November, 12 2021, 07:39am EDT
New Report Exposes Five Wealthy Countries Whose Fossil Fuel Production Threatens Chance at 1.5oC
After two weeks of talks, pledges and meetings in Glasgow, a scathing report has cut through the rhetoric of five wealthy nations, including the COP Hosts, by reviewing their plans to expand the production of the primary cause of climate change - fossil fuels.
GLASGOW
After two weeks of talks, pledges and meetings in Glasgow, a scathing report has cut through the rhetoric of five wealthy nations, including the COP Hosts, by reviewing their plans to expand the production of the primary cause of climate change - fossil fuels.
The report, coined The Fossil Fuelled 5, finds that the gap between climate rhetoric and reality is dangerously wide, with wealthy nations -- the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Norway and Australia -- planning to approve and subsidise new fossil fuel projects which undermines their recent claims of leadership in addressing the climate crisis.
The report that analysed recent government announcements and the latest data on fossil fuel production found that:
There is an alarming gap between what the Fossil Fuelled 5 are pledging to do to reduce their domestic emissions and their plans to expand fossil fuel production, undermining efforts to curtail global emissions and ignoring their responsibility to phase out fossil fuels, rapidly and justly.
Coal, oil and gas production must fall globally by 69%, 31% and 28% respectively between now and 2030 to keep the 1.5oC target alive. However, the projections suggest that the Fossil Fuelled 5 will reduce coal production by only 30%, and actually increase oil and gas production by 33% and 27%, respectively. As wealthy nations, the Fossil Fuelled 5 should be leading this transition away from fossil fuels.
Despite their net zero targets and climate pledges these five nations alone have provided over $150 billion in public support for the fossil fuel production and consumption during the COVID-19 pandemic. This level of support to fossil fuel production is more than the entire G7 put towards clean energy as part of the pandemic recovery ($147 billion).
The report released today on the final day of COP26, led by Freddie Daley from the University of Sussex, synthesises the most recent government emissions pledges and compares them to the fossil fuel production plans in the coming decade, as well as other factors such as fossil fuel subsidies. They show that several of the world's wealthiest nations "are doubling down on fossil fuel production" which will "have disastrous impacts for all life on our planet, but especially those communities in the Global South who have done the least to create this crisis and have the fewest resources to adapt to its impacts."
Despite their historical responsibility for emissions, and being well-placed to finance a global just transition, these countries are also guilty of exporting large amounts of coal, oil and gas, fuelling other countries' dependency on dirty energy sources.
Lead author Freddie Daley, Research Associate at the University of Sussex, said:
"There's an alarming gap between what wealthy nations are saying and what they are doing. You would expect these five nations to provide the leadership needed to move the global economy away from fossil fuels and reduce emissions to zero. However, they seem to be quite content to make pledges and promises with one hand, while expanding and subsidising fossil fuel production to the tune of billions on the other.
"Not only are these wealthy nations jeopardising their own futures and the futures of their citizens through this continued expansion, but they are condemning communities in the global south to a state of perpetual crisis which they did nothing to create. If these nations want to be climate pioneers, it is time they addressed the elephant in the room: fossil fuels."
Country-specific analysis from the paper's country profiles include:
The United States has pledged to halve emissions by 2030 yet have simultaneously provided $20 billion in annual support to the fossil fuel industry.
Despite hosting COP26, the United Kingdom is expected to green light the Cambo oil field, which contains approximately 255 million barrels of oil.
Canada is looking to increase their price on carbon but also provided approximately $17 billion in public finance to three fossil fuel pipelines between 2018 and 2020.
Norway has raised its ambition to decrease emissions but has already granted 60+ new licenses for fossil fuel production and access to 84 new exploration zones in 2021 alone.
Despite its recent commitment to net zero by 2050, Australia has over 100 fossil fuel projects currently in the approval pipeline.
The paper was produced by the University of Sussex and conducted in cooperation with the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, Oil Change International, Uplift UK, Greenpeace Norway, The Australia Institute, and Stand.earth.
