October, 29 2018, 12:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Andrea Treece, Earthjustice, (415) 217-2089, atreece@earthjustice.org
Emily Ehrhorn, the Humane Society of the United States, (202) 779-1814, eehrhorn@humanesociety.org
Rebecca Bullis, Defenders of Wildlife, 202-772-0295, rbullis@defenders.org
Supreme Court Halts Effort to Reinstate Failed "No Otter Zone" in California
Supreme Court denies appeal of decision upholding U.S. Fish & Wildlife decision to end experimental program that set back California sea otter recovery
WASHINGTON
The U.S. Supreme Court today declined to review a Ninth Circuit decision that upheld the U.S. Fish and Wildlife's termination of a failed experimental program known as the "No Otter Zone." The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had determined the program would harm the California sea otter by excluding the animals from their historic range along the Southern California coast.
The high court's decision marks the end of years of litigation by fishing groups, represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, aimed at forcing the government to reinstate the program even though it would harm sea otters and prevent the species from recovering.
"It's a relief to see common sense win the day. The decision to end the "No Otter Zone" was not only reasonable--it was the only option for protecting otters and complying with the law," said Earthjustice attorney Andrea Treece. "Otters are an irreplaceable part of our coastal ecosystem - otters need kelp forest and seagrass habitat, and those habitats need otters. Allowing otters to expand their population southward without human interference helps sea otters and coastal habitats."
Earthjustice, on behalf of Friends of the Sea Otter, Defenders of Wildlife, The Humane Society of the United States and Center for Biological Diversity, intervened to help defend the Service's decision.
Several fishing industry groups sued the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service multiple times, arguing that it was obligated to continue to implement the "No Otter Zone," even after the agency determined that doing so would jeopardize the species' chances at survival and recovery. Two district courts ruled against the industry groups and they appealed the previous rulings.
The Ninth Circuit ruled against these industry groups, confirming that the agency acted fully within its authority by ending the experimental sea otter translocation and management program when it determined it was preventing sea otter recovery rather than promoting it.
"This decision is a win for sea otters and endangered species everywhere," said Anna Frostic, managing attorney for wildlife and animal research for the Humane Society of the United States. "The court reinforced that the government has the obligation to amend or terminate a program when it is no longer helping the imperiled species that the government is required to protect."
"The Supreme Court's decision confirms the ruling that the Fish and Wildlife Service made the right decision to let sea otters expand their range naturally, without artificial barriers. If this species is to recover, wider distribution throughout the historic sea otter range is essential," said Friends of the Sea Otter Board Chair Jennifer Covert. "It is gratifying that the fight we have been involved in for approximately two decades to end the no otter zone has now been confirmed by the courts."
The conservation groups defending the decision opposed high court review, pointing out that the decision was also fully consistent with the Fish and Wildlife Service's independent obligation to protect and recover listed species under the Endangered Species Act.
"It's great to see the Supreme Court deferring to wildlife professionals on ending this ill-conceived program. Sea otters and the people who love them should be applauding this victory," said Miyoko Sakashita, oceans program director for the Center for Biological Diversity. "This decision helps keep California's sea otters on the path toward recovery."
"If we want threatened sea otters to make a comeback in California, we need programs that encourage recovery instead of hindering it," said Kim Delfino, director of California programs for Defenders of Wildlife. "The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recognized that the 'No Otter Zone' would do more harm than good to sea otters by blocking their access to vital habitat. The court's decision reaffirms that fact."
Background:
Congress established the "No Otter Zone" in 1986 as part of a plan by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to translocate sea otters to San Nicolas Island to establish a second population. At the time, the agency suggested the translocation program would aid the recovery of the California sea otter, protected as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. The "No Otter Zone" was established by Congress in response to complaints from fishermen that moving otters to a new location could interfere with their fishing activities.
Many relocated otters swam back to their waters of origin; others died as the result of being captured or transported. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service ultimately determined that enforcing the "No Otter Zone" was hurting the sea otter's recovery chances. In 2003, the agency determined again that eliminating the zone and allowing otters to expand to their natural, historical range south of Point Conception was necessary to achieve recovery of the species.
