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For Immediate Release
June, 16 2009, 02:05pm EDT
Contact:
Elliott Negin,Media Director,enegin@ucsusa.org
National Climate Report: Factsheets, Green Group Statement
New Climate Report Provides Robust Science for Climate Change Decisions, Science Group Says
WASHINGTON
The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) today released a comprehensive report
on the impact climate change could have on the United States. The
landmark report, which compares the potential impacts of higher and
lower emissions scenarios, bolsters the growing consensus that there
are significant economic, public health and environmental advantages to
moving quickly to dramatically reduce emissions, according to the Union
of Concerned Scientists (UCS).
Fifteen environmental, conservation, science and wilderness groups, including UCS have also issued a joint statement on the federal climate report.
"This is exactly the comprehensive scientific assessment America
needs to effectively respond to climate change," said UCS President
Kevin Knobloch.
The United States and other countries could achieve emissions
reductions that would result in an atmospheric concentration of
heat-trapping gases that is well below the "lower-emissions scenario"
examined in the USGCRP report, said Peter Frumhoff, director of science
and policy at UCS and a U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
lead author. By mid-century, such a reduced concentration would result
in less climate change than the report projects in its lower-emissions
scenario.
"This new report underscores the clear choice we face," said
Frumhoff. "By making sizeable early cuts in emissions we can protect
the places we know and love across our nation from severe climatic
disruption. It's time to roll up our sleeves and get to work."
Many of the findings in the USGCRP report draw upon a string of studies
UCS conducted on climate change in California, the Northeast and the
Great Lakes region. UCS plans to issue a report this summer on threats
to the Midwest. UCS also recently issued a two-year study that
shows that a comprehensive energy and climate policy would dramatically
reduce heat-trapping emissions and provide savings of $300 for the
average household by 2020 thanks in part to energy-saving technology
and more fuel-efficient cars.
"We have a historic opportunity to reinvent our economy, tackle
global warming, and cut energy costs," said Knobloch. "It's critical
that we limit heat-trapping emissions enough to help avoid the worst
consequences of climate change. Combining a carbon cap with strong
efficiency, renewable electricity, and transportation standards can
deliver those emission cuts and lower energy costs."
The Union of Concerned Scientists is the leading science-based nonprofit working for a healthy environment and a safer world. UCS combines independent scientific research and citizen action to develop innovative, practical solutions and to secure responsible changes in government policy, corporate practices, and consumer choices.
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The Pine Tree State Sues Polluters for Climate Deception
"With Maine’s lawsuit, the demands that Big Oil faces accountability for decades of climate lies are growing louder and more powerful," said Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity.
Nov 26, 2024
Maine on Tuesday joined a group of eight other U.S. states that have sued major oil and gas companies for deceiving the public about their products' role in the climate crisis.
Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey's office announced that he has filed a suit in state court against Exxon, Shell, Chevron, BP, Sunoco, and the American Petroleum Institute.
Frey's suit accuses the companies of knowing about the potentially catastrophic consequences of continued dependence on fossil fuels for decades, thanks to companies' internal research, but that the defendants undertook a disinformation campaign to discredit the scientific consensus on climate change, delay a transition to a green energy economy, and sow doubt in the public's mind about the impact of burning fossil fuels.
"The state seeks to hold the defendants accountable for failing to warn Mainers and concealing their knowledge about the devastating consequences of the increasing use of fossil fuels on Maine's people, economy, and environment. This conduct has resulted in enormous financial burdens, public health impacts, property damage, and other harms across Maine as a result of extreme weather, sea-level rise, and warmer temperatures," according to the release from Frey's office.
Frey's lawsuit asks the court to require the companies pay for both "past and future climate harms caused by the defendants" and ensure that the companies end their "ongoing deception" in the state. The state is demanding a jury trial and numerous forms of relief, including penalties and disgorgement of profits, according to the release.
