December, 20 2021, 11:01am EDT

More Than 100 Groups Call on CFTC To Shut Down Dangerous 'Water Futures' Market
Letter details legal problems with California-based water futures scheme.
WASHINGTON
A national advocacy organization, along with 138 other organizations, petitioned the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) today to suspend the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's water futures market, which is based on the availability of water rights in California.
The letter from Food & Water Watch details a range of serious problems with Nasdaq Veles California Water Index Futures, which were self-certified by the CME before their launch one year ago. It is the world's first market for water futures contracts. The comment was co-signed by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Southern California Watershed Alliance, FLOW (For Love of Water), Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund, Center for Biological Diversity, National Family Farm Coalition, Public Citizen, and more than 130 other organizations.
It argues that the 'commodity' in question -- water rights in a state grappling with a serious drought -- and the price index for such rights are not commodities at all, and their trade in a futures market undermines state law and does not conform to CFTC regulations.
It also points out that the agency's regulations strictly prohibit CME from allowing trades of futures that are "readily susceptible to manipulation of the price of such contracts." The fact that the market was self-certified means that the commission has not appropriately evaluated whether the futures contracts violate this standard.
"Water is necessary and essential for life and is simply not a commodity," said Zach Corrigan, Senior Attorney for Food & Water Watch. "The Commission should reject this shoe-horn attempt to drive investor profit under a federal law never meant to apply to a common public resource managed by the state for the public welfare."
"The radically deregulatory Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 allows exchanges to self-certify that new futures contracts comply with CFTC rules and core regulatory principles," said Dr. Steve Stuppan, senior policy analyst at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy. "Self-certification has been applied to minor changes to contracts. The CME water futures contract, however, is a novel contract and a new asset class for which the CFTC must not allow self-certification. CFTC staff should heed and further the analysis in this letter of the California water sales that underlie this futures contract towards determining whether the contract is susceptible to market manipulation, a violation of a key CFTC core principle."
"In this time of global-warming-induced drought in California, the last thing we need is to gamble on our precious water resources," said Conner Everts, Executive Director, Southern California Watershed Alliance.
As the letter lays out, water entitlements in California involve rights allocated for different types of waters (e.g., ground, surface) and in different areas that cannot be exchanged under state law. But futures contracts can be freely traded on CME's market, thus allowing investors to profit. This undermines state law including California's "beneficial use" doctrine, which prohibits water entitlements to be used for speculation. It also violates the Commission's regulations, which bar futures trading that "involves, relates to, or references . . . an activity. . . that is unlawful under any State or Federal law;" or that is "similar to" such an activity."
"FLOW unequivocally supports Food & Water Watch's efforts to stop the commodification of water," said Liz Kirkwood, Executive Director, For Love of Water (FLOW). "Water is a fundamental human right held in trust by the states for the public, not something to be speculated on by profiteers."
"The CFTC needs to strongly re-consider the listing of water futures," said Andrew Park, Senior Policy Analyst at Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund. "There is no reason why speculators and other financial market participants should be able to have any impact on the prices of Earth's most important resource."
The letter also argues that, even if all of the other deficiencies did not exist, the water futures market is contrary to the public interest. The petition warns that large institutional speculators -- which tend to dominate key commodities markets -- could pursue investment strategies that would result in actual water hoarding and raise water rates, which would be particularly devastating to small farmers.
The petition closes by reminding the CFTC that it has the authority to review any self-certified products and suspend trading activities during any such review. The commission can also hold a hearing on the Nasdaq Veles Water Futures, which would prompt the CFTC to ultimately decide whether or not the product violates its normal policies.
Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people's health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.
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DC Belmarsh Tribunal Urges Biden to Drop Assange Charges
"How is it acceptable that perpetrators of the illegal invasion of Iraq are the ones who get to decide if the man who exposed their crimes is a journalist?" asked Abby Martin.
Dec 11, 2023
Seeking to pressure the Biden administration into dropping charges against jailed Australian WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, human rights and press freedom defenders gathered in Washington, D.C. over the weekend for the second U.S. session of the Belmarsh Tribunal.
