March, 29 2016, 01:15pm EDT
![Center for Biological Diversity](https://assets.rbl.ms/32012680/origin.jpg)
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Miyoko Sakashita, Center for Biological Diversity, (510) 844-7108, miyoko@biologicaldiversity.org
Marissa Knodel, Friends of the Earth, (202) 222-0729, MKnodel@foe.org
Virali Modi-Parekh, Rainforest Action Network, (510) 747-8476, virali@ran.org
Tina Posterli, Waterkeeper Alliance, (212) 747-0622 x 113, tposteri@waterkeeper.org
David Turnbull, Oil Change International, (202) 316-3499, david@priceofoil.org
Historic Petition Urges Obama to Halt All New Offshore Fossil Fuel Leases
More Than 45 Organizations Back Historic Legal Petition That Takes Aim at Ocean-drilling Damage to Climate, Wildlife, Communities
WASHINGTON
More than 45 climate, conservation, indigenous and coastal organizations representing the major coastal regions of the United States filed a legal petition today calling on President Obama to align U.S. energy policy with his climate goals by issuing an executive order to end new oil and gas lease auctions in federally controlled oceans -- including the Arctic, Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.
The order, under the authority of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, would make federally managed waters that have not already been leased to industry unavailable for new leases. Halting new fossil fuel leases on more than 1 billion acres off America's coasts would keep up to 62 billion tons of carbon emissions in the ground -- the pollution equivalent of more than 16,000 coal-fired power plants.
The order would be a step toward limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, consistent with the 2015 Paris Agreement, by preventing the leasing of new offshore oil and gas. To stay within the 1.5-degree limit, the vast majority of known fossil fuels must remain unburned and kept safely in the ground.
The petition, led by the Center for Biological Diversity, comes on the heels of the administration's proposed five-year plan governing future federal offshore oil and gas leasing. The proposal would expand leasing in the Arctic and Gulf of Mexico, risking more disastrous spills, putting wildlife and communities in harm's way and deepening U.S. dependence on the fossil fuels that are driving the global climate crisis.
Despite its name, leases outlined in the five-year program would allow for oil and gas production over the next 40 to 70 years, long past the point that scientists say fossil fuels should be phased out. Continuing to rely on fossil fuels decades into the future undermines a rapid and essential transition to renewable energy. The petition calls on President Obama to align federal leasing policy with U.S. climate change goals while promoting a rapid transition to a clean-energy economy, starting with a halt in offshore leasing.
Groups joining today's petition are the Center for Biological Diversity, Food and Water Watch, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Oil Change International, Rainforest Action Network, Waterkeeper Alliance, Alaska Inter-Tribal Council, Alaska Rising Tide, Altamaha Riverkeeper, Apalachicola Riverkeeper, Assateague Coastal Trust, Atchafalaya Basinkeeper, Cahaba Riverkeeper, California Coastal Protection Network, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Clean Ocean Action, Cook Inletkeeper, Courage Campaign, Crystal Coast Waterkeeper, Emerald Coastkeeper, Environmental Defense Center, Environmental Youth Council, Eyak Preservation Council, Friends of Matanzas, Gulf Restoration Network, Institute for Fisheries Resources, Kootenai Environmental Alliance, Living Rivers, Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Matanzas Waterkeeper, Miami Waterkeeper, Native Conservancy (Land Trust), Ocean Conservation Research, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations, Preserve Our Wildlife, Prince William Soundkeeper, Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands (REDOIL), Riverkeeper, Sea Turtle Oversight Protection, Seneca Lake Guardian, Suncoast Waterkeeper, Turtle Island Restoration Network, Wabash Riverkeeper Network, Whale and Dolphin Conservation, WILDCOAST and WildEarth Guardians.
Statements from petition signatories:
"President Obama recognized oil drilling off the Atlantic coast was a bad idea. But the same logic -- that we must protect our climate, wildlife and coastal communities from oil spills and carbon emissions -- holds true for all ocean coasts," said Miyo Sakashita, oceans program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "So we're calling on the president to honor his climate change pledges and end future fossil fuel leasing from all federal offshore areas."
"President Obama has acknowledged that in order to prevent climate catastrophe, we must transition away from dirty fossil fuels and keep the vast majority of them in the ground. He has the authority to drive that transition by permanently protecting our public waters from oil and gas exploitation," said Marissa Knodel of Friends of the Earth. "To cement his climate legacy and honor his administration's climate goals, President Obama should not offer any new leases in the 2017-2022 offshore drilling program and withdraw all federal offshore areas from future leasing."
