April, 22 2021, 12:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
David Turnbull, david@priceofoil.org, +1 202 316 3499 (United States)
Collin Rees, collin@priceofoil.org, +1 308 293 3159 (United States)
Laurie Van der Burg, laurie@priceofoil.org (Belgium)
Romain Ioualalen, romain@priceofoil.org (France)
Oil Change International Response to Leaders Climate Summit
Today, world leaders have gathered virtually at a so-called "Leaders Summit on Climate" hosted by the Biden administration. These leaders provided statements and commitments to increase ambition on global climate action. With a few notable exceptions, however, largely absent from the discussions were commitments to a managed ramp-down of fossil fuel production, though some progress was made on shifting public finance out of fossil fuels and into clean. In response, Oil Change International experts provided the following statements:
WASHINGTON
Today, world leaders have gathered virtually at a so-called "Leaders Summit on Climate" hosted by the Biden administration. These leaders provided statements and commitments to increase ambition on global climate action. With a few notable exceptions, however, largely absent from the discussions were commitments to a managed ramp-down of fossil fuel production, though some progress was made on shifting public finance out of fossil fuels and into clean. In response, Oil Change International experts provided the following statements:
David Turnbull, Strategic Communications Director:
"True climate leadership requires a full reckoning with the realities of what's driving our climate crisis: fossil fuels. Without a robust plan from rich countries in particular to ramp down fossil fuel production and ramp up support for communities for a just transition to a renewable energy economy, any conversation about 'climate leadership' is incomplete at best, or misleading at worst. We're pleased to hear countries recommit to the 1.5oC Paris goal and ramp up their emission reduction commitments, however we are gravely concerned after today's statements that there is still limited willingness to actually stop digging the climate hole we find ourselves in.
"Continued fossil fuel production impacts those on the frontlines of extraction and related infrastructure every day, adding to the historic injustices our extractive economy has perpetuated. Today's session on ramping up ambition came up short, and we call on all world leaders to quickly catch up to the reality that we must stop spending public money on fossil fuels and start the fossil fuel production phase out and just transition for communities immediately."
Laurie van der Burg, Senior Campaigner:
"A bright spot of the climate summit is that it reconfirmed the momentum that is building on shifting public finance out of fossil fuels and into clean. Korea announced an end to coal financing, and, though woefully incomplete, the US reiterated it is taking steps towards ending overseas finance for fossil fuels. This follows the UK putting an immediate halt to new finance for fossil fuel projects overseas, not just coal, but also oil and gas, last month."
"As COP26 host and president of the upcoming G7 and having acted on this agenda itself, the UK is uniquely positioned to prioritize making 2021 the year in which the public finance balance tips from fossils to clean. It must encourage other governments to follow its example by the G7 to keep the ball rolling towards COP26."
Collin Rees, Senior Campaigner:
"Today's announcements from the Biden Administration were a welcome change from the Trump era, but they laid bare how important tackling fossil fuels will be to restore U.S. climate leadership on the global stage and end environmental injustice. President Biden must follow through on his pledges to end fossil fuel subsidies and move swiftly to end overseas public finance for fossil fuels, an area in which the U.S. risks falling drastically behind its peers. Biden has made some good first steps by rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline and pausing oil and gas leasing on public lands, but much more must be done to limit the expansion of the oil and gas industry. New decarbonization goals are difficult to take seriously until Biden takes immediate action to stop the Line 3 and Dakota Access oil pipelines and lays out a credible plan to ramp down fossil fuel production here at home."
Romain Ioualalen, Senior Campaigner:
"Today, the leaders of the world met to tout their climate action while presiding over the second largest increase in CO2 emissions in history. This disconnect between pledges and actions is the reason why we are failing to address the climate crisis. It is urgent for so-called climate leaders in the US, Canada, Norway and the UK to enact policies to phase out their production of fossil fuels, and to follow the example of countries such as Denmark and Costa Rica that have banned new oil and gas exploration and production. Distant carbon neutrality pledges and revised NDCs will continue to ring hollow as long as countries fail to address the root of the climate crisis: our continued reliance on fossil fuels."
Oil Change International is a research, communications, and advocacy organization focused on exposing the true costs of fossil fuels and facilitating the ongoing transition to clean energy.