Collin Rees, U.S. Program Manager, Oil Change International:
"The United States is the poster child for climate hypocrisy -- the world's largest historical emitter claiming the mantle of climate leadership while pouring fuel on the fire of the climate crisis. Joe Biden's words will ring hollow until he cancels deadly fossil fuel expansion projects like the Dakota Access Pipeline or the dozens of proposed oil and gas export terminals awaiting approval from his administration. This new report makes it clear the U.S. remains a massive driver of oil and gas expansion, and that won't change until our leaders commit to a managed phase-out of fossil fuel extraction that truly protects communities, workers, and the climate."
Tzeporah Berman, Chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty:
"Canada claims to be a climate leader yet its emissions have continued to rise since signing the Paris Agreement. This is not surprising given the unwillingness of political leaders to address the largest source of emissions - oil and gas. While important steps have been taken such as putting a price on carbon nationally, the Canadian government subsidizes the sector more than any other G20 nation. The Fossil Fuelled 5 report highlights why Canada is standing in the way of binding agreements for a wind down of oil, gas and coal at COP26. It's not too late to turn things around. When the Minister of Environment and Climate Change returns to Canada, it's imperative that we have a plan for winding down emissions and production so that no worker nor their family is left behind. This would include a meaningful cap placed on emissions from the oil and gas industry plus no more investment in the Trans Mountain pipeline or LNG. Canada must then rejoin the international negotiating table with a real intention to be part of the solution, rather than accelerating the climate emergency."
Tessa Khan, Founder & Director of Uplift UK:
"The UK government has invested a lot in trying to persuade people that it is taking action to tackle the climate crisis, but while it is still opening up new oil and gas fields we can discount most of it as hot air. We know that there can't be any fossil fuel developments if we want a liveable climate and yet the UK government wants to open 30 new oil and gas fields in the North Sea, starting with Cambo. And all the while subsiding fossil fuel companies to the tune of billions. Actions matter now not words. Just stop talking, Prime Minister and instead, stop Cambo."
Frode Pleym, Executive Director of Greenpeace Norway:
"The use of fossil fuels is the number one reason we are currently facing a climate emergency. Yet, the wealthiest countries with the greatest capacity to rapidly transition away from fossil fuels, keep allowing and even subsidising the development of new oil, gas and coal. It's time for the leaders of countries such as Norway to come together and lead the way out of climate chaos once and for all."
Richie Merizan, Climate & Energy Program Director at The Australia Institute:
"Not only is the Morrison Government unrepentant about Australia's fossil fuels production and export plans through to 2050 and beyond, it is openly boasting about these plans here at Glasgow. PM Morrison's Net Zero target does nothing to stop fossil fuel expansion, and goes so far as to explicitly build their continued use into its plan to reduce emissions. While the world moves forward in phasing out fossil fuels - a key aim of this COP, the Morrison Government is intent on driving Australia backwards. Australia is a wealthy country and is in the box seat to be leading the renewable energy transition."
The full report is available here.
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.
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'Damning' Independent Probe Finds Israel Has Yet to Provide Evidence Against UNRWA
The U.S. House on Saturday passed a bill including a prohibition on funding the agency, due to Israel's unsubstantiated claims that UNRWA employees have terrorism links.
Apr 22, 2024
Countries that have continued to suspend their funding of the United Nations' top relief agency in the occupied Palestinian territories were left with "no room" to justify their decision, said critics on Monday as an independent investigation into Israel's allegations against the organization revealed Israeli officials have ignored requests to provide evidence to support their claims.
Catherine Colonna, the former foreign minister of France, released her findings in a probe regarding Israel's claims that a significant number of employees of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) were members of terrorist groups.
Nearly three months after U.N. Secretary-General AntĂłnio Guterres commissioned the report, Colonna said Israel "has yet to provide supporting evidence" of its allegation that "a significant number of UNRWA employees are members of terrorist organizations."
Colonna's findings were bolstered by an investigation led by the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in Sweden, the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway, and the Danish Institute for Human Rights, which separately sought evidence from Israel.
"Israeli authorities have to date not provided any supporting evidence nor responded to letters from UNRWA in March, and again in April, requesting the names and supporting evidence that would enable UNRWA to open an investigation," said the Nordic groups.