The tribunal—organized by Progressive International in partnership with the Wau Holland Foundation—was held Saturday at the National Press Club, where Assange first premiered "Collateral Murder," a video showing a U.S. Army helicopter crew killing a group of Iraqi civilians and then laughing about it.
"As long as the Espionage Act is deployed to imprison those who expose war crimes, no publisher and no journalist will be safe. It is time to free the truth."
The Belmarsh Tribunal was first convened in London in 2021. The event is inspired by the Russell Tribunal, a 1966 event organized by philosophers Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre to hold the U.S. accountable for its escalating war crimes in Vietnam.
Saturday's gathering was co-hosted by Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and The Intercept D.C. bureau chief Ryan Grim.
"Believe it or not, there are only two persons in the world who have been punished for the war crimes that were revealed by WikiLeaks: Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange," Grim told attendees.
Srećko Horvat, the Croatian author, philosopher, and activist who co-founded the Belmarsh Tribunal,
said that "the pressure is mounting on the Biden administration to free Julian Assange."
"More than one man's life is at stake, but the First Amendment and freedom of the press itself," he added. "As long as the Espionage Act is deployed to imprison those who expose war crimes, no publisher and no journalist will be safe. It is time to free the truth."
Rebecca Vincent, director of campaigns at Reporters Without Borders, warned that "if the U.S. government succeeds to extradite Julian Assange to this country, he will become the first publisher imprisoned under the Espionage Act—but he will not be the last."
According to Progressive International:
U.S. congresspeople from both parties are lobbying U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and President Joe Biden to stop pursuing Assange under the Espionage Act. At the same time, Australian members of Parliament are making a major bipartisan push to demand the U.S. Justice Department end its legal campaign against Australian national Assange.
Assange—who suffers from physical and mental health problems including heart and respiratory issues—published classified materials, many of them provided by Manning, exposing U.S. and allied nations' war crimes, including the Afghan War Diary, the Iraq War Logs, and "Collateral Murder."
Since Assange's apprehension 13 years ago in London, he has been confined for seven years in the Ecuadorean Embassy while he was protected by the administration of former Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, and jailed in the U.K. capital's maximum-security Belmarsh Prison. He's currently being held on remand in the notorious lockup pending extradition to the United States after the U.K. High Court rejected his final appeal earlier this year.
If fully convicted, Assange—who is 52 years old and is married with two children—could be sentenced to up to 175 years behind bars.
"How is it acceptable that perpetrators of the illegal invasion of Iraq are the ones who get to decide if the man who exposed their crimes is a journalist?" asked American journalist Abby Martin during the event.
Pivoting to Israel's current war on Gaza—which many experts and observers around the world are calling a genocide as over 70,000 Palestinians have been killed, maimed, or left missing and 80% of the strip's population has been forcibly displaced—Martin asserted that "the people of Gaza have risked and lost their lives to expose the war crimes of the U.S. and Israel."
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"The U.S. veto makes it complicit in the carnage in Gaza," said the executive director of Doctors Without Borders.
Dec 11, 2023
The United Nations General Assembly is expected to vote Tuesday on a Gaza cease-fire resolution after the United States used its veto power late last week to tank a similar measure put before the U.N. Security Council, a move that drew international outrage and condemnation.
Following the U.S. veto on Friday, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said he "will not give up" in his push for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip as the territory's humanitarian crisis continues to spiral out of control, with the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) warning that conditions created by Israel's siege and near-constant bombing have made it "almost impossible" to respond sufficiently to the emergency.
"Without a cease-fire, there is no peace," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Sunday. "And without peace, there is no health."
In late October, the 193-member U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian truce in Gaza, with just 14 countries—including the U.S. and Israel—voting in opposition. Weeks later, Israel and Hamas agreed to a pause that lasted just seven days before Israel resumed and expanded its attack on the Palestinian territory.
After the U.S. blocked a United Arab Emirates-led cease-fire resolution at the Security Council on Friday, Egypt and Mauritania "invoked Resolution 377A (V) to call for an emergency meeting of the U.N. General Assembly (UNGA) on Tuesday," Al Jazeerareported.
