May, 19 2022, 08:56am EDT
122 CSOs warn there is only six months left to meet joint COP26 commitment to end international public finance for fossil fuels
Russia’s war in Ukraine and fuel price spikes mean international public finance institutions must roll out rapid decarbonization and aid packages, not back track by locking in new fossil infrastructure
WASHINGTON
Today, 122 civil society groups are releasing letters to eleven government signatories to the Glasgow Statement on International Public Support for the Clean Energy Transition, laying out the actions they must take as soon as possible to meet their commitment. In this joint statement at COP26, 35 countries and 5 public finance institutions committed to end their international public finance for 'unabated' fossil fuels by the end of 2022, and instead prioritise their "support fully towards the clean energy transition."
The Glasgow Statement has the potential to directly shift at least USD $24 billion a year in influential trade and development finance from governments away from oil, gas, and coal towards the clean energy transition if it is implemented well -- and much more if these initial signatories can convince peers to join them and bring their commitment into other multilateral settings like the G7 and OECD.
However, todays' letters to Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, France, Portugal, and New Zealand warn that the initiative will fail to have this transformative impact if initial implementation is late, creates large loopholes for gas or carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS), or is not paired with an exponential increase in public finance for renewable energy. Letters with similar recommendations have already been sent to the United Kingdom and United States, and will be sent this month to Costa Rica and El Salvador.
The warning from civil society comes at the halfway mark for countries to implement their commitment, and right ahead of the G7 where public finance for energy is set to be a key issue. As Russia's war in Ukraine has continued, the United States and Canada have signalled they may backtrack and instead rely on significant loopholes to continue trade finance for fossil gas.
Last month's IPCC Working Group III report was clear that continued fossil fuel finance of any kind is misaligned with the Paris climate goals, and that public finance for fossil fuels in particular plays a key role in determining our global future energy systems. In light of this, civil society groups are also emphasizing the need for wealthy country signatories to prioritize public finance for a just energy transition for low-income countries and communities and to avoid hypocrisy by ending any public finance and other subsidies for fossil fuels they still provide domestically. The letters to Costa Rica and El Salvador also emphasize the role Global South country signatories can play in holding wealthier signatories accountable to these responsibilities.
Quotes:
Bronwen Tucker, Public Finance Campaign Co-Manager, Oil Change International said: "The Glasgow Statement on public finance was a truly exciting break from most multilateral climate agreements because it named both a near-term timeline and concrete actions that signatories would take. But now that we are at the halfway point to implementation, too many signatories are missing vital ingredients for what will be needed for it to have a transformative impact: binding fossil fuel exclusion policies that include gas, clear definitions for CCUS, and meaningful increases in support for a globally just energy transition."
Julia Levin, National Climate Program Manager, Environmental Defence Canada said: "As the largest provider of public finance to oil and gas companies in the G20, Canada's commitments to end subsidies to the sector are critical. But so far, Canada has been dragging its feet on this key climate promise - and has instead created new subsidy and bond programs geared toward false solutions like carbon capture. Oil and gas companies have profited immensely for decades from activities that are fueling the climate crisis and polluting communities' land and water. Public financing should not keep getting funneled to these companies period, no matter where in the world they operate or whether they are promising to lower their emissions."
Diana Cardenas Monar, General Coordinator, Climate Finance Group for Latin America and the Caribbean (GFLAC) said: "In line with Article 2.1c of the Paris Agreement and the need for financial flows to become a driver of the climate agenda and the energy transition, the Glasgow Statement on public finance was an important step forward. But what is needed is to go beyond words into action, with a sense of urgency and considering the current geopolitical context. In Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), with only two countries as signatories, the region has a long path ahead with specific political and socio-economic challenges to address. Thus, shifting financial flows of developed countries from fossil fuels to support a just energy transition in LAC and other regions will be key for a global alignment of public finances with climate objectives."
Kate DeAngelis, International Finance Program Manager, Friends of the Earth US said: "President Biden started his presidency with bold statements on the need to end overseas fossil fuel financing, but has spent the past year taking little real action. Rather than using this moment to cave to the oil and gas industry, the Biden-Harris Administration must end US financing for international fossil fuels and promote a sustainable, renewable energy future."
