May, 19 2022, 10:24am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Barbara Chillcott, Western Environmental Law Center, chillcott@westernlaw.org
Ben Tettlebaum, The Wilderness Society, ben_tettlebaum@tws.org
Taylor McKinnon, Center for Biological Diversity, tmckinnon@biologicaldiversity.
Natasha Léger, Citizens for a Healthy Community, natasha@chc4you.org
Groups petition Interior to use existing, long-dormant authority to rein in oil and gas
Yesterday, a coalition of 30 environmental and community groups petitioned the Department of Interior to use the agency's longstanding authority and responsibility under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) to center public lands as a cornerstone of ecological and community resilience in the face of a changing climate.
WASHINGTON
Yesterday, a coalition of 30 environmental and community groups petitioned the Department of Interior to use the agency's longstanding authority and responsibility under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act (FLPMA) to center public lands as a cornerstone of ecological and community resilience in the face of a changing climate. By adopting the climate and conservation-centered regulations proposed in the petition, Interior would empower federal public lands to serve as one of our country's key climate solutions.
Right now, public lands are, unfortunately, a major climate problem. Fossil fuel extraction from federal public lands is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions and associated climate and community impacts. Interior's highly permissive approach to oil and gas development of federal public lands and minerals has undercut the Biden administration's ability to deliver on its climate commitments. Oil and gas companies own leases conveying the right to drill 26.6 million acres of federal public lands and minerals. Although nearly 53 percent of those leased acres are non-producing, 96,000 wells have already been drilled and Biden's Interior has approved, without imposing any climate mitigation measures, an industry stockpile of more than 9,000 additional drilling permits. Adding insult to injury, the administration just announced its intent to sell an additional 144,000 acres of oil and gas leases.
The coalition requests that Interior set public lands as the foundation of the nation's efforts to respond to the global climate crisis by immediately initiating a rulemaking to leverage FLPMA's mandate that Interior prevent the "permanent impairment" and "unnecessary or undue degradation" of public lands from oil and gas development. For decades, the agencies have mothballed these critical provisions in favor of promoting a massive expansion of climate-damaging oil and gas production on public lands.
The coalition's recommended regulatory framework would require that Interior and BLM adhere to science-based climate guardrails, already agreed to by the Biden administration, to constrain warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to actively pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. In so doing, the petition would provide a vehicle for the administration to further its commitments to reduce emissions, curb the impacts of fossil fuel extraction on federal public lands, and to reach the 30x30 and 50x50 conservation milestones. Climate action specifically focused on the federal public lands and minerals oil and gas program is absolutely necessary to mitigate the worst effects of the climate crisis.
As we close in on the 50th anniversary of this landmark law, it is time for Interior to fulfill FLPMA's promise by adopting a framework that meets the urgency demanded by the climate crisis and opens new doors for public lands to contribute to a thriving, resilient future.
"The intersecting geopolitical, energy, and climate crises we face demand strong action. Using the power of the environmental laws that require federal land managers to protect public lands for the long term, this administration can open new doors to a thriving, resilient future for all people, with our public lands as a cornerstone of ecological and community resilience," said Barbara Chillcott, senior attorney at the Western Environmental Law Center. "We know public lands hold the key to resilience in the face of a warming climate--so why aren't we using the full power of the law to protect them and ourselves?"
"There is no more impactful climate action the administration can take than stopping the ongoing exploitation of public lands by the fossil fuel industry over any other competing use," said Adam Carlesco, staff attorney with Food & Water Watch. "The proposed regulatory changes within this petition are aimed at ensuring that Interior upholds its statutory obligations to preserve these lands for future generations."
"Public lands contribute 4.5 times more carbon to the atmosphere than they sequester, largely due to energy extraction activities, like oil and gas drilling," said Shelley Silbert, executive director of Great Old Broads for Wilderness. "We can mitigate the devastating effects of climate change by putting in place this proposed framework for public land management. If we care about our kids and grandkids, why wouldn't we want to do this?"
"The bedrock laws governing our public lands are intended to conserve these cherished places and their vital resources, not auction them off for private profit," said Ben Tettlebaum, senior staff attorney with The Wilderness Society. "This framework would help fulfill the promise that public lands benefit all of us - current and future generations. It's long past time for Interior to honor our voices - the people and communities who depend on these lands for clean air, clean water, subsistence, recreation, and a climate-resilient future."
