May, 14 2012, 04:23pm EDT
Chicago Supports Clean Air Act, Joins Urgent Call for Climate-Change Action
Global Warming to Confront City With Up to 1,200 Heat-related Deaths a Year
CHICAGO
Chicago has joined more than 20 other U.S. cities in supporting the use of the Clean Air Act to protect air quality and reduce greenhouse gas pollution to head off catastrophic climate change. Through a May 9 resolution, Chicago is the 25th city to join the Center for Biological Diversity's national Clean Air Citiescampaign, which urges national leaders to take action on global warming.
"We need strong air-pollution standards for the sake of our children, our climate and the success of our city. The Clean Air Act is the best way to keep our air clean and safe and reduce global warming hazards," said Proco Joe Moreno, the Chicago alderman who introduced the resolution. "Our leaders in Washington need to know that Chicagoans support clean air and will not stand idly by as big polluters try to dictate the terms of our air quality."
"Chicago's leaders recognize that the Clean Air Act protects our health from dangerous pollutants and can play a key role in heading off a global climate crisis," said Rose Braz, the Center's climate campaign director. "More than two dozen cities around the country, from Seattle to Salt Lake City to Kansas City to Cincinnati to Philadelphia -- and now Chicago -- are sending an urgent message to our national leaders: To avert a climate catastrophe, we need to act now."
If greenhouse gas pollution is not reduced, Chicago will begin to experience much hotter summers that could lead to as many as 1,200 heat-related deaths a year, according to a risk assessment prepared for city planners. The city's average temperature has already increased 2.6 degrees since 1980, and the number of heat-wave days is expected to quadruple by the end of the century if emissions are not curtailed. Respiratory illness rates will also rise, driven by a heat-related increase in ground-level ozone.
The Clean Air Act has protected the air we breathe for four decades. By curbing air pollution, it is directly responsible for dramatically reducing dangerous pollutants such as lead, sulfur dioxide and fine particulates. The Act has saved many thousands of lives, improving health and decreasing hospitalizations, curbing illnesses such as cancer and asthma and reducing lost school and work days.
The Center's Clean Air Cities campaign is working across the country to encourage cities to pass resolutions supporting the Clean Air Act and its ability to reduce the amount of carbon in our atmosphere to no more than 350 parts per million, the level scientists say is needed to avoid catastrophic global warming. The resolutions call on President Barack Obama and the Environmental Protection Agency to take swift action under the Clean Air Act to address climate change.
Similar resolutions have been approved in Cincinnati and Oberlin, Ohio; Seattle, Wash.; Kansas City, Mo.; Albany, N.Y.; Tucson, Ariz.; Boone, N.C.; Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, Pa.; Minneapolis, Minn.; Tampa and Pinecrest, Fla.; Santa Fe, N.M.; Cambridge, Mass.; Madison and Milwaukee, Wis.; and Arcata, Richmond, Berkeley, Oxnard, Santa Cruz and Santa Monica, Calif. Several other cities around the country will be considering resolutions over the next few months.
Learn more about the Center's Clean Air Citiescampaign and get the facts about the Clean Air Act.
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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Climate Movement Cheers Michigan AG's Plans to Sue Big Oil
"Pursuing this litigation will allow us to recoup our costs and hold those responsible for jeopardizing Michigan's economic future and way of life accountable," said the state attorney general
May 09, 2024
Advocates of holding fossil fuel giants accountable for their significant contributions to the climate emergency welcomed Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel's Thursday announcement that she intends to sue the polluting industry.
"Big Oil knew decades ago that their products would cause catastrophic climate change, but instead of doing the right thing they lied about it," declared Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity. "The people of Michigan deserve their day in court to make these companies pay for the massive harm they knowingly caused."
Dozens of municipalities and attorneys general for the District of Columbia and eight states—California, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont—have already filed climate liability suits against Big Oil in recent years.
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The Democratic attorney general's office explained that she is "seeking proposals from attorneys and law firms to serve as special assistant attorneys general to pursue litigation related to the climate change impacts caused by the fossil fuel industry on behalf of the state of Michigan."
The Detroit Newsnoted that "Nessel took a similar tact in suing drugmakers for the opioid crisis, farming out much of the work to outside law firms in Michigan, Texas, and Florida."
According to the newspaper:
Nessel's office is working with other state departments to assess the costs associated with climate change, such as the cost of expanding storm water systems to handle flooding caused by stronger storms, responding to natural disasters, or supporting northern Michigan tourism economies dealing with dwindling ice and snow.
"This is going to be a massive discovery effort to find out exactly what our Michigan damages are now already and what can we expect to see in the future as a result of climate change," she said.
"I don't know that there's a bigger issue facing the state of Michigan than climate change," Nessel told the outlet. "We are talking about billions and billions of dollars in damages and we're already starting to see that on a day-to-day basis. We know this is only going to get worse."
The youth-led Sunrise Movement applauded Nessel's plans and asserted that U.S. President Joe Biden—who is seeking reelection in November—and the Department of Justice "must follow suit."
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Immigrant rights advocates on Thursday slammed the Biden administration's proposal to fast-track the rejection of certain migrants seeking asylum in the United States.
On Thursday the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) proposed a rule that would empower immigration officials to disqualify certain asylum-seekers during their initial eligibility screening—called the credible fear interview (CFI)—using existing national security and terrorism-related criteria, or bars.
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"I urge President Biden to embrace our values as a nation of immigrants and use this opportunity to instead provide relief for the long-term immigrants of this nation."
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called the proposed rule "yet another step in our ongoing efforts to ensure the safety of the American public by more quickly identifying and removing those individuals who present a security risk and have no legal basis to remain here."
However, Greg Chen, senior director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, argued that while "bars are an important feature of our immigration laws to ensure that dangerous individuals are not allowed into the country," they must be "accurately applied where warranted."
"This change could make the process faster by excluding people who would not be entitled to stay," he noted. "However, due process will likely be eroded by accelerating what is a highly complex legal analysis needed for these bars and conducting them at the preliminary CFI screening."
As Chen explained:
At that early stage, few asylum seekers will have the opportunity to seek legal counsel or time to understand the consequences of a bar being applied. Under the current process, they have more time to seek legal advice, to prepare their case, and to appeal it or seek an exemption. Ultimately to establish a fair and orderly process at the border, Congress needs to provide the Department of Homeland Security with the resources to meet its mission and also ensure the truly vulnerable are not summarily denied protection without due process.
Democratic lawmakers—some of whom held a press conference Wednesday on protecting undocumented immigrants in the U.S.—also criticized the proposal.
"As the Biden administration considers executive actions on immigration, we must not return to failed Trump-era policies aimed at banning asylum and moving us backwards," said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), referring to former Republican President Donald Trump, the presumptive 2024 GOP nominee to face President Joe Biden in November.
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One year ago, critics accused Biden of "finishing Trump's job" by implementing a crackdown on asylum-seekers upon the expiration of Title 42—a provision first invoked during Trump administration at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and continued by Biden to expel more than 1 million migrants under the pretext of public safety.
Earlier this week, the advocacy group Human Rights First released a report detailing the harms of the policy on its anniversary. The group held a press conference to unveil the report and warn of the dangers of further anti-migrant policies.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday responded to U.S. President Joe Biden's threat to withhold shipments of arms used by the Israel Defense Forces to kill thousands of Palestinian civilians by declaring that his far-right government would continue its assault on Gaza with or without American help.
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