June, 29 2012, 03:15pm EDT
Greenpeace Statement on the Finalization of the Duke-Progress Energy Merger
In response to Duke Energy and Progress Energy finalizing their long awaited merger agreement to become the largest utility company in the country, Greenpeace Climate Campaigner Robert Gardner said:
With great power comes great responsibility to act. The world is watching Duke Energy's actions to see if it will be a leader in innovating the energy marketplace - or if they will continue to rely overwhelmingly on coal, gas and nuclear energy.
WASHINGTON
In response to Duke Energy and Progress Energy finalizing their long awaited merger agreement to become the largest utility company in the country, Greenpeace Climate Campaigner Robert Gardner said:
With great power comes great responsibility to act. The world is watching Duke Energy's actions to see if it will be a leader in innovating the energy marketplace - or if they will continue to rely overwhelmingly on coal, gas and nuclear energy.
We look forward to Duke becoming the clean energy leader it's long imagined itself. As all signs point to continued use of fossil fuel and nuclear power as the primary means of generating electricity, we have doubts about the sincerity of their rhetoric. Especially problematic are Duke's plans to continue to demand the costs of new fossil fuel generation - specifically Edwardsport IGCC and Cliffside 6 - from their ratepayers in Indiana and North Carolina. In effect, citizens are paying Duke Energy to degrade the quality of their own health and environment.
As this chapter closes for Duke Energy, we look forward to the next chapter being about sustainable environmental policy and a renewable energy mandate to generate electricity without the use of fossil fuels by 2030.
Greenpeace is a global, independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future.
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Citing new research from the consulting firm Oliver Wyman, the Financial Timesreported Sunday that the commodity trading industry "made record gross profits of more than $115 billion from trading activities last year."
That total is up 60% compared to 2021, with the independent trading houses Trafigura, Vitol, and Glencore among the biggest beneficiaries, the Financial Times noted.
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Ernst Frankl, a partner at Oliver Wyman and one of the report's authors, told the Financial Times that 2022 "was a bit of a perfect storm across all the commodities, from a trading opportunity perspective."
"Volatility is the lifeblood of what traders need in order to trade," Frankl said.
Nick Dearden, director of the U.K.-based advocacy group Global Justice Now, expressed disgust at traders' booming profits in the midst of worsening cost-of-living crises.
\u201cAs we suffer a #CostOfLivingCrisis, food, energy and financial corporations made record profits of $115bn gambling on the basics of life. \u201cVolatility is the lifeblood of what traders need in order to trade.\u201d 1/2 https://t.co/AmHtYSL35K\u201d— Nick Dearden (@Nick Dearden) 1678106592
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Negotiators are currently working to extend a United Nations-backed agreement that has allowed Ukraine to export grain from key ports that Russia blockaded. The initiative is set to expire on March 18.
"To all the leaders in the world, we need to renew the Black Sea Grain Initiative," World Food Program (WFP) executive director David Beasley said last month. "It must be renewed at all costs. Ukraine alone feeds 400 million people around the world."
The WFP projects that more than 345 million people will be "food insecure" this year, more than double the 2020 number.
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Hundreds of Jewish New Yorkers rallied and marched on the home of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Sunday to protest his embrace of far-right Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu amid growing violence against Palestinians—violence that demonstrators said is enabled by the U.S. government's unwavering military and diplomatic support.
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"There's a great danger that Israel will turn into a dictatorship," warned one protester.
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As tens of thousands of Israelis protest the reforms that Netanyahu’s government seeks to ram through in hopes of “saving the essence” of Israeli democracy, they are largely avoiding a confrontation with the foundational problem, namely that the essence of the Israeli system is to put settler colonialism ahead of any liberal principles around democracy, equality, or human rights.
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