"The resolution says that if the UNSC is not able to discharge its primary responsibility of maintaining global peace due to lack of unanimity, the UNGA can step in," the outlet explained.
Unlike Security Council resolutions, General Assembly measures are not legally binding—though they are seen as holding political weight.
The draft resolution expected to come to a vote during Tuesday's emergency UNGA session expresses "grave concern over the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip" and demands "an immediate humanitarian cease-fire" as well as the "immediate and unconditional release of all hostages"—language that closely resembles the measure that the U.S. vetoed.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., said in an explanation of the veto that the resolution did not include language backed by the Biden administration that would have condemned Hamas and explicitly acknowledged Israel's right to defend itself.
Humanitarian groups responded with fury to the U.S. veto, which came as Israel—armed with American-made weaponry—ramped up its assault on southern Gaza, further imperiling displaced people and what's left of the territory's healthcare system.
Avril Benoît, executive director of Doctors Without Borders, said in a statement that the veto was a "vote against humanity."
"The U.S. veto stands in sharp contrast to the values it professes to uphold," said Benoît. "By continuing to provide diplomatic cover for the ongoing atrocities in Gaza, the U.S. is signaling that international humanitarian law can be applied selectively—and that the lives of some people matter less than the lives of others."
"The U.S. veto," Benoît added, "makes it complicit in the carnage in Gaza."
In an op-ed for Common Dreams on Monday, Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs—who also serves as president of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network—warned against cynicism about the U.N.'s role and purpose, writing that the international body is "currently blocked by the U.S."
"The U.N. is doing its job, building international law, sustainable development, and universal human rights, step by step, with advances and reverses, over the opposition of powerful forces, but with the arc of history on its side," Sachs wrote. "International law is a relatively new human creation, still in the works. It is difficult to achieve in the face of obstreperous imperial power, but we must pursue it."
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COP28 on 'Verge of Complete Failure' as Draft Omits Fossil Fuel Phaseout
"Nations committed to climate action must reject this weakened proposal," said one campaigner.
Dec 11, 2023
The most recent draft text of the agreement world leaders are hoping to reach by the end of the United Nations Climate Change Conference on December 12 does not include any mention of a phaseout of fossil fuels.
Instead, the document released Monday calls for "reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly, and equitable manner so as to achieve net zero by, before, or around 2050 in keeping with the science."
"COP28 is now on the verge of complete failure," former U.S. Vice President Al Gore tweeted in response to the release. "The world desperately needs to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible, but this obsequious draft reads as if OPEC dictated it word for word. It is even worse than many had feared. It is 'Of the Petrostates, by the Petrostates, and for the Petrostates.'"
"How do we go home and tell our people that this is what the world has to say about our futures?"
An agreement to phase out fossil fuels at COP28 has been a major demand of civil society groups and influential delegations including the European Union and nations especially vulnerable to the climate crisis, according to Reuters. The call comes as nations' current pledges under the Paris agreement put the world on a path for 2.9°C of warming, even as 2023 is almost certain to be the hottest year on record.
Yet there were concerns leading into the U.N. talks that the influence of the fossil fuel industry would undermine an ambitious outcome. COP28 President Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber is also the CEO of the United Arab Emirates' national oil company, and reports emerged that he had used talks surrounding COP28 to push oil and gas deals.
The latest language on fossil fuels comes in the text of the Global Stocktake, a mechanism by which parties to the Paris agreement assess their progress and set new goals. It is one bullet in a list of actions that the draft says nations "could include" in the path to "deep, rapid, and sustained reductions in greenhouse gas emissions."
Other actions in the list include
- Tripling renewable energy capacity and doubling efficiency by 2030;
- Quickly "phasing down unabated coal";
- Achieving a "net-zero energy system" as soon as possible;
- Curbing greenhouse gases beyond carbon dioxide such as methane; and
- Ending "inefficient fossil fuel subsidies."
"The COP28 draft text resembles a disjointed wish list, far from the stringent measures required to limit warming to 1.5°C," Andreas Sieber, associate director of policy and campaigns at 350.org, said in a statement. "The presidency, displaying a troubling lack of leadership, has notably weakened commitments to phasing out fossil fuels and promoting renewables."
