December, 23 2010, 04:58pm EDT
New Obama Offshore Oil Plan Sacrifices Polar Bear Habitat
WASHINGTON
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar today issued a revised offshore oil plan
that will allow drilling in the heart of polar bear habitat
in Alaska.
Salazar's announcement, which came in response to a previous court
ruling, finalized a revised 2007-2012 nationwide offshore oil leasing plan.
The previous plan, issued under the Bush administration, had been
overturned by a federal appeals court for failing to properly analyze
impacts of drilling off the Arctic coast of Alaska. Salazar's new plan
reaffirms a 2008 lease sale in polar bear critical habitat in the Chukchi Sea.
"Once
again Secretary Salazar has placed political expediency over sound science
and the rule of law, and polar bears and other arctic species will suffer
for it," said Brendan Cummings, senior counsel at the Center for
Biological Diversity.
Oil
development in the Chukchi Sea, home to America's polar bears,
remains a dangerous proposition because no technologies exist to clean up
oil spills in icy waters. Today's plan upholds the sale of leases in
the Chukchi.
The
Center for Biological Diversity and other organizations filed a court
challenge to the 2007-2012 offshore oil leasing plan issued by the Bush
administration. The Court of Appeals for the District
of Columbia set aside that plan for failing to adequately
assess the environmental impacts of opening up areas off Alaska to drilling. Today's
announcement comes in response to that ruling. A court in Alaska
also separately ruled this year that the environmental analysis underlying
the lease sale in the Chukchi
Sea was unlawful.
"Secretary Salazar has apparently learned nothing from either the
Gulf spill or the courts. No matter how many times the courts overturn his
decisions to open the Arctic to oil, he
comes back with the exact same decision," said Cummings. "This
year in the Gulf of Mexico we saw the
damage that a massive oil spill can cause. Given the lack of clean-up
technology for an oil spill in the Arctic, Salazar's decision to move
forward with the Chukchi leases demonstrates that all the promised reforms
following the Gulf spill ultimately mean nothing for the Arctic."
In a separate but related development, also in response to a court order,
Salazar announced on Wednesday he would uphold a Bush-era decision to list
polar bears as merely "threatened," rather than the more
protective status of "endangered." Such a move allows Salazar
to exempt greenhouse gas polluters nationwide, as well as oil companies
operating in polar bear habitat, from some of the Endangered Species
Act's most protective provisions.
"This
week Secretary Salazar has delivered a double-barreled blast to the future
of the polar bear," said Cummings. "At this rate Secretary
Salazar will be writing the polar bear's obituary rather than its
recovery plan."
At the Center for Biological Diversity, we believe that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature — to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, we work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. We do so through science, law and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters and climate that species need to survive.
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UN Chief Warns of Israel's Syria Invasion and Land Seizures
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United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Thursday that he is "deeply concerned" by Israel's "recent and extensive violations of Syria's sovereignty and territorial integrity," including a ground invasion and airstrikes carried out by the Israel Defense Forces in the war-torn Mideastern nation.
Guterres "is particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes on several locations in Syria" and has stressed the "urgent need to de-escalate violence on all fronts throughout the country," said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
Israel claims its invasion and bombardment of Syria—which come as the United States and Turkey have also violated Syrian sovereignty with air and ground attacks—are meant to create a security buffer along the countries' shared border in the wake of last week's fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid the IDF's ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 162,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
While Israel argues that its invasion of Syria does not violate a 1974 armistice agreement between the two countries because the Assad dynasty no longer rules the neighboring nation, Dujarric said Guterres maintains that Israel must uphold its obligations under the deal, "including by ending all unauthorized presence in the area of separation and refraining from any action that would undermine the cease-fire and stability in Golan."
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Addressing the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and conversations it has sparked about the country's for-profit system, longtime Medicare for All advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday condemned the murder and stressed that getting to universal coverage will require a movement challenging corporate money in politics.
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"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," Sanders added. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together and understanding that it is the right of every American to be able to walk into a doctor's office when they need to and not have to take out their wallet."
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In addition to highlighting Sanders' interview on social media, Congressman Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) pointed out to Business Insider on Wednesday that "you've got thousands of people that are sharing their stories of frustration" in the wake of Thompson's death.
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"You condemn the murder of an insurance executive who was a father of two kids," he said. "At the same time, you say there's obviously an outpouring behavior of people whose claims are being denied, and we need to reform the system."
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)—a co-sponsor of Sanders' Medicare for All Act—similarly toldHuffPost in a Tuesday interview, "The visceral response from people across this country who feel cheated, ripped off, and threatened by the vile practices of their insurance companies should be a warning to everyone in the healthcare system."
"Violence is never the answer, but people can be pushed only so far," she continued. "This is a warning that if you push people hard enough, they lose faith in the ability of their government to make change, lose faith in the ability of the people who are providing the healthcare to make change, and start to take matters into their own hands in ways that will ultimately be a threat to everyone."
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Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) 2024 roundup, which was published Thursday, found that at least 54 journalists were killed on the job or in connection with their work this year, and 18 of them were killed by Israeli armed forces (16 in Palestine, and two in Lebanon).
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"In Gaza, the scale of the tragedy is incomprehensible," wrote Thibaut Bruttin, director general of RSF, in the introduction to the report. Since October 2023, 145 journalists have been killed in Gaza, "including at least 35 who were very likely targeted or killed while working."
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When counting the number of journalists killed by the Israeli army since October 2023 in both Gaza and Lebanon, the tally comes to 155—"an unprecedented massacre," according to the roundup.
Multiple journalists were also killed in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Sudan, Myanmar, Colombia, and Ukraine, according to the report, and hundreds more were detained and are now behind bars in countries including Israel, China, and Russia.
Meanwhile, in a statement released Thursday, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) announced that at least 139 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed since the war in Gaza began in 2023, and in a statement released Wednesday, IFJ announced that 104 journalists had perished worldwide this year (which includes deaths from January 1 through December 10). IFJ's number for all of 2024 appears to be higher than RSF because RSF is only counting deaths that occurred "on the job or in connection with their work."
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