September, 15 2020, 12:00am EDT
Global Coalition Releases Liability "Roadmap" for Governments To Make Big Polluters Pay
WORLDWIDE
Today, a global coalition released a liability roadmap: a first-of-its-kind tool outlining how local to global decision makers, including government officials, can hold polluting industries liable for the climate damage they knowingly cause, while unlocking climate finance needed to address the climate crisis and implement solutions.
This roadmap, released just one week before UN climate week and days after Portuguese young people announced they're suing 33 countries over inaction on climate change, is the next stage in the global campaign to Make Big Polluters Pay.
Last September, international climate organizations launched a global call for Big Polluter liability at the UN Secretary General's Climate Action Summit in New York City. And at COP25 in Madrid, the demands of hundreds of thousands of people to make Big Polluters pay were delivered to government delegates. Organizations and signatories echoing this call hail from around 70 countries including Bolivia, The Philippines, and Nigeria.
Liability has taken on new importance amid the COVID-19 pandemic and unprecedented climate disasters. Many Big Polluters are in large part responsible for the multi-faceted crises people are facing and are still attempting to profit from fueling it--demanding government bailouts and rolling out PR schemes that position themselves as solutions.
Fossil fuel and other polluting industry liability is a growing area of focus for climate experts, academics and governments alike as the industry's long history of denial and the link between industry emissions and climate impacts becomes more evidenced. From U.S. states to Vanuatu to Peru, elected officials and people are exploring holding polluters like the fossil fuel industry liable for its long history of deceit and environmental destruction.
For example, The Philippines' commission on human rights has concluded that the fossil fuel industry can be held legally responsible for their role in climate change. Earlier this year, the expansion of Heathrow Airport was successfully stopped after civil society argued it was a violation of the UK government's Paris Agreement commitments. Indian fisherman challenging the International Finance Corporation (IFC) secured a precedent-setting judgment in the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019.
In Peru, a farmer is suing a German utility for its role in the crisis harming his livelihood. And, in the United States this year, a federal court ruled against the fossil fuel industry in a procedural matter that could not only clear the way for more cities and states to seek industry accountability, it could even revive cases that had been previously dismissed at the U.S. federal level.
Quotes from Make Big Polluters Pay partners:
"When big polluters pollute big they not only exacerbate catastrophic climate change, the commit crimes. Arson and murder are crimes. Not only do indigenous communities directly suffer direct, more frequent and more destructive climate events with the pollution of fossil fuel energy, the production, infrastructure and refining of fossil fuel kill people and subject them to chronic debilitating illnesses and destroy our biodiversity, food security and ways of life. As local jurisdictions are usually responsible for prosecuting crime, they should be encouraged to go after these killers of all forms of life." - Tom Goldtooth, Indigenous Environmental network
"Scientific evidence is clear, the prevailing agribusiness industry is one of the major drivers of climate change and eco-destruction. It is heavily reliant on fossil fuels, extractivism, agrochemicals, deforestation, and land-use changes. More importantly, this harmful industry is directly affecting the enjoyment of a number of human rights--in particular the human right to adequate food and nutrition. Big polluters have to be held liable for their 'dirty' agribusiness in order to restore essential eco-system services, heal the planet and protect present and future generations' rights." - Astrud Beringer, FIAN International
"The facade of promoting Nature based Solutions, Net Zero and offsetting is a clear pointer that the polluting industries continue to subvert their immediate obligation to reduce emissions. The New Normal is besieged with massive bail outs to the fossil fuel and aviation industries with the agri-business surviving merrily on perverse subsidies; denying the fact they are liable for the climate crisis and rising GHG emissions, deforestation, destruction of livelihoods and food security of billions.
A bottom-up global Peoples' Movement demanding liability from the rogue corporations and climate denier governments would be a Peoples Pathway that continues to demand climate justice recognizing and respecting equity, gender equality and the rights of the Indigenous Peoples, Local Communities, Peasants, Fisherfolks and Workers." - Souparna Lahiri, Climate campaigner and advisor, Global Forest Coalition
"The liability roadmap is about more than lawsuits and courtrooms. This is about making Big Polluters pay for the havoc they've wreaked by fueling the climate crisis and about forcing them to end their abuses. This is about making Big Polluters pay for causing decades of suffering and destruction in communities on the global frontlines of the climate crisis, with no end in sight. The roadmap will carry us further down the road where Big Polluters are forced to put people's well-being and the well-being of the Earth and its ecosystems above expansion, extraction, and profit making." - Sriram Madhusoodanan, U.S. climate campaign director, Corporate Accountability
"The launch of the liability roadmap is timely. It presents an opportunity and pathway that African governments must seize to finally hold polluting industries accountable for the environmental and human rights abuses they have caused in communities across Africa and the world over." - Akinbode Oluwafemi Executive Director Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA)
"Big Polluters have wrecked our climate, ecosystems, lives and livelihoods, for too long. They manage to abdicate any responsibility, and only benefit from the damage they cause, which falls disproportionately on Global South communities, Indigenous Peoples, people of colour, women, workers, farmers, peasants and low-income communities. The Liability Roadmap is a tool we can use to call to account those who have knowingly caused the climate crisis, and make them pay. Not only that, it lays the foundations for systemic change - reducing corporate power and ensuring resources for the much-needed just transformation." - Sara Shaw, Climate Justice & Energy Program Coordinator, Friends of the Earth International
"The same people at the front line of the health, food and economic crises are the same people at the front line of the climate crisis. Transnational corporations have benefited from a broken system based in structural violence that repeatedly harms Black, Indigenous, peasant, and local communities. These systems of oppression only benefit corporations and the elites of the world. But, there is not a planet B. As peoples rise against oppression and racism, we must also rise against Big Polluters that are destroying our lives, our present, our future. This tool will bring us one step closer to making Big Polluters pay and thus, closer to justice." - Nathalie Regifo Alvarez, Latin America Climate Campaign Director, Corporate Accountability
"El poder corporativo no conoce limites, desde capturar las politicas publicas a nivel nacional, influenciar y entorpecer las negociaciones multilaterales del clima a impulsar falsas soluciones que ademas de exacerbar la crisis climatica, incrementan unicamente sus riquezas. La avaricia de unos pocos esta condenando al resto del mundo a una catastrofe ambiental, social y economica. Muchos ya han muerto a causa de este modelo economico que despoja, destruye y mata. Tenemos que crear vias de movilizacion y esperanza para cambiar la balanza a favor de los pueblos mas vulnerables. El Mapa de Responsabilidad Legal es una valiosa herramienta que pretende ser un aporte para que los estados respondan a los pueblos, no al interes corporativo." - Martin Vilela, Responsable de Area, justicia climatica e incidencia internacional. Plataforma Boliviana frente al Cambio Climatico
"The climate emergency and now the Covid-19 crisis are pushing developing countries further into poverty and debt. It's time for the polluting industries and rich countries most responsible for climate change to pay for the damage they've caused. They're liable for the lives and livelihoods being devastated by climate disasters and pollution.
We're supporting communities in South Asia hit by two cyclones this year, while battling a pandemic, and local activists fighting for justice against dirty extractives companies in Zambia and Niger Delta.
This is an opportunity to build back better and protect all our futures by investing in green economies. Covid-19 must not be used as a cover for polluters and governments to continue their disastrous path towards catastrophic global warming." - Harjeet Singh, Global Lead on climate change for ActionAid
Corporate Accountability stops transnational corporations from devastating democracy, trampling human rights, and destroying our planet.
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Humanitarian Groups Dread 2025 Aid Shortfall as Trump Term Looms
"At a time when the richest people on Earth can go to space as a tourist," said one advocate, "it is incomprehensible that we as an international community are unable to find the necessary funding to provide displaced families with shelter."
Dec 04, 2024
As the United Nations humanitarian agency and its partner organizations launched the annual Global Humanitarian overview on Wednesday to appeal for aid ahead of 2025, officials shared sobering numbers: 305 million people in dire need of assistance, 190 million people the agencies believe they can help next year if funding demands are met, and $47 billion that's needed to help the people facing the greatest threats.
Tom Fletcher, under-secretary-general at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said governments, particularly those in wealthy countries like the United States, face "a choice" as the world bears witness to starvation, increasingly frequent climate disasters, and other suffering in Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, and elsewhere.
"We can respond to these numbers with generosity, with compassion, with genuine solidarity for those in the most dire need on the planet—or we can carry on," said Fletcher at a news briefing. "We can choose to leave them alone to face these crises. We can choose to let them down."
Fletcher and other humanitarian leaders noted that as of last month, just 43% of the $50 billion funding appeal made for 2024 had been met.
Food assistance in Syria has been cut by 80% as a result of the large funding gap, while protection services in Myanmar and water and sanitation aid in Yemen have also been reduced.
Fletcher said that with another major funding shortfall expected in 2025, OCHA and its partners are expecting to be forced to make "ruthless" decisions to direct aid to those most in need—likely leaving out 115 million people.
