August, 01 2012, 10:47am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Kelly Trout, (202) 222-0722, ktrout@foe.org; Marcie Keever, (510) 900-3144, mkeever@foe.org;
Rich Kassel, (646) 783-4090, rich.kassel@gladstein.org;
David Marshall, (603) 568-2968, dmarshall@catf.us
Landmark Regulations to Reduce Air Pollution from Ships in North American Waters Go Into Effect
An Emission Control Area to reduce air pollution from ships in the waters around North America goes into effect today, two years after the International Maritime Organization approved an application from the U.S. and Canada to create this lower pollution zone. The rule's measures will prevent tons of harmful pollutants from entering the atmosphere from ships' smokestacks. Many of these air pollutants, like particulates and smog-forming compounds, significantly impact the health of coastal communities and can travel hundreds of miles inland as well.
WASHINGTON
An Emission Control Area to reduce air pollution from ships in the waters around North America goes into effect today, two years after the International Maritime Organization approved an application from the U.S. and Canada to create this lower pollution zone. The rule's measures will prevent tons of harmful pollutants from entering the atmosphere from ships' smokestacks. Many of these air pollutants, like particulates and smog-forming compounds, significantly impact the health of coastal communities and can travel hundreds of miles inland as well. The EPA estimates that implementing the Emission Control Area will prevent between 12,000 and 31,000 premature deaths each year across the U.S. and save billions of dollars in health care costs by 2030.
The ECA designation brings the ocean waters of North America into an international control program, which reduces the emissions of nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides and particulate matter from ships within 200 nautical miles of the coasts of the U.S. and Canada. The ECA requires ships to use fuel with a sulfur content of 1.0 percent or less, or utilize equally effective means, to reduce harmful air emissions with even more stringent, cleaner fuel requirements beginning in 2015.
Currently, most large ships burn bunker fuel -- one of the dirtiest fuels on the planet, thousands of times dirtier than diesel truck fuel. Bunker fuel emissions from ships significantly impact our air quality, not just along the coast or at port but for hundreds of miles inland. When bunker fuel is spilled it is almost impossible to clean up and has extremely destructive effects on our oceans and the marine life that depends on those waters.
"With the implementation of the North American Emission Control Area, large ships will no longer be allowed to recklessly pollute our air, destroy coastal habitats and harm the health of our communities," said John Kaltenstein, marine program manager at Friends of the Earth U.S. "Friends of the Earth has been working for more than a decade to end deadly and unregulated pollution from the shipping industry, one of the last industries to be brought under pollution control laws."
"Every dollar invested in cleaner ships avoids more than $30 in health costs, thanks to reduced asthma, cancer and heart disease," said Rich Kassel, a consultant to the Natural Resources Defense Council and a member of the U.S. delegation that secured the ECA. "With economic and public health benefits like these, it's easy to see why there has been broad bi-partisan support for creating the Emission Control Area."
Yet even in the face of progress, the cruise industry is working to water down the ECA, lobbying Congress and the Obama administration to put in place measures that would allow it to bypass the ECA's protective rules. The cruise industry claims that it will have to avoid North American waters if the ECA's standards go into effect, citing increasing costs due to the switch to less polluting fuel and replacing ship equipment to accommodate that fuel. The industry's recent efforts include attempts to amend the ECA to exempt cruise ships from the cleaner fuel requirements in less populated areas like Alaska and Hawaii. If the industry's efforts are successful, it will significantly increase risks for asthma and other air pollution related diseases.
"The shipping industry, including the cruise lines, fully participated in the IMO's five years of deliberations on the treaty amendments that included the current ECA protections and the adoption of the North American ECA itself," observed David Marshall, Senior Counsel with the Clean Air Task Force and a participant in those negotiations. "The cruise line industry has had several years to prepare for its requirements, but instead is mounting an 11th hour effort to convince Congress and EPA to adopt proposals that would violate the international treaty that the United Stated has ratified and is bound by."
Friends of the Earth, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Clean Air Task Force are calling on the EPA and the entire Obama administration to stand firm in their support of the Emission Control Area and resist any attempts by shipping industry polluters to weaken the clean air and economic benefits it will have for our communities.
Friends of the Earth fights for a more healthy and just world. Together we speak truth to power and expose those who endanger the health of people and the planet for corporate profit. We organize to build long-term political power and campaign to change the rules of our economic and political systems that create injustice and destroy nature.
(202) 783-7400LATEST NEWS
UN Chief Warns of Israel's Syria Invasion and Land Seizures
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres stressed the "urgent need" for Israel to "de-escalate violence on all fronts."
Dec 12, 2024
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."
Israel conquered the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights in 1967 and has illegally occupied it ever since, annexing the seized lands in 1981.
Other countries including France, Russia, and Saudi Arabia have criticized Israel's invasion, while the United States defended the move.
"The Syrian army abandoned its positions in the area... which potentially creates a vacuum that could have been filled by terrorist organizations," U.S. State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a press briefing earlier this week. "Israel has said that these actions are temporary to defend its borders. These are not permanent actions... We support all sides upholding the 1974 disengagement agreement."
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Sanders Says 'Political Movement,' Not Murder, Is the Path to Medicare for All
"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," he said. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together."
Dec 12, 2024
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.
"Look, when we talk about the healthcare crisis, in my view, and I think the view of a majority of Americans, the current system is broken, it is dysfunctional, it is cruel, and it is wildly inefficient—far too expensive," said Sanders (I-Vt.), whose position is backed up by various polls.
"The reason we have not joined virtually every other major country on Earth in guaranteeing healthcare to all people as a human right is the political power and financial power of the insurance industry and drug companies," he told Jacobin. "It will take a political revolution in this country to get Congress to say, 'You know what, we're here to represent ordinary people, to provide quality care to ordinary people as a human right,' and not to worry about the profits of insurance and drug companies."
Asked about Thompson's alleged killer—26-year-old Luigi Mangione, whose reported manifesto railed against the nation's expensive healthcare system and low life expectancy—Sanders said: "You don't kill people. It's abhorrent. I condemn it wholeheartedly. It was a terrible act. But what it did show online is that many, many people are furious at the health insurance companies who make huge profits denying them and their families the healthcare that they desperately need."
"What you're seeing, the outpouring of anger at the insurance companies, is a reflection of how people feel about the current healthcare system."
"What you're seeing, the outpouring of anger at the insurance companies, is a reflection of how people feel about the current healthcare system," he continued, noting the tens of thousands of Americans who die each year because they can't get to a doctor.
"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."
"The way we're going to bring about the kind of fundamental changes we need in healthcare is, in fact, by a political movement which understands the government has got to represent all of us, not just the 1%," the senator told Jacobin.
The 83-year-old Vermonter, who was just reelected to what he says is likely his last six-year term, is an Independent but caucuses with Democrats and sought their presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020. He has urged the Democratic Party to recognize why some working-class voters have abandoned it since Republicans won the White House and both chambers of Congress last month. A refusal to take on insurance and drug companies and overhaul the healthcare system, he argues, is one reason.
Sanders—one of the few members of Congress who regularly talks about Medicare for All—isn't alone in suggesting that unsympathetic responses to Thompson's murder can be explained by a privatized healthcare system that fails so many people.
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.
Khanna—a co-sponsor of the Medicare for All Act, led in the House of Representatives by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.)—made the case that you can recognize those stories without accepting the assassination.
"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."
Two other Medicare for All advocates, Reps. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), also made clear to Business Insider that they oppose Thompson's murder but understand some of the responses to it.
"Of course, we don't want to see the chaos that vigilantism presents," said Ocasio-Cortez. "We also don't want to see the extreme suffering that millions of Americans confront when your life changes overnight from a horrific diagnosis, and people are led to just some of the worst, not just health events, but the worst financial events of their and their family's lives."
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."
After facing some criticism for those comments, Warren added Wednesday: "Violence is never the answer. Period... I should have been much clearer that there is never a justification for murder."
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Reports Target Israeli Army for 'Unprecedented Massacre' of Gaza Journalists
"In Gaza, the scale of the tragedy is incomprehensible," wrote Thibaut Bruttin, director general of Reporters Without Borders.
Dec 12, 2024
Reports released this week from two organizations that advocate for journalists underscore just how deadly Gaza has become for media workers.
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).
The organization has also filed four complaints with the International Criminal Court "for war crimes committed by the Israeli army against journalists," according to the roundup, which includes stats from January 1 through December 1.
"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."
Bruttin added that "many of these reporters were clearly identifiable as journalists and protected by this status, yet they were shot or killed in Israeli strikes that blatantly disregarded international law. This was compounded by a deliberate media blackout and a block on foreign journalists entering the strip."
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."
IFJ lists out each of the slain journalists in its 139 count, which includes the journalist Hamza Al-Dahdouh, the son of Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief, Wael Al-Dahdouh, who was killed with journalist Mustafa Thuraya when Israeli forces targeted their car while they were in northern Rafah in January 2024.
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