"The impacts of public land exploitation are especially devastating for New Mexico's low-income communities and communities of color. The Administration must take concrete action to mitigate these impacts and address our worsening climate conditions. They can start right now by implementing the recommendations in this proposed framework and protecting public lands," said Oriana Sandoval, chief executive officer of the Center for Civic Policy.
"Protecting public lands is an American idea - some call it 'America's best idea','' said Demis Foster, executive director of Conservation Voters New Mexico. "Congress created the tools necessary to undo decades of degradation and ensure that our federal public lands can be used to address the climate crisis, provide equitable access to the outdoors and support a growing outdoor recreation economy, and provide the basis for a future our children can be proud of."
"We must ensure responsible stewardship of our land and resources," said Hannah Burling, president of the League of Women Voters of New Mexico. "Growth must follow the findings of a comprehensive analysis of the climate, environmental, and social impacts of such development."
"By adopting the rules proposed in this petition, Interior will open new doors to usher in an era of sustainable public land use that can mitigate past and present harmful practices, rein in climate change, and create opportunities for disproportionately impacted frontline communities to thrive," said Mara Yarbrough, campaign director of the New Mexico Permian Basin Climate Justice Coalition. "We urge Interior to act within its authority and take definitive climate action by adopting this proposed framework."
"Our public lands are not just resources to be exploited. They are critical to ensuring that life support ecosystems remain intact," said Natasha Leger, executive director of Citizens for a Healthy Community. "It is time for the Department of Interior's regulations to match the statutory intent of preventing irreparable harm to our environment and ensure the regulatory standards and thresholds necessary to tackle the climate crisis."
"This will further empower President Biden to avoid more climate harm to forests, rivers, wildlife and people from greenhouse gas pollution," said Taylor McKinnon, senior public lands campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity. "Climate science makes clear that any new fossil fuel leasing and production is incompatible with avoiding the catastrophes of warming. The Biden administration needs to heed that reality and take urgent, meaningful action now."
"It's time to wind down and ultimately phase out fossil fuel production from public lands," said Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director of WildEarth Guardians. "For our climate, we need to end fracking, stop mining coal, and start safeguarding the lands that are vital to this nation."
"This framework will empower Interior to take climate action in line with the public interest and merited for the scale of the crises we face," said Mattea Mrkusic, policy lead at Evergreen Action. "Climate commitments have to be observed in reality, not just in rhetoric."
The Western Environmental Law Center uses the power of the law to safeguard the public lands, wildlife, and communities of the American West in the face of a changing climate. We envision a thriving, resilient West, abundant with protected public lands and wildlife, powered by clean energy, and defended by communities rooted in an ethic of conservation.
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'Children Are Starving': Rafah Suffers as Israel Halts All Aid and Escalates Assault
"People have been fearing this for a long, long time and it is now upon us. There is constant bombardment. There is smoke on the horizon. There are people on the move," said one humanitarian worker.
May 10, 2024
United Nations experts on Friday used U.S. President Joe Biden's own language regarding Israel's offensive in Rafah, Gaza to demand that the president follow through with his statement that an Israeli invasion of the southern city would be a "red line" and would push him to halt military support for Israel.
"States with influence over Israel have described any incursion into Rafah as a 'red line,'" said experts including Francesca Albanese, special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, and Michael Fakhri, special rapporteur on the right to food. "They must immediately put those words into practice and stop this disastrous campaign by ending the flow of arms into Israel and withholding investment and political support."
The latest call for the U.S. to end its support for Israel comes as humanitarian workers in Rafah, where 1.4 million people have been living in improvised tent encampments for weeks following the forced displacement of 90% of Gaza residents, are grappling with rapidly dwindling aid supplies.
Israel seized control of the crucial Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt this week, shutting off all humanitarian aid—which was already a fraction of what's needed—as the enclave's entire population suffers from acute food insecurity.
Along with food, said the U.N. experts, Rafah now has no access to shipments of other survival supplies and fuel, which is needed to run Gaza's remaining hospitals and water desalination plants.
As a full-scale ground assault on Rafah is threatened, Sam Rose, director of planning for the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), toldAl Jazeera, people in Rafah "are petrified" of a potential "scorched earth" war on Palestinian civilians.
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U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has long demanded that Biden end unconditional military support for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), warned that the U.S. can no longer be "complicit" in Israel's starving of Palestinians, dozens of whom have already died of malnutrition due to Israel's blockade on nearly all aid since October.
Biden stopped a shipment of bombs to Israel last week, but NBC Newsreported Friday that shipments of "both offensive and defensive weaponry" have been sent to the IDF in recent days despite Israel's incursion.
UNRWA said Friday that 110,000 people have fled Rafah this week, with Israel claiming the coastal town of Al-Mawasi, about six miles from the city, is a new "expanded humanitarian area" where Palestinians will be safe. Rafah is one of many places in Gaza that have been previously designated as safe zones but were then bombarded by the IDF.
The U.N. experts said Al-Mawasi, a narrow strip of land, "cannot cope with a population influx."
The town is "already without sufficient food, water, medicine, hygiene products, electricity, shelter, and access to education for children," they said.
"In light of the grievous humanitarian situation on the ground, no evacuation order issued by Israel can be considered compliant with international humanitarian law," said the rapporteurs. "Further displacement of Gaza's population through evacuation orders or military operations contravenes binding provisional measures imposed on Israel by the International Court of Justice."
On Friday, Israeli troops were advancing in eastern Rafah as cease-fire talks brokered by the U.S., Qatar, and Egypt appeared to stall. Hamas said the "ball is now completely" in the hands of Israel, which on Monday rejected a cease-fire deal that Hamas had accepted, just as the IDF launched strikes on Rafah.
Hamas, which has governed Gaza for nearly two decades, said Israel had "raised objections" to Hamas' demands on "several central issues"; the Palestinian group has demanded a withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, the return of displaced Palestinians, and swapping Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called on the international community to "speak with one voice for an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza."
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As Israeli forces continued their devastating assault on the Gaza Strip and deadly occupation of the West Bank, human rights defenders from around the world gathered Friday in South Africa—which is leading a genocide case against Israel at the World Court—for the inaugural Global Anti-Apartheid Conference on Palestine.
The conference began with a moment of silence for the nearly 35,000 Palestinians—most of them women and children—killed by Israeli troops during the 217-day war and "complete siege," which has also wounded more than 78,000 people, displaced around 90% of the strip's population, and starved at least hundreds of thousands of others—dozens of whom have died.
Meanwhile, Israel's illegal occupation and settler colonization have intensified in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, where soldiers and settlers have killed at least 467 Palestinians and wounded or arrested thousands of others—some of whom were tortured—over the past seven months.
"This conference must make sure that we mobilize the world... and free the people of Palestine," Rev. Frank Chikane of the African National Congress (ANC) and World Council of Churches said at the start of the symposium.
Thanking Chikane for "spearheading" conference organizing efforts, South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor hailed the "watershed moment" of "anti-apartheid movements on Palestine from around the globe coming together and joining forces in the struggle for justice for the Palestinian people."
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Pandor highlighted South Africa's December
filing of a genocide case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, a move supported by over 30 countries and regional blocs and hundreds of advocacy groups. In January, the ICJ found that Israel is "plausibly" committing genocide in Gaza and ordered its government to prevent future genocidal acts—an order human rights monitors say Israel has ignored, largely by blocking humanitarian aid. In March, the ICJ ordered Israel to allow more aid into Gaza.
"We will continue to do everything within our power to preserve the existence of the Palestinian people as a group, to end all acts of apartheid and genocide against the Palestinian people, and to walk with them towards the realization of their collective right to self-determination," Pandor said. "We continue to do so following in the footsteps of Nelson Mandela and will not rest until the freedom of the peoples of Palestine is realized."
Ronnie Kasrils—a communist who went from being a guerrilla fighter in the ANC's armed wing during the apartheid era to a government minister in a free South Africa—warned against compromising in the fight for freedom. He also reaffirmed Palestinians' legal right to "armed struggle, an international right of resistance against tyranny, against military occupation."
Anti-Apartheid stalwart Ronnie Kasrils gives a passionate address at the Global Anti-Apartheid Conference On Palestine. #PalestineAfrica2024 pic.twitter.com/32i6KQfA85
— Salaamedia (@salaamedia) May 10, 2024
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"Israel initiated this war but Israel will not be the one who decides how it ends," he added.
Lamis Deek, a New York-based attorney specializing in international human rights, called for "liberation of all the land from institutions of Zionist violence and supremacy, return, reparations, justice and accountability for every Zionist crime, and restitution."
"The Palestinian resistance is on the frontline against global descent into darkness and barbarism" @Lamis_Deek speaks powerfully about what it we means when we speak about Palestinian liberation. At The Global Anti Apartheid Conference on Palestine#PalestineAfrica pic.twitter.com/2eKGrS2EZ6
— CAGE International (@CAGEintl) May 10, 2024
Declan Kearney, a member of Northern Ireland's Legislative Assembly and national chairman of the Irish republican and democratic socialist party Sinn Féin, noted that "Palestinian and Irish freedom fighters share a special bond. Our commitment is absolute and unbreakable."