Fishing industry groups sought in two lawsuits to force the Service to re-establish the "No Otter Zone." In September 2015, U.S. District Court Judge Walter found that forcing the Service to continue the failed program would be absurd, given that the purpose of the program had been to protect otters and the program was now known to harm their survival and recovery.
In March 2017, Judge Dolly M. Gee of the U.S. District Court, Central District of California, also ruled in favor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's decision to end the program.
In March 2018, the Ninth Circuit upheld both of the district courts' decisions.
While the California sea otter population has rebounded from historical lows, the species remains threatened by pollution, disease, and competition with fisheries. The California sea otter population is believed to have been between 14,000 and 16,000 animals before fur traders arrived. In recent years, it has hovered around 3,000 animals.
Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.
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Biden Condemned for Ahistorical and 'Politically Suicidal' Attack on Campus Protests
"Biden's claim that 'dissent must never lead to disorder' defies American history, from the Boston Tea Party to the tactics that civil rights activists, Vietnam War protesters, and anti-apartheid activists used to confront injustice."
May 02, 2024
President Joe Biden faced immediate backlash Thursday for characterizing pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have erupted on university campuses across the country as lawless and violent, a narrative likely to further alienate the thousands of students who have joined peaceful protests against Israel's U.S.-backed war on Gaza in recent weeks.
In brief, unscheduled remarks delivered from the White House, Biden acknowledged that "peaceful protest is in the best tradition of how Americans respond to consequential issues."
But he then proceeded to cast recent campus demonstrations as abhorrent, using instances of property damage to broadly paint student protesters as out of control—giving a pass to police forces and pro-Israel mobs that have brutally attacked peaceful encampments.
Biden, who has armed Israel's military to the hilt, also conflated trespassing and disruptions of day-to-day campus activities—including classes and graduations—with violence, saying, "None of this is a peaceful protest."
"Dissent must never lead to disorder," the president said, ignoring the long history of disruptive civil rights and anti-war protests in the U.S. "There's the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos."
Watch Biden's remarks in full:
Edward Ahmed Mitchell, a civil rights attorney and national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), said Thursday that "President Biden's claim that 'dissent must never lead to disorder' defies American history, from the Boston Tea Party to the tactics that civil rights activists, Vietnam War protesters, and anti-apartheid activists used to confront injustice."
"And if President Biden is truly concerned about the conflict on college campuses, he should specifically condemn law enforcement and pro-Israel mobs for attacking students, and stop enabling the genocide in Gaza that has triggered the protests," Mitchell added.
Matt Duss, executive vice president of the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), wrote following the president's remarks that "the best speech of Biden's campaign was in June 2020, amid the nationwide protests against the murder of George Floyd."
"He could've given a very similar speech today, if only he thought the same rights and principles applied to Palestinians," Duss added. "In June 2020, Biden criticized violence but also refused to paint the protests with that broad brush. He acknowledged the root causes, the pain driving them. He could've made some effort to do the same today, instead he chose to amplify a right-wing caricature."
Countering suggestions that criticism of Biden could harm his reelection chances against former President Donald Trump, Duss pointed to an old social media post in which he explained: "One of my concerns here is that Biden is undermining his re-election. In addition to being morally and strategically awful, I think his Gaza policy is alienating and demobilizing constituencies he will need."
At the end of his speech, a reporter asked Biden whether the mass demonstrations on college campuses have led him to reconsider his approach to Israel's assault on Gaza, which to date has been unconditionally supportive even in the face of horrific Israeli war crimes.
"No," Biden said in response to the reporter's question.
"Apparently Biden is not swayed by the mass killing of children, international law, or an election as a growing number of Americans are appalled by his policies," Assal Rad, an author and Middle East analyst, wrote in reply to the president.
Biden to young people: go fuck yourselves, I’m sticking with Israel and its genocide.
Absolutely surreal, sad, politically suicidal, grotesque. https://t.co/96RIQE2ZO5
— Daniel Denvir (@DanielDenvir) May 2, 2024
Justice Democrats called Biden's speech "shameful," writing that "as campuses have unleashed police on students—he blames protesters as the problem and ignores the violence they've faced."
"If dissent was crucial to our democracy," the progressive group added, "you would spend more time listening to their demands than lying about their tactics."
Biden's address came hours after Los Angeles police launched a violent attack on pro-Palestinian demonstrators at UCLA, where a pro-Israel mob brutally assaulted student protesters just a day earlier.
In a statement earlier this week, College Democrats of America endorsed the Gaza solidarity protests that have swept the nation and warned Democratic leaders that each day they "fail to stand united for a permanent cease-fire, two-state solution, and recognition of a Palestinian state, more and more youth find themselves disillusioned with the party."
"We condemn those politicians, like MAGA Republicans and many other lawmakers, for smearing all protesters as hateful when, according to reports, the overwhelming majority of protests are peaceful," said the College Democrats.
In a floor speech on Wednesday, Sanders called out his colleagues who "are spending their time attacking the protesters rather than the Netanyahu government, which has caused and has created this horrific situation."
Sanders noted that the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) "was arrested 45 times for sit-ins and protests, 45 times for protesting segregation and racism."
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The Guardian's Tom Brown and Christina Last reported that fossil fuel producers in countries including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, and Norway "appear to have installed technology that could stop researchers from identifying methane, carbon dioxide emissions, and pollutants at industrial facilities involved in the disposal of unprofitable natural gas."
As the World Bank, European Union, and others have been using satellites to track flaring—the burning of unwanted fossil gas—in an effort to reduce the harmful practice, fossil fuel producers have been adopting enclosed combustion technology to eliminate unwanted methane.
While the industry promotes enclosed combustors as a clean, safe, and efficient solution for eliminating unwanted emissions and ensuring regulatory compliance, critics claim they're a way for gas producers to conceal flaring—which releases five times more methane than previously believed, as Common Dreamsreported in 2022.
"Enclosed combustors are basically a flare with an internal flare tip that you don't see."
"Enclosed combustors are basically a flare with an internal flare tip that you don't see," Tim Doty, a former regulator at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, told The Guardian. "Enclosed flaring is still flaring. It's just different infrastructure that they're allowing."
"Enclosed flaring is, in truth, probably less efficient than a typical flare," Doty added. "It's better than venting, but going from a flare to an enclosed flare... is not an improvement in reducing emissions."
Eric Kort, an associate professor at the University of Michigan, told The Guardianthat "if you enclose the flare, people don't see it, so they don't complain about it."
"But it also means it's not visible from space by most of the methods used to track flare volumes," he added.
According to a March 2023 report published by the World Bank and Global Gas Flaring Reduction Partnership, an estimated 140 billion cubic meters of gas was flared globally in 2022, a 3% decrease from the previous year. The top 10 countries by flare volume that year were Russia, Iraq, Iran, Algeria, Venezuela, the United States, Mexico, Libya, Nigeria, and China.
Flaring releases carbon dioxide and toxic pollutants including carcinogenic chemicals. Despite these dangers, energy and environmental regulators allow the venting of fossil gas, which is up to 90% methane, into the atmosphere.
Methane—which has more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide during its first two decades in the atmosphere—is emitted during the production and transportation of oil, gas, and coal, as well as from municipal landfills and livestock.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) published a report last October warning that immediate cuts to methane gas pollution caused by fossil fuel production are critical for limiting planetary heating to 1.5°C, the more ambitious objective of the Paris agreement.
The need is urgent. According to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the three most critical heat-trapping gases in Earth's atmosphere—carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—once again reached record levels last year, with methane increasing by 10 parts per billion to 1,922.6 ppb.
Responding to The Guardian's reporting, U.K. Green parliamentary candidate Catherine Read said that "oil and gas companies are hiding their 'flaring' operations because laws are being brought in to reduce emissions of [greenhouse gases] from waste gas that can't be sold at a profit."
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"The grotesque wealth that this Earth-wrecking company continues to accumulate is something we cannot allow ourselves to accept as normal," one campaigner said.
May 02, 2024
Oil major Shell announced $7.7 billion in profits during the first quarter of 2024 on Thursday, as well as a $3.5 billion share buyback program.
The news comes as every month covered by the period was the hottest of its kind on record. The three-month period also saw the second-largest wildfire in Texas history, extreme heat in West Africa and the Sahel, and the beginning of the Great Barrier Reef's fifth mass bleaching event in eight years. Scientists have clearly linked global heating, and the weather disasters it exacerbates, to the climate crisis driven primarily by the burning of fossil fuels.
"As extreme weather accelerates and the cost-of-living crisis rumbles on, Shell's latest billion-pound profits are an affront to the world," Izzie McIntosh, climate campaign manager at Global Justice Now, said in a statement. "The grotesque wealth that this Earth-wrecking company continues to accumulate is something we cannot allow ourselves to accept as normal."
"This is the sad irony of the global energy system in which those causing chaos are the ones getting rich."
Shell's profits for the first three months of 2024 were around 20% lower than for the same time in 2023, CNBC reported. However, the company brought in $1.2 billion more than analysts had predicted. The world's largest oil firms, including Shell, saw record profits in 2022 following Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the energy crisis that followed.
"Shell has beaten expectations by a reasonable margin, despite the impact of lower gas prices during the first quarter," Stuart Lamont, an investment manager at RBC Brewin Dolphin, said in a statement shared by CNBC.
Global Witness pointed out that Shell's earnings to date amounted to over $58,000 a minute, more than the average U.K. nurse makes in a year.
"Shell continuing to rake in huge sums of money shows us that huge polluter profits were not a one-off but are the twisted reality of an energy system that benefits climate-wrecking companies to the cost of everyone else," Global Witness fossil fuel campaigner Alexander Kirk said in a statement.
Shell announced its profits one day after the U.S. Senate held a hearing on how large oil and gas companies, including Shell, have continued to deceive the public about the dangers of their products, moving from outright climate denial into making commitments they don't intend to keep or touting false solutions like carbon capture and storage that they then fail to develop. Shell, according to the testimony of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), spent only 11% of its capital on low-carbon technologies between 2009 and 2023.
The hearing sparked calls for accountability from the fossil fuel industry—such as mechanisms to make climate polluters pay for the transition to renewable energy—and the news of Shell's profits generated more.
In the U.K., Labor Shadow Energy and Climate Minister Ed Miliband proposed increasing the tax on energy company profits. Shell paid the U.K. government around $1.4 billion in taxes in 2023, of which around $300 million went to the Energy Profits Levy, according toThe Guardian. Also last year, it paid its shareholders $23 billion, nine times more than it invested in its "Renewables and Energy Solutions" program.
"These results show yet again why it is so damning [that Prime Minister] Rishi Sunak refuses to bring in a proper windfall tax on the oil and gas giants," Miliband said. "These are companies that have made record profits at the expense of working people. Labor says tax these companies fairly so we can invest in clean homegrown energy that will end the cost of living crisis and make Britain energy independent."
Greenpeace U.K. called Shell's latest profits "shameless."
"Their reckless hunt for profits needs to end," the environmental advocacy group wrote on social media. "When will world leaders find their backbone and make polluters pay?"
When one commenter suggested governments held back out of desire to keep collecting Big Oil's taxes, Greenpeace fired back, "What taxes?" and noted that Shell avoided paying U.K. taxes for years.
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Global Witness and Global Justice Now also took the opportunity to call for an energy transition.
"This is the sad irony of the global energy system in which those causing chaos are the ones getting rich," Kirk said. "This spiral won't stop until we make the urgent switch to a fairer renewable energy system that puts both people and planet first."
McIntosh concluded: "We urgently need to bring a fair and organised end to the fossil fuel era, and that means companies like Shell must stop trying to extract new oil and gas, and start paying what they owe for the loss and damage they've caused. Profit announcements like this for a corporate dinosaur like Shell need to become a thing of the past."
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