Simone Ogno, Finance and Climate campaigner, ReCommon said: "Italy's dependence on Russian gas has been made possible thanks to public finance, especially SACE, the Italian export credit agency. Public finance is now at risk of driving the country toward new 'bloody' gas suppliers while gas prices stay high and more and more people are forced to choose between a meal and paying their energy bills. It's time for Italy's public finance to play its part and Draghi's government has to clarify how it will implement the Glasgow Statement by pulling SACE out of fossil finance and breaking the country's dependence on fossil fuels once and for all."
Marius Troost, Policy Officer, Both ENDS said: "Signing the Glasgow Statement is one thing, translating it into ambitious policy is another. The science is clear about the need to stop financing fossil fuels and the role public finance plays in this process. It is therefore crucial that the signatories of the Statement, including The Netherlands, follow up on their promises. There can be no room for exceptions and loopholes that water down the commitment."
David Ryfisch, Team Leader International Climate Policy, Germanwatch said: "Fossil energies are risky and create long-term dependencies. This has become painfully clear for many G7 states, particularly Germany, in the last few months. Learning from their own mistakes, all G7 countries should join the Glasgow Statement and stop international investments into fossil fuels and instead accelerate their renewable energy finance."
Anna-Lena Rebaud, Climate and Just Transition campaigner, Friends of the Earth France said: "During his first mandate, Emmanuel Macron has been a master in communication, but has repeatedly failed at ambitious climate action. The climate plan on export finance adopted in 2020 is a good example. After joining the Glasgow Statement, the new government cannot fail again at effectively putting an end to all public support to fossil fuels."
Nicole Rodel, Communications Campaigner, Oil Change International said: "Russia's war in Ukraine and the current fuel prices spikes have prompted some Glasgow Statement signatories to suggest they may backtrack and use their international public finance to lock-in new fossil infrastructure like the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, new import terminals for U.S. LNG, and Equinor's extraction projects in Tanzania and Canada. We cannot afford this. What is desperately needed instead is for global leaders to double down on the Glasgow statement and support rapid decarbonization packages for renewables and energy efficiency in the areas that need it most. The pandemic has shown that governments can rapidly mobilize massive sums of public money. This is the moment to do it, and accelerate the transition to a clean and fair future without fossil-fueled conflict."
Read the letters in full:
- Canada
- Italy
- France
- Germany
- Netherlands
- New Zealand
- Portugal
- United Kingdom (November 2021)
- United States (April 2022)
Notes:
- The $24 billion per year quoted above is from the open-access Public Finance for Energy Database (energyfinance.org), a project of Oil Change International that tracks financial flows to fossil fuels and clean energy from G20 bilateral development finance institutions (DFIs), export finance agencies (ECAs), and the multilateral development banks (MDBs). For non-G20 countries, Oil Change International has used the same methodology to estimate fossil fuel finance totals.
- The countries and the institutions that have signed the joint Glasgow statementon public finance include: Agence Francaise de Developpement (AFD), Albania, Canada, Costa Rica, Denmark, Banco de Desenvolvimento de Minas Gerais (BDMG), The East African Development Bank (EADB), El Salvador, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, Netherlands Development Finance Company (FMO), France, Germany, Mali, Marshall Islands, New Zealand, Moldova, Portugal, Slovenia, South Sudan, Spain, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, the European Investment Bank, The Gambia, The United Kingdom, the United States and Zambia.
- An April 2022 briefing from Oil Change International on recent trends in international public finance for fossil fuels, and how these financial flows could be used instead to unlock a globally just transition.
- A March 2022 report from BankTrack, Milieudefensie, and Oil Change International found that Global North public finance institutions have backed at least $37 billion for fossil fuels in Africa since the Paris Agreement. Government backing and preferential rates meant this finance has had an outsized impact on private financial flows, pushing forward fossil fuel projects and crowding out renewable alternatives. Meanwhile, poor contract terms, debt traps, and disproportionate ownership by foreign multinationals have meant this finance has undermined development.
- A legal opinion by Professor Jorge E Vinuales from the University of Cambridge and Barrister Kate Cook of Matrix Chambers argues that governments and public finance institutions that continue to finance fossil fuel infrastructure are potentially at risk of climate litigation.
Oil Change International is a research, communications, and advocacy organization focused on exposing the true costs of fossil fuels and facilitating the ongoing transition to clean energy.