The Republic of Ireland said in March that it would intervene in the South African ICJ case and the country—along with fellow European Union members Spain, Slovenia, and Malta—is set later this month to join the nearly 140 nations that recognize Palestinian statehood.
The United Nations General Assembly voted 143-9 on Friday to approve Palestine's bid for full U.N. membership. The United States—Israel's leading international backer—and Israel voted against the proposal, which will head to the U.N. Security Council and an almost certain U.S. veto.
Kearney echoed other speakers who stressed the importance of international solidarity, applauding the "unprecedented" global outpouring of support for Palestine.
"We are with the Palestinian people on their long walk to freedom and will never abandon them," he vowed.
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"It is a day of resistance and demand," said trade groups that organized the action "in defense of democracy, labor rights, and the living wage."
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Argentina's primary trade union federation on Thursday held another nationwide general strike, the second called since President Javier Milei, a far-right economist, took office in December and began pursuing sweeping austerity and deregulation.
The South American nation's unions organized the strike "in defense of democracy, labor rights, and the living wage," according to a statement from the General Confederation of Labor (CGT), the Argentine Workers' Central Union (CTA), and the Autonomous CTA.
"It is a day of resistance and demand," the groups said, blasting the Milei government's "brutal" attacks on labor rights, social security, public health, education, science, and "our cultural identity." The policies of austerity, say opponents, have disproportionately impacted working people and retirees.
The labor groups called out the government for promoting "dangerous policies for the privatization of public enterprises" and pushing for "a phenomenal transfer of resources to the most concentrated and privileged sectors of the economy."
CGT celebrated the 24-hour strike's success on Friday, declaring that "Argentina stopped," and sharing photos of sparsely populated roads, transit hubs, and other public spaces.
As the
Buenos Aires Timesreported:
In the nation's capital, streets were mostly empty, with very little public transport. Many schools and banks closed their doors while most shops were shuttered. Garbage was left uncollected.
Rail and port terminals were closed, while the industrial action forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights, leaving airports semi-deserted. Some buses—from firms that did not take part in the strike—were running in the morning, although with few passengers. Cars were circulating, but traffic levels were similar to that seen on weekends.
The port of Rosario, which exports 80% of the nation's agro-industrial production, was all but paralysed in the midst of its busiest season.
A spokesperson for Milei, Manuel Adorni, claimed the nationwide action was "an attack on the pocket and against the will of the people" by those "who have curtailed the progress of Argentines over the last 25 years," the newspaper noted.
Meanwhile, union leaders stressed that the strike was the result of "a government that only benefits the rich at the expense of the people, gives away natural resources, and seeks to eliminate workers' rights," as CTA secretary general Hugo Yasky put it.
As the action wound down Thursday, Yasky described it as a "display of dignity of the Argentine people" that sent "a strong message" to Milei's government as well as the International Monetary Fund "that intends to govern us" and the country's senators.
Argentina's Senate is now debating an "omnibus" bill that contains some of Milei's neoliberal economic policies—including making privatization easier—after the package was approved last week by the Chamber of Deputies, the lower congressional body.
Rubén Sobrero, general secretary of the Railway Union, signaled that more strikes could come if lawmakers continue to advance the president's policies, tellingThe Associated Press that "if there is no response within these 24 hours, we'll do another 36."
From Europe to North America, trade groups around the world expressed solidarity with Thursday's strike.
"Milei's policies have not tackled the decadence of the elites that he decries, instead he has delivered daily misery for millions of working people. Plummeting living standards, contracting production, and the collapse of purchasing power means some people cannot even afford to eat," said International Trade Union Confederation general secretary Luc Triangle in a statement.
Triangle noted that "the government is targeting the rights of the most vulnerable sectors of the population and key trade union rights, such as collective bargaining, that support greater fairness and equality in society, while threatening those who protest with police repression and criminalization."
"In this context, the work of the trade unions in Argentina is extraordinary. They have emerged as the main opposition to the government's dystopian agenda, uniting resistance and building a coalition in defense of workers' rights and broader democratic principles," he added. "The demands of the trade unions in Argentina for social justice, democracy, and equality are the demands of working people across the world. Their fight is our fight and that is why the global trade union movement stands with them."
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