October, 08 2015, 10:00am EDT
Welcome For Moratorium On Underground Coal Gasification
SCOTLAND
Responding to the announcement of a Scottish Government moratorium on Underground Coal Gasification, Mary Church, Head of Campaigns at Friends of the Earth Scotland, said:
"Well done to Fergus Ewing for announcing this important new moratorium. Underground coal gasification is a risky and experimental technique, with a very chequered history around the world. This industry clearly deserves the same public scrutiny as shale gas fracking and coal bed methane."
UCG is a form of unconventional gas extraction which involves igniting coal seams underground or under the sea and capturing the gas produced at the surface. Proposals are currently being developed for the Forth and the Solway. The Scottish Government emphasised that the moratorium on UCG is separate to the one in place on shale gas fracking and coalbed methane, and has appointed Professor Campbell Gemmell, former CEO of SEPA, to lead an independent examination of the issues and evidence surrounding the industry.
The Scottish Government has also today published details of the timescales and remit of research into the public health and environmental impacts of unconventional gas extraction and a public consultation to inform the moratorium on fracking and coalbed methane extraction. The remit of the research has broadened since the January announcement of a moratorium to include research on climate change, economic impacts, traffic impacts, seismic monitoring and decommissioning.
Church continued:
"We warmly welcome the Scottish Government's detailed timetable for action, and the extended research remit announced today. This framework for reviewing shale gas fracking and coalbed methane looks like a well designed process, over a sensible timescale. The experience from the growing number of states and regions around the world with bans and moratoriums is clear that undertaking a thorough review of unconventional gas cannot be rushed.
"We strongly urge individuals and communities to fully engage with this process and make their opposition to this dirty industry clear. All too often the millions spent on PR by big corporations can crowd out the voices of affected communities and those speaking up for the environment and public health when it comes to important policy or decisions like this. INEOS and others have big budgets at their disposal to get their points across. It is vital that people the length and breadth of Scotland who don't want to see the central belt wrecked by the fossil fuel industry make their voice count in this review.
"There is a growing body of evidence from around the world that fracking for shale gas, extracting coal-bed methane and the underground coal gasification process poses unacceptable risks for human health and the environment. In December 2014 New York State joined a number of countries and regions in deciding to banning fracking after undertaking a two-year assessment on the impacts of fracking on human health and the environment.
"We are particularly glad that climate change impacts are to be the subject of detailed study. In the context of our international obligations to cut emissions it would be completely irresponsible for a hydrocarbon-rich nation like Scotland to open up a new frontier of fossil fuels, further exacerbating the climate crisis.
"We are confident that when the evidence is independently assessed and the Scottish public have had a chance to voice their concerns, this consultation will lead to a full ban on unconventional gas and fracking."
Friends of the Earth Scotland is campaigning for a world where everyone can enjoy a healthy environment and a fair share of the earth's resources. Climate change is the greatest threat to this aim, that's why we're calling for a just transition to a 100% renewable, nuclear-free, zero-fossil-fuel Scotland.
LATEST NEWS
'Insane This Is Legal': Bettors Make Huge Profits From Suspiciously Timed Wagers on Iran War
"Reminder that Donald Trump Jr. sits on Polymarket's advisory board and his firm invested double-digit millions into the platform last year."
Mar 01, 2026
Bettors on the prediction platform Polymarket made a killing with suspiciously timed wagers that the United States would attack Iran by February 28, the day President Donald Trump announced a bombing campaign against the Middle East nation.
Bloomberg reported that six accounts on Polymarket, all newly created this month, "made around $1 million in profit" by betting on the timing of the US attack on Iran. The accounts, according to Bloomberg, "had only ever placed bets on when US strikes might occur," and "some of their shares were purchased, in some cases at roughly a dime apiece, hours before the first explosions were reported in Tehran."
One account with the name Magamyman raked in over $515,000 by betting roughly $87,000 that the "US strikes Iran by February 28, 2026."
The lucrative bets quickly drew scrutiny from lawmakers. US Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) wrote on social media that "it’s insane this is legal."
"People around Trump are profiting off war and death," Murphy alleged. "I’m introducing legislation ASAP to ban this."
Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) wrote that "prediction markets cannot be a vehicle for profiting off advance knowledge of military action" and demanded "answers, transparency, and oversight."
"Reminder that Donald Trump Jr. sits on Polymarket's advisory board and his firm invested double-digit millions into the platform last year," Levin wrote, referring to the president's eldest son. "The [Justice Department] and [Commodity Futures Trading Commission] both had active investigations into Polymarket that were dropped after Trump took office."
