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physicians for social responsibility
Local Leaders, Climate Groups Blast FERC Approval of Fracked Gas Pipeline Expansion
"This irresponsible decision will have implications on the health and well-being of communities, as well as lasting impact on generations to come," warned one campaigner.
Oct 19, 2023
Elected officials and environmental advocates in the Pacific Northwest on Thursday condemned U.S. regulators for greenlighting a Canadian company's fracked gas pipeline expansion project despite the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved TC Energy's Gas Transmission Northwest (GTN) XPress Project, which would upgrade compressor stations in Kootenai County, Idaho; Sherman County, Oregon; and Walla Walla County, Washington.
"Today's decision by FERC flies in the face of what is morally and economically necessary to protect our communities from the worsening impacts of climate change," declared Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee. "The federal government has finally begun making tremendous climate investments under the Inflation Reduction Act, but this decision essentially digs the hole deeper and locks in long-term capital investments that prevent us from reaching our national and state goals."
Along with Inslee, political opponents of the project include Democratic Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek; U.S. Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and Andrea Salinas (D-Ore.); and U.S. Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
"Expanding this fossil fuel pipeline for 50 years—until 2073—saddles our children and their children with climate harm and fossil fuel costs," Inslee warned. "This fight isn't over. I'm thankful for the aligned efforts of Gov. Kotek, our senators, and our West Coast attorneys general to make clear why this pipeline is a dangerous detour on our path away from fossil fuels. We are more resolved than ever to keep this pipeline from increasing fossil fuel use."
Advocacy groups are also determined to prevent the expansion.
"FERC failed to listen to senators, governors, state attorneys general, tribes, and the public in its rubber stamp of unnecessary fracked gas in the Northwest," stressed Columbia Riverkeeper staff attorney Audrey Leonard. "The commission's decision violates the public interest and common sense, and we will file a petition for rehearing challenging this project."
"Since the analysis for this project was published, two major TC Energy pipelines have failed, causing safety hazards and spilling fossil fuel," Leonard noted. "If this were to happen in dry, rural, fire-prone lands or in the residential areas where TC Energy's GTN pipeline is located, it would be catastrophic."
Satya Austin-Opper of 350 Deschutes in Oregon stressed that "the GTN Xpress proposal would lock in a huge new influx of fracked gas for decades at the very moment that our communities are experiencing accelerated climate change impacts such as frequent drought and summers of smoke."
"And this pipeline runs right through our community," Austin-Opper continued, also noting the company's recent history. "I'm worried about how devastating the impact would be if the pipeline were to fail, which is certainly a possibility given the unsafe track record of TC Energy's other aging pipelines."
Oil Change International U.S. program co-manager Allie Rosenbluth argued that "with this decision to approve the GTN Xpress expansion, the Biden administration is again failing on its promises to protect environmental justice communities and the climate."
The FERC decision follows a historically hot summer that led United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres to caution that "climate breakdown has begun" and the European Copernicus Climate Change Service's announcement earlier this month that 2023 is on track to be the warmest year ever recorded.
"Any expansion of fossil fuels is incompatible with a livable future," Rosenbluth asserted. "Oregon and Washington must continue to rise to the challenge and safeguard the health and well-being of communities and the climate by challenging FERC's approval of this unnecessary and dangerous gas expansion."
Leaders from Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) in both states also highlighted the health impacts of the project.
"FERC's alarming decision to approve the GTN Xpress Project blatantly disregards concerns from community advocates and hundreds of health professionals in Oregon and within our region," said David De La Torre of Oregon PSR. "This irresponsible decision will have implications on the health and well-being of communities, as well as lasting impact on generations to come."
"As wildfires and extreme heat events continue to increase in frequency, straining health services and the well-being of Oregonians, it is imperative that we not continue to approve proposals that accelerate the climate crisis," he added. "We don't need more fracked gas being pumped through our state and communities."
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'The World Is at Stake': Defuse Nuclear War Kicks Off Nationwide Week of Action
"The need for action to curtail the possibility of nuclear conflict could not be more urgent," said the campaign's organizer.
Sep 24, 2023
Activists from the Defuse Nuclear War coalition on Sunday launched a week of action to demand the U.S. government take steps to reduce the existential threat of thermonuclear annihilation, including by reinstating arms control treaties, shutting down hair-trigger missiles, and engaging in "genuine diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine."
Defuse Nuclear War is organizing around 40 events across the United States. Demonstrations are planned in Baltimore, Boston, Philadelphia, Tucson, Fresno, and Salt Lake City, pickets are scheduled across Washington state, vigils are set to take place in Hawaii and California, activists plan to unfurl a banner at a Lockheed Martin facility in Pennsylvania, and an interfaith gathering will be held outside United Nations headquarters in New York.
"Our coalition of activists is demanding that the Biden administration seriously consider the consequences of their inaction in addressing this threat."
