April, 09 2020, 12:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Melissa Hornbein, Western Environmental Law Center, 406-708-3058, hornbein@westernlaw.org
Natasha Léger, Citizens for a Healthy Community, 970-399-9700, natasha@chc4you.org
Taylor McKinnon, Center for Biological Diversity, 801-300-2414, tmckinnon@biologicaldiversity.org
Sumer Shaikh, Sierra Club, 774-545-0128, sumer.shaikh@sierraclub.org
Sumer Shaikh, Sierra Club, 774-545-0128, sumer.shaikh@sierraclub.org
Rebecca Fischer, WildEarth Guardians, 406-698-1489-rfischer@wildearthguardians.org
Trump Administration Plan Expands Fossil Fuel Extraction Across Southwestern Colorado at Expense of Ag, Endangered Species, Recreation
The Trump administration today announced the release of its final plan
WASHINGTON
The Trump administration today announced the release of its final plan to expand drilling and fracking and other fossil fuel extraction across southwestern Colorado for the next two decades, threatening organic agriculture, recreation and endangered species while undermining the state's climate law. It will be published in the Federal Register on Friday.
The Bureau of Land Management's final Uncompahgre land-management plan and record of decision will guide the use of public lands across nearly 1.7 million acres of mountains, woodlands and red-rock deserts for decades to come.
"The Uncompahgre land-management plan gives the initial green light to widespread, long-term oil and gas development in the ecologically sensitive North Fork Valley," said Melissa Hornbein with the Western Environmental Law Center. "This plan, unconscionable as the connections between fossil fuel emissions and global climate change become clearer every day, has the potential to exponentially increase greenhouse gas pollution in the region over the next decade, when we need to be drastically reducing emissions."
"It makes no climate, ecological or economic sense to drill in the North Fork Valley," said Natasha Leger, executive director of Citizens for a Healthy Community. "This is exactly the type of federal action that is responsible for accelerating climate and environmental degradation, which cannot be allowed to stand if we have any hope of protecting present and future generations, rare and irreplaceable ecosystems like the North Fork, and meeting Colorado's goals for a clean and renewable energy future."
The plan ignores 42,000 public comments in opposition, as well as problems identified in the groups' July protest. The agency refused to consider alternatives to curb fossil-fuel leasing and failed to analyze how expanding fracking and drilling could harm organic agriculture, the climate and endangered species like the Colorado pikeminnow and Gunnison sage grouse. The conservation groups are asking the BLM to redo its environmental impact statement and support a plan that recommends no new leasing.
"This dangerous plan ignores climate science and steamrolls the communities that care deeply about these beautiful public lands," said Diana Dascalu-Joffe, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. "Coloradoans understand that we must end fracking to avoid the worst consequences of the climate crisis. We'll do everything possible to prevent this reckless plan from becoming reality."
The BLM's oil and gas production forecast shows the plan would increase climate pollution in the region by more than 2,300 percent over the next decade. Colorado's new law calls for cutting greenhouse gas pollution in half by 2030.
"The plan would severely undermine Colorado's climate goals and entrench the North Fork Valley in decades of dirty fossil fuel extraction," said Rebecca Fischer, climate and energy program attorney for WildEarth Guardians. "Ultimately, the Trump administration is testing Colorado's commitment to its new climate law, and its success depends on the state stepping up to defend bold climate action."
The plan would allow fracking on more than half of the 675,000 acres of public land and almost a million acres of federal minerals that it covers, and coal extraction on another 371,000 acres. The BLM's environmental impact analysis fails to tally direct and indirect climate pollution that would result from fossil fuel production.
Meanwhile a draft plan for eastern Colorado, released by the Trump administration in June, would triple annual greenhouse gas pollution from oil and gas development by 2037. These two plans will dictate public-land management in Colorado for decades.
"The Trump administration's effort to expand drilling on lands in the midst of a climate crisis is reckless," said Kim Pope, organizing representative for the Sierra Club. "Time and again, the BLM makes dangerous land management decisions at the expense of communities and wildlife. Instead of this backward agenda, the Bureau of Land Management must prioritize the input of the public and work with them to protect lands and communities to slow climate disruption."
The region includes the North Fork Valley and Telluride, areas that support exceptional outdoor recreation and Colorado's burgeoning organic agriculture hub. The area also includes numerous threatened and endangered species, including Colorado pikeminnows, razorback suckers, greenback cutthroat trout and Gunnison sage grouse.
Background
Fossil fuel production on public lands causes about a quarter of U.S. greenhouse gas pollution. Peer-reviewed science estimates that a nationwide federal fossil fuel leasing ban would reduce carbon emissions by 280 million tons per year, ranking it among the most ambitious federal climate policy proposals in recent years.
Federal fossil fuels that have not been leased to industry contain up to 450 billion tons of potential climate pollution; those already leased to industry contain up to 43 billion tons. Pollution from already-leased fossil fuels on federal lands, if fully developed, would essentially exhaust the U.S. carbon budget for a 1.5 degree Celsius target.
Existing laws give Congress and presidents the authority to end new federal fossil fuel leasing. Hundreds of organizations have already petitioned the federal government to end new onshore and offshore leasing.
The Western Environmental Law Center uses the power of the law to safeguard the public lands, wildlife, and communities of the American West in the face of a changing climate. We envision a thriving, resilient West, abundant with protected public lands and wildlife, powered by clean energy, and defended by communities rooted in an ethic of conservation.
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House Democrat Probes Trump's $1 Billion 'Quid Pro Quo' Deal With Big Oil
Rep. Jamie Raskin expressed concern that some firms, "which have a track record of using deceitful tactics to undermine effective climate policy, may have already accepted or facilitated Mr. Trump's explicit corrupt bargain."
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A top U.S. House Democrat announced Tuesday that he is demanding answers from fossil fuel executives after Washington Post reporting revealed last week that former Republican President Donald Trump recently told industry leaders he would gut climate regulations if they raised $1 billion for his 2024 presidential campaign.
Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, on Monday wrote to the heads of the American Petroleum Institute (API) and eight companies: Cheniere Energy, Chesapeake Energy, Chevron, Continental Resources, EQT Corporation, ExxonMobil, Occidental Petroleum, and Venture Global LNG.
Raskin's letters note that the executives "appear to have attended" Trump's fundraising dinner at Mar-a-Lago in Florida last month and "media reports raise significant potential ethical, campaign finance, and legal issues that would flow from the effective sale of American energy and regulatory policy to commercial interests in return for large campaign contributions."
"Mr. Trump's unvarnished quid pro quo offer is especially troubling evidence in light of recent accounts that the 'U.S. oil industry is drawing up ready-to-sign executive orders for Donald Trump aimed at pushing natural gas exports, cutting drilling costs, and increasing offshore oil leases in case he wins a second term,'" he wrote, citing Politico. "These preparatory actions suggest that certain oil and gas companies, which have a track record of using deceitful tactics to undermine effective climate policy, may have already accepted or facilitated Mr. Trump's explicit corrupt bargain."
Raskin also highlighted findings from a January Oversight Committee Democrats staff report, which shows that "when Mr. Trump was in office, he accepted at least $7.8 million from kings, princes, and foreign states, including the People's Republic of China and Saudi Arabia, in blatant violation of the Constitution's foreign emoluments clause, and rendered a sequence of foreign policy favors to his patrons."
The congressman—and constitutional scholar—asked the executives to respond to questions and document requests by May 27. He is seeking the names of employees who attended the April 11 fundraiser, copies of materials distributed during the event, descriptions of all policy proposals and related campaign contributions discussed, and draft executive orders or policy paperwork prepared by members of the companies.
"The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is the principal oversight committee of the House of Representatives and has broad authority to investigate 'any matter' at 'any time,'" Raskin explained. "The requested information is needed to investigate and legislate on matters related to presidential and presidential-candidate ethics and to continue to address the major ethics crisis created by Donald Trump's efforts to profit off the presidency."
As Raskin released the letters on Tuesday, Media Matters for America's Allison Fisher pointed out that "unfortunately, over a four-day period, TV news broadcast and cable networks—with the exception of MSNBC—did not cover Trump's proposition to oil executives."
However, Trump has made his policy plans clear. Even before the fundraiser, he publicly pledged to "drill, baby, drill" if he beats Democratic President Joe Biden in November. One March analysis found that a second Trump term would lead to the release of 4 billion more tons of planet-heating carbon dioxide—the combined annual emissions of the European Union and Japan—by 2030 than if Biden were reelected.
The letters aren't the first time Raskin has taken aim at the fossil fuel industry this month. At the beginning of May, he testified before the U.S. Senate Budget Committee about a nearly three-year investigation into "Big Oil's campaign of deception and distraction," which he said "undermines the efforts we need to mobilize our people and government to save our climate, our habitat, and our species."
"Unless the deception ends, and until the industry is held accountable," the congressman warned, "we are unlikely ever to be able to muster the national political will to effectively tackle climate change."
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Record 76 Million Internally Displaced in 2023, Largely Due to Violence
"We have never, ever recorded so many people forced away from their homes and communities," one expert said. "It is a damning verdict on the failures of conflict prevention and peacemaking."
May 14, 2024
War, conflict, and environmental disasters displaced a record 75.9 million people from their homes at the end of 2023, the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center reported Tuesday.
The vast majority of the displaced—68.3 million—were forced from their homes due to conflicts, the highest number since data became available 15 years ago.
"Millions of families are having their lives torn apart by conflict and violence," Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council—which houses IDMC—said in a statement. "We have never, ever recorded so many people forced away from their homes and communities. It is a damning verdict on the failures of conflict prevention and peacemaking."
"This report is a stark reminder of the urgent and coordinated need to expand disaster risk reduction, support peacebuilding, ensure the protection of human rights, and, whenever possible, prevent the displacement before it happens."
The IDMC publishes its Global Report on Internal Displacement every year, which is considered the definitive source for data on internal displacements worldwide. This year's report notes that the number of people displaced within their own countries increased by 51% in the last five years while the number displaced by conflict alone swelled by 49%, spiking in 2022 and 2023. The uptick was primarily due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine as well as renewed or ongoing conflicts in Congo, Ethiopia, and Sudan.
"Over the past two years, we've seen alarming new levels of people having to flee their homes due to conflict and violence, even in regions where the trend had been improving," said IDMC director Alexandra Bilak. "Conflict, and the devastation it leaves behind, is keeping millions from re-building their lives, often for years on end."
In addition to tracking the number of displaced people, the IDMC also looked at the total number of new displacements in 2023. It recorded 46.9 million new movements—20.5 million due to war and conflict and 26.4 million due to natural disasters.
"As the planet grapples with conflicts and disasters, the staggering numbers of 47 million new internal displacements tells a harrowing tale," International Organization for Migration Deputy Director General Ugochi Daniels said in a statement. "This report is a stark reminder of the urgent and coordinated need to expand disaster risk reduction, support peacebuilding, ensure the protection of human rights, and, whenever possible, prevent the displacement before it happens."
Of the 20.5 million conflict-driven displacements last year, nearly two-thirds were due to violence in Sudan, Congo, and Palestine.
In Sudan, renewed hostilities between government and paramilitary forces ignited in April of last year, forcing 6 million new movements and leaving 9.1 million displaced.
"This figure is the highest ever reported for a single country globally since 2008," the report authors wrote.
All told, conflict forced 13.5 million displacements in sub-Saharan Africa, the highest number for the region in 15 years.
Nearly 17% of total conflict displacements in 2023 were forced in Gaza, even though Israel only began its war on the enclave during the last quarter of the year. Although it was only home to around 2.3 million people at the start of the war, Gaza saw 3.4 million displacements, as many people were forced to move multiple times.
"This figure should be considered conservative, because many people were displaced within governorates before moving across them, but such movements were unaccounted for," the report authors explained.
By the end of 2023, around 1.7 million people in Gaza—or 83% of the population— were displaced, "all of them facing acute humanitarian needs," the authors wrote.
The report also says that 7.7 million people were living outside their homes by the end of 2023 due to disasters such as extreme weather and geological events such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. The 26.4 million disaster-driven displacements were the third-highest amount in the last 10 years.
Displacing disasters in 2023 included climate change-fueled events like cyclone Freddy—which caused 1.4 million displacements in southeast Africa—and Canada's record wildfire season, which fueled 185,000 displacements, the highest number for Canada on record.
"No country is immune to disaster displacement," Bilak said. "But we can see a difference in how displacement affects people in countries that prepare and plan for its impacts and those that don't. Those that look at the data and make prevention, response, and long-term development plans that consider displacement fare far better."
Egeland called for more attention to the plight of displaced people after the initial trigger fades from the headlines.
"The suffering and the displacement last far beyond the news cycle," Egeland said. "Too often their fate ends up in silence and neglect. The lack of protection and assistance that millions endure cannot be allowed to continue."
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Veteran Human Rights Leader Has Seen Enough: Israel Perpetrating Genocide in Gaza
Israel's "sustained policy of obstructing the movement of humanitarian assistance into the territory" pushed Human Rights Watch co-founder Aryeh Neier to view the assault on Gaza as a genocide.
May 14, 2024
A widely respected humanitarian law expert who has resisted using the term "genocide" for Israel's killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza—a word used "sparingly" in the international human rights movement, he noted—said Tuesday that he has concluded a genocide is indeed taking place, evidenced particularly by Israel's blocking of humanitarian aid.
Aryeh Neier, who co-founded Human Rights Watch in 1978, served as its executive director for 12 years, and also led the American Civil Liberties Union and the Open Society Foundations, noted in an essay in The New York Review of Books that his organizations have used the term "genocide" to describe few mass killings.
Neier was not convinced of South Africa's genocide claim against Israel when it argued its case with the International Court of Justice in January, even though he was "deeply distressed" by the human impact of Israel's relentless U.S.-backed bombing campaign in Gaza.
The 2,000-pound bombs being used against Gaza's population of 2.3 million Palestinians were "clearly inappropriate," wrote Neier in the magazine's June 6 issue. "Yet I was not convinced that this constituted genocide."
Neier wrote that he believed at the time that Israel's retaliation against Hamas for the October 7 attack it led in southern Israel could "include an attempt to incapacitate" the Palestinian group, necessitating the wide-scale assault on Gaza, where it operates.
"I am now persuaded that Israel is engaged in genocide against Palestinians in Gaza," wrote Neier, whose family escaped Nazi Germany as refugees when he was an infant. "What has changed my mind is its sustained policy of obstructing the movement of humanitarian assistance into the territory."
Israel's intent to block aid—and to treat Gazans as "collectively complicit for Hamas's crimes"—has been clear since shortly after the October 7 attack, when Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said: "There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly."
"I am now persuaded that Israel is engaged in genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. What has changed my mind is its sustained policy of obstructing the movement of humanitarian assistance into the territory."
The result of that policy, wrote Neier, has been the deaths of at least 28 Palestinian children from starvation, according to numbers released by the Gaza Health Ministry in April.
"That number could multiply many times over if reports on food insecurity are valid," he wrote, citing warnings from U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power and World Food Program Executive Director Cindy McCain that famine has already taken hold in parts of Gaza.
Under the "complete siege" ordered by Gallant and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, noted Neier, Israel has severely restricted the number of aid vehicles allowed into Gaza, where the population relied on deliveries from about 500 aid trucks per day before the current escalation. Trucks have been subjected to "time-consuming and onerous inspections," with shipments turned away for including items like children's medical scissors and maternity kits.
Neier also cited Israel's killing of more than 200 aid workers and its persuading of international donors to stop funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)—based on unproven allegations that a dozen of its 13,000 Gaza-based staffers had connections to Hamas—as evidence that Israel is taking numerous steps to stop aid from getting to Gaza's starving population, while killing at least 35,173 Palestinians.
Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in response to Neier's essay that "no one has more authority among human rights advocates than" the author.
"Aryeh Neier is an immensely respected—and not at all politically radical—figure in the human rights community who can't be credibly accused of having any sort of obsession with Israel," said writer Abe Silberstein.
Neier wrote that after working to protect human rights for more than six decades, "there is much about [Israel's attack on Gaza] that is deeply depressing, including how difficult it is to find a way to give victims any hope that justice will eventually be done."
"I myself hope that the frequent citation of international humanitarian law as the standard for judging the conflict will have a positive effect," he wrote. "Whatever else emerges from this war, and whatever judgment comes from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), it is evident that Israel has done itself as well as its Palestinian victims long-term harm."
The ICJ is currently considering South Africa's claim that Israel is committing genocide, having issued a preliminary ruling in January that the case was "plausible" and that Israel must take steps to prevent genocidal acts.
Although the ICJ does not have jurisdiction to adjudicate war crimes or crimes against humanity charges, wrote Neier, "if it ultimately finds that Israel has committed genocide, that will be a resounding defeat for a state that was born in the aftermath of a genocide that many of its founders had barely survived."
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