Fears that funding needs will be far from met in 2025 are arising partially from the election last month of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who pursued significant cuts during his first term to agencies including the U.N. Population Fund, UNAIDS, the World Health Organization, and the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
"America is very much on our minds at the moment, we're facing the election of a number of governments who will be more questioning of what the United Nations does and less ideologically supportive of this humanitarian effort that we've laid out in this report," said Fletcher. "But it's our job to frame the arguments in the right way to land and not to give up. And so I'll head to Washington. I'll spend a lot of time in Washington, I imagine, over the next few months, engaging with the new administration, making the case to them, just as I'll spend a lot of time in other capitals where people might be skeptical about the work that we are doing."
Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) Secretary-General Jan Egeland, who led OCHA for three years, toldAl Jazeera that U.S. funding under the Trump administration is "a tremendous question mark."
"Should the U.S. administration cut its humanitarian funding, it could be more complex to fill the gap of growing needs," said Egeland.
The U.S. is the largest humanitarian donor in the world, contributing $10 billion last year—but its donations pale in comparison to its military spending, which was budgeted at more than $841 billion in 2024, and the earnings of its top corporations.
As NRC noted, Facebook parent company Meta earned $47.4 billion—about the same amount humanitarian agencies are requesting this year—before income taxes in 2023.
Without naming billionaire SpaceX CEO Elon Musk—a Trump ally and megadonor who's expected to have a role in his new administration—Camilla Waszink, director of partnership and policy at NRC, called out the widening gap between the world's richest people and those in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.
"At a time when the richest people on Earth can go to space as a tourist and trillions of U.S. dollars are used annually on global military expenditure, it is incomprehensible that we as an international community are unable to find the necessary funding to provide displaced families with shelter and prevent children from dying of hunger," said Waszink. "There is an urgent need for a revamp of global solidarity. Existing donor countries must ensure assistance keeps pace with needs and inflation, and emerging economies should compete to become among the most generous donors in the same way they compete to host expensive international sports events."
"It is devastating to know that millions of people in need will not receive necessary assistance next year because of the growing lack of funding for the humanitarian response. With a record number of conflicts ongoing, donors are cutting aid budgets that displaced and conflict-affected people rely on to survive," she added. "Conflicts and a blatant disregard for protection of civilians are driving massive humanitarian needs. It is essential that donors provide funding, but they must also invest in ending conflicts, bringing violations to a halt and preventing new needs from developing."
Fletcher noted that in addition to conflicts like Israel's U.S.-backed assault on Gaza, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and the civil war in Sudan, the climate crisis is a major driver of growing humanitarian needs.
"2024 will be the hottest year on record," said Fletcher. "Presumably 2025 will then be the hottest year on record. Floods, droughts, heatwaves, wildfires affecting millions. We're on the brink of surpassing the 1.5°C in warming, and that will hit hardest in the countries that have actually contributed least to climate change. It wipes out food systems. It wipes out livelihoods, it forces communities to move from their homes and land. Drought has caused 65% of agricultural economic damage over the last 15 years, worsening food insecurity."
In conflict zones and in regions affected by the climate emergency, said Fletcher, "it's our mission to do more."
"My people are desperate to get out there and deliver because they really are on the frontline," he said. "They can see what is needed, but we need these resources. That's our call to action. And we also need the world to do more. Those with power to do more—to challenge this era of impunity and to challenge this era of indifference."
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CEO of UnitedHealthcare—Largest Private Insurer in US—Killed in Apparent Targeted Attack
"This does not appear to be a random act of violence," according to the police commissioner.
Dec 04, 2024
The CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, was fatally shot early Wednesday outside of a hotel in midtown Manhattan.
During a press conference, New York Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch said that Thompson was killed "in what appears, at this early stage in our investigation, to be a brazen, targeted attack. This does not appear to be a random act of violence." Thompson was taken to Mount Sinai West hospital before being pronounced dead.
Thompson, 50, was believed to be on his way to attend the company's annual investor conference, which was set to take place at the New York Hilton Hotel. Thompson, according to his LinkedIn page, has worked for UnitedHealth Group for 20 years and was named CEO of UnitedHealthcare in April 2021. He was a resident of Minnesota, according to the NYPD.
According to the NYPD, it appears the suspect was "lying in wait for several minutes" before approaching Thompson from behind and firing and striking Thompson multiple times. "Many people passed the suspect, but he appeared to wait for his intended target," said the commissioner.
The shooter, who a detective with the NYPD said appears to be male, then fled the scene, first on foot, and then on an e-bike, and was last seen in Central Park early this morning. There is currently a search underway for the shooter.
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'Right Thing to Do': FERC Delays Controversial LNG Export Terminal
"We are happy about the delay, but these projects don't ever need to be approved and neither does any other LNG facility," one frontline advocate said.
Dec 04, 2024
Frontline communities along the Gulf Coast were granted a "temporary reprieve" last week when the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission moved to pause its approval of the controversial Calcasieu Pass 2 liquefied natural gas export terminal while it conducts an assessment of its impact on air quality.
FERC approved Venture Global's CP2 in late June despite opposition from local residents who say the company's nearly identical Calcasieu Pass terminal has already wracked up a history of air quality violations and disturbed ecosystems and fishing grounds in Louisiana's Cameron Parish, harming health and livelihoods.
"This order reveals that FERC recognizes that CP2 LNG's environmental impacts are too great to pass through any real scrutiny" Megan Gibson, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), said in a statement on Monday.
"FERC's pause on construction may give us some temporary reprieve, but this project never should have been authorized in the first place."
FERC's decision follows a request for a rehearing of its June decision filed by frontline residents and community groups including For a Better Bayou and Fishermen Involved in Sustaining Our Heritage (FISH) as well as the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council. In their request, the groups and individuals pointed to errors the commission had made in its approval decision.
"With this order, it seems FERC is finally willing to acknowledge that it has not done enough to properly consider the cumulative harm on communities caused by building so many of these LNG export terminals so close together," Nathan Matthews, a Sierra Club senior attorney, said in a statement. "Prohibiting construction of CP2 LNG while FERC takes another look at the environmental impact of this massive, polluting facility is the right thing to do."
"Still," Matthews continued, "FERC must take concrete steps to properly evaluate the true scope of the dangers posed to communities from gas infrastructure moving forward and avoid making unwarranted approvals in the future."
FERC's decision comes over four months after the D.C. Circuit Court remanded the commission's approval of Commonwealth LNG, also in Louisiana, over concerns that it had not fully assessed the impacts of that project's air pollution emissions. Now, frontline advocates are urging FERC to do its due diligence as it weighs the environmental impacts of CP2.
"Through the lenses of optical gas imaging, we've seen massive plumes of toxic emissions, undeniable proof that these projects poison the air we breathe," James Hiatt, director of For a Better Bayou, said of LNG export facilities. "Modeling must use the latest data from the most local sources to fully capture the harm these facilities inflict on Cameron Parish. Anything less is a betrayal of our community. FERC must choose justice over profit and stop sacrificing people for polluters."
Gibson of SELC said that FERC had already repeated some of the errors in its CP2 approval in its new order.
"This continued failure to fulfill its regulatory duty is not just an oversight—it is a failure to protect vulnerable communities and our economy from the real potential harms of this massive export project," Gibson said.
FERC's decision comes as the fate of the LNG buildout itself hangs in the balance. The Biden administration's Department of Energy is currently rushing to complete its renewed assessment of whether or not LNG exports serve the public interest. Environmental and frontline groups have argued that they do not because of local pollution, the fact that they would raise domestic energy bills, and their contribution to the climate emergency. CP2 alone would spew 8,510,099 metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent per year, which is about the same as adding 1,850,000 new gas cars to the road.
While President-elect Donald Trump has promised to "drill, baby, drill" and is likely to disregard any Biden administration conclusions, a strong outgoing statement against LNG exports would help bolster legal challenges to Trump energy policy.
At the same time, Bill McKibben pointed out in a column on Tuesday that the administration's pause on LNG export approvals while it updates its public interest criteria has acted to slow the industry's expansion, and that FERC's reconsideration of CP2 could add to this delay.
"The vote for the new review is 4-0, and bipartisan," McKibben wrote. "It could slow down approvals for the project till, perhaps, the third quarter of next year. And that's good news, because the rationale for new LNG exports shrinks with each passing month, as the gap between the price of clean solar, wind, and battery power, and the price of fossil fuel, continues to grow."
Ultimately, frontline Gulf Coast advocates want to see the LNG buildout halted entirely.
"I, along with the fishermen in Cameron, Louisiana, know firsthand how harmful LNG exports are, and see the total disregard they have for human life as they poison our families and seafood," said FISH founder Travis Dardar, an Indigenous fisherman in Cameron, Louisiana. "FERC's pause on construction may give us some temporary reprieve, but this project never should have been authorized in the first place. As far as anyone who believes in the fairytale of LNG being cleaner, we have paid with our communities and livelihoods. It's time to break these chains and turn away from this false solution."
Roisheta Ozaine, a prominent anti-LNG activist and founder of the Vessel Project of Louisiana, said that she, as a mother in an environmental justice community, saw "firsthand how LNG facilities prioritize profit over the well-being of our families. Commonwealth and CP2 are no different."
"We are happy about the delay, but these projects don't ever need to be approved and neither does any other LNG facility," Ozane continued. "My children are suffering from health conditions that threaten their daily lives, all while regulatory agencies and elected officials turn a blind eye. It's time for our leaders to put people before profit and prioritize the health of our communities over the pollution that harms us. We deserve a future where our children's health is safeguarded, not sacrificed."
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