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'Jail Time Should Seriously Be Considered,' Pocan Says of Big Oil Price Fixing
"I would recommend 'Orange Is the New Black,'" said the Wisconsin Democrat. "We're feeling it at the pumps and clearly this kind of behavior, we know, isn't isolated."
May 15, 2024
As Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan appeared before a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on Wednesday, Congressman Mark Pocan highlighted recent FTC action against fossil fuel industry price fixing and urged criminal consequences.
"I just did a little napkin math," Pocan (D-Wis.) said. If collusion led to a $0.40-0.60 increase in the price for a gallon of gas for a vehicle, "for the average person filling their tank, that's $8 or $10 a week," he explained. "That's $500 a year of added cost."
If half of the residents in Pocan's congressional district have a car, "that's $175 million a year," he said. If that figure is applied across all 435 districts, it translates to billions of dollars "that we're being gouged because of someone like this who's trying to price collude," he continued, referring to Scott Sheffield, the founder and longtime CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources.
The FTC earlier this month barred Sheffield from serving on the board of directors of or as an adviser to ExxonMobil, which just acquired Pioneer, due to his alleged collusion with the representatives of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and OPEC+.
While welcoming the FTC's move, Pocan noted that "if you commit theft, the average sentence... in the United States is 23 months" and the multibillion-dollar profit that fossil fuel giants make from price gouging "is more than grand larceny theft."
🚨BIG: @RepMarkPocan applauds @FTC for revealing an oil price-fixing scheme that cost Americans billions from 2021-2023.
"I just did a little napkin math ... That's $175 million a year—just for people in my district—that we're being gouged." pic.twitter.com/maM8Uk6usY
— American Economic Liberties Project (@econliberties) May 15, 2024
"What else can we do to these oil companies that are ripping us off?" the congressman asked Khan, an appointee of President Joe Biden with "a pro-working families record."
The FTC chair responded that "price fixing and output reduction in a coordinated way can be criminal violations of the antitrust laws. As enforcers we can't specifically speak to what we're referring and what we're not, but as a general matter, it's been a priority of mine to make sure we are referring more criminal candidates to the Justice Department, because we need to make sure companies and executives aren't just treating fines as a cost of doing business and that they take seriously the rule of law."
Referencing a television show that takes place in federal prison, Pocan told her that "I would recommend 'Orange Is the New Black,' if we need to, to make a point. It would be helpful because we're feeling it at the pumps and clearly this kind of behavior, we know, isn't isolated."
Sharing a video of his remarks on social media, Pocan declared: "Unacceptable! A slap on the wrist isn't enough. I think jail time should seriously be considered."
As the American Economic Liberties Project (AELP) pointed out, Pocan wasn't the only lawmaker to reference the recent price fixing revelations during the Wednesday hearing; he was joined by Reps. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.) and Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.).
"Finally it's being noticed!" said AELP's Matt Stoller, who has written about the alleged collusion. "Dem House members get it!"
Stoller wasn't alone in welcoming the discussion in Congress—after days of limited attention on the issue among national figures.
"This illegal oil corporation price fixing conspiracy cost Americans as much as $2,100. Per year," saidMore Perfect Union, sharing a video of Pocan and citingThe American Prospect.
The Ohio AFL-CIO stressed: "Greedflation is not inflation. Pass it on."
Noting that Sheffield is getting a $68 million "golden parachute on his way out," former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich argued Wednesday: "That money (and more) should be refunded to the American people. Not sent to his bank account."
Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens similarly said last week that "the Department of Justice should criminally prosecute Scott Sheffield and Congress should tax back the industry's windfall profits and issue every American a refund."
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1st Jewish Biden Appointee to Resign Over Gaza Quits on Nakba Day
"I can no longer in good conscience continue to represent this administration amid President Biden's disastrous, continued support for Israel's genocide in Gaza," Interior assistant Lily Greenberg Call wrote.
May 15, 2024
Lily Greenberg Call, a special assistant to the chief of staff in the Department of the Interior, became the first Jewish political appointee to resign her post in protest of U.S. President Joe Biden's support for Israel's genocide in Gaza.
Call announced her resignation on Wednesday, which is also the 76th anniversary of the Nakba—or the expulsion of the majority of Palestinians from their homes in 1948 as part of the process of creating the current state of Israel.