(202) 518-9029LATEST NEWS
Trump Taps 'Manifestly Unqualified' Peter Thiel Protégé as Acting CDC Director After RFK's Purge
A health researcher for Public Citizen said Trump's interim CDC director has "no medical or public health background and extremist libertarian views."
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After pushing out his own handpicked Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director, infectious disease expert Susan Monarez, fueling a wave of outraged resignations this week, US President Donald Trump has appointed a loyal acolyte to replace her at Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s side.
On Thursday, the president tapped one of RFK's top aides as interim CDC director: biotech investor Jim O'Neill, a man with no medical experience but extensive experience profiting from healthcare while working at billionaire GOP megadonor Peter Thiel's venture capital firm, Mithril Capital.
Unlike his predecessor, whose ouster came as she tried to push back against RFK's anti-vaccine agenda, O'Neill fits snugly into the secretary's efforts to restrict access to the Covid-19 vaccine, and potentially ban it outright, as the Daily Beast reported earlier this week.
"A tech investor with no medical or public health background and extremist libertarian views, Jim O'Neill was unfit for the number two position at HHS and manifestly unqualified to lead the CDC," said Dr. Robert Steinbrook, director of Public Citizen's health research group, on Friday.
Just as Kennedy did during his confirmation hearings, O'Neill insisted he was "pro-vaccine," noting that he was "an adviser to a vaccine company." However, this is belied by his record on the subject.
He has championed unproven cures like ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and vitamin D supplements to protect against Covid-19, and has accused the CDC under the administration of former President Joe Biden of downplaying the vaccine's dangers while railing against mandates.
O'Neill has also praised Kennedy's response to the measles outbreak that swept across the US earlier this year, during which the secretary downplayed the severity and cast unfounded doubt on the effectiveness and safety of the measles vaccine that had virtually eradicated the disease before vaccination rates began to decline.
"Unlike Susan Monarez," Steinbrook said, "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."
O'Neill melds medical crankery with a Thielite strain of anarcho-libertarianism. He has served on the board of the Seasteading Institute, an organization founded by Patri Friedman, the grandson of the right-wing economist Milton Friedman, who advocates for corporations like Apple and Google to form their own floating cities at sea, which would be governed as corporate "dictatorships" free from the constraints of democratic governance.
That anti-government ethos extends to his views on the healthcare system, which O'Neill says is flawed not because of the rampant profiteering of the private companies that run it, but because it is supposedly not "free market" enough.
In 2014, he advocated for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to begin approving drugs for the market without conducting clinical trials to determine their effectiveness. "Let people start using them, at their own risk," he argued, "Let's prove efficacy after they've been legalized."
He has also argued for the government to allow people to sell their own internal organs. This process often results in deteriorating health for the disproportionately poor people who partake.
While working at HHS under the administration of former President George W. Bush, O'Neill also opposed the FDA regulation of companies that use algorithms to perform laboratory tests.
At the time, he was focused on DNA testing products like 23andMe, but a report from the consumer watchdog group Public Citizen says that "a decade after he made this remark, it's clear how dangerous such a concept is," noting that "with the development and proliferation of artificial intelligence, algorithms are omnipresent in the practice of medicine, including in diagnostic tools, medical devices, AI assistants to doctors, and personalized medicine."
In addition to Thiel's ideology, he reportedly brings several conflicts of interest to the CDC director job from his time working at Thiel's venture capital firm.
Accountable.US reported Friday that O'Neill "took money from, helped incubate, or was otherwise linked to at least eight medical industry startups with direct business before the department he could help run."
These include firms he advised, like the pharmaceutical company ADvantage Therapeutics or the National Institutes of Health grantee Rational Vaccines, which manufactures herpes drugs.
It also includes four companies seeded by his Thiel-affiliated venture capital firm Breakout Labs, some of which have received government funding or have products awaiting FDA approval.
Though O'Neill agreed to divest from some of these companies and abstain from involvement in decision-making with them as part of his ethics agreement, the report notes that "he did not promise to abstain from decisions involving these companies for the duration of his term, or to abstain from doing business with them after departing HHS."
"O'Neill would be in a prime position to ensure favorable outcomes for several medical industry startups he's been financially linked to that have direct business before HHS and the CDC," said Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk. "How can American patients be sure that proper vetting of these companies would take place on O'Neill's watch and that public health will be a higher priority over the profits of his former clients?"
