October, 15 2014, 12:15pm EDT
![Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)](https://assets.rbl.ms/32012690/origin.jpg)
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Jenny Powers, 212-727-4566, jpowers@nrdc.org, or Elizabeth Heyd, 202-289-2424, eheyd@nrdc.org
NRDC President: "Stamp out our carbon footprint - in our lifetime"
In an assertive bid to put the brakes on the fossil fuel pollution driving global climate change, NRDC President Frances Beinecke has called for the United States to stamp out its carbon footprint--to become carbon-neutral--in our lifetime.
A veteran of four decades on the front lines of environmental advocacy, Beinecke issues the call to action and lays out a visionary plan to achieve the goal in her forthcoming book, The World We Create: A Message of Hope for a Planet in Peril, released today by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
NEW YORK, NY
In an assertive bid to put the brakes on the fossil fuel pollution driving global climate change, NRDC President Frances Beinecke has called for the United States to stamp out its carbon footprint--to become carbon-neutral--in our lifetime.
A veteran of four decades on the front lines of environmental advocacy, Beinecke issues the call to action and lays out a visionary plan to achieve the goal in her forthcoming book, The World We Create: A Message of Hope for a Planet in Peril, released today by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
"It is time for us, as Americans, to state as a national goal that we will strengthen and accelerate our efforts to clean up our carbon pollution, invest in energy efficiency and shift to renewable power so that, within our lifetime, we will become a carbon-neutral nation that no longer contributes to climate change," she writes. "That means we will reduce our reliance on coal, gas and oil. We will cut our carbon footprint. And we will protect and restore our forests and wetlands so that we offset every pound of carbon pollution we produce by adding to our natural capacity to absorb it."
It's no pipe dream. We can reach the goal in our lifetime, Beinecke notes, and she shows how we can accomplish it.
"The objective is clear and achievable," she writes. "It will focus our priorities and organize our resources around a new vision for our future. It will put millions of Americans to work in good-paying jobs that can't be sent overseas. It will make our companies more competitive, our country more secure and our children more healthy and prosperous. It will restore American leadership on the global imperative to address climate change. It will strike a powerful blow against the central environmental challenge of our time and help avert global economic and humanitarian catastrophe. And it will send the message to future generations that we will honor our obligation to leave this world in better shape for them than it was left to us."
The World We Create opens with a clear-eyed look at the environmental damage we're doing and the risks we've incurred through fossil fuel production.
Deepwater drilling is turning rich ocean waters into industrial zones. Fracking has brought the oil patch to the American backyard. We're destroying broad swaths of the great boreal forest of Canada for tar sands and blowing up entire mountains in West Virginia for coal.
She then details, in authoritative yet accessible prose, the damage we're doing by burning these fuels, pumping so much carbon pollution into the atmosphere that we have literally altered the global climate system.
Taking the reader from an Iowa farm to the Arctic sea ice, Beinecke shows how climate change is imposing enormous costs on us today, endangering our health and imperiling our children's future. Then she calls on the country to take action now--by hitting fast-forward on efforts to clean up our carbon pollution, invest in energy efficiency and shift to renewable power--to avert climate, economic and humanitarian catastrophe tomorrow.
"We know we can shrink our carbon footprint, in other words, to less than one-fifth its current size by 2050," she writes in her book, citing hard analysis from respected authorities like the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Academy of Sciences and the United Nations.
"But we have to act much sooner," she writes. "Our own history tells us we can, our children's future demands that we must."
In this book, readers also learn that:
- Of every dollar spent in the United States, eight cents goes for oil, coal and natural gas, endowing powerful industrial polluters with enormous resources they use to help anchor our future in the dirty fuels of the past. That's nearly double, by the way, what we spend to educate 50 million children in our public schools grades K-12.
- Fracking operations nationwide have contaminated and blasted into the ground at least 750 billion gallons of water, enough to cover the states of Delaware and Rhode Island with water nearly a foot deep.
- The fracking industry is producing $700 million worth of oil and gas in our country every day. It has the resources to do everything possible to reduce needless risks to our communities, environment and health. In far too many cases, though, that isn't happening, and the public is bearing the costs and risks.
- At the same time, a clean energy revolution has begun. In the three-year period from 2011-2013, wind and solar power accounted for 44 percent of all the new electricity generating capacity built in our nation.
- Over the past 35 years, we've cut our energy use in half, as a share of our economic output. We can save even more in the years ahead. We're on track to roughly double the gas mileage our new cars get by 2025, and we can do even better than that.
- Some 3.4 million Americans make their living each day helping to create a more sustainable future by doing things like building renewable power systems, improving public transit options and developing the next generation of energy efficient cars, workplaces and homes. They're helping to prepare our economy for success in the fast-growing global market for the clean energy solutions of tomorrow.
- And we've arrived at a hopeful moment of national convergence. We have a president who understands the stakes for the country, a widening business community that grasps the opportunity for prosperity and change, and a new generation of environmental stewards is united around the need to act.