"Nakba and Shoah, the Hebrew word for Holocaust, mean the same thing: catastrophe," Call wrote in her letter. "I reject the premise that one people's salvation must come at another's destruction. I am committed to creating a world where this does not happen—and this cannot be done from within the Biden administration."
"What Israel is doing to people in Gaza and to Palestinians across the land is incredibly un-Jewish to me and such a disgrace to our ancestors."
In her letter, addressed to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Call said that she had worked for both Vice President Kamala Harris' presidential campaign in 2019 and Biden's in 2020 and was "thrilled" to accept a position at DOI.
"I joined the Biden administration because I believe in fighting for a better America, for a future where Americans can thrive: one with economic prosperity, a healthy planet, and equal rights for all people," she wrote.
However, that changed with Biden's financial, military, and political backing of Israel's war on Gaza.
"I can no longer in good conscience continue to represent this administration amid President Biden's disastrous, continued support for Israel's genocide in Gaza," she wrote.
Call spoke of her Jewish immigrant heritage and how her family story—moving from grandparents without college degrees to a granddaughter with a presidential appointment—represented the American dream.
"And yet, I have asked myself many times over the last eight months: What is the point of having power if you will not use it to stop crimes against humanity?" she wrote.
"President Biden has the blood of innocent people on his hands."
Call also spoke of how her Jewish faith and lifelong experience in the Jewish community informed her decision.
"What I have learned from my Jewish tradition is that every life is precious. That we are obligated to stand up for those facing violence and oppression, and to question authority in the face of injustice," she said.
In a separate interview with The Associated Press, she criticized Biden for "making Jews the face of the American war machine," adding that this was "deeply wrong."
For example, the AP wrote:
Call pointed to comments by Biden, including at a White House Hanukkah event where he said, "Were there no Israel, there wouldn't be a Jew in the world who was safe" and at an event at Washington's Holocaust Memorial last week in which he said the October 7 Hamas-led attacks that triggered the war were driven by an "ancient desire to wipe out the Jewish people."
Call's own views on Israel have altered dramatically in the last few years. As The Washington Post reported:
Greenberg Call, who graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 2019, was president of Bears for Israel, an affiliate group of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and said she grew up going to student events hosted by the group. In a piece for Teen Vogue two years ago, she said she began to question AIPAC and its mission of ensuring unconditional American support for Israel as she got to know more Palestinians and after AIPAC endorsed Republican candidates who supported Donald Trump's false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
Call told the Post that it had been a struggle to make the decision she did because of her deep roots in the Jewish community, but that Jewish values were ultimately what led her to go through with it.
"What Israel is doing to people in Gaza and to Palestinians across the land is incredibly un-Jewish to me and such a disgrace to our ancestors," she said.
Call wrote in the letter that while she knew people who lost family in Hamas' October 7 attack on Israel that killed around 1,100 people and was "terrified" by rising antisemitism, she was "certain that the answer to this is not to collectively punish millions of innocent Palestinians through displacement, famine, and ethnic cleansing."
Call outlined the horrors of Israel's war on Gaza: more than 35,000 people and 15,000 children killed, attacks on hospitals, mass graves, the destruction of every university in Gaza, and the targeting of journalists.
"These are all violations of international law, none of which would be possible without American weapons, and none of which have been condemned by President Biden," she wrote.
She continued:
The president has the power to call for a lasting cease-fire, to stop sending weapons to Israel, and to condition aid. The United States has used nearly no leverage throughout the last eight months to hold Israel accountable. Quite the opposite, we have enabled and legitimized Israel's actions with vetoes of United Nations resolutions designed to hold Israel accountable. President Biden has the blood of innocent people on his hands.
Call's resignation comes one day after Biden announced another $1 billion weapons shipment to Israel, even as it continues an assault on Gaza's southernmost city of Rafah. Biden had previously called a ground offensive on Rafah a "red line" that Israel should not cross, yet critics point out that Israel's current operations in Rafah should certainly qualify.
"There's been many moments in the last eight months that I have thought about it," Call toldMiddle East Eye of her decision to resign, "and I think everything that has happened in the last few weeks in particular, made me feel like the time is right."
