September, 13 2017, 11:30am EDT
Berkeley City Council Passes Resolution Against Offshore Fracking, Drilling
Trump Order to Expand Offshore Leasing Meeting Resistance in California
BERKELEY, Calif.
The Berkeley City Council last night approved a resolution opposing new drilling off the California coast and fracking in existing offshore oil and gas wells.
The vote follows President Trump's April 28 executive order urging federal agencies to expand oil and gas leasing in federal waters. Trump's order could expose the Pacific Ocean to new oil leasing for the first time in more than 30 years.
This week's resolution was sponsored by Berkeley City Councilman Kriss Worthington and supported by the Center for Biological Diversity, which has been organizing a series of California city resolutions opposing offshore drilling and fracking, starting with the Santa Barbara City Council's vote on July 25.
"The last thing Californians want is more drilling and fracking off our coast. Berkeley and other California cities are forming a wall of opposition to Trump's reckless agenda," said Blake Kopcho, an organizer with the Center. "Californians won't stand aside and let him endanger wildlife and our communities with oil spills and toxic fracking chemicals."
The Berkeley resolution calls for:
- A ban on new drilling, fracking, and other well stimulation in federal and state waters off the California coast,
- No new federal oil and gas leases in the Pacific, Atlantic, Arctic oceans and the eastern Gulf of Mexico -- areas currently protected from new leases; and
- A rapid phase-out of all oil and gas extraction off the California coast on a schedule sufficient to respond to the climate crisis.
The last offshore lease in federal waters off California was in 1984, but Trump's order seeks to renew the leasing program. There are more than 30 offshore drilling platforms and hundreds of miles of underwater oil and gas pipelines off California's coast. Operators want permits to frack offshore wells, using chemicals toxic to wildlife.
Separate lawsuits filed by the State of California and the Center challenging the federal government's approval of offshore fracking are pending in federal district court.
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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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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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.
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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.
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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."
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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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