"It's time to stop the corporate giveaway of public lands and waters. Obama has the power to create real, lasting change by ending the fossil fuel leasing program. An executive act would cut 25 percent of U.S. climate change emissions and set the stage to transition beyond fossil fuels," said Amanda Starbuck, program director for Rainforest Action Network.
"President Obama must apply a climate test to offshore drilling and the rest of our energy policy. When he does, he'll see that offshore drilling fails that climate test," said David Turnbull, campaigns director at Oil Change International.
"Any areas being opened up for leasing now will not even begin producing oil and gas for at least five years. By then we should be well on our way toward ending destructive fossil fuel extraction, not adding new rigs," said Marc Yaggi, executive director of Waterkeeper Alliance. "By focusing our investments on a clean-energy future, the Obama administration will secure its climate legacy, ensuring economic and environmental resilience for future generations."
"The recent Refugio Oil Spill off the coast of California reminds us of the inevitable risks of offshore oil and gas development," said Linda Krop, chief counsel of the Environmental Defense Center. "These risks are compounded by the devastating and long-lasting effects of climate change on our coastlines, communities, wildlife and public health."
"Alaska stands on the front lines as an Arctic region whose ecosystems and communities are some of the most dramatically affected by climate change," said Stephen Jolley of Alaska Rising Tide. "If we are committed to social justice and equality for all, we must act as allies to those communities whose social and spiritual health relies on their continued relationship to the land by halting operations that would send our bountiful home into further decline."
"From sea level rise and extreme storms fueled by climate change, to coastal erosion, to frequent spills and accidents, the people of the Gulf of Mexico are on the frontline of the impacts from the oil and gas industry," said Cynthia Sarthou, Executive Director of the Gulf Restoration Network. "Even after the BP disaster, the industry and its political allies continue to actively resist new safety reforms. It is time for the President to end new offshore leasing and promote a transition to a more stable, sustainable and equitable economy for our communities and climate."
"While we were glad President Obama listened to the communities and citizens of the Atlantic coast and removed that area from offshore leasing, our work is not done," said Matanzas Riverkeeper Neil A. Armingeon. "We must support those who continue to fight oil and gas development in their communities, and we hope President Obama will once again do what's right and end new leasing in the Gulf and the Arctic."
Background
The American public owns nearly 650 million acres of federal public land, and more than 1.7 billion acres of Outer Continental Shelf (the oceans between 3 and 200 miles off the coast) -- and the fossil fuels beneath them. This includes sensitive oceans and coastlines, including Alaska's Chukchi Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the Eastern Seaboard. These places and fossil fuels, held in trust for the public by the federal government, are administered by the Department of the Interior for potential leasing.
Over the past decade, the combustion of federal fossil fuels has resulted in nearly a quarter of all U.S. energy-related emissions. An August report by EcoShift consulting, commissioned by the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Earth, found that remaining federal oil, gas, coal, oil shale and tar sands that have not been leased to industry contain up to 450 billion tons of potential greenhouse gas pollution. Burning the recoverable oil and gas under federal waters would release 61.5 billion tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the equivalent of driving 13 billion passenger cars for one year. As of this year, 67 million acres of public fossil fuels were already leased to industry, an area more than 55 times larger than Grand Canyon National Park and containing up to 43 billion tons of potential greenhouse gas pollution.
Last year Sens. Merkley (D-Ore.), Sanders (D-Vt.) and others introduced legislation to end issuance of new federal fossil fuel leases. Days later President Obama canceled the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, saying, "Because ultimately, if we're going to prevent large parts of this Earth from becoming not only inhospitable but uninhabitable in our lifetimes, we're going to have to keep some fossil fuels in the ground rather than burn them and release more dangerous pollution into the sky."
Download a letter from more than 400 groups and climate leaders urging President Obama to halt new federal fossil fuel leasing.
Download Grounded: The President's Power to Fight Climate Change, Protect Public Lands by Keeping Publicly Owned Fossil Fuels in the Ground (this report details the legal authorities with which a president can halt new federal fossil fuel leases).
Download The Potential Greenhouse Gas Emissions of U.S. Federal Fossil Fuels (this report quantifies the volume and potential greenhouse gas emissions of remaining federal fossil fuels).
