July, 16 2014, 03:24pm EDT
New Obama Initiatives Add Critical Elements to Climate Change Agenda
The Obama Administration today added critical components to the president's climate change agenda by unveiling broad initiatives that will further protect public health, the health of the nation's infrastructure, and the health of our economy.
The following is a statement by Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council:
WASHINGTON
The Obama Administration today added critical components to the president's climate change agenda by unveiling broad initiatives that will further protect public health, the health of the nation's infrastructure, and the health of our economy.
The following is a statement by Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council:
"President Obama's latest initiatives make it abundantly clear that there remains much to do - beyond curbing dangerous carbon pollution from power plants - if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. His message is at once urgent and encouraging. Climate change is here and now. We are running out of time - but not out of solutions."
Among the administration's climate initiatives:
- The Centers for Disease Control, in a new report, lays out the health hazards from climate change, which will help communities build in resilience measures to cope with specific health vulnerability;
- A nearly $1 billion National Disaster Resilience Competition will help communities be prepared for future natural disasters;
- Department of Interior will work with Indian tribes on climate adaptation;
- Department of Agriculture will award $236 million to bolster rural electric infrastructure in eight states;
- Department of Agriculture will continue to try to safeguard drinking water in rural communities affected by the West Coast drought;
- Federal Emergency Management Agency will call upon states to include climate variability in their state hazard mitigation planning.
- Improving storm water management and making coasts more resilient in the face of rising sea levels.
NRDC works to safeguard the earth--its people, its plants and animals, and the natural systems on which all life depends. We combine the power of more than three million members and online activists with the expertise of some 700 scientists, lawyers, and policy advocates across the globe to ensure the rights of all people to the air, the water, and the wild.
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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.
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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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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.
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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."
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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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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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