"The U.S. has allowed far too many weapons treaties to lapse in recent years, and the Ukraine War threatens daily to plunge the world into nuclear war," Defuse Nuclear War national campaign organizer Ryan Black said in a statement. "Our coalition of activists is demanding that the Biden administration seriously consider the consequences of their inaction in addressing this threat."
Chris Nelson of the California group Chico Peace Alliance—which is planning a Monday march through the Chico State University campus and the city's downtown—said:
The annual obscene "Defense" Authorization Act maintains and grows constant war infrastructure that can only be curtailed by the action of civilians. The revolving door in Congress for the arms contractors now makes representative government ineffective for arms control. Nuclear weapons are illegal under the International Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. It is up to us to make that normative and create effective pressure to get interim treaties reestablished.
The landmark treaty—which was signed in 2017 and went into effect in 2021—has been signed by 97 nations.
Sean Arent of Physicians for Social Responsibility and Washington Against Nuclear Weapons—which is holding 12 demonstrations around the Evergreen State later this month—said that "Washington state is at the center of the atomic world, with more deployed nuclear weapons than anywhere else in the United States based out of the Kitsap-Bangor Trident nuclear submarine base."
"The plutonium for some of the very first bombs were made at the ongoing disaster site known as Hanford, still radioactive to this day," Arent continued. "It is past time that our members of Congress recognize this legacy and lead our country away from nuclear weapons."
"We're asking our members of Congress to support justice for communities impacted by these weapons like the Marshallese, support diplomatic negotiations towards arm reductions, and to fight tooth and nail to phase out—not enhance—our nuclear weapons arsenal in the impending National Defense Authorization Act," Arent added. "The world is at stake."
This year, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientisits' Doomsday Clock—which tracks the world's proximity to a possible nuclear war—was set to 90 seconds to midnight, the closest it has been to thermonuclear armageddon since it was created in 1947.
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Climate Change, Nuclear Weapons, and Hope
The very existence of nuclear weapons is clearly not sustainable and indeed threatens everything we care about, and potentially all of life. This does not have to be the way it is and we can do something about it.
Jul 08, 2023
The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was adopted six years ago this week.
On that day—July 7, 2017—122 non-nuclear nations chose hope over fear, realizing the interconnectedness of all life on this planet, and refusing to be bullied or held hostage by the nuclear nations. Recognizing the devastating humanitarian consequences of even a limited regional nuclear conflict using less than .5% of the global arsenals, their voices rose up and said no to the continued existence of these immoral weapons.
In addressing the interconnected, existential threats of climate change and nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons remain the elephant in the room largely due to unexamined assumptions. We all see the effects of climate change each day in our communities and across the planet, and are therefore motivated by a sense that we can all do some small piece to mitigate this change. From recycling to investing in energy-efficient homes, communities, and cars, we feel empowered. The larger global climate imperatives are left to the world’s leaders each vying for their own vested interests and not for the collective good.
Regarding nuclear weapons there can be a feeling that an individual cannot make a difference, they exist, they cannot be eliminated, they make us safe, and they are somehow sustainable. Even thinking about them promotes an overwhelming sense of impotence, paralysis, and a belief that nothing can be done. This is the story, the narrative, we tell ourselves. We must change this story. As Robert Kennedy said, “Some men see things as they are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not.” Out of the status quo and fear came the U.S. decision to modernize its entire nuclear arsenal to an estimated cost of over $1.5 trillion in the decades ahead. This was the “grand bargain” negotiated by President Obama, to gain support from a conservative Congress in ratifying the New START Treaty in spite of being obligated under Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons to work in “good faith” along with all other nuclear nations to abolish their nuclear arsenals. In fact, there is no significant effort towards nuclear abolition by the nuclear nations and this modernization has been the greatest driver of the arms race with all other nuclear nations following suit and modernizing their arsenals.
The very existence of nuclear weapons is clearly not sustainable and indeed threatens everything we care about, and potentially all of life. This does not have to be the way it is and we can do something about it.
At the peak of the Cold War there were over 63,000 nuclear weapons. Today there are ~12,512. The TPNW (Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons) provides an international framework and vision of hope. Citizens and civil society in nuclear nations around the world are adopting the Treaty, and pushing their elected officials through the ICAN cities appeal. In the United States, a rapidly growing grassroots coalition with representation of all facets of society from health and scientific to environmental, religious, social justice, peace and veterans groups is engaging our communities and elected officials in this work to abolish nuclear weapons.
This movement to prevent nuclear war is called Back from the Brink. With an intention to abolish nuclear weapons, it includes the common sense precautionary measures necessary to prevent nuclear war until their complete abolition has been achieved. Working in community, this effort has instilled hope, energizing those involved across our nation. This coalition is working with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, ICAN building support to save the world from the most immediate existential threat. This framework of international cooperation provides a model moving forward in the ongoing effort to solve the crisis of climate change.
As Vaclav Havel said, “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
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