals like Liwathon are a huge step backward."
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Corporate Coalition Calls on Congress to Approve Paid Family Leave
"Lack of a national paid leave policy makes all of us more vulnerable during this pandemic and for future public health emergencies, while putting the financial stability of businesses on the line."
Mar 23, 2021
Arguing that "when families thrive, we all thrive," nearly 200 companies and organizations on Tuesday sent a memo to U.S. congressional leaders urging them to work with the Biden administration to include paid parental leave in its proposed $3 trillion "Build Back Better Recovery Plan."
"To have almost 200 companies come out and go on the record in support of a public policy position like paid leave is really unprecedented."
--Annie Sartor, PL+US
Addressed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), the memo from Paid Leave for the U.S. (PL+US), a "national campaign to win paid family and medical leave by 2022," calls on lawmakers to "respond to the unprecedented economic, health, and safety challenges faced by the business community as a result of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic" by passing "permanent paid family and medical leave" as part of the administration's next recovery package.
"The pandemic has exposed an acute emergency on top of an ongoing, chronic crisis," the memo argues. "At the onset of the pandemic, fewer than 21% of workers had access to paid leave through their employers. Lack of a national paid leave policy makes all of us more vulnerable during this pandemic and for future public health emergencies, while putting the financial stability of businesses on the line."
"We cannot emerge from this pandemic and remain one of only two countries in the world with no form of national paid leave," the memo stresses. "We need a policy that is inclusive and that protects all workers equally, regardless of what kind of work they do, where they live, or whom they love."
"Congress must work with the administration to build a framework for a permanent paid family and medical leave policy, so we're never unprepared for a crisis again," it states. "An equitable and comprehensive paid family and medical leave program must include time to welcome a newly arrived child, time to care for a seriously ill family member, and time to care for one's own serious illness."
The memo continues:
Paid leave receives consistent bipartisan support, with growing demand from businesses of all sizes and sectors. More than eight in 10 Americans (pdf) support creating a national paid leave policy and a recent report found that more than 75% of businesses agree that a national paid leave policy would help them be better positioned to weather future public health emergencies and economic crises. Access to paid leave also leads to better retention, personal health, and improved morale, which contributes to greater stability and viability for our businesses, ultimately helping our bottom line.
In short, paid leave is good for business. Paid leave is also a key element of addressing racial, class, and gender inequalities in the United States. With an equal paid leave policy in place, we can help stem the historic tide of women leaving the workforce and ensure that low-wage earners and people of color have the time they need to care for themselves and their families.
"This crisis has given us a unique opportunity to build stronger and more equitable workplaces for working people, families, and businesses, while investing in our nation's economic recovery," the memo concludes. "We urge Congress to meet the moment by passing a comprehensive federal paid family and medical leave policy that provides long-term health benefits and economic security to all American families and contributes to the vitality and sustainability of our businesses."
A wide range of companies and organizations, from tech giant Salesforce, to outdoor outfitter Patagonia, to the nonprofit Girls Who Code, signed the memo.
While 15 states and Washington, D.C. currently require employers to offer paid parental leave, only 17% of U.S. civilian workers had access to it, according to 2018 figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
\u201cLevi Strauss CEO: Too many companies don't have paid family leave. America can do better. \n\nStaggering that the US is the only developed nation without mandated paid family leave. \ud83d\ude33\ud83e\udd2f https://t.co/OqQ6c7AgGo\u201d— Hargo (@Hargo) 1616533599
Of the 41 countries included in a 2019 Pew Research Center analysis of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations, only the United States did not mandate paid parental leave. At 86 weeks of total paid leave, Estonia offered new parents the most time off, followed by Bulgaria and Hungary.
"Not mandating paid leave is inexcusable," wrote Chip Bergh, CEO of Levi Strauss--one of the memo's signatories--in a Tuesday CNNop-ed. "It hurts workers, businesses, and our economy. Policymakers and business leaders have a moral and economic imperative to provide more assistance."
Bergh added that "Congress should move quickly to pass the Family and Medical Insurance Leave (FAMILY) Act, introduced by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), as part of the next recovery package."
"Not mandating paid leave is inexcusable. It hurts workers, businesses, and our economy. Policymakers and business leaders have a moral and economic imperative to provide more assistance."
--Chip Bergh, Levi Strauss
The proposed legislation, wrote Bergh, "would provide every worker in the United States up to 12 weeks of paid time off to care for their own health, a new child, or a sick parent and spouse. This would provide immense relief to so many Americans."
While the U.S. remains glaringly absent from the list of countries guaranteeing paid parental leave, both President Joe Biden and congressional leaders have signalled an openness to changing that.
"Making paid leave a reality for all Americans is an economic necessity," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) toldThe Washington Post. "Not having to choose between your job and taking care of a new child or a sick family member would be a real breakthrough for everyday Americans."
Annie Sartor, a senior director at PL+US, told the Post that when her group launched in 2016, "it was pretty unheard of to see these really generous paid leave policies that are more common among employers now."
"This is the closest we've ever been to winning paid family and medical leave," she said. "We have a White House that is embracing paid leave and knows it's critical. We have a Congress that's ready to act, and this is why frankly businesses are acting now. To have almost 200 companies come out and go on the record in support of a public policy position like paid leave is really unprecedented."
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NATO and Russia 'War Games' Not Games At All
The nature and scale of ongoing exercises suggest 'Russia is preparing for a conflict with NATO, and NATO is preparing for a possible confrontation with Russia.'
Aug 12, 2015
War games conducted by Russian and NATO forces go far beyond the hypothetical, raising the specter of a very real conflict on the European continent, a new study warns.
According to the European Leadership Network (ELN), a think tank based in London, "[o]ver the last 18 months, against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, the relationship between Russia and the West has deteriorated considerably"--at least in part due to war games that feed a "climate of mistrust."
ELN's report, Preparing for the Worst: Are Russian and NATO Military Exercises Making War in Europe More Likely? (pdf), analyzes a Russian 'snap exercise' in March involving 80,000 military personnel from bases across the country and NATO's Allied Shield set of war games conducted on air, land, and sea in June, involving 15,000 personnel from 22 countries.
Though both sides "may maintain that these operations are targeted against hypothetical opponents, the nature and scale of them indicate otherwise: Russia is preparing for a conflict with NATO, and NATO is preparing for a possible confrontation with Russia," the authors write.
NATO's activities, for example, are "clearly intended to simulate the kinds of operations NATO forces would need to engage in, in the context of a military crisis or confrontation with Russia somewhere in the Baltic region," the report reads, while the scale and geographical distribution of Russia's drill "means it could only have been a simulated war with U.S.-led NATO."
"We do not suggest that the leadership of either side has decided to go to war or that a military conflict between the two is inevitable," the report continues, "but that the changed profile of exercises is a fact, and it does play a role in sustaining the current climate of tensions in Europe."
The exercises also indicate "what each side sees as its most exposed areas," ELN states. NATO concentrates its activities in the Baltic States and Poland, while Russia focuses primarily on the Arctic and High North, the seaport city of Kaliningrad occupied Crimea, and its border areas with NATO members Estonia and Latvia.
While Russia and NATO both insist that their moves are defensive in nature, the authors argue that war games can be easily perceived "as provocative and deliberate aggravation of the crisis."
To "defuse or at least minimize the tensions" between the world powers, the report recommends increased transparency and communication around the scheduling of exercises, "restraint in terms of size or scenarios used in exercises," and--most grandly--the immediate commencement of "conceptual work" on a new treaty limiting the deployment of specific categories of weapons.
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