The reports come nearly three months after Israel made its initial allegation that 12 UNRWA employees took part in the October 7 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, a claim that prompted the United Statesâthe largest international funder of the agency, which subsists mainly on donationsâto swiftly halt its funding. Israel also claimed that as many as 12% of UNRWA's employees were members of terrorist organizations.
As Common Dreamsreported at the time, Israel's announcement came hours after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued a preliminary ruling that found Israel was "plausibly" committing a genocide in Gaza by relentlessly striking the enclave and blocking almost all humanitarian aid to its 2.3 million people.
The Biden administration has dismissed the ICJ's finding.
The United States' suspension of UNRWA funding set off a domino effect, leading at least 15 countries to freeze their contributions, even though the U.N. had reported a month earlier that Israel's air, land, and sea blockade on Gaza was pushing hundreds of thousands of civilians into starvation.
Countries including Sweden, Japan, France, and Australia have reinstated their funding of the agency in recent weeks, citing concerns about the intensifying humanitarian crisis in Gazaâwhere more than two dozen children have died of starvation so farâand Israel's lack of evidence.
Lawmakers in the U.S., which provides nearly $344 million to UNRWA annually, included a prohibition on funding for the agency in its foreign aid bill that passed in the House of Representatives on Saturday, while the United Kingdom has said it would make a decision about resuming funding after the Colonna report was released.
"The report leaves no room for Britain to justify the continued suspension of funds," said the independent news group Declassified U.K.
Colonna's report, which was accepted by Guterres Monday, noted that UNRWA is more rigorous than other U.N. agencies in its internal oversight of its staff and their neutrality.
"The review revealed that UNRWA has established a significant number of mechanisms and procedures to ensure compliance with the humanitarian principles, with emphasis on the principle of neutrality and that it possesses a more developed approach to neutrality than other similar U.N. or NGO entities," reads the report.
Guterres called on donor countries to "fully cooperate in the implementation of the recommendations" of the report.
"Moving forward, the secretary-general appeals to all stakeholders to actively support UNRWA, as it is a lifeline for Palestine refugees in the region," said the U.N. chief's office in a statement.
Despite the U.K.'s claim that it would review Colonna's report to determine whether to resume funding, The Guardianreported the government was "unlikely" to make a prompt decision based on the findings, as Conservative lawmakers have urged Foreign Secretary David Cameron against doing so.
The continued suspension of donations, said U.K.-based researcher and activist Gary Spedding, "is unjustifiable and at total odds with the rest of our allies (except the USA) who resumed funding."
"Our government has so much to answer for regarding the decision to pause funding without any evidence whatsoever, then sustain that decision even while other allies resumed and Palestinians in Gaza starved and died from sickness and disease, and even now we still haven't resumed," said Spedding. "We must have accountability and answers. Why did the government pause funding to begin with despite no evidence being presented by Israel? Why have we joined in on damaging UNRWA as part of Israel's plan to dismantle it? Why are Palestinian lives and rights worth so little?"
Colonna's report, said Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft executive vice president Trita Parsi, is "not only damning for Israel."
"It is also damning for all the Western countries," he said, "that cut funding for UNRWA on mere (now debunked) accusations by Israel."
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"Can we get some healthcare please, or maybe feed some of the 40 million+ Americans who can't get enough food?" asked the watchdog group Public Citizen.
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New research published Monday shows that global military spending increased in 2023 for the ninth consecutive year, surging to $2.4 trillion as Russia's assault on Ukraine and Israel's war on the Gaza Strip helped push war-related outlays to an all-time high.
The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) recorded military spending increases in every geographical region it examined last year, from Europe to Oceania to the Middle East. Last year's global increase of 6.8% was the largest since 2009, SIPRI said.
The United States was by far the largest military spender at $916 billion in 2023, up 2.3% compared to the previous year. The next biggest spender was China, which poured an estimated $296 billion into its military last yearâthree times less than the U.S.
"Can we get some healthcare please, or maybe feed some of the 40 million+ Americans who can't get enough food?" asked the watchdog group Public Citizen in response to SIPRI's report, which found that the U.S. accounted for 37% of the world's total military spending last year.
A separate analysis of U.S. military spending in 2023 found that 62% of the country's federal discretionary budget went to militarized programs, leaving less than half of the budget for healthcare, housing, nutrition assistance, education, and other domestic priorities.
