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For Immediate Release
October, 05 2017, 11:00am EDT
Contact:
Adam Scott, adam@priceofoil.org, +1 416 347 3858
Oil Change International Reacts to the Cancellation of Energy East
Today, TransCanada cancelled its proposed Energy East pipeline project. In response, Adam Scott, Senior Advisor at Oil Change International released the following statement:
"This is an important day in the fight against climate change in Canada. Realizing that Energy East would never be allowed if its full climate impact was accounted for, TransCanada has walked away from the project.
WASHINGTON
Today, TransCanada cancelled its proposed Energy East pipeline project. In response, Adam Scott, Senior Advisor at Oil Change International released the following statement:
"This is an important day in the fight against climate change in Canada. Realizing that Energy East would never be allowed if its full climate impact was accounted for, TransCanada has walked away from the project.
"Energy East was a disaster waiting to happen. The pipeline and tanker proposal scheme was utterly incompatible with a world where we avoid the worst impacts of climate change. The project was designed to facilitate massive, long-lived expansion of Canada's oil production at a time when science shows we must cut carbon pollution rapidly. TransCanada pulled its application for Energy East once the National Energy Board (NEB) ruled that it would consider all greenhouse gas emissions resulting from the project.
"Oil Change International estimates its construction would have created up to an additional 236 million tons of carbon pollution each year, multiplied over decades of operation.
"Energy East was just the latest in a string of ill-conceived tar sands pipeline projects. Like Northern Gateway, Keystone XL, Enbridge's Line 3, and Kinder Morgan before it, this pipeline generated unprecedented grassroots opposition from Indigenous peoples, and front-line communities across the continent aiming to protect their climate, their water, and their rights. This movement grows stronger every day.
"Canada cannot live up to its obligations to protect our climate if allows new, long-lived, high-carbon infrastructure to be built. Energy East is yet another lesson about how Canada must make decisions on its energy future going forward.
"The fossil fuel era is ending. Energy East is just the latest in a growing list of projects that will never see the light of day. Movements will continue to stand up to projects that we know are not in the best interests of our communities, our climate, and our children. But our governments must also step up to ensure that our transition off of fossil fuels to the safe and renewable energy future is just and managed."
Oil Change International is a research, communications, and advocacy organization focused on exposing the true costs of fossil fuels and facilitating the ongoing transition to clean energy.
(202) 518-9029LATEST NEWS
'Not Another Penny for Another Endless War,' Ilhan Omar Says as Trump Seeks $200 Billion
One advocacy group leader highlighted that "$200 billion is enough to materially change the lives of Americans," from establishing universal pre-K education to building over 100,000 housing units.
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As US President Donald Trump on Thursday confirmed reporting that he's seeking $200 billion more from Congress to continue waging his unpopular war of choice on Iran, Rep. Ilhan Omar was among those forcefully pushing back.
"We're told there's no money for universal healthcare or to end hunger in this country. But somehow $200 billion more for war will likely move through Congress without question," said the progressive Minnesota Democrat, who fled civil war in Somalia as a child. "Not another penny for another endless war."
Since Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started bombing Iran late last month—creating a spiraling crisis that has now killed and injured thousands of people across the Middle East, plus damaged civilian infrastructure in multiple countries—anti-war lawmakers and organizations have delivered similar messages.
"While they kick 17 million Americans off their healthcare, Republicans want to spend billions on Trump's reckless war of choice," Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in early March. "Hell no."
Last week, shortly after Pentagon officials told Congress that just the first six days cost Americans more than $11.3 billion, over 250 groups collectively told lawmakers on Capitol Hill to "vote against any additional funding for Trump's unconstitutional war."
At the time, the reported figure was a quarter of what it is now: $50 billion. The coalition noted that the funding "would be enough to restore food assistance for 4 million Americans that was taken away in the tax and budget reconciliation bill, establish universal pre-K education, and pay for the annual construction of more than 100,000 units of housing, among other possible priorities."
After Trump confirmed that he wants four times more than expected, one coalition member, the Institute for Middle East Understanding (IMEU) Policy Project, took to social media to highlight other ways the money could be spent to improve the lives of working Americans, from school meals and paid leave to funding all levels of education.
Another coalition member, Public Citizen, released a Thursday statement in which co-president Robert Weissman ripped Trump's spending request as "grotesque beyond words."
According to Weissman:
It should properly be understood not just as a request to replenish supplies, but to expand, escalate, and perpetuate the illegal, unconstitutional, unpopular and devastating war on Iran. Congress should understand that approving any portion of this funding opens the gates for one, two, and potentially many more war funding requests in the future.
How dare the administration propose this gargantuan sum to expand an illegal war of choice at the same time it has rammed through deep cuts in healthcare and food assistance, refuses to spend foreign assistance at a cost of millions of lives, and has cut spending on protecting clean air, maintaining our national parks, investing in health research, protecting consumers from fraud, and so much more.
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Weissman argued that "every member of Congress should announce, right now, that they will reject this monstrous war funding proposal, before it is formalized."
Despite rising casualties across the Middle East and polls showing that the US assault on Iran is unpopular, even with Trump voters, a few Democrats voted with nearly all Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives earlier this month to reject war powers resolutions intended to end Trump's Operation Epic Fury. The upper chamber blocked a similar effort late Wednesday.
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Germany said Wednesday that it will drop its planned intervention in the International Court of Justice genocide against Israel so that it can better focus on its own defense in a separate ICJ case filed by Nicaragua accusing Berlin of enabling Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza via arms sales.
Deputy German Foreign Minister Josef Hinterseher said during a press conference in Berlin that his country "will not intervene" on Israel's side in the South Africa v. Israel genocide case filed at the Hague-based tribunal in December 2023.
This is a marked departure from Germany's January 2024 announcement that it would intervene on behalf of Israel in the case, arguing that the genocide allegation made by South Africa had "no basis whatsoever."
Nearly two dozen nations, most recently the Netherlands, Namibia, and Iceland, have either formally intervened on the side of South Africa or announced their intent to do so. The Herero and Nama peoples of modern-day Namibia suffered a genocide during the region's colonization by Germany in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
A handful of countries including the United States, Hungary, and Fiji have also intervened on behalf of Israel.
In 2024, Nicaragua filed a case against Germany at the ICJ, arguing that the European nation “has not only failed to fulfill its obligation to prevent the genocide committed and being committed against the Palestinian people... but has contributed to the commission of genocide in violation" of the Genocide Convention.
Germany has provided financial, military, diplomatic, and political support to Israel. It also temporarily halted financial contributions to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) based on unsubstantiated Israeli claims that a dozen of its worjers were involved in the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023.
Unlike Germany, the US and Israel are not members of the ICJ. The US quit the tribunal after it ruled against the Reagan administration in Nicaragua v. United States, a 1984 ruling that determined the US illegally supported Contra terrorists and mined Nicaraguan harbors.
However, under the court's territorial jurisdiction powers, countries that are not members of the court can still be brought before it for crimes committed in member states.
Further complicating matters, Germany is one of numerous countries which have intervened in Gambia v. Myanmar, which the African nation filed at the ICJ in 2019 amid the Burmese junta's ongoing genocide against Rohingya Muslims.
The ICJ has issued several provisional orders in South Africa v. Israel, including directives to prevent genocidal acts and allow aid into the besieged Gaza Strip amid a burgeoning famine. Israel has been accused of ignoring these orders.
The US under the Biden and Trump administrations pressured ICJ members to refrain from intervening on behalf of South Africa. The Trump administration has also sanctioned members of the International Criminal Court (ICC)‚ which in 2024 issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza.
In Germany, as in several other Western nations, authorities have cracked down on pro-Palestine protests, free expression of support for Palestinian rights, and criticism of Israel. Critics say the persistent framing of German national identity around enduring guilt for the Nazis' wholesale slaughter of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust is driving overzealous policing of dissent and conflation of pro-Palestinian activism with antisemitism.
This perceived moral burden, say observers, risks stifling legitimate political debate, curtailing free speech, and criminalizing solidarity with Palestinians under the pretext of historical responsibility. This has driven German actions from secretly funding Israel's development of nuclear weapons over half a century ago to brutally assaulting and arresting pro-Palestine protesters—including women, elders, minors, and people with disabilities—after the October 2023 attack.
German police punch an anti-genocide woman in front of the cameras.
[image or embed]
— Antifa_Ultras (@antifa-ultras.bsky.social) October 7, 2025 at 2:20 PM
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"To pull the region back from the brink and prevent the further loss of civilian life and destruction of vital public infrastructure, renewed diplomatic efforts are critical."
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United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk renewed his call for achieving peace through diplomacy on Thursday, highlighting how the US-Israeli war on Iran is having a disproportionate impact on civilians across the Middle East.
"The human cost of this reckless war is alarming. Hostilities are being waged without regard to the immediate and long-term consequences for civilians across the entire region," Türk said in a statement as the US and Israel bombed Iran, retaliatory Iranian strikes hit fossil fuel facilities throughout the region, and Israeli forces attacked alleged Hezbollah targets in Lebanon.
"Attacks on energy infrastructure—including South Pars in Iran and Ras Laffan in Qatar—will only compound hardship," the UN official warned. "Disastrous humanitarian, economic, and environmental consequences will be triggered if such attacks continue, resulting in deep harm to civilians—potentially for years to come."
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According to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, US and Israeli attacks over the past few weeks have already damaged at least 67,414 civilian locations, including homes, schools, medical facilities, energy installations, courthouses, and UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization World Heritage sites.
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