December, 09 2020, 11:00pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Jacey Bingler, Communications Manager, Urgewald, jacey@urgewald.org, +49 175 521 7571
Lucie Pinson, Director, Reclaim Finance, lucie@reclaimfinance.org
Patrick McCully, Climate & Energy Program Director, Rainforest Action Network, patrick@ran.org
Erin Jensen, Deputy Communications Director, Friends of the Earth U.S., 202-222-0722, ejensen@foe.org
WASHINGTON
Two days ahead of the 5th Paris Agreement anniversary, 18 NGOs are releasing a joint report showcasing 12 of the most devastating fossil fuel projects that are currently planned or under development. These expansion projects alone would use up three-quarters of the total remaining carbon budget if we are to have a 66% probability of limiting global warming to 1.5deg Celsius.
The report exposes the banks and investors that are providing financing to the fossil fuel companies developing large-scale, contested coal, oil and gas expansion projects. The 12 case studies highlight the immense environmental damage, violation of Indigenous rights, negative health impacts, human rights concerns and expected CO2 emissions caused by each of the projects. The group of organizations behind the report has formulated concrete policy demands for the finance industry. The finance sector needs to rapidly move money and services such as insurance out of the fossil fuel industry. The first priority should be to no longer enable coal, oil and gas expansion projects - such as those covered in the report - to move forward.
The full report can be downloaded at: https://urgewald.org/five-years-lost.
The case studies covered in the report were chosen based on their detrimental local and global impacts. They are being pushed forward against local resistance and despite calls by scientists and numerous political leaders to phase out fossil fuels.[1] The case studies are: gas extraction in Mozambique; oil & gas development in Suriname; oil & gas drilling in the US Permian Basin; oil & gas extraction in Argentina's Vaca Muerta region; coal and gas in Bangladesh's Payra Hub; China's new coal power plants; India's coal mines; coal expansion in the Philippines; gas extraction as part of Australia's Burrup Hub; drilling for oil & gas in the Norway Barents Sea; oil & gas projects and pipeline construction in the East Mediterranean; and offshore oil & gas drilling in the UK.
Together, these 12 projects are expected to cause at least 175 gigatons of additional CO2 equivalent emissions, should they move forward as intended by the companies involved. This is almost 75% of the remaining 235 Gt carbon budget if we are to limit global warming to 1.5degC with a 66% probability. [2]
The companies represented in the most case studies are ExxonMobil, BP and Total. These oil majors are each involved in six out of the eight oil and gas projects in the report. Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron are each involved in five of the eight oil and gas projects. Equinor is involved in four, while Repsol and Eni are each represented in three.
The report finds that financial institutions have provided $1.6 trillion in loans and underwriting since January 2016 and invested $1.1 trillion in bonds and shares in the 133 companies driving the 12 fossil fuel expansion projects. [3] On the banking side, the companies that have received the most funding since the Paris Agreement are BP, ExxonMobil, Petrobras, Occidental Petroleum and State Grid Corporation of China with a total of $358 billion in loans and underwriting from January 2016 to August 2020. The companies in the report with the highest investment value are Chevron, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Total, and BP. Together, investors hold bonds and shares in value of $394 billion in these five companies, as of August 2020.
20 investors provided almost half of the total investments - $535 billion of the total $1.1 trillion - identified in the report. Among the top investors, US financial institutions are the worst offenders. With bonds and shares worth $110 billion, BlackRock (USA) is the top investor in the report's coal, oil and gas companies. Vanguard (USA) follows closely behind with $104 billion in bonds and shares. State Street (USA) is in third place with $50.8 billion, followed by Capital Group (USA) with $48.4 billion. Only four of the top 20 investors are not from the US: the Norwegian Government Pension Fund with $31.9 billion in fifth place, UBS (Switzerland) with $11.8 billion in 11th place, Deutsche Bank (Germany) with $10.4 billion in 19th place and Legal & General (UK) with $9.8 billion in 20th place.
The top 20 banks provided more than half of the total funding to the fossil fuel companies involved in these 12 projects: $949 billion out of the total $1.6 trillion. The US banks CitiGroup, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase are the top financiers with a total of $295 billion. There are eight European banks among the top 20. Together, they provided $308 billion, led by Barclays ($66.4 billion) and HSBC ($55.2 billion), and followed by BNP Paribas ($52.7 billion), Deutsche Bank ($27.6 billion), Credit Suisse ($22.5 billion) and Santander ($21.1 billion). The Japanese banks in the top 20, Mitsubishi, Mizuho and SMBC, provided financing worth $149 billion. Also among the top 20 financiers are the Bank of China ($26.5 billion) and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China ($24.9 billion), and the Royal Bank of Canada ($24.7 billion).