Frey is the 11th attorney general (including the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico), to take such a legal move. More than 20 states, tribes, cities and counties have so far pursued similar climate deception lawsuits to date, according the Maine attorney general's office. Earlier this fall, California's attorney general filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil, alleging that the company falsely touted chemical recycling as a solution to the plastics crisis.
A September report from Big Oil International found that the number cases climate cases brought against fossil fuel corporations—many of which center on climate damages, misleading advertising about fossil fuels, or failure to reduce emissions in line with legal agreements—has been ticking upward since the 2015 Paris climate accords.
Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity, whose organization helps communities hold fossil fuel companies accountable, applauded the move: “Big Oil companies have lied for decades about the catastrophic harm they knew their products would cause, and now Maine has joined a growing wave of communities across the U.S. that are demanding accountability. These polluters continue to fuel the climate crisis and lie about it to protect their profits. It’s only right that Big Oil companies pay their fair share of the damage their deception has caused. With Maine's lawsuit, the demands that Big Oil faces accountability for decades of climate lies are growing louder and more powerful.”
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Nov 26, 2024
"Look what anti-personnel landmines will do to your people," read a sign displayed by two of the protesters who gathered in Siem Reap, Cambodia this week to confront delegates at a conference on the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty.
The people holding the sign were among those who took part in the demonstration while using wheelchairs or crutches due to the amputations and serious injuries they have suffered from landmine attacks.
More than 100 people lined a walkway leading to the conference venue on Sunday as the Siem Reap-Angkor Summit on a Mine-Free World opened.
The conference began days after the Biden administration announced a reversal of its own policy and approved a plan to provide anti-personnel landmines to Ukraine—a decision that was condemned by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) and other human rights groups.
As Amnesty International USA advocacy direct Ben Linden said last week, the weapons are "inherently indiscriminate" because they cause explosives to scatter across a wide region, putting people at risk long after conflicts end. The majority of landmine victims are children.
In 2023, at least 5,757 people were killed or maimed by landmines, 84% of whom were civilians. Over one-third were children.
Alex Munyambabazi, who lost a leg to a landmine in 2005 in Uganda, was among those who assembled at the landmines summit.
"We don't want to see any more victims like me, we don't want to see any more suffering," he toldAgence France-Presse (AFP). "Every landmine planted is a child, a civilian, a woman, who is just waiting for their legs to be blown off, for his life to be taken. I am here to say we don't want any more victims. No excuses, no exceptions."
The U.S. and Russia are not signatories to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production, and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction, but Ukraine is. According to U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Ukraine "asked" for anti-personnel landmines.
Tamar Gabelnick, director of ICBL, told AFP that Ukraine's use of U.S.-supplied landmines would signify a "blatant disregard for their obligations under the mine ban treaty."
Ukrainian delegates were present at the Siem Reap conference this week.
In a message delivered to delegates in Siem Reap, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres acknowledged the "important progress" made by the treaty, "with over 55 million anti-personnel devices destroyed across 13,000 square kilometers in over 60 countries, and thousands of people receiving lifesaving awareness education and victim assistance services."
"I call on states parties to meet their obligations and ensure compliance to the convention, while addressing humanitarian and developmental impacts through financial and technical support," he said. " I also encourage all states that have not yet acceded to the convention to join the 164 that have done so."
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Friends and family of Porsha Ngumezi, a 35-year-old mother of two in Houston, were stunned last year to learn that she had died in a hospital after suffering a miscarriage when she was 11 weeks pregnant—and medical experts who spoke to the investigative outlet ProPublicaon Monday had the same reaction.
"All she needed was a [dilation and curettage]," one friend told Ngumezi's grieving husband, Hope Ngumezi, referring to a standard procedure which is often given to pregnant patients who have first-trimester miscarriages. Commonly called a D&C, it is also diagnose or treat other health conditions and provide abortion care.
Dr. Daniel Grossman, an obstetrics and gynecology professor at University of California, San Francisco, toldProPublica that "at every point" of Ngumezi's visit to Houston Methodist Sugar Land, a hospital outside Houston, medical providers' response to her case was "kind of shocking."