Sieber also criticized the lack of urgency in the text's overall language.
"By framing actions as 'could' instead of 'shall,' and with weak language on short-term declines and renewable targets, this draft falls short. Nations committed to climate action must reject this weakened proposal, insisting on transformative changes for a meaningful impact on global warming."
The Alliance of Small Island States, meanwhile, told the Financial Times that the "weak language on fossil fuels was completely insufficient."
Joseph Sikulu, Pacific managing director of 350.org, added, "This week we felt that the goal of phasing out fossil fuels was within reach, but the lack of climate leadership shown by the presidency and the blatant watering down of commitments to a 'wish list' is an insult to those of us that came here to fight for our survival. How do we go home and tell our people that this is what the world has to say about our futures?"
Environmental Defense associate director of national change Julia Levin called the draft text "unacceptable," while Jean Su from the Center for Biological DiversitytoldThe Associated Press that it "moves disastrously backward from original language offering a phaseout of fossil fuels."
"If this race-to-the-bottom monstrosity gets enshrined as the final word, this crucial COP will be a failure," Su said.
Climate campaigners are also concerned that the text opens the doorway to untested technological solutions like carbon capture and storage that can be used to extend the burning of fossil fuels.
"The word 'phaseout' has been phased out."
"It's incredibly dangerous for the fossil fuel industry and its enablers in government to promote the idea that they can keep burning fossil fuels while pulling carbon out of the air or out of the smokestacks with technologies that consistently fail to deliver," Collin Rees, the U.S. program manager at Oil Change International, toldNew York Times opinion writer Peter Coy before the latest draft was released.
Despite these warnings, one of the suggested actions in the text is "accelerating zero and low emissions technologies, including, inter alia, renewables, nuclear, abatement, and removal technologies, including such as carbon capture and utilization and storage, and low carbon hydrogen production, so as to enhance efforts towards substitution of unabated fossil fuels in energy systems."
"Like the smog-ridden Dubai skyline, the mention of fossil fuels in the final outcome is at best murky, and at worst, dangerous," Cansin Leylim, 350.org associate director of global campaigns, said in a statement. "This outcome leaves the doors wide open to dangerous distractions and false technologies like carbon capture and storage (CCS), which will surely blow us past the 1.5°C planetary limit, and fails to integrate the crucial finance and equitability aspects of the just transition to renewable energy that we need."
Sara Shaw with Friends of the Earth International agreed that "the fossil fuel text is alarmingly weak and opens the door to risky, dangerous CCS/CCUS, hydrogen, nuclear, and carbon removal technologies (geoengineering, or nature-based). These loopholes prolong the fossil fuel era, and delay and distract from any meaningful phaseout."
However, she added there was more going on behind the scenes.
"Countries who claim to be climate champions like the U.S. and E.U. are calling for stronger fossil fuel phaseout text, despite planning massive fossil fuel expansion," Shaw said. "And they are seeking to water down the climate finance provisions (one of the elements of the text which is better than expected) so urgently needed to enable the energy transition in the global South."
Activists are still hoping to strengthen the language before negotiations conclude Tuesday.
"The word 'phaseout' has been phased out," Li Shuo, director of the Asia Society Policy Institute, told AP. "We need to phase in the word phaseout. I think there's still a chance for countries to do so."
Peri Dias, 350.org Latin America representative at COP28, said: "In the coming hours, we will either witness a historic decision for the good of the planet, or one for its end. Are the parties at COP28 going to agree to a rapid and fair elimination of fossil fuels or not?"
Gore concluded: "There are 24 hours left to show whose side the world is on: the side that wants to protect humanity's future by kickstarting the orderly phase out of fossil fuels or the side of the petrostates and the leaders of the oil and gas companies that are fueling the historic climate catastrophe."
"In order to prevent COP28 from being the most embarrassing and dismal failure in 28 years of international climate negotiations, the final text must include clear language on phasing out fossil fuels," he said. "Anything else is a massive step backwards from where the world needs to be to truly address the climate crisis and make sure the 1.5°C goal doesn't die in Dubai."
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