April, 06 2021, 12:00am EDT

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Brynn Furey, Energy Conservation and Efficiency Associate, 954-829-0607, bfurey@environmentamerica.org
Johanna Neumann, Senior Director, Campaign for 100% Renewable Energy, 413-367-4794, johanna@environmentamerica.org
Josh Chetwynd, Communications Manager, 303-573-5558, jchetwynd@publicinterestnetwork.org
New Report: Electrifying America's Buildings by 2050 Could Be Like Taking 65 Million Cars off the Road
Building electrification is a key step to cutting carbon emissions and reaching 100 percent renewable energy.
WASHINGTON
Replacing fossil fuel technology with electric options in the majority of American homes and businesses over the next 30 years could reduce so much net carbon emissions that it would be the equivalent of taking 65 million cars -- almost one-fourth of the total number of cars in the U.S. in 2019 -- off the road. These important savings are just one of the major findings in a new report released Tuesday by Environment America Research & Policy Center, U.S. PIRG Education Fund and Frontier Group. Entitled Electric Buildings: Repowering Homes and Businesses for Our Health and Environment, the study documents the benefits of electrifying the majority of buildings in America for consumers and the environment.
In addition, the report ranks states by their capacity to decrease greenhouse gas emissions through building electrification. New York, California, Texas, Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania were the states with the greatest ability to lower carbon emissions over the next 30 years by cutting fossil fuel usage out of homes and offices.
"Change is upon us -- we just need to embrace it. We have the tools and technology right now to make every home and most businesses in America run -- and run better -- on clean renewable energy," said Susan Rakov, chair of Environment America Research & Policy Center's Clean Energy program. "When my gas stove failed this year, I bought an induction stove. It sure is different -- and I love it. It boils water faster than my old gas stove, it doesn't release dangerous air pollutants into my home when we're cooking, and I no longer have to worry about escaping methane from the stove contributing to global warming."
Such electric technologies as heat pumps, water heaters and other electric appliances like induction stoves can help America end its dependence on dirty, dangerous fossil fuels, the report explains. Advances in these technologies make choosing a fully electric system for homes and commercial buildings an efficient and affordable decision for owners in almost all new construction situations. In some cities, installing a heat pump over fossil fuel heating methods in a new home could save between $1,600 and $6,800 for space and water heating over a 15-year period. In other locations, savings could reach as high as $13,700 during the same timespan.
Electrifying America's buildings is critical to lower carbon emissions and put us on the path towards 100 percent renewable energy. In 2018, fossil fuel combustion in U.S. homes and businesses accounted for almost 9 percent of total U.S. emissions.
"Last century, many families saw their quality of life improve when they switched from a coal-burning stove to an electric or gas range, or an icebox to an electric refrigerator," said Johanna Neumann, senior director of Environment America Research & Policy Center's Campaign for 100% Renewable Energy. "Today, a new technological revolution is underway to replace fossil fuel heating and cooking with electric technologies. The sooner America makes the switch, the sooner we'll realize the benefits of cleaner and more efficient energy."
With Environment America, you protect the places that all of us love and promote core environmental values, such as clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and clean energy to power our lives. We're a national network of 29 state environmental groups with members and supporters in every state. Together, we focus on timely, targeted action that wins tangible improvements in the quality of our environment and our lives.
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Americans Take to the Streets for 1,000+ 'Workers Over Billionaires' Labor Day Rallies
"Workers are fighting for a society where public schools take precedence over private profits, healthcare is prioritized over hedge funds, and affordable housing is valued more than homelessness," said May Day Strong.
Sep 01, 2025
This is a developing story... Please check back for possible updates.
Americans turned out across the United States on Monday for more than 1,000 demonstrations against President Donald Trump and other oligarchs "to reclaim worker power against billionaires who hoard unprecedented wealth and power."
The "Workers Over Billionaires" protests, led by the May Day Strong Coalition, which is made up of dozens of organizations including the AFL-CIO, American Federation of Teachers, National Union of Healthcare Workers, and advocacy groups like Americans for Tax Fairness, Indivisible, Our Revolution, and Public Citizen.
Demonstrations took place or are set to happen in big cities, small towns, and communities in between all across the nation. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) spoke at a rally in Concord, New Hampshire, where he vowed that "together, we will create an economy and government that work for all, not just the 1%."
May Day Strong said Monday's mobilizations aim "to build collective action against billionaires taking over the US government."
"Building upon momentum from May Day, Good Trouble Lives On, No Kings, and key impromptu actions in the streets and the workplace, Workers Over Billionaires will reach communities nationwide, tapping rural and city workers to stop the billionaire agenda that continues to burden everyone," the coalition said. "As the federal government continues to enable the ultrarich, working people are stepping onto pavement to stop their greed and protect their families."
"Working families want to live in a country that puts workers over billionaires," the coalition added. "Workers are fighting for a society where public schools take precedence over private profits, healthcare is prioritized over hedge funds, and affordable housing is valued more than homelessness."
AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said ahead of the protests: "Every single thing working people have won for ourselves in this country's history—it's not because we asked those in power. It's not because they were handed to us. It's because we fought for them relentlessly."
Saqib Bhatti, executive director of Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE), told USA Today that "it's important to show that there is opposition to the Trump-billionaire agenda in every community, big and small; it's not just cities that are united against what's happening... it's all towns, it's small towns that voted overwhelmingly for Trump."
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Trump Admin Circulating Plan to Transform Depopulated Gaza Into High-Tech Cash Cow
Under the proposal, the US would take control after "voluntary" relocation of Palestinians from the strip, where proposed projects include an Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone and Gaza Trump Riviera & Islands.
Sep 01, 2025
The White House is "circulating" a plan to transform a substantially depopulated Gaza into US President Donald Trump's vision of a high-tech "Riviera of the Middle East" brimming with private investment and replete with artificial intelligence-powered "smart cities."
That's according a 38-page prospectus for a proposed Gaza Reconstitution, Economic Acceleration, and Transformation (GREAT) Trust obtained by The Washington Post and published in a report on Sunday. Parts of the proposal were previously reported by the Financial Times.
"Gaza can transform into a Mediterranean hub for manufacturing, trade, data, and tourism, benefiting from its strategic location, access to markets... resources, and a young workforce all supported by Israeli tech and [Gulf Cooperation Council] investments," the prospectus states.
However, to journalist Hala Jaber, the plan amounts to "genocide packaged as real estate."
Here comes the Gaza Network State.A plan to turn Gaza into a privately-developed “gleaming tourism resort and high-tech manufacturing and technology hub” with “AI-powered smart cities” and “Trump Riviera” resortgift link:wapo.st/4g2eATo
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— Gil Durán (@gilduran.com) August 31, 2025 at 10:18 AM
The GREAT Trust was drafted by some of the same Israelis behind the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), whose aid distribution points in Gaza have been the sites of deliberate massacres and other incidents in which thousands of aid-seeking Palestinians have been killed or wounded.
According to the Post, financial modeling for the GREAT Trust proposal "was done by a team working at the time for the Boston Consulting Group"—which played a key role in creating GHF. BCG told the Post that the firm did not approve work on the trust plan, and that two senior partners who led the financial modeling were subsequently terminated.
The GREAT Trust envisions "a US-led multirlateral custodianship" lasting a decade or longer and leading to "a reformed Palestinian self-governance after Gaza is "demilitarized and de-radicalized."
Josh Paul—a former US State Department official who resigned in October 2023 over the Biden administration's decision to sell more arms to Israel as it waged a war on Gaza increasingly viewed by experts as genocidal—told Democracy Now! last week that Trump's plan for Gaza is "essentially a new form of colonialism, a transition from Israeli colonialism to corporate" colonialism.
The GREAT Trust contains two proposals for Gaza's more than 2 million Palestinians. Under one plan, approximately 75% of Gaza's population would remain in the strip during its transformation. The second proposal involves up to 500,000 Gazans relocating to third countries, 75% of them permanently.
The prospectus does not say how many Palestinians would leave Gaza under the relocation option. Those who choose to permanently relocate to other unspecified countries would each receive $5,000 plus four years of subsidized rent and subsidized food for a year.
The GREAT Trust allocates $6 billion for temporary housing for Palestinians who remain in Gaza and $5 billion for those who relocate.
The proposal projects huge profits for investors—nearly four times the return on investment and annual revenue of $4.5 billion within a decade. The project would be a boon for companies ranging from builders including Saudi bin Laden Group, infrastructure specialists like IKEA, the mercenary firm Academi (formerly Blackwater), US military contractor CACI—which last year was found liable for torturing Iraqis at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison—electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla, tech firms such as Amazon, and hoteliers Mandarin Oriental and IHG Hotels and Resorts.
Central to the plan are 10 "megaprojects," including half a dozen "smart cities," a regional logistics hub to be build over the ruins of the southern city of Rafah, a central highway named after Saudi Crown Prime Mohammed bin Salman—Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Gulf states feature prominently in the proposal as investors—large-scale solar and desalinization plants, a US data safe haven, an "Elon Musk Smart Manufacturing Zone," and "Gaza Trump Riviera & Islands" similar to the Palm Islands in Dubai.
In addition to "massive" financial gains for private US investors, the GREAT Trust lists strategic benefits for the United States that would enable it to "strengthen" its "hold in the east Mediterranean and secure US industry access to $1.3 trillion of rare-earth minerals from the Gulf."
Earlier this year, Trump said the US would "take over" Gaza, American real estate developers would "level it out" and build the "Riviera of the Middle East" atop its ruins after Palestinians—"all of them"—leave Palestine's coastal exclave. The president called for the "voluntary" transfer of Gazans to Egypt and Jordan, both of whose leaders vehemently rejected the plan.
"Voluntary emigration" is widely considered a euphemism for ethnic cleansing, given Palestinians' general unwillingness to leave their homeland.
According to a May survey by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, nearly half of Gazans expressed a willingness to apply for Israeli assistance to relocate to other countries. However, many Gazans say they would never leave the strip, where most inhabitants are descendants of survivors of the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinians during the creation of Israel in 1948. Some are actual Nakba survivors.
"I'm staying in a partially destroyed house in Khan Younis now," one Gazan man told the Post. "But we could renovate. I refuse to be made to go to another country, Muslim or not. This is my homeland."
The Post report follows a meeting last Wednesday at the White House, where Trump, senior administration officials, and invited guests including former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, investor and real estate developer Jared Kushner—who is also the president's son-in-law—and Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer discussed Gaza's future.
While Dermer reportedly claimed that Israel does not seek to permanently occupy Gaza, Israeli leaders including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes including murder and forced starvation in Gaza—have said they will conquer the entire strip and keep at least large parts of it.
"We conquer, cleanse, and stay until Hamas is destroyed," Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich recently said. "On the way, we annihilate everything that still remains."
The Israel Knesset also recently hosted a conference called "The Gaza Riviera–from vision to reality" where participants openly discussed the occupation and ethnic cleansing of the strip.
The publication of the GREAT Trust comes as Israeli forces push deeper into Gaza City amid a growing engineered famine that has killed at least hundreds of Palestinians and is starving hundreds of thousands of more. Israel's 696-day assault and siege on Gaza has left at least 233,200 Palestinians dead, wounded, or missing, according to the Gaza Health Ministry—whose casualty figures are seen as a likely undercount by experts.
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'Endangering Every American's Health': 9 Former CDC Chiefs Sound Alarm on RFK Jr.
Their "astonishing, powerful op-ed," said one professor, "drives home what we are losing and what's already been lost."
Sep 01, 2025
Nearly every living former director or acting director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from the past half-century took to the pages of The New York Times on Monday to jointly argue that Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "is endangering every American's health."
"Collectively, we spent more than 100 years working at the CDC, the world's preeminent public health agency. We served under multiple Republican and Democratic administrations," Drs. William Foege, William Roper, David Satcher, Jeffrey Koplan, Richard Besser, Tom Frieden, Anne Schuchat, Rochelle Walensky, and Mandy Cohen highlighted.
What RFK Jr. "has done to the CDC and to our nation's public health system over the past several months—culminating in his decision to fire Dr. Susan Monarez as CDC director days ago—is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced," the nine former agency leaders wrote.
Known for spreading misinformation about vaccines and a series of scandals, Kennedy was a controversial figure long before President Donald Trump chose him to lead HHS—a decision that Senate Republicans affirmed in February. However, in the wake of Monarez's ouster, fresh calls for him to resign or be fired have mounted.
This is powerful. Nine former CDC leaders just came together to defend SCIENCE.Maybe it’s time we LISTEN TO THEM—not the loud voices spreading MISINFORMATION.Science saves lives. Lies cost themwww.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
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— Krutika Kuppalli, MD FIDSA (@krutikakuppalli.bsky.social) September 1, 2025 at 10:35 AM
As the ex-directors detailed:
Secretary Kennedy has fired thousands of federal health workers and severely weakened programs designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence, and more. Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United States in a generation, he's focused on unproven "treatments" while downplaying vaccines. He canceled investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill-prepared for future health emergencies. He replaced experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views. He announced the end of US support for global vaccination programs that protect millions of children and keep Americans safe, citing flawed research and making inaccurate statements. And he championed federal legislation that will cause millions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to lose their coverage. Firing Dr. Monarez—which led to the resignations of top CDC officials—adds considerable fuel to this raging fire.
Monarez was nominated by Trump, and was confirmed by Senate Republicans in late July. As the op-ed authors noted, she was forced out by RFK Jr. just weeks later, after she reportedly refused "to rubber-stamp his dangerous and unfounded vaccine recommendations or heed his demand to fire senior CDC staff members."
"These are not typical requests from a health secretary to a CDC director," they wrote. "Not even close. None of us would have agreed to the secretary's demands, and we applaud Dr. Monarez for standing up for the agency and the health of our communities."
After Monarez's exit, Trump tapped Jim O'Neill, an RFK Jr. aide and biotech investor, as the CDC's interim director. Critics including Robert Steinbrook, director of Public Citizen's health research group, warn that "unlike Susan Monarez, O'Neill is likely to rubber-stamp dangerous vaccine recommendations from HHS Secretary Kennedy's handpicked appointees to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and obey orders to fire CDC public health experts with scientific integrity."
The agency's former directors didn't address O'Neill, but they wrote: "To those on the CDC staff who continue to perform their jobs heroically in the face of the excruciating circumstances, we offer our sincere thanks and appreciation. Their ongoing dedication is a model for all of us. But it's clear that the agency is hurting badly."
"We have a message for the rest of the nation as well: This is a time to rally to protect the health of every American," they continued. The experts called on Congress to "exercise its oversight authority over HHS," and state and local governments to "fill funding gaps where they can." They also urged philanthropy, the private sector, medical groups, and physicians to boost investments, "continue to stand up for science and truth," and support patients "with sound guidance and empathy."
Doctors, researchers, journalists, and others called their "must-read" piece "extraordinary" and "important."
"Just an astonishing, powerful op-ed that drives home what we are losing and what's already been lost," said University of Michigan Law School professor Leah Litman. "We are so incredibly fortunate to live with the advances [of] modern medicine and health science. Destroying and stymying it is just unforgivable."
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