"She is having significant blood loss and the physician didn't move toward aspiration," Grossman told ProPublica.
Like at least two other Texas women—Nevaeh Crain and Josseli Barnica—Ngumezi's death in June 2023 was the result of the abortion ban that went into effect in Texas in 2022, according to medical experts who reviewed her case.
Ngumezi arrived at the hospital on June 11, 2023 after experiencing heavy bleeding 11 weeks into her pregnancy with her third child. Doctors noted that Ngumezi had a blood-clotting disorder and that she was experiencing "significant bleeding" with large clots.
"Doctors assume that a D&C is not standard in Texas anymore, even in cases where it should be recommended. People are afraid: They see D&C as abortion and abortion as illegal."
An ultrasound showed a "sac-like structure," but no fetus or cardiac activity were detected, indicating that she was having a miscarriage.
But instead of providing a D&C, in which a small tube is inserted into the uterus to gently remove any remaining fetal tissue, doctors took a "wait-and-see approach [that] has become more common under abortion bans," according to the medical experts who spoke to ProPublica.
Dr. Gabrielle Taper, who has worked as an OB-GYN in Austin, told ProPublica that since Texas' abortion ban went into effect in 2022—two months after the right-wing majority on the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade—there has been "much more hesitation [among doctors] about: When can we intervene, do we have enough evidence to say this is a miscarriage, how long are we going to wait, what will we use to feel definitive?"
For Ngumezi, that hesitation meant that Dr. Andrew Ryan Davis, the obstetrician on duty, prescribed misoprostol to help Ngumezi pass the fetal tissue without a D&C.
Dr. Alison Goulding, another OB-GYN in Houston, told ProPublica that because misoprostol can also be used for women in labor or to treat postpartum bleeding, under Texas' abortion ban, "stigma and fear are there for D&Cs in a way that they are not for misoprostol."
"Doctors assume that a D&C is not standard in Texas anymore, even in cases where it should be recommended," Goulding said. "People are afraid: They see D&C as abortion and abortion as illegal."
But more than a dozen doctors told ProPublica that considering Ngumezi's blood-clotting disorder, doctors should have provided a D&C.
"Misoprostol," reported ProPublica, "is an effective method to complete low-risk miscarriages but is not recommended when a patient is unstable."
Some critics who support abortion bans have dismissed Ngumezi's case—and that of other women who have died because of the laws—as the result of medical malpractice that had nothing to do with recently passed state laws. They claim Texas' law protects women who have miscarriages.
But ProPublica noted that Ngumezi had a similar case to one described on social media by podcast host Ryan Hamilton earlier this year. Hamilton's wife experienced bleeding while miscarrying at 13 weeks, and was prescribed misoprostol and sent home after an ultrasound at Surepoint Emergency Center Stephenville showed no fetal cardiac activity. The bleeding got worse, but an emergency doctor told the couple they couldn't provide a D&C because of "the current stance" in Texas.
Greer Donley, a law professor at University of Pittsburgh, said that "the antiabortion movement wants us to blame the doctors and sometimes that is warranted. But abortion bans are the ultimate cause of this harm."
"When life in prison is the penalty for violating a ban, doctors will understandably be risk averse. And that chill in care will cause death," said Donley.
ProPublica reported that "performing a D&C attracts more attention from colleagues, creating a higher barrier in a state where abortion is illegal."
Doctors, added Goulding, "have to convince everyone that it is legal and won't put them at risk [of prosecution]."
In Ngumezi's case, the bleeding continued after she took misoprostol, and her heart stopped three hours later—a "preventable" death, according to the experts.
"The only reason" Ngumezi died, said Reproductive Justice for All, is that Republican politicians including President-elect Donald Trump helped put Texas' abortion ban in place.
"We are heartbroken and enraged by the tragic, preventable death of Porsha Ngumezi," said Planned Parenthood Texas Votes. "This nightmare reality, where political agendas outweigh patients' lives, has left another family shattered."
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