Together, SIPRI found, the top five biggest military spenders last yearâthe U.S., China, Russia, India, and Saudi Arabiaâaccounted for 61% of global military outlays.
"The unprecedented rise in military spending is a direct response to the global deterioration in peace and security," Nan Tian, senior researcher with SIPRI's Military Expenditure and Arms Production Program, said in a statement. "States are prioritizing military strength but they risk an action-reaction spiral in the increasingly volatile geopolitical and security landscape."
In the Middle East, military spending jumped by 9% last yearâthe highest annual growth rate in the past decade. Israel, which relies heavily on weapons imports from the U.S., spent 24% more on its military last year than in 2022, according to SIPRI, an increase fueled by the country's devastating assault on Gaza.
SIPRI found that NATO's 31 member countries dumped a combined $1.3 trillion into military expenditures in 2023, accounting for 55% of the global total.
U.S. military spending, which is poised to continue surging in the coming years, made up 68% of NATO's 2023 total.
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"Members of Congress should understand that approving more military aid could subject them to personal liability for aiding and abetting an ongoing genocide in Gaza."
Apr 22, 2024
Hours after the U.S. House approved legislation that would send billions of dollars in additional military aid to Israel, the country's forces killed nearly two dozen people in Rafah, the southern Gaza city where more than half of the enclave's population is sheltering.
Gaza health officials said Sunday that the weekend strikes on Rafahâa former "safe zone" that Israel has been threatening to invade for weeksâkilled 22 people, including 18 children. The Associated Pressreported that the first of the Israeli strikes "killed a man, his wife, and their 3-year-old child, according to the nearby Kuwaiti Hospital, which received the bodies."
"The woman was pregnant and the doctors saved the baby, the hospital said," AP added. "The second strike killed 17 children and two women from an extended family."
Israeli forces have killed more than 14,000 children in Gaza since October, but the Biden administration and American lawmakers have refused to back growing international calls to cut off the supply of weaponry and other military equipment even as U.S. voters express support for an arms embargo.
The measure the House approved on Saturday includes $26 billion in funding for Israel, much of which is military assistance.
"Just a day after the House voted to send $14 billion in unconditional military funding to [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's campaign of death and destruction, he bombed the safe zone of Rafah AGAIN, killing 22 Palestinians, of which 18 were CHILDREN!" U.S. Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), one of the 58 House lawmakers who voted against the legislation, wrote on social media late Sunday.
"History books will write about today and the past seven months, and how our nation's leaders lacked the courage and moral clarity to stand up to a tyrant," she added. "Shameful."
The military aid package for Israel now heads to the U.S. Senate, which is set to consider the bill early this week. U.S. President Joe Biden, who has continued to greenlight arms sales to Israel amid clear evidence of war crimes, is expected to sign the measure if it reaches his desk.
"Rather than sending more weapons to Israel, Congress should declare an immediate arms embargo on Israel."
U.S. law prohibits "arms transfers that risk facilitating or otherwise contributing to violations of human rights or international humanitarian law," according to a White House memo issued in February. The U.S. State Department has said repeatedly that it has not found Israel to be in violation of international law, a position that runs directly counter to the findings of leading humanitarian organizations and United Nations experts.
The investigative outlet ProPublicareported last week that a "special State Department panel recommended months ago that Secretary of State Antony Blinken disqualify multiple Israeli military and police units from receiving U.S. aid after reviewing allegations that they committed serious human rights abuses" prior to the October 7 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel.
"But Blinken has failed to act on the proposal in the face of growing international criticism of the Israeli military's conduct in Gaza, according to current and former State Department officials," ProPublica noted.
Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), said in a statement Sunday that senators "should reject sending additional weapons to Israel not only because our laws prohibit military aid to abusive regimes, but because it's extremely damaging to our national interests."
DAWN's advocacy director, Raed Jarrar, added that "at a time when Israel is bracing for International Criminal Court arrest warrants against its leaders, members of Congress should understand that approving more military aid could subject them to personal liability for aiding and abetting an ongoing genocide in Gaza."
"Rather than sending more weapons to Israel," said Jarrar, "Congress should declare an immediate arms embargo on Israel."
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