Download The Potential Greenhouse Gas Emissions fact sheet.
Download Public Lands, Private Profits (this report details the corporations profiting from climate-destroying fossil fuel extraction on public lands).
At the Center for Biological Diversity, we believe that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature — to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, we work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. We do so through science, law and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters and climate that species need to survive.
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Critics Warn Manchin-Barrasso Permitting Bill 'Is Taken Straight From Project 2025'
"You thought Project 2025 was just a threat after the election? It's actually happening *right now,*" said one climate campaigner.
Jul 26, 2024
Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that one campaigner linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that although the proposal "includes several positive reforms for the accelerated development of transmission projects," it also advocates "limiting opportunities for communities to challenge projects, loosening oversight for drilling and mining projects, extending drilling permits and fast-tracking [liquified natural gas] permits, and several other provisions friendly to fossil fuel giants."
"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
While Manchin has been trying—and failing—to pass fossil fuel-friendly permitting reform legislation for years, Brett Hartl, director of public affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that his "Frankenstein legislation is taken straight from Project 2025, and it's the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry."
Hartl said the bill "deprives communities of the power to defend themselves and gives that power to Big Oil by making it harder for communities to challenge polluting projects in court," and "prioritizes the profits of coal barons over public health."
"And it mandates oil and gas extraction in our oceans," he continued. "The insignificant crumbs thrown at renewable energy do nothing to address the climate emergency."
"Monday was the hottest day in recorded history," Hartl noted. "It's shocking that as the climate emergency continues to break records around us, the Senate continues to fast-track the fossil fuel expansion that is killing us. This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
Manchin—who has said this will be his last term in office—has been a steadfast supporter of the fossil fuel industry, partly because his family owns a coal company. The senator says his permitting reform bill "will advance American energy once again to bring down prices, create domestic jobs, and allow us to continue in our role as a global energy leader."
However, Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International's U.S. manager, warned Thursday that "this bill is yet another dangerous attempt by Sen. Manchin to line the pockets of his fossil fuel donors, sacrificing communities and our climate along the way."
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else," she continued. "It would unleash more drilling on federal lands and waters, unnecessarily rush the review of proposed oil and gas export projects, and lift the Biden administration's pause on new LNG exports."
"We urge Congress to reject this proposal and commit to action that protects frontline communities from the impacts of fossil fuel development and the climate crisis," Rosenbluth added.
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else."
NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
"We cannot afford to roll back so many of our bedrock environmental and community legal protections and offer a blank check to the oil and gas industry," she stressed. "We need new solutions for permitting if we are going to meet our clean energy potential and address the climate challenge. But this is not it."
"This bill would altogether be a leap backward on climate, health, and justice if passed into law," Adams added. "The Senate should reject it and look toward alternative solutions already being considered."
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'Nothing To Eat': War-Torn Sudan Faces Mass Famine as Military Delays Aid
Both parties in Sudan's civil war are to blame for a looming mass famine, experts say, and the military's blocking of U.N. aid at a border crossing with Chad exacerbates the problem.
Jul 26, 2024
Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
U.S. and international officials have issued increasingly alarmed calls for steady aid access to help feed the millions of severely malnourished people in Darfur and other areas of Sudan.
Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
The Sudanese who've made it out of the country and into Adré reported dire and unsafe conditions in their home country.
"We had nothing to eat," Bahja Muhakar, a Sudenese mother of three, told the Times after she crossed into Chad, following a harrowing six-day journey from Al-Fashir, a major city in Darfur. She said the family often had to live off of one shared pancake per day.
Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
Now the mothers and their families are refugees in Adré, where 200,000 Sudanese are living in an overcrowded, under-resourced transit camp.
In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
In April, Reutersreported that people in Sudan were eating soil and leaves to survive, and The Washington Postcalled it a nation in "chaos," reporting that World Food Program trucks had been "blocked, hijacked, attacked, looted, and detained."
In late June, a coalition of U.N. agencies, aid groups, and governments warned that 755,000 people in Sudan faced famine in the coming months.
The U.S. last week announced $203 million in additional aid to Sudan—part of a $2.1 billion pledge that world leaders made in April, which some countries have not yet delivered on.