"These 12 case studies illustrate the lamentable failure of banks to respond to the urgency of the climate crisis. Instead of adopting a rigorous approach that would prevent the expansion of fossil fuels and facilitate their phase-out, global banks are refusing to break with the fatal growth trend of fossil extraction. BNP Paribas, JPMorgan Chase and Mitsubishi all have very different coal, oil and gas exclusion policies. However, this report shows that there is something that clearly unites them: they all keep supporting some of the worst projects worldwide through their loyal financing to the oil and gas majors," comments Lucie Pinson, executive director of Reclaim Finance.
"The Vaca Muerta geological basin in Argentina has the world's second largest reserves of shale gas. But fracking is not financially viable without huge government subsidies: in 2021, the subsidies to private companies are projected to cost the government one percent of Argentina's national budget, and four times its total health expenses projected for Covid 19. So exploiting Vaca Muerta is not part of the climate solution." says Maria Marta di Paola, director of investigations with FARN.
A multitude of new exclusion policies and sustainability commitments have recently been released by banks and investors. However, the findings outlined in the "Five Years Lost" report prove that the finance industry is failing to align its business model with the Paris Agreement. The 12 case studies, while are by no means the only examples of unhindered fossil fuel expansion, should be seen as a litmus test for the industry. As long as financiers do not divest from the top companies driving these fossil fuel expansion projects forward, their sustainability announcements clearly ring hollow. It is high time for financial institutions to adopt policies that exclude companies whose fossil fuel expansion plans will blow our carbon budget. Otherwise global efforts to fight the climate crisis will fail.
"Developing new coal, oil and gas reserves while the world is already experiencing the devastating effects of climate change is insane. This is the opposite of reducing CO2 emissions as agreed five years ago in Paris. If carbon bomb mega-projects such as the ones showcased in this report move forward, we will overshoot 1.5deg of global warming. The leading investors of the companies behind these projects are BlackRock, Vanguard and StateStreet. These institutions are gambling away our future and are exposing themselves to a risk of huge stranded assets at the same time. The only reasonable decision for investors in this situation is to green their portfolio and to quit companies planning new fossil investments now," says Katrin Ganswindt, Finance Campaigner with Urgewald.
The full report can be downloaded at: https://urgewald.org/five-years-lost.
The Environmental Working Group is a community 30 million strong, working to protect our environmental health by changing industry standards.
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US Led 'Unprecedented' Surge in Global Military Spending in 2024
"As governments increasingly prioritize military security, often at the expense of other budget areas, the economic and social trade-offs could have significant effects on societies for years to come," said one expert.
Apr 28, 2025
Military spending worldwide soared to $2.718 trillion last year, meaning it "has increased every year for a full decade, going up by 37% between 2015 and 2024," according to an annual report released Monday.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has tracked conflict, disarmament, and weapons for nearly six decades. Its 2024 spending report states that "for the second year in a row, military expenditure increased in all five of the world's geographical regions, reflecting heightened geopolitical tensions across the globe."
In a Monday statement, Xiao Liang, a researcher with the SIPRI Military Expenditure and Arms Production Program, highlighted that "over 100 countries around the world raised their military spending in 2024."
"It was the highest year-on-year increase since the end of the Cold War."
"This was really unprecedented... It was the highest year-on-year increase since the end of the Cold War," Liang told Agence France-Press, while acknowledging that there may have been larger jumps during the Cold War but Soviet Union data is not available.
Liang warned that "as governments increasingly prioritize military security, often at the expense of other budget areas, the economic and social trade-offs could have significant effects on societies for years to come."
The United States—whose Republican lawmakers are currently cooking up a plan to give even more money to a Pentagon that's never passed an audit—led all countries, with $997 billion in military spending. The report points out that the U.S. not only allocated "3.2 times more than the second-largest spender," but also "accounted for 37% of global military expenditure in 2024 and 66% of spending by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members."
In the second spot was China, with an estimated $314 billion in spending. Nan Tian, director of the SIPRI Military Expenditure and Arms Production Program, raised the alarm about spending in Asia.
"Major military spenders in the Asia-Pacific region are investing increasing resources into advanced military capabilities," said Tian. "With several unresolved disputes and mounting tensions, these investments risk sending the region into a dangerous arms-race spiral."
In third place was Russia, with an estimated $149 billion in spending. Russia remains at war after launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Rounding out the top five were Germany ($88.5 billion) and India ($86.1 billion).
They were followed by the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, France, Japan, South Korea, Israel, Poland, Italy, and Australia. The report says that "together, the top 15 spenders in 2024 accounted for 80% of global military spending ($2,185 billion) and for 79% of the total increase in spending over the year. All 15 increased their military spending in 2024."
"The two largest year-on-year percentage increases among this group were in Israel (+65%) and Russia (+38%), highlighting the effect of major conflicts on spending trends in 2024," the publication continues. Israel has been engaged in a U.S.-backed military assault on the Gaza Strip—globally condemned as genocide—since October 2023.
"Russia once again significantly increased its military spending, widening the spending gap with Ukraine," noted SIPRI researcher Diego Lopes da Silva. "Ukraine currently allocates all of its tax revenues to its military. In such a tight fiscal space, it will be challenging for Ukraine to keep increasing its military spending."
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday announced an upcoming three-day truce to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. In response, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for an immediate monthlong cease-fire.
All NATO members boosted military spending last year, which SIPRI researcher Jade Guiberteau Ricard said was "driven mainly by the ongoing Russian threat and concerns about possible U.S. disengagement within the alliance."
"It is worth saying that boosting spending alone will not necessarily translate into significantly greater military capability or independence from the USA," the expert added. "Those are far more complex tasks."
Another SIPRI researcher, Lorenzo Scarazzato, highlighted that "for the first time since reunification Germany became the biggest military spender in Western Europe, which was due to the €100 billion special defense fund announced in 2022."
"The latest policies adopted in Germany and many other European countries suggest that Europe has entered a period of high and increasing military spending that is likely to continue for the foreseeable future," Scarazzato said.
As for the Middle East, SIPRI researcher Zubaida Kari said that "despite widespread expectations that many Middle Eastern countries would increase their military spending in 2024, major rises were limited to Israel and Lebanon."
In addition to slaughtering at least tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza over the past nearly 19 months, Israel has killed thousands of people in Lebanon while allegedly targeting the political and paramilitary group Hezbollah. Kari said that elsewhere in the region, "countries either did not significantly increase spending in response to the war in Gaza or were prevented from doing so by economic constraints."
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Not Just for the Battlefield: Rights Group Warns of Dystopian World Where Killer Robots Reign
"To avoid a future of automated killing, governments should seize every opportunity to work toward the goal of adopting a global treaty on autonomous weapons systems," according to the author of the report.
Apr 28, 2025
In a report published Monday, a leading human rights group calls for international political action to prohibit and regulate so-called "killer robots"—autonomous weapons systems that select targets based on inputs from sensors rather than from humans—and examines them in the context of six core principles in international human rights law.
In some cases, the report argues, an autonomous weapons system may simply be incompatible with a given human rights principle or obligation.
The report, co-published by Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic, comes just ahead of the first United Nations General Assembly meeting on autonomous weapons systems next month. Back in 2017, dozens of artificial intelligence and robotics experts published a letter urging the U.N. to ban the development and use of killer robots. As drone warfare has grown, those calls have continued.
"To avoid a future of automated killing, governments should seize every opportunity to work toward the goal of adopting a global treaty on autonomous weapons systems," said the author behind the report, Bonnie Docherty, a senior arms adviser at Human Rights Watch and a lecturer on law at Harvard Law School's International Human Rights Clinic, in a statement on Monday.
According to the report, which includes recommendations on a potential international treaty, the call for negotiations to adopt "a legally binding instrument to prohibit and regulate autonomous weapons systems" is supported by at least 129 countries.
Drones relying on an autonomous targeting system have been used by Ukraine to hit Russian targets during the war between the two countries, The New York Timesreported last year.
In 2023, the Pentagon announced a program, known as the Replicator initiative, which involves a push to build thousands of autonomous drones. The program is part of the U.S. Defense Department's plan to counter China. In November, the watchdog group Public Citizen alleged that Pentagon officials have not been clear about whether the drones in the Replicator project would be used to kill.
A senior Navy admiral recently toldBloomberg that the program is "alive and well" under the Department of Defense's new leadership following U.S. President Donald Trump's return to the White House.
Docherty warned that the impact of killer robots will stretch beyond the traditional battlefield. "The use of autonomous weapons systems will not be limited to war, but will extend to law enforcement operations, border control, and other circumstances, raising serious concerns under international human rights law," she said in the statement
When it comes to the right to peaceful assembly under human rights law, which is important in the context of law enforcement exercising use force, "autonomous weapons systems would be incompatible with this right," according to the report.
Killer robots pose a threat to peaceful assembly because they "would lack human judgment and could not be pre-programmed or trained to address every situation," meaning they "would find it challenging to draw the line between peaceful and violent protesters."
Also, "the use or threat of use of autonomous weapons systems, especially in the hands of abusive governments, could strike fear among protesters and thus cause a chilling effect on free expression and peaceful assembly," per the report.
Killer robots would also contravene the principle of human dignity, according to the report, which establishes that all humans have inherent worth that is "universal and inviolable."
"The dignity critique is not focused on the systems generating the wrong outcomes," the report states. "Even if autonomous weapons systems could feasibly make no errors in outcomes—something that is extremely unlikely—the human dignity concerns remain, necessitating prohibitions and regulations of such systems."
"Autonomous weapon systems cannot be programmed to give value to human life, do not possess emotions like compassion that can generate restraint to violence, and would rely on processes that dehumanize individuals by making life-and-death decisions based on software and data points," Docherty added.
In total, the report considers the right to life; the right to peaceful assembly; the principle of human dignity; the principle of nondiscrimination; the right to privacy; and the right to remedy.
The report also lists cases where it's more ambiguous whether autonomous weapons systems would violate a certain right.
The right to privacy, for example, protects individuals from "arbitrary or unlawful" interferences in their personal life. According to the report, "The development and use of autonomous weapons systems could violate the right because, if they or any of their component systems are based on AI technology, their development, testing, training, and use would likely require mass surveillance."
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'Absolute Insanity': Right-Wing Activist Asks If Trump Will Suspend Habeas Corpus to Expel More Migrants
"Anyone advocating for suspending the writ of habeas corpus because they don't like due process is spitting on the legacy of those who fought and died for this country and our Constitution," said one policy expert.
Apr 28, 2025
With the Trump administration making space in the press briefing room for right-wing podcasters and other conservative "new media" content creators, viewers of briefings since President Donald Trump took office have seen his press secretary field questions about the Ukrainian president's clothing during an Oval Office meeting, compliments about Trump's "fitness plan," and attacks on reporters who have long reported from the White House.
On Monday, the first question of the briefing was derided by one Democratic politician as "absolute insanity," as right-wing commentator and influencer Rogan O'Handley—also known by the handle "DC Draino"—was given the floor to ask whether Trump will suspend the writ of habeas corpus in order to circumvent several judges' rulings and "start shipping out" undocumented immigrants without due process.
"Can you please let us know if and when the Trump administration is planning to suspend the writ of habeas corpus to circumvent these radical judges?" asked O'Handley after accusing federal judges of "thwarting [Trump's] agenda with an unprecedented number of national injunctions."
O'Handley shared some familiar right-wing talking points—saying federal judges have provided "more due process to violent MS-13 and Tren de Aragua illegal aliens than they did for U.S. citizens who peacefully protested on January 6"—as he suggested the administration should abandon the legal principle under which people who are detained are permitted to challenge their imprisonment in court.
"You have got to be kidding me," wrote Sara McGee, a Democrat running for the Texas House of Representatives.
His question came amid escalating attacks by Republicans and the administration on judges who have ruled against the White House. A Republican congressman said last month that Chief Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. should be impeached for issuing an order against Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to expel hundreds of undocumented immigrants to El Salvador. Last week, the FBI arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan for allegedly helping a migrant evade arrest by escorting him out of her courtroom.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, noted that O'Handley and press secretary Karoline Leavitt also repeatedly cited at least one statistic that was "completely made up"—that the Biden administration allowed 15 million undocumented immigrants into the United States—as they suggested Trump should take legal steps to force all of them out of the country without the input of the judicial system.
The undocumented population in the U.S. in 2023 was 11.7 million, according to the Center for Migration Studies, down from the peak of 12 million, which was reached in 2008.
"They've been pushing this on the right for about a week now," said Reichlin-Melnick of the push to suspend habeas corpus for undocumented immigrants. "Anyone advocating for suspending the writ of habeas corpus because they don't like due process is spitting on the legacy of those who fought and died for this country and our Constitution."
Leavitt responded to O'Handley's question by saying while she has "not heard such discussions take place... the president and the entire administration are certainly open to all legal and constitutional remedies" to continue expelling people from the United States.
Several cases of undocumented immigrants who have been sent to El Salvador's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center have made national headlines in recent weeks, including that of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia; Merwil Gutiérrez, a 19-year-old who federal agents acknowledged was not who they were looking for during a raid; and Andry Hernandez Romero, a makeup artist who was accused of being a gang member solely because he had tattoos.
O'Handley's suggestion that the bedrock legal principle be suspended for undocumented immigrants—hundreds of whom have already been forced out of the country without due process—came ahead of Trump's scheduled signing of two new immigration-related executive orders.
One would direct the departments of Justice and Homeland Security to publish a list of sanctuary cities and states—those where local law enforcement are directed not to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement as it seeks to arrest undocumented immigrants.
The other, Leavitt said, would "unleash America's law enforcement to pursue criminals." The New York Postreported that the order would be related to providing local police agencies with military equipment and legal support for officers accused of wrongdoing.
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