There's no concrete evidence that Trump administration officials or staffers were behind the hugely profitable bets, but the wagers heightened concerns about the possibility of insider trading using increasingly popular prediction market platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi. Last month, bettors used Polymarket to make big profits on suspiciously timed wagers on when the US would oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Polymarket currently allows users to bet on when Iran will have a new supreme leader, when the US and Iran will reach a ceasefire agreement, and when the US will invade Iran.
The celebrity news tabloid TMZ reported Saturday that "a group at a Washington, DC restaurant was talking openly in the bar area Friday afternoon about a national secret that was about to literally explode hours later—the bombing of Iran."
As journalist David Bernstein noted, that—if true—leaves open the possibility that "these 'insider' bets have been placed by any rich person with good ears in DC."
"Not to mention that for all we know these administration clowns were probably gossiping about it on a text chain with half a dozen people they accidentally invited," Bernstein added. "This is hardly the locked lips brigade we’re dealing with."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Experts Pillory Trump Case for War on Iran: 'Flimsiest Excuse for Initiating a Major Attack' in Decades
"What they posed as the threat they were trying to preempt—an attack by Iran against US forces—is so extremely implausible, it is also laughable," said one analyst.
Mar 01, 2026
Senior Trump administration officials attempted during a briefing with reporters on Saturday to make their case for the joint US-Israeli military assault on Iran that has so far killed hundreds and plunged the Middle East into chaos.
According to experts who listened to the briefing, which was conducted on background, the justification for war was incredibly weak. Daryl Kimball, president of the Arms Control Association, told Laura Rozen of the Diplomatic newsletter that the administration's argument was "the flimsiest excuse for initiating a major attack on another country without congressional authorization, in violation of the UN Charter, in many decades."
During his early Saturday remarks announcing the attacks, President Donald Trump claimed that "imminent threats from the Iranian regime" against "the American people" drove him to act. But Kimball said that administration officials "provided absolutely no evidence" to back that assertion during the briefing.
"What they posed as the threat they were trying to preempt—an attack by Iran against US forces—is so extremely implausible, it is also laughable," said Kimball.
Following the start of Saturday's assault, which Trump explicitly characterized as a war aimed at overthrowing the Iranian government, unnamed administration officials began leaking the claim that Trump feared an Iranian attack on the massive US military buildup in the Middle East, prompting him to greenlight the bombing campaign in coordination with Israel and with a nudge from Saudi Arabia.
Kimball, in a social media post, took members of the US media to task for echoing the administration's narrative. "Reporters need to do more than stenography," he wrote in response to Punchbowl's Jake Sherman.
"The American people were lied to about Iraq. The American people are being lied to again today—and once again, it is ordinary people who will pay the price."
Trump and top administration officials also repeated the longstanding claim from US warhawks that Iran is bent on developing a nuclear weapon, something Iranian leaders have publicly denied—including during recent diplomatic talks. Neither US intelligence assessments nor international nuclear watchdogs have produced evidence indicating that Iran is moving rapidly in the direction of nukes, as claimed by the administration.
Rozen noted that some remarks from administration officials during Saturday's briefing "suggested Trump’s negotiators"—a team that included Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff—"may not have had the expertise or experience to understand the Iranian proposal to curb its nuclear program." Rozen reported that one administration official kept misstating the acronym for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN nuclear watchdog.
Trump administration officials, according to Rozen, seemed astonished that Iranian negotiators would not accept the US offer to provide free nuclear fuel "forever" for Iran's peaceful energy development, viewing the rejection as a suspicious indication that Iran was opposed to a diplomatic resolution—even though, according to Oman's foreign minister, Iran had already made concessions that went well beyond the terms of the 2015 nuclear accord that Trump abandoned during his first stint in the White House.
Experts said it should be obvious—particularly given Trump's decision to ditch the previous nuclear accord—why Iran would not trust the US to stick by such a commitment.
The administration's inability to provide a coherent justification for war tracks with the rapidly shifting narrative preceding Saturday's strikes—an indication, according to some observers, that Trump had made the decision to attack Iran even in the face of diplomatic progress and left officials to try to cobble together a rationale after the fact.
In a lengthy social media post, Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth insisted war was necessary because Iran "refused to make a deal" and because the Iranian government "has targeted and killed Americans," hardly the claim of an imminent threat push by the president and other administration officials.
Brian Finucane, a senior adviser to the US Program at the International Crisis Group, noted in response that the Trump administration has "sidelined anyone who could articulate... a coherent argument, partly because expertise is deep state and woke and partly because they just don't care."
The result is another potentially catastrophic war that runs roughshod over US and international law, puts countless civilians at risk, and threatens to spark a region-wide conflict.
"President Trump, along with his right-wing extremist Israeli ally Benjamin Netanyahu, has begun an illegal, premeditated, and unconstitutional war," US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement on Saturday. "Tragically, Trump is gambling with American lives and treasure to fulfill Netanyahu's decades-long ambition of dragging the United States into armed conflict with Iran."
"The American people were lied to about Vietnam. The American people were lied to about Iraq," Sanders added. "The American people are being lied to again today—and once again, it is ordinary people who will pay the price."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Democratic Leaders Face Backlash Over 'Cowardly' Responses to Trump War on Iran
"As we plunge headlong into another catastrophic war, Sen. Schumer and Rep. Jeffries’ throat-clearing and process critique only serves Trump and the war machine."
Mar 01, 2026
The top Democrats in the US Congress, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, faced backlash on Saturday over what critics described as tepid, equivocal responses to President Donald Trump's illegal assault on Iran—and for slowwalking efforts to prevent the war before the bombing began.
While both Democratic leaders chided Trump for failing to seek congressional authorization and not adequately briefing lawmakers on the details of Saturday's attacks, neither offered a full-throated condemnation of a military assault that has killed hundreds so far, including dozens of children, and hurled the Middle East into chaos.
Schumer (D-NY)—who infamously worked to defeat the 2015 nuclear deal that Trump later abandoned during his first White House term, setting the stage for the current crisis—said he "implored" US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to "be straight with Congress and the American people about the objectives of these strikes and what comes next."
"Iran must never be allowed to attain a nuclear weapon," he added, "but the American people do not want another endless and costly war in the Middle East when there are so many problems at home."
Jeffries (D-NY), a beneficiary of AIPAC campaign cash, said in his response to the massive US-Israeli assault that "Iran is a bad actor and must be aggressively confronted for its human rights violations, nuclear ambitions, support of terrorism, and the threat it poses to our allies like Israel and Jordan in the region."
"The Trump administration must explain itself to the American people and Congress immediately, provide an ironclad justification for this act of war, clearly define the national security objective, and articulate a plan to avoid another costly, prolonged military quagmire in the Middle East," said Jeffries.
The Democratic leaders' responses bolstered the view that their objections to Trump's attack on Iran are based on procedure, not opposition to war.
This is a disgusting and cowardly statement handwringing about process and the need for a briefing.
No you idiot. This war is a horror and a disaster and must be directly opposed. Any Democrat who can’t say that needs to resign and ESPECIALLY the ones in leadership. https://t.co/CdZoEyNkOy
— Krystal Ball (@krystalball) February 28, 2026
Claire Valdez, a New York state assemblymember who is running for Congress, said that "as we plunge headlong into another catastrophic war, Sen. Schumer and Rep. Jeffries’ throat-clearing and process critique only serves Trump and the war machine."
"Democrats should speak clearly and with one voice: no war," Valdez added.
Schumer and Jeffries both committed to swiftly forcing votes on War Powers resolutions in their respective chambers. But reporting last week by Aída Chávez of Capital & Empire indicated that top Democrats worked behind the scenes to slow momentum behind the resolutions, helping ensure they did not come to a vote before Trump launched the war.
"The preferred outcome of many AIPAC-aligned Senate Democrats, according to a senior foreign policy aide to Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, is that Trump acts unilaterally, weakening Iran while absorbing the domestic backlash ahead of the midterms," Chávez wrote.
Neither Schumer nor Jeffries backed legislation last year aimed at forestalling US military intervention in Iran.
The top Democrats' responses to Saturday's US-Israeli attacks on Iran, which Trump said would continue "uninterrupted" even after the killing of the nation's supreme leader, contrasted sharply with statements of rank-and-file congressional Democrats—and even some members of leadership—who condemned the president for shredding the Constitution and driving the US into another deadly war that the American public opposes.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who has been floated as a possible 2028 challenger to Schumer, said Saturday that "the American people are once again dragged into a war they did not want by a president who does not care about the long-term consequences of his actions."
"This war is unlawful. It is unnecessary. And it will be catastrophic," said Ocasio-Cortez. "This is a deliberate choice of aggression when diplomacy and security were within reach. Stop lying to the American people. Violence begets violence. We learned this lesson in Iraq. We learned this lesson in Afghanistan. And we are about to learn it again in Iran. Bombs have yet to create enduring democracies in the region, and this will be no different."
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), a vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, was more blunt.
"Congress must stop the bloodshed by immediately reconvening to exert its war powers and stop this deranged president," she said. "But let’s be clear: Warmongering politicians from both parties support this illegal war, and it will take a mass anti-war movement to stop it."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular