July, 29 2011, 12:07pm EDT
Congress V. The Environment: The 2012 Appropriations Rider Tracker
House Expands and Votes on Extreme Anti-Environment Spending Bill; Riders tally soars, 192 amendments filed as of this morning, more expected
WASHINGTON
The voting on environmentally destructive amendments to the House of Representatives 2012 Interior and EPA spending bill (H.R. 2584) is now underway, as one of the most extreme attacks on our environment and public health in modern history continues. Debate and floor time for this House spending bill, which determines the funding for the Department of Interior, Environmental Protection Agency, Forest Service and other environment-related federal agencies, commenced on Monday.
Updated: Friday, July 29, 2011, 2:13pm ET
As of July 27, 77 amendments and anti-environmental riders have been filed, and House leaders have said they are expecting about 200 total amendments to be filed throughout the bill's floor debate. Before the bill came to the House floor on Monday morning, it already had 38 anti-environmental policy riders unrelated to spending that attack our clean air, clean water, endangered species, and iconic places.
Among the original 38 riders in the bill are provisions to:
- Ban the EPA from all work to reduce the climate change pollution of power plants, refineries, and other major polluters for one full year, and allow major new sources of carbon pollution to be built without any controls.
- Mandate that California's National Forests allow off-road vehicles in places where they cause harm and raise significant safety concerns.
- Leave millions of acres of wilderness-quality lands open to drilling, mining, and off-road vehicles.
- Prohibit the EPA from ensuring that hardrock mining companies - not American taxpayers - are responsible for footing the bills of costly environmental cleanups at their mine sites. This rider derails a rulemaking that Earthjustice litigation compelled.
- As well as a host of other riders that don't reduce spending but instead attack our protections for drinking water sources, prohibit the EPA from regulating coal ash as a hazardous waste, allow power plants and cement kilns to poison pregnant women and young children, destroy wetlands that protect communities from flooding, allow sewage to flow into our rivers and lakes, and expose more Americans to dangerous pesticides.
- Read more details on the range of riders.
Earthjustice will be highlighting and tracking many of these extreme anti-environment, anti-science, and anti-health riders on this webpage. We will update this page as new amendments are filed, offered, and voted upon.
Among today's (Friday, July 29, 2011) amendments filed are:
- The Snub to Environmental Justice Rider: We anticipate that Rep. Blackburn will offer an amendment to prohibit funding of the EPA's environmental justice program. This program helps ensure that communities of color and lower income communities disproportionately impacted by pollution are treated fairly and are meaningfully involved in the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.
- Chumming the Chesapeake Bay with Pollution: Rep. Robert Goodlatte (R-VA) is expected to offer an amendment that is intended to block implementation of pollution limits needed to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. If the same as a previous amendment he offered, it would prohibit EPA from enforcing a key cleanup measure - known as Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) - if Chesapeake Bay states fail to meet their pollution control commitments. The result could seriously undermine the restoration of this national treasure and important fishery.
Among today's (Thursday, July 28, 2011) amendments filed are:
- The Texas Tells Its Neighbors "Eat Our Soot and Smog!" Rider: Amendment No. 75 by Rep. John Carter (R-TX): This rider audaciously aims to exempt Texas from the court-ordered Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, just finalized by the EPA on July 6, 2011, to limit deadly soot and smog-forming air pollution from power plants in 27 states. The Cross-State Air Pollution Rule will protect Texas' millions of neighbors who are exposed to that state's air pollution, and prevent tens of thousands of premature deaths, heart attacks, cases of acute bronchitis; hundreds of thousands of cases of aggravated asthma; and 1.8 million sick days a year beginning in 2014. For Texas's neighboring states, all that translates into tens of billions of dollars worth of annual health benefits. This is rider is just plain lousy-neighbor behavior.
- Wiping Out the Lesser Prairie Chicken Rider: Amendment No. 78 by Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-TX): This rider would block Endangered Species Act listing of the lesser prairie chicken, an iconic grouse species that plays a critical role in grassland ecosystems but now occupies less than 15 percent of its historic range. This bird has been on the Endangered Species Act waiting list for 13 years despite desperately needing protection.
Among today's (Wednesday, July 27, 2011) amendments filed are:
- The Killing Our Oceans Rider: Amendment by Rep. Bill Flores (R-TX): Last year, following the recommendations of two bipartisan ocean commissions, President Obama established our National Ocean Policy to protect, maintain, and restore our ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes natural resources for present and future generations. Rep. Flores is proposing to block this government efficiency and return our country to the state of disorder that characterized business before this policy. It is backwards-looking, absent of logic, and will cost us greatly in many jobs and tourism dollars that depend on healthy oceans and coasts.
- The Sad End to Manatees Rider: Amendment No. 42 by Rep. Rich Nugent (R-FL): America's endangered manatee, an extremely vulnerable species, is fighting desperately for survival in Florida. Florida developers are threatening with plans to build a marina and boating center near King's Bay, one of the last safe havens for endangered manatees. Despite strong public support for the proposed refuge, House politicians now seem willing to do the developers' bidding through this disappointing policy rider, which would block the proposed refuge and put the endangered manatees directly in harm's way.
- Lawless Borders Rider: Amendment No. 55 by Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ): This amendment completely waives 23 federal laws for any border patrol activities on federal lands, including the Clean Water Act, The Bald Eagle Protection Act, The Coastal Zone Management Act, the Wilderness Act, and the American Indian Religous Freedom and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. This sweeping amendment would create a lawless zone in many National Parks, National Wildlife Refuges National Forests and National Seashores.
- Curtailing Federal Land Management Efficiency Riders: Amendments Nos. 60 and 82 by Rep. Scott Rigell (R-VA) and 63 by Rep. James Lankford (R-OK): The Rigell amendment prohibits acquisition of lands by the federal government without first selling an equal number of federally owned lands. The Lankford amendment is similar in requiring no net increase in federal land ownership. Both amendments tie the hands of land managers by making it harder improve management with the acquistion of inholdings and will keep managers from being able to take advantage of oportunities, such when bargain-priced parcels become available.
- The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing Rider: Amendment No. 62 by Rep. James Lankford (R-OK). This amendment is a sneaky attempt to prevent the kinds of protections that Interior Secretary Salazar implemented when he withdrew a million acres of federal land adjacent to the Grand Canyon from new uranium mining. However, unlike the Grand Canyon rider (Sec. 445) this amendment applies to all National Park Service and Department of Interior lands, and the threats could be far more wide-ranging.
- The Bring On the Polluted Haze Rider: Amendment No. 61 filed by Rep. James Lankford (R-OK): This amendment guts the EPA regulations that protect our air visibility standards and would bring on widespread haze from a multitude of sources and impair our visibility in every direction over a large area.
- The Fish-Kill Rider: Amendment No. 64 filed by Rep. James Lankford (R-OK): This rider would prevent the more than 1,500 industrial facilities from having to implement fish saving measures in their cooling water intake structures. Power plants, pulp and paper makers, chemical manufacturers, petroleum refiners, and metal manufactures use such structures to pull large volumes of cooling water from our lakes, rivers, and estuaries, which suck in and kill large numbers of fish and shellfish, along with some larger marine species that get trapped against screens at the front of intake structures.
- The Petty 'Let's Stop EPA From Having Any New Office Space' Rider: Amendment No. 70 filed by Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX): This rider hopes to make EPA staff "homeless" as it bans EPA from entering into any new contracts that would allow it to construct, purchase, or lease any facility, land, or space.
- King Coal Rider for Blowing Up Mountains: by Rep. David McKinley (R-WV): This rider seeks to stop the federal government from protecting the American public from the environmental destruction and pollution of mountaintop removal mining. Communities across Appalachia are facing severe environmental and health harms as a result of this devastating coal mining practice. Specifically, this amendment aims to take away the EPA's authority to stop permits which allow unacceptable impacts on waters of the United States, including from coal mining practices.
- Dooming the Endangered Mexican Wolf Rider: by Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM): This rider would prohibit funding for the recovery of the endangered Mexican wolf in southwestern states. In the U.S., only 50 Mexican wolves remain in the wild.
- Trample Our National Heritage & History Rider: by Rep Denny Rehberg (R-MT): This rider would prohibit presidents from creating National Monuments under current authority granted them by the Antiquities Act as it seeks to inject the partisan gridlock into the process.