Some officials including Thomas-Greenfield, who has dubbed the situation in Sudan "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world," have called for the U.N. Security Council to allow aid delivery into the country even in the absence of SAF approval; it's believed that Russia would veto such a measure.
Sudan's civil war has seen a great deal of international interference. Amnesty International on Thursday published an investigatory briefing showing that weapons from Russia, China, Serbia, Turkey, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been identified in the country. And The Guardian on Friday reported that the passports of Emirati citizens had been found among wreckage in Sudan, indicating the UAE may have troops or intelligence officers on the ground, though the UAE denied the accusation.
The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
The SAF and Sudanese government figures have cast doubt on international experts' claims about famine in the country.
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JD Vance Doubles Down on Attack on 'Childless Cat Ladies'
Vance "meant no disrespect to cats, but he did mean to demean women and still holds the view in 2024 that they should be punished for not having children."
Jul 26, 2024
After days of condemnation from critics including actress Jennifer Aniston and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, U.S. Sen. JD Vance was given the opportunity on Thursday to clarify his remarks from 2021 in which he said the Democratic Party was run by "childless cat ladies."
Instead, the Ohio Republican and running mate of former President Donald Trump assured SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly on "The Megyn Kelly Show" that while he has "nothing against cats," he meant what he said in terms of "the substance" of his argument.
Vance made it clear, said Aaron Fritschner, deputy chief of staff for Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), "that he meant no disrespect to cats, but he did mean to demean women and still holds the view in 2024 that they should be punished for not having children."
The comments in question were made by Vance to then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson when Vance was running for the Senate.
Calling out Buttigieg—who, the secretary disclosed this week, was struggling at the time to adopt a child with his husband—and Vice President Kamala Harris, a stepmother of two and the Democratic Party's presumptive presidential nominee, Vance said people without biological children "don't really have a direct stake in" the future of the country and therefore shouldn't hold higher office.
In separate remarks that same year, Vance said parents should "have more power" at the voting booth and that "if you don't have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn't get nearly the same voice."
He also specifically categorized people who don't have children as "bad" in an interview in 2021, saying the government should "reward the things that we think are good" and "punish the things that we think are bad," with people taxed at a lower rate if they have children.
While a spokesperson for Vance told ABC News that the senator's taxation proposal was "basically no different" than the child tax credit supported by the Democratic Party, Democrats who have pushed for the credit have heralded its proven ability to slash child poverty rates and help families afford groceries, childcare, and other essentials, rather than viewing the tax savings as a way to reward people for procreating.
In his interview with Kelly on Thursday, Vance attempted to pivot away from his own comments, saying his point was to criticize "the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child" and claiming without evidence that the Harris campaign had "come out against the child tax credit"—a signature policy of the Biden-Harris administration.
"I'm proud to stand for parents and I hope that parents out there recognize that I'm a guy who wants to fight for you," said Vance. "The Democrats, in the past five, 10 years, Megyn, they have become anti-family. It's built into their policy, it's built into the way they talk about parents and children. I don't think we should back down from it, I think we should be honest about the problem."
Vance and Kelly went on to lament the anxiety "hardcore environmentalists" and progressive lawmakers such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have expressed about the damage fossil fuel extraction is doing the planet, accusing them of pushing people to forgo having families—but said nothing about Republican policies that have made child-rearing less accessible.
In recent years, the entire Republican caucus in Congress was joined by conservative then-Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia in blocking the extension of the enhanced child tax credit, which had been credited with cutting the national child poverty rate in half. Republicans also allowed a pandemic-era universal school meal program to expire, while several Democratic-led states have passed state-level programs to ensure all children can have meals at school, regardless of their family's income.
Under Republican abortion bans, numerous stories have cropped up of pregnant people who have been forced to carry pregnancies to term despite finding out that their fetuses had fatal abnormalities and would die soon after birth—as have stories of children who were forced to give birth or had to cross state lines in order to get abortion care.
As with his position that nonparents should be "punished" for not having children, "who else does 'pro-child/family' Vance think should 'face consequences and reality' by way of curtailing choices, rights, and freedoms?" asked writer Alheli Picazo. "Women and girls who become pregnant through rape/incest."
University of North Carolina law professor Carissa Byrne Hessick said that one could test "empirically" Vance's claim that Democratic policies are anti-family.
"But I haven't heard the GOP talk much about things that would help my family and my kids," she said, "like reducing childcare and tuition costs."
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