Though Steinbrook describes O'Neill as "manifestly unqualified" for the position, he said, "No credible public health authority is likely to work for Kennedy, who is dictating the agency's decisions based on whim, not science."
"The only path forward," Steinbrook said, "is for Kennedy to go, which Congress, professional organizations, medical journals, and the public should demand."
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Creating what critics are equating to "AI death panels" elderly Americans in need of care, the Trump administration is launching a pilot program in six states that will use artificial intelligence to determine whether Medicare recipients should qualify for certain procedures.
As reported by The New York Times on Thursday, the pilot program will hire private firms to deploy AI to make what are known as "prior authorization" decisions regarding whether Medicare should pay for certain procedures, including spinal surgeries and steroid injections. The program is set to run first in Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington.
According to the paper, the program will rely on algorithms similar to those "used by insurers have been the subject of several high-profile lawsuits, which have asserted that the technology allowed the companies to swiftly deny large batches of claims and cut patients off from care in rehabilitation facilities."
The way the program is being structured will also give AI firms big incentives to maximize the denial of claims for Medicare recipients, as the Times reported that "Medicare plans to pay them a share of the savings generated from rejections."
Abe Sutton, the director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, emphasized in an interview with the Times that this program would not be used to review emergency services or hospital stays.
Even so, some experts and advocates have warned that this program risks bringing the same problems experienced by people who use private insurance to Medicare.
"It's basically the same set of financial incentives that has created issues in Medicare Advantage and drawn so much scrutiny," Ohio-based surgeon Dr. Vinay Rathi, who is also an expert in Medicare payment policies, explained to the Times. "It directly puts them at odds with the clinicians."
Jathan Sadowski, a senior lecturer and research fellow in the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University, also warned about private insurance practices creeping into traditional Medicare.
"The government is hiring companies using AI to make those determinations about healthcare," he wrote on X. "This is exactly the same tactic that private insurers like UnitedHealth use to delay and deny treatment."
The reported pilot program also drew harsh reviews from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), as president Randi Weingarten and the union's Retirees Program and Policy Council co-chair Tom Murphy issued a joint statement accusing the Trump administration of "attempting to transform Medicare into the very worst of private insurance."
"Instead of making life easier and better for older Americans, this administration is introducing extra hurdles that are burdensome to patients and often get in the way of their desperately needed treatments," they said. "And the administration is inserting private AI companies, which have a giant financial stake in the denial of care, into the doctor-patient relationship."
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"The safety of our public officials should never be subject to erratic, vindictive political impulses," said a spokesman for California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
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US President Donald Trump has canceled extended Secret Service protection for former Vice President Kamala Harris just as she was scheduled to go on a multi-city book tour.
CNN reported on Friday that Trump this week sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security that simply read, "You are hereby authorized to discontinue any security-related procedures previously authorized by executive memorandum, beyond those required by law, for the following individual, effective September 1, 2025: Former Vice President Kamala D. Harris."
As CNN explained, former vice presidents are entitled by federal law to six months of Secret Service protection after leaving office.
However, former President Joe Biden late in his term signed a directive that extended Harris' protection past the standard six-month window. The reason for the extension—its existence not reported publicly until Trump moved to revoke it—has not been made clear.
Harris last year was the Democratic Party's presidential nominee after then-President Joe Biden decided against running for a second term.
As California is Harris' home state, both California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass are aware of and have been discussing Harris' security situation, and CNN noted she could get added protection in the future from the Los Angeles Police Department or potentially another state agency.
In a statement given to CNN, Bass delivered a scathing denunciation of the president for revoking his former rival's Secret Service protection.
"This is another act of revenge following a long list of political retaliation in the form of firings, the revoking of security clearances and more," she said. "This puts the former Vice President in danger and I look forward to working with the Governor to make sure Vice President Harris is safe in Los Angeles."
Bob Salladay, a spokesman for Newsom, also ripped the president for his actions.
"The safety of our public officials should never be subject to erratic, vindictive political impulses," he said.
Harris is scheduled to go on tour starting next month in New York to promote her book "107 Days," which reflects on her failed 2024 presidential campaign.
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