- Threatening Salmon Restoration in the San Joaquin River: Amendment offered by Rep. Jeff Denham (R-CA): This rider would prohibit the federal government from spending any money to restore runs of salmon to the San Joaquin River in California. Although the San Joaquin once supported the biggest salmon run in California, these salmon were largely wiped out years ago by the construction of the Friant Dam, which stopped the river's natural flow. A protracted lawsuit was settled with an agreement to re-water the river and bring the salmon back. Rep. Denham claims the river isn't ready to receive the salmon even though plentiful rains this year have put more water in the river than it has seen for years.
Among today's (Tuesday, July 26, 2011) amendments filed are:
- The Dirty Fuel Rider: Amendment No. 8 filed by Rep. Bill Flores (R-TX): This amendment seeks to limit funds to enforce a provision of law that prohibits the federal government from entering into contracts to purchase fuels that pollute more than conventional fuels. The current policy has broad support, including from the Department of Defense, which has opposed similar funding limitations.
- The Invisible National Parks Rider: Amendment No. 15 filed by Rep. Rick Berg (R-ND): Rep. Berg (R-ND) wants to perform a magic trick that would have made even the Great Houdini balk: make our national parks disappear. Berg's amendment to prohibit funding for the EPA's regional haze program would obscure jaw-dropping vistas and landscapes in special places across the country. To add insult to injury, that hazy pollution will also be bad for the lungs of the soon-to-be-dejected visitors who arrive only to find their long-awaited views wrapped in a brownish cloak of dirty air.
- The Factory Farm Filth Rider: Amendment No. 16 filed by Rep. Tom Latham (R-IA): This rider would ban the EPA from even studying the impacts of pollution from industrial livestock facilities (factory farms, or concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs)) on our waters. It would prohibit the EPA from collecting water pollution info from these huge sources of harmful pollution, which are known to jeopardize and degrade our drinking water supplies.
- The Welcome to Frackistan Rider: Amendment No. 25 filed by Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX): This amendment seeks to limit federal agency oversight of a controversial drilling process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Agencies like the Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency are tasked with protecting our air, water, and public lands, and make sure that drilling is done safely, but instead, this amendment seeks to remove their expertise from the drilling process.
- The Riders for Repeating Tragic Oil Spills: Amendment No. 26 and No. 77 filed by Rep. Jeff Landry (R-LA): These amendments exempt companies engaged in the offshore oil drilling business from accountability or regulation. These ignorant riders spite everything we learned from the Deepwater Horizon disaster and everything the President's National Oil Spill Commission told us about the culpability of contractors like Halliburton and Transocean in the Gulf spill. They weaken oversight of offshore drilling contractors and let them off the hook for any safety failures of their equipment - and they would prohibit government oversight of these players and block the federal government from ensuring that drilling contractors are meeting safety requirements and following the law, along with the primary holder of the drilling lease.
- The Pro-Flooding and Pro-Fire Rider: Amendment No. 33 filed by Rep. Austin Scott (R-GA): This year, the nation has experienced record floods, record droughts, and record fires. This irresponsible and wide-sweeping amendment blocks the Interior Department and the Forest Service from implementing its programs that prepare for the record-breaking floods, fires, and droughts to come due to climate change. This amendment also blocks all environment-related agencies from climate change research, science, and preparation. While the private sector is busy preparing and planning for climate change and extreme weather patterns, this amendment flies in the face of common sense and good planning by insisting that the government turn a blind eye to the costly changes and impacts facing our communities, lands, and economy. It will cost our country and economy gravely.
- The Justice Blocker Rider: Amendment No. 34 filed by Rep. Lee Terry (R-NE): This rider seeks to curtail citizens' access to courts if the injured party has suffered non-economic losses, such as those seeking to enforce their Constitutional rights to religious freedom and free speech, or statutory rights to clean water and clean air.
- The Carbon Polluter Bail-Out Rider: Amendment No. 38 filed by Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS): This rider wipes out all carbon pollution reporting requirements under the Clean Air Act. It allows the nation's biggest and worst climate change polluters to get out of even reporting their pollution, let alone being accountable for it.
- The Stop Clean Fuels Rider: Amendment No 40 filed by Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS): This rider gets polluting refineries, which already enjoy a host of regulatory loopholes and other flexibilities from pollution controls, out of requirements to produce cleaner forms of energy.
For more information on the riders included within the base H.R. 2584, click here.
Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.
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Russia's Putin Secures Another Term
The controversial leader won a record number of votes for a post-Soviet candidate even as opponents organized a protest at noon on the election's third and last day.
Mar 17, 2024
Despite protests on Sunday, Russian President Vladimir Putin won reelection with more votes than any candidate since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Exit poll the Public Opinion Foundation (POF) put the final tally after three days of voting at 87.8%, the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM) at 87%, and Russia's Central Election Commission (CEC) at 87.3%. Putin will now serve another six-year term, meaning he will have been at the helm of the Russian state for longer than any leader since Catherine the Great, surpassing Josef Stalin.
The election comes less than a month after the second anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and is likely to lead to more tensions between the Russian and U.S. governments.
"It gives me some hope to see how many people are not happy with the dictatorship, the war, with what's happening in Russia."
"For a U.S. administration that hoped Putin's Ukraine adventure would be wrapped up by now with a decisive setback to Moscow's interests, the election is a reminder that Putin expects that there will be many more rounds in the geopolitical boxing ring," Nikolas Gvosdev, director of the National Security Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told the Russia Matters project.
With most of Putin's prominent opponents either dead, imprisoned, or in exile, the elections results were considered a foregone conclusion by both friends and foes of his administration.
A Putin spokesperson said in 2023 that the election was "not really democracy" but instead "costly bureaucracy," according to CNN. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said the election was "obviously not free nor fair."
However, Russian opponents of Putin did find a way to demonstrate their position with a protest called "Noon Against Putin." The protest was called for by St. Petersburg politician Maxim Reznik, according to The Guardian. Participants were instructed to head to a polling place at noon and cast a paper ballot for one of the candidates running against Putin, or to write-in another candidate or spoil their ballot.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny had endorsed the protest before his death last month in a Russian prison, leading the Independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper to dub it "Navalny's political testament."
The action drew crowds to polling places both in Russian cities like Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Yekaterinburg and at Russian embassies around the world.
"This is the first time in my life I have ever seen a queue for elections," one woman waiting in line in Moscow told
CNN. Russian journalists reported that the lines at some stations within the country reached the thousands, according to Reuters.
Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, who had also endorsed the protest, voted at the embassy in Berlin, while several protesters gathered outside the embassy in London.
"I expected there to be a lot of people, but not this many," London-based participant Maria Dorofeyeva told The Guardian, adding, "It gives me some hope to see how many people are not happy with the dictatorship, the war, with what's happening in Russia. And we want to stop it."
Ruslan Shaveddinov of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation told Reuters:
"We showed ourselves, all of Russia and the whole world that Putin is not Russia (and) that Putin has seized power in Russia."
"Our victory is that we, the people, defeated fear, we defeated solitude—many people saw they were not alone," Shaveddinov said
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Van Hollen Says Netanyahu Spreading 'Flat Out Lies' About UNRWA
The Maryland senator defended the organization on CBS and said there was no evidence that it was a "proxy for Hamas."
Mar 17, 2024
U.S. Senator for Maryland Chris Van Hollen continued his defense of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East and its work in Gaza in an appearance on CBS News' "Face the Nation" on Sunday.
"The claim that Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and others are making that somehow UNRWA is a proxy for Hamas are just flat out lies, that's a flat out lie," he told journalist Margaret Brennan.
The U.S. was one of many Western countries that paused funding for UNRWA after the agency announced in January that it had fired 12 staffers over Israeli allegations that they had been involved in Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel. However, some countries including Canada, Sweden, the European Union, and Australia have since restored funding. A report has also emerged that Israel tortured UNRWA staffers into falsely confessing to involvement in the Hamas attack.
"Netanyahu has wanted to get rid of UNRWA because he had seen them as a means to continue the hopes of the Palestinian people for a homeland of their own."
Van Hollen's remarks on Sunday come days after he argued for the restoration of UNRWA funds on the floor of the U.S. Senate and criticized Republican legislators who wanted to permanently end funds for the organization that supports some 6 million Palestinian refugees in countries across the Middle East, including around 2 million in Gaza.
During his speech, he pointed out that the Netanyahu government had not shared the underlying evidence that UNRWA staffers participated in October 7 with either UNRWA itself or the U.S. government. He also urged his colleagues to read a classified Director of National Intelligence report on Netanyahu's claims of UNRWA complicity with Hamas.
On "Face the Nation," Van Hollen said that the person in charge of operations on the ground in UNRWA was a 20-year U.S. Army veteran.
"You can be sure he is not in cahoots with Hamas," the senator told Brennan.
He also repeated claims that Netanyahu has wanted to eliminate UNRWA entirely since at least 2017.
"Netanyahu has wanted to get rid of UNRWA because he had seen them as a means to continue the hopes of the Palestinian people for a homeland of their own," Van Hollen said, adding that the right-wing Israeli leader's "primary objective" was preventing the formation of a Palestinian state.
However, the dismantling of UNRWA would be especially catastrophic amid Israel's ongoing bombardment and invasion of Gaza, which has killed more than 31,000 people and put the survivors at risk of famine. No other organization has the infrastructure in place to distribute the necessary aid.
"If you cut off funding for UNRWA in Gaza entirely, it means more people will starve, more people won't get the medial assistance they need, and so it would be a huge mistake," Van Hollen said.
He also said that only 14 of the agency's 13,000-strong staff in Gaza had been accused of participating in the October 7 attack.
"We should investigate it, we should hold all those people accountable, but for goodness' sake, let's not hold 2 million innocent Palestinian civilians who are dying of starvation... accountable for the bad acts of 14 people."
Van Hollen also repeated his call for President Joe Biden to condition the sale of offensive military weapons to Israel on the country obeying international law and allowing aid into Gaza. While Israel sent the U.S. a letter saying it was in compliance with the law, "the day it was signed, clearly the Netanyahu government is not in compliance, because we see that they're continuing to restrict humanitarian assistance," he told Brennan.
Also on "Face the Nation" Sunday, United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) Chief Executive Catherine Russell described the impact that a lack of aid was having on the children of Gaza.
"We know now that children are dying of malnutrition in Gaza," she told Brennan.
Russell said that not enough aid was reaching those who needed it, calling both air drops and sea deliveries "a drop in the bucket."
She also called for greater transparency into what was actually happening in Gaza and the difficulties of delivering aid.
"The world should be able to see what's happening and make their own judgments about what's going on," Russell said.
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"They are continuing to do similar things today to try to fool people and pull the wool over people's eyes just in the name of greed," the former vice president said.
Mar 17, 2024
In reflecting on nearly 50 years of climate advocacy, former Vice President Al Gore said that he had "underestimated" the greed of the fossil fuel industry.
The remarks came in an interview published in USA Today on Sunday. When asked if he had any regrets, Gore responded that he had "put every ounce of energy" he had into climate advocacy, but added:
"I was pretty slow to recognize how important the massive funding of anti-climate messaging was going on. I underestimated the power of greed in the fossil fuel industry, the shamelessness in putting out the lies."
"They are continuing to do similar things today to try to fool people and pull the wool over people's eyes just in the name of greed," Gore continued.
"What's at stake is so incredible."
Gore, who tried to raise awareness about the climate crisis in the U.S. House of Representatives as early as 1981 and brought the issue to national attention in 2006's documentary An Inconvenient Truth, has taken a harsher tone against oil, gas, and coal companies in recent months. In August 2023, he said that the "climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis," and in September, he implored the industry to "get out of the way." In December, he lamented that the industry had "captured the COP process," referring to the appointment of the United Arab Emirates national oil company CEO Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber to preside over the United Nations' COP28 climate conference in that country.
In the USA Today interview, Gore also named the fossil fuel industry when asked about his greatest frustration.
"Well, that we haven't made more progress," Gore answered, "and that some of the fossil fuel companies have been shameless in providing, continuing to provide lavish funding for disinformation and misinformation."
"What's at stake is so incredible," he added.
However, Gore told USA Today that he tried not to focus on his anger, but instead on continuing to raise awareness about the crisis and what can be done about it. And he remained hopeful that his grandchildren would live in a world in which people had come together and acted in time.
"We've got all the solutions we need right now to cut emissions in half before the end of this decade," he said. "We've got a clear line of sight to how we can cut the other 50% of emissions by mid century."
He also encouraged more people to get involved with the climate movement.
"I would say the greatest need is for more grassroots advocates because the most persuasive advocates are those in your own community," he said.
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