Her letter also comes days after polling indicated that around 13% of 2020 Biden voters in six key swing states would not vote for him in 2024 because of his Gaza policy.
"I think the president has to know that there are people in his administration who think this is disastrous," Call told AP. "Not just for Palestinians, for Israelis, for Jews, for Americans, for his election prospects."
Call is at least the fifth Biden official to resign over his Gaza policy and the second political appointee, according to AP. While she is the first known Jewish Biden staffer to resign, Army Maj. Harrison Mann also cited his Jewish background when announcing his resignation decision on Monday.
"As the descendant of European Jews, I was raised in a particularly unforgiving moral environment when it came to the topic of bearing responsibility for ethnic cleansing—my grandfather refused to ever purchase products manufactured in Germany—where the paramount importance of 'never again' and the inadequacy of 'just following orders' were oft repeated," he wrote.
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'Most Thorough Legal Analysis' Yet Concludes Israel Committing Genocide in Gaza
The University Network for Human Rights report also stresses that other nations are legally obligated to "refrain from recognizing Israel's breaches as legal or taking any actions that may amount to complicity."
May 15, 2024
The University Network for Human Rights on Wednesday released and sent to United Nations offices a 105-page report that it called "the most thorough legal analysis" yet to find "Israel is committing genocide" against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
The network partnered with the International Human Rights Clinic at Boston University School of Law, the International Human Rights Clinic at Cornell Law School, the Center for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria, and the Lowenstein Human Rights Project at Yale Law School for the analysis, which draws from "a diverse range of credible sources" and the territory's history.
"After reviewing the facts established by independent human rights monitors, journalists, and United Nations agencies, we conclude that Israel's actions in and regarding Gaza since October 7, 2023, violate the Genocide Convention," the report states. "Israel has committed genocidal acts of killing, causing serious harm to, and inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza, a protected group that forms a substantial part of the Palestinian people."
As of May 1, Israel's assault had killed "more than 5% of Gaza's population, with over 2% of Gaza's children killed or injured," the analysis notes. In recent days, Israeli forces have ramped up their attack on Rafah—where over a million people from other parts of the besieged enclave sought refuge—and the total death toll has risen to 35,233, according to Gaza health officials, with another 79,141 Palestinians injured.
"Israel's military operation has destroyed up to 70% of homes in Gaza, and has decimated civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, schools, universities, U.N. facilities, and cultural and religious heritage sites," the document says, noting the "staggering" number of forced displacements. "Civilians in Gaza face catastrophic levels of hunger and deprivation due to Israel's restriction on, and failure to ensure adequate access to, basic essentials of life, including food, water, medicine, and fuel."
"Israel's genocidal acts in Gaza have been motivated by the requisite genocidal intent, as evidenced in this report by the statements of Israeli leaders, the character of the state and its military forces' conduct against and relating to Palestinians in Gaza, and the direct nexus between them," the publication continues, pointing to comments from "officials at all levels of Israeli government, up to and including" Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel has faced mounting allegations of genocide since launching its retaliation for the Hamas-led October 7 attack—including an ongoing South Africa-led case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which found in January that the country is "plausibly" committing genocide.
Bolstering the ICJ's conclusion, the Wednesday report declares that "Israel's violations of the international legal prohibition of genocide amount to grave breaches of peremptory norms of international law that must cease immediately."
"These violations give rise to obligations by all other states: to refrain from recognizing Israel’s breaches as legal or taking any actions that may amount to complicity in these breaches; and to take positive steps to suppress, prevent, and punish the commission by Israel of further genocidal acts against the Palestinian people in Gaza," the document adds.
The United States has long provided Israel with billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic support—which have soared since October 7, despite growing pressure on U.S. President Joe Biden to cut off such assistance. The Democrat has incrementally increased his criticism of the Israeli assault in recent weeks, angering far-right leaders in both countries.
The new legal analysis—which was sent to the U.N.'s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect, and the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel—came on the same day that 20 human rights groups issued a joint statement.
The rights organizations—including Amnesty International, Mercy Corps, and Oxfam—called on world leaders "to urgently act in bringing to an end, and pursue accountability for," Israel's grave breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza.
Both documents were released on Nakba Day, which commemorates the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians during the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Some experts and campaigners contend that the Nakba—Arabic for catastrophe—continues today.
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