For those reasons and more, Beinecke believes we can stamp out our carbon footprint in our lifetime, strike a blow against climate change and lead the way for international efforts to contain and counter this global threat.
"The modern environmental movement exists for one purpose," Beinecke writes. "We're here to change the world, to create a place where our environment is treated as the single most important physical asset we share, because that's exactly what it is. That's when we'll begin to care for the natural systems of the Earth as if our very lives depended on them, because they do. That is not yet the world we live in. It is the world we must create."
In this book, she shows how we can do that.
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.
(212) 727-2700LATEST NEWS
UN Chief Says Rich Countries 'Signing Away Our Future' With Fossil Fuel Development
"I must call out the flood of fossil fuel expansion we are seeing in some of the world's wealthiest countries," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said. "Countries must phaseout fossil fuels—fast and fairly."
Jul 26, 2024
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday criticized the world's wealthiest countries for expanding fossil fuel production, one day after an analysis in The Guardian showed that five Western countries are leading a global surge in oil and gas development.
Guterres' remarks came as part of a "call to action" on extreme heat at a press conference in New York, after record-setting world temperatures earlier in the week and a series of deadly heatwaves across the world this year.
Guterres, who has long been outspoken on the need for climate action, called extreme heat one of the "symptoms" of a "disease" that is the "addiction" to fossil fuels.
"I must call out the flood of fossil fuel expansion we are seeing in some of the world's wealthiest countries," he said nine minutes and 53 seconds into his remarks. "In signing such a surge of new oil and gas licenses, they are signing away our future. The leadership of those with the greatest capabilities and capacities is essential. Countries must phaseout fossil fuels—fast and fairly."
The U.N. chief's comments may have been based on Wednesday's findings that five Western countries—the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Norway—have significantly scaled up oil and gas licensing this year, despite their international climate commitments. The findings came from an analysis of industry data conducted by the International Institute for Sustainable Development and published in The Guardian.
The analysis found that the five countries together have licensed or plan to license projects in 2024 that will emit 11.9 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions over their lifetimes. The news renewed discussions about whether countries such as the U.S., though they claim to be climate leaders, should be considered "petrostates"—a contemptuous term formerly reserved for countries such as Saudi Arabia and Russia.
Guterres has long been outspoken on the issue of fossil fuels. At the COP28 U.N. climate change summit in Dubai last year, he spoke forcefully about the need for phasing them out and meeting the 1.5°C target set in the Paris agreement.
"The 1.5°C limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels," he said. "Not reduce. Not abate. Phase out—with a clear timeframe aligned with 1.5°C."
The loophole-ridden deal that emerged from Dubai didn't match Guterres' ambitions, but did call for "transitioning away from fossil fuels."
His call to action on Thursday included a four-part plan for dealing with extreme heat: caring for the most vulnerable, protecting workers, boosting resilience, and limiting further temperature rise by phasing out fossil fuels and scaling up renewables.
Leaders across the board must wake up and step up their #ClimateAction.
That means governments – especially #G20 countries – as well as the private sector, cities and regions.
They must #ActNow as though our future depends on it – because it does.
— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) July 26, 2024
Guterres warned that 70% of the global workforce—over 2.4 billion people—is at substantial risk of experiencing extreme heat, and the situation is especially dire for workers in Africa and the Middle East. He called for strong laws to protect workers, which some countries are enacting. The Biden administration recently moved to set the first national workplace heat safety protections in the U.S.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Labour Ditches Tory Plan to Oppose ICC Request for Netanyahu Arrest Warrant
Now the United Kingdom's government must "stop selling Israel weapons," said one observer.
Jul 26, 2024
The United Kingdom's newly elected Labour government abandoned plans by its Tory predecessor to challenge the International Criminal Court's May application for arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Under Conservative leadership, the U.K. joined the U.S., Germany, and other Israel allies in condemning the ICC prosecutor's application for arrest warrants against the top Israeli officials for alleged war crimes in Gaza, including "starvation of civilians as a method of warfare" and "extermination."
The ICC prosecutor also applied for arrest warrants against Hamas leaders over atrocities committed in Israel on October 7.
As The Financial Timesreported, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer "had until Friday to decide whether to make legal arguments to support questions raised by the previous Conservative government over the ICC's jurisdiction to issue warrants against Netanyahu and his defense minister."
A spokesperson for the Labour government said it would "not be pursuing this in line with our long-standing position" that "it's a matter for the courts to decide."
"Well done to the millions of people across the country who have made it clear that they refuse to be complicit in war crimes."
Humanitarians applauded the government's decision. Rohan Talbot, director of advocacy and campaigns at Medical Aid for Palestinians, called Tory opposition to the proposed arrest warrants "a disgraceful attempt to delay justice."
"I hope the new government will now throw its full support behind the court and uphold any warrants issued," Talbot added.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, also welcomed the move and urged the government to "stop selling Israel weapons." Between October 7 and May 31, the U.K. government issued more than 100 arms export licenses to Israel, according to official figures reported by The Guardian.
Reutersreported earlier this week that in documents released Tuesday, "judges granted permission to 18 states including the U.S., Germany, and South Africa to file written submissions to the ICC about its proposed arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas leaders.
"While there is no set deadline to rule on the prosecution request for arrest warrants," the news agency noted, "allowing dozens of legal arguments will slow the process by the three-judge panel deciding on the matter."
Former Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, who won reelection to his Islington North seat as an Independent following his expulsion from the Labour Party, called the Starmer government's decision to ditch the Tories' opposition to the ICC arrest warrant requests "an important first step in respecting the universal application of international law."
"Well done to the millions of people across the country who have made it clear that they refuse to be complicit in war crimes," Corbyn added. "We will continue to demand an end to the massacre in Gaza, an end to all arms sales to Israel, and an end to the occupation of Palestine."
Keep ReadingShow Less
US Healthcare Workers Back From Gaza Tell Harris and Biden: 'End This Madness'
"Every day that we continue supplying weapons and munitions to Israel is another day that women are shredded by our bombs and children are murdered with our bullets."
Jul 26, 2024
As President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Thursday, dozens of American healthcare workers who recently volunteered in the Gaza Strip urged the U.S. leaders to do everything in their power to end Israel's assault on the enclave, citing the horrors they witnessed firsthand.
In an open letter addressed to Biden, Harris, and First Lady Jill Biden, 45 physicians, surgeons, and nurses wrote that "we wish you could see the nightmares that plague so many of us since we have returned: dreams of children maimed and mutilated by our weapons, and their inconsolable mothers begging us to save them."
"We wish you could hear the cries and screams our consciences will not let us forget," the letter reads. "We cannot believe that anyone would continue arming the country that is deliberately killing these children after seeing what we have seen."
The healthcare workers called on the Biden administration to "withhold military, economic, and diplomatic support from the state of Israel and to participate in an international arms embargo of both Israel and all Palestinian armed groups until a permanent cease-fire is established, and until good-faith negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians lead to a permanent resolution of the conflict."
"We are not politicians. We do not claim to have all the answers," they continued. "We are simply physicians and nurses who cannot remain silent about what we saw in Gaza. Every day that we continue supplying weapons and munitions to Israel is another day that women are shredded by our bombs and children are murdered with our bullets. President Biden and Vice President Harris, we urge you: End this madness now!"
This is an open letter addressed to @POTUS, @VP , and @FLOTUS signed by 45 American physicians and nurses, about what we saw while working in Gaza. Please feel free to distribute. A PDF can be downloaded from the link and/or QR code on page 1. pic.twitter.com/LHVvmeAFad
— Feroze Sidhwa (@FerozeSidhwa) July 25, 2024
The letter was released as Netanyahu, fresh off his widely condemned address to the U.S. Congress, met separately on Thursday with Biden and Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
In remarks following her meeting with Netanyahu, Harris said that "what has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating," pointing to "the images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third, or fourth time."
"We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies," the vice president added. "We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent."
Harris said she told Netanyahu directly to "get this deal done"—referring to a cease-fire agreement with Hamas—but, as expected, she did not break with the administration on supplying arms to the Israeli military.
While there has been no obvious policy change from the administration now that Harris has taken over for Biden at the top of the Democratic Party's presidential ticket, Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft argued that the vice president "clearly broke with Biden on Israel in terms of rhetoric and tone."
Parsi also contended that there was "a substance shift."
"Biden has disingenuously claimed that Hamas blocked a cease-fire deal," Parsi wrote on social media. "By saying that she urged Netanyahu 'to clinch the deal,' Kamala pointed to the real obstacle."
BREAKING: VP Harris speaks after meeting with Israeli PM Netanyahu
Harris calling for an immediate cease-fire deal to free the hostages.
The VP saying she “will not be silent" about the suffering in Gaza, the "devastating" loss of life and the "dire" humanitarian crisis. pic.twitter.com/Fe5QPoOuFh
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) July 25, 2024
In their letter to Harris and Biden, the healthcare workers wrote that Israel "has directly targeted and deliberately devastated Gaza's entire healthcare system" and "targeted our colleagues in Gaza for death, disappearance, and torture." According to figures from the United Nations Human Rights Office, Israeli forces have killed one in every 40 healthcare workers in the Palestinian territory since October as diseases spread and the number of Gazans killed or wounded continues to grow by the hour.
The healthcare workers expressed the view that—based on available evidence and their experiences—"the death toll from this conflictis many times higher than what is reported by the Gaza Ministry of Health," which currently stands at over 39,100.
"We also believe this is probative evidence of widespread violations of American laws governing the use of American weapons abroad, and of international humanitarian law," they continued. "We cannot forget the scenes of unbearable cruelty directed at women and children that we witnessed ourselves."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular