April, 22 2020, 12:00am EDT
Environmentalists Blast Oil Industry Attempts to Hijack the Fed's Main Street Lending Program
Environmentalists are blasting attempts by oil and gas companies to hijack the Fed's Main Street Lending Program in order to pay down their debt -- debt that began skyrocketing long before the coronavirus impacted the industry.
"Big Oil is looking to steal as big a piece of the stimulus as possible. While first responders work without hazard pay or PPE gear, polluters are looking for a lifeline from taxpayers for their failing industry," said Lukas Ross, Friends of the Earth Senior Policy Analyst.
WASHINGTON
Environmentalists are blasting attempts by oil and gas companies to hijack the Fed's Main Street Lending Program in order to pay down their debt -- debt that began skyrocketing long before the coronavirus impacted the industry.
"Big Oil is looking to steal as big a piece of the stimulus as possible. While first responders work without hazard pay or PPE gear, polluters are looking for a lifeline from taxpayers for their failing industry," said Lukas Ross, Friends of the Earth Senior Policy Analyst.
According to reporting from Reuters, the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA) is asking the Fed "to reconsider a provision that bars eligible borrowers from using the cash to repay other loan balances and requires borrowers to promise to repay the Fed before other debt of equal or lower priority." In other words, they're looking to take the money, use it to pay pre-existing debts, and run.
"This is nothing more than a greedy grab of the people's bailout by some of the wealthiest corporations in the world," said Tamara Toles O'Laughlin, North America Director of 350.org. "Big Oil is trying to protect profits for money hungry executives by siphoning dollars desperately needed by small and medium-sized businesses. This isn't just bad for everyday people, it's terrible for our climate. It's time to invest in a renewable energy economy that works for everybody. And it's past time to stop propping up polluters. Government support should go directly to people losing jobs, wages, and suffering from lack of access to healthcare, not to help pay the debts of billionaires."
Economists and experts are in widespread agreement that the economic collapse of the oil and gas sector is due to long term structural problems that have only been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and oil price war. Over the last decade the industry has taken on enormous debt while spending billions on massive stock buybacks and dividend payments, and continued to pour money into new production, despite clear warnings that their trajectory endangers the planet, economy, and their own viability.
"This week's price crash is not just another boom and bust cycle -- economists have warned that fossil fuels are a risky investment for years," said Jack Shapiro, Greenpeace USA Senior Climate Campaigner. "No matter what Trump and climate deniers in Congress do, the transition from oil and gas to renewable energy is inevitable. Justice for workers and communities is not, especially if fossil fuel executives are allowed to write the rules. We must do everything we can to ensure oil CEOs don't escape with a golden parachute while their workers are left to foot the bill. Congress must guarantee that not a cent of taxpayer money will go to the corporations that created and profited from the climate crisis."
A report released earlier this week by the Center for International Environmental Law, "Pandemic Crisis, Systemic Decline, Why Exploiting the COVID-19 Crisis Will Not Save the Oil, Gas, and Plastic Industries," even before the present crisis, oil, gas and plastics companies showed clear signs of systemic weakness, including long-term underperformance on stock markets, massive accumulations of corporate debt, and rapidly slowing growth.
"Oil and gas companies came into this crisis already saddled with hundreds of billions in corporate debt, fracking wells that were leaking cash, a decade-long stock slump, dwindling investor confidence and a business model fundamentally incompatible with a liveable world. No amount of public money can reverse those trends. Throwing taxpayer dollars down such an unfillable hole at a time of national and global crisis is as unconscionable as it is pointless," said CIEL President Carroll Muffett.
The paper makes clear that diverting COVID-19 support to oil, gas, and plastic companies will take money away from much-needed public health initiatives, and ultimately won't save these failing industries, as the underlying trends spell long-term decline for oil, gas, and petrochemical companies.
"The oil industry and its financiers have long subordinated protecting the climate and respecting indigenous peoples to their desire for short-term profit. Now they want a bailout when their badly-managed finances are collapsing. This not the time to bail out a failing and harmful industry; it is the time to take care of those most impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic and make our economic and health systems more resilient to the coming climate crisis," said Moira Birss, Climate and Finance Director at Amazon Watch.
Attempting to hijack a bailout designed to benefit small businesses is just the latest attempt by the oil and gas industry to profit off of federal bailout programs. Since the outset of the coronavirus, the fossil fuel industry has attempted to profiteer off the crisis, lobbying the Trump administration for bailouts and the rollback of environmental protections, while pushing forward with the construction of dangerous projects like the Keystone XL pipeline. This morning, President Trump tweeted that he has instructed the Secretary of Energy and Secretary of the Treasury to formulate a plan which will make funds available to the oil and gas industry.
"The fossil fuel industry wants us to believe its financial woes are just the result of COVID-19, but that's a lie -- these problems have been mounting for years as oil companies and banks made ever-riskier bets on extraction projects hurting communities and wrecking the climate," said Collin Rees, Senior Campaigner at Oil Change International. "The only special treatment the Fed or any other bank should give the oil and gas industry is an automatic hard pass."
This latest move by oil and gas companies is a clear reminder why it's essential that Congress provide better oversight of the Fed bailout programs. That's especially true for Fed programs that will be managed by Wall Street financial institutions. Groups with the Stop the Money Pipeline campaign have already raised alarms about BlackRock's management of the Fed's multi-billion dollar debt purchasing program, moves by the Commodities Futures Trading Association to bailout banks for risky bets in the oil and gas sector, and the news that major US banks are considering direct ownership of oil and gas companies.
"So we're in a pandemic realizing how fragile we are in this wide world, how much our families and our loved ones matter to us. The federal government bailing out the industries destroying our only home, the only home of generations yet to come, is unconscionable," said Tara Houska, founder of Giniw Collective. "Mother Nature has reminded us of our place in creation, we should listen."
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US Voter Registrations Surge as Republicans Try to Limit Ballot Access
One group said it has registered over 100,000 new voters since U.S. President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
Jul 26, 2024
The group behind a popular get-out-the-vote technology platform said Friday that it's registered more than 100,000 new U.S. voters since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, a surge that came amid mounting Republican efforts to make it harder to register and vote.
Vote.org said that 84% of voters registered in the new wave are under age 35. Nearly 1 in 5 new registrees is 18 years old. Andrea Hailey, the group's CEO, said that "since 2020, we have led the largest voter registration drive in U.S. history," with more than 7.8 million people registered.
After dropping out, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to face former Republican President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in the November election. The new presumptive Democratic candidate has already earned endorsements from many Democrats in Congress and groups advocating on issues including climate, labor, and reproductive rights.
Vote.org's success comes as Republicans at the federal level are proposing and passing legislation creating obstacles to the ballot box.
Earlier this month, U.S. House Republicans passed Rep. Chip Roy's (R-Texas)
Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to vote in federal elections. Republicans claim the bill is meant to fix the virtually nonexistent "problem" of noncitizen voter fraud.
However, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.)
slammed the bill as a "xenophobic attack" meant to silence "Black voices, brown voices, LBGTQIA+ voices, [and] young voices."
Lee said the SAVE Act underscores the need to pass her recently introduced Right to Vote Act, "which would establish the first-ever affirmative federal voting rights guarantee, ensuring every citizen may exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot."
Earlier this year, U.S. Senate Democrats also reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation its sponsors say will "update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act."
Meanwhile, Republican-controlled state legislatures and red-state governors are enacting laws imposing tough restrictions on voter registration, with violations punishable by stiff fines that critics say are meant to dissuade people from registration drives and similar efforts.
Again under the guise of preventing fraud, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed legislation limiting voter registration drives, with fines of up to $250,000 for violators.
"These draconian laws and rules are like taking a sledgehammer to hit a flea," Cecile Scoon, an attorney and president of the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters,
toldThe New York Times in an article published Friday.
Three years after Kansas passed a law making "false representation" of an election official a crime, campaigners say it's become extremely difficult to sign up new voters.
"In 2020, even with the pandemic, we had registered nearly 10,000 Kansans to vote. Now, we haven't been able to register anyone," Davis Hammet, president of the youth voter mobilization group Loud Light, told the Times.
In Louisiana, Republican state lawmakers quietly passed legislation making it easier for election officials to toss out absentee ballots with missing details, limiting how people can mail in other voters' ballots, and restricting the ability to assist people with disabilities with their ballots.
"What we've found is that these measures have a disproportionate impact on voters with disabilities, both Black and white," NAACP Legal Defense Fund senior policy counsel Jared Evans
toldNola.com earlier this week.
"It's clear that their goal is to make it harder to vote, harder for specific communities to vote especially," Evans added. "What they don't realize is that these laws hurt white voters, too."
In Nebraska, Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen last week
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"We refuse to accept thousands of Nebraskans having their voting rights stripped away," ACLU of Nebraska legal and policy fellow Jane Seu said in a statement. "We are confident in the constitutionality of these laws, and we are exploring every option to ensure that Nebraskans who have done their time can vote